119 



It is noteworthy that Hutcheson in limiting the function 

 of the moral sense to the production of a peculiar pleasure, 

 opens the way to such an assimilation of this pleasure to 

 other pleasure as Hume carried out through the medium of 

 sympathy. It is further evident in Hutcheson that there is 

 no direct road between 'individualistic' and ' universalistic ' 

 hedonism. Unless we have public affections, he says, "this 

 Truth, 'that an hundred Felicities is a greater Sum than one 

 Felicity', will no more excite to study the Happiness of the 

 Hundred, than this truth, 'a hundred Stones are greater than 

 one', will excite a Man, who has no desire of Heaps, to cast 

 them together". 1 



9. HUME. 



The moral problem remaining for Hume is thus seen to 

 refer to the foundation of the moral judgment, whether to 

 class it as reason or sentiment. Cudw^orth, Clarke, and others 

 had postulated reason as the basis of the moral judgment. Ac- 

 cording to Hume, however, although reason discovers relations 

 and makes judgments thereon, no discovered relation of agree- 

 ment, difference, or 'contrariety' affords any ground for our 

 moral approval or disapproval. What then is this ground? 

 It is a feeling or sentiment of approval or disapproval, which 

 arises when we contemplate all the circumstances of a case/ 

 This feeling, Hume maintains, is not that of self-love, but is 

 the feeling of sympathy a " fellow T -feeling with others". 



Against the theory that the virtue of an act is nothing but 

 the pleasure it gives us, Hume contends that men can enter 

 into the feelings of others by sympathy, and that as a con- 

 sequence w r e often approve of actions which are decidedly 

 hurtful to us and advantageous to our enemies. He depre- 

 cates the attempts of philosophers to trace moral judgments to 

 self-love. "We must, " he says, "renounce a theory which 

 accounts for every moral sentiment by the principle of self- 

 love." No doubt self-love explains much, but an appeal to 

 experience shows its defects. We praise the moral greatness of 

 persons who lived in a time long past where our interests have 

 no part. "We must adopt a more public affection, and allow 

 that the interests of society are not, even on their own account, 

 entirely indifferent to us." There exists a fellow-feeling with 

 the happiness and misery of others, which must be admitted as 

 "a principle in human nature * * * beyond which we cannot 

 hope to find any principle more general". And Hume further 

 states that "it is not probable that these principles can be 

 resolved into principles more simple and universal, whatever 



'S.B. 453. 



