to a person who benefits us by pure accident. Since gratitude is directed towards the assumed cause of pleasure, and since a person is regarded as a cause only in his capacity of a volitional being, gratitude presupposes that the pleasure shall be due to his will. For the same reason motives are also taken into consideration by the benefited party. As Hutcheson observes, “bounty from a donor apprehended as morally evil, or extorted by force, or conferred with some view of self-interest, will not procure real good-will; nay, it may raise indignation.”14 Like moral approval, gratitude may be called forth not only by acts and volitions, but by absence of volitions, in so far as this absence is traceable to a good disposition of will. And, like the moral judge, the grateful man is, in his retributive feeling, influenced by the notion he forms of the benefactor’s character.
13 Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 136.
14 Hutcheson, Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, p. 157.
The cognitions by which non-moral resentment and gratitude are determined are thus, as regards their general nature, precisely similar to those which determine moral indignation and approval. Whether moral or non-moral, a retributive emotion is essentially directed towards a sensitive and volitional entity, or self, conceived of as the cause of pleasure or the cause of pain. This solves a problem which necessarily baffles solution in the hands of those who fail to recognise the emotional origin of moral judgments, and which, when considered at all, has, I think, never been fully understood by those who have essayed it. It has been argued, for instance, that moral praise and blame are not applied to inanimate things and those who commit involuntary deeds, because they are administered only “where they are capable of producing some effect”;15 that moral judgment is concerned with the question of compulsion, because “only when a man acts morally of his own free will is society sure of him”;16 that we do not regard a lunatic as responsible, because we know that “his mind is so diseased that it is impossible by moral reprobation alone to change his character so that it maybe subsequently relied upon.”17 The bestowal of moral praise or blame on such or such an object is thus attributed to utilitarian calculation;18 whereas in reality it is determined by the nature of the moral emotion which lies at the bottom of the judgment. And, as Stuart Mill observes (though he never seems to have realised the full import of his objection), whilst we may administer praise and blame with the express design of influencing conduct, “no anticipation of salutary effects from our feeling will ever avail to give us the feeling itself.”19
15 James Mill, Fragment on Mackintosh, p. 370.
16 Ziegler, Social Ethics, p. 56 sq.
17 Clifford, Lectures and Essays, p. 296.
18 See also James Mill, op. cit. pp. 261, 262, 375.
19 Stuart Mill, in a note to James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, ii. 323.
The nature of the moral emotions also gives us the key to another important problem—a problem which has called forth endless controversies—namely, the co-existence of moral responsibility with the general law of cause and effect. It has been argued that responsibility, and moral judgments generally, are inconsistent with the notion that the human will is determined by causes; that “either free-will is a fact, or moral judgment a delusion.” The argument has been well summed up by Sir Leslie Stephen as follows:—“Moral responsibility, it is said, implies freedom. A man is only responsible for that which he causes. Now the causa causæ is also the causa causati. If I am caused as well as cause, the cause of me is the cause of my conduct; I am only a passive link in the chain which transmits the force. Thus, as each individual is the product of something external to himself, his responsibility is really shifted to that something. The universe or the first cause is alone responsible, and since it is responsible to itself alone, responsibility becomes a mere illusion.”20 We are told that, if determinism were true, human beings would be no more proper subjects of moral valuation than are inanimate things; that the application of moral praise and blame would be “in itself as absurd as to applaud the sunrise or be angry at the rain”;21 that the only admiration which the virtuous man might deserve would be the kind of admiration “which we justly accord to a well-made machine.”22 Nor are these inferences from the doctrine of determinism only weapons forged by its opponents; they are shared by many of its own adherents. Richard Owen and his followers maintained that, since a man’s character is made for him, not by him, there is no justice in punishing him for what he cannot help.23 To Stuart Mill responsibility simply means liability to punishment, inflicted for a utilitarian purpose.24 So also Prof. Sidgwick—whose attitude towards the free-will theory is that of a sceptic—argues that the common retributive view of punishment, and the ordinary notions of “merit,” “demerit,” and “responsibility,” involve the assumption that the will is free, and that these terms, if used at all, have to be used in new significations. “If the wrong act,” he says, “and the bad qualities of character manifested in it, are conceived as the necessary effects of causes antecedent or external to the existence of the agent, the moral responsibility—in the ordinary sense—for the mischief caused by them can no longer rest on him. At the same time, the Determinist can give to the terms ‘ill-desert’ and ‘responsibility’ a signification which is not only clear and definite, but, from an utilitarian point of view, the only suitable meaning. In this view, if I affirm that A is responsible for a harmful act, I mean that it is right to punish him for it; primarily, in order that the fear of punishment may prevent him and others from committing similar acts in future.”25
20 Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 285.
21 Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, ii. 41 sq.
22 Balfour, Foundations of Belief, p. 25.
23 Stuart Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, p. 506.
24 Ibid. p. 506 sqq.
25 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, p. 71 sq.
If these conclusions are correct it is obvious that, whether the infliction of punishment be justifiable or not, the feeling of moral indignation or moral approval is, from the deterministic point of view, absurd. And