Moral sanction

“ I use the expressions 'moral sanction' and 'moral sentiment' as equivalent terms, because the pleasures and pains, which constitute the moral sanction, are inseparable, even in thought, from the moral feeling. The moral feeling of self-approbation or self-disapprobation cannot even be conceived apart from the pleasures or pains which are attendant on it, and by means of which it reveals itself to us. ”

“ Punishment is the condemnation of wrong-doing by censure or by legal penalties. The unpleasant consequences of neglect of the self-regarding virtues are not punishment; but the reaction of the good forces of society against wrong-doing is as natural as the unpleasant physical effects of imprudence.
"If the question as to what moral sanction is means, 'What reason is there why morality exists?' the answer lies not in enumerating the penalties of wrong-doing, but in tracing the origin of morality as an equilibrium of the forces of society.... ”

“ It is the sensibility to Praise and Blame—the joyful feelings associated with the one, and the dread associated with the other—that gives effect to POPULAR OPINION, or the POPULAR SANCTION, and, with reference to men generally, the MORAL SANCTION.
The other motives to virtue, namely, the association of our own acts of Justice and Beneficence, as cause, with other men's as effects, are subject to strong counteraction, for we can rarely perform such acts without sacrifice to ourselves. ”

“ It is not only the great instrument for creating and applying the moral sanction, the approbation and disapprobation of mankind; but it is of essential service towards the application of punishment, by making known the occasions on which it is deserved. ”

“ When we are considering conduct, however, in its general aspects and not exclusively in its relations to law, we appear to need a word to express any inducement, whether of a pleasureable or painful nature, which may influence a man's actions, and such a word the term 'sanction' seems conveniently to supply. Taking the word in this extended sense, the sanctions of conduct may be enumerated as the physical, the legal, the social, the religious, and the moral. ”

“ The religious sanction, in particular, has been 'immensely weakened, and people seem to believe that if they do not happen to like morality, there is no reason why they should be moral.' It is, then, 'specially necessary to those who do care for morality to make its one unquestionable indisputable sanction as clear and strong and emphatic as acts and words can make it. ”

“ For one man restrained by the fear of the criminal law, a vast number are restrained by the 'fear of the disapprobation of their neighbours, which is the moral sanction, or by the fear of punishment in a future state of existence, which is the religious sanction, or by the fear of their own disapprobation, which may be called the conscientious sanction, and may be regarded as a compound case of the other 'two.' [123] An objection, therefore, to coercion would be an objection to all the bonds which [319] make association possible ”

“ All which, and many kindred facts, make it certain that the operativeness of a moral code depends much more upon the emotions called forth by its injunctions than on the consciousness of the utility of obeying such injunctions. The feelings excited during early life toward moral principles, by witnessing the social sanction and the religious sanction they possess, influence conduct far more than the perception that conformity to such principles conduces to welfare. ”

“ If such is the disproportion and disagreement between the inner pleasures and pains, and the moral merit of him who experiences them, what shall we say of that wholly outward sanction which consists in the rewards and punishments distributed by the unequal justice of man? I do not speak of legal pains alone; it is well known that they often fall upon the innocent, and are spared to the guilty; that they are almost always disproportioned: the law punishing the crime, without taking note of the exact moral value of the action ”

“ This doctrine of simple deterrence, however, seems, to most critics, to be insufficient. It omits the moral element too completely. When a man is punished for some revolting offence, we are not simply providing him and his like with reasons for abstaining in future. We are, as a fact, exposing him to infamy, sometimes more painful to bear than the immediate penalty, and are thus, in fact, invoking the sanction of the moral sentiment. Therefore, it is urged, we must still, whether we like it or not, be moralists. The purely utilitarian argument has omitted one element of the calculation. ”

“ The difference between manners and morals of the higher order is due simply to the more pressing need, in the case of our most serious duties, of a reflective sanction, a "moral sense," to break us in to the common service. ”

“ Regardless, then, of the theoretical excellence or stupidity of these standards, in actual practice the moral code resolves itself into the one cardinal heresy of being found out, with the chief sanction enforcing it, the fear of what people will say. ”

“ As a rule of conduct, to be enforced by moral sanctions, we think no more should be attempted than to prevent people from doing harm to others, or omitting to do such good as they have undertaken. Demanding no more than this, society, in any tolerable circumstances, obtains much more; for the natural activity of human nature, shut out from all noxious directions, will expand itself in useful ones. ”

“ The sanction upon which social life reposes is, in our moral theory, the legal punishment enforceable in our Courts, and the basis presupposed for the security and material happiness of our citizens is the possession of goods which shall guarantee us from anxiety and permit us an independence of action in the midst of our fellowmen. ”

“ It is true that the sentiments in the higher races, and especially in superior members of the higher races, are now in considerable degrees adjusted to these principles; the sympathies that have become organic in the most developed men produce some spontaneous conformity to altruistic precepts. Even to such, however, the social sanction, which is in part derived from the religious sanction, is important as strengthening the influence of such precepts. And, to those endowed with less of moral sentiment, these sanctions are still more important aids to guidance. ”

“ V. If at the hands of such chance persons in the community, as the party in question may happen in the course of his life to have concerns with, according to each man's spontaneous disposition, and not according to any settled or concerted rule, it may be said to issue from the moral or popular sanction. ”

“ Actions which are done in obedience to the external sanctions of morality, and in accordance with the rules which they imply, may be outwardly indistinguishable from right actions, but they are not right. If a suburban lady gives half-a-crown to a charitable institution simply because all the other ladies in the Terrace do so, she is acting in obedience to the external social sanction, and her action has no moral worth. Her action would be right only if the motive were good, i.e. ”

“ The sanctions of morality, as we have seen, are attempts to answer the question, "Why should I be good?" And we have also seen that no sanction can give a satisfactory answer to this question. The only sound answer to the question, "Why should I be good?" is, "Because it is good to be good." Good conduct is its own sufficient justification. ”

“ This it is which makes any mind, of well developed feelings, work with, and not against, the outward motives to care for others, afforded by what I have called the external sanctions; and when those sanctions are wanting, or act in an opposite direction, constitutes in itself a powerful internal binding force, in proportion to the sensitiveness and thoughtfulness of the character; since few but those whose mind is a moral blank, could bear to lay out their course of life on the plan of paying no regard to others except so far as their own private interest compels. ”

“ One of the most effective sanctions in all conditions of life, but especially in the upper and better educated circles of a civilized society, is what may be called the social sanction, that is to say, a regard for the good opinion and a dread of the evil opinion of those who know us, and especially of those amongst whom we habitually live. ”

“ It is, however, generally believed and held that to sanction anything of the sort would be to loosen the bonds of society, to sap the foundations of morality and to produce certain disastrous consequences not clearly defined but probably all the more dreaded on that account. ”

“ Now for this last sort of people there is no reason why they should discharge any moral duty, except from fear of punishment in all its grades, from mere disapprobation to hanging, and the duty of society is to see that they live under wholesome fear of such punishment short, sharp, and decisive. ”

“ Even here, no doubt, there is a difference between right and wrong; there is scope for the action of free will; there are just causes of praise and blame, and Society rightly protects itself by severe penalties against the crimes that are most natural; but what human judge can duly measure the scale of moral guilt? or what comparison can there be between the crimes that are engendered by such circumstances and those which spring up in the homes of refined and well-regulated comfort? ”

“ Its power must be greater than the gain resulting from the crime as the infraction poisons the enjoyment. Now, a state of mind where duty is sovereign is morally proper, and therefore a source of moral pleasure. What, then, sublimer than the heroic despair that tramples even life underfoot, because it cannot bear the judgment within? A good man sacrificing his life to conform to the moral law, or a criminal taking his own life because of the morality he has violated: in both cases our respect for the moral law is raised to the highest power. ”

“ For, if we omit, as excluded from the question, the penal restraints—religious and legal—and ask what is the ultimate moral restraint to the aggression of man on man, we find it to be—sympathy with the pain inflicted. ”

“ The man who does harm ought to be extinguished, not punished.'' But as against this too facile notion we must look to experience, and to the other material and moral conditions of social life, for the necessary balance and completion. ”

“ That part of the moral constitution, which exists in some degree in us all, which leads us to feel pain at the sight of injustice, and to desire retribution for cruelty and crime, seemed in him to have become an absorbing sentiment, as if he had been chosen by some higher power as the instrument of doom. ”

“ And we must keep these principles in mind—the principle of conduct based upon a personal example rejecting force, and the principle of conduct based upon a social edifice relying upon force for its well-being and advancement; otherwise we confuse the issue, and weaken our appreciation of the moral position which each side assumes. It is surely quite evident that the State, while based upon force, cannot (except as an indulgence) countenance the claim of any individual to make the morality of its action the test for personal allegiance and service. ”

“ All law, says the utilitarian, implies 'sanctions'—motives equally operative upon all members of society; and, as the last resort, so far as criminal law is concerned, the sanction of physical suffering. ”

“ We have shown that the implanted susceptibility, called the sense of justice, demands that the rewards and penalties for good and evil have reference to the knowledge and power of a voluntary agent; that is to say, it is contrary to our moral nature voluntarily to inflict penalties for wrong action on a being who either has no power to know what right is, or no power to do it. We revolt from such inflictions with instinctive abhorrence, as unfit and contrary to the design of all things. ”

“ It has shut men's eyes to the awful fact of retribution, administered here and now, and prevented their realising any punishment other than the savage, barbarous and wholly vindictive punishment of torturing eternally by fire. It shuts men's minds to the operation of moral laws, to the fact that judgment is executed instantaneously upon the commission of wrong. ”

“ For human nature seems to require the double stimulus of praise and blame from others, in order to the best performance of duty that it can at present attain: so that the ‘social sanction’ would be less effective if it became purely penal. ”

“ Such motives were found in punishments, established against transgressors of the laws; and I call them sensible motives, because experience has shown that the majority of men adopt no fixed rules of conduct, nor avoid that universal principle of dissolution, observable alike in the moral as in the physical world, save by reason of motives which directly strike the senses and constantly present themselves to the mind, counterbalancing the strong impressions of private passions, opposed as they are to the general welfare ”

“ In short, it seems to me that virtues and vices which cannot be expressed in physiological terms are not worth talking about; that when a morality refuses to derive its sanction from the laws which govern our body, it loses the right to exist. ”