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.166This doctrine, if true, obviates the need for all psychological inves-tigation or reflection on the part of the moral philosopher; except in sofar as he desires to expose the errors of his predecessors, by showinghow they proceed from a false and unnecessarily complicated psychol-ogy, such as that of Kant or that of the founders of Utilitarianism.Forthe whole of the positive psychology required by him is contained in anutshell, in the sentence: Reason proclaims my duty, and my sense ofduty impels me to do it But some of the modern exponents of intuition-ism, unfortunately for the consistency of their doctrine, are not contentto leave their sense of duty an utterly mysterious faculty of whichnothing more can be said.Sidgwick asserted that the notion of ought or duty is too elementary to admit of formal definition; and in the samespirit Dr.Rashdall tells us that the idea that something ought to be done is an unanalysable idea which is involved in all ethical judgments. But he ventures further and tells us that Duty means precisely devotionto the various kinds of good in proportion to their relative value andimportance ;167 and again: At bottom the sense of duty is the due ap-preciation of the proportionate objective value of ends. 168 From this itappears that, by the admission of a prominent exponent of the intuition-ist doctrine, the sense of duty is not an ultimate element of the moralconsciousness, is not an unanalysable idea and at the same time an im-pulse to action; rather it appears as the highly abstract name for all thatimmensely complex part of the mental organization which is the moralcharacter, and which comprises the system of the moral sentiments andthe developed self-regarding sentiment.For it is the possession of devel-oped moral character, and this alone, that enables us to judge rightly ofthe relative values of moral goods and impels us to pursue the best; and,as I have tried to show in this book, and as indeed is now generallyadmitted, this complex organization which is moral character is onlyacquired by any individual by a slow process of growth continued throughmany years under the constant pressure of the social environment and ofthe moral tradition.Our sense of duty is, in short, at the lower morallevel our sense of what is demanded of us by our fellows; and, at thehigher moral level, it is our sense of what we demand of ourselves invirtue of the ideal of character that we have formed.How and why werespond to these demands made upon us by our fellows and by our- 258/William McDougallselves, and how we come to make these demands, I have tried to showby means of a general theory of action, a theory of the moral sentimentsand a theory of volition.Before dismissing the theory of a moral fac-ulty, I must add that in one respect the intuitionist doctrine is true;namely, it is true that when we have acquired moral sentiments we dofrequently both pass moral judgments and make moral efforts withoutany weighing of the consequences of action.But to admit or to establishthis is neither to justify the doctrine of a moral faculty, nor to denythat our moral judgments frequently need correction by reference to theconsequences of action upon human welfare, the only true and ultimatecriterion of moral value.We may admit also the possibility that, though the moral sentimentsare in the main built up anew in each individual in the way roughlysketched in the pages of this volume, some predisposition to their for-mation may be inherited, and that, in so far as this is the case, the capac-ity of moral judgment, which is rooted in them, may be said to be innateand, in that sense, a priori.It only remains to show that the theory of action here set forth isimplied in the doctrines of some eminent philosophers (although it hasnot been explicitly stated by them), and most clearly perhaps by T.H.Green and Prof.Stout.These authors recognize the actions of animalsas true conations or expressions of will, in the wider sense of the word will. They recognize that human nature is capable of, or liable to,similar modes of primitive conation; and that desire is a comparativelycomplex mode of conation of which, perhaps, in the proper sense menonly are capable.But they do not claim that volition or moral conduct isnothing more than the issue of a conflict of desires.They rightly tell usthat these simpler modes of conation, blind impulses, cravings, and de-sires, are something that each man experiences as, in a sense, forcesacting upon him, impelling him towards this or that line of action; andthat he knows that his true self can either oppose such tendencies, or canaccept them; and that only when the self thus intervenes to accept orresist desire or impulse do we perform a volitional act And by the selfthey do not mean an abstract entity of which no account can be given.Green tells us that by the true self he means the character of the man; heuses also the term conscience to convey the same notion; and by con-science he means something which has a history in the life of the indi-vidual, something that is slowly built up in the course of moral trainingand under the influence of the social environment; conscience or moral An Introduction to Social Psychology/259character is, in short, in Green s view an organized system of habits ofwill
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