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moral sense narrator in TJ (1)
moral sense narrator in TJ (1)
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SEL 25(1985)
ISSN 0039-3657
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600 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
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JAMES J. LYNCH 601
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602 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
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JAMES J. LYNCH 603
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604 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
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JAMES J. LYNCH 605
6Henry Knight Miller notes that Fielding's "moral creed" generally follows the
line of such latitudinarian preachers as Tillotson, Barrow, Burnet, and Hoadley,
but that their ideas had become so widely disseminated that it is not possible to
trace Fielding's creed to any specific sources (pp. 66-67). R. S. Crane examines
the connection between the latitudinarian moralists and the sentimental tradi-
tion in his seminal article, "Suggestions Toward the Genealogy of the 'Man of
Feeling,"' ELH 3 (1934):205-30. Battestin examines many of these same in his
discussion of Joseph Andrews (pp. 14-25).
Miller notes that Fielding "agrees . . in almost no important regard" with
Hutcheson, "whose ethics of feeling is nearly as rigorous and rationalistic as the
scheme of Clarke and his followers" (p. 69). J. L. Mackie, in Hume's Moral Theory
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), offers a rather different interpreta-
tion of Hutcheson. He notes that Hutcheson's use of the term "moral sense" has a
dangerous ambiguity. It may suggest an objectivist, almost a Platonic view: that
there is necessarily attached to benevolence some quality that demands moral
approval. He argues, however, that Hutcheson's moral sense is more subjectivist:
that our moral approval is "immediate, non-inferential, non-willed, and almost
universal among men" (p. 34). David Hume, he argues, follows essentially in this
subjectivist, sentimentalist tradition, while Joseph Butler gives the moral sense
an objectivist interpretation (p. 36).
7Francis Hutcheson, Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Ed. Bernard Peach (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), p. 117-18.
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606 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
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JAMES J. LYNCH 607
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608 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
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JAMES J. LYNCH 609
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610 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
should see more than idle Reason does and should not hastily con-
demn a character who plays the role of a villain because the Pas-
sions may force him to play a role that Reason-the
license-holder-may be too idle to correct.
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JAMES J. LYNCH 611
On the one hand, the advice seems intended for ill-natured critics
who, like the ill-natured readers of 6:1, should pursue their plea-
sures elsewhere. On the other hand the critic is not, strictly speak-
ing, ill-natured; rather, he has a Heart that is better than his Head
and that causes him to leap to disapproval because of a character's
imperfection, not because of his utter villainy. He expects models
of perfection in Art where there are none in Nature, and, is thus no
better than the critic in 7:1 who fails to recognize that a "single bad
Act no more constitutes a Villain in Life, than a single bad Part on
the Stage" (p. 328).
Fielding argues both that the presentation of perfectly good and
perfectly evil characters misrepresents nature and that in our
moral response to characters drawn from nature, we should be cau-
tious at leaping to judgments drawn singularly from our moral
sense. If an author creates a character of "Angelic Perfection," a
reader contemplating that character "may be both concerned and
ashamed to see a Pattern of Excellence, in his Nature, which he
may reasonably despair of ever arriving at" (p. 527). Similarly, if an
author creates a character of "diabolical Depravity," a reader con-
templating him "may be no less affected with those uneasy Situa-
tions, at seeing the Nature, of which he is a Partaker, degraded into
so odious and detestable a Creature." But if, on the other hand, an
author creates a character which mingles good and bad, we must
temper our approval of the former and our disapproval of the latter
with reason:
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612 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
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JAMES J. LYNCH 613
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614 MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
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