Progressive Morality | Page 4

function, it plainly ought not
to be the exclusive possession of one class, but ought to be
communicated, by means of example and education, to the classes who
are now supposed to be bereft of it. There are points in this code,
however, such as that the payment of 'debts of honour' should take
precedence of that of tradesmen's bills, and that less courtesy is due to
persons in an inferior station than to those in our own, which at least
merit re-consideration. It may, indeed, be said of all these laws or codes
of honour, that, though they have probably, on the whole, a salutary

effect in maintaining a high standard of conduct in the various bodies
or classes where they obtain, they require to be constantly watched, lest
they should become capricious or tyrannical, and specially lest they
should conflict with the wider interests of society or the deeper
instincts of morality. It must not be forgotten that we are 'men' before
we are 'gentlemen,' and that no claims of any profession, institution, or
class can replace or supplant those of humanity and citizenship.
We see, then, or rather we are obliged at the present stage of our
enquiry to assume, that the social sanction, whether it be derived from
the average sentiment of society at large or from the customs and
opinions of particular aggregates of society, requires constant
correction at the hands of the moralist. The sentiment which it
represents may be only the sentiment of men of average moral tone, or
it may even be that of men of an inferior or degraded morality, and
hence it often needs to be tested by the application of rules derived
from a higher standard both of feeling and intelligence. Nor is it the
moral standard only which may be used to correct the social standard.
We may often advantageously have recourse to the legal standard for
the same purpose. For the laws of a country express, as a rule, the
sentiments of the wisest and most experienced of its citizens, and hence
we might naturally expect that they would be in advance of the average
moral sentiment of the people, as well as of the social traditions of
particular professions or classes. And this I believe to be usually the
case. For instances, we have to go no further than the comparison
between the laws and the popular or professional sentiment on bribery
at elections, on smuggling, on evasion of taxation, on fraudulent
business transactions, on duelling, on prize-fighting, or on gambling.
At the same time it must be confessed that, as laws sometimes become
antiquated, and the leanings of lawyers are proverbially conservative, it
occasionally happens that, on some points, the average moral sentiment
is in advance of the law. I may select as examples, from comparatively
recent legal history, the continuance of religious disabilities and the
excessive punishment of ordinary or even trivial crimes; and, perhaps, I
may venture to add, as a possible reform in the future now largely
demanded by popular sentiment, some considerable modifications of
the laws regulating the transfer of and the succession to landed property.

Thus it will be seen that law and the sentiment of society may each be
employed as corrective of the other, and that, consequently, their
comparison implies a higher standard than either, by means of which
each may be tested, and to which each, in its turn, may be referred. This
higher or common standard it will be our business to consider in a
subsequent part of this Essay. Meanwhile, it may be pointed out that, in
addition to its function as an occasional corrective of the legal sanction,
the social sanction subserves two great objects: first, it largely
complements the legal sanction, being applicable to numberless cases
which that sanction does not, and, in fact, cannot reach; secondly, the
legal sanction, even in those cases which it reaches, is greatly
reinforced by the social sanction, which adds the pains arising from an
evil reputation, and all the indefinable social inconveniences which an
evil reputation brings with it, to the actual penalties inflicted by the
law.
The religious sanction varies, of course, with the different religious
creeds, and, in the more imperfect forms of religion, by no means
always operates in favour of morality. But it will be sufficient here to
consider the religious sanction solely in relation to Christianity. As
enforced by the Bible and the Church, the religious sanctions of
conduct are two, which I shall call the higher and the lower sanctions.
By the latter I mean the hope of the divine reward or the fear of the
divine punishment, either in this world or the next; by the former, the
love of God and that veneration for His nature which irresistibly
inspires the