A consideration of the cases last mentioned will lead us to conclude that, in the view of Common Sense, the question (raised in the preceding chapter), whether an act is virtuous in proportion as it was done from regard for duty or virtue, must be answered in the negative: for the degree in which an act deserves praise as courageous, loyal, or patriotic does not seem to be reduced by its being shown that the predominant motive to the act was natural affection and not love of virtue as such. Indeed in some cases I think it clear that we commonly attribute virtue to conduct where regard for duty or virtue is not consciously present at all: as in the case of a heroic act of courage--let us say, in saving a fellow-creature from death--under an impulse of spontaneous sympathy. So again, when we praise a man as “genuinely humble” we certainly do not imply that he is conscious of fulfilling a duty--still less that he is conscious of exhibiting a virtue--by being humble.
It further appears to me that in the case of many important virtues we do not commonly consider the ultimate spring of action--whether it be some emotional impulse or the rational choice of duty as duty--in attributing a particular virtue to particular persons: what we regard as indispensable is merely a settled resolve to will a certain kind of external effects. Thus we call a man veracious if his speech exhibits, in a noteworthy degree, a settled endeavour to produce in the minds of others impressions exactly correspondent to the facts, whatever his motive may be for so doing: whether he is moved, solely or mainly, by a regard for virtue, or a sense of the degradation of falsehood, or a conviction that truth-speaking is in the long run the best policy, or a sympathetic aversion to the inconveniences which misleading statements cause to other people. I do not mean that we regard these motives as of equal moral value: but that the presence or absence of any one or other of them is not implied in our attribution of the virtue of veracity. Similarly we attribute Justice, if a man has a settled habit of weighing diverse claims and fulfilling them in the ratio of their importance; Good Faith if he has a settled habit of strictly keeping express or tacit engagements: and so forth. Even where we clearly take motives into account, in judging of the degree of virtue it is often rather the force of seductive motives resisted than the particular nature of the prevailing springs of action which we consider. Thus we certainly think virtue has been manifested in a higher degree in just or veracious conduct, when the agent had strong temptations to be unjust or unveracious; and in the same way there are certain dispositions or habits tending to good conduct which are called virtues when there are powerful seductive motives operating and not otherwise; _e.g._ when we attribute the virtue of temperance to a man who eats and drinks a proper amount, it is because we also attribute to him appetites prompting to excess.