Even at the present stage of our enquiry, it must be tolerably evident
to the reader that moral progress, if such a fact exist, will be due
mainly to the increasing accuracy and the extended applications of our
moral judgments, or, in other words, to the development of the rational
rather than the emotional element in the ethical act. The moral feeling
follows on the moral judgment, and awards praise or blame, experiences
satisfaction or dissatisfaction, in accordance with the intellectual
decisions which have preceded it. The character of the feeling,
therefore, as distinct from its intensity, is already determined for it
by a previous process. And its intensity is undoubtedly greater amongst
primitive and uneducated men than it is in civilized life. Amongst
ourselves, not only are the feelings of approbation and disapprobation
themselves largely modified by the account we take of mixed motives,
qualifying circumstances, and the like, but the expression of, them is
still further restrained by the caution which the civilized man
habitually practises in the presence of others. Indeed, great, in many
respects, as are the advantages of this moderation and restraint, there
is a certain danger that, as civilisation advances, the approval of
virtue and the disapproval of vice may cease to be expressed in
sufficiently plain and emphatic terms. But, on the other hand, with the
extension of experience and the ever-improving discipline of the
intellectual faculties, the moral judgment, we may already presume (for
the confirmation of this presumption I must refer to the next chapter),
will always be growing in accuracy, receiving further applications, and
becoming a more and more adequate representative of facts.
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