The Private and Public Interests Are Not The Motive To Justice Or Morality

We then need to find some motive to acts of justice and honesty, distinct from our regard to the honesty.

• This is very difficult.

If we say that a concern for our self-interest is the legitimate motive to all honest actions, then when self-interest ceases, honesty can no longer have place.

It is certain that when self-love acts freely, it becomes the source of all injustice and violence, instead of engaging us to honest actions. Man can never correct those vices without correcting and restraining the natural movements of self-interest.

But if the reason or motive of justice and honesty is the regard to public interest, I propose three considerations: Public interest is not naturally attached to the observation of the rules of justice. It is only connected with the the rules of justice after an artificial convention for the establishment of these rules. If the loan was secret, and that the lender required that the money be paid in secret, (as when the lender conceals his own riches) then the public interest ceases. The public is no longer interested in the borrower’s actions. But no moralist will say that the obligation ceases. Experience proves that men ordinarily do not look so far as the public interest when they: pay their creditors, perform their promises, and abstain from theft and injustice.

The public interest is a motive too remote and too sublime to: affect the generality of mankind, and operate with any force in actions so contrary to private interest as are frequently those of justice and common honesty.

There is no such thing as the love of mankind that is independent of:
    personal qualities,
    services, or
    the relation to our self.
The happiness or misery of any sensible creature affects us when:
    brought near to us, and
    represented in lively colours.
But this proceeds merely from sympathy.
    It is no proof of a universal affection to mankind, since this concern extends itself beyond our own species.
An affection between the sexes is a passion implanted in human nature.
    This passion appears in its peculiar symptoms and in:
        inflaming every other principle of affection, and
        raising a stronger love from beauty, wit, kindness, than what would otherwise flow from them.
    If there were an universal love among all humans, it would appear after the same manner.
        Any degree of a good quality would cause a stronger affection than the same degree of a bad quality would cause hatred.
        This is contrary to what we find by experience.
Men's tempers are different.
    Some have a propensity to the tender, others to the rougher affections.
But human nature in general is nothing but the object of both love and hatred.
    It requires some other cause which may excite these passions by a double relation of impressions and ideas.
    We cannot elude this hypothesis.
No phenomena can point out any such kind affection to men, independent of their merit and every other circumstance.
    We love company in general, as we love any other amusement.
An Englishman in Italy is a friend.
    A European in China is a friend.
    A man on the moon would also be a friend.
But this proceeds only from the relation to ourselves.
    In these cases, this gathers force by being confined to a few persons.

Party Interest Is Not The Motive To Justice Or Morality

Public benevolence is the regard to mankind’s interests. Private benevolence is the regard to a party’s interests. If public benevolence cannot be the original motive to justice much less than private benevolence, what is the original motive to: hate my enemy? hate a vicious man? deprive a miser? harm a profligate debauchee? acquire something for my family in urgent need? In all these cases, the original motive to justice would fail. Consequently the justice itself, and along with it all property, right, and obligation.

A rich man lies under a moral obligation to communicate a share of his superfluities to those in necessity.
    If private benevolence [party interest] were the original motive to justice, a man would not be obliged to leave others having more than he is obliged to give them.
    At least the difference would be very inconsiderable.
Men generally fix their affections more on what they have, than on what they never enjoyed.
    This is why it would be greater cruelty to dispossess a man of anything, than not to give it him.
But who will assert, that this is the only foundation of justice?

Men attach themselves so much to their possessions because they consider their possessions as:
    their property, and
    secured to them inviolably by the laws of society.
But this is a secondary consideration.
    It is dependent on the preceding notions of justice and property.

The Sense Of Justice Is Artificial, But Its Motive Or Moral Sense Is Natural

A man's property is supposed to be fenced against every mortal.
But private benevolence is weaker in some persons than in others.
    In most persons, it must absolutely fail.
Therefore, private benevolence is not the original motive of justice.

It follows that the real motive for observing the laws of equity is the very equity and merit of that observance.
But this is reasoning in a circle, and a sophistry.
    Since no action can be equitable or meritorious if it cannot come from some separate motive.
The sense of justice and injustice is not derived from nature unless we allow that nature has:
    established a sophistry, and
    rendered it necessary and unavoidable.
It instead arises artificially, though necessarily, from education and human conventions.

In addition, no action can be laudable or blameable without some motives distinct from the sense of morals.
    Thus, these motives must have a great influence on the sense of morals.
We blame or praise according to their general force in human nature.
In judging of the beauty of animals, we always see the economy of a certain species.
    We call them beautiful if their limbs and features have proportions common to the species.
Similarly, we always consider the 'natural' and usual force of the passions when we determine vice and virtue.
    If the passions depart very much from the common measures on either side, they are always disapproved as vicious.
Where everything else is equal, a man naturally loves:
    his children better than his nephews,
    his nephews better than his cousins, and
    his cousins better than strangers.
Our common measures of duty in preferring the one to the other, comes from this.
    Our sense of duty always follows the common and 'natural' course of our passions.

When I deny justice to be a 'natural' virtue, I only mean that it is 'artificial'.
    Justice is the most natural virtue if 'natural' means common or inseparable, just as virtue is the most 'natural' principle of the human mind.
Mankind is an inventive species.
    If an invention is obvious and absolutely necessary, it may be as natural as anything that proceeds immediately from original principles, without any thought or reflection.
Though the rules of justice are artificial, they are not arbitrary.
    It is proper to call them Laws of Nature if we mean 'natural' as something:
        common to any species, or
        something inseparable from the species.