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Morals And Moral Sentiments
by
Much that is required to make this hypothesis complete must stand over until, at the close of the second volume of the Principles of Psychology, I have space for a full exposition. What I have said will make it sufficiently clear that two fundamental errors have been made in the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been construed in senses much too narrow. Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses, and means, and proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of means and ends–implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in observed relations, and is not taken to include the connexions formed in consciousness between states that recur together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest to every one who reads the Principles of Psychology; and it is in their widest senses that I have used them in the letter to Mr. Mill. I think I have shown above that, when they are so understood, the hypothesis briefly set forth in that letter is by no means so indefensible as is supposed. At any rate, I have shown–what seemed for the present needful to show–that Mr. Hutton’s versions of my views must not be accepted as correct.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: See Prospective Review for January, 1852.]
[Footnote 34: His criticism will be found in the National Review for January, 1856, under the title “Atheism.”]
[Footnote 35: Hereafter I hope to elucidate at length these phenomena of expression. For the present, I can refer only to such further indications as are contained in two essays on “The Physiology of Laughter” and “The Origin and Function of Music.”]
[Footnote 36: I may add that in Social Statics, chap. xxx., I have indicated, in a general way, the causes of the development of sympathy and the restraints upon its development–confining the discussion, however, to the case of the human race, my subject limiting me to that. The accompanying teleology I now disclaim.]