114 



if you give to this Creature a reflecting Faculty, it will at the 



same instant approve of Gratitude, Kindness, and Pity; be 



taken with any shew or representation of the social Passion, 



and think nothing more amiable than this, or more odious 



than the contrary. And this is to be capable of Virtue, and 



to have a Sense of Right and Wrong." 1 Shaftesbury further 



states that a man may "by licentiousness of Practice, favour'd 



i by Atheism, come in time to lose much of his natural moral 



; Sense". 2 



The main function of the moral sense is that of approving 

 the benevolent affections. By such approval an additional 

 pleasure is added to that which such affections already possess, 

 and the combination is thus able to counteract the influence 

 of the selfish affections. The tendency of Shaftesbury here 

 is to make benevolence and virtue identical, and at the same 

 time to impair the disinterested character of benevolence. 



The moral judgment, for Shaftesbury, is not reducible, 

 as was supposed by his predecessors, to reflection and 

 the balancing of advantages, but may be said to follow 

 rather than precede the ideas of good and bad. Since then the 

 natural moral law is independent of reflection , its content 

 must consist in an emotion, or a relation between emotions, 

 and since moral action concerns either ourselves or our fellow- 

 men, this relation is seen to be that of harmony between the 

 egoistic and the social affections. The same balancing and 

 blending of private and social affections which tends naturally 

 to public good, is also conducive to the happiness of the indi- 

 vidual in whom it exists. 



Locke had not been able to dispense with rewards and pun- 

 ishments annexed to the moral law. Shaftesbury, however, 

 maintains that morality is its own reward; it involves the 

 highest internal satisfaction, and does not therefore need to 

 be measured by any external standard. When we speak of 

 a man as good, we mean that his dispositions or affections are 

 such as tend of themselves, without external constraint, to 

 promote the good or happiness of human society. Man is 

 not originally fierce and malignantly disposed towards his 

 fellows, but peaceable and benevolent. 



The work of Shaftesbury constitutes a turning point in 

 British ethics. W T ith moralists immediately following, the 

 consideration of abstract rational principles falls into the 

 background, and its place is taken by empirical study of the 

 human mind. 



^.B. 25. 

 *S.B. 24. 



