ETHICS, a word of Greek origin, meaning nearly the same thing as the more familiar term morals. The science, treating of the nature and grounds of moral obligation, and expounding our various duties, is called sometimes by the one term, and sometimes by the other. This is a subject wherein opinions so different from each other have been, and are still held, that a writer's task must lie first in explaining what are the chief points in dispute, and next in giving an account of the positions taken up by the opposing schools.
There are two distinct questions connected with the theory of morals. The first is the properly ethical question, and is, what is the criterion of a moral act? otherwise expressed as the moral standard—the circumstance determining an action to be right, and not wrong, nor simply indifferent as regards right and wrong. What determines us to single out some conduct as the subject of moral approbation, and other conduct as the subject of moral disapprobation? We consider murder, theft, breach of promises or contracts, resistance to authority, cruelty, ingratitude, slander, holding of slaves, polyg amy, to be wrong, or immoral; and the science of E. is called upon to assign the reason, or reasons, why these various actions are so accounted.
The other question is properly psychological; in other words, relates to the constitu tion of the human mind. It is, by what faculty of our nature do we recognize this difference in actions? Is it by oue of our ordinary intellectual faculties, such as reason? or by some of our emotional susceptibilities, as love and hatred? or by a mixed faculty like prudence? or by something peculiar and distinct, relating to this one object and no other, as the eye is formed for recognizing color, and the ear for sound? This ques tion has been often improperly mixed up with the other, although there are certain theories wherein the answer to the first depends on the answer to the second.
As regards the standard of morals, it should be premised that punishment for neglect is what shows an action to he obligatory. We may dislike a man's conduct; but if we do not consider it deserving of punishment, it is not immoral in our eyes. People's imprudences, whereby they hurt themselves alone; are disapproved of; but there is seldom any disposition, to step in by way of penalty in order to prevent such conduct; the disapprobation, therefore, is not of the moral kind. The punishment inflicted by society is partly legal, or through the civil government, and partly by public opinion, which, by attaching a stigma to certain conduct, is able to inspire no less dread than the civil authority. The punishment, by society acting in this way, is sometimes called the popular sanction, to distinguish it from the legal sanction. Dishonor is another name for the same thing. Many kinds of conduct tolerated by law, are still punished by the loss of public esteem and the infliction of disgrace. Cowardice, eccentricity, heterodoxy beyond certain limits, expose the individual to public censure. Many kinds of inhumanity, as maltreating dependents, have no other check than expressed disappro bation.
There have been various theories to account for the singling out of some actions to be authoritatively forbidden by law and society—that is, forbidden by the sanction of punishment. Sonic have said that the will of the Deity, or divine revelation, has indicated what we are not to do, and that there is nothing left to us but to conform to what is thus prescribed; others, as Cudworth, maintain, on the contrary, that what the Deity commands must he such as our own conscience approves, otherwise we could not give him the character of being independently good and just. It has been said that
right reason shows us the difference between right and wrong; this was Cudworth's own view. Samuel Clarke conceived that there was an eternal and intrinsic fitness in the things considered as right, and an unfitness in the wrong, " with a regard to which the will of God always chooses, and which ought likewise to determine the wills of all sub ordinate rational beings." Both these writers aimed at replying to Hobbes, who had maintained that the civil magistrate is supreme in morality as well as in politics; mean ing, however, in all probability, that the magistrate himself ought to frame his dictates in one, as in the other, with a view to the public good, which would be a utilitarian view. The phrase " the moral sense," which now represents perhaps the most prevalent moral theoryoccurs first in lord Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning Virtue, from whom it was adopted 'by Hutcheson, and has since passed into general currency. Sometimes it has been maintained that a regard to .solf#iaterest is the only ultitnatd rule of right, which has a very different meaning, according as we look at self exclusive, or inclusive, of other men's wellbeing. The most enlarged benevolence, in one view, is but an aspect of self. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, laid down as the criterion of right, the " sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator." But although this theory acknowledges our bias in the capacity of agents, it presumes us to be infallible when acting as judges or critics, a position by no means self-evident. The spectator has his own failings as well as the actor, unless specially qualified by nature and education to play the part of a moral judge. But to pass on. Jeremy is known as the most distinguished propounder of the principle of utility as the basis of morals, a principle explained by him as in contrast, first to asceticism, and next to " sympathy and antipathy,"by which he meant to describe all those systems, such as the moral sense theory, that are grounded in internal feeling, instead of a regard to outward consequences. In opposing utility to asceticism, he intended to imply that there was no merit attaching to self-denial as such, and that the infliction of pain, or the surrender of pleasure, could only be justified by being the means of procuring a greater amount of happiness than was lost. Paley also repudiated the doctrine of a moral sense, and held that virtue is "the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." The utilitarian theory of Bentham, with various modifications, has been defended and expounded by James Mill, in his Analysis of the Human .Mind, and in his anonymous Fragment on Mackintosh,.. by John Austin, in his Province of Jurisprudence Determined; and by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his Dissertations and Discussions, and in Fraser's Magazine (Oct. to Dec., 1861).