The need of a closer psychological definition and interpretation of ethical emotion must be apparent to any reader of the current psychology, where we find the utmost confusion and looseness of usage. One of the most glaring instances which I have come across is this from Perez (First Three Years of Childhood, p. 286): “As soon as the child begins to obey, from fear or from habit, he enters on the possession of the moral sense; as soon as he obeys in order to be rewarded or praised or to give pleasure, he has advanced further in this possession.” A boy at table reaches out for the last piece of cake, but withdraws his hand out of love for his mother’s approbation, and fear of her disapprobation. Does this imply moral sense and emotion? We say, indeed, that these were very proper and moral emotions for the child to have; objectively moral, but we do not describe the psychical state of the child correctly by saying that it has the moral sense and emotion. In fact, just so far as he acts out of love or fear, just so far he is not acting out of ethical emotion; that is, simply because he feels he ought.

Only the slightest introspection, then, is needed to recognise the distinction of objective and subjective morality, of a moral emotion and the emotion of morality. So we must disallow even dread of “moral discomfort” as psychically moral, Spencer notwithstanding (Essays I., p. 348). The fear of remorse may restrain from objectively 333immoral acts, but the ethical emotion is not a fear constraint, as every one knows when doing a thing simply because he feels he ought to. Because I judge my feeling or act a right one, does not constitute this the feeling of rightness as psychic fact. In short, we must always distinguish between the socially right action, the morally right action, and the psychologically moral action. He who erects a model tenement, even though he do it to advertise himself, is doing the right thing by society, though his action is neither prompted by a moral emotion nor the moral emotion. If philanthropy incites him, both the act and feeling objectively are moral, but psychically he is immoral, and only becomes psychically moral when he acts out of the ethical emotion as feeling of duty. One who acts out of sympathy, pity, mercy, affection, feeling of honour, love of approbation, and similar emotions, often confounded with the moral emotion, is objectively moral. We pronounce these to be right emotions, yet they are not the emotion of right, and so not psychically moral; and it is evident, also, that they may not be socially right, for often actions from these motives result in social wrongs. However, in later phases of psychic evolution, when emotions themselves are reflected upon as psychic acts, the emotion of the moral “ought” may be felt as stimulus to them, and so we may at once feel that we ought to sympathise, and so sympathise, and so act, and may thus at the same time be psychically, morally and socially right.

But while the nature and rise of ethical emotion is often untruly connected with some one kind of act, as obedience, or with some one kind of motive, as love of reward, a far more likely field of investigation is opened by those who connect feeling of duty with conflict of motives. Yet it is obvious at first sight that mere opposition of any two psychic factors is not a distinct feeling. I have seen my dog run away from me to follow some canine friend, and then back to follow, and so on, till one affection became 334dominant force; but such simple interference of emotions does not constitute any third and new or higher emotion. Conflicts of this sort in higher natures have sometimes a reflex psychosis in painful feeling of distraction and bewilderment, but this is the end of the natural course of feeling conflicts.

There are, however, higher phases of conflict of motives which may bring us nearer to ethical emotion. A burglar, the evening he is to crack a safe, is inclined to indulge in several glasses of wine, but his companion remarks that he ought not to drink if he expects to do the job. Here is something to be done, a duty, and under the compulsive force of the feeling of this duty the burglar lays down his glass untouched. Is not the psychic phenomenon really a case of the ethical emotion as involved in the thwarting of present inclination for the right carrying out of the thing to be done? A feeling for that which is laid upon us to be done, whether we lay it upon ourselves, or it is laid upon us by others, has certainly the compulsory quality which we commonly attribute to the ethical emotion. When we have set out to do something, this pre-determination exercises a peculiar pressure when some diverse inclination enters, but it is the force of firmly-formed purpose and of tenacious will. Its compulsiveness is not ethical, but volitional. A very little reflection convinces me that something to be done, and something which ought to be done, incite distinct emotions. I feel differently when I go to church, because I have planned to go, or have been told to go, and when I go simply because I feel I ought. There is also superadded, the purely impulsive force of the emotion for the larger good; and this may, indeed, play the whole part in the contest with present inclination, which contest then becomes of the simple alternating order. Thus the burglar has avaricious visions of gold, and relaxes his cup; he looks at the tempting wine, and grasps it again, and so on.

335It is true, however, that the feeling for the larger and future good against a present inclination may be a feeling of oughtness, a feeling of duty, a constraining to do a set something. Providence and prudential action are enforced not merely by, “I wish to get the larger good,” but, “I ought to reach it.” The most permanent, the greatest and completest pleasure and benefit not only incites us, but constrains us. Constraining emotion, a feeling of oughtness, may then arise both from a preview of bare accomplishment of plan or purpose set by ourselves or others, and also from sense of larger over lesser advantage. Here is the region of utilitarian duty, of the Ethics of calculation of personal pleasure and happiness. Psychically here is a true feeling of ought, and here is the ethical emotion, if we make the term denominate all feeling of oughtness. But if this is the region of Ethics, it may be said to be the region of the lower Ethics, and we may indeed deny the term ethical to all this kind of emotion of oughtness. The emotion arises about personal and particular ends, and not about principles. The ambitious man feels an ought as well as the conscientious, but they are diverse in nature. Alike merely in the general quality of compulsive force, they may differ in tone and special qualities. The constraining emotion which comes with viewing a universal law of right may be claimed as distinct from the constraint exercised by personal ends. But it is not our purpose to discuss this matter here.

The psychic conflict which is specially connected with moral emotion is the conflict of the egoistic and altruistic impulses. When in such a struggle sympathy prevails, we approve as objectively moral and right, but the existence of ethical emotion in determining the dominance of the altruism is not assured. Pity originally overcame hatred without the compulsion of duty. Altruistic impulses contest with egoistic in na?ve and simple natures without any appearance of feeling for duty. The origin and 336nature of morality does not thus seem bound up with the earliest forms of egoistic-altruistic contests, though in later evolution it may come in as reinforcement of the altruistic. We may feel then, not merely like helping a man in distress at the expense of our own comfort, but we feel we ought to help him; the force of a general principle of conduct is felt in the form we term the ethical emotion, yet it is obvious that such a recognition of a general and universal law and such a feeling therefor is far later than the rise of altruism itself. Darwin alludes to the baulking of the social instinct as having special ethical significance. With the social instinct baulked, as with any other, there certainly results distress, but it is by no means made clear that this necessarily involves moral quality. When a savage in a fit of anger slays his pet child, the misery of baulked parental instinct may soon be felt, and he may bitterly regret the deed, but this does not involve moral feeling, a feeling of repentance for the essential wrongfulness of the act. He would regret in the same spirit the destroying his dinner by his own hand. If we say that he is stricken with remorse, we assert conscience violated. Remorse cannot explain conscience, but must be explained by it. Still, morality is not bound up necessarily with sociality. Sociality certainly arises and progresses to a considerable evolution before moral compulsion and the emotion of bare rightness arises to sanction and to stimulate social activities. And if moral emotion is not implied positively in altruism as an outgoing towards others, neither is it implied in the incoming of others upon the individual, either in respect of approbation or disapprobation, or in the more direct and essential way of rewards and penalties. Penalty is at bottom but a species of disadvantage brought to bear on the individual through fear of consequences. The desire to get even—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—and all exacting justice as an equivalence, whether as exacted by the individual or by 337persons delegated, the officers of justice, is plainly not in its origin and basis the ethical emotion. A system of mutual dues and rights may or may not have the sanction of morality, but they arise in advantage; and the motives which originate penalties and act with reference thereto, are far from being the pure moral emotion, a direct feeling for rightness as rightness. The merchant in general pays his import duty, not as a moral duty, but as something required by legality rather than morality. Law and public sentiment exercise through emotion, and that of a compulsory type, certain effects on conduct, but it is clear that the general feeling of oughtness as self-imposed law of rightness is not presupposed.

If the ethical emotion be not specially bound up with obedience or with conflict of motives, may it not be particularly connected with science? At the outset we note that a very natural confusion of science and Ethics is favoured by the fact that we can apply the term Ethics both to the science and the matter treated, and so speak of the science Ethics as the science of Ethics, of ethical perception, emotion and action. But yet we know that the science is by no means to be identified with its subject matter, and also that the science of a matter and the Ethics of it are two very diverse psychic tendencies and points of view. Science is always an objectifying impulse whose end is merely to know, but Ethics is subjective, whose end is merely to be. This is emphasized by the fact that science in its ceaseless objectifying may constitute a science of science, and science of the science of science, and so on, but Ethics is self-contained, and there can be no Ethics of Ethics. While we so sharply distinguish scientific and ethical activity, yet so far as the science is prompted by ethical emotion it is ethical activity. If I learn and know out of the feeling of duty, the act is psychically moral, yet is always distinct in quality from the feeling 338which prompts it. Thus there is an Ethics of science, or rather, to or toward science, though most scientific activity is carried on at the stimulus of other impulses, as love of truth, ambition, etc. Psychologically speaking, then, science is in no wise Ethics nor Ethics science.

But it will be said, “Is not ethical discrimination a cognitive activity? Must not one know the right, know that he ought, before he can feel ethically and act ethically?” But it will be found that at bottom the rightness of an action is the appreciated accord of the action with an end which is already felt to be right. I am asked whether I think it was right for a certain poor man to purloin a loaf from a baker for his starving family. In passing ethical judgment I simply fall back on some ethical postulate. The right of the family to life, I may say, ought to take precedence of the right of property. I therein fall back upon the simple feeling of right as ethical emotion. The knowing activity is concerned merely in the apprehending the situation, and ratiocination in tracing back to moral principles, but the ethical discrimination is neither, but an affair of direct emotion. If it be felt to be right to save life in any wise that seems necessary............