The Scottish Philosophy [213]
I suppose merely the succession of ideas. The laws of the association of ideas are merely the laws of their succession. It is quite a straining of the word to give association the power of creating a new idea. We place oxygen and hydrogen in a certain relation to each other, and water is the product; and the water possesses properties not discernible in the elements separately. But chemists do not ascribe this to the mere association of the two: they derive it from the properties of the oxygen and the hydrogen. In like manner when a new idea springs up, we are not to attribute it to the association of feelings, but to a property of the feelings, a property proceeding from a power actual or potential. We have thus to go back to a power deeper and more fundamental, and to get a source of ideas, not in mere association, but in the of Leibnitz, or in the feelings themselves; and this is the moral power.
(2) If we thus prove that there is an original moral faculty {359} of the nature of moral perception, discerning between good and evil, we are in a position to settle the further question: Whether virtue can be resolved into benevolence? Mackintosh stands up for the existence and authority of conscience as a class of feeling. He holds that our business is to follow conscience, even when we do not see the consequences of the acts we perform. But what is the common quality in the acts which conscience approves of? He maintains that, in the last resort, it is beneficial tendency which distinguishes virtuous acts, and dispositions from those which we call vicious. He allows that the virtuous man may not see the beneficial consequences of the acts he performs, that the man who speaks truth may never think that to speak truth leads to happiness: he does it simply because it is right. Still, if we inquire into it, it will be found that beneficial tendency is the essential quality in virtuous acts. I dispute this statement, appealing to conscience as the arbiter. For conscience affirms that justice, that veracity, that candor, are good, quite as much so as benevolence itself, and it is difficult, I believe impossible, to resolve justice and the virtues embraced under it, such as veracity and the love of truth, into benevolence.
Altogether Sir James Mackintosh never fulfilled the expectations that were formed by Robert Hall and his other friends. He went from medicine to law, and from law to politics; and with first-rate intellectual powers, failed to reach the highest positions in any one of these departments. He was without firmness of purpose to resist temptation and concentrate his energies on what he acknowledged to be his life-work, and so was at the mercy of circumstances, and attained the highest eminence only as a in the best social circles of London, where he had a perpetual stimulus to excel. If he had only had the courage to devote himself to what he knew to be his forte, but which could not bring him immediate fame; had he read systematically, instead of discursively, and made himself as well acquainted with the higher forms of the Greek and German philosophy, as he did with the later forms and of British philosophy, -- he might have ranked with the highest thinkers of his age, As it is he has left us little that will endure beyond these able and candid sketches of ethical writers. {360}
XLVII. -- HENRY (LORD) BROUGHAM.[89] L/ORD\ B/ROUGHAM\ was born in Scotland, was the son of a Scotch mother, was trained in the Scotch metaphysics, and employed them with advantage in his work on natural theology, and was swayed by them, often unconsciously, in his addresses at scientific associations, in his speeches, his sketches of statesmen and philosophers, and in his legal opinions and decisions which, when they relate to moral themes, are evidently founded on sound ethical principles, caught from Stewart and the Scottish professors. We are therefore entitled to claim him as belonging to the fraternity.
He was born in Edinburgh, September,
(2) If we thus prove that there is an original moral faculty {359} of the nature of moral perception, discerning between good and evil, we are in a position to settle the further question: Whether virtue can be resolved into benevolence? Mackintosh stands up for the existence and authority of conscience as a class of feeling. He holds that our business is to follow conscience, even when we do not see the consequences of the acts we perform. But what is the common quality in the acts which conscience approves of? He maintains that, in the last resort, it is beneficial tendency which distinguishes virtuous acts, and dispositions from those which we call vicious. He allows that the virtuous man may not see the beneficial consequences of the acts he performs, that the man who speaks truth may never think that to speak truth leads to happiness: he does it simply because it is right. Still, if we inquire into it, it will be found that beneficial tendency is the essential quality in virtuous acts. I dispute this statement, appealing to conscience as the arbiter. For conscience affirms that justice, that veracity, that candor, are good, quite as much so as benevolence itself, and it is difficult, I believe impossible, to resolve justice and the virtues embraced under it, such as veracity and the love of truth, into benevolence.
Altogether Sir James Mackintosh never fulfilled the expectations that were formed by Robert Hall and his other friends. He went from medicine to law, and from law to politics; and with first-rate intellectual powers, failed to reach the highest positions in any one of these departments. He was without firmness of purpose to resist temptation and concentrate his energies on what he acknowledged to be his life-work, and so was at the mercy of circumstances, and attained the highest eminence only as a
XLVII. -- HENRY (LORD) BROUGHAM.[89] L/ORD\ B/ROUGHAM\ was born in Scotland, was the son of a Scotch mother, was trained in the Scotch metaphysics, and employed them with advantage in his work on natural theology, and was swayed by them, often unconsciously, in his addresses at scientific associations, in his speeches, his sketches of statesmen and philosophers, and in his legal opinions and decisions which, when they relate to moral themes, are evidently founded on sound ethical principles, caught from Stewart and the Scottish professors. We are therefore entitled to claim him as belonging to the fraternity.
He was born in Edinburgh, September,