Philosophy, p. 97 sqq. Fowler, Principles of Morals, ii. 198 sqq.
It is true that a moral judgment may be followed by a moral emotion, that the finding out the tendency of a certain mode of conduct to evoke indignation or approval is apt to call forth such an emotion, if there was none before, or otherwise to increase the one existing. It is, moreover, true that the predicate of a moral judgment, as well as the generalisation leading up to such a predicate, may give a specific colouring to the approval or disapproval which it produces, quite apart from the general characteristics belonging to that emotion in its capacity of a moral emotion; the concepts of duty and justice, for instance, no doubt have a peculiar flavour of their own. But for all this, moral emotions cannot be described as resentment or retributive kindliness called forth by moral judgments. Such a definition would be a meaningless play with words. Whatever emotions may follow moral judgments, such judgments could never have been pronounced unless there had been moral emotions antecedent to them. Their predicates, as was pointed out above, are essentially based on generalisations of tendencies in certain phenomena to arouse moral emotions; hence the criterion of a moral emotion can in no case depend upon its proceeding from a moral judgment. But at the same time moral judgments, being definite expressions of moral emotions, naturally help us to discover the true nature of these emotions.
The predicate of a moral judgment always involves a notion of disinterestedness. When pronouncing an act to be good or bad, I mean that it is so, quite independently of any reference it might have to my own interests. A moral judgment may certainly have a selfish motive; but then it, nevertheless, pretends to be disinterested, which shows that disinterestedness is a characteristic of moral concepts as such. This is admitted even by the egoistic hedonist, who maintains that we approve and condemn acts from self-love. According to Helvetius, it is the love of consideration that a virtuous man takes to be in him the love of virtue; and yet everybody pretends to love virtue for its own sake, “this phrase is in every one’s mouth and in no one’s heart.”2
2 Helvetius, De l’Homme, i. 263.
If the moral concepts are essentially generalisations of tendencies in certain phenomena to call forth moral emotions, and, at the same time, contain the notion of disinterestedness, we must conclude that the emotions from which they spring are felt disinterestedly. Of this fact we find an echo—more or less faithful—in the maxims of various ethical theorisers, as well as practical moralists. We find it in the utilitarian demand that, in regard to his own happiness and that of others, an agent should be “as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator”;3 in the “rule of righteousness” laid down by Samuel Clarke, that “We so deal with every man, as in like circumstances we could reasonably expect he should with us”;4 in Kant’s formula, “Act only on that maxim which thou canst at the same time will to become a universal law”;5 in Professor Sidgwick’s so-called axiom, “I ought not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another”;6 in the biblical sayings, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”7 and, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”8 The same fact is expressed in the Indian Mahabharata, where it is said:—“Let no man do to another that which would be repugnant to himself; this is the sum of righteousness; the rest is according to inclination. In refusing, in bestowing, in regard to pleasure and to pain, to what is agreeable and disagreeable, a man obtains the proper rule by regarding the case as like his own.”9 Similar words are ascribed to Confucius.10 When Tsze-kung asked if there is any one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life, the Master answered, “Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” And in another utterance Confucius showed that the rule had for him not only a negative, but a positive form. He said that, in the way of the superior man, there are four things to none of which he himself had as yet attained; to serve his father as he would require his son to serve him, to serve his prince as he would require his minister to serve him, to serve his elder brother as he would require his younger brother to serve him, and to set the example in behaving to a friend as he would require the friend to behave to him.11
3 Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 24.
4 Clarke, Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, p. 201.
5 Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, sec. 2 (Sämmtliche Werke, iv. 269).
6 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, p. 383. However, as we have seen above, this so-called “axiom” is not a correct representation of the disinterestedness of moral emotions.
7 Leviticus, xix. 18. St. Matthew, xxii. 39.
8 St. Matthew, vii. 12. Cf. St. Luke, vi. 31.
9 Mahabharata, xiii. 5571 sq., in Muir, Religious and Moral Sentiments, rendered from Sanskrit Writers, p. 107. Cf. Panchatantra, iii. (Benfey’s translation, ii. 235).
10 Lun Yü¸, xv. 23. Cf. ibid. xii. 2; Chung Yung, xiii. 3.
11 Chung Yung, xiii. 4.
This “golden rule” is not, as has been sometimes argued, a rule of retaliation.12 It does not say, “Do to others what they wish to do to you”; it says, “Do to others what you wish, or require, them to do to you.” It brings home to us the fact that moral rules are general rules, which ought to be obeyed irrespectively of any selfish considerations. If formulated as an injunction that we should treat our neighbour in the same manner as we consider that he, under exactly similar circumstances, ought to treat us, it is simply identical with the sentence, “Do your duty,” with emphasis laid on the disinterestedness which is involved in the very conception of duty. So far, St. Augustine was right in saying that “Do as thou wouldst be done by” is a sentence which all nations under heaven are agreed upon.13
12 Letourneau, L’Évolution religieuse dans les diverses races humaines, p. 553.
13 St. Augustine, quoted by Lilly, Right and Wrong, p. 106.
Disinterestedness, however, is not the only characteristic by which moral indignation and approval are distinguished from other, non-moral, kinds of resentment or retributive kindly emotion. It is, indeed, itself a form of a more comprehensive quality which characterises moral