Moral Science, Alexander Bain [top non fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

is a lower and a higher faculty of Desire; or, otherwise expressed, there are the various affections that have their roots in sense and centre in self-love or the desire of self-preservation, and there is also a natural love of justice implanted from the beginning. In proportion as the _appetitus justi_, which consists in will, gains upon the _appetitus commodi_, men become more worthy of a larger happiness. Self-love rules in man, so long as he is in the natural state of sin; if, amid great conflict and by divine help, the higher affection gains the upper hand, the state of true virtue, which is identical with the theoretic state of belief, and also of pure love to God and man, is reached.

By the middle of the thirteenth century, the schoolmen had before them the whole works of Aristotle, obtained from Arabian and other sources. Whereas, previous to this time, they had comprehended nearly all the subjects of Philosophy under the one name of Dialectics or Logic, always reserving, however, Ethics to Theology, they were now made aware of the ancient division of the sciences, and of what had been accomplished in each. The effect, both in respect of form and of subject-matter, was soon apparent in such compilations or more independent works as they were able to produce after their commentaries on the Aristotelian text. But in Ethics, the nature of the subject demanded of men in their position a less entire submission to the doctrines of the pagan philosopher; and here accordingly they clung to the traditional theological treatment. If they were commenting on the Ethics of Aristotle, the Bible was at hand to supply his omissions; if they were setting up a complete moral system, they took little more than the ground-work from him, the rest being Christian ideas and precepts, or fragments borrowed from Platonism and other Greek systems, nearly allied in spirit to their own faith.

This is especially true, as will be seen, of Thomas Aquinas. His predecessors can be disposed of in a few words. ALEXANDER of HALES (d. 1245) was almost purely theological. BONAVENTURA (1221-74) in his double character of rigid Franciscan and mystic, was led far beyond the Aristotelian Ethics. The mean between excess and defect is a very good rule for the affairs of life, but the true Christian is bound besides to works of supererogation: first of all, to take on the condition of poverty; while the state of mystic contemplation remains as a still higher goal for the few. ALBERT THE GREAT (1193-1280), the most learned and complete commentator of Aristotle that had yet appeared, divide the whole subject of Ethics into _Monastica, Oeconomica_, and _Politica_. In this division, which is plainly suggested by the Aristotelian division of Politics in the large sense, the term _Monastica_ not inaptly expresses the reference that Ethics has to the conduct of men as individuals. Albert, however, in commenting on the Nicomachean Ethics, adds exceedingly little to the results of his author beyond the incorporation of a few Scriptural ideas. To the cardinal virtues he appends the _virtutes adjunctae_, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and again in his compendious work, _Summa Theologiae_, distinguishes them as _infusae_, the cardinal being considered as _acquisitae_.

Besides his commentaries on the Aristotelian works (the Ethics included) and many other writings, THOMAS AQUINAS (1226-74) left two large works, the _Summa philosophica_ and the famous _Summa Theologiae_. Notwithstanding the prominence assigned to theological questions, the first is a regular philosophical work; the second, though containing the exposition of philosophical opinions, is a theological textbook. Now, as it is in the Summary for theological purposes that the whole practical philosophy of Aquinas is contained, it is to be inferred that he regarded the subject of Ethics as not on the same level with other departments of philosophy. Moreover, even when he is not appealing to Scripture, he is seen to display what is for him a most unusual tendency to desert Aristotle, at the really critical moments, for Plato or Plotinus, or any other authority of a more theological cast.

In the (unfinished) _Summa Theologiae_, the Ethical views and cognate questions occupy the two sections of the second part--the so-called _prima_ and _secunda secundae_. He begins, in the Aristotelian fashion, by seeking an ultimate end of human action, and finds it in the attainment of the highest good or happiness. But as no created thing can answer to the idea of the highest good, it must be placed in God. God, however, as the highest good, can only be the object, in the search after human happiness, for happiness in itself is a state of the mind or act of the soul. The question then arises, "what sort of act?" Does it fall under the Will or under the Intelligence? The answer is, Not under the will, because happiness is neither desire nor pleasure, but _consecutio_, that is, a possessing. Desire precedes _consecutio_, and pleasure follows upon it; but the act of getting possession, in which lies happiness, is distinct from both. This is illustrated by the case of the miser having his happiness in the mere possession of money; and the position is essentially the same as Butler's, in regard to our appetites and desires, that they blindly seek their objects with no regard to pleasure. Thomas concludes that the _consecutio_, or happiness, is an act of the intelligence; what pleasure there is being a mere accidental accompaniment.

Distinguishing between two phases of the intellect--the theoretic and the practical--in the one of which it is an end to itself, but in the other subordinated to an external aim, he places true happiness in acts of the self-sufficing theoretic intelligence. In this life, however, such a constant exercise of the intellect is not possible, and accordingly what happiness there is, must be found, in great measure, in the exercise of the practical intellect, directing and governing the lower desires and passions. This twofold conception of happiness is Aristotelian, even as expressed by Thomas under the distinction of perfect and imperfect happiness; but when he goes on to associate perfect happiness with the future life only, to found an argument for a future life from the desire of a happiness more perfect than can be found here, and to make the pure contemplation, in which consists highest bliss, a vision of the divine essence face to face, a direct cognition of Deity far surpassing demonstrative knowledge or mortal faith--he is more theologian than philosopher, or if a philosopher, more Platonist than Aristotelian.

The condition of perfect happiness being a theoretic or intellectual state, the _visio_, and not the _delectatio_, is consistently given as its central fact; and when he proceeds to consider the other questions of Ethics, the same superiority is steadily ascribed to the intellectual function. It is because we _know_ a thing to be good that we wish it, and knowing it, we cannot help wishing. Conscience, as the name implies, is allied to knowledge. Reason gives the law to will.

After a long disquisition about the passions and the whole appetitive side of human nature, over which Reason is called to rule, he is brought to the subject of virtue. He is Aristotelian enough to describe virtue as _habitus_--a disposition or quality (like health) whereby a subject is more or less well disposed with reference to itself or something else; and he takes account of the acquisition of good moral habits (_virtutes acquisitae_) by practice. But with this he couples, or tends to substitute for it, the definition of Augustin that virtue is a good quality of mind, _quam Deus in nobis sine nobis operatur_, as a ground for _virtutes infusae_, conferred as gifts upon man, or rather on certain men, by free grace from on high. He wavers greatly at this stage, and in this respect his attitude is characteristic for all the schoolmen.

So again in passing from the general question of Virtue to the virtues, he puts several of the systems under contribution, as if not prepared to leave the guidance of Aristotle, but feeling at the same time the necessity of bridging over the distance between his position and Christian requirements. Understanding Aristotle to make a co-ordinate division of virtues into Moral and Intellectual, he gives reasons for such a step. Though virtue, he says, is not so much the perfecting of the operation of our faculties, as their employment by the will for good ends, it may be used in the first sense, and thus the intellectual virtues will be the habits of intelligence that procure the truest knowledge. The well-known division of the cardinal virtues is his next theme; and it is established as complete and satisfactory by a twofold deduction. But a still higher and more congenial view is immediately afterwards adopted from Plotinus. This is the Neo-Platonic description of the four virtues as _politicae, purgatoriae_, and _purgati animi_, according to the scale of elevation reached by the soul in its efforts to mount above sense. They are called by Thomas also _exemplares_, when regarded at once as the essence of the Deity, and as the models of human perfections.

This mystical division, not unsupported by philosophical authority, smooths the way for his account of the highest or _theological_ virtues. These bear upon the vision of Deity, which was recognized above as the highest good of humanity, and form an order apart. They have God for their object, are altogether inspired by God (hence called _infusae_), and are taught by revelation. Given in connection with the natural faculties of intellect and will, they are exhibited in the attainment of the supernatural order of things. With intellect goes _Faith_, as it were the intellect applied to things not intelligible; with Will go Hope and Charity or Love: Hope being the Will exercised upon things not naturally desired, and Love the union of Will with what is not naturally brought near to us.

Aquinas then passes to politics, or at least the discussion of the political ideas of law, right, &c.

Coming now to _modern_ thinkers, we begin with


THOMAS HOBBES. [1588-1679.]

The circumstances of Hobbes's life, so powerful in determining the nature of his opinions, had an equally marked effect on the order and number of expositions that he gave to the psychological and political parts of his system. His ethical doctrines, in as far as they can be dissociated from, his politics, may be studied in no less than three distinct forms; either in the first part of the Leviathian (1651); or in the De Cive (1647), taken along-with the _De Homine_ (1658); or in the Treatise of Human Nature (1650, but written ten years earlier), coupled with the De Corpore Politico (also 1650). But the same result, or with only unimportant variations, being obtained from all, we need not here go beyond the first-mentioned.

In the first part of the Leviathan, then, bearing the title _Of Man_, and designed to consider Man as at once the _matter_ and _artificer_ of the Commonwealth or State, Hobbes is led, after discussing Sense, Imagination, Train of Imaginations, Speech, Reason and Science, to take up, in chapter sixth, the Passions, or, as he calls them, the Interior beginnings of voluntary motions. Motions, he says, are either vital and animal, or voluntary. Vital motions, _e.g._, circulation, nutrition, &c., need no help of imagination; on the other hand, voluntary motions, as going and speaking--since they depend on a precedent thought of whither, which way, and what--have in the imagination their first beginning. But imagination is only the relics of sense, and sense, as Hobbes always declares, is motion in the human organs communicated by objects without; consequently, visible voluntary motions begin in invisible internal motions, whose nature is expressed by the word _Endeavour_. When the endeavour is towards something causing it, there is Appetite or Desire; endeavour 'fromward something' is