Progressive Morality | Page 6

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 to
the estimation in which we shall be held by any other being than
ourselves, but that it has regard simply and solely to the internal feeling
of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with which, on reflexion, we shall look
back upon our own acts.

CHAPTER II.
THE MORAL SANCTION OR MORAL SENTIMENT. ITS
FUNCTIONS AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF ITS CLAIMS TO
SUPERIORITY.
I now proceed to consider more at length what are the precise functions
of the moral sentiment or moral sanction[1], and what is the
justification of the weight which we attach to it, or rather of the

preference which we assign to it, or feel that we ought to assign to it,
over all the other sanctions of conduct. We have already seen that the
moral sentiment or sanction is the feeling of satisfaction or
dissatisfaction which we experience when we reflect on our own acts,
without any reference to any external authority or external opinion.
Now it is important to ask whether this feeling is uniformly felt on the
occurrence of the same acts, or whether it ever varies, so that acts, for
instance, which are at one time viewed with satisfaction, are at another
time regarded with indifference or with positive dissatisfaction. It
would seem as if no man who reflects on ethical subjects, and profits
by the observation and experience of life, could possibly answer this
question in any other than one way. There must be very few educated
and reflective men who have not seen reason, with advancing years, to
alter their opinion on many of, at least, the minor points of morality in
which they were instructed as children. A familiar instance occurs at
once in the different way in which most of us view card-playing or
attendance at balls or theatres from the much stricter views which
prevailed in many respectable English households a generation ago. On
the other hand, excess in eating and drinking is regarded with far less
indulgence now than it was in the days of our fathers and grandfathers.
On these points, then, at least, and such as these, it must be allowed that
there is a variation of moral sentiment, or, in other words, that the acts
condemned or approved by the moral sanction are not invariably the
same. Moreover, any of us who are accustomed to reason on moral
questions, and can observe carefully the processes through which the
mind passes, will notice that there is constantly going on a
re-adjustment, so to speak, of our ethical opinions, whether we are
reviewing abstract questions of morality or the specific acts of
ourselves or others. We at one time think ourselves or others more, and,
at another time, less blameable for the self-same acts, or we come to
regard some particular class of acts in a different light from what we
used to do, either modifying our praise or blame, or, in extreme cases,
actually substituting one for the other. But, though these facts are
patent, and may be verified by any one in his experience either of
himself or others, there have actually been moralists who have
appeared to maintain the position that, when a man is unbiassed by
passion or interest, his moral judgments are and must be invariably the

same. This error has, undoubtedly, been largely fostered by the loose
and popular use of the terms conscience and moral sense. These terms,
and especially the word conscience, are often employed to designate a
sort of mysterious entity, supposed to have been implanted in the mind
by God Himself, and endowed by Him with the unique prerogative of
infallibility. Even so philosophical and sober a writer as Bishop Butler
has given some countenance to this extravagant supposition, and to the
exaggerated language which he employs on the prerogatives of
conscience, and to the emphatic manner in which he insists on the
absolute, if not the infallible, character of its decisions, may be traced
much of the misconception which still prevails on the subject. But we
have only to take account of the notorious fact that the consciences of
two equally conscientious men may point in entirely opposite
directions, in order to see that the decisions of conscience cannot, at all
events, be credited with infallibility. Those who denounce and those
who defend religious persecution, those who insist on the removal and
those who insist on the retention of religious disabilities, those who are
in favour of and those who are opposed to a relaxation of the marriage
laws,