whole kingdoms are blessed by benevolent spirits for the virtuous conduct of their rulers. Yahveh promised not to destroy Sodom for the sake of ten righteous, provided that so many righteous could be found in the town.2 The doctrine of vicarious reward or satisfaction through good works is, in fact, more prevalent than the doctrine of vicarious punishment. Jewish theology has a great deal more to say about the acceptance of the merits of the righteous on behalf of the wicked, than about atonement through sacrifice. The Muhammedans, who know nothing of vicarious suffering as a means of expiation, confer merits upon their dead by reciting chapters of the Koran and almsgiving, and some of them allow the pilgrimage to Mecca to be done by proxy. Christian theology itself maintains that salvation depends on the merit of the passion of Christ; and from early times the merits of martyrs and saints were believed to benefit other members of the Church.5 For the explanation of these and similar facts various circumstances have to be considered. Good deeds may be so pleasing to a god as to induce him to forgive the sins of the wicked, in accordance with the rule that anger yields to joy. There is solidarity not only between members of the same family, but between members of the same social unit; hence the virtues of individuals may benefit the whole community to which they belong. The Catholic theologian argues that, since we are all regenerated unto Christ by being washed in the same baptism, made partakers of the same sacraments, and, especially, of the same meat and drink, the body and blood of Christ, we are all members of the same body. 'As, then, the foot does not perform its functions solely for itself, but also for the benefit of the eyes; and as the eyes exercise their sight, not for their own, but for the common benefit of all the members; so should works of satisfaction be deemed common to all the members of the 1 de Groot, Religious System of China (vol. iv. book ii.) 435. 2 Genesis, xviii. 32. 3 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 424, n. I. 4 Lane, Modern Egyptians, pp. 247, VOL. I 248, 532. Sell, op. cit. pp. 242, 278, 287, 288, 298. Cf. Wallin, Första Resa fran Cairo till Arabiska öknen, p. 103. Harnack, History of Dogma, ii. 133, n. 3. H Church." Moreover, virtues, like sins, are believed to 1 be in a material way transferable. In Upper Bavaria, when a dead person is laid out, a cake of flour is placed on his breast in order to absorb the virtues of the deceased, whereupon the cake is eaten by the nearest relatives. And we are told that, in a certain district in the north of England, if a child is brought to the font at the same time as a body is committed to the ground, whatever was "good" in the deceased person is supposed to be transferred to the little child, since God does not allow any "goodness" to be buried and lost to the world, and such "goodness" is most likely to enter a little child coming to the sacrament of Baptism. A blessing, also, no less than a curse, is looked upon in the light of material energy; goodness is not required for the acquisition of it, mere contact will do. Blessings are hereditary :-"The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him." 4 It is no doubt more becoming for a god to pardon the sinner on account of the merits of the virtuous, than to punish the innocent for the sins of the wicked. It shows that his compassion overcomes his wrath; and the mercy of the deity is, among all divine attributes, that on which the higher monotheistic religions lay most stress. Allah said, "Whoso doth one good act, for him are ten rewards, and I also give more to whomsoever I will; and whoso doth ill, its retaliation is equal to it, or else I forgive him." 5 Nevertheless, the moral consciousness of a higher type can hardly approve that the wicked should be pardoned for the sake of the virtuous, or that the reward for an act should be bestowed upon anybody else than the The doctrine of vicarious merit or recompense is agent. not just; it involves that badness is unduly ignored; it is based on crude ideas of goodness and merit. The theory of opera supererogativa, as we have seen, attaches badness Folk-Medicine,' in Folk-Lore, vii. 280. Proverbs, xx. 7. 1 Catechism of the Council of Trent, ii. 5. 72. Am Urquell, ii. 101. 3 Peacock, Executed Criminals and 5 Lane-Poole, Speeches and TableTalk of Mohammad, p. 147. true and goodness to external acts rather than to mental facts, and assumes that reparation can be given for badness, whereas the scrutinising moral judge only forgives badness in case it is superseded by repentance. If thus a bad act cannot be compensated by a good one, even though both be performed by one and the same person, it can still less be compensated by the good act of another man. From various quarters we hear protests against the notion of vicarious merit-protests which emphasise the direction of moral reward. Ezekiel, who reproved the old idea that the children's teeth are set on edge because the fathers have eaten sour grapes, also taught that a wicked son is to reap no benefit from the blessing bestowed upon a righteous father.1 "Fear the day," says the Koran, "wherein no soul shall pay any recompense for another soul." The Buddhistic Dhammapada contains the following passage, which sums up our whole argument :— "By oneself the evil is done, by oneself one suffers; by oneself evil is left undone, by oneself one is purified. The pure and the impure stand and fall by themselves, no one can purify another." 3 1 Ezekiel, xviii. 5 sqq. 3 Dhammatada, xii. 165. CHAPTER IV THE NATURE OF THE MORAL EMOTIONS (concluded) WE have seen that moral disapproval is a form of resentment, and that moral approval is a form of retributive kindly emotion. It still remains for us to examine in what respects these emotions differ from kindred nonmoral emotions-disapproval from anger and revenge, approval from gratitude--in other words, what characterises them as specifically moral emotions. It is a common opinion, held by all who regard the intellect as the source of moral concepts, that moral emotions only arise in consequence of moral judgments, and that, in each case, the character of the emotion is determined by the predicate of the judgment. We are told that, when the intellectual process is completed, when the act in question is definitely classed under such or such a moral category, then, and only then, there follows instantaneously a feeling of either approbation or disapprobation as the case may be. When we hear of a murder, for instance, we must discern the wrongness of the act before we can feel moral indignation at it. It is true that a moral judgment may be followed by a moral emotion, that the finding out the tendency of a certain mode of conduct to evoke indignation or approval is apt to call forth such an emotion, if there was none before, or otherwise to increase the one existing. It is, moreover, true that the predicate of a moral judgment, as 1 Fleming, Manual of Moral Philosophy, p. 97 sqq. Fowler, Principles of Morals, ii. 198 sqq. well as the generalisation leading up to such a predicate, may give a specific colouring to the approval or disapproval which it produces, quite apart from the general characteristics belonging to that emotion in its capacity of a moral emotion; the concepts of duty and justice, for instance, no doubt have a peculiar flavour of their own. But for all this, moral emotions cannot be described as resentment or retributive kindliness called forth by moral judgments. Such a definition would be a meaningless play with words. Whatever emotions may follow moral judgments, such judgments could never have been pronounced unless there had been moral emotions antecedent to them. Their predicates, as was pointed out above, are essentially based on generalisations of tendencies in certain phenomena to arouse moral emotions; hence the criterion of a moral emotion can in no case depend upon its proceeding from a moral judgment. But at the same time moral judgments, being definite expressions of moral emotions, naturally help us to discover the true nature of these emotions. The predicate of a moral judgment always involves a notion of disinterestedness. When pronouncing an act to be good or bad, I mean that it is so, quite independently of any reference it might have to my own interests. A moral judgment may certainly have a selfish motive; but then it, nevertheless, pretends to be disinterested, which shows that disinterestedness is a characteristic of moral concepts as such. This is admitted even by the egoistic hedonist, who maintains that we approve and condemn acts from × self-love. According to Helvetius, it is the love of consideration that a virtuous man takes to be in him the love of virtue; and yet everybody pretends to love virtue for its own sake, "this phrase is in every one's mouth and in no one's heart." 1 If the moral concepts are essentially generalisations of tendencies in certain phenomena to call forth moral emotions, and, at the same time, contain the notion of 1 Helvetius, De l'Homme, i. 263. |