113 



deliberation, operating upon the data gathered in experience 

 as to the connection of pleasure and pain with certain actions. 



6. SHAFTESBURY. 



The next step to be taken toward a solution of the problem 

 of social morality was that taken by the Moral Sense school. 

 Instead of presenting the principle of social duty as abstract 

 reason, with which natural self-love is liable to conflict, it is 

 possible that man is endowed by nature with social affections, 

 and that there may be a normal harmony between these and 

 his natural self-love. This line of thought Shaftesbury 1 

 may be said to have begun. Although there were those who, 

 before Shaftesbury, spoke of natural affections binding men to 

 their fellows, yet he is the first to make this the central point 

 in his system. No one before him had definitely transferred 

 the centre of ethical interest from the Reason, conceived as 

 apprehending abstract moral distinctions, to the emotional 

 impulses that prompt to social duty. 



Shaftesbury, "surpassing all his predecessors in the acute- 

 ness of his aesthetic sense, is the first to prove the primary 

 character of the moral feeling, and the consequent impossi- 

 bility of deriving it from any consideration of the useful 

 or harmful consequences of an action". 2 For him, the prim- 

 ary and immediate character of moral feeling proves that mor- 

 ality is based on emotions which are natural to man, and which 

 can be objects of deliberation only secondarily, in which case 

 they give rise to moral judgments. 



"We have found," Shaftesbury states, "that to deserve 

 the name good or virtuous a Creature must have all his In- 

 clinations and Affections, his Dispositions of Mind, suitable 

 and agreeing with the Good of his Kind, or of that System in 

 which he is included, and of which he constitutes a Part." 3 



We do not know the good by reference to pleasure or pain, 

 nor yet from reason, but by a faculty or sense which tells us 

 what is right or wrong, in much the same way, for example, as 

 our sense of beauty distinguishes the beautiful from that which- 

 is not beautiful. This faculty or sense, Shaftesbury calls 

 the moral sense. "Let us suppose a Creature," he says 

 "who wanting reason, and being unable to reflect, has, not- 

 withstanding, many good Qualitys and Affections; as Love 

 to his Kind, Courage, Gratitude, or Pity. Tis certain that 



*W. Wundt, "Ethical Systems", translated by M. F. Washburn, Swan 

 Sonnenschein & Co., 1897, p. 67. 

 'S.B. 26. 



