The Elements of Moral Philosophy, with A Brief Account of the Nature, Progress, and Origin of Philosophy

Section IV. The Final Causes of Our Moral Faculties of Perception and Affection

41 u s e c t i o n i v u The Final Causes of Our Moral Faculties of Perception and Affection We have now taken a General Prospect of Man, and of his Moral Powers and Connections, and on these erected a Scheme of Duty, or Moral Obligation, which seems to be confirmed by Experience, consonant to Reason, and approved by his most inward, and most sacred Senses. It may be proper in the next place to take a more particular View of the Final Causes of those delicate Springs by which he is impelled to Action, and of those Clogs by which he is restrained from it.— By this Detail we shall be able to judge of their Aptitude to answer their End, in a Creature endued with his Capacities, subject to his Wants, exposed to his Dangers, and susceptible of his Enjoyments; and from thence we shall be in a Condition to pronounce concerning the End of his whole Structure, its Harmony with his State, and, consequently, its Subserviency to answer the great and benevolent Intentions of its Author . In the Anatomy of this inward and more elaborate Subject, it will not be necessary to pursue every little Fibre, nor to mark the nicer Complications and various Branchings of the more minute Parts. It shall suffice to lay open the larger Vessels and stronger Muscling of this Divine Piece of Workmanship, and to trace their Office and Use in the Disposition of the Whole. The Supreme Being has seen fit to blend in the whole of Things a prodigious Variety of discordant and contrary Principles; Light and The Survey proposed Inward Anatomy of the System of the Mind 42 book i Darkness, Pleasure and Pain, Good and Evil. There are multifarious Natures , higher and lower, and many intermediate ones between the widedistant Extremes. These are differently situated, variously adjusted, and subjected to each other, and all of them subordinate to the Order and Perfection of the Whole. We may suppose Man, placed as in a Center amidst those innumerable Orders of Beings, by his Outward Frame drawn to the Material System, and by his Inward connected with the Intellectual, or Moral, and of course affected by the Laws which govern both, or affected by that Good and that Ill which result from those Laws. In this infinite Variety of Relations with which he is surrounded , and of Contingencies to which he is liable, he feels strong Attractions to the Good, and violent Repulsions or Aversions to the Ill. But as Good and Ill are often blended, and wonderfully complicated one with the other; as they sometimes immediately produce and run up into each other, and at other times lie at great Distances, yet by means of intervening Links, introduce one another; and as these Effects are often brought about in consequence of hidden Relations, and general Laws, of the Energy of which he is an incompetent Judge, it is easy for him to mistake Good for Evil, and Evil for Good, and consequently he may be frequently attracted by such things as are destructive, or repelled by such as are salutary. Thus, by the tender and complicated Frame of his Body, he is subjected to a great Variety of Ills, to Sickness, Cold, Heat, Fatigue, and innumerable Wants. Yet his Knowledge is so narrow withal, and his Reason so weak, that in many Cases he cannot judge, in the way of Investigation, or Reasoning, of the Connections of those Effects with their respective Causes, or of the various latent Energies of Natural Things. He is therefore informed of this Connection by the Experience of certain Senses, or Organs of Perception, which, by a mechanical instantaneous Motion, feel the Good and the Ill, receiving Pleasure from one, and Pain from the other. By these, without any Reasoning, he is taught to attract, or chuse what tends to his Welfare, and to repel and avoid what tends to his Ruin. Thus, by his Senses of Taste and Smell, or by the Pleasure he receives from certain kinds of Food, he is admonished which agree with his Constitution, and by an opposite Sense of Pain, he is informed which sorts disagree, or are destructive of it; but is final causes of perception and affection 43 not by means of these instructed in the inward Natures and Constitutions of Things. Some of those Senses...