Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/558

MR. W. L. COURTNEY ON BISHOP BUTLER. 557 that the obligation to promote private good and the obligation to promote public good both spring from a dictate of reason. It is only when the man contemplates himself apart from his relations to his fellows that the reasonable course of action necessarily seems to him to be the gratification of his various " particular passions," " propensions," &c., in exact proportion to the extent to which such gi-atification will promote his " good on the whole ". It is only over the self-regarding passions that " self- love " claims any authority. Butler never, as Mr. Courtney (p. 106) asserts, " elevates Self-love into the rank of a principle of human nature side by side with Benevolence," except in the sense that reflection approves the promotion of a man's own good on the whole when the effect of his actions upon himself only is in question, in preference to all particular passions which could only attain their object by a sacrifice of " good on the whole," just as it approves the promotion of public good, the gratification of benevolence, in opposition to all other desires or passions wher- ever the public good is in question. What then is to be done in the case of collision between the dictates of benevolence and those of self-love? Butler's answer is put as clearly as it can well be put in the following passage from his Preface, which must be given in full if its force is to be seen : " The not taking into consideration this authority, which is implied in the idea of reflex approbation or disapprobation, seems a material deficiency or omission in Lord Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue. He has shown beyond all contradiction that virtue is naturally the interest or happiness, and vice the misery, of such a creature as man, placed in the circumstances in which we are in this world. But suppose there are par- ticular exceptions, a case which the author was unwilling to put, and yet surely it is to be put ; or suppose a case which he has put and determined, that of a sceptic not convinced of this happy tendency of virtue, or being of a contrary opinion. His determination is that it would be without remedy. One may say more explicitly, that, leaving out the authority of reflex approbation or disapprobation, such a one would be under an obligation to act viciously ; since interest, one's own happiness, is a mani- fest obligation, and there is not supposed to be any other obligation in the case. ' But does it mend the matter, to take in that natural authority of reflection 1 There indeed would be an obligation to virtue : but would not the obligation from supposed interest on the side of vice remain ? ' If it should, yet to be under two contrary obligations, i.e., under none at all, would not be exactly the same as a formal obligation to be vicious. But the obligation on the side of interest really does not remain. For the natural authority of the principle of reflection is an obligation the most near and intimate, the most certain and known ; whereas the contrary obligation can at the most appear no more than probable, &c." There is one passage, and, so far as I am aware, only one, in the Sermons which seems at first sight to claim more for Self-love than Butler claimed for it in the Preface, i.e., that it is rational to gratify it when Conscience or Reflection does not supervene, as it does whenever the dictates of Self-love conflict with those of Benevolence ; and that is at the end of Sermon xi., where he