James Frederick Ferrier

“ No sensations, transform them as we may, can ever transport a being beyond the limits of itself, nothing can do that but thought: and thought, as different from sensation, has no place in this psychology. If you are not quite satisfied with this statement, consider the matter in this way: I cannot feel your pleasures and your pains, nor can you feel mine. Each of us can only feel his own; and therefore if sensation be all in all it is absolutely impossible for us to pay the slightest heed to the pains and pleasures of one another. ”

“ He has a perception only of his own weal and of his own woe. The one of these he courts, and the other he wards off under the irresistible compulsion of his nature. And this nature, the only nature which he has, assures him that he is doing right in pursuing the one at all hazards, and wrong in failing at all hazards to eschew the other. ”

“ Let us suppose that man is at first a mere sensational creature, and that his reason and other qualities, although original, do not show themselves until a later period in his career; on that supposition I conceive that these ethics would apply to man, would, indeed, be the only rule and motive of his actions in his early condition, and prior to the development of these subsequent manifestations. Now this is by no means an absurd or untrue supposition; on the contrary, it is certain that man is sensitive to pleasure and pain before his reason comes into play. ”

“ We may suppose the one answer to be that our knowledge is wholly, or almost wholly, due to the mind itself; that none, or, at any rate, very few of the ingredients of cognition are derived from foreign sources. And conversely we may suppose the other answer to be, that all, or nearly all, the elements of cognition are derived from foreign sources, and that none, or scarcely any, of them are native products of the mind. ”

“ The extreme doctrine of innate ideas allows nothing to foreign sources, but finds the origin of all cognition in the mind itself; the extreme doctrine of sensation allows nothing to the mind itself, but finds the origin of all cognition in foreign sources. ”

“ This system of ethics maintains that we have from nature social affections which lead us into friendly fellowship with our kind, and incline us to consult the interests of others, no less than private feelings, which excite us to promote our own personal advantage. It holds that we grow up to be the moral agents that we are through an innate sense of duty, which at once approves of our conduct when we do right, and disapproves of it when we do wrong. ”

“ On the whole, then, we may conclude that the sensational ethics in the simple form in which we have been viewing them, are true in regard to man in his early and mere sensational state. This truth, however, must be admitted to be rather ideal than real, for, except in early infancy, it is only in the abstract or ideally that we regard man as a merely sensational being. Reason soon comes into play, and then the ethics of sensation lose their truth and cease to be applicable to his nature. ”

“ In considering this subject, what I wish to bring before you is this: that ethics must always have their roots in psychology; that as our psychology is, so must our ethics be (that is, if we preserve any consistency in our reasoning) ; that a confused or imperfect or erroneous psychology must always issue in a confused or imperfect or erroneous moral theory; and that a correct moral theory is only to be reached through a correct psychological system. ”

“ For instance Hobbes asserts that man's natural condition is a state of mutual warfare and aggression, and this assertion has drawn down upon his head a large measure of obloquy and indignation. But it is precisely equivalent to saying that man's natural condition is a state of susceptibility to pleasure and to pain; because this susceptibility, if unchecked by any other principle, will necessarily strive after a monopoly of enjoyment, and this struggle will necessarily bring people into collision with each other. ”

“ It allows to the mind no original furnishing at all, except a power of receptivity. The name of this receptive and entirely passive capacity is sensation. Outward things conveying impressions to the senses in particular, and to the nervous organism generally, are the source and origin of all our ideas. The mind is at first an absolute blank, and contributes no elements of its own to the formation of its cognitions. It originates nothing from within, but receives all its knowledge from without. All knowledge and all ideas are ultimately resolvable into sensations. ”

“ Our unreflective judgment is rather in favour of this hypothesis. When we look, with a not very critical eye, at the ongoings of human life, we are apt to think that people have grown up of their own accord to be what they are. We do not, indeed, go so far as to suppose that a man who from his infancy had lived in solitude would, either in his moral or intellectual manifestations, bear any close resemblance to ourselves. Still, I think that we naturally tend to approximate to such a supposition. ”

“ The ethical system, which springs from the doctrine of innate ideas, is the hypothesis which contends for an innate moral faculty, an instinctive perception of the difference between right and wrong, a natural sense of justice and injustice, an original conscience which teaches us to govern our passions, and prompts us to do to others as we would that they should do unto us. ”

“ And we learn nothing from being told that our conscience or sense of duty, our sentiments in regard to right and wrong, our obligation to pursue one course of conduct and to avoid another course, are ultimate principles which admit of no further analysis or explanation. ”

“ Here sensational happiness is equivalent to an approving conscience, while a disapproving conscience is identical with sensational misery. And here, too, our own pleasures and pains must be pursued and shunned by each of us in total disregard of the claims and feelings of our fellow-men. These necessarily go for nothing, for, as I have shown you, our sensations (and we are supposed to have nothing but sensations) , our sensations can give us no sense of theirs, no sense of their felicity or wretchedness. ”

“ Above all, the advocates of an innate morality have failed to note the very important part which thought or reason plays in the construction of our moral sentiments. They have not explained or comprehended the exact nature of thought, this being indeed rather a psychological than a moral research, and one which has been left very much in arrear by the psychology of innate ideas. ”

“ It is not true that conscience operates like an instinct; it is not true that we distinguish instinctively between the right and the wrong, as we do between the pleasurable and the painful; it is not true that our social feelings arise, as our selfish ones do, without the intervention of any antecedent principle. ”

“ Sensation, and the capacity of receiving it, being, according to this psychology, the only original quality or endowment of our nature; and sensation being always an expression either of pleasure or of pain, and the sensational capacity being a susceptibility of these feelings, it follows that pleasure and pain, and a susceptibility thereof, form originally the whole staple and essence of our constitution. ”

“ In such a case it is each man for himself and his own interests, not because he dislikes the happiness and desires the misery of his fellows, but because he has, and can have, absolutely no perception of them. ”

“ A sensation has no general or indefinite compass. Hence no sensation, and no series of sensations, can ever carry the being who experiences them out of and beyond himself. He is tied down by sensation and confined exclusively to himself. ”

“ If, therefore, by our natural condition, Hobbes means our early and sensational condition, it appears to me that a good ground of defence may be obtained for his averment that the natural and primitive state of mankind is a bellum omnium contra omnes. Hobbes's error lay in his not paying sufficient regard to the provision I just mentioned. He does not allow due weight to the principles which man develops subsequently to his sensational manifestations. ”

“ Each of them can be occupied with nothing but its own sensations. None of them can transcend its own particular feelings, because no creature can feel any pains or any pleasures except its own. So much in explanation of what I mean by saying that all sensation is necessarily individual or particular.
18. I have now to speak of the ethics which are founded on the psychology of sensation. It will conduce to distinctness if we regard these ethics as twofold. There is, first, a very simple system which arises when we keep in view the particularity of sensation as I have just explained it to you ”

“ We entertain a half-conscious impression that we and our friends should have been tolerably like what we now are, and should have demeaned ourselves very much as we now do, even though the external agencies to which we have been subject had not been brought to bear upon us. ”

“ Example, education, traditional usages, prescriptive customs, the approbation and disapprobation of our fellow-men, all these are foreign agencies, and they exert such a potent influence on each of us, and so shape and modify our original dispositions, as to render it in the highest degree difficult to determine accurately what are the native or primary, and what the acquired or secondary elements in our moral constitution. ”

“ Particular pleasures and pains are experienced, there the matter begins and ends; not a hair's-breadth beyond his own sentient states can the creature experiencing the sensations travel. His condition is one of utter and entire isolation. ”

“ It allows but little influence to the varied circumstances which operate upon us from without. It finds our moral sentiments not to be the result of any foreign agencies, but the spontaneous produce of our own internal constitution. ”

“ It grows necessarily out of his very reason, but it is certainly moulded into what it is by the form and pressure bf the society in which he lives, and by the force of the circumstances which surround him. ”