}

CHAPTER V

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE RATIONALISTIC AND

THE HEDONISTIC ELEMENTS IN LOCKE

The connection between the various types of ethical theory in Locke has been a source of considerable confusion to critics and historians. How should Locke be classified? Can the purely rationalistic and hedonistic elements of his thought be harmonized and made part of one unified system? Or are they inconsistent and separate strands which he held alternately and never brought together? An attempt will be made in this chapter to examine two related problems and Burnet's criticism of Locke upon this matter.

the

1. The first question of importance for the historian of Locke to consider is the relation between virtue and pleasure. Undoubtedly, the relation is an intimate one. As he wrote in his Thoughts concerning Education: "I place virtue as the first and most necessary of those endowments that belong to a man or a gentleman. . . . Without that, I think, he will be happy neither in this nor the other world."1 But either of two alternative interpretations is here possible. According to one alternative, virtue and vice are distinctions which rest upon nature of things as discovered by reason; and pleasure and pain are simply the fitting consequences which God in his justice has arranged as rewards and punishments therefor. According to the other alternative, virtue and vice are constituted as such by the consequences in pleasure and pain which follow certain types of action, and can therefore be defined in terms of their consequences. In the former case, virtue is the primary conception, and pleasure is a proper culmination which fortunately happens to crown a virtuous life. In the latter case pleasure is the goal and end of conduct, and virtue is the best means thereto. Which of these alternatives did Locke accept?

Critics have been ready on both sides to interpret Locke as holding one of the alternatives to the exclusion of the other. But they have

1 Thoughts concerning Education, § 135. Cf. also Essay, I, 2, o,

2

2 On the one hand Curtis (An Outline of Locke's Ethical Philosophy, p. 137) maintains that Locke repudiated "the basing of moral distinctions on the utility of actions to produce happiness,” and defined happiness in terms of virtue. So also Alexander (Locke, in the Series of Philosophies Ancient and Modern, p. 72) holds that in Locke's view "the value of moral laws is not derived from the pleasure and pain they bring by way of sanction." On the other hand, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (Hora Sabbaticæ, Vol. II, pp. 134-136) takes the view that Locke expounded "the criminal law theory of morals," and treated morality as "a system having for its object the attainment of happiness." Likewise, Sir Leslie Stephen (English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 81) says that in Locke "virtue is approved because visibly conducive to happiness, and conscience is merely our opinion of the conformity of actions to certain moral rules, the utility of which has been proved by experience." The latter two critics are much

thus erred in selecting for emphasis that element of Locke's thought
which is most in harmony with their own views. Locke never reduced
his various ideas on ethics to a systematic statement. He was recep-
tive to many influences, and reflected the many sources from which he
derived inspiration. It would be a mistake to attempt to fit all he said
into one harmonious whole. Rather it is best frankly to recognize the
diverse elements as more or less unrelated aspects of his thought. At
certain times he certainly tried to make ethics a purely rationalistic
science, insisting that a man's will should "be always determined by
that which is judged good by his understanding," that "we should
take pains to suit the relish of our minds to the true intrinsic good or
ill that is in things," and that "the eternal law and nature of things
must not be altered to comply with his [i.e., any man's] ill-ordered
choice.' "3
At other times he wrote as if virtue were to be measured,
by the consequences for happiness. By belittling the pleasures of the
present world in favor of those in the life to come, i.e., by subordinating
all other sanctions to the theological sanction, he may have deemed
himself to have avoided the reproach which usually attaches to the
scramble for pleasure; but he none the less adhered to the principle of
hedonism. Though he maintained that God has so attached pleasures
and pains to things that we will not be able to find our highest happi-
ness in our present environment, but will be led to seek our bliss in the
next world, yet he valued heaven for the pleasure it affords. "Virtue,
as in its last obligation it is the will of God, discovered by natural
reason, and thus has the force of a law; so in the matter of it, it is
nothing else but the doing of good, either to oneself or others; and the
contrary hereunto, vice, is nothing else but the doing of harm." 5
Consequently, neither element of Locke's thought can be stated in
terms of the other. While the rationalism of his epistemological theory
led him to one point of view (or rather to a series of closely related
points of view),6 his practical British "common-sense," 7 and his simple
piety, led him to quite another. So sometimes the nature of virtue is,
in his ethics, independent of pleasure, even though it merits pleasure
as a reward; and at other times the nature of virtue is constituted by
the pleasures which it is destined to secure. The former position is

4

fairer to Locke than the former ones. For J. F. Stephen recognizes (p. 150) that in the Treatises of Government Locke followed a rationalistic method; and L. Stephen goes on to point out vacillations in Locke in which Locke became at times rationalistic. Sidgwick in his Outlines of the History of Ethics, pp. 175-178, gives a properly balanced account of the rationalistic and hedonistic elements in Locke, and is a happy exception to the one-sided attitude of most critics.

3 Essay, II, 21,54-57.

4 Idem, II, 7, 5.

5 King: Op. cit., p 292.

6 Cf. above, Book II, Chapter III.

? It must be remembered that Locke was interested in many of the acutely pressing problems of his day, in economics, finance, foreign trade, agricultural restoration in Ireland, etc. And in such problems pleasure was a much more handy standard to apply than was the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas.

the one which is more consistent with the bulk of his original philosophical speculations; the latter is the one which is more in keeping with his interest in economic and political affairs, his deistic tendencies, and his implicit trust in religion.

2. A question closely related to the preceding is the relation of God's will to the moral law. In both the rationalistic and hedonistic aspects of his thought Locke brought ethical distinctions ultimately back to God. Indeed, it is probable that it was just this stating of the problem of morality in religious terms which kept him from noting the discrepancies between the two points of view which he at different times maintained concerning the connection of virtue and pleasure. But the religious sanction, instead of resolving his difficulties, only made them more acute. The will of God in imposing rewards and punishments may be related to good and evil in either of two ways. In one case God is the most important of the realities from the ideas of which reason ascertains the moral law; and the will of God, directed according to the dictates of his reason, simply adds rewards or punishments to the obedience or disobedience of the moral law, in order to compel men to take their duties more seriously and to satisfy the requirements of justice. In the other case God is the chief source whence flow pleasures and pains; and his will is therefore the creator of moral distinctions, the essential fact in terms of which good and bad must be defined. The difference between these two points of view is very fundamental. According to the former, things are commanded or forbidden by God because they are right or wrong; according to the latter, they are right or wrong because God commands or forbids them. However, it seems that Locke never faced this issue squarely. If he had consistently made virtue prior to pleasure, he would also have made good and bad more ultimate than God's will; but he seems to have felt the inadequacies of a purely rationalistic ethics, as has been shown, and found it difficult to evolve moral distinctions from terms which were non-moral to begin with. If he had consistently made virtue a means to pleasure, he could have gone on to define good and bad wholly in terms of the consequences arbitrarily attached to certain courses of conduct by the power of God's will; but he was unwilling to renounce his rationalism to such an extent. And so he vacillated between two theories of the relation of God's will to the moral law, as in the case of the relation of virtue to pleasure.

The passages in which Locke used the idea of God as the basis of a rationalistic ethics have been referred to above. It is only necessary here to produce the passages in which he held to the opposite view

point. He made at times a most significant division of ethical considerations into two parts. The first part is the collection of ideas such as drunkenness, lying, modesty, frugality, which may be called “positive absolute ideas." The second part is the comparison of men's actions to the law of God. The positive absolute ideas do not in themselves, nor in their relation to each other, determine morality. Only the conformity of actions relatively to the divine law enables conduct to be called "good, bad, or indifferent." 10 Morality here comes to be a consequence of will rather than of reason alone. To oblige the conscience, as Locke wrote in his journal in 1676, is the same thing as "to render the transgressors liable to answer at God's tribunal, and receive punishment at his hands." 11 And in the Essay he maintained: "The true ground of morality. can only be the will and law of a • God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender." 12 "Without a notion of a law-maker, it is impossible to have a notion of a law, and an obligation to observe it." 13 And though reason is useful in comparing men's conduct to the law, reason does not frame the law also. Thus Locke at times made the will of God in imposing rewards and punishments the origin of right and wrong.14

The inconsistencies in Locke's account of the relation of God's will to the moral law nowhere come out more clearly than in his brief paper Of Ethics in General. This paper, which is the nearest approach to a systematic statement of his position, reveals a striking distrust of the ability of reason to establish solely by itself an acceptable theory of ethics. "Whoever treats of morality so as to give us only the definitions. of justice and temperance, theft and incontinency, and tells us which are virtues, which are vices, does only settle certain complex ideas of modes with their names to them. but whilst they discourse ever

so acutely of temperance or justice, but show no law of a superior that prescribes temperance, to the observation or breach of which law there are rewards and punishments annexed, the force of morality is lost, and evaporates only into words, disputes, and niceties. . . . Without showing a law that commands or forbids them, moral goodness will be

• Shaftesbury in his Characteristics, Vol. I, p. 346, again throws light on the views of his tutor Locke. He says: "According to Mr. Locke, . God indeed is a perfect free agent in his sense; that is, free to anything that is, however ill; for if he wills it, it will be made good; virtue may be vice, and vice virtue in its turn, if he pleases. And thus neither right nor wrong, virtue nor vice, are anything in themselves."

10 Essay, II, 28, 15. Also King: Op. cit., p. 313.

11 King: Op. cit., p. 62.

12 Essay, I, 2, 6.

13 Idem, I, 3, 8. Cf. Works, Vol. VII, p. 144.

14 Thomas Fowler in his book on John Locke in the English Men of Letters Series (pp. 153-154) maintains that Locke, like Paley after him, made morality depend solely on the will of God. Though Fowler exaggerates the importance of this one element in Locke's thought, yet certainly the element is conspicuously there, and has been too much overlooked by those critics of Locke who are themselves inclined to rationalism.

but an empty sound." Locke did not here deny that the collection of simple ideas into mixed modes was important; but he did deny that reason could by examining these modes determine which are good and which are bad. In addition to that elementary form of ethical inquiry, "there is another sort of morality or rules of our actions, which though they may in many parts be coincident and agreeable with the former, yet have a different foundation, and we come to the knowledge of them in a different way; these notions or standards of our actions, not being ideas of our own making, to which we give names, but depend upon something without us, and so not made by us, but for us.. Το establish morality, therefore, upon its proper basis, and such foundations as may carry an obligation with them, we must first prove a law, which always supposes a law-maker: one that has a superiority and right to ordain, and also a power to reward and punish according to the tenor of the law established by him. This sovereign law-maker who has set rules and bounds to the actions of men, is God, their Maker." Therefore, the task of the moralist is to show that certain laws are what God wills for men.15

This passage from Locke's short paper on ethics has been quoted liberally because of its great significance. Some critics of Locke have endeavored to harmonize the two aspects of his thought by supposing that God's will declared that law which God's reason discovered as being in accordance with the nature of things.16 But such a defense of Locke cannot be permitted. For if the will of God were controlled by moral distinctions noted by his reason, men, having the faculty of reason also, could define the moral law apart from reference to God's will. There would then be no need for the "second sort of morality," in which moral laws are treated as positive divine enactments. There would be no need to suppose a law-maker with rewards and punishments back of the law. But the fact that Locke did feel the need for such a law-maker argues against this attempted harmonization. Locke's strong hedonistic sympathies, adopted from the teaching of Hobbes and reinterpreted in the light of deistic theology, could not be assimilated into the rationalistic ethics which he attempted to build on the foundation of his epistemological theories. In addition to being a rationalist and an admirer of Grotius, Hooker, and Pufendorf, Locke was also a pious Christian. So it was easy for him to follow the deists in their resolution of moral obligation into obedience to the divine will, with the background of hedonistic assumptions. Any rationalist

15 King: Op. cit., pp. 309–313.

16 E.g., Curtis: An Outline of Locke's Ethical Philosophy, pp. 49-62. The inconsistency in Locke is, however, recognized by other critics. J. F. Stephen in his Hora Sabbaticæ, Vol. II, p. 153, says: "It is poor logic to argue that Infinite Wisdom commanded a thing because it is right, and that it is right because it is commanded by Infinite Wisdom; yet this is the fallacy into which Locke falls throughout the whole of this essay" (i.e., the Treatise of Civil Government).