Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/347

346 s. COIT : spreads a strange moral alarm through the heart of even the best men, so deep is the consciousness of moral weakness. If anyone betrays self-security, as if he felt no need of even the inner sanction to keep him in the way of duty, no further proof is needed either that his self-examination has been superficial or that his ideal of duty is low. Nay, to strive for the inner moral sanction will never cease to strengthen the moral impulse in human beings, and thereby to further the interests of mankind. If it ever does, the moral impulse will have ceased to be a sense of obligation, and ethics will be no longer a science of what men feel that they ought to do. But there is a deep-seated sentiment in the moral con- sciousness of civilised men which seems to oppose the adoption of the inner moral sanction as the end of conduct, and which, if really in antagonism to it, forms a strong argument against it. For the moral judgments of an en- lightened society embody the accumulated wisdom of ages as to what will in the long run tend most to universal happiness. We must therefore analyse this sentiment and see what the exact truths are which it shadows forth, and whether these conflict with the end of action which our argu- ments thus far have led us to regard as the true final moral aim of life. " It is commonly thought," to use Prof. Sidg- wick's very just statement of this sentiment, " that an act in the highest sense virtuous must be done for its own sake and not for the sake of the attendant pleasure, even if that be the pleasure of the moral sense ; and if I do an act for the sole desire of obtaining the glow of moral self-approbation, which I believe will attend its performance, the act will not be truly virtuous ". Now doubtless the moral judgment of anyone instantly assents to this. In the first place, to do an act for the sole desire of obtaining the glow of moral self- approbation, to have no elements whatever of pure benevo- lence in the motive, and no tendency to become lost in the deed itself, would indicate an abnormal and monstrous state of mind in the doer, a state in which it would probably be impossible to have any judgment at all concerning right and wrong or any feeling of self-approbation in the consciousness of doing right. But we have already seen that an object, by becoming the final aim, does not become the sole desire. Therefore in this point the demands of the popular sentiment do not conflict with the adoption of the inner sanction as the last desire of the heart, as the object whose attainment would prevent any act or enterprise or life from being looked upon as a failure.