Progressive Morality | Page 5

time or a short one, whether it is to take immediate effect or to be deferred for a term of years. And, similarly, the same is the case with rewards. No peculiar merit, as it appears to me, can be claimed by a man because he acts from fear of divine punishment rather than of human punishment, or from hope of divine rewards rather than of human rewards. The only differences between the two sanctions are (1) that the hopes and fears inspired by the religious sanction are, to one who believes in their reality, far more intense than those inspired by the legal sanction, the two being related as the temporal to the eternal, and (2) that, inasmuch as God is regarded as omnipresent and omniscient, the religious sanction is immeasurably more far-reaching than the legal sanction or even than the legal and the social sanctions combined. Thus the lower religious sanction is, to those who really believe in it, far more effective than the legal sanction, though it is the same in kind. But the higher religious sanction appeals to a totally different class of motives, the motives of love and reverence rather than of hope and fear. In this higher frame of mind, we keep God's commandments, because we love Him, not because we hope for His rewards or fear His punishments. We reverence God, and, therefore, we strive to be like Him, to be perfect even as He is perfect. We have attained to that state of mind in which perfect love has cast out fear, and, hence, we simply do good and act righteously because God, who is the supreme object of our love and the supreme ideal of conduct, is good and righteous. There can be no question that, in this case, the motives are far loftier and purer than in the case of the legal and the lower religious sanctions. But there are few men, probably, capable of these exalted feelings, and, therefore, for the great mass of mankind the external inducements to right conduct must, probably, continue to be sought in the coarser motives. It may be mentioned, before concluding this notice of the religious sanctions, that there is a close affinity between the higher religious sanction and that form of the social sanction which operates through respect for the good opinions of those of our fellow-men whom we love, reverence, or admire.
But, quite distinct from all the sanctions thus far enumerated, there is another sanction which is derived from our own reflexion on our own actions, and the approbation or disapprobation which, after such reflexion, we bestow upon them. There are actions which, on no reasonable estimate of probabilities, can ever come to the knowledge of any other person than ourselves, but which we look back on with pleasure or regret. It may be said that, though, in these cases, the legal and the social sanctions are confessedly excluded, the sanction which really operates is the religious sanction, in either its higher or its lower form. But it can hardly be denied that, even where there is no belief in God, or, at least, no vivid sense of His presence nor any effective expectation of His intervention, the same feelings are experienced. These feelings, then, appear to be distinct in character from any of the others which we have so far considered, and they constitute what may appropriately be called the moral sanction, in the strict sense of the term. It is one of the faults of Bentham's system that he confounds this sanction with the social sanction, speaking indifferently of the moral or popular (that is to say, social) sanction; but let any one examine carefully for himself the feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with which he looks back upon past acts of his own life, and ask himself whether he can discover in those feelings any reference to the praise or blame of other persons, actual or possible. There will, if I mistake not, be many of them in which he can discover no such reference, but in which the feeling is simply that of satisfaction with himself for having done what he ought to have done, or dissatisfaction with himself for having done that which he ought not to have done. Whether these feelings admit of analysis and explanation is another question, and one with which I shall deal presently, but of their reality and distinctness no competent and impartial person, on careful self-examination, can well doubt. The answer, then, to our first question, I conceive to be that the moral sanction, properly so called, is distinguished from all other sanctions of conduct in that it has no regard to the prospect of physical pleasure or pain, or to the hope of reward or fear of punishment, or