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

8UBJECTIVIST THEORY OF ETHICS 375
If we did not feel indignation at violation of custom, if,
in other words, we did not automatically react against
conduct which we instinctively felt to be socially injurious,
there would be no ethics; for ethics is founded on precisely
these instinctive reactions of approval and approbation.
"It is the instinctive desire to inflict counter-pain/'
Westermarck concludes, "that gives to moral indignation
its most important characteristic. Without it moral
condemnation and the ideas of right and wrong would
never have come into existence." And if we ask how, if
ever came
morality is enly disguised expediency, morality
to be contrasted with expediency, Westermarck's answer
is that, although our ancestors originally approved of a
particular form of conduct because it was useful, we have
come, in course of time, to forget the reasons why it was
approved, and to feel approval for the conduct in question
for its own sake. This answer is based upon the theory of
the Association of Ideas, of which an account is given
below. 1
Durkheim on
To illustrate the
the Pressure of Social
variations of what, from the
Feeling.
point of
view of ethical theory is broadly the same position, I will
mention the conclusions of one other writer, Durkheim.
The essential features of Durkheim's position are those
with which we are already familiar. Conscience, or the
moral sense, is utilitarian in origin, but actions originally
for utilitarian reasons have now come to seem
approved
praiseworthy in and for themselves. The variation in
which the distinctiveness of Durkheim's view consists
relates to the role which he attributes to the herd instinct
in the formation of our moral ideas. The conclusion which
he seeks to establish is that in primitive societies there is a
communal sense or instinct which is more than the sum
total of the separate instincts of its members. This instinc-
tive sense presses upon and influences the individual;
"this pressure", he writes I am translating from the
1 See pp. 380-382.