2o6 ENGLISH ETHICS. more lively approval, the more calm and deliberate it is, the higher the degree of happiness experienced by the ob- ject of the action, and the greater the number of persons affected by it. Patriotism and love of mankind in general are higher virtues than affection for friends and children. As the goal of the self-regarding affections, perfection makes its appearance — for the first time in English ethics — by the side of happiness. Joseph Butler* (1692-1752 ; Sermons on Human Nature, 1^26] cf. p. 194) maintains still more strictly than Hutch eson the immediateness both of the affections and the moral estimation of them. He declares that even the self-regard- ing impulses as such are un-egoistic, and makes moral judg- ment leave out of view all consequences, either foreseen or present, whereas his predecessor had resolved the goodness of the action into its advantageous effects (not for the agent and the spectator, but for its object and) for society. The conscience — so Butler terms the moral sense — directly ap- proves or disapproves characters and actions in themselves, no matter what good or ill they occasion in the world. We judge a mode of action good, not because it is useful to society, but because it corresponds to the demands of the conscience. This must be unconditionally obeyed, what- ever be the issue. We must not act contrary to truth and justice, even if it should seem to bring about more happi- ness than misery. — Butler, too, furnishes material for the ethics of Hume, by his revival of the separation, pre- viously defended by the Stoics, of desire and passion from self-love or interest. Self-love desires a thing because it expects pleasure from it, but the natural impulses impel us toward their objects immediately, t. e., without a repre- sentation of the pleasure to be gained ; and repetition is necessary before the artificial motive of egoistic pleas- ure-seeking can be added to the natural motive of inborn desire. Self-love always presupposes original, immediate affections. The English moral science of the century is brought to a conclusion by Adam Smith f (1723-90), the celebrated
- Cf. ColHns's Butler, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics. i88i.— Tr.
f Cf. Farrer's Adam Smith, English Philosophers Series, l88o. — Tr.
