Moral Distinctions Derived From A Moral Sense

Morality Is Based On Feeling

Since vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas, it must be created by some impression or sentiment that enables us to differentiate them. Our decisions on moral rectitude and depravity are perceptions. All perceptions are either impressions or ideas. The exclusion of the one is a convincing argument for the other. Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judged of. This feeling or sentiment is commonly so soft and gentle. We usually confound this feeling with an idea, because of our custom of taking all resembling things as the same.

What is the nature of these impressions?
    How do they operate on us?
We must pronounce the impression arising:
    from virtue to be agreeable, and
    from vice to be uneasy.
A noble and generous action is most fair and beautiful.
    A cruel and treacherous action gives us the most abhorrence.
No enjoyment equals our satisfaction from the company of those we love and esteem.
    The greatest punishment is to be obliged to pass our lives with those we hate.
A very play or romance may give us instances of:
    pleasure conveyed by virtue, and
    pain arising from vice.

The distinguishing impressions which lets us know moral good or evil, are nothing but particular pains or pleasures.
    It follows that, in all inquiries on these moral distinctions, it will be enough to show the principles which make us feel a satisfaction or uneasiness from any character's survey.
    These will satisfy us why the character is laudable or blamable.
Why is an action, sentiment, or character virtuous or vicious?
    Because its view causes a kind of pleasure or uneasiness.
    We can explain the vice or virtue by giving a reason for the pleasure or uneasiness.
    Having the sense of virtue is nothing but to feel a kind of satisfaction from the contemplation of a character.
    The very feeling constitutes our praise or admiration.
        We do not go further.
        We do not inquire into the cause of the satisfaction.
        We do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases.
        We feel that it is virtuous, from feeling that it pleases in a particular way.
The case is the same as in our judgments on all kinds of beauty, tastes, and sensations.
    Our approbation is implied in the immediate pleasure they convey to us.

I have objected to the system which establishes eternal rational measures of right and wrong.
    It is impossible to show any relations in the actions of reasonable creatures, which are not found in external objects.
    If morality always attended these relations, it would be possible for inanimate matter to become virtuous or vicious.
Similarly, my present system may be objected to.
    If virtue and vice are determined by pleasure and pain, these qualities must arise from the sensations in every case.
    Consequently, any animate, inanimate, rational or irrational object, might become morally good or evil if it can excite a satisfaction or uneasiness.
This objection to my system may seem the same as my objection to the eternal measures of morality.
But it does not have the same force because:
    'Pleasure' means sensations which:
        are very different from each other, and
        only have a distant resemblance.
    Good music and a good bottle of good wine equally produce pleasure.
        Their goodness is determined merely by the pleasure.
        But do we say that the wine is harmonious or the music has a good flavour?
    Similarly, an inanimate object and a person's character or sentiments may give satisfaction.
        But the satisfaction is different.
        This difference:
            keeps our sentiments on them from being confounded, and
            makes us ascribe virtue to the one and not to the other.
    Every pleasure or pain arising from characters and actions, of that peculiar kind, does not make us praise or condemn.
        An enemy's good qualities are hurtful to us.
        But it may still command our esteem and respect.
    A feeling or sentiment of morally good or evil is created only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest.
        Those sentiments from interest and morals:
            are apt to be confounded, and
            naturally run into one another.
    We often think of an enemy as vicious.
        We can distinguish between his opposition to our interest and his real baseness.
        The sentiments are distinct in themselves.
        A man of temper and judgment can protect himself from these illusions.
    Similarly, a musical voice is nothing but one that naturally gives a kind of pleasure.
        Yet it is difficult for a man to know if an enemy's voice is agreeable or musical.
        But a person of a fine ear, who has the command of himself, can:
            separate these feelings, and
            give praise to what deserves it.

    In the preceding system of the passions in Book 2, we remarked a more considerable difference among our pains and pleasures.
    Pride and humility, love and hatred are excited when anything presented to us:
        is related to the object of that passion, and
        produces a separate sensation related to the sensation of that passion.
    Virtue and vice are attended with these circumstances.
        They must:
            be placed in ourselves or others
            excite pleasure or uneasiness, and
            give rise to one of these four passions.
        These clearly distinguish them from the pleasure and pain arising from inanimate objects that are often unrelated to us.
        This is perhaps the most considerable effect that virtue and vice have on the mind.

From what principles is this pleasure and pain, that distinguishes moral good and evil, derived from?
    Where does it arise in the human mind?
It is absurd to imagine that these sentiments are produced by an original quality and primary constitution in every instance.
    We have an infinite number of duties.
    It is impossible that our original instincts should extend to each of them.
    The mind cannot take all the precepts contained in the most complete system of ethics, from infancy.
Such a method is incompatible to the usual maxims which conduct nature.
    A few principles produce all that variety we observe in the universe.
    Everything is carried on in the easiest and most simple manner.
We therefore need to:
    abridge these primary impulses, and
    find some more general principles on which all our notions of morals are founded.

Three Definitions Of The Word ‘Nature’

Should we search for these principles in nature?
    Or must we look for them in some other origin?
Our answer depends on the definition of 'Nature' because it is most ambiguous and equivocal.

If 'nature' is opposed to 'miracles', then the following are natural:
    The distinction between vice and virtue
    Every event which has ever happened in the world, except those miracles, on which our religion is founded.

We make no very extraordinary discovery when we say that the sentiments of vice and virtue are natural in this sense.


But 'nature' may also be opposed to 'rare' and 'unusual'.
    This is the common meaning of nature.
    In this sense, disputes often arise on what is natural or unnatural.

We generally do not have any very precise standard to solve these disputes.
'Frequent' and 'rare' depend on the number of observed examples.
    This number may gradually increase or decrease.
    It will be impossible to fix any exact boundaries between them.
If ever there were anything natural in this sense, moral sentiments may be it.
    Since no nation or person was utterly deprived of morals, who never showed the smallest approbation or dislike of manners.
These sentiments are so rooted in our constitution and temper.
    It is impossible to destroy them without entirely confounding the human mind by disease or madness.


But 'nature' may also mean not man-made.
    In this sense, it may be disputed whether the notions of virtue are natural or not.

We readily forget, that men's designs, projects, and views are principles as necessary in their operation as heat and cold, moist and dry.
    We usually set them in opposition to the other principles of nature.
I think it is impossible to answer whether the sense of virtue is natural or artificial.
    Our sense of some virtues is artificial, and that of others natural.
    This question will be more proper in the exact detail of each vice and virtue.14


Based on these definitions of natural and unnatural, the systems which assert that virtue is natural and vice is unnatural are most unphilosophical.
    If natural means non-miraculous, then vice and virtue are equally natural.
    If natural means ordinary, then virtue will perhaps be found to be the most unnatural.
        Heroic virtue will be found as unusual as the most brutal barbarity.
    If natural means not man-made, both vice and virtue are equally artificial and out of nature.
    Actions themselves are:
        artificial, and
        performed with a certain design and intention.
            Otherwise, actions could never be ranked under merit or demerit.
    Therefore, it is impossible that natural and unnatural characters can ever mark the boundaries of vice and virtue.

Thus, we are still brought back to our first position, that:
    virtue is distinguished by the pleasure, and
    vice is distinguished by the pain that any action, sentiment, or character gives us by its mere view and contemplation.
This decision is very commodious because it reduces us to this simple question:
    Why does any action or sentiment make us feel good or bad, without us looking for any incomprehensible relations and qualities?
    We could never clearly conceive these relations and qualities in nature nor in our imagination.
I flatter myself that I have executed most of my present design by a question which is not ambiguous and obscure.

Footnote 14:

In the following discourse, 'natural' is also opposed sometimes to civil, sometimes to moral.
The opposition will always discover the sense it is taken in.