Progressive Morality | Page 5

effort to imitate His perfections. The lower religious
sanction is plainly the same in kind with the legal sanction. If a man is
induced to do or to refrain from doing a certain action from fear of
punishment, the motive is the same, whether the punishment be for a
long 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,