CHAP.VII. TH CHA P. VII. That moral Approbation implies a real Judgment. HE approbation of good actions, and disapprobation of bad, are so familiar to every man come to years of understanding, that it seems ftrange there should be any dispute about their nature. Whether we reflect upon our own conduct, or attend to the conduct of others with whom we live, or of whom we hear or read, we cannot help approving of fome things, disapproving of others, and regarding many with perfect indifference. These operations of our minds we are conscious of every day, and almost every hour we live. Men of ripe understanding are capable of reflecting upon them, and of attending to what passes in their own thoughts on fuch occafions; yet, for half a century, it has been a serious difpute among Philofophers, what this approbation and disapprobation is, Whether there be a real judgment included in it, which, like all other judgments, must be true or false; or, Whether it include no more but fome agreeable or uneasy feeling, in the person who approves or disap proves. Mr HUME obferves very justly, that this is a controversy started of late. Before the modern system of ideas and impressions was introduced, nothing would have appeared more abfurd, than to say, That when I condemn a man for what he has done, I pafs no judgment at all about the man, but only express some uneafy feeling in myself. Nor did the new fyftem produce this difcovery at once, but gradually, by feveral steps, according as its confequences were Nnn 2 more ނ CHAP. VII. more accurately traced, and its spirit more thoroughly imbibed by fucceffive Philofophers. DES CARTES and Mr LOCKE went no farther than to maintain that the secondary qualities of body, heat and cold, found, colour, taste and smell, which we perceive and judge to be in the external object, are mere feelings or fenfations in our minds, there being nothing in bodies themselves to which thefe names can be applied; and that the office of the external fenfes is not to judge of external things, but only to give us ideas or fenfations, from which we are by reafoning to deduce the existence of a material world without us, as well as we can. ARTHUR COLLIER and Bishop BERKELEY difcovered, from the fame principles, that the primary, as well as the fecondary, qualities of bodies, fuch as extenfion, figure, folidity, motion, are only fenfations in our minds; and therefore, that there is no material world without us at all. The fame philofophy, when it came to be applied to matters of taste, discovered that beauty and deformity are not any thing in the objects, to which men, from the beginning of the world, afcribed them, but certain feelings in the mind of the fpecta tor. The next step was an eafy confequence from all the preceding, that moral approbation and disapprobation are not judgments, which must be true or false, but barely, agreeable and uneafy feelings or fenfations. Mr HUME made the laft ftep in this progrefs, and crowned the system by what he calls his hypothefis, to wit, That belief is more properly an act of the fenfitive, than of the cogitative part of our nature. Beyond this I think no man can go in this track; fenfation or feeling feeling is all, and what is left to the cogitative part of our na- CHAP. VII. ture, I am not able to comprehend. I have had occafion to confider each of these paradoxes, excepting that which relates to morals, in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man; and, though they be ftrictly connected with each other, and with the fyftem which has produced them, I have attempted to fhew, that they are inconfiftent with just notions of our intellectual powers, no less than they are with the common fenfe and common language of mankind. this, I think, will likewise appear with regard to the conclufion relating to morals, to wit, That moral approbation is only an agreeable feeling, and not a real judgment. And To prevent ambiguity as much as poffible, let us attend to the meaning of feeling and of judgment. These operations of the mind, perhaps, cannot be logically defined; but they are well understood, and easily distinguished, by their properties and adjuncts. Feeling, or fenfation, seems to be the lowest degree of animation we can conceive. We give the name of animal to every being that feels pain or pleasure; and this feems to be the boundary between the inanimate and animal creation. We know no being of fo low a rank in the creation of God, as to poffefs this animal power only without any other. We commonly diftinguish feeling from thinking, because it hardly deserves the name; and though it be, in a more general fenfe, a fpecies of thought, is least removed from the paffive and inert ftate of things inanimate. A feeling must be agreeable, or uneafy, or indifferent. It may be weak or ftrong. It is expreffed in language either by a fingle word, or by fuch a contexture of words as may be the fubject CHAP. VII. fubject or predicate of a proposition, but such as cannot by themfelves make a propofition. For it implies neither affirmation nor negation; and therefore cannot have the qualities of true or false, which diftinguit propofitions from all other forms of speech, and judgments from all other acts or the mind. That I have fuch a feeling, is indeed an affirmative proposition, and expresses teftimony grounded upon an intuitive judgment. But the feeling is only one term of this propofition; and it can only make a propofition when joined with another term, by a verb affirming or denying. As feeling diftinguishes the animal nature from the inanimate; fo judging feens to diftinguish the rational nature from the merely animal. Though judgment in general is expreffed by one word in language, as the most complex operations of the mind may be ; yet a particular judgment can only be expreffed by a sentence, and by that kind of sentence which Logicians call a propofition, in which there must neceffarily be a verb in the indicative mood, either expreffed or understood. Every judgment muft neceffarily be true or falfe, and the fame may be faid of the propofition which expresses it. It is a determination of the understanding, with regard to what is true, or falfe, or dubious. In judgment, we can diftinguish the object about which we judge, from the act of the mind in judging of that object. In mere feeling there is no such distinction. The object of judgment must be expreffed by a propofition; and belief, disbelief or doubt, always accompanies the judgment we form. If we judge the propofition to be true, we must believe it; if we judge it to be falfe, we must disbelieve it; and if we be uncertain whether it be true or falfe, we must doubt. The The toothach, the beadach, are words which express uneasy feel- CHAP. VII. ings; but to fay that they exprefs a judgment would be ridiculous. That the fun is greater than the earth, is a propofition, and therefore the object of judgment; and when affirmed or denied, believed or disbelieved, or doubted, it expreffes judgment; but to fay that it expreffes only a feeling in the mind of him that believes it, would be ridiculous. These two operations of mind, when we confider them feparately, are very different, and eafily diftinguished. When we feel without judging, or judge without feeling, it is impossible, without very grofs inattention, to mistake the one for the other. But in many operations of the mind, both are infeparably conjoined under one name; and when we are not aware that the operation is complex, we may take one ingredient to be the whole, and overlook the other. In former ages, that moral power, by which human actions ought to be regulated, was called reason, and confidered both by Philofophers, and by the vulgar, as the power of judging what we ought, and what we ought not to do. 66 This is very fully expreffed by Mr HUME, in his Treatife of Human Nature, Book II. Part III. § 3. Nothing is more ufual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the com"bat of paffion and reafon, to give the preference to reason, "and affert that men are only fo far virtuous as they conform "themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, 'tis said, "is obliged to regulate his actions by reafon; and if any other "motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppofe it, till it be entirely fubdued, or, at least,. "brought to a conformity to that fuperior principle. On this " method |