Mackintosh recognised the fact that morality is essentially a function of character.Mill cannot fully admit that,because he virtually assumes all character to be the same.Regarding morality as something co-ordinate with law,he does not perceive that the very possibility of law implies the moral instincts,which correspond to the constitution of character,and belong to a sphere underlying,not on the same plane with,the legislative sphere.They are the source of all order;not themselves the product of the order.It is impossible to deduce them,therefore,from the organisation which presupposes them.Now,in one direction,Mill's theory leads,as his son remarked,not to laxity but to excessive strictness.The 'criterion'is laid down absolutely.The 'moral sense'is rejected because it means an autocratic faculty,entitled to override the criterion by its own authority.To appeal to 'motives'is to allow the individual to make his own feeling the ultimate test of right and wrong.If we follow Mill in this we are not really assuming the moral neutrality of motive or the indifference,but an impossible profession of character.Men are not governed by abstract principles but by their passions and affections.The emotions,as Mackintosh rightly said,cannot be resolved into the mere logic.Utility may give the true criterion of morality,but it does not follow that the perception of utility is implied in moral conduct.The motives are good which in fact produce useful conduct,though the agent does not contemplate the abstract principle.It is impossible that men should be moved simply by a desire for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.'What does and always must guide men is their personal relation to the little circle which they actually influence.The good man is the man so constituted that he will spontaneously fulfil his duties.
The moral law,that is,will be also the law of his character and conduct.
The mother is good because she loves her child,not because she sees that care of her child is dictated by the general maxim of utility.The 'utility'of character means the fitness of the agent to be an efficient member of the social structure to which he belongs.In particular cases this may lead to such problems as that of Fletcher of Saltoun.His sense of honour and his general benevolence,though both useful,might come into collision;and the most difficult of all questions of casuistry arise from such conflicts between private and public affections.Mill is justified in holding that a sense of honour cannot give an ultimate and autocratic decision.Under some pretext or other,we shall have to ask the Utilitarian question whether on the whole it may not be causing more misery than the virtuous action is worth.But that only means that the character must be so balanced as to give due weight to each motive;not that we can abstract from character altogether,as though human beings could be mere colourless and uniform atoms,embodying abstract formulae.
Mill is following Bentham,and only brings out more clearly the psychological assumptions.A man,he says,acts from the 'same motive'whether he steals five shillings or earns it by a day's labour.The motive,in this sense,regards only one consequence,whereas the 'intention'regards all.The 'motive,'that is,is only one of the motives or a part of the character,and this way of speaking is one of the awkward results of turning 'motives'into 'things.'
The obvious answer is that which Mill himself makes to Mackintosh.Mackintosh and Butler,he thinks,personify particular 'appetites.'140it is not really the 'conscience'which decides,but the man.That is quite true,and similarly it is the whole man who steals or works,not the 'personified'motive;and it is accordingly from the whole character that we judge.We have to consider the relation of the love of five shillings to the other qualities of industry and honesty.The same view appears in Mill's characteristic dislike of 'sentimentalism.'Wishing to attack Mackintosh's rhetoric about the delight of virtuous feeling,he for once quotes a novel to illustrate this point.When Parson Adams defined charity as a 'generous disposition to relieve the distressed,'Peter Pounce approved;'it is,as you say,a disposition,and does not so much consist in the act as in the disposition to do it.'141When,therefore,Mackintosh says that he finds it difficult to separate the virtue from the act,Mill replies that nothing is easier.The virtue is 'in the act and its consequences';the feeling a mere removable addition.Apparently he would hold that the good Samaritan and the Pharisee had the same feeling,though it prompted one to relieve the sufferer and the other to relieve himself of the sight of the sufferer.
They had,of course,a feeling in common,but a feeling which produced diametrically opposite effects,because entering into totally different combinations.