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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that reparation can be given for badness, whereas the scrutinising moral judge only forgives badness in case it is superseded by repentance.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 true 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." 8

1 Ezekiel, xviii. 5 sqq.
2 Koran, ii. 44.

3 Dhammatada, xii. 165.

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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 def 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.

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disinterestedness, we must conclude that the emotions from which they spring are felt disinterestedly. Of this fact we find an echo-more or less faithful-in the maxims of various ethical theorisers, as well as practical moralists. We find it in the utilitarian demand that, in regard to his own happiness and that of others, an agent should be "as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator; in the "rule of righteousness" laid down by Samuel Clarke, that " We so deal with every man, as in like circumstances we could reasonably expect he should with us"; in Kant's formula, "Act only on that maxim which thou canst at the same time will to become a universal law";3 in Professor Sidgwick's so-called axiom, "I ought not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another"; in the biblical sayings, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The same fact is expressed in the Indian Mahabharata, where it is said:"Let no man do to another that which would be repugnant to himself; this is the sum of righteousness; the rest is according to inclination. In refusing, in bestowing, in regard to pleasure and to pain, to what is agreeable and disagreeable, a man obtains the proper rule by regarding the case as like his own." Similar words are ascribed to Confucius.s When Tsze-kung asked if there is any one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life, the Master answered, "Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to

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5 Leviticus, xix. 18. St. Matthew, xxii. 39.

6 St. Matthew, vii. 12. Cf. St. Luke, vi. 31.

7 Mahabharata, xiii. 5571 sq., in Muir, Religious and Moral Sentiments, rendered from Sanskrit Writers, p. 107. Cf. Panchatantra, iii. 104 (Benfey's translation, ii. 235).

8 Lun Yü, xv. 23. Cf. ibid. xii. 2; Chung Yung, xiii. 3.

others." And in another utterance Confucius showed that the rule had for him not only a negative, but a positive form. He said that, in the He said that, in the way of the superior man, there are four things to none of which he himself had as yet attained; to serve his father as he would require his son to serve him, to serve his prince as he would require his minister to serve him, to serve his elder brother as he would require his younger brother to serve him, and to set the example in behaving to a friend as he would require the friend to behave to him.1

This " golden rule" is not, as has been sometimes argued, a rule of retaliation. It does not say, "Do to others what they wish to do to you"; it says, “Do to others what you wish, or require, them to do to you.' It brings home to us the fact that moral rules are general rules, which ought to be obeyed irrespectively of any selfish considerations. If formulated as an injunction that we should treat our neighbour in the same manner as we consider that he, under exactly similar circumstances, ought to treat us, it is simply identical with the sentence, "Do your duty," with emphasis laid on the disinterestedness which is involved in the very conception of duty. So far, St. Augustine was right in saying that "Do as thou wouldst be done by " is a sentence which all nations under heaven are agreed upon.

3

Disinterestedness, however, is not the only characteristic by which moral indignation and approval are distinguished from other, non-moral, kinds of resentment or retributive kindly emotion. It is, indeed, itself a form of a more comprehensive quality which characterises moral emotions apparent impartiality. If I pronounce an act done to a friend or to an enemy to be either good or bad, that implies that I assume it to be so independently of the fact that the person to whom the act is done is my friend or my enemy. Conversely, if I pronounce an

Chung Yung, xiii. 4.

Letourneau, L'évolution religieuse dans les diverses races humaines, p. 553.

3 St. Augustine, quoted by Lilly, Right and Wrong, p. 106.

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