Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/199

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 1 77 of Locke's often vacillating discussion of freedom (II. 21). Desire is directed to pleasure; the will obeys the under- standing, which is exalted above motives of pleasure and the passions. Everything is physically good which occasions and increases pleasure in us, which removes or diminishes pain, or contributes to the attainment of some other good and the avoidance of some other evil. Actions, on the contrary, are morally good when they conform to a rule by which they are judged. Whoever earnestly medi- tates on his welfare will prefer moral or rational good to sensuous good, since the former alone vouchsafes true happiness. God has most intimately united virtue and general happiness, since he has made the preservation of human society dependent on the exercise of virtue. The mark of a law for free beings is the fact that it appor- tions reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience. The laws to which an action must conform in order to deserve the predicate "good" are three in number (IL 28): by the divine law "men judge whether their actions are sins or duties " ; by the civil law, " whether they be criminal or innocent " (deserving of punishment or not) ; by the law of opinion or reputation, " whether they be virtues or vices." The first of these laws threatens immorality with future misery; the second, with legal punishments; the third, with the disapproval of our fellow-men. The third law, the law of opinion or reputation, called also philosophical, coincides on the whole, though not throughout, with the first, the divine law of nature, which is best expressed in Christianity, and which is the true touchstone of the moral character of actions. While Locke, in his polemic against innate ideas, had emphasized the diver- sity of moral judgments among individuals and nations (as a result of which an action is condemned in one place and praised as virtuous in another), he here gives prominence to the fact of general agreement in essentials, since it is only natural that each should encourage by praise and esteem that which is to his advantage, while virtue evidently con- duces to the good of all who come into contact with the virtuous. Amid the greatest diversity of moral judg- ments virtue and praise, vice and blame, go together.