The Whole Works of Joseph Butler Volume 1-2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 edition. Excerpt: ... doubt, whether perception by memory can in this case be depended upon, may doubt also, whether perception by deduction and reasoning, which also includes memory, or, indeed, whether intuitive perception can. Here, then, we can go no farther. For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other perceptions of exactly the same kind with them, and which there is just the same ground to suspect; or to attempt to prove the truth of our faculties, which can no otherwise be proved than by the use or means of those very suspected faculties themselves. DISSERTATION II. OF THE NATURE OF VIRTUE. That which renders beings capable of moral government, is their having a moral nature, and moral faculties of perception and of action. Brute creatures are impressed and actuated by various instincts and propensions: so also are we. But, additional to this, we have a capacity of reflecting upon actions and characters, and making them an object to our thought: and on our doing this, we naturally and unavoidably approve some actions, under the peculiar view of their being virtuous and of good desert; and disapprove others, as vicious and of ill desert. That we have this moral approving and disapproving* faculty, is certain * This way of speaking is taken from Epictetus, (Arr. Epict. lib. i. cap. i.), and is made use of, as seeming the most full, and least liable to cavil. And the moral faculty may be understood to have these two epithets, Sokijuootikt) and airoSoKi/uurTiKi), upon a double account; from our experiencing it in ourselves, and recognizing it in each other. It appears from our exercising it unavoidably, in the approbation and disapprobation even of feigned characters: from the...