(3) A few further particulars may be emphasized from the comprehensive systematization which Hutcheson industriously and thoughtfully gave to Shaftesbury’s ideas.  Two points reveal the forerunner of Hume.  First, the role assigned to the reason in moral affairs is merely subsidiary.  Our motive to action is never the knowledge of a true proposition, but always simply a wish, affection, or impulse.  Ultimate ends are given by the feelings alone; the reason can only discover the means thereto.  Secondly, the turbulent, blind, rapidly passing passions are distinguished from the calm, permanent affections, which are mediated by cognition.  The latter are the nobler; among them, in turn, the highest place is occupied by those conducive to the general good, whose worth is still further determined by the extent of their objects.  From this is derived the law that a kind affection receives the more lively approval, the more calm and deliberate it is, the higher the degree of happiness experienced by the object of the action, and the greater the number of persons affected by it.  Patriotism and love of mankind in general are higher virtues than affection for friends and children.  As the goal of the self-regarding affections, perfection makes its appearance—­for the first time in English ethics—­by the side of happiness.

Joseph Butler[1] (1692-1752; Sermons on Human Nature, 1726; cf. p. 194) maintains still more strictly than Hutcheson the immediateness both of the affections and the moral estimation of them.  He declares that even the self-regarding impulses as such are un-egoistic, and makes moral judgment leave out of view all consequences, either foreseen or present, whereas his predecessor had resolved the goodness of the action into its advantageous effects (not for the agent and the spectator, but for its object and) for society.  The conscience—­so Butler terms the moral sense—­directly approves or disapproves characters and actions in themselves, no matter what good or ill they occasion in the world.  We judge a mode of action good, not because it is useful to society, but because it corresponds to the demands of the conscience.  This must be unconditionally obeyed, whatever be the issue.  We must not act contrary to truth and justice, even if it should seem to bring about more happiness than misery.—­Butler, too, furnishes material for the ethics of Hume, by his revival of the separation, previously defended by the Stoics, of desire and passion from self-love or interest.  Self-love desires a thing because it expects pleasure from it, but the natural impulses impel us toward their objects immediately, i. e., without a representation of the pleasure to be gained; and repetition is necessary before the artificial motive of egoistic pleasure-seeking can be added to the natural motive of inborn desire.  Self-love always presupposes original, immediate affections.

[Footnote 1:  Cf.  Collins’s Butler, Blackwood’s Philosophical Classics. 1881.—­TR.]