ABSTRACT
What in this book may be considered new? The principle of association as applied to the training of children and adolescents in ‘doing right’ is certainly of venerable antiquity; Plato emphasized it in the rules he laid down for his ‘guardians’, and many later writers have taken their cue from him. Most explicit, perhaps, has been David Hartley, who summarized, in 1749, his Observations on Man, His Fame, His Duty, and His Expectations as follows:
There are many immediate good Consequences, which attend Virtue, as many ill ones do upon Vice, and that during our whole Progress through Life. Sensuality and Intemperance subject Men to Diseases and Pain, to Shame, Deformity, Filthiness, Terrors, and Anxieties; whereas Temperance is attended with Ease of Body, Freedom of Spirits, the Capacity of being pleased with the Objects of Pleasure, the good Opinion of others, the Perfection of the Senses, and of the Faculties bodily and mental, long Life Plenty, Etc. … Now these Pleasures and Pains, by often recurring in various Combinations, and by being variously transferred upon each other, from the great Affinity between the several Virtues, and their Rewards, with each other; also between the several Vices, and their Punishments, with each other; will at last beget in us a general, mixed, pleasing Idea and Consciousness, when we reflect upon our own virtuous Affections or Actions; a Sense of Guilt, and an Anxiety, when we reflect on the contrary; and also raise in us the Love and Esteem of Virtue, and the Hatred of Vice in others.
The Moral Sense or Judgment here spoken of, is sometimes considered as an Instinct, sometimes as Determinations of the Mind, grounded on the eternal Reasons and Relations of Things. Those who maintain either of these Opinions may, perhaps, explain them so as to be consistent with the foregoing Analysis of the Moral Sense from Association. But if by Instinct be meant a Disposition communicated to the Brain, and in consequence of this, to the Mind, or to the Mind alone, so as to be quite independent of Association; and by a moral Instinct, such as Disposition producing in us moral Judgments concerning Affections and Actions; it will be necessary, in order to support the Opinion of a moral Instinct, to produce Instances, where moral Judgments arise in us independently of prior Associations determining thereto.
In like manner, if by founding the Morality of Actions, and our Judgment concerning this Morality, on the eternal Reasons and Relations of Things, be meant, that the Reasons drawn from the Relations of Things, by which the Morality or Immorality of certain Actions is commonly proved, and which, with the relations, are called Eternal, from their appearing the same, or nearly the same, to the Mind at all Times, would determine the Mind to form the corresponding moral Judgment independently of prior Associations, this ought also to be proved by the Allegation of proper Instances. To me it appears, that the Instances are, as far as we can judge of them, of an opposite Nature, and favour the Deduction of all our moral Judgments, Approbations, and Disapprobations, from Association alone. However, some Associations are formed so early, repeated so often, riveted so strong, and have so close a Connexion with the common Nature of Man, and the Events of Life which happen to all, as, in a popular way of speaking, to claim the Appellation of original and natural Dispositions; and to appear like Instincts, when compared with Dispositions evidently factitious; also like Axioms, and intuitive Propositions, eternally true according to the usual Phrase, when compared with moral Reasonings of a compound Kind. But I have endeavoured to shew in these Papers, that all Reasoning, as well as Affection, is the mere Result of Association.
