GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

NATURE OF THE MORAL FACULTY 283
As in Aristotle's ethics, reason is reduced tp the rdle of
planning the steps which are necessary to give effect to
our intuitions. The view that feeling is the mainspring of
morality, and that the function of reason is confined to
planning the means and estimating the results of gratifying
our desires and giving vent to our feelings, has several
times engaged our attention in the preceding pages. 1
It is a view which continually recurs in the history of
ethics, cropping up on occasions in the most unexpected
places, as witness, for example, the following quotation
from that champion of rationalism, T. H. Huxley: "In
whatever way we look at the matter, morality is based
on feeling not on reason; though reason alone is competent
to trace out the effects of our action and therefore dictate
conduct."
(The ambiguity of this last statement, "therefore dictate
conduct," indicates the difficulty of reaching any
satisfactory conclusion in relation to this issue, if we persist
in regarding reason and feeling as separate faculties
endowed with separate functions. The discussion in die
previous chapter, 1 and the conclusion in which it issued,
that the division of the human personality into a set of
separate faculties is untenable, was designed to guard
against precisely this difficulty.) Huxley continues :
"Justice is founded on the love of one's neighbour and
goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral law like the laws
of physical nature rests in the long run upon instinctive
intuitions."
Huxley's instinctive intuitions bear a close resemblance
to
Shaftesbury's Will of Nature; we have only, it seems, to
obey them, 'and all will be well. When, however, he comes
to work out his doctrine in detail, Shaftesbury abates
something of the full rigour of his Intuitionism. This he
does in two respects, both of which point in the direction
which the utilitarians were subsequently to take.
1 See Chapter IV, pp. 110-116, and Chapter VII, pp. 268-271.
1 See Chapter VII, pp. 268-371, also Chapter II, pp. 55-57.