According to Lord Herbert, the standard of virtue is the common notions in which, all men agree.  They are such, as the following,—­to avoid evil, to be temperate, in doubtful cases to choose the safer course, not to do to others what you would not wish done to yourself, to be grateful to benefactors, &c. Conscience is what teaches us to carry out those principles in practice.  It excites joy over good actions, and produces abhorrence and repentance for bad.  Upon it, our repentance of mind and eternal welfare depend. (For an account of Lord Herbert’s common notions, see Appendix B., Lord Herbert of Cherbury.)]

[Footnote 19:  In this respect, Butler differs from both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson.  With Shaftesbury, the main function of the moral sense is to smile approval on benevolent affections, by which an additional pleasure is thrown into the scale against the selfish affections.  The superiority of the ‘natural affections’ thus depends on a double pleasure, their intrinsically pleasureable character, and the superadded pleasure of reflection.  The tendency of Shaftesbury is here to make benevolence and virtue identical, and at the same time to impair the disinterested character of benevolence.]

[Footnote 20:  With this view, we may compare the psychology of Shaftesbury, set forth in his ’Characteristics of Men, Manners, and Times.’  The soul has two kinds of affections—­(1) Self-affection, leading to the ‘good of the private,’ such as love of life, revenge, pleasure or aptitude towards nourishment and the means of generation, emulation or love of praise, indolence; and (2) Natural affections, leading to the good of the public.  The natural or spontaneous predominance of benevolence is goodness; the subjection of the selfish by effort and training is virtue.  Virtue consists generally in the proper exercise of the several affections.]

[Footnote 21:  Butler’s definition of conscience, and his whole treatment of it, have created a great puzzle of classification, as to whether he is to be placed along with the upholders of a ‘moral sense.’  Shaftesbury is more explicit: 

’No sooner does the eye open upon figures, the ear to sounds, than straight the Beautiful results, and grace and harmony are known and acknowledged.  No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human affections discerned (and they are, most of them, as soon discerned as felt), than straight an inward eye distinguishes the fair and shapely, the amiable and admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or the despicable’ ’In a creature capable of forming general notions of things, not only the outward beings which offer themselves to the sense, are the objects of the affections, but the very actions themselves, and the affections of pity, kindness, and gratitude, and their contraries, being brought into the mind by reflection, become objects.  So that, by means of this reflected sense, there arises another kind of affection towards these affections themselves, which have been already felt, and are now become the subject of a new liking or dislike.’  What this ‘moral sense’ approves is benevolence, and when its approval has been acted upon, by subjecting the selfish affections, ‘virtue’ is attained.]