The actions which are approved by the moral sense are those "which proceed, partly at least, from a disinterested ultimate desire of the happiness of others."[1] This desire is the motive which prompts to right action; it is 'the true spring of virtue.'[2] It is reinforced, however, by the feelings which the perception of moral goodness itself arouses.
The element of strength in Hutcheson's position is the recognition of the fact that the distinction between right and wrong is not a product of reason. The vulnerable part of his theory is the reference of moral judgments to an internal sense, which, in all essential respects, has the same nature as the ordinary external senses.[3] Hutcheson, like Locke, regards sense as a mere capacity for being affected in a particular manner on particular occasions. If the moral faculty, then, is only a superior kind of sense, it is simply a capacity for receiving impressions of a higher order. On this view, of course, morality becomes a purely individual matter; and, if differences of opinion should arise, they could not be removed by an appeal to any objective standard. It is evident also that moral judgment requires training, but a faculty of sense perception, such as Hutcheson postulates, cannot be improved. In attempting to obviate these objections, Hutcheson merely involves himself in other difficulties. Lack of uniformity in moral judgments, he tells us, is due to the fact that "our Reason may be very deficient in its Office, by giving us partial Representations of the Tendency of Actions."[4] "The moral sense seems ever to approve and condemn uniformly the same immediate objects, the same affections and dispositions; though we reason very differently about the actions which evidence certain dispositions or their contraries."[5] But, if reason is at fault whenever there is any difference of opinion on ethical questions, it is clear that moral approval is not altogether divorced from reason. The same conclusion follows from Hutcheson's admission
