CONSCIENCE AND COMMUNITY 159

both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson confess that the authority
for the Moral Sense must be found elsewhere, by having
recourse to a law outside that given by human nature, i.e.
to the law of a Divine Superior promulgated with sanctions
of reward and punishment. Hutcheson, in particular,
remarks that the Moral Sense needs ' corroborating ' by
religious belief, and that ' the word " obHgation " is some-
times taken for a strong motive of interest constituted by
the will of some potent Superior to engage us to act as he
requires.' This seems to base obUgation on the constraint
exerted by the hedonistic motive. But he goes on to say :
' in describing the Superior who can constitute obligation
we not only include sufficient force or power, but also a
just right to govern : and this justice or right will lead
again to a moral faculty.' In such a passage Hutcheson
seems to realise the need for a justification of the magis-
terial function which he ascribes to the Moral Sense. This
Moral Sense, he affirms in his System of Moral Philosophy,
possesses ' a dignity and commanding nature of which we
are immediately conscious.' Such a statement, however,
having been written several years later than Butler's
Sermons, may reflect their teaching.
So much, then, may be said regarding the School of
Moral Sense and its view of the objectivity and authority
of moral judgments.
