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Title: The Methods of Ethics
Author: Sidgwick, Henry
Language: English
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THE METHODS OF ETHICS
Ἢ οὐ γελοῖον ἐπὶ μὲν ἄλλοις σμικροῦ ἀξίοις πᾶν ποιεῖν συντεινομένους,
ὅπως ὄτι ἀκριβέστατα καὶ καθαρώτατα ἕξει, τῶν δὲ μεγίστων μὴ μεγίστας
ἀξιοῦν εἶναι καὶ τὰς ἀκριβείας;--PLATO.
THE
METHODS OF ETHICS
BY
HENRY SIDGWICK
SOMETIME KNIGHTBRIDGE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
_SEVENTH EDITION_
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1907
[_The Right of Translation is reserved._]
_First Edition 1874._
_Second Edition 1877._
_Third Edition 1884._
_Fourth Edition 1890._
_Fifth Edition 1893._
_Sixth Edition 1901._
_Seventh Edition 1907._
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
In offering to the public a new book upon a subject so trite as Ethics,
it seems desirable to indicate clearly at the outset its plan and
purpose. Its distinctive characteristics may be first given negatively.
It is not, in the main, metaphysical or psychological: at the same time
it is not dogmatic or directly practical: it does not deal, except by
way of illustration, with the history of ethical thought: in a sense
it might be said to be not even critical, since it is only quite
incidentally that it offers any criticism of the systems of individual
moralists. It claims to be an examination, at once expository and
critical, of the different methods of obtaining reasoned convictions
as to what ought to be done which are to be found--either explicit
or implicit--in the moral consciousness of mankind generally: and
which, from time to time, have been developed, either singly or in
combination, by individual thinkers, and worked up into the systems now
historical.
I have avoided the inquiry into the Origin of the Moral Faculty--which
has perhaps occupied a disproportionate amount of the attention of
modern moralists--by the simple assumption (which seems to be made
implicitly in all ethical reasoning) that there is something[1] under
any given circumstances which it is right or reasonable to do, and that
this may be known. If it be admitted that we now have the faculty of
knowing this, it appears to me that the investigation of the historical
antecedents of this cognition, and of its relation to other elements
of the mind, no more properly belongs to Ethics than the corresponding
questions as to the cognition of Space belong to Geometry.[2] I make,
however, no further assumption as to the nature of the object of
ethical knowledge: and hence my treatise is not dogmatic: all the
different methods developed in it are expounded and criticised from a
neutral position, and as impartially as possible. And thus, though my
treatment of the subject is, in a sense, more practical than that of
many moralists, since I am occupied from first to last in considering
how conclusions are to be rationally reached in the familiar matter
of our common daily life and actual practice; still, my immediate
object--to invert Aristotle’s phrase--is not Practice but Knowledge.
I have thought that the predominance in the minds of moralists of a
desire to edify has impeded the real progress of ethical science:
and that this would be benefited by an application to it of the same
disinterested curiosity to which we chiefly owe the great discoveries
of physics. It is in this spirit that I have endeavoured to compose
the present work: and with this view I have desired to concentrate the
reader’s attention, from first to last, not on the practical results to
which our methods lead, but on the methods themselves. I have wished
to put aside temporarily the urgent need which we all feel of finding
and adopting the true method of determining what we ought to do; and to
consider simply what conclusions will be rationally reached if we start
with certain ethical premises, and with what degree of certainty and
precision.
I ought to mention that chapter iv. of Book i. has been reprinted (with
considerable modifications) from the _Contemporary Review_, in which
it originally appeared as an article on “Pleasure and Desire.” And I
cannot conclude without a tribute of thanks to my friend Mr. Venn, to
whose kindness in accepting the somewhat laborious task of reading and
criticising my work, both before and during its passage through the
press, I am indebted for several improvements in my exposition.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
In preparing this work for the second edition, I have found it
desirable to make numerous alterations and additions. Indeed the extent
which these have reached is so considerable, that I have thought it
well to publish them in a separate form, for the use of purchasers
of my first edition. On one or two points I have to acknowledge a
certain change of view; which is partly at least due to criticism. For
instance, in chap. iv. of Book i. (on “Pleasure and Desire”), which has
been a good deal criticised by Prof. Bain and others, although I still
retain my former opinion on the psychological question at issue, I have
been led to take a different view of the relation of this question
to Ethics; and in fact § 1 of this chapter as it at present stands
directly contradicts the corresponding passage in the former edition.
So again, as regards the following chapter, on ‘Free-Will,’ though I
have not exactly found that the comments which it has called forth have
removed my difficulties in dealing with this time-honoured problem,
I have become convinced that I ought not to have crudely obtruded
these difficulties on the reader, while professedly excluding the
consideration of them from my subject. In the present edition therefore
I have carefully limited myself to explaining and justifying the view
that I take of the practical aspect of the question. I have further
been led, through study of the Theory of Evolution in its application
to practice, to attach somewhat more importance to this theory than I
had previously done; and also in several passages of Books iii. and iv.
to substitute ‘well-being’ for ‘happiness,’ in my exposition of that
implicit reference to some further end and standard which reflection on
the Morality of Common Sense continually brings into view. This latter
change however (as I explain in the concluding chapter of Book iii.) is
not ultimately found to have any practical effect. I have also modified
my view of ‘objective rightness,’ as the reader will see by comparing
Book i. chap. i. § 3 with the corresponding passage in the former
edition; but here again the alteration has no material importance.
In my exposition of the Utilitarian principle (Book iv. chap. i.) I
have shortened the cumbrous phrase ‘greatest happiness of the greatest
number’ by omitting--as its author ultimately advised--the last four
words. And finally, I have yielded as far as I could to the objections
that have been strongly urged against the concluding chapter of the
treatise. The main discussion therein contained still seems to me
indispensable to the completeness of the work; but I have endeavoured
to give the chapter a new aspect by altering its commencement, and
omitting most of the concluding paragraph.
The greater part, however, of the new matter in this edition is merely
explanatory and supplementary. I have endeavoured to give a fuller
and clearer account of my views on any points on which I either have
myself seen them to be ambiguously or inadequately expressed, or have
found by experience that they were liable to be misunderstood. Thus in
Book i. chap. ii. I have tried to furnish a rather more instructive
account than my first edition contained of the mutual relations of
Ethics and Politics. Again, even before the appearance of Mr. Leslie
Stephen’s interesting review in _Fraser_ (March 1875), I had seen the
desirability of explaining further my general view of the ‘Practical
Reason,’ and of the fundamental notion signified by the terms ‘right,’
‘ought,’ etc. With this object I have entirely rewritten chap. iii.
of Book i., and made considerable changes in chap. i. Elsewhere,
as in chaps. vi. and ix. of Book i., and chap. vi. of Book ii., I
have altered chiefly in order to make my expositions more clear and
symmetrical. This is partly the case with the considerable changes that
I have made in the first three chapters of Book iii.; but I have also
tried to obviate the objections brought by Professor Calderwood[3]
against the first of these chapters. The main part of this Book
(chaps. iv.-xii.) has been but slightly altered; but in chap. xiii. (on
‘Philosophical Intuitionism’), which has been suggestively criticised
by more than one writer, I have thought it expedient to give a more
direct statement of my own opinions; instead of confining myself (as
I did in the first edition) to comments on those of other moralists.
Chap. xiv. again has been considerably modified; chiefly in order to
introduce into it the substance of certain portions of an article
on ‘Hedonism and Ultimate Good,’ which I published in _Mind_ (No.
5). In Book iv. the changes (besides those above mentioned) have
been inconsiderable; and have been chiefly made in order to remove a
misconception which I shall presently notice, as to my general attitude
towards the three Methods which I am principally occupied in examining.
In revising my work, I have endeavoured to profit as much as possible
by all the criticisms on it that have been brought to my notice,
whether public or private.[4] I have frequently deferred to objections,
even when they appeared to me unsound, if I thought I could avoid
controversy by alterations to which I was myself indifferent. Where I
have been unable to make the changes required, I have usually replied,
in the text or the notes, to such criticisms as have appeared to me
plausible, or in any way instructive. In so doing, I have sometimes
referred by name to opponents, where I thought that, from their
recognised position as teachers of the subject, this would give a
distinct addition of interest to the discussion; but I have been
careful to omit such reference where experience has shown that it would
be likely to cause offence. The book is already more controversial
than I could wish; and I have therefore avoided encumbering it with
any polemics of purely personal interest. For this reason I have
generally left unnoticed such criticisms as have been due to mere
misapprehensions, against which I thought I could effectually
guard in the present edition. There is, however, one fundamental
misunderstanding, on which it seems desirable to say a few words.
I find that more than one critic has overlooked or disregarded the
account of the plan of my treatise, given in the original preface and
in § 5 of the introductory chapter: and has consequently supposed me
to be writing as an assailant of two of the methods which I chiefly
examine, and a defender of the third. Thus one of my reviewers seems
to regard Book iii. (on Intuitionism) as containing mere hostile
criticism from the outside: another has constructed an article on
the supposition that my principal object is the ‘suppression of
Egoism’: a third has gone to the length of a pamphlet under the
impression (apparently) that the ‘main argument’ of my treatise is
a demonstration of Universalistic Hedonism. I am concerned to have
caused so much misdirection of criticism: and I have carefully altered
in this edition the passages which I perceive to have contributed to
it. The morality that I examine in Book iii. is my own morality as
much as it is any man’s: it is, as I say, the ‘Morality of Common
Sense,’ which I only attempt to represent in so far as I share it; I
only place myself outside it either (1) temporarily, for the purpose
of impartial criticism, or (2) in so far as I am forced beyond it by
a practical consciousness of its incompleteness. I have certainly
criticised this morality unsparingly: but I conceive myself to have
exposed with equal unreserve the defects and difficulties of the
hedonistic method (cf. especially chaps. iii., iv. of Book ii., and
chap. v. of Book iv.). And as regards the two hedonistic principles, I
do not hold the reasonableness of aiming at happiness generally with
any stronger conviction than I do that of aiming at one’s own. It was
no part of my plan to call special attention to this “Dualism of the
Practical Reason” as I have elsewhere called it: but I am surprised
at the extent to which my view has perplexed even those of my critics
who have understood it. I had imagined that they would readily trace
it to the source from which I learnt it, Butler’s well-known Sermons.
I hold with Butler that “Reasonable Self-love and Conscience are
the two chief or superior principles in the nature of man,” each of
which we are under a “manifest obligation” to obey: and I do not (I
believe) differ materially from Butler in my view either of reasonable
self-love, or--theology apart--of its relation to conscience. Nor,
again, do I differ from him in regarding conscience as essentially a
function of the practical Reason: “moral precepts,” he says in the
_Analogy_ (Part II. chap. viii.), “are precepts the reason of which
we see.” My difference only begins when I ask myself, ‘What among the
precepts of our common conscience do we really see to be ultimately
reasonable?’ a question which Butler does not seem to have seriously
put, and to which, at any rate, he has given no satisfactory answer.
The answer that I found to it supplied the rational basis that I had
long perceived to be wanting to the Utilitarianism of Bentham, regarded
as an ethical doctrine: and thus enabled me to transcend the commonly
received antithesis between Intuitionists and Utilitarians.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I did not mean to exclude the supposition that two or more
alternatives might under certain circumstances be equally right (1884).
[2] This statement now appears to me to require a slight modification
(1884).
[3] Cf. _Mind_, No. 2.
[4] Among unpublished criticisms I ought especially to mention the
valuable suggestions that I have received from Mr. Carveth Read; to
whose assistance in revising the present edition many of my corrections
are due.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
In this third edition I have again made extensive alterations,
and introduced a considerable amount of new matter. Some of these
changes and additions are due to modifications of my own ethical or
psychological views; but I do not think that any of these are of great
importance in relation to the main subject of the treatise. And by far
the largest part of the new matter introduced has been written either
(1) to remove obscurities, ambiguities, and minor inconsistencies
in the exposition of my views which the criticisms[5] of others or
my own reflection have enabled me to discover; or (2) to treat as
fully as seemed desirable certain parts or aspects of the subject
which I had either passed over altogether or discussed too slightly
in my previous editions, and on which it now appears to me important
to explain my opinions, either for the greater completeness of my
treatise,--according to my own view of the subject,--or for its better
adaptation to the present state of ethical thought in England. The most
important changes of the first kind have been made in chaps. i. and
ix. of Book i., chaps, i.-iii. of Book ii., and chaps. i., xiii., and
xiv. of Book iii.: under the second head I may mention the discussions
of the relation of intellect to moral action in Book i. chap. iii., of
volition in Book i. chap. v., of the causes of pleasure and pain in
Book ii. chap. vi., of the notion of virtue in the morality of Common
Sense in Book iii. chap. ii., and of evolutional ethics in Book iv.
chap. iv. (chiefly).
I may add that all the important alterations and additions have been
published in a separate form, for the use of purchasers of my second
edition.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] I must here acknowledge the advantage that I have received from
the remarks and questions of my pupils, and from criticisms privately
communicated to me by others; among these latter I ought especially to
mention an instructive examination of my fundamental doctrines by the
Rev. Hastings Rashdall.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
The chief alterations in this fourth edition are the following. (1) I
have expanded the discussion on Free Will in Book i. chap. v. § 3, to
meet the criticisms of Mr. Fowler, in his _Principles of Morals_, and
Dr. Martineau, in his _Types of Ethical Theory_. (2) In consequence
of the publication of the last-mentioned work, I have rewritten
part of chap. xii. of Book iii., which deals with the Ethical view
maintained by Dr. Martineau. (3) I have expanded the argument in
Book iii. chap. xiv., to meet objections ably urged by Mr. Rashdall
in _Mind_ (April 1885). (4) I have somewhat altered the concluding
chapter, in consequence of an important criticism by Prof. v. Gizycki
(_Vierteljahrsschrift für Wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, Jahrg. iv.
Heft i.) which I had inadvertently overlooked in preparing the third
edition. Several pages of new matter have thus been introduced: for
which--I am glad to say--I have made room by shortening what seemed
prolix, omitting what seemed superfluous, and relegating digressions to
notes, in other parts of the work: so that the bulk of the whole is not
increased.
For the index which forms a new feature in the present edition I am
indebted to the kindness of Miss Jones of Girton College, the author of
_Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions_.
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION
Such criticisms of my Ethical opinions and reasonings as have come
under my notice, since the publication of the fourth edition of this
treatise, have chiefly related to my treatment of the question of
Free Will in Book i. chap. v., or to the hedonistic view of Ultimate
Good, maintained in Book iii. chap. iv. I have accordingly rewritten
certain parts of these two chapters, in the hope of making my arguments
more clear and convincing: in each case a slight change in view will
be apparent to a careful reader who compares the present with the
preceding edition: but in neither case does the change affect the
main substance of the argument. Alterations, in one or two cases not
inconsiderable, have been made in several other chapters, especially
Book i. chap. ii., and Book iii. chaps. i. and ii.: but they have
chiefly aimed at removing defects of exposition, and do not (I think)
in any case imply any material change of view.
My thanks are again due to Miss Jones, of Girton College, for reading
through the proofs of this edition and making most useful corrections
and suggestions: as well as for revising the index which she kindly
made for the fourth edition.
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
The revision of _The Methods of Ethics_ for this edition was begun by
Professor Sidgwick and carried through by him up to p. 276, on which
the last of his corrections on the copy were made. The latter portion
of his revision was done under the pressure of severe illness, the
increase of which prevented him from continuing it beyond the point
mentioned; and by the calamity of his death the rest of the book
remains without the final touches which it might have received from his
hand. In accordance with his wish, I have seen pp. 277 to 509 through
the press unchanged--except for a few small alterations which he had
indicated, and the insertion on pp. 457-459 of the concluding passage
of Book iv. chapter iii.[6] Such alterations as were made by Professor
Sidgwick in this edition prior to p. 276 will be found chiefly in
chapters i.-v. and ix. of Book i., and chapters iii. and vi. of Book ii.
The Appendix on “The Kantian Conception of Free Will,” promised in note
1 on p. 58 of this edition, is substantially a reprint of a paper by
Professor Sidgwick under that heading which appeared in _Mind_, vol.
xiii. No. 51, and accurately covers the ground indicated in the note.
There is one further matter of importance. Among the MS. material
which Professor Sidgwick intended to be referred to, in preparing
this edition for the press, there occurs, as part of the MS. notes
for a lecture, a brief history of the development in his thought of
the ethical view which he has set forth in the _Methods of Ethics_.
This, though not in a finished condition, is in essentials complete
and coherent, and since it cannot fail to have peculiar value and
interest for students of the book, it has been decided to insert it
here. Such an arrangement seems to a certain extent in harmony with the
author’s own procedure in the Preface to the Second Edition; and in
this way while future students of the _Methods_ will have access to an
introductory account which both ethically and historically is of very
exceptional interest, no dislocation of the text will be involved.
In the account referred to Professor Sidgwick says:--
“My first adhesion to a definite Ethical system was to the
Utilitarianism of Mill: I found in this relief from the apparently
external and arbitrary pressure of moral rules which I had been
educated to obey, and which presented themselves to me as to some
extent doubtful and confused; and sometimes, even when clear, as
merely dogmatic, unreasoned, incoherent. My antagonism to this was
intensified by the study of Whewell’s _Elements of Morality_ which
was prescribed for the study of undergraduates in Trinity. It was
from that book that I derived the impression--which long remained
uneffaced--that Intuitional moralists were hopelessly loose (as
compared to mathematicians) in their definitions and axioms.
The two elements of Mill’s view which I am accustomed to distinguish
as Psychological Hedonism [that each man does seek his own Happiness]
and Ethical Hedonism [that each man ought to seek the general
Happiness] both attracted me, and I did not at first perceive their
incoherence.
Psychological Hedonism--the law of universal
pleasure-seeking--attracted me by its frank naturalness. Ethical
Hedonism, as expounded by Mill, was morally inspiring by its dictate
of readiness for absolute self-sacrifice. They appealed to different
elements of my nature, but they brought these into apparent harmony:
they both used the same words “pleasure,” “happiness,” and the
persuasiveness of Mill’s exposition veiled for a time the profound
discrepancy between the natural end of action--private happiness, and
the end of duty--general happiness. Or if a doubt assailed me as to
the coincidence of private and general happiness, I was inclined to
hold that it ought to be cast to the winds by a generous resolution.
But a sense grew upon me that this method of dealing with the conflict
between Interest and Duty, though perhaps proper for practice
could not be final for philosophy. For practical men who do not
philosophise, the maxim of subordinating self-interest, as commonly
conceived, to “altruistic” impulses and sentiments which they feel to
be higher and nobler is, I doubt not, a commendable maxim; but it is
surely the business of Ethical Philosophy to find and make explicit
the rational ground of such action.
I therefore set myself to examine methodically the relation of
Interest and Duty.
This involved a careful study of Egoistic Method, to get the relation
of Interest and Duty clear. Let us suppose that my own Interest is
paramount. What really is my Interest, how far can acts conducive
to it be known, how far does the result correspond with Duty (or
Wellbeing of Mankind)? This investigation led me to feel very
strongly _this_ opposition, rather than that which Mill and the
earlier Utilitarians felt between so-called Intuitions or Moral Sense
Perceptions, and Hedonism, whether Epicurean or Utilitarian. Hence the
arrangement of my book--ii., iii., iv. [Book ii. Egoism, Book iii.
Intuitionism, Book iv. Utilitarianism].
The result was that I concluded that no complete solution of the
conflict between my happiness and the general happiness was possible
on the basis of mundane experience. This [conclusion I] slowly and
reluctantly accepted--cf. Book ii. chap. v., and last chapter of
treatise [Book ii. chap. v. is on “Happiness and Duty,” and the
concluding chapter is on “The Mutual Relations of the Three Methods”].
This [was] most important to me.
In consequence of this perception, moral choice of the general
happiness or acquiescence in self-interest as ultimate, became
practically necessary. But on what ground?
I put aside Mill’s phrases that such sacrifice was “heroic”: that it
was not “well” with me unless I was in a disposition to make it. I put
to him in my mind the dilemma:--Either it is for my own happiness or
it is not. If not, why [should I do it]?--It was no use to say that
if I was a moral hero I should have formed a habit of willing actions
beneficial to others which would remain in force, even with my own
pleasure in the other scale. I knew that at any rate I was not the
kind of moral hero who does this without reason; from _blind_ habit.
Nor did I even wish to be that kind of hero: for it seemed to me that
that kind of hero, however admirable, was certainly not a philosopher.
I must somehow _see_ that it was right for me to sacrifice my
happiness for the good of the whole of which I am a part.
Thus, in spite of my early aversion to Intuitional Ethics, derived
from the study of Whewell, and in spite of my attitude of discipleship
to Mill, I was forced to recognise the need of a fundamental ethical
intuition.
The utilitarian method--which I had learnt from Mill--could not, it
seemed to me, be made coherent and harmonious without this fundamental
intuition.
In this state of mind I read Kant’s Ethics again: I had before read
it somewhat unintelligently, under the influence of Mill’s view
as to its “grotesque failure.”[7] I now read it more receptively
and was impressed with the truth and importance of its fundamental
principle:--_Act from a principle or maxim that you can will to be
a universal law_--cf. Book iii. chap. i. § 3 [of _The Methods of
Ethics_]. It threw the “golden rule” of the gospel (“Do unto others as
ye would that others should do unto you”) into a form that commended
itself to my reason.
Kant’s resting of morality on Freedom did not indeed commend itself to
me,[8] though I did not at first see, what I now seem to see clearly,
that it involves the fundamental confusion of using “freedom” in two
distinct senses--“freedom” that is realised only when we do right,
when reason triumphs over inclination, and “freedom” that is realised
equally when we choose to do wrong, and which is apparently implied
in the notion of ill-desert. What commended itself to me, in short,
was Kant’s ethical principle rather than its metaphysical basis.
This I briefly explain in Book iii. chap. i. § 3 [of _The Methods of
Ethics_]. I shall go into it at more length when we come to Kant.
That whatever is right for me must be right for all persons in similar
circumstances--which was the form in which I accepted the Kantian
maxim--seemed to me certainly fundamental, certainly true, and not
without practical importance.
But the fundamental principle seemed to me inadequate for the
construction of a system of duties; and the more I reflected on it the
more inadequate it appeared.
On reflection it did not seem to me really to meet the difficulty
which had led me from Mill to Kant: it did not settle finally the
subordination of Self-interest to Duty.
For the Rational Egoist--a man who had learnt from Hobbes that
Self-preservation is the first law of Nature and Self-interest the
only rational basis of social morality--and in fact, its actual basis,
so far as it is effective--such a thinker might accept the Kantian
principle and remain an Egoist.
He might say, “I quite admit that when the painful necessity comes
for another man to choose between his own happiness and the general
happiness, he must as a reasonable being prefer his own, i.e. it is
right for him to do this on my principle. No doubt, as I probably do
not sympathise with him in particular any more than with other persons,
I as a disengaged spectator should like him to sacrifice himself to
the general good: but I do not expect him to do it, any more than I
should do it myself in his place.”
It did not seem to me that this reasoning could be effectively
confuted. No doubt it was, from the point of view of the universe,
reasonable to prefer the greater good to the lesser, even though the
lesser good was the private happiness of the agent. Still, it seemed
to me also undeniably reasonable for the individual to prefer his
own. The rationality of self-regard seemed to me as undeniable as the
rationality of self-sacrifice. I could not give up this conviction,
though neither of my masters, neither Kant nor Mill, seemed willing to
admit it: in different ways, each in his own way, they refused to admit
it.
I was, therefore, [if] I may so say, a disciple on the loose, in search
of a master--or, if the term ‘master’ be too strong, at any rate I
sought for sympathy and support, in the conviction which I had attained
in spite of the opposite opinions of the thinkers from whom I had
learnt most.
It was at this point then that the influence of Butler came in. For
the stage at which I had thus arrived in search of an ethical creed,
at once led me to understand Butler, and to find the support and
intellectual sympathy that I required in his view.
I say to understand him, for hitherto I had misunderstood him,
as I believe most people then misunderstood, and perhaps still
misunderstand, him. He had been presented to me as an advocate of the
authority of Conscience; and his argument, put summarily, seemed to be
that because reflection on our impulses showed us Conscience claiming
authority therefore we ought to obey it. Well, I had no doubt that
my conscience claimed authority, though it was a more utilitarian
conscience than Butler’s: for, through all this search for principles I
still adhered for practical purposes to the doctrine I had learnt from
Mill, _i.e._ I still held to the maxim of aiming at the general
happiness as the supreme directive rule of conduct, and I thought I
could answer the objections that Butler brought against this view
(in the “Dissertation on Virtue” at the end of the _Analogy_). My
difficulty was, as I have said, that this claim of conscience, whether
utilitarian or not, had to be harmonised with the claim of Rational
Self-love; and that I vaguely supposed Butler to avoid or override
[the latter claim].
But reading him at this stage with more care, I found in him, with
pleasure and surprise, a view very similar to that which had developed
itself in my own mind in struggling to assimilate Mill and Kant. I
found he expressly admitted that “interest, my own happiness, is a
manifest obligation,” and that “Reasonable Self-love” [is “one of the
two chief or superior principles in the nature of man”]. That is, he
recognised a “Dualism of the Governing Faculty”--or as I prefer to
say “Dualism of the Practical Reason,” since the ‘authority’ on which
Butler laid stress must present itself to my mind as the authority of
reason, before I can admit it.
Of this more presently: what I now wish to make clear is that it was
on this side--if I may so say--that I entered into Butler’s system and
came under the influence of his powerful and cautious intellect. But
the effect of his influence carried me a further step away from Mill:
for I was led by it to abandon the doctrine of Psychological Hedonism,
and to recognise the existence of ‘disinterested’ or ‘extra-regarding’
impulses to action, [impulses] not directed towards the agent’s
pleasure [cf. chap. iv. of Book i. of _The Methods of Ethics_]. In fact
as regards what I may call a Psychological basis of Ethics, I found
myself much more in agreement with Butler than Mill.
And this led me to reconsider my relation to Intuitional Ethics. The
strength and vehemence of Butler’s condemnation of pure Utilitarianism,
in so cautious a writer, naturally impressed me much. And I had myself
become, as I had to admit to myself, an Intuitionist to a certain
extent. For the supreme rule of aiming at the general happiness, as I
had come to see, must rest on a fundamental moral intuition, if I was
to recognise it as binding at all. And in reading the writings of the
earlier English Intuitionists, More and Clarke, I found the axiom I
required for my Utilitarianism [That a rational agent is bound to aim
at Universal Happiness], in one form or another, holding a prominent
place (cf. _History of Ethics_, pp. 172, 181).
I had then, theoretically as well as practically, accepted this
fundamental moral intuition; and there was also the Kantian principle,
which I recognised as irresistibly valid, though not adequate to give
complete guidance.--I was then an “intuitional” moralist to this
extent: and if so, why not further? The orthodox moralists such as
Whewell (then in vogue) said that there was a whole intelligible system
of intuitions: but how were they to be learnt? I could not accept
Butler’s view as to the sufficiency of a plain man’s conscience: for it
appeared to me that plain men agreed rather verbally than really.
In this state of mind I had to read Aristotle again; and a
light seemed to dawn upon me as to the meaning and drift of his
procedure--especially in Books ii., iii., iv. of the _Ethics_--(cf.
_History of Ethics_, chap. ii. § 9, p. 58, read to end of section).
What he gave us there was the Common Sense Morality of Greece,
reduced to consistency by careful comparison: given not as something
external to him but as what “we”--he and others--think, ascertained by
reflection. And was not this really the Socratic induction, elicited by
interrogation?
Might I not imitate this: do the same for _our_ morality here and now,
in the same manner of impartial reflection on current opinion?
Indeed _ought_ I not to do this before deciding on the question whether
I had or had not a system of moral intuitions? At any rate the result
would be useful, whatever conclusion I came to.
So this was the part of my book first written (Book iii., chaps.
i.-xi.), and a certain imitation of Aristotle’s manner was very marked
in it at first, and though I have tried to remove it where it seemed to
me affected or pedantic, it still remains to some extent.
But the result of the examination was to bring out with fresh force
and vividness the difference between the maxims of Common Sense
Morality (even the strongest and strictest, _e.g._ Veracity and
Good Faith) and the intuitions which I had already attained, _i.e._
the Kantian Principle (of which I now saw the only certain element
in Justice--“treat similar cases similarly”--to be a particular
application), and the Fundamental Principle of Utilitarianism. And this
latter was in perfect harmony with the Kantian Principle. I certainly
could will it to be a universal law that men should act in such a way
as to promote universal happiness; in fact it was the only law that it
was perfectly clear to me that I could thus decisively will, from a
universal point of view.
I was then a Utilitarian again, but on an Intuitional basis.
But further, the reflection on Common Sense Morality which I had gone
through, had continually brought home to me its character as a system
of rules tending to the promotion of general happiness (cf. [_Methods
of Ethics_] pp. 470, 471).
Also the previous reflection on hedonistic method for Book ii. had
shown me its weaknesses. What was then to be done? [The] conservative
attitude [to be observed] towards Common Sense [is] given in chapter
v. of Book iv.: “Adhere generally, deviate and attempt reform only
in exceptional cases in which,--notwithstanding the roughness of
hedonistic method,--the argument against Common Sense is decisive.”
In this state of mind I published my book: I tried to say what I had
found: that the opposition between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism was
due to a misunderstanding. There was indeed a fundamental opposition
between the individual’s interest and either morality, which I could
not solve by any method I had yet found trustworthy, without the
assumption of the moral government of the world: so far I agreed with
both Butler and Kant.
But I could find no real opposition between Intuitionism and
Utilitarianism.... The Utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham seemed to me
to want a basis: that basis could only be supplied by a fundamental
intuition; on the other hand the best examination I could make of the
Morality of Common Sense showed me no clear and self-evident principles
except such as were perfectly consistent with Utilitarianism.
Still, investigation of the Utilitarian method led me to see defects
[in it]: the merely empirical examination of the consequences of
actions is unsatisfactory; and being thus conscious of the practical
imperfection in many cases of the guidance of the Utilitarian calculus,
I remained anxious to treat with respect, and make use of, the guidance
afforded by Common Sense in these cases, on the ground of the general
presumption which evolution afforded that moral sentiments and opinions
would point to conduct conducive to general happiness; though I
could not admit this presumption as a ground for overruling a strong
probability of the opposite, derived from utilitarian calculations.”
It only remains to mention that the Table of Contents and the Index
have been revised in accordance with the changes in the text.
E. E. CONSTANCE JONES.
GIRTON COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE, _April 1901_.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Cf. note on p. 457, and Prefatory Note to the Seventh Edition.
[7] Kant’s _Fundamental Principles_ (_Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der
Sitten_), §§ 1, 2. Mill, _Utilitarianism_, pp. 5, 6 [7th edition (large
print), 1879].
[8] Book i. chap. v. of _The Methods of Ethics_.
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION
This Edition is a reprint of the Sixth, the only changes (besides
correction of a few clerical errors) being an alteration of type in the
passage which occurs on p. 457 in the Sixth Edition and pp. 457-459
in this Edition, together with consequent changes (1) in paging and
indexing, (2) in the reference to the passage in question in the
reprinted Preface to the Sixth Edition, and (3) in the insertion of the
note on p. 457.
E. E. C. J.
_December 1906._
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
PAGES
1. Ethics is a department of the Theory or Study of Practice. 1-2
2. It is the study of what ought to be, so far as this depends upon
the voluntary action of individuals. 2-4
3. In deciding what they ought to do, men naturally proceed on
different principles, and by different methods. 4-6
4. There are two _prima facie_ rational Ends, Excellence or
Perfection and Happiness: of which the latter at least may be
sought for oneself or universally. It is also commonly thought
that certain Rules are prescribed without reference to ulterior
consequences. The Methods corresponding to these different
principles reduce themselves in the main to three, Egoism,
Intuitionism, Utilitarianism. 6-11
5. These methods we are to examine separately, abstracting them
from ordinary thought, where we find them in confused combination,
and developing them as precisely and consistently as possible. 11-14
CHAPTER II
ETHICS AND POLITICS
1. In considering the relation between Ethics and Politics, we have
to distinguish between Positive Law and Ideal Law. 15-18
2. But at any rate the primary object of Ethics is not to determine
what ought to be done in an ideal society: it therefore does not
necessarily require as a preliminary the theoretical construction
of such a society. 18-22
CHAPTER III
ETHICAL JUDGMENTS
1. By ‘Reasonable’ conduct--whether morally or prudentially
reasonable--we mean that of which we judge that it ‘ought’ to be
done. Such a judgment cannot be legitimately interpreted as a
judgment concerning facts, nor as referring exclusively to the
_means_ to ulterior ends: in particular, the term ‘ought,’ as used
in moral judgments, does not merely signify that the person judging
feels a specific emotion: 23-28
2. nor does it merely signify that the conduct in question is
prescribed under penalties: 28-31
3. The notion expressed by “ought,” in its strictest ethical use
is too elementary to admit of formal definition, or of resolution
into simpler notions; it is assumed to be objectively valid; and
judgments in which it is used when they relate to the future
conduct of the person judging, are accompanied by a special kind of
impulse to action. 31-35
4. This ‘dictate of reason’ is also exemplified by merely
prudential judgments; and by merely hypothetical imperatives. 35-38
CHAPTER IV
PLEASURE AND DESIRE
1. The psychological doctrine, that the object of Desire is always
Pleasure, is liable to collide with the view of Ethical judgments
just given: and in any case deserves careful examination. 39-42
2. If by “pleasure” is meant “agreeable feeling,” this doctrine
is opposed to experience: for throughout the whole scale of our
desires, from the highest to the lowest, we can distinguish
impulses directed towards other ends than our own feelings from the
desire of pleasure: 42-51
3. as is further shown by the occasional conflict between the two
kinds of impulse. 51-52
4. Nor can the doctrine derive any real support from consideration
either of the ‘unconscious’ or the ‘original’ aim of human action. 52-54
Note 54-56
CHAPTER V
FREE WILL
1. The Kantian identification of ‘Free’ and ‘Rational’ action is
misleading from the ambiguity of the term ‘freedom.’ 57-59
2. When, by definition and analysis of voluntary action, the issue
in the Free Will Controversy has been made clear, it appears that
the cumulative argument for Determinism is almost overwhelming: 59-65
3. still it is impossible to me in acting not to regard myself as
free to do what I judge to be reasonable. However the solution of
the metaphysical question of Free Will is not important--Theology
apart--for systematic Ethics generally: 65-70
4. it seems however to have a special relation to the notion of
Justice: 71-72
5. The practical unimportance of the question of Free Will becomes
more clear if we scrutinize closely the range of volitional effects.72-76
CHAPTER VI
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS
1. The Methods indicated in chap. i. have a _prima facie_ claim to
proceed on reasonable principles: other principles seem, in so far
as they can be made precise, to reduce themselves to these: 77-80
2. especially the principle of “living according to Nature.” 80-83
3. In short, all varieties of Method may conveniently be classed
under three heads: Intuitionism and the two kinds of Hedonism,
Egoistic and Universalistic. The common confusion between the two
latter is easily explained, but must be carefully guarded against. 83-87
Note 87-88
CHAPTER VII
EGOISM AND SELF-LOVE
1. To get a clear idea of what is commonly known as Egoism, we must
distinguish and exclude several possible meanings of the term: 89-93
2. and define its end as the greatest attainable surplus of
pleasure over pain for the agent,--pleasures being valued in
proportion to their pleasantness. 93-95
CHAPTER VIII
INTUITIONISM
1. I apply the term Intuitional--in the narrower of two legitimate
senses--to distinguish a method in which the rightness of some
kinds of action is assumed to be known without consideration of
ulterior consequences. 96-98
2. The common antithesis between Intuitive and Inductive is
inexact, since this method does not necessarily proceed from the
universal to the particular. We may distinguish Perceptional
Intuitionism, according to which it is always the rightness of some
particular action that is held to be immediately known: 98-100
3. Dogmatic Intuitionism, in which the general rules of Common
Sense are accepted as axiomatic: 100-101
4. Philosophical Intuitionism, which attempts to find a deeper
explanation for these current rules. 101-103
Note 103-104
CHAPTER IX
GOOD
1. Another important variety of Intuitionism is constituted by
substituting for “right” the wider notion “good.” 105-106
2. The common judgment that a thing is “good” does not on
reflection appear to be equivalent to a judgment that it is
directly or indirectly pleasant. 106-109
3. “Good” = “desirable” or “reasonably desired”: as applied to
conduct, the term does not convey so definite a dictate as
“right,” and it is not confined to the strictly voluntary. 109-113
4. There are many other things commonly judged to be good: but
reflection shows that nothing is ultimately good except some
mode of human existence. 113-115
BOOK II
EGOISM
CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF EGOISM
1. The Principle of Egoistic Hedonism is the widely accepted
proposition that the rational end of conduct for each individual
is the Maximum of his own Happiness or Pleasure. 119-121
2. There are several methods of seeking this end: but we may take
as primary that which proceeds by Empirical-reflective comparison
of pleasures. 121-122
CHAPTER II
EMPIRICAL HEDONISM
1. In this method it is assumed that all pleasures sought and pains
shunned are commensurable; and can be arranged in a certain scale
of preferableness: 123-125
2. pleasure being defined as “feeling apprehended as desirable by
the sentient individual at the time of feeling it.” 125-130
Note 130
CHAPTER III
EMPIRICAL HEDONISM (_continued_)
1. To get a clearer view of this method, let us consider objections
tending to show its inherent impracticability: as, first, that
“pleasure as feeling cannot be conceived,” and that a “sum of
pleasures is intrinsically unmeaning”: 131-134
2. that transient pleasures cannot satisfy; and that the
predominance of self-love tends to defeat its own end: 134-138
3. that the habit of introspectively comparing pleasures is
unfavourable to pleasure: 138-140
4. that any quantitative comparison of pleasures and pains is
vague and uncertain, even in the case of our own past
experiences: 140-144
5. that it also tends to be different at different times:
especially through variations in the present state of the person
performing the comparison: 144-146
6. that, in fact, the supposed definite commensurability of
pleasures is an unverifiable assumption: 146-147
7. that there is a similar liability to error in appropriating
the experience of others; and in inferring future pleasures
from past. 147-150
CHAPTER IV
OBJECTIVE HEDONISM AND COMMON SENSE
1. It may seem that the judgments of Common Sense respecting the
Sources of Happiness offer a refuge from the uncertainties of
Empirical Hedonism: but there are several fundamental defects in
this refuge; 151-153
2. and these judgments when closely examined are found to be
perplexingly inconsistent. 153-158
3. Still we may derive from them a certain amount of practical
guidance. 158-161
CHAPTER V
HAPPINESS AND DUTY
1. It has been thought possible to prove on empirical grounds that
one’s greatest happiness is always attained by the performance of
duty. 162-163
2. But no such complete coincidence seems to result from a
consideration either of the Legal Sanctions of Duty: 163-166
3. or of the Social Sanctions: 166-170
4. or of the Internal Sanctions: even if we consider not merely
isolated acts of duty, but a virtuous life as a whole. 170-175
CHAPTER VI
DEDUCTIVE HEDONISM
1. Hedonistic Method must ultimately rest on facts of empirical
observation: but it might become largely deductive, through
scientific knowledge of the causes of pleasure and pain: 176-180
2. but we have no practically available general theory of these
causes, either psychophysical, 180-190
3. or biological. 190-192
4. Nor can the principle of ‘increasing life,’ or that of ‘aiming
at self-development,’ or that of ‘giving free play to impulse,’
be so defined as to afford us any practical guidance to the end
of Egoism, without falling back on the empirical comparison of
pleasures and pains. 192-195
BOOK III
INTUITIONISM
CHAPTER I
INTUITIONISM
1. The fundamental assumption of Intuitionism is that we have the
power of seeing clearly what actions are in themselves right and
reasonable. 199-201
2. Though many actions are commonly judged to be made better
or worse through the presence of certain _motives_, our common
judgments of right and wrong relate, strictly speaking, to
_intentions_. One motive, indeed, the desire to do what is right
as such, has been thought an essential condition to right conduct:
but the Intuitional method should be treated as not involving this
assumption. 201-207
3. It is certainly an essential condition that we should not
believe the act to be wrong; and this implies that we should
not believe it to be wrong for any similar person in similar
circumstances: but this implication, though it may supply a
valuable practical rule, cannot furnish a complete criterion of
right conduct. 207-210
4. The _existence_ of apparent cognitions of right conduct,
intuitively obtained, as distinct from their validity, will
scarcely be questioned; and to establish their validity it is not
needful to prove their ‘originality.’ 210-214
5. Both particular and universal intuitions are found in our
common moral thought: but it is for the latter that ultimate
validity is ordinarily claimed by intuitional moralists. We must
try, by reflecting on Common Sense, how far we can state these
Moral Axioms with clearness and precision. 214-216
CHAPTER II
VIRTUE AND DUTY
1. Duties are Right acts, for the adequate performance of which a
moral motive is at least occasionally necessary. Virtuous conduct
includes the performance of duties as well as praiseworthy acts
that are thought to go beyond strict duty, and that may even be
beyond the power of some to perform. 217-221
2. Virtues as commonly recognised, are manifested primarily in
volitions to produce particular right effects--which must at least
be thought by the agent to be not wrong--: but for the
completeness of some virtues the presence of certain emotions
seems necessary. 221-228
3. It may be said that Moral Excellence, like Beauty, eludes
definition: but if Ethical Science is to be constituted, we must
obtain definite Moral Axioms. 228-230
CHAPTER III
THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES
1. The common conception of Wisdom assumes a harmony of the ends of
different ethical methods: all of which--and not one rather than
another--the wise man is commonly thought to aim at and attain as
far as circumstances admit. 231-233
2. The Will is to some extent involved in forming wise decisions:
but more clearly in acting on them--whatever we may call the
Virtue thus manifested. 233-236
3. Of minor intellectual excellences, some are not strictly
Virtues: others are, such as Caution and Decision, being in
part voluntary. 236-237
Note 237
CHAPTER IV
BENEVOLENCE
1. The Maxim of Benevolence bids us to some extent _cultivate_
affections, and confer happiness 238-241
2. on sentient, chiefly human, beings; especially in certain
circumstances and relations, in which affections--which are hardly
virtues--prompt to kind services. Rules for the distribution of
Kindness are needed, 241-246
3. as claims may conflict; but clearly binding rules cannot be
obtained from Common Sense in a definite form; 246-247
4. nor clear principles from which rules may be deduced; as is
seen when we examine the duties to Kinsmen, as commonly
conceived: 247-250
5. and the wider duties of Neighbourhood, Citizenship, Universal
Benevolence; and the duties of cultivating Reverence and Loyalty: 250-254
6. and those springing from the Conjugal relation: 254-256
7. and those of Friendship: 256-259
8. and those of Gratitude: and those to which we are prompted by
Pity. 259-263
Note 263
CHAPTER V
JUSTICE
1. Justice is especially difficult to define. The Just cannot
be identified with the Legal, as laws may be unjust. Again, the
Justice of laws does not consist merely in the absence of
arbitrary inequality in framing or administering them. 264-268
2. One element of Justice seems to consist in the fulfilment of (1)
contracts and definite understandings, and (2) expectations arising
naturally out of the established order of Society; but the duty of
fulfilling these latter is somewhat indefinite: 268-271
3. and this social order may itself, from another point of view,
be condemned as unjust; that is, as tried by the standard of Ideal
Justice. What then is this Standard? We seem to find various
degrees and forms of it. 271-274
4. One view of Ideal Law states Freedom as its absolute End: but
the attempt to construct a system of law on this principle
involves us in insuperable difficulties. 274-278
5. Nor does the realisation of Freedom satisfy our common
conception of Ideal Justice. The principle of this is rather
‘that Desert should be requited.’ 278-283
6. But the application of this principle is again very perplexing:
whether we try to determine Good Desert (or the worth of
services), 283-290
7. or Ill Desert, in order to realise Criminal Justice. There
remains too the difficulty of reconciling Conservative and Ideal
Justice. 290-294
CHAPTER VI
LAWS AND PROMISES
1. The duty of obeying Laws, though it may to a great extent be
included under Justice, still requires a separate treatment. We
can, however, obtain no _consensus_ for any precise definition
of it. 295-297
2. For we are neither agreed as to what kind of government is
ideally legitimate, 297-299
3. nor as to the criterion of a traditionally legitimate
government, 299-301
4. nor as to the proper limits of governmental authority. 301-303
5. The duty of fulfilling a promise in the sense in which it
was understood by both promiser and promisee is thought to be
peculiarly stringent and certain 303-304
6. (it being admitted that its obligation is relative to the
promisee, and may be annulled by him, and that it cannot override
strict prior obligations). 304-305
7. But Common Sense seems to doubt how far a promise is binding
when it has been obtained by force or fraud: 305-306
8. or when circumstances have materially altered since it was
made--especially if it be a promise to the dead or absent,
from which no release can be obtained, or if the performance
of the promise will be harmful to the promisee, or inflict a
disproportionate sacrifice on the promiser. 306-308
9. Other doubts arise when a promise has been misapprehended: and
in the peculiar case where a prescribed form of words has been
used. 308-311
CHAPTER VII
CLASSIFICATION OF DUTIES. TRUTH
1. I have not adopted the classification of duties into Social
and Self-regarding: as it seems inappropriate to the Intuitional
method, of which the characteristic is, that it lays down certain
absolute and independent rules: such as the rule of Truth. 312-315
2. But Common Sense after all scarcely seems to prescribe
truth-speaking under all circumstances: nor to decide clearly
whether the beliefs which we are bound to make true are those
directly produced by our words or the immediate inferences from
these. 315-317
3. It is said that the general allowance of Unveracity would be
suicidal, as no one would believe the falsehood. But this argument,
though forcible, is not decisive; for (1) this result may be in
special circumstances desirable, or (2) we may have reason to
expect that it will not occur. 317-319
Note 319
CHAPTER VIII
OTHER SOCIAL DUTIES AND VIRTUES
1. Common opinion sometimes condemns sweepingly malevolent feelings
and volitions: but Reflective Common Sense seems to admit some as
legitimate, determining the limits of this admission on
utilitarian grounds. 320-324
2. Other maxims of social duty seem clearly subordinate to
those already discussed: as is illustrated by an examination of
Liberality and other cognate notions. 324-326
CHAPTER IX
SELF-REGARDING VIRTUES
1. The general duty of seeking one’s own happiness is commonly
recognised under the notion of Prudence. 327-328
2. This as specially applied to the control of bodily appetites is
called Temperance: but under this notion a more rigid restraint is
sometimes thought to be prescribed: though as to the principle of
this there seems no agreement. 328-329
3. Nor is it easy to give a clear definition of the maxim of
Purity--but in fact common sense seems averse to attempt this.
We must note, however, that suicide is commonly judged to be
absolutely wrong. 329-331
CHAPTER X
COURAGE, HUMILITY, ETC.
1. The Duty of Courage is subordinate to those already discussed:
and in drawing the line between the Excellence of Courage and
the Fault of Foolhardiness we seem forced to have recourse to
considerations of expediency. 332-334
2. Similarly the maxim of Humility seems either clearly
subordinate or not clearly determinate. 334-336
CHAPTER XI
REVIEW OF THE MORALITY OF COMMON SENSE
1. We have now to examine the moral maxims that have been defined,
to ascertain whether they possess the characteristics of
scientific intuitions. 337-338
2. We require of an Axiom that it should be (1) stated in clear
and precise terms, (2) really self-evident, (3) not conflicting
with any other truth, (4) supported by an adequate ‘consensus of
experts.’ These characteristics are not found in the moral maxims
of Common Sense. 338-343
3. The maxims of Wisdom and Self-control are only self-evident in
so far as they are tautological: 343-345
4. nor can we state any clear, absolute, universally-admitted
axioms for determining the duties of the Affections: 345-349
5. and as for the group of principles that were extracted from
the common notion of Justice, we cannot define each singly in a
satisfactory manner, still less reconcile them: 349-352
6. and even the Duty of Good Faith, when we consider the numerous
qualifications of it more or less doubtfully admitted by Common
Sense, seems more like a subordinate rule than an independent
First Principle. Still more is this the case with Veracity: 352-355
7. similarly with other virtues: even the prohibition of Suicide,
so far as rational, seems to rest ultimately on utilitarian
grounds. 355-357
8. Even Purity when we force ourselves to examine it rigorously
yields no clear independent principle. 357-359
9. The common moral maxims are adequate for practical guidance,
but do not admit of being elevated into scientific axioms. 359-361
CHAPTER XII
MOTIVES OR SPRINGS OF ACTION AS SUBJECTS OF MORAL JUDGMENT
1. It has been held by several moralists that the “Universal
Conscience” judges primarily not of Rightness of acts, but of Rank
of Motives. 362-365
2. If, however, we include the Moral Sentiments among these
motives, this latter view involves all the difficulties and
perplexities of the former, yet it is paradoxical to omit these
sentiments. 365-367
3. But even if we leave these out, we still find very little
agreement as to Rank of Motives: and there is a special difficulty
arising from complexity of motive. Nor does Common Sense seem to
hold that a “higher” motive--below the highest--is always to be
preferred to a “lower.” 367-372
CHAPTER XIII
PHILOSOPHICAL INTUITIONISM
1. The Philosopher, as such, attempts to penetrate beneath the
surface of Common Sense to some deeper principles: 373-374
2. but has too often presented to the world, as the result of his
investigation, tautological propositions and vicious circles. 374-379
3. Still there are certain abstract moral principles of real
importance, intuitively known; though they are not sufficient by
themselves to give complete practical guidance. Thus we can exhibit
a self-evident element in the commonly recognised principles of
Prudence, Justice, and Benevolence. 379-384
4. This is confirmed by a reference to Clarke’s and Kant’s
systems: 384-386
5. and also to Utilitarianism: which needs for its basis a
self-evident principle of Rational Benevolence; as is shown by
a criticism of Mill’s “proof.” 386-389
Note 389-390
CHAPTER XIV
ULTIMATE GOOD
1. The notion of Virtue, as commonly conceived, cannot without a
logical circle be identified with the notion of Ultimate Good: 391-394
2. nor is it in accordance with Common Sense to regard Subjective
Rightness of Will, or other elements of Perfection, as
constituting Ultimate Good. 394-395
3. What is ultimately good or desirable must be Desirable
Consciousness. 395-397
4. _i.e._ either simply Happiness, or certain objective relations
of the Conscious Mind. 398-400
5. When these alternatives are fairly presented, Common Sense
seems disposed to choose the former: especially as we can now
explain its instinctive disinclination to admit Pleasure as
ultimate end: while the other alternative leaves us without a
criterion for determining the comparative value of different
elements of ‘Good.’ 400-407
BOOK IV
UTILITARIANISM
CHAPTER I
THE MEANING OF UTILITARIANISM
1. The ethical theory called Utilitarianism, or Universalistic
Hedonism, is to be carefully distinguished from Egoistic Hedonism:
and also from any psychological theory as to the nature and origin
of the Moral Sentiments. 411-413
2. The notion of ‘Greatest Happiness’ has been determined in Book
ii. chap. i.: but the extent and manner of its application require
to be further defined. Are we to include all Sentient Beings? and
is it Total or Average Happiness that we seek to make a maximum?
We also require a supplementary Principle for _Distribution_ of
Happiness: the principle of Equality is _prima facie_ reasonable. 413-417
CHAPTER II
THE PROOF OF UTILITARIANISM
Common Sense demands a Proof of the first Principle of this method,
more clearly than in the case of Egoism and Intuitionism. Such
a proof, addressed to the Egoistic Hedonist, was in fact given
in Book iii. chap. xiii. § 3: it exhibited the essence of the
Utilitarian Principle as a clear and certain moral Intuition. But
it is also important to examine its relation to other received
maxims. 418-422
CHAPTER III
THE RELATION OF UTILITARIANISM TO THE MORALITY OF COMMON SENSE
1. Taking as our basis Hume’s exhibition of the Virtues as
Felicific qualities of character, we can trace a complex
coincidence between Utilitarianism and Common Sense. It is
not needful--nor does it even help the argument--to show this
coincidence to be perfect and exact. 423-426
2. We may observe, first, that Dispositions may often be admired
(as generally felicific) when the special acts that have resulted
from them are infelicific. Again, the maxims of many virtues
are found to contain an explicit or implicit reference to Duty
conceived as already determinate. Passing over these to examine
the more definite among common notions of Duty: 426-430
3. we observe, first, how the rules that prescribe the distribution
of kindness in accordance with normal promptings of Family
Affections, Friendship, Gratitude, and Pity have a firm Utilitarian
basis: and how Utilitarianism is naturally referred to for an
explanation of the difficulties that arise in attempting to define
these rules. 430-439
4. A similar result is reached by an examination, singly and
together, of the different elements into which we have analysed the
common notion of Justice: 439-448
5. and in the case of other virtues. 448-450
6. Purity has been thought an exception: but a careful examination
of common opinions as to the regulation of sexual relations
exhibits a peculiarly complex and delicate correspondence between
moral sentiments and social utilities. 450-453
7. The hypothesis that the Moral Sense is ‘unconsciously
Utilitarian’ also accounts for the actual differences in different
codes of Duty and estimates of Virtue, either in the same age and
country, or when we compare different ages and countries. It is not
maintained that perception of rightness has always been consciously
derived from perception of utility: a view which the evidence of
history fails to support. 453-457
On the Utilitarian view, the relation between Ethics and Politics
is different for different parts of the legal code. 457-459
CHAPTER IV
THE METHOD OF UTILITARIANISM
1. Ought a Utilitarian, then, to accept the Morality of Common
Sense provisionally as a body of Utilitarian doctrine? Not quite;
for even accepting the theory that the Moral Sense is derived from
Sympathy, we can discern several causes that must have operated
to produce a divergence between Common Sense and a perfectly
Utilitarian code of morality. 460-467
2. At the same time it seems idle to try to construct such a code
in any other way than by taking Positive Morality as our basis. 467-471
3. If General Happiness be the ultimate end, it is not reasonable
to adopt “social health” or “efficiency” as the practically
ultimate criterion of morality. 471-474
CHAPTER V
THE METHOD OF UTILITARIANISM (_continued_)
1. It is, then, a Utilitarian’s duty at once to support generally,
and to rectify in detail, the morality of Common Sense: and the
method of pure empirical Hedonism seems to be the only one that he
can at present use in the reasonings that finally determine the
nature and extent of this rectification. 475-480
2. His innovations may be either negative and destructive, or
positive and supplementary. There are certain important general
reasons against an innovation of the former kind, which may, in
any given case, easily outweigh the special arguments in its
favour. 480-484
3. Generally, a Utilitarian in recommending, by example or precept,
a deviation from an established rule of conduct, desires his
innovation to be generally imitated. But in some cases he may
neither expect nor desire such imitation; though cases of this
kind are rare and difficult to determine. 485-492
4. There are no similar difficulties in the way of modifying the
Ideal of Moral Excellence--as distinguished from the dictates of
Moral Duty--in order to render it more perfectly felicific. 492-495
CONCLUDING CHAPTER
THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE THREE METHODS
1. It is not difficult to combine the Intuitional and Utilitarian
methods into one; but can we reconcile Egoistic and Universalistic
Hedonism? 496-498
2. In so far as the latter coincides with Common Sense, we have
seen in Book ii. chap. v. that no complete reconciliation is
possible, on the basis of experience. 498-499
3. Nor does a fuller consideration of Sympathy, as a specially
Utilitarian sanction, lead us to modify this conclusion; in spite
of the importance that is undoubtedly to be attached to
sympathetic pleasures. 499-503
4. The Religious Sanction, if we can show that it is actually
attached to the Utilitarian Code, is of course adequate: 503-506
5. but its existence cannot be demonstrated by ethical arguments
alone. Still, without this or some similar assumption, a
fundamental contradiction in Ethics cannot be avoided. 506-509
APPENDIX ON KANT’S CONCEPTION OF FREE WILL 511
INDEX 517
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. The boundaries of the study called Ethics are variously and often
vaguely conceived: but they will perhaps be sufficiently defined, at
the outset, for the purposes of the present treatise, if a ‘Method
of Ethics’ is explained to mean any rational procedure by which we
determine what individual human beings ‘ought’--or what it is ‘right’
for them--to do, or to seek to realise by voluntary action.[9] By
using the word “individual” I provisionally distinguish the study of
Ethics from that of Politics,[10] which seeks to determine the proper
constitution and the right public conduct of governed societies: both
Ethics and Politics being, in my view, distinguished from positive
sciences by having as their special and primary object to determine
what ought to be, and not to ascertain what merely is, has been, or
will be.
The student of Ethics seeks to attain systematic and precise general
knowledge of what ought to be, and in this sense his aims and methods
may properly be termed ‘scientific’: but I have preferred to call
Ethics a study rather than a science, because it is widely thought that
a Science must necessarily have some department of actual existence
for its subject-matter. And in fact the term ‘Ethical Science’
might, without violation of usage, denote either the department of
Psychology that deals with voluntary action and its springs, and with
moral sentiments and judgments, as actual phenomena of individual
human minds; or the department of Sociology dealing with similar
phenomena, as manifested by normal members of the organised groups of
human beings which we call societies. We observe, however, that most
persons do not pursue either of these studies merely from curiosity,
in order to ascertain what actually exists, has existed, or will exist
in time. They commonly wish not only to understand human action, but
also to regulate it; in this view they apply the ideas ‘good’ and
‘bad,’ ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ to the conduct or institutions which they
describe; and thus pass, as I should say, from the point of view of
Psychology or Sociology to that of Ethics or Politics. My definition
of Ethics is designed to mark clearly the fundamental importance of
this transition. It is true that the mutual implication of the two
kinds of study--the positive and the practical--is, on any theory, very
close and complete. On any theory, our view of what ought to be must
be largely derived, in details, from our apprehension of what is; the
means of realising our ideal can only be thoroughly learnt by a careful
study of actual phenomena; and to any individual asking himself ‘What
ought I to do or aim at?’ it is important to examine the answers which
his fellow-men have actually given to similar questions. Still it seems
clear that an attempt to ascertain the general laws or uniformities
by which the varieties of human conduct, and of men’s sentiments and
judgments respecting conduct, may be _explained_, is essentially
different from an attempt to determine which among these varieties of
conduct is _right_ and which of these divergent judgments _valid_. It
is, then, the systematic consideration of these latter questions which
constitutes, in my view, the special and distinct aim of Ethics and
Politics.
§ 2. In the language of the preceding section I could not avoid taking
account of two different forms in which the fundamental problem of
Ethics is stated; the difference between which leads, as we shall
presently see, to rather important consequences. Ethics is sometimes
considered as an investigation of the true Moral laws or rational
precepts of Conduct; sometimes as an inquiry into the nature of the
Ultimate End of reasonable human action--the Good or ‘True Good’ of
man--and the method of attaining it. Both these views are familiar,
and will have to be carefully considered: but the former seems most
prominent in modern ethical thought, and most easily applicable
to modern ethical systems generally. For the Good investigated in
Ethics is limited to Good in some degree attainable by human effort;
accordingly knowledge of the end is sought in order to ascertain what
actions are the right means to its attainment. Thus however prominent
the notion of an Ultimate Good--other than voluntary action of any
kind--may be in an ethical system, and whatever interpretation may be
given to this notion, we must still arrive finally, if it is to be
practically useful, at some determination of precepts or directive
rules of conduct.
On the other hand, the conception of Ethics as essentially an
investigation of the ‘Ultimate Good’ of Man and the means of attaining
it is not universally applicable, without straining, to the view of
Morality which we may conveniently distinguish as the Intuitional
view; according to which conduct is held to be right when conformed
to certain precepts or principles of Duty, intuitively known to be
unconditionally binding. In this view the conception of Ultimate Good
is not necessarily of fundamental importance in the determination of
Right conduct except on the assumption that Right conduct itself--or
the character realised in and developed through Right conduct--is the
sole Ultimate Good for man. But this assumption is not implied in the
Intuitional view of Ethics: nor would it, I conceive, accord with the
moral common sense of modern Christian communities. For we commonly
think that the complete notion of human Good or Well-being must include
the attainment of Happiness as well as the performance of Duty; even if
we hold with Butler that “the happiness of the world is the concern of
Him who is the Lord and the Proprietor of it,” and that, accordingly,
it is not right for men to make their performance of Duty conditional
on their knowledge of its conduciveness to their Happiness. For those
who hold this, what men ought to take as the _practically_ ultimate
end of their action and standard of Right conduct, may in some cases
have no logical connexion with the conception of Ultimate Good for man:
so that, in such cases, however indispensable this latter conception
may be to the completeness of an ethical system, it would still not be
important for the methodical determination of Right conduct.
It is on account of the prevalence of the Intuitional view just
mentioned, and the prominent place which it consequently occupies in
my discussion, that in defining Ethics I have avoided the term ‘Art of
Conduct’ which some would regard as its more appropriate designation.
For the term ‘Art’--when applied to the contents of a treatise--seems
to signify systematic express knowledge (as distinguished from the
implicit knowledge or organised habit which we call skill) of the right
means to a given end. Now if we assume that the rightness of action
depends on its conduciveness to some ulterior end, then no doubt--when
this end has been clearly ascertained--the process of determining the
right rules of conduct for human beings in different relations and
circumstances would naturally come under the notion of Art. But on
the view that the practically ultimate end of moral action is often
the Rightness of the action itself--or the Virtue realised in and
confirmed by such action--and that this is known intuitively in each
case or class of cases, we can hardly regard the term ‘Art’ as properly
applicable to the systematisation of such knowledge. Hence, as I do not
wish to start with any assumption incompatible with this latter view, I
prefer to consider Ethics as the science or study of what is right or
what ought to be, so far as this depends upon the voluntary action of
individuals.[11]
§ 3. If, however, this view of the scope of Ethics is accepted, the
question arises why it is commonly taken to consist, to a great extent,
of psychological discussion as to the ‘nature of the moral faculty’;
especially as I have myself thought it right to include some discussion
of this kind in the present treatise. For it does not at first appear
why this should belong to Ethics, any more than discussions about the
mathematical faculty or the faculty of sense-perception belong to
mathematics and physics respectively. Why do we not simply start with
certain premises, stating what ought to be done or sought, without
considering the faculty by which we apprehend their truth?
One answer is that the moralist has a practical aim: we desire
knowledge of right conduct in order to act on it. Now we cannot help
believing what we see to be true, but we can help doing what we see
to be right or wise, and in fact often do what we know to be wrong or
unwise: thus we are forced to notice the existence in us of irrational
springs of action, conflicting with our knowledge and preventing its
practical realisation: and the very imperfectness of the connexion
between our practical judgment and our will impels us to seek for more
precise knowledge as to the nature of that connexion.
But this is not all. Men never ask, ‘Why should I believe what I see to
be true?’ but they frequently ask, ‘Why should I do what I see to be
right?’ It is easy to reply that the question is futile, since it could
only be answered by a reference to some other recognised principle of
right conduct, and the question might just as well be asked as regards
that again, and so on. But still we do ask the question widely and
continually, and therefore this demonstration of its futility is not
completely satisfactory; we require besides some explanation of its
persistency.
One explanation that may be offered is that, since we are moved
to action not by moral judgment alone, but also by desires and
inclinations that operate independently of moral judgment, the answer
which we really want to the question ‘Why should I do it?’ is one which
does not merely prove a certain action to be right, but also stirs in
us a predominant inclination to do the action.
That this explanation is true for some minds in some moods I would not
deny. Still I think that when a man seriously asks ‘why he should do’
anything, he commonly assumes in himself a determination to pursue
whatever conduct may be shown by argument to be reasonable, even though
it be very different from that to which his non-rational inclinations
may prompt. And we are generally agreed that reasonable conduct in any
case has to be determined on principles, in applying which the agent’s
inclination--as it exists apart from such determination--is only one
element among several that have to be considered, and commonly not the
most important element. But when we ask what these principles are, the
diversity of answers which we find manifestly declared in the systems
and fundamental formulæ of professed moralists seems to be really
present in the common practical reasoning of men generally; with this
difference, that whereas the philosopher seeks unity of principle, and
consistency of method at the risk of paradox, the unphilosophic man
is apt to hold different principles at once, and to apply different
methods in more or less confused combination. If this be so, we can
offer another explanation of the persistent unsatisfied demand for an
ultimate reason, above noticed. For if there are different views of
the ultimate reasonableness of conduct, implicit in the thought of
ordinary men, though not brought into clear relation to each other,--it
is easy to see that any single answer to the question ‘why’ will not
be completely satisfactory, as it will be given only from one of these
points of view, and will always leave room to ask the question from
some other.
I am myself convinced that this is the main explanation of the
phenomenon: and it is on this conviction that the plan of the present
treatise is based. We cannot, of course, regard as valid reasonings
that lead to conflicting conclusions; and I therefore assume as a
fundamental postulate of Ethics, that so far as two methods conflict,
one or other of them must be modified or rejected. But I think it
fundamentally important to recognise, at the outset of Ethical inquiry,
that there is a diversity of methods applied in ordinary practical
thought.
§ 4. What then are these different methods? what are the different
practical principles which the common sense of mankind is _prima facie_
prepared to accept as ultimate? Some care is needed in answering this
question: because we frequently prescribe that this or that ‘ought’
to be done or aimed at without any express reference to an ulterior
end, while yet such an end is tacitly presupposed. It is obvious that
such prescriptions are merely, what Kant calls them, Hypothetical
Imperatives; they are not addressed to any one who has not first
accepted the end.
For instance: a teacher of any art assumes that his pupil wants to
produce the product of the art, or to produce it excellent in quality:
he tells him that he _ought_ to hold the awl, the hammer, the brush
differently. A physician assumes that his patient wants health: he
tells him that he _ought_ to rise early, to live plainly, to take hard
exercise. If the patient deliberately prefers ease and good living
to health, the physician’s precepts fall to the ground: they are no
longer addressed to him. So, again, a man of the world assumes that his
hearers wish to get on in society, when he lays down rules of dress,
manner, conversation, habits of life. A similar view may be plausibly
taken of many rules prescribing what are sometimes called “duties to
oneself”: it may be said that they are given on the assumption that
a man regards his own Happiness as an ultimate end: that if any one
should be so exceptional as to disregard it, he does not come within
their scope: in short, that the ‘_ought_’ in such formulæ is still
implicitly relative to an _optional_ end.
It does not, however, seem to me that this account of the matter is
exhaustive. We do not all look with simple indifference on a man who
declines to take the right means to attain his own happiness, on no
other ground than that he does not care about happiness. Most men would
regard such a refusal as irrational, with a certain disapprobation;
they would thus implicitly assent to Butler’s statement[12] that
“interest, one’s own happiness, is a manifest obligation.” In other
words, they would think that a man _ought_ to care for his own
happiness. The word ‘ought’ thus used is no longer relative: happiness
now appears as an ultimate end, the pursuit of which--at least within
the limits imposed by other duties--appears to be prescribed by
reason ‘categorically,’ as Kant would say, _i.e._ without any tacit
assumption of a still ulterior end. And it has been widely held by even
orthodox moralists that all morality rests ultimately on the basis
of “reasonable self-love”;[13] _i.e._ that its rules are ultimately
binding on any individual only so far as it is his interest on the
whole to observe them.
Still, common moral opinion certainly regards the duty or virtue of
Prudence as only a part--and not the most important part--of duty
or virtue in general. Common moral opinion recognises and inculcates
other fundamental rules--_e.g._ those of Justice, Good Faith,
Veracity--which, in its ordinary judgments on particular cases, it is
inclined to treat as binding without qualification and without regard
to ulterior consequences. And, in the ordinary form of the Intuitional
view of Ethics, the “categorical” prescription of such rules is
maintained explicitly and definitely, as a result of philosophical
reflection: and the realisation of Virtue in act--at least in the
case of the virtues just mentioned--is held to consist in strict and
unswerving conformity to such rules.
On the other hand it is contended by many Utilitarians that all the
rules of conduct which men prescribe to one another as moral rules
are really--though in part unconsciously--prescribed as means to the
general happiness of mankind, or of the whole aggregate of sentient
beings; and it is still more widely held by Utilitarian thinkers that
such rules, however they may originate, are only valid so far as their
observance is conducive to the general happiness. This contention I
shall hereafter examine with due care. Here I wish only to point out
that, if the duty of aiming at the general happiness is thus taken
to include all other duties, as subordinate applications of it, we
seem to be again led to the notion of Happiness as an ultimate end
categorically prescribed,--only it is now General Happiness and not the
private happiness of any individual. And this is the view that I myself
take of the Utilitarian principle.
At the same time, it is not necessary, in the methodical investigation
of right conduct, considered relatively to the end either of private or
of general happiness, to assume that the end itself is determined or
prescribed by reason: we only require to assume, in reasoning to cogent
practical conclusions, that it is adopted as ultimate and paramount.
For if a man accepts any end as ultimate and paramount, he accepts
implicitly as his “method of ethics” whatever process of reasoning
enables him to determine the actions most conducive to this end.[14]
Since, however, to every difference in the end accepted at least
some difference in method will generally correspond: if all the ends
which men are found practically to adopt as ultimate (subordinating
everything else to the attainment of them under the influence of
‘ruling passions’), were taken as principles for which the student of
Ethics is called upon to construct rational methods, his task would
be very complex and extensive. But if we confine ourselves to such
ends as the common sense of mankind appears to accept as rational
ultimate ends, the task is reduced, I think, within manageable limits;
since this criterion will exclude at least many of the objects which
men practically seem to regard as paramount. Thus many men sacrifice
health, fortune, happiness, to Fame; but no one, so far as I know, has
deliberately maintained that Fame is an object which it is reasonable
for men to seek for its own sake. It only commends itself to reflective
minds either (1) as a source of Happiness to the person who gains
it, or (2) a sign of his Excellence, moral or intellectual, or (3)
because it attests the achievement by him of some important benefit
to society, and at the same time stimulates him and others to further
achievement in the future: and the conception of “benefit” would, when
examined in its turn, lead us again to Happiness or Excellence of human
nature,--since a man is commonly thought to benefit others either by
making them happier or by making them wiser and more virtuous.
Whether there are any ends besides these two, which can be reasonably
regarded as ultimate, it will hereafter[15] be part of our business to
investigate: but we may perhaps say that _prima facie_ the only two
ends which have a strongly and widely supported claim to be regarded
as rational ultimate ends are the two just mentioned, Happiness and
Perfection or Excellence of human nature--meaning here by ‘Excellence’
not primarily superiority to others, but a partial realisation of,
or approximation to, an ideal type of human Perfection. And we must
observe that the adoption of the former of these ends leads us to
two _prima facie_ distinct methods, according as it is sought to be
realised universally, or by each individual for himself alone. For
though doubtless a man may often best promote his own happiness by
labouring and abstaining for the sake of others, it seems to be implied
in our common notion of self-sacrifice that actions most conducive to
the general happiness do not--in this world at least--always tend
also to the greatest happiness of the agent.[16] And among those who
hold that “happiness is our being’s end and aim” we seem to find a
fundamental difference of opinion as to whose happiness it is that it
is ultimately reasonable to aim at. For to some it seems that “the
constantly proper end of action on the part of any individual at the
moment of action is his real greatest happiness from that moment to
the end of his life”;[17] whereas others hold that the view of reason
is essentially universal, and that it cannot be reasonable to take
as an ultimate and paramount end the happiness of any one individual
rather than that of any other--at any rate if equally deserving
and susceptible of it--so that general happiness must be the “true
standard of right and wrong, in the field of morals” no less than of
politics.[18] It is, of course, possible to adopt an end intermediate
between the two, and to aim at the happiness of some limited portion
of mankind, such as one’s family or nation or race: but any such
limitation seems arbitrary, and probably few would maintain it to be
reasonable _per se_, except as the most practicable way of aiming at
the general happiness, or of indirectly securing one’s own.
The case seems to be otherwise with Excellence or Perfection.[19] At
first sight, indeed, the same alternatives present themselves:[20] it
seems that the Excellence aimed at may be taken either individually
or universally; and circumstances are conceivable in which a man is
not unlikely to think that he could best promote the Excellence of
others by sacrificing his own. But no moralist who takes Excellence
as an ultimate end has ever approved of such sacrifice, at least so
far as Moral Excellence is concerned; no one has ever directed an
individual to promote the virtue of others except in so far as this
promotion is compatible with, or rather involved in, the complete
realisation of Virtue in himself.[21] So far, then, there seems to
be no need of separating the method of determining right conduct
which takes the Excellence or Perfection of the individual as the
ultimate aim from that which aims at the Excellence or Perfection of
the human community. And since Virtue is commonly conceived as the
most valuable element of human Excellence--and an element essentially
preferable to any other element that can come into competition with
it as an alternative for rational choice--any method which takes
Perfection or Excellence of human nature as ultimate End will _prima
facie_ coincide to a great extent with that based on what I called
the Intuitional view: and I have accordingly decided to treat it as a
special form of this latter.[22] The two methods which take happiness
as an ultimate end it will be convenient to distinguish as Egoistic
and Universalistic Hedonism: and as it is the latter of these, as
taught by Bentham and his successors, that is more generally understood
under the term ‘Utilitarianism,’ I shall always restrict that word to
this signification. For Egoistic Hedonism it is somewhat hard to find
a single perfectly appropriate term. I shall often call this simply
Egoism: but it may sometimes be convenient to call it Epicureanism: for
though this name more properly denotes a particular historical system,
it has come to be commonly used in the wider sense in which I wish to
employ it.
§ 5. The last sentence suggests one more explanation, which, for
clearness’ sake, it seems desirable to make: an explanation, however,
rather of the plan and purpose of the present treatise than of the
nature and boundaries of the subject of Ethics as generally understood.
There are several recognised ways of treating this subject, none of
which I have thought it desirable to adopt. We may start with existing
systems, and either study them historically, tracing the changes in
thought through the centuries, or compare and classify them according
to relations of resemblance, or criticise their internal coherence.
Or we may seek to add to the number of these systems: and claim after
so many unsuccessful efforts to have at last attained the one true
theory of the subject, by which all others may be tested. The present
book contains neither the exposition of a system nor a natural or
critical history of systems. I have attempted to define and unfold
not one Method of Ethics, but several: at the same time these are not
here studied historically, as methods that have actually been used or
proposed for the regulation of practice; but rather as alternatives
between which--so far as they cannot be reconciled--the human mind
seems to me necessarily forced to choose, when it attempts to frame
a complete synthesis of practical maxims and to act in a perfectly
consistent manner. Thus, they might perhaps be called natural methods
rationalised; because men commonly seem to guide themselves by a
mixture of different methods, more or less disguised under ambiguities
of language. The impulses or principles from which the different
methods take their rise, the different claims of different ends to be
rational, are admitted, to some extent, by all minds: and as along
with these claims is felt the need of harmonising them--since it is,
as was said, a postulate of the Practical Reason, that two conflicting
rules of action cannot both be reasonable--the result is ordinarily
either a confused blending, or a forced and premature reconciliation,
of different principles and methods. Nor have the systems framed by
professed moralists been free from similar defects. The writers have
usually proceeded to synthesis without adequate analysis; the practical
demand for the former being more urgently felt than the theoretical
need of the latter. For here as in other points the development of the
theory of Ethics would seem to be somewhat impeded by the preponderance
of practical considerations; and perhaps a more complete detachment
of the theoretical study of right conduct from its practical
application is to be desired for the sake even of the latter itself:
since a treatment which is a compound between the scientific and the
hortatory is apt to miss both the results that it would combine; the
mixture is bewildering to the brain and not stimulating to the heart.
So again, I am inclined to think that here, as in other sciences, it
would be an advantage to draw as distinct a line as possible between
the known and the unknown; as the clear indication of an unsolved
problem is at any rate a step to its solution. In ethical treatises,
however, there has been a continual tendency to ignore and keep out
of sight the difficulties of the subject; either unconsciously, from
a latent conviction that the questions which the writer cannot answer
satisfactorily must be questions which ought not to be asked; or
consciously, that he may not shake the sway of morality over the minds
of his readers. This last well-meant precaution frequently defeats
itself: the difficulties thus concealed in exposition are liable to
reappear in controversy: and then they appear not carefully limited,
but magnified for polemical purposes. Thus we get on the one hand vague
and hazy reconciliation, on the other loose and random exaggeration of
discrepancies; and neither process is effective to dispel the original
vagueness and ambiguity which lurks in the fundamental notions of our
common practical reasonings. To eliminate or reduce this indefiniteness
and confusion is the sole immediate end that I have proposed to
myself in the present work. In order better to execute this task, I
have refrained from expressly attempting any such complete and final
solution of the chief ethical difficulties and controversies as would
convert this exposition of various methods into the development of a
harmonious system. At the same time I hope to afford aid towards the
construction of such a system; because it seems easier to judge of the
mutual relations and conflicting claims of different modes of thought,
after an impartial and rigorous investigation of the conclusions to
which they logically lead. It is not uncommon to find in reflecting
on practical principles, that--however unhesitatingly they seem to
command our assent at first sight, and however familiar and apparently
clear the notions of which they are composed--nevertheless when we
have carefully examined the consequences of adopting them they wear a
changed and somewhat dubious aspect. The truth seems to be that most of
the practical principles that have been seriously put forward are more
or less satisfactory to the common sense of mankind, so long as they
have the field to themselves. They all find a response in our nature:
their fundamental assumptions are all such as we are disposed to
accept, and such as we find to govern to a certain extent our habitual
conduct. When I am asked, “Do you not consider it ultimately reasonable
to seek pleasure and avoid pain for yourself?” “Have you not a moral
sense?” “Do you not intuitively pronounce some actions to be right and
others wrong?” “Do you not acknowledge the general happiness to be a
paramount end?” I answer ‘yes’ to all these questions. My difficulty
begins when I have to choose between the different principles or
inferences drawn from them. We admit the necessity, when they conflict,
of making this choice, and that it is irrational to let sometimes one
principle prevail and sometimes another; but the necessity is a painful
one. We cannot but hope that all methods may ultimately coincide: and
at any rate, before making our election we may reasonably wish to have
the completest possible knowledge of each.
My object, then, in the present work, is to expound as clearly and as
fully as my limits will allow the different methods of Ethics that I
find implicit in our common moral reasoning; to point out their mutual
relations; and where they seem to conflict, to define the issue as much
as possible. In the course of this endeavour I am led to discuss the
considerations which should, in my opinion, be decisive in determining
the adoption of ethical first principles: but it is not my primary
aim to establish such principles; nor, again, is it my primary aim to
supply a set of practical directions for conduct. I have wished to keep
the reader’s attention throughout directed to the processes rather than
the results of ethical thought: and have therefore never stated as my
own any positive practical conclusions unless by way of illustration:
and have never ventured to decide dogmatically any controverted points,
except where the controversy seemed to arise from want of precision or
clearness in the definition of principles, or want of consistency in
reasoning.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] The exact relation of the terms ‘right’ and ‘what ought to be’ is
discussed in chap. iii. of this Book. I here assume that they may be
used as convertible, for most purposes.
[10] I use ‘Politics’ in what I take to be its most ordinary
signification, to denote the science or study of Right or Good
Legislation and Government. There is a wider possible sense of the
term, according to which it would include the greater part of Ethics:
_i.e._ if understood to be the Theory of Right Social Relations. See
chap. ii. § 2.
[11] The relation of the notion of ‘Good’ to that of ‘Right’ or ‘what
ought to be’ will be further considered in a subsequent chapter of this
Book (ix.)
[12] See the Preface to Butler’s _Sermons on Human Nature_.
[13] The phrase is Butler’s.
[14] See the last paragraph of chap. iii. of this Book.
[15] See chap. ix. of this Book, and Book iii. chap. xiv.
[16] For a full discussion of this question, see Book ii. chap. v. and
the concluding chapter of the work.
[17] Bentham, _Memoirs_ (vol. x. of Bowring’s edition), p. 560.
[18] Bentham again, _Memoirs_, p. 79. See note at the end of Book i.
chap. vi. The Utilitarians since Bentham have sometimes adopted one,
sometimes the other, of these two principles as paramount.
[19] I use the terms ‘Excellence’ and ‘Perfection’ to denote the same
ultimate end regarded in somewhat different aspects: meaning by either
an ideal complex of mental qualities, of which we admire and approve
the manifestation in human life: but using ‘Perfection’ to denote the
ideal as such, while ‘Excellence’ denotes such partial realisation of
or approximation to the ideal as we actually find in human experience.
[20] It may be said that even more divergent views of the reasonable
end are possible here than in the case of happiness: for we are not
necessarily limited (as in that case) to the consideration of sentient
beings: inanimate things also seem to have a perfection and excellence
of their own and to be capable of being made better or worse in their
kind; and this perfection, or one species of it, appears to be the end
of the Fine Arts. But reflection I think shows that neither beauty
nor any other quality of inanimate objects can be regarded as good or
desirable in itself, out of relation to the perfection or happiness of
sentient beings. Cf. _post_, chap. ix. of this Book.
[21] Kant roundly denies that it can be my duty to take the Perfection
of others for my end: but his argument is not, I think, valid. Cf.
_post_, Book iii. chap. iv. § 1.
[22] See Book iii. chap. xiv., where I explain my reasons for only
giving a subordinate place to the conception of Perfection as Ultimate
End.
CHAPTER II
THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO POLITICS
§ 1. In the last chapter I have spoken of Ethics and Politics as being
both Practical Studies, including in the scope of their investigation
somewhat that lies outside the sphere of positive sciences--viz. the
determination of ends to be sought, or rules to be unconditionally
obeyed. Before proceeding further, it would seem desirable to determine
in outline the mutual relations of these cognate studies, regarded from
the point of view of Ethics.
As I have defined them, Ethics aims at determining what ought to be
done by individuals, while Politics aims at determining what the
government of a state or political society ought to do and how it ought
to be constituted,--including under the latter head all questions as to
the control over government that should be exercised by the governed.
At first sight it may seem that Politics, so conceived, must be a
branch of Ethics. For all the actions of government are actions of
individuals, alone or in combination, and so are all the actions of
those who, obeying, influencing, or perhaps occasionally resisting
government, maintain and from time to time modify the constitution of
their state: and it would seem that if properly performed such actions
must be determined on ethical principles or be capable of justification
by such principles. But this argument is not decisive; for by similar
reasoning Ethics would have to comprehend all arts, liberal and
industrial. _E.g._ it is a main part of the moral duty of a sea-captain
and his subordinates to navigate their ship properly; but we do not
take Ethics to include a study of the rules of navigation. It may be
replied that every man is not a sailor, but--at least in a country
under popular government--every citizen has important political duties,
which he ought to perform according to knowledge, so far as possible;
but, similarly, it is an important part of every adult’s moral duty
to take care of his health, and it is proverbial that “every man at
forty is a fool or his own physician”; yet we do not consider Ethics to
include the art of medicine.
The specially important connexion between Ethics and Politics arises in
a different way. It is the business of government, by laying down and
enforcing laws, to regulate the outward conduct of the governed, not in
one department only, but in all their social relations, so far as such
conduct is a proper subject for coercive rules. And not only ought this
regulation to be in harmony with morality--for obviously people ought
not to be compelled to do what they ought not to do--but further, to an
important extent the Law of a man’s state will properly determine the
details of his moral duty, even beyond the sphere of legal enforcement.
Thus we commonly regard it as an individual’s moral duty, under the
head of Justice, to “give every man his own,” even when--through some
accident--the other party has not the power of legally enforcing his
right; but still, in considering what is the other’s “own,” we assume
him generally to be guided by the law of his state; if that were
changed, his moral duty would change with it. Similarly, the mutual
moral duties of husbands and wives, and of children and parents, will
vary in detail with the variations in their legal relations.
But when we look closer at the relation thus constituted between
Ethics and Politics, we see that a distinction has to be taken between
actual or Positive Law and Ideal Law or Law as it ought to be. It is
for the latter that Political Theory lays down principles; but it is
Positive, not Ideal, Law that primarily determines right conduct for an
individual here and now, in the manner just exemplified. No doubt if
Positive and Ideal Law appear to me to diverge very widely--if (_e.g._)
I am convinced by political theory that a fundamental change in the
law of property is desirable--this conviction is likely to influence
my view of my moral duty under the existing law; but the extent of
this influence is vague and uncertain. Suppose I am a slave-owner
in a society in which slavery is established, and become convinced
that private property in human beings should be abolished by law: it
does not therefore follow that I shall regard it as my moral duty to
set free my slaves at once. I may think immediate general abolition
of slavery not only hopeless, but even inexpedient for the slaves
themselves, who require a gradual education for freedom: so that it is
better for the present to aim at legal changes that would cut off the
worst evils of slavery, and meanwhile to set an example of humane and
considerate treatment of bondsmen. Similar reasonings might be applied
to the abolition of private property in the instruments of production,
or in appointments to offices, civil or ecclesiastical. Speaking
generally, the extent to which political ideals ought to influence
moral duty would seem to depend partly on the apparent remoteness
or nearness of the prospect of realising the ideal, partly on its
imperativeness, or the expediency of immediate realisation: and the
force attached to both these considerations is likely to vary with the
political method adopted; so that it belongs to Politics rather than
Ethics to determine them more precisely.
To sum up: we have to distinguish clearly between two questions: (1)
how far the determination of right conduct for an individual here
and now ought to be influenced by Positive Laws, and other commands
of Government as actually established; and (2) how far it ought to
be influenced by Political Theory, as to the functions and structure
of Government as it ought to be. As regards the former, it clearly
belongs to Ethics to determine the grounds and limits of obedience
to Government; and also the general conception of political duty, so
far as it goes beyond mere obedience--with due recognition of the
large variations due to the varying political conditions of different
states. (A “good citizen” in the United States will reasonably form
a conception of his actual political duty widely divergent from that
reasonably formed by a good citizen in Russia.[23]) And this will be
the primary business of Ethics so far as it deals with the political
side of life. The discussion of political ideals will only come within
its purview in a more indefinite and indirect way, so far as such
ideals cannot but have some influence on the determination of political
duty under existing conditions.
§ 2. I have stated the Relation of Ethics to Politics--regarded from an
ethical point of view--that seems to me to accord with the definition
of the former subject adopted in the preceding chapter. Some thinkers,
however, take a view of Ethical Theory which involves a relation to
Political Theory quite different from that just set forth; regarding
Theoretical or “Absolute” Ethics as properly an investigation not of
what ought to be done here and now, but of what ought to be the rules
of behaviour in a society of ideally perfect human beings. Thus the
subject-matter of our study would be doubly ideal: as it would not only
prescribe what ought to be done as distinct from what is, but what
ought to be done in a society that itself _is_ not, but only _ought_ to
be. In this view the conclusions of Theoretical or “Absolute” Ethics
would have as indirect and uncertain a relation to the practical
problems of actual life as those of Theoretical Politics:--or even more
so, as in sober political theory it is commonly only the government and
not the governed society that is conceived in an ideal condition. Still
the two studies are not unlikely to blend in one theory of ideal social
relations;--unless the ideal society is conceived as having no need
of government, so that Politics, in the ordinary sense,[24] vanishes
altogether.
Those who take this view[25] adduce the analogy of Geometry to show
that Ethics ought to deal with ideally perfect human relations, just
as Geometry treats of ideally straight lines and perfect circles. But
the irregular lines which we meet with in experience have spatial
relations which Geometry does not ignore altogether; it can and does
ascertain them with a sufficient degree of accuracy for practical
purposes: though of course they are more complex than those of
perfectly straight lines. So in Astronomy, it would be more convenient
for purposes of study if the stars moved in circles, as was once
believed: but the fact that they move not in circles but in ellipses,
and even in imperfect and perturbed ellipses, does not take them out
of the sphere of scientific investigation: by patience and industry we
have learnt how to reduce to principles and calculate even these more
complicated motions. It may be useful for purposes of instruction to
assume that the planets move in perfect ellipses: but what we want, as
astronomers, to know is the actual motion of the stars, and its causes:
and similarly as moralists we naturally inquire what ought to be done
in the actual world in which we live. In neither case can we hope to
represent in our general reasonings the full complexity of the actual
considerations: but we endeavour to approximate to it as closely as
possible. It is only so that we really grapple with the question to
which mankind generally require an answer: ‘What is a man’s duty in his
present condition?’ For it is too paradoxical to say that the whole
duty of man is summed up in the effort to attain an ideal state of
social relations; and unless we say this, we must determine our duties
to existing men in view of existing circumstances: and this is what
the student of Ethics seeks to do in a systematic manner.
The inquiry into the morality of an ideal society can therefore be at
best but a preliminary investigation, after which the step from the
ideal to the actual, in accordance with reason, remains to be taken.
We have to ask, then, how far such a preliminary construction seems
desirable. And in answering this we must distinguish the different
methods of Ethics. For it is generally held by Intuitionists that true
morality prescribes absolutely what is in itself right, under all
social conditions; at least as far as determinate duties are concerned:
as (_e.g._) that truth should always be spoken and promises kept, and
‘Justice be done, though the sky should fall.’ And so far as this is
held it would seem that there can be no fundamental distinction drawn,
in the determination of duty, between the actual state of society and
an ideal state: at any rate the general definition of (_e.g._) Justice
will be the same for both, no less than its absolute stringency. Still
even an extreme Intuitionist would admit that the details of Justice
and other duties will vary with social institutions: and it is a
plausible suggestion, that if we can clearly contemplate as a pattern
the “absolute” Justice of an ideal community, we shall be better able
to attain the merely “relative” Justice that is alone possible under
existing conditions. How far this is so, we shall be in a better
position to judge when we have examined the definition of Justice from
an Intuitional point of view.
The question takes a simpler form in the case of the method which
proposes as an ultimate end, and supreme standard, Universal
Happiness.[26] Here we have merely to ask how far a systematic
consideration of the social relations of an ideally happy group of
human beings is likely to afford guidance in our efforts to promote
human happiness here and now. I shall not at present deny that this
task might usefully be included in an exhaustive study of this method.
But it can easily be shown that it is involved in serious difficulties.
For as in ordinary deliberation we have to consider what is best
under certain conditions of human life, internal or external, so
we must do this in contemplating the ideal society. We require to
contemplate not so much the end supposed to be attained--which is
simply the most pleasant consciousness conceivable, lasting as long and
as uninterruptedly as possible--but rather some method of realising
it, pursued by human beings; and these, again, must be conceived as
existing under conditions not too remote from our own, so that we
can at least endeavour to imitate them. And for this we must know
how far our present circumstances are modifiable; a very difficult
question, as the constructions which have actually been made of such
ideal societies show. For example, the _Republic_ of Plato seems in
many respects sufficiently divergent from the reality, and yet he
contemplates war as a permanent unalterable fact, to be provided for
in the ideal state, and indeed such provision seems the predominant
aim of his construction; whereas the soberest modern Utopia would
certainly include the suppression of war. Indeed the ideal will often
seem to diverge in diametrically opposite directions from the actual,
according to the line of imagined change which we happen to adopt,
in our visionary flight from present evils. For example, permanent
marriage-unions now cause some unhappiness, because conjugal affection
is not always permanent; but they are thought to be necessary, partly
to protect men and women from vagaries of passion pernicious to
themselves, but chiefly in order to the better rearing of children. Now
it may seem to some that in an ideal state of society we could trust
more to parental affections, and require less to control the natural
play of emotion between the sexes, and that ‘Free Love’ is therefore
the ideal; while others would maintain that permanence in conjugal
affection is natural and normal, and that any exceptions to this rule
must be supposed to disappear as we approximate to the ideal. Again,
the happiness enjoyed in our actual society seems much diminished by
the unequal distribution of the means of happiness, and the division
of mankind into rich and poor. But we can conceive this evil removed
in two quite different ways: either by an increased disposition on
the part of the rich to redistribute their share, or by such social
arrangements as would enable the poor to secure more for themselves. In
the one case the ideal involves a great extension and systematisation
of the arbitrary and casual almsgiving that now goes on: in the other
case, its extinction.
In short, it seems that when we abandon the firm ground of actual
society we have an illimitable cloudland surrounding us on all sides,
in which we may construct any variety of pattern states; but no
definite ideal to which the actual undeniably approximates, as the
straight lines and circles of the actual physical world approximate to
those of scientific geometry.
It may be said, however, that we can reduce this variety by studying
the past history of mankind, as this will enable us to predict to
some extent their future manner of existence. But even so it does
not appear that we shall gain much definite guidance for our present
conduct. For let us make the most favourable suppositions that we can,
and such as soar even above the confidence of the most dogmatic of
scientific historians. Let us assume that the process of human history
is a progress of mankind towards ever greater happiness. Let us assume
further that we can not only fix certain limits within which the future
social condition of mankind must lie, but even determine in detail the
mutual relations of the different elements of the future community,
so as to view in clear outline the rules of behaviour, by observing
which they will attain the maximum of happiness. It still remains quite
doubtful how far it would be desirable for us to imitate these rules
in the circumstances in which we now live. For this foreknown social
order is _ex hypothesi_ only presented as a more advanced stage in
our social progress, and not as a type or pattern which we ought to
make a struggle to realise approximately at an earlier stage. How far
it should be taken as such a pattern, is a question which would still
have to be determined, and in the consideration of it the effects of
our actions on the existing generation would after all be the most
important element.[27]
FOOTNOTES:
[23] It may be doubted whether the latter ought properly to be termed
a “good citizen,” and not rather a “faithful subject of the Czar of
Russia.” But this doubt only illustrates the divergence to which I am
drawing attention.
[24] Sometimes, as before observed, Politics appears to be used in a
wider sense, to denote the theory of ideal social relations, whether
conceived to be established through governmental coercion or otherwise.
[25] In writing this section I had primarily in view the doctrine set
forth in Mr. Spencer’s _Social Statics_. As Mr. Spencer has restated
his view and replied to my arguments in his _Data of Ethics_, it is
necessary for me to point out that the first paragraph of this section
is not directed against such a view of ‘Absolute’ and ‘Relative’
Ethics as is given in the later treatise--which seems to me to differ
materially from the doctrine of _Social Statics_. In _Social Statics_
it is maintained not merely--as in the _Data of Ethics_--that Absolute
Ethics which “formulates normal conduct in an ideal society” ought to
“take precedence of Relative Ethics”; but that Absolute Ethics is the
only kind of Ethics with which a philosophical moralist can possibly
concern himself. To quote Mr. Spencer’s words:--“Any proposed system of
morals which recognises existing defects, and countenances acts made
needful by them, stands self-condemned.... Moral law ... requires as
its postulate that human beings be perfect. The philosophical moralist
treats solely of the _straight_ man ... shows in what relationship
he stands to other straight men ... a problem in which a _crooked_
man forms one of the elements, is insoluble by him.” _Social Statics_
(chap. i.). Still more definitely is Relative Ethics excluded in the
following passage of the concluding chapter of the same treatise (the
italics are mine):--“It will very likely be urged that, whereas the
perfect moral code is confessedly beyond the fulfilment of imperfect
men, some other code is needful for our present guidance ... to say
that the imperfect man requires a moral code which recognises his
imperfection and allows for it, _seems at first sight reasonable_. _But
it is not really so_ ... a system of morals which shall recognise man’s
present imperfections and allow for them _cannot be devised; and would
be useless if it could be devised_.”
[26] I omit, for the present, the consideration of the method which
takes Perfection as an ultimate end: since, as has been before
observed, it is hardly possible to discuss this satisfactorily, in
relation to the present question, until it has been somewhat more
clearly distinguished from the ordinary Intuitional Method.
[27] Some further consideration of this question will be found in a
subsequent chapter. Cf. Book iv. chap. iv. § 2.
CHAPTER III
ETHICAL JUDGMENTS
§ 1. In the first chapter I spoke of actions that we judge to be right
and what ought to be done as being “reasonable,” or “rational,” and
similarly of ultimate ends as “prescribed by Reason”: and I contrasted
the motive to action supplied by the recognition of such reasonableness
with “non-rational” desires and inclinations. This manner of speaking
is employed by writers of different schools, and seems in accordance
with the common view and language on the subject. For we commonly think
that wrong conduct is essentially irrational, and can be shown to be so
by argument; and though we do not conceive that it is by reason alone
that men are influenced to act rightly, we still hold that appeals to
the reason are an essential part of all moral persuasion, and that
part which concerns the moralist or moral philosopher as distinct from
the preacher or moral rhetorician. On the other hand it is widely
maintained that, as Hume says, “Reason, meaning the judgment of truth
and falsehood, can never of itself be any motive to the Will”; and
that the motive to action is in all cases some Non-rational Desire,
including under this term the impulses to action given by present
pleasure and pain. It seems desirable to examine with some care the
grounds of this contention before we proceed any further.
Let us begin by defining the issue raised as clearly as possible. Every
one, I suppose, has had experience of what is meant by the conflict of
non-rational or irrational desires with reason: most of us (_e.g._)
occasionally feel bodily appetite prompting us to indulgences which
we judge to be imprudent, and anger prompting us to acts which we
disapprove as unjust or unkind. It is when this conflict occurs that
the desires are said to be irrational, as impelling us to volitions
opposed to our deliberate judgments; sometimes we yield to such
seductive impulses, and sometimes not; and it is perhaps when we do
_not_ yield that the impulsive force of such irrational desires is most
definitely felt, as we have to exert in resisting them a voluntary
effort somewhat analogous to that involved in any muscular exertion.
Often, again,--since we are not always thinking either of our duty
or of our interest,--desires of this kind take effect in voluntary
actions without our having judged such actions to be either right
or wrong, either prudent or imprudent; as (_e.g._) when an ordinary
healthy man eats his dinner. In such cases it seems most appropriate
to call the desires “non-rational” rather than “irrational.” Neither
term is intended to imply that the desires spoken of--or at least the
more important of them--are not normally accompanied by intellectual
processes. It is true that some impulses to action seem to take
effect, as we say “blindly” or “instinctively,” without any definite
consciousness either of the end at which the action is aimed, or of
the means by which the end is to be attained: but this, I conceive, is
only the case with impulses that do not occupy consciousness for an
appreciable time, and ordinarily do not require any but very familiar
and habitual actions for the attainment of their proximate ends. In
all other cases--that is, in the case of the actions with which we
are chiefly concerned in ethical discussion--the result aimed at, and
some part at least of the means by which it is to be realised, are
more or less distinctly represented in consciousness, previous to the
volition that initiates the movements tending to its realisation.
Hence the resultant forces of what I call “non-rational” desires,
and the volitions to which they prompt, are continually modified by
intellectual processes in two distinct ways; first by new perceptions
or representations of means conducive to the desired ends, and secondly
by new presentations or representations of facts actually existing
or in prospect--especially more or less probable consequences of
contemplated actions--which rouse new impulses of desire and aversion.
The question, then, is whether the account just given of the influence
of the intellect on desire and volition is not exhaustive; and whether
the experience which is commonly described as a “conflict of desire
with reason” is not more properly conceived as merely a conflict among
desires and aversions; the sole function of reason being to bring
before the mind ideas of actual or possible facts, which modify in the
manner above described the resultant force of our various impulses.
I hold that this is not the case; that the ordinary moral or prudential
judgments which, in the case of all or most minds, have some--though
often an inadequate--influence on volition, cannot legitimately be
interpreted as judgments respecting the present or future existence
of human feelings or any facts of the sensible world; the fundamental
notion represented by the word “ought” or “right,”[28] which such
judgments contain expressly or by implication, being essentially
different from all notions representing facts of physical or psychical
experience. The question is one on which appeal must ultimately be
made to the reflection of individuals on their practical judgments
and reasonings: and in making this appeal it seems most convenient
to begin by showing the inadequacy of all attempts to explain the
practical judgments or propositions in which this fundamental notion
is introduced, without recognising its unique character as above
negatively defined. There is an element of truth in such explanations,
in so far as they bring into view feelings which undoubtedly accompany
moral or prudential judgments, and which ordinarily have more or less
effect in determining the will to actions judged to be right; but so
far as they profess to be interpretations of what such judgments mean,
they appear to me to fail altogether.
In considering this question it is important to take separately the
two species of judgments which I have distinguished as “moral” and
“prudential.” Both kinds might, indeed, be termed “moral” in a wider
sense; and, as we saw, it is a strongly supported opinion that all
valid moral rules have ultimately a prudential basis. But in ordinary
thought we clearly distinguish cognitions or judgments of duty from
cognitions or judgments as to what “is right” or “ought to be done” in
view of the agent’s private interest or happiness: and the depth of the
distinction will not, I think, be diminished by the closer examination
of these judgments on which we are now to enter.
This very distinction, however, suggests an interpretation of the
notion of rightness which denies its peculiar significance in moral
judgments. It is urged that “rightness” is properly an attribute of
means, not of ends: so that the attribution of it merely implies
that the act judged right is the fittest or only fit means to the
realisation of some end understood if not expressly stated: and
similarly that the affirmation that anything ‘ought to be done’ is
always made with at least tacit reference to some ulterior end. And I
grant that this is a legitimate interpretation, in respect of a part of
the use of either term in ordinary discourse. But it seems clear (1)
that certain kinds of actions--under the names of Justice, Veracity,
Good Faith, etc.--are commonly held to be right unconditionally,
without regard to ulterior results: and (2) that we similarly regard
as “right” the adoption of certain ends--such as the common good
of society, or general happiness. In either of these cases the
interpretation above suggested seems clearly inadmissible.[29]
We have therefore to find a meaning for “right” or “what ought to be”
other than the notion of fitness to some ulterior end. Here we are met
by the suggestion that the judgments or propositions which we commonly
call moral--in the narrower sense--really affirm no more than the
existence of a specific emotion in the mind of the person who utters
them; that when I say ‘Truth ought to be spoken’ or ‘Truthspeaking is
right,’ I mean no more than that the idea of truthspeaking excites in
my mind a feeling of approbation or satisfaction. And probably some
degree of such emotion, commonly distinguished as ‘moral sentiment,’
ordinarily accompanies moral judgments on real cases. But it is absurd
to say that a mere statement of my approbation of truth-speaking is
properly given in the proposition ‘Truth ought to be spoken’; otherwise
the fact of another man’s disapprobation might equally be expressed
by saying ‘Truth ought not to be spoken’; and thus we should have two
coexistent facts stated in two mutually contradictory propositions.
This is so obvious, that we must suppose that those who hold the view
which I am combating do not really intend to deny it: but rather to
maintain that this subjective fact of my approbation is all that
there is any _ground_ for stating, or perhaps that it is all that any
reasonable person is prepared on reflection to affirm. And no doubt
there is a large class of statements, in form objective, which yet
we are not commonly prepared to maintain as more than subjective if
their validity is questioned. If I say that ‘the air is sweet,’ or
‘the food disagreeable,’ it would not be exactly true to say that
I mean no more than that I like the one or dislike the other: but
if my statement is challenged, I shall probably content myself with
affirming the existence of such feelings in my own mind. But there
appears to me to be a fundamental difference between this case and
that of moral feelings. The peculiar emotion of moral approbation is,
in my experience, inseparably bound up with the conviction, implicit
or explicit, that the conduct approved is ‘really’ right--_i.e._
that it cannot, without error, be disapproved by any other mind. If
I give up this conviction because others do not share it, or for any
other reason, I may no doubt still retain a sentiment prompting to
the conduct in question, or--what is perhaps more common--a sentiment
of repugnance to the opposite conduct: but this sentiment will no
longer have the special quality of ‘moral sentiment’ strictly so
called. This difference between the two is often overlooked in ethical
discussion: but any experience of a change in moral opinion produced by
argument may afford an illustration of it. Suppose (_e.g._) that any
one habitually influenced by the sentiment of Veracity is convinced
that under certain peculiar circumstances in which he finds himself,
speaking truth is not right but wrong. He will probably still feel a
repugnance against violating the rule of truthspeaking: but it will be
a feeling quite different in kind and degree from that which prompted
him to veracity as a department of virtuous action. We might perhaps
call the one a ‘moral’ and the other a ‘quasi-moral’ sentiment.
The argument just given holds equally against the view that approbation
or disapprobation is not the mere liking or aversion of an individual
for certain kinds of conduct, but this complicated by a sympathetic
representation of similar likings or aversions felt by other human
beings. No doubt such sympathy is a normal concomitant of moral
emotion, and when the former is absent there is much greater difficulty
in maintaining the latter: this, however, is partly because our moral
beliefs commonly agree with those of other members of our society, and
on this agreement depends to an important extent our confidence in the
truth of these beliefs.[30] But if, as in the case just supposed, we
are really led by argument to a new moral belief, opposed not only to
our own habitual sentiment but also to that of the society in which
we live, we have a crucial experiment proving the existence in us of
moral sentiments as I have defined them, colliding with the represented
sympathies of our fellow-men no less than with our own mere likings
and aversions. And even if we imagine the sympathies opposed to our
convictions extended until they include those of the whole human race,
against whom we imagine ourselves to stand as _Athanasius contra
mundum_; still, so long as our conviction of duty is firm, the emotion
which we call moral stands out in imagination quite distinct from the
complex sympathy opposed to it, however much we extend, complicate and
intensify the latter.
§ 2. So far, then, from being prepared to admit that the proposition
‘X ought to be done’ _merely_ expresses the existence of a certain
sentiment in myself or others, I find it strictly impossible so to
regard my own moral judgments without eliminating from the concomitant
sentiment the peculiar quality signified by the term ‘moral.’ There is,
however, another interpretation of ‘ought,’ in which the likings and
aversions that men in general feel for certain kinds of conduct are
considered not as sympathetically represented in the emotion of the
person judging, and thus constituting the moral element in it, but as
causes of pain to the person of whom ‘ought’ or ‘duty’ is predicated.
On this view, when we say that a man ‘ought’ to do anything, or that it
is his ‘duty’ to do it, we mean that he is bound under penalties to do
it; the particular penalty considered being the pain that will accrue
to him directly or indirectly from the dislike of his fellow-creatures.
I think that this interpretation expresses a part of the meaning
with which the words ‘ought’ and ‘duty’ are used in ordinary thought
and discourse. For we commonly use the term ‘moral obligation’ as
equivalent to ‘duty’ and expressing what is implied in the verb
‘ought,’ thus suggesting an analogy between this notion and that of
legal obligation; and in the case of positive law we cannot refuse
to recognise the connexion of ‘obligation’ and ‘punishment’: a law
cannot be properly said to be actually established in a society if it
is habitually violated with impunity. But a more careful reflection on
the relation of Law to Morality, as ordinarily conceived, seems to show
that this interpretation of ‘ought’--though it cannot be excluded--must
be distinguished from the special ethical use of the term. For the
ideal distinction taken in common thought between legal and merely
moral rules seems to lie in just this connexion of the former but not
the latter with punishment: we think that there are some things which a
man ought to be compelled to do, or forbear, and others which he ought
to do or forbear without compulsion, and that the former alone fall
properly within the sphere of law. No doubt we also think that in many
cases where the compulsion of law is undesirable, the fear of moral
censure and its consequences supplies a normally useful constraint on
the will of any individual. But it is evident that what we mean when we
say that a man is “morally though not legally bound” to do a thing is
not merely that he “will be punished by public opinion if he does not”;
for we often join these two statements, clearly distinguishing their
import: and further (since public opinion is known to be eminently
fallible) there are many things which we judge men ‘ought’ to do,
while perfectly aware that they will incur no serious social penalties
for omitting them. In such cases, indeed, it would be commonly said
that social disapprobation ‘ought’ to follow on immoral conduct; and
in this very assertion it is clear that the term ‘ought’ cannot mean
that social penalties are to be feared by those who do not disapprove.
Again, all or most men in whom the moral consciousness is strongly
developed find themselves from time to time in conflict with the
commonly received morality of the society to which they belong: and
thus--as was before said--have a crucial experience proving that duty
does not mean _to them_ what other men will disapprove of them for not
doing.
At the same time I admit, as indeed I have already suggested in § 3
of chap. i., that we not unfrequently pass judgments resembling moral
judgments in form, and not distinguished from them in ordinary thought,
in cases where the obligation affirmed is found, on reflection, to
depend on the existence of current opinions and sentiments as such.
The members of modern civilised societies are under the sway of a code
of Public Opinion, enforced by social penalties, which no reflective
person obeying it identifies with the moral code, or regards as
unconditionally binding: indeed the code is manifestly fluctuating and
variable, different at the same time in different classes, professions,
social circles, of the same political community. Such a code always
supports to a considerable extent the commonly received code of
morality: and most reflective persons think it generally reasonable
to conform to the dictates of public opinion--to the code of Honour,
we may say, in graver matters, or the rules of Politeness or Good
Breeding in lighter matters--wherever these dictates do not positively
conflict with morality; such conformity being maintained either on
grounds of private interest, or because it is thought conducive to
general happiness or wellbeing to keep as much as possible in harmony
with one’s fellow-men. Hence in the ordinary thought of unreflective
persons the duties imposed by social opinion are often undistinguished
from moral duties: and indeed this indistinctness is almost inherent
in the common meaning of many terms. For instance, if we say that a
man has been ‘dishonoured’ by a cowardly act, it is not quite clear
whether we mean that he has incurred contempt, or that he has deserved
it, or both: as becomes evident when we take a case in which the Code
of Honour comes into conflict with Morality. If (_e.g._) a man were
to incur social ostracism anywhere for refusing a duel on religious
grounds, some would say that he was ‘dishonoured,’ though he had
acted rightly, others that there could be no real dishonour in a
virtuous act. A similar ambiguity seems to lurk in the common notion
of ‘improper’ or ‘incorrect’ behaviour. Still in all such cases the
ambiguity becomes evident on reflection: and when discovered, merely
serves to illustrate further the distinction between the notion
of ‘right conduct,’ ‘duty,’ what we ‘ought’ or are under ‘moral
obligation’ to do--when these terms are used in a strictly ethical
sense--and conduct that is merely conformed to the standard of current
opinion.
There is, however, another way of interpreting ‘ought’ as connoting
penalties, which is somewhat less easy to meet by a crucial
psychological experiment. The moral imperative may be taken to be a
law of God, to the breach of which Divine penalties are annexed; and
these, no doubt, in a Christian society, are commonly conceived to be
adequate and universally applicable. Still, it can hardly be said that
this belief is shared by all the persons whose conduct is influenced
by independent moral convictions, occasionally unsupported either by
the law or the public opinion of their community. And even in the case
of many of those who believe fully in the moral government of the
world, the judgment “I ought to do this” cannot be identified with
the judgment “God will punish me if I do not”; since the conviction
that the former proposition is true is distinctly recognised as an
important part of the grounds for believing the latter. Again, when
Christians speak--as they commonly do--of the ‘justice’ (or other moral
attributes) of God, as exhibited in punishing sinners and rewarding the
righteous, they obviously imply not merely that God _will_ thus punish
and reward, but that it is ‘right’[31] for Him to do so: which, of
course, cannot be taken to mean that He is ‘bound under penalties.’
§ 3. It seems then that the notion of ‘ought’ or ‘moral obligation’ as
used in our common moral judgments, does not merely import (1) that
there exists in the mind of the person judging a specific emotion
(whether complicated or not by sympathetic representation of similar
emotions in other minds); nor (2) that certain rules of conduct are
supported by penalties which will follow on their violation (whether
such penalties result from the general liking or aversion felt for
the conduct prescribed or forbidden, or from some other source). What
then, it may be asked, does it import? What definition can we give
of ‘ought,’ ‘right,’ and other terms expressing the same fundamental
notion? To this I should answer that the notion which these terms
have in common is too elementary to admit of any formal definition.
In so saying, I do not mean to imply that it belongs to the “original
constitution of the mind”; _i.e._ that its presence in consciousness
is not the result of a process of development. I do not doubt that the
whole fabric of human thought--including the conceptions that present
themselves as most simple and elementary--has been developed, through
a gradual process of psychical change, out of some lower life in which
thought, properly speaking, had no place. But it is not therefore to be
inferred, as regards this or any other notion, that it has not really
the simplicity which it appears to have when we now reflect upon it.
It is sometimes assumed that if we can show how thoughts have grown
up--if we can point to the psychical antecedents of which they are the
natural consequents--we may conclude that the thoughts in question are
really compounds containing their antecedents as latent elements. But
I know no justification for this transference of the conceptions of
chemistry to psychology;[32] I know no reason for considering psychical
antecedents as really constitutive of their psychical consequents, in
spite of the apparent dissimilarity between the two. In default of such
reasons, a psychologist must accept as elementary what introspection
carefully performed declares to be so; and, using this criterion, I
find that the notion we have been examining, as it now exists in our
thought, cannot be resolved into any more simple notions: it can only
be made clearer by determining as precisely as possible its relation
to other notions with which it is connected in ordinary thought,
especially to those with which it is liable to be confounded.
In performing this process it is important to note and distinguish
two different implications with which the word “ought” is used; in
the narrowest ethical sense what we judge ‘ought to be’ done, is
always thought capable of being brought about by the volition of any
individual to whom the judgment applies. I cannot conceive that I
‘ought’ to do anything which at the same time I judge that I cannot do.
In a wider sense, however,--which cannot conveniently be discarded--I
sometimes judge that I ‘ought’ to know what a wiser man would know,
or feel as a better man would feel, in my place, though I may know
that I could not directly produce in myself such knowledge or feeling
by any effort of will. In this case the word merely implies an ideal
or pattern which I ‘ought’--in the stricter sense--to seek to imitate
as far as possible. And this wider sense seems to be that in which
the word is normally used in the precepts of Art generally, and in
political judgments: when I judge that the laws and constitution of my
country ‘ought to be’ other than they are, I do not of course imply
that my own or any other individual’s single volition can directly
bring about the change.[33] In either case, however, I imply that what
ought to be is a possible object of knowledge: _i.e._ that what I judge
ought to be must, unless I am in error, be similarly judged by all
rational beings who judge truly of the matter.
In referring such judgments to the ‘Reason,’ I do not mean here to
prejudge the question whether valid moral judgments are normally
attained by a process of reasoning from universal principles or axioms,
or by direct intuition of the particular duties of individuals.
It is not uncommonly held that the moral faculty deals primarily
with individual cases as they arise, applying directly to each case
the general notion of duty, and deciding intuitively what ought
to be done by this person in these particular circumstances. And
I admit that on this view the apprehension of moral truth is more
analogous to Sense-perception than to Rational Intuition (as commonly
understood):[34] and hence the term Moral Sense might seem more
appropriate. But the term Sense suggests a capacity for feelings
which may vary from _A_ to _B_ without either being in error, rather
than a faculty of cognition:[35] and it appears to me fundamentally
important to avoid this suggestion. I have therefore thought it better
to use the term Reason with the explanation above given, to denote the
faculty of moral cognition:[36] adding, as a further justification of
this use, that even when a moral judgment relates primarily to some
particular action we commonly regard it as applicable to any other
action belonging to a certain definable class: so that the moral truth
apprehended is implicitly conceived to be intrinsically universal,
though particular in our first apprehension of it.
Further, when I speak of the cognition or judgment that ‘X ought to
be done’--in the stricter ethical sense of the term ought[37]--as a
‘dictate’ or ‘precept’ of reason to the persons to whom it relates, I
imply that in rational beings as such this cognition gives an impulse
or motive to action: though in human beings, of course, this is only
one motive among others which are liable to conflict with it, and is
not always--perhaps not usually--a predominant motive. In fact, this
possible conflict of motives seems to be connoted by the term ‘dictate’
or ‘imperative,’ which describes the relation of Reason to mere
inclinations or non-rational impulses by comparing it to the relation
between the will of a superior and the wills of his subordinates. This
conflict seems also to be implied in the terms ‘ought,’ ‘duty,’ ‘moral
obligation,’ as used in ordinary moral discourse: and hence these terms
cannot be applied to the actions of rational beings to whom we cannot
attribute impulses conflicting with reason. We may, however, say of
such beings that their actions are ‘reasonable,’ or (in an absolute
sense) ‘right.’
§ 4. I am aware that some persons will be disposed to answer all the
preceding argument by a simple denial that they can find in their
consciousness any such unconditional or categorical imperative as I
have been trying to exhibit. If this is really the final result of
self-examination in any case, there is no more to be said. I, at least,
do not know how to impart the notion of moral obligation to any one
who is entirely devoid of it. I think, however, that many of those who
give this denial only mean to deny that they have any consciousness of
moral obligation to actions without reference to their consequences;
and would not really deny that they recognise some universal end or
ends--whether it be the general happiness, or well-being otherwise
understood--as that at which it is ultimately reasonable to aim,
subordinating to its attainment the gratification of any personal
desires that may conflict with this aim. But in this view, as I have
before said, the unconditional imperative plainly comes in as regards
the end, which is--explicitly or implicitly--recognised as an end at
which all men ‘ought’ to aim; and it can hardly be denied that the
recognition of an end as ultimately reasonable involves the recognition
of an obligation to do such acts as most conduce to the end. The
obligation is not indeed “unconditional,” but it does not depend on the
existence of any non-rational desires or aversions. And nothing that
has been said in the preceding section is intended as an argument in
favour of Intuitionism, as against Utilitarianism or any other method
that treats moral rules as relative to General Good or Well-being.
For instance, nothing that I have said is inconsistent with the view
that Truthspeaking is only valuable as a means to the preservation of
society: only if it be admitted that it _is_ valuable on this ground I
should say that it is implied that the preservation of society--or some
further end to which this preservation, again, is a means--must be
valuable _per se_, and therefore something at which a rational being,
as such, ought to aim. If it be granted that we need not look beyond
the preservation of society, the primary ‘dictate of reason’ in this
case would be ‘that society _ought_ to be preserved’: but reason would
also dictate that truth ought to be spoken, so far as truthspeaking
is recognised as the indispensable or fittest means to this end: and
the notion “ought” as used in either dictate is that which I have been
trying to make clear.
So again, even those who hold that moral rules are only obligatory
because it is the individual’s interest to conform to them--thus
regarding them as a particular species of prudential rules--do not
thereby get rid of the ‘dictate of reason,’ so far as they recognise
private interest or happiness as an end at which it is ultimately
reasonable to aim. The conflict of Practical Reason with irrational
desire remains an indubitable fact of our conscious experience, even if
practical reason is interpreted to mean merely self-regarding Prudence.
It is, indeed, maintained by Kant and others that it cannot properly
be said to be a man’s duty to promote his own happiness; since “what
every one inevitably wills cannot be brought under the notion of duty.”
But even granting[38] it to be in some sense true that a man’s volition
is always directed to the attainment of his own happiness, it does not
follow that a man always does what he believes will be conducive to his
own _greatest_ happiness. As Butler urges, it is a matter of common
experience that men indulge appetite or passion even when, in their own
view, the indulgence is as clearly opposed to what they conceive to be
their interest as it is to what they conceive to be their duty. Thus
the notion ‘ought’--as expressing the relation of rational judgment
to non-rational impulses--will find a place in the practical rules of
any egoistic system, no less than in the rules of ordinary morality,
understood as prescribing duty without reference to the agent’s
interest.
Here, however, it may be held that Egoism does not properly regard
the agent’s own greatest happiness as what he “ought” to aim at: but
only as the ultimate end for the realisation of which he has, on
the whole, a predominant desire; which may be temporarily overcome
by particular passions and appetites, but ordinarily regains its
predominance when these transient impulses have spent their force. I
quite recognise that this is a view widely taken of egoistic action,
and I propose to consider it in a subsequent chapter.[39] But even
if we discard the belief, that any end of action is unconditionally
or “categorically” prescribed by reason, the notion ‘ought’ as above
explained is not thereby eliminated from our practical reasonings: it
still remains in the “hypothetical imperative” which prescribes the
fittest means to any end that we may have determined to aim at. When
(_e.g._) a physician says, “If you wish to be healthy you ought to
rise early,” this is not the same thing as saying “early rising is
an indispensable condition of the attainment of health.” This latter
proposition expresses the relation of physiological facts on which
the former is founded; but it is not merely this relation of facts
that the word ‘ought’ imports: it also implies the unreasonableness of
adopting an end and refusing to adopt the means indispensable to its
attainment. It may perhaps be argued that this is not only unreasonable
but impossible: since adoption of an end means the preponderance of a
desire for it, and if aversion to the indispensable means causes them
not to be adopted although recognised as indispensable, the desire for
the end is _not_ preponderant and it ceases to be adopted. But this
view is due, in my opinion, to a defective psychological analysis.
According to my observation of consciousness, the adoption of an end
as paramount--either absolutely or within certain limits--is quite a
distinct psychical phenomenon from desire: it is a kind of volition,
though it is, of course, specifically different from a volition
initiating a particular immediate action. As a species intermediate
between the two, we may place resolutions to act in a certain way at
some future time: we continually make such resolutions, and sometimes
when the time comes for carrying them out, we do in fact act otherwise
under the influence of passion or mere habit, without consciously
cancelling our previous resolve. This inconsistency of will our
practical reason condemns as irrational, even apart from any judgment
of approbation or disapprobation on either volition considered by
itself. There is a similar inconsistency between the adoption of an
end and a general refusal to take whatever means we may see to be
indispensable to its attainment: and if, when the time comes, we do not
take such means while yet we do not consciously retract our adoption
of the end, it can hardly be denied that we ‘ought’ in consistency to
act otherwise than we do. And such a contradiction as I have described,
between a general resolution and a particular volition, is surely a
matter of common experience.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] The difference between the significations of the two words is
discussed later.
[29] As, for instance, when Bentham explains (_Principles of Morals
and Legislation_, chap. i. § i. note) that his fundamental principle
“states the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in
question as being the right and proper end of human action,” we cannot
understand him really to _mean_ by the word “right” “conducive to the
general happiness,” though his language in other passages of the same
chapter (§§ ix. and x.) would seem to imply this; for the proposition
that it is conducive to general happiness to take general happiness as
an end of action, though not exactly a tautology, can hardly serve as
the fundamental principle of a moral system.
[30] See Book iii. chap. xi. § 1.
[31] ‘Ought’ is here inapplicable, for a reason presently explained.
[32] In Chemistry we regard the antecedents (elements) as still
existing in and constituting the consequent (compound) because the
latter is exactly similar to the former in weight, and because we can
generally cause this compound to disappear and obtain the elements in
its place. But we find nothing at all like this in the growth of mental
phenomena: the psychical consequent is in no respect exactly similar
to its antecedents, nor can it be resolved into them. I should explain
that I am not here arguing the question whether the _validity_ of moral
judgments is affected by a discovery of their psychical antecedents.
This question I reserve for subsequent discussion. See Book iii. chap.
i. § 4.
[33] I do not even imply that any combination of individuals could
completely realise the state of political relations which I conceive
‘ought to’ exist. My conception would be futile if it had no relation
to practice: but it may merely delineate a pattern to which no more
than an approximation is practically possible.
[34] We do not commonly say that particular physical facts are
apprehended by the Reason: we consider this faculty to be conversant
in its discursive operation with the relation of judgments or
propositions: and the intuitive reason (which is here rather in
question) we restrict to the apprehension of universal truths, such as
the axioms of Logic and Mathematics.
[35] By cognition I always mean what some would rather call “apparent
cognition”--that is, I do not mean to affirm the _validity_ of the
cognition, but only its existence as a psychical fact, and its claim to
be valid.
[36] A further justification for this extended use of the term Reason
will be suggested in a subsequent chapter of this Book (chap. viii. §
3).
[37] This is the sense in which the term will always be used in the
present treatise, except where the context makes it quite clear that
only the wider meaning--that of the political ‘ought’--is applicable.
[38] As will be seen from the next chapter, I do not grant this.
[39] Chap. ix. of this Book.
CHAPTER IV
PLEASURE AND DESIRE
§ 1. In the preceding chapter I have left undetermined the emotional
characteristics of the impulse that prompts us to obey the dictates
of Reason. I have done so because these seem to be very different
in different minds, and even to vary much and rapidly in the same
mind, without any corresponding variation in the volitional direction
of the impulse. For instance, in the mind of a rational Egoist the
ruling impulse is generally what Butler and Hutcheson call a “calm”
or “cool” self-love: whereas in the man who takes universal happiness
as the end and standard of right conduct, the desire to do what is
judged to be reasonable as such is commonly blended in varying degrees
with sympathy and philanthropic enthusiasm. Again, if one conceives
the dictating Reason--whatever its dictates may be--as external to
oneself, the cognition of rightness is accompanied by a sentiment of
Reverence for Authority; which may by some be conceived impersonally,
but is more commonly regarded as the authority of a supreme Person,
so that the sentiment blends with the affections normally excited by
persons in different relations, and becomes Religious. This conception
of Reason as an external authority, against which the self-will
rebels, is often irresistibly forced on the reflective mind: at other
times, however, the identity of Reason and Self presents itself as
an immediate conviction, and then Reverence for Authority passes
over into Self-respect; and the opposite and even more powerful
sentiment of Freedom is called in, if we consider the rational Self
as liable to be enslaved by the usurping force of sensual impulses.
Quite different again are the emotions of Aspiration or Admiration
aroused by the conception of Virtue as an ideal of Moral Beauty.[40]
Other phases of emotion might be mentioned, all having with these
the common characteristic that they are inseparable from an apparent
cognition--implicit or explicit, direct or indirect--of _rightness_
in the conduct to which they prompt. There are, no doubt, important
differences in the moral value and efficacy of these different
emotions, to which I shall hereafter call attention; but their primary
practical effect does not appear to vary so long as the cognition of
rightness remains unchanged. It is then with these cognitions that
Ethics, in my view, is primarily concerned: its object is to free them
from doubt and error, and systematise them as far as possible.
There is, however, one view of the feelings which prompt to voluntary
action, which is sometimes thought to cut short all controversy as to
the principles on which such action ought to be regulated. I mean the
view that volition is always determined by pleasures or pains actual or
prospective. This doctrine--which I may distinguish as Psychological
Hedonism--is often connected and not seldom confounded with the method
of Ethics which I have called Egoistic Hedonism; and no doubt it seems
at first sight a natural inference that if one end of action--my
own pleasure or absence of pain--is definitely determined for me by
unvarying psychological laws, a different end cannot be prescribed for
me by Reason.
Reflection, however, shows that this inference involves the unwarranted
assumption that a man’s pleasure and pain are determined independently
of his moral judgments: whereas it is manifestly possible that our
prospect of pleasure resulting from any course of conduct may largely
depend on our conception of it as right or otherwise: and in fact the
psychological theory above mentioned would require us to suppose that
this is normally the case with conscientious persons, who habitually
act in accordance with their moral convictions. The connexion of the
expectation of pleasure from an act with the judgment that it is right
may be different in different cases: we commonly conceive a truly moral
man as one who finds pleasure in doing what he judges to be right
because he so judges it: but, even where moral sensibility is weak,
expectation of pleasure from an act may be a necessary consequent of a
judgment that it is right, through a belief in the moral government of
the world somehow harmonising Virtue and Self-interest.
I therefore conclude that there is no necessary connexion between
the psychological proposition that pleasure or absence of pain to
myself is always the actual ultimate end of my action, and the ethical
proposition that my own greatest happiness or pleasure is for me the
_right_ ultimate end. It may, however, be replied that if the former
proposition be accepted in the same quantitatively precise form as the
latter--if it is admitted that I must by a law of my nature always aim
at the greatest possible pleasure (or least pain) to myself--then at
least I cannot conceive any aim conflicting with this to be prescribed
by Reason. And this seems to me undeniable. If, as Bentham[41] affirms,
“on the occasion of every act he exercises, every human being is”
inevitably “led to pursue that line of conduct which, according to his
view of the case, taken by him at the moment, will be in the highest
degree contributory to his own greatest happiness,”[42] then, to any
one who knows this, it must become inconceivable that Reason dictates
to him to pursue any other line of conduct. But at the same time, as
it seems to me, the proposition that he ‘ought’ to pursue _that_ line
of conduct becomes no less clearly incapable of being affirmed with
any significance. For a psychological law invariably realised in my
conduct does not admit of being conceived as ‘a precept’ or ‘dictate’
of reason: this latter must be a rule from which I am conscious that it
is possible to deviate. I do not, however, think that the proposition
quoted from Bentham would be affirmed without qualification by any of
the writers who now maintain psychological Hedonism. They would admit,
with J. S. Mill,[43] that men often, not from merely intellectual
deficiencies, but from “infirmity of character, make their election
for the nearer good, though they know it to be less valuable: and this
no less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures ... they pursue
sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware
that health is the greater good.”[44]
This being so, Egoistic Hedonism becomes a possible ethical ideal
to which psychological Hedonism seems to point. If it can be shown
that the ultimate aim of each of us in acting is always solely _some_
pleasure (or absence of pain) to himself, the demonstration certainly
suggests that each _ought_ to seek his own _greatest_ pleasure.[45] As
has been said, no cogent inference is possible from the psychological
generalisation to the ethical principle: but the mind has a natural
tendency to pass from the one position to the other: if the actual
ultimate springs of our volition are always our own pleasures and
pains, it seems _prima facie_ reasonable to be moved by them in
proportion to their pleasantness and painfulness, and therefore to
choose the greatest pleasure or least pain on the whole. Further,
this psychological doctrine seems to conflict with an ethical view
widely held by persons whose moral consciousness is highly developed:
viz. that an act, to be in the highest sense virtuous, must not be
done solely for the sake of the attendant pleasure, even if that be
the pleasure of the moral sense; so that if I do an act from the sole
desire of obtaining the glow of moral self-approbation which I believe
will attend its performance, the act will not be truly virtuous.
It seems therefore important to subject psychological Hedonism, even in
its more indefinite form, to a careful examination.
§ 2. It will be well to begin by defining more precisely the question
at issue. First, I will concede that pleasure is a kind of feeling
which stimulates the will to actions tending to sustain or produce
it,--to sustain it, if actually present, and to produce it, if it be
only represented in idea--; and similarly pain is a kind of feeling
which stimulates to actions tending to remove or avert it.[46] It
seems convenient to call the felt volitional stimulus in the two cases
respectively Desire[47] and Aversion; though it should be observed
that the former term is ordinarily restricted to the impulse felt
when pleasure is not actually present, but only represented in idea.
The question at issue, then, is not whether pleasure, present or
represented, is normally accompanied by an impulse to prolong the
actual or realise the represented feeling, and pain correspondingly by
aversion: but whether there are no desires and aversions which have not
pleasures and pains for their objects--no conscious impulses to produce
or avert results other than the agent’s own feelings. In the treatise
to which I have referred, Mill explains that “desiring a thing, and
finding it pleasant, are, in the strictness of language, two modes of
naming the same psychological fact.” If this be the case, it is hard
to see how the proposition we are discussing requires to be determined
by “practised self-consciousness and self-observation”; as the denial
of it would involve a contradiction in terms. The truth is that an
ambiguity in the word Pleasure has tended to confuse the discussion
of this question.[48] When we speak of a man doing something “at his
pleasure,” or “as he pleases,” we usually signify the mere fact of
voluntary choice: not necessarily that the result aimed at is some
prospective feeling of the chooser. Now, if by “pleasant” we merely
mean that which influences choice, exercises a certain attractive force
on the will, it is an assertion incontrovertible because tautological,
to say that we desire what is pleasant--or even that we desire a
thing in proportion as it appears pleasant. But if we take “pleasure”
to denote the kind of feelings, above defined, it becomes a really
debateable question whether the end to which our desires are always
consciously directed is the attainment by ourselves of such feelings.
And this is what we must understand Mill to consider “so obvious, that
it will hardly be disputed.”
It is rather curious to find that one of the best-known of English
moralists regards the exact opposite of what Mill thinks so obvious, as
being not merely a universal fact of our conscious experience, but even
a necessary truth. Butler, as is well known, distinguishes self-love,
or the impulse towards our own pleasure, from “particular movements
towards particular external objects--honour, power, the harm or good
of another”; the actions proceeding from which are “no otherwise
interested than as every action of every creature must from the nature
of the case be; for no one can act but from a desire, or choice, or
preference of his own.” Such particular passions or appetites are,
he goes on to say, “_necessarily presupposed by the very idea_ of
an interested pursuit; since the very idea of interest or happiness
consists in this, that an appetite or affection enjoys its object.” We
could not pursue pleasure at all, unless we had desires for something
else than pleasure; for pleasure consists in the satisfaction of just
these “disinterested” impulses.
Butler has certainly over-stated his case,[49] so far as my own
experience goes; for many pleasures,--especially those of sight,
hearing and smell, together with many emotional pleasures,--occur to
me without any perceptible relation to previous desires, and it seems
quite _conceivable_ that our primary desires might be entirely directed
towards such pleasures as these. But as a matter of fact, it appears to
me that throughout the whole scale of my impulses, sensual, emotional,
and intellectual alike, I can distinguish desires of which the object
is something other than my own pleasure.
I will begin by taking an illustration of this from the impulses
commonly placed lowest in the scale. The appetite of hunger, so far
as I can observe, is a direct impulse to the eating of food. Such
eating is no doubt commonly attended with an agreeable feeling of
more or less intensity; but it cannot, I think, be strictly said that
this agreeable feeling is the object of hunger, and that it is the
representation of this pleasure which stimulates the will of the hungry
man as such. Of course, hunger is frequently and naturally accompanied
with anticipation of the pleasure of eating: but careful introspection
seems to show that the two are by no means inseparable. And even when
they occur together the pleasure seems properly the object not of the
primary appetite, but of a secondary desire which can be distinguished
from the former; since the _gourmand_, in whom this secondary desire
is strong, is often prompted by it to actions designed to stimulate
hunger, and often, again, is led to control the primary impulse, in
order to prolong and vary the process of satisfying it.
Indeed it is so obvious that hunger is something different from the
desire for anticipated pleasure, that some writers have regarded
its volitional stimulus (and that of desire generally) as a case of
aversion from present pain. This, however, seems to me a distinct
mistake in psychological classification. No doubt desire is a state of
consciousness so far similar to pain, that in both we feel a stimulus
prompting us to pass from the present state into a different one. But
aversion from pain is an impulse to get out of the present state and
pass into some other state which is only negatively represented as
different from the present: whereas in desire as such, the primary
impulse is towards the realisation of some positive future result. It
is true that when a strong desire is, for any reason, baulked of its
effect in causing action, it is generally painful in some degree: and
so a secondary aversion to the state of desire is generated, which
blends itself with the desire and may easily be confounded with it.
But here, again, we may distinguish the two impulses by observing the
different kinds of conduct to which they occasionally prompt: for the
aversion to the pain of ungratified desire, though it may act as an
additional stimulus towards the gratification of the desire, may also
(and often does) prompt us to get rid of the pain by suppressing the
desire.
The question whether all desire has in some degree the quality of pain,
is one of psychological rather than ethical interest;[50] so long as
it is admitted that it is often not painful in any degree comparable
to its intensity as desire, so that its volitional impulse cannot be
explained as a case of aversion to its own painfulness. At the same
time, so far as my experience goes, I have no hesitation in answering
the question in the negative. Consider again the case of hunger; I
certainly do not find hunger as an element of my normal life at all
a painful feeling: it only becomes painful when I am in ill health,
or when the satisfaction of the appetite is abnormally delayed. And,
generally speaking, any desire that is not felt to be thwarted in
its primary impulse to actions tending to its satisfaction, is not
only not itself a painful feeling--even when this attainment is still
remote--but is often an element of a state of consciousness which
as a whole is highly pleasurable. Indeed, the pleasures afforded by
the consciousness of eager activity, in which desire is an essential
element, constitute a considerable item in the total enjoyment of
life. It is almost a commonplace to say that such pleasures, which
we may call generally the pleasures of Pursuit, are more important
than the pleasures of Attainment: and in many cases it is the prospect
of the former rather than of the latter that induces us to engage in
a pursuit. In such cases it is peculiarly easy to distinguish the
desire to attain the object pursued, from a desire of the pleasure of
attainment: since the attainment only becomes pleasant in prospect
because the pursuit itself stimulates a desire for what is pursued.
Take, for example, the case of any game which involves--as most games
do--a contest for victory. No ordinary player before entering on such
a contest, has any desire for victory in it: indeed he often finds
it difficult to imagine himself deriving gratification from such
victory, before he has actually engaged in the competition. What he
deliberately, before the game begins, desires is not victory, but
the pleasant excitement of the struggle for it; only for the full
development of this pleasure a transient desire to win the game is
generally indispensable. This desire, which does not exist at first, is
stimulated to considerable intensity by the competition itself: and in
proportion as it is thus stimulated both the mere contest becomes more
pleasurable, and the victory, which was originally indifferent, comes
to afford a keen enjoyment.
The same phenomenon is exhibited in the case of more important kinds
of pursuit. Thus it often happens that a man, feeling his life languid
and devoid of interests, begins to occupy himself in the prosecution
of some scientific or socially useful work, for the sake not of the
end but of the occupation. At first, very likely, the occupation is
irksome: but soon, as he foresaw, a desire to attain the end at which
he aims is stimulated, partly by sympathy with other workers, partly by
his sustained exercise of voluntary effort directed towards it; so that
his pursuit, becoming eager, becomes also a source of pleasure. Here,
again, it is no doubt true that in proportion as his desire for the end
grows strong, the attainment of it becomes pleasant in prospect: but it
would be a palpable mistake to say that this prospective pleasure is
the object of the desire that causes it.[51]
When we compare these pleasures with those previously discussed,
another important observation suggests itself. In the former case,
though we could distinguish appetite, as it appears in consciousness,
from the desire of the pleasure attending the satisfaction of appetite,
there appeared to be no incompatibility between the two. The fact that
a glutton is dominated by the desire of the pleasures of eating in no
way impedes the development in him of the appetite which is a necessary
condition of these pleasures. But when we turn to the pleasures
of pursuit, we seem to perceive this incompatibility to a certain
extent: a certain subordination of self-regard seems to be necessary
in order to obtain full enjoyment. A man who maintains throughout an
epicurean mood, keeping his main conscious aim perpetually fixed on
his own pleasure, does not catch the full spirit of the chase; his
eagerness never gets just the sharpness of edge which imparts to the
pleasure its highest zest. Here comes into view what we may call the
fundamental paradox of Hedonism, that the impulse towards pleasure, if
too predominant, defeats its own aim. This effect is not visible, or at
any rate is scarcely visible, in the case of passive sensual pleasures.
But of our active enjoyments generally, whether the activities on
which they attend are classed as ‘bodily’ or as ‘intellectual’ (as
well as of many emotional pleasures), it may certainly be said that
we cannot attain them, at least in their highest degree, so long as
we keep our main conscious aim concentrated upon them. It is not only
that the exercise of our faculties is insufficiently stimulated by the
mere desire of the pleasure attending it, and requires the presence
of other more objective, ‘extra-regarding,’ impulses, in order to be
fully developed: we may go further and say that these other impulses
must be temporarily predominant and absorbing, if the exercise and
its attendant gratification are to attain their full scope. Many
middle-aged Englishmen would maintain the view that business is more
agreeable than amusement; but they would hardly find it so if they
transacted the business with a perpetual conscious aim at the attendant
pleasure. Similarly, the pleasures of thought and study can only be
enjoyed in the highest degree by those who have an ardour of curiosity
which carries the mind temporarily away from self and its sensations.
In all kinds of Art, again, the exercise of the creative faculty is
attended by intense and exquisite pleasures: but it would seem that in
order to get them, one must forget them: the genuine artist at work
seems to have a predominant and temporarily absorbing desire for the
realisation of his ideal of beauty.
The important case of the benevolent affections is at first sight
somewhat more doubtful. On the one hand it is of course true, that when
those whom we love are pleased or pained, we ourselves feel sympathetic
pleasure and pain: and further, that the flow of love or kindly feeling
is itself highly pleasurable. So that it is at least plausible to
interpret benevolent actions as aiming ultimately at the attainment
of one or both of these two kinds of pleasures, or at the averting
of sympathetic pain from the agent. But we may observe, first, that
the impulse to beneficent action produced in us by sympathy is often
so much out of proportion to any actual consciousness of sympathetic
pleasure and pain in ourselves, that it would be paradoxical to regard
this latter as its object. Often indeed we cannot but feel that a tale
of actual suffering arouses in us an excitement on the whole more
pleasurable than painful, like the excitement of witnessing a tragedy;
and yet at the same time stirs in us an impulse to relieve it, even
when the process of relieving is painful and laborious and involves
various sacrifices of our own pleasures. Again, we may often free
ourselves from sympathetic pain most easily by merely turning our
thoughts from the external suffering that causes it: and we sometimes
feel an egoistic impulse to do this, which we can then distinguish
clearly from the properly sympathetic impulse prompting us to relieve
the original suffering. And finally, the much-commended pleasures of
benevolence seem to require, in order to be felt in any considerable
degree, the pre-existence of a desire to do good to others for their
sake and not for our own. As Hutcheson explains, we may _cultivate_
benevolent affection for the sake of the pleasures attending it (just
as the glutton cultivates appetite), but we cannot produce it at will,
however strong may be our desire of these pleasures: and when it
exists, even though it may owe its origin to a purely egoistic impulse,
it is still essentially a desire to do good to others for their sake
and not for our own.
It cannot perhaps be said that the self-abandonment and
self-forgetfulness, which seemed an essential condition of the full
development of the other elevated impulses before noticed, characterise
benevolent affection normally and permanently; as love, when a powerful
emotion, seems naturally to involve a desire for reciprocated love,
strong in proportion to the intensity of the emotion; and thus the
consciousness of self and of one’s own pleasures and pains seems
often heightened by the very intensity of the affection that binds
one to others. Still we may at least say that this self-suppression
and absorption of consciousness in the thought of other human beings
and their happiness is a common incident of all strong affections:
and it is said that persons who love intensely sometimes feel a sense
of antagonism between the egoistic and altruistic elements of their
desire, and an impulse to suppress the former, which occasionally
exhibits itself in acts of fantastic and extravagant self-sacrifice.
If then reflection on our moral consciousness seems to show that “the
pleasure of virtue is one which can only be obtained on the express
condition of its not being the object sought,”[52] we need not distrust
this result of observation on account of the abnormal nature of the
phenomenon. We have merely another illustration of a psychological law,
which, as we have seen, is exemplified throughout the whole range
of our desires. In the promptings of Sense no less than in those of
Intellect or Reason we find the phenomenon of strictly disinterested
impulse: base and trivial external ends may excite desires of this
kind, as well as the sublime and ideal: and there are pleasures of the
merely animal life which can only be obtained on condition of not being
directly sought, no less than the satisfactions of a good conscience.
§ 3. So far I have been concerned to insist on the felt incompatibility
of ‘self-regarding’ and ‘extra-regarding’ impulses only as a means of
proving their essential distinctness. I do not wish to overstate this
incompatibility: I believe that most commonly it is very transient, and
often only momentary, and that our greatest happiness--if that be our
deliberate aim--is generally attained by means of a sort of alternating
rhythm of the two kinds of impulse in consciousness. A man’s conscious
desire is, I think, more often than not chiefly extra-regarding; but
where there is strong desire in any direction, there is commonly keen
susceptibility to the corresponding pleasures; and the most devoted
enthusiast is sustained in his work by the recurrent consciousness of
such pleasures. But it is important to point out that the familiar
and obvious instances of conflict between self-love and some
extra-regarding impulse are not paradoxes and illusions to be explained
away, but phenomena which the analysis of our consciousness in its
normal state, when there is no such conflict, would lead us to expect.
If we are continually acting from impulses whose immediate objects are
something other than our own happiness, it is quite natural that we
should occasionally yield to such impulses when they prompt us to an
uncompensated sacrifice of pleasure. Thus a man of weak self-control,
after fasting too long, may easily indulge his appetite for food to
an extent which he knows to be unwholesome: and that not because the
pleasure of eating appears to him, even in the moment of indulgence, at
all worthy of consideration in comparison with the injury to health;
but merely because he feels an impulse to eat food, which prevails
over his prudential judgment. Thus, again, men have sacrificed all
the enjoyments of life, and even life itself, to obtain posthumous
fame: not from any illusory belief that they would be somehow capable
of deriving pleasure from it, but from a direct desire of the future
admiration of others, and a preference of it to their own pleasure. And
so, again, when the sacrifice is made for some ideal end, as Truth, or
Freedom, or Religion: it may be a real sacrifice of the individual’s
happiness, and not merely the preference of one highly refined pleasure
(or of the absence of one special pain) to all the other elements of
happiness. No doubt this preference is possible; a man may feel that
the high and severe delight of serving his ideal is a “pearl of great
price” outweighing in value all other pleasures. But he may also feel
that the sacrifice will not repay _him_, and yet determine that it
shall be made.
To sum up: our conscious active impulses are so far from being always
directed towards the attainment of pleasure or avoidance of pain for
ourselves, that we can find everywhere in consciousness extra-regarding
impulses, directed towards something that is not pleasure, nor relief
from pain; and, indeed, a most important part of our pleasure depends
upon the existence of such impulses: while on the other hand they are
in many cases so far incompatible with the desire of our own pleasure
that the two kinds of impulse do not easily coexist in the same moment
of consciousness; and more occasionally (but by no means rarely) the
two come into irreconcilable conflict, and prompt to opposite courses
of action. And this incompatibility (though it is important to notice
it in other instances) is no doubt specially prominent in the case of
the impulse towards the end which most markedly competes in ethical
controversy with pleasure: the love of virtue for its own sake, or
desire to do what is right as such.
§ 4. The psychological observations on which my argument is based will
not perhaps be directly controverted, at least to such an extent as
to involve my main conclusion: but there are two lines of reasoning
by which it has been attempted to weaken the force of this conclusion
without directly denying it. In the first place, it is urged that
Pleasure, though not the only conscious aim of human action, is
yet always the result to which it is unconsciously directed. The
proposition would be difficult to disprove; since no one denies that
pleasure in some degree normally accompanies the attainment of a
desired end: and when once we go beyond the testimony of consciousness
there seems to be no clear method of determining which among the
consequences of any action is the end at which it is aimed. For the
same reason, however, the proposition is at any rate equally difficult
to prove. But I should go further, and maintain that if we seriously
set ourselves to consider human action on its unconscious side, we
can only conceive it as a combination of movements of the parts of
a material organism: and that if we try to ascertain what the ‘end’
in any case of such movements is, it is reasonable to conclude that
it is some material result, some organic condition conducive to the
preservation either of the individual organism or of the race to which
it belongs. In fact, the doctrine that pleasure (or the absence of
pain) is the end of all human action can neither be supported by the
results of introspection, nor by the results of external observation
and inference: it rather seems to be reached by an arbitrary and
illegitimate combination of the two.
But again, it is sometimes said that whatever be the case with our
present adult consciousness, our original impulses were all directed
towards pleasure[53] or from pain, and that any impulses otherwise
directed are derived from these by “association of ideas.” I can find
no evidence that even tends to prove this: so far as we can observe the
consciousness of children, the two elements, extra-regarding impulse
and desire for pleasure, seem to coexist in the same manner as they
do in mature life. In so far as there is any difference, it seems to
be in the opposite direction; as the actions of children, being more
instinctive and less reflective, are more prompted by extra-regarding
impulse, and less by conscious aim at pleasure. No doubt the two
kinds of impulse, as we trace back the development of consciousness,
gradually become indistinguishable: but this obviously does not justify
us in identifying with either of the two the more indefinite impulse
out of which both have been developed. But even supposing it were found
that our earliest appetites were all merely appetites for pleasure, it
would have little bearing on the present question. What I am concerned
to maintain is that men do not _now_ normally desire pleasure alone,
but to an important extent other things also: some in particular having
impulses towards virtue, which may and do conflict with their conscious
desire for their own pleasure. To say in answer to this that all men
_once_ desired pleasure is, from an ethical point of view, irrelevant:
except on the assumption that there is an original type of man’s
appetitive nature, to which, as such, it is right or best for him to
conform. But probably no Hedonist would expressly maintain this; though
such an assumption, no doubt, is frequently made by writers of the
Intuitional school.
NOTE.--Some psychologists regard Desire as essentially painful. This
view seems to me erroneous, according to the ordinary use of the term:
and though it does not necessarily involve the confusion--against
which I am chiefly concerned to guard in the present chapter--between
the volitional stimulus of desire itself and the volitional stimulus
of aversion to desire as painful, it has some tendency to cause
this confusion. It may therefore be worth while to point out that
the difference of opinion between myself and the psychologists in
question--of whom I select Dr. Bain as a leading example--depends
largely, though not entirely, on a difference of definition. In chap.
viii. of the second division of his book on _The Emotions and the
Will_, Dr. Bain defines Desire as “that phase of volition where there
is a motive and not ability to act on it,” and gives the following
illustration:--
“The inmate of a small gloomy chamber conceives to himself the
pleasure of light and of an expanded prospect: the unsatisfying ideal
urges the appropriate action for gaining the reality; he gets up and
walks out. Suppose now that the same ideal delight comes into the
mind of a prisoner. Unable to fulfil the prompting, he remains under
the solicitation of the motive: and his state is denominated craving,
longing, appetite, desire. If all motive impulses could be at once
followed up, desire would have no place ... there is a bar in the way
of acting which leads to the state of conflict and renders desire a
more or less painful state of mind.”
Now I agree that Desire is most frequently painful in some degree
when the person desiring is inhibited from acting for the attainment
of the desired object. I do not indeed think that even under these
circumstances it is always painful, especially when it is accompanied
with hope. Take the simple case of hunger. Ordinarily, when I am
looking forward to dinner with a good appetite, I do not find hunger
painful--unless I have fasted unusually long--although custom and a
regard for my digestion prevent me from satisfying the appetite till
the soup is served. Still I admit that when action tending to fruition
is excluded, desire is very liable to be painful.
But it is surely contrary to usage to restrict the term Desire to this
case. Suppose Dr. Bain’s prisoner becomes possessed of a file, and
sees his way to getting out of prison by a long process, which will
involve, among other operations, the filing of certain bars. It would
surely seem absurd to say that his desire finally ceases when the
operation of filing begins. No doubt the concentration of attention
on the complex activities necessary for the attainment of freedom
is likely to cause the prisoner to be so absorbed by other ideas
and feelings that the desire of freedom may temporarily cease to be
present in his consciousness. But as the stimulus on which his whole
activity ultimately depends is certainly derived from the unrealised
idea of freedom, this idea, with the concomitant feeling of desire,
will normally recur at brief intervals during the process. Similarly
in other cases, while it is quite true that men often work for a
desired end without consciously feeling desire for the end, it would
be absurd to say that they never feel desire while so working: at any
rate this restricted use of the term has never, I think, been adopted
by ethical writers in treating of Desire. And in some passages Dr.
Bain himself seems to adopt a wider meaning. He says, for instance,
in the chapter from which I have quoted, that “we have a form of
desire ... _when we are working for distant ends_.” If, then, it be
allowed that the feeling of Desire is at any rate sometimes an element
of consciousness coexisting with a process of activity directed to
the attainment of the desired object, or intervening in the brief
pauses of such a process, I venture to think that when the feeling is
observed under these conditions, it will not be found in accordance
with the common experience of mankind to describe it as essentially
painful.
Take, as a simple instance, the case of a game involving bodily
exercise and a contest of skill. Probably many persons who take part
in such exercises for sanitary or social purposes begin without
any perceptible desire to win the game: and probably as long as
they remain thus indifferent the exercise is rather tedious.
Usually, however, a conscious desire to win the game is excited,
as a consequence of actions directed towards this end: and--in my
experience at least--in proportion as the feeling grows strong, the
whole process becomes more pleasurable. If this be admitted to be a
normal experience, it must surely be also admitted that Desire in this
case is a feeling in which introspection does not enable us to detect
the slightest quality of pain.
It would be easy to give an indefinite number of similar instances of
energetic activity carried on for an end--whether in sport or in the
serious business of life--where a keen desire for the attainment of
the end in view is indispensable to a real enjoyment of the labour
required to attain, and where at the same time we cannot detect any
painfulness in the desire, however much we try to separate it in
introspective analysis from its concomitant feeling.
The error that I am trying to remove seems to me partly due to
overlooking these cases, and contemplating exclusively cases in which
Desire is for some reason or other prevented from having its normal
effect in stimulating activity directed to the attainment of the
desired object. Partly, however, it seems to be due to the resemblance
between Desire and Pain, to which I have drawn attention in the text
of this chapter, _i.e._ the _unrestfulness_ which is undoubtedly a
characteristic of the state of desire, and--ordinarily--of pain.
For the characteristic of “unrestfulness” requires some care to
distinguish it from “uneasiness,” in the sense in which this latter
term signifies some degree of painfulness. The mistake is connected
with the equally erroneous view--which Hobbes controverts in his
usual forcible style--that “the Felicity of this life consisteth
in the repose of a mind satisfied”; and it has also some affinity
with the widespread view--which has left its mark on more than one
European language--that labour, strenuous activity, is essentially
painful. On both these points, it ought to be said, there is doubtless
considerable divergence between the experiences of different
individuals: but at any rate among Englishmen I conceive that a person
who finds desire always painful--in the sense in which, as I have
tried to show, the word is commonly used both by moralists and in
ordinary discourse--is as exceptional a being as one who finds labour
always painful.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] The relation of the æsthetic to the moral ideal of conduct will be
discussed in a subsequent chapter (ix.) of this Book.
[41] I here, as in chap. i., adopt the exact hedonistic interpretation
of ‘happiness’ which Bentham has made current. This seems to me the
most suitable use of the term; but I afterwards (Book i. chap. vii. §
1) take note of other uses.
[42] _Constitutional Code_, Introduction, § 2.
[43] _Utilitarianism_, chap. ii. p. 14.
[44] Mr. Leslie Stephen, who holds (_Science of Ethics_, p. 50) that
“pain and pleasure are the sole determining causes of action,” at the
same time thinks that it “will be admitted on all hands” that “we are
not always determined by a calculation of pleasure to come.”
[45] Or, more precisely, ‘greatest surplus of pleasure over pain.’
[46] The qualifications and limitations which this proposition
requires, before it can be accepted as strictly true, do not seem to me
important for the purpose of the present argument. See Book ii. chap.
ii. § 2.
[47] In the present treatise ‘Desire’ is primarily regarded as a felt
impulse or stimulus to actions tending to the realisation of what is
desired. There are, however, states of feeling, sometimes intense, to
which the term ‘desire’ is by usage applicable, in which this impulsive
quality seems to be absent or at least latent; because the realisation
of the desired result is recognised as hopeless, and has long been
so recognised. In such cases the ‘desire’ (so-called) remains in
consciousness only as a sense of want of a recognised good, a feeling
no more or otherwise impulsive than the regretful memory of past joy.
That is, desire in this condition may develop a secondary impulse to
voluntary day-dreaming, by which a bitter-sweet imaginary satisfaction
of the want is attained; or, so far as it is painful, it may impel to
action or thought which will bring about its own extinction: but its
primary impulse to acts tending to realise the desired result is no
longer perceptible.
With this state of mind
--“the desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow”--
I am not concerned in the present discussion. I notice it chiefly
because some writers (_e.g._ Dr. Bain) seem to contemplate as the sole
or typical case of desire, “where there is a motive and no ability to
act upon it”; thus expressly excluding that condition of desire (as I
use the term) which seems to me of primary importance from an ethical
point of view, _i.e._ where action tending to bring about the desired
result is conceived as at once possible.
[48] The confusion occurs in the most singular form in Hobbes, who
actually identifies Pleasure and Appetite--“this motion in which
consisteth pleasure, is a solicitation to draw near to the thing that
pleaseth.”
[49] The same argument is put in a more guarded, and, I think,
unexceptionable form by Hutcheson. It is perhaps more remarkable that
Hume, too, shares Butler’s view which he expresses almost in the
language of the famous sermons. “There are,” he says, “bodily wants
or appetites, acknowledged by every one, which necessarily precede
all sensual enjoyment, and carry us directly to seek possession of
the object. Thus hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their
end: and from the gratification of these primary appetites arises a
pleasure, which may become the object of another species of inclination
that is secondary and interested.” Hence Hume finds that “the
hypothesis which allows of a disinterested benevolence, distinct from
self-love,” is “conformable to the analogy of nature.” See _Enquiry
concerning the Principles of Morals_ (Appendix II.).
[50] Some further discussion of it will be found in the note at the end
of the chapter.
[51] Professor J. S. Mackenzie, in his _Manual of Ethics_ (3rd edition,
Book i. chap. ii. note), arguing for the universal painfulness of
desire, urges that the so-called “pleasures of pursuit” are really
pleasures of “progressive attainment”; what causes pleasure being
the series of partial attainments that precede the final attainment.
There seems to me much truth in this view, as regards some forms of
pursuit; but in other cases I can find nothing deserving the name in
the course of the pursuit: the prominent element of the pleasure seems
to be clearly the reflex of eager and hopeful, perhaps consciously
skilful, activity. _E.g._ this is often the case in the pursuit of
truth, scientific or historical. I have spent most pleasant hours in
hunting for evidence in favour of a conjecture that had occurred to
me as a possible solution of a difficult historical question, without
any “progressive attainment” at all, as I found no evidence of any
importance: but the pleasure had none the less been real, at any rate
in the earlier part of the pursuit. Or take the common experience of
deer-stalking, or the struggle for victory in an evenly balanced game
of chess, or a prolonged race in which no competitor gains on the
others till near the end. I find nothing like “progressive attainment”
in these cases.
But even granting Mr. Mackenzie’s view to be more widely applicable
than I think it, the question it deals with seems to me in the main
irrelevant to the issue that I am now discussing: since it remains true
that the presence of antecedent desire is an essential condition of the
pleasures of attainment--whether “progressive” or “catastrophic”--and
that the desire is not itself perceptibly painful.
[52] Lecky, _Hist. of European Morals_, Introduction.
[53] I must ask the reader to distinguish carefully the question
discussed in this chapter, which relates to the _objects_ of desires
and aversions, from the different question whether the _causes_ of
these impulses are always to be found in antecedent experiences of
pleasure and pain. The bearing of this latter question on Ethics,
though not unimportant, is manifestly more indirect than that of the
question here dealt with: and it will be convenient to postpone it till
a later stage of the discussion. Cf. _post_, Book ii. chap. vi. § 2,
and Book iv. chap. iv. § 1.
CHAPTER V
FREE WILL
§ 1. In the preceding chapters I have treated first of rational,
and secondly of disinterested action, without introducing the vexed
question of the Freedom of the Will. The difficulties connected
with this question have been proved by long dialectical experience
to be so great, that I am anxious to confine them within as strict
limits as I can, and keep as much of my subject as possible free from
their perturbing influence. And it appears to me that we have no
psychological warrant for identifying Disinterested with either “Free”
or “Rational” action; while to identify Rational and Free action is
at least misleading, and tends to obscure the real issue raised in
the Free Will controversy. In the last chapter I have tried to show
that action strictly disinterested, that is, disregardful of foreseen
balance of pleasure to ourselves, is found in the most instinctive
as well as in the most deliberate and self-conscious region of our
volitional experience. And rational action, as I conceive it, remains
rational, however completely the rationality of any individual’s
conduct may be determined by causes antecedent or external to his own
volition: so that the conception of acting rationally, as explained in
the last chapter but one, is not bound up with the notion of acting
‘freely,’ as maintained by Libertarians generally against Determinists.
I say “Libertarians generally,” because in the statements made by
disciples of Kant as to the connexion of Freedom and Rationality,
there appears to me to be a confusion between two meanings of the term
Freedom, which require to be carefully distinguished in any discussion
of Free Will. When a disciple of Kant[54] says that a man “is a free
agent in so far as he acts under the guidance of reason,” the statement
easily wins assent from ordinary readers; since, as Whewell says, we
ordinarily “consider our Reason as being ourselves rather than our
desires and affections. We speak of Desire, Love, Anger, as mastering
_us_, or of _ourselves_ as controlling them. If we decide to prefer
some remote and abstract good to immediate pleasures, or to conform to
a rule which brings us present pain (which decision implies exercise
of Reason), we more particularly consider such acts as our _own_
acts.”[55] I do not, therefore, object on the score of usage to this
application of the term “free” to denote voluntary actions in which
the seductive solicitations of appetite or passion are successfully
resisted: and I am sensible of the gain in effectiveness of moral
persuasion which is obtained by thus enlisting the powerful sentiment
of Liberty on the side of Reason and Morality. But it is clear that if
we say that a man is a “free” agent in so far as he acts rationally,
we cannot also say--in the same sense--that it is by his own “free”
choice that he acts irrationally, when he does so act; and it is this
latter proposition which Libertarians generally have been concerned to
maintain. They have thought it of fundamental importance to show the
‘Freedom’ of the moral agent, on account of the connexion that they
have held to exist between Freedom and Moral Responsibility: and it is
obvious that the Freedom thus connected with Responsibility is not the
Freedom that is only manifested or realised in rational action, but
the Freedom to choose between right and wrong which is manifested or
realised equally in either choice. Now it is implied in the Christian
consciousness of “wilful sin” that men do deliberately and knowingly
choose to act irrationally. They do not merely prefer self-interest to
duty (for here is rather a conflict of claims to rationality than clear
irrationality); but (_e.g._) sensual indulgence to health, revenge to
reputation, etc., though they know that such preference is opposed to
their true interests no less than to their duty.[56] Hence it does
not really correspond to our experience as a whole to represent the
conflict between Reason and passion as a conflict between ‘ourselves’
on the one hand and a force of nature on the other. We may say, if
we like, that when we yield to passion, we become ‘the slaves of our
desires and appetites’: but we must at the same time admit that our
slavery is self-chosen. Can we say, then, of the wilful wrongdoer that
his wrong choice was ‘free,’ in the sense that he might have chosen
rightly, not merely if the antecedents of his volition, external
and internal, had been different, but supposing these antecedents
unchanged? This, I conceive, is the substantial issue raised in the
Free Will controversy; which I now propose briefly to consider: since
it is widely believed to be of great Ethical importance.
§ 2. We may conveniently begin by defining more exactly the notion
of Voluntary action, to which, according to all methods of Ethics
alike, the predicates ‘right’ and ‘what ought to be done’--in the
strictest ethical sense--are exclusively applicable. In the first
place, Voluntary action is distinguished as ‘conscious’ from actions
or movements of the human organism which are ‘unconscious’ or
‘mechanical.’ The person whose organism performs such movements only
becomes aware of them, if at all, after they have been performed;
accordingly they are not imputed to him as a person, or judged to be
morally wrong or imprudent; though they may sometimes be judged to be
good or bad in respect of their consequences, with the implication
that they ought to be encouraged or checked as far as this can be done
indirectly by conscious effort.
So again, in the case of conscious actions, the agent is not regarded
as morally culpable, except in an indirect way, for entirely unforeseen
effects of his voluntary actions. No doubt when a man’s action has
caused some unforeseen harm, the popular moral judgment often blames
him for carelessness; but it would be generally admitted by reflective
persons that in such cases strictly moral blame only attaches to the
agent in an indirect way, in so far as his carelessness is the result
of some wilful neglect of duty. Thus the proper immediate objects of
moral approval or disapproval would seem to be always the results of
a man’s volitions so far as they were intended--_i.e._ represented in
thought as certain or probable[57] consequences of his volitions:--or,
more strictly, the volitions themselves in which such results were so
intended, since we do not consider that a man is relieved from moral
blame because his wrong intention remains unrealised through external
causes.
This view seems at first sight to differ from the common opinion
that the morality of acts depends on their ‘motives’; if by motives
are understood the desires that we feel for some of the foreseen
consequences of our acts. But I do not think that those who hold this
opinion would deny that we are blameworthy for any prohibited result
which we foresaw in willing, whether it was the object of desire or
not. No doubt it is commonly held that acts, similar as regards their
foreseen results, may be ‘better’ or ‘worse’[58] through the presence
of certain desires or aversions. Still so far as these feelings are
not altogether under the control of the will, the judgment of ‘right’
and ‘wrong’--in the strictest sense of these terms--seems to be not
properly applicable to the feelings themselves, but rather to the
exertion or omission of voluntary effort to check bad motives and
encourage good ones, or to the conscious adoption of an object of
desire as an end to be aimed at--which is a species of volition.
We may conclude then that judgments of right and wrong relate properly
to volitions accompanied with intention--whether the intended
consequences be external, or some effects produced on the agent’s own
feelings or character. This excludes from the scope of such judgments
those conscious actions which are not intentional, strictly speaking;
as when sudden strong feelings of pleasure and pain cause movements
which we are aware of making, but which are not preceded by any
representation in idea either of the movements themselves or of their
effects. For such actions, sometimes distinguished as ‘instinctive,’
we are only held to be responsible indirectly so far as any bad
consequences of them might have been prevented by voluntary efforts to
form habits of more complete self-control.
We have to observe further that our common moral judgments recognise an
important distinction between _impulsive_ and _deliberate_ wrongdoing,
condemning the latter more strongly than the former. The line between
the two cannot be sharply drawn: but we may define ‘impulsive’ actions
as those where the connexion between the feeling that prompts and the
action prompted is so simple and immediate that, though intention
is distinctly present, the consciousness of personal choice of the
intended result is evanescent. In deliberate volitions there is always
a conscious selection of the result as one of two or more practical
alternatives.
In the case, then, of such volitions as are pre-eminently the objects
of moral condemnation and approbation, the psychical fact ‘volition’
seems to include--besides intention, or representation of the results
of action--also the consciousness of self as choosing, resolving,
determining these results. And the question which I understand to be at
issue in the Free Will controversy may be stated thus: Is the self to
which I refer my deliberate volitions a self of strictly determinate
moral qualities, a definite character partly inherited, partly formed
by my past actions and feelings, and by any physical influences that
it may have unconsciously received; so that my voluntary action, for
good or for evil, is at any moment completely caused by the determinate
qualities of this character, together with my circumstances, or the
external influences acting on me at the moment--including under this
latter term my present bodily conditions?--or is there always a
possibility of my choosing to act in the manner that I now judge to be
reasonable and right, whatever my previous actions and experiences may
have been?
In the above questions a materialist would substitute ‘brain and
nervous system’ for ‘character,’ and thereby obtain a clearer notion;
but I have avoided using terms which suggest materialistic assumptions,
because Determinism by no means involves Materialism. For the present
purpose the difference is unimportant. The substantial dispute relates
to the completeness of the causal dependence of any volition upon the
state of things at the preceding instant, whether we specify these as
‘character and circumstances,’ or ‘brain and environing forces.’[59]
On the Determinist side there is a cumulative argument of great force.
The belief that events are determinately related to the state of things
immediately preceding them is now held by all competent thinkers in
respect of all kinds of occurrences except human volitions. It has
steadily grown both intensively and extensively, both in clearness and
certainty of conviction and in universality of application, as the
human mind has developed and human experience has been systematised and
enlarged. Step by step in successive departments of fact conflicting
modes of thought have receded and faded, until at length they have
vanished everywhere, except from this mysterious citadel of Will.
Everywhere else the belief is so firmly established that some declare
its opposite to be inconceivable: others even maintain that it
always was so. Every scientific procedure assumes it: each success
of science confirms it. And not only are we finding ever new proof
that events are cognisably determined, but also that the different
modes of determination of different kinds of events are fundamentally
identical and mutually dependent: and naturally, with the increasing
conviction of the essential unity of the cognisable universe, increases
the indisposition to allow the exceptional character claimed by
Libertarians for the department of human action.
Again, when we fix our attention on human action, we observe that
the portion of it which is originated unconsciously is admittedly
determined by physical causes: and we find that no clear line can be
drawn between acts of this kind and those which are conscious and
voluntary. Not only are many acts of the former class entirely similar
to those of the latter, except in being unconscious: but we remark
further that actions which we habitually perform continually pass from
the conscious class into the--wholly or partly--unconscious: and the
further we investigate, the more the conclusion is forced upon us,
that there is no kind of action originated by conscious volition which
cannot also, under certain circumstances, be originated unconsciously.
Again, when we look closely at our conscious acts, we find that in
respect of such of them as I have characterised as ‘impulsive’--acts
done suddenly under the stimulus of a momentary sensation or
emotion--our consciousness can hardly be said to suggest that they are
not completely determined by the strength of the stimulus and the state
of our previously determined temperament and character at the time of
its operation: and here again, as was before observed, it is difficult
to draw a line clearly separating these actions from those in which the
apparent consciousness of ‘free choice’ becomes distinct.
Further, we always explain[60] the voluntary action of all men except
ourselves on the principle of causation by character and circumstances.
Indeed otherwise social life would be impossible: for the life of man
in society involves daily a mass of minute forecasts of the actions of
other men, founded on experience of mankind generally, or of particular
classes of men, or of individuals; who are thus necessarily regarded
as things having determinate properties, causes whose effects are
calculable. We infer generally the future actions of those whom we know
from their past actions; and if our forecast turns out in any case to
be erroneous, we do not attribute the discrepancy to the disturbing
influence of Free Will, but to our incomplete acquaintance with their
character and motives. And passing from individuals to communities,
whether we believe in a “social science” or not, we all admit and take
part in discussions of social phenomena in which the same principle
is assumed: and however we may differ as to particular theories, we
never doubt the validity of the assumption: and if we find anything
inexplicable in history, past or present, it never occurs to us to
attribute it to an extensive exercise of free will in a particular
direction. Nay, even as regards our own actions, however ‘free’ we feel
ourselves at any moment, however unconstrained by present motives and
circumstances and unfettered by the result of what we have previously
been and felt, our volitional choice may appear: still, when it is once
well past, and we survey it in the series of our actions, its relations
of causation and resemblance to other parts of our life appear, and
we naturally explain it as an effect of our nature, education, and
circumstances. Nay we even apply the same conceptions to our future
action, and the more, in proportion as our moral sentiments are
developed: for with our sense of duty generally increases our sense of
the duty of moral culture, and our desire of self-improvement: and the
possibility of moral self-culture depends on the assumption that by a
present volition we can determine to some extent our actions in the
more or less remote future. No doubt we habitually take at the same
time the opposite, Libertarian, view as to our future: we believe, for
example, that we are perfectly able to resist henceforward temptations
to which we have continually yielded in the past. But it should be
observed that this belief is (as moralists of all schools admit and
even urge) _at any rate to a great extent_ illusory and misleading.
Though Libertarians contend that it is _possible_ for us at any moment
to act in a manner opposed to our acquired tendencies and previous
customs,--still, they and Determinists alike teach that it is much less
easy than men commonly imagine to break the subtle unfelt trammels of
habit.
§ 3. Against the formidable array of cumulative evidence offered
for Determinism there is to be set the immediate affirmation of
consciousness in the moment of deliberate action. Certainly when I have
a distinct consciousness of choosing between alternatives of conduct,
one of which I conceive as right or reasonable, I find it impossible
not to think that I can now choose to do what I so conceive,--supposing
that there is no obstacle to my doing it other than the condition of
my desires and voluntary habits,--however strong may be my inclination
to act unreasonably, and however uniformly I may have yielded to such
inclinations in the past.[61] I recognise that each concession to
vicious desire makes the difficulty of resisting it greater when the
desire recurs: but the difficulty always seems to remain separated
from impossibility by an impassable gulf. I do not deny that the
experience of mankind includes cases in which certain impulses--such as
aversion to death or extreme pain, or morbid appetite for alcohol or
opium--have reached a point of intensity at which they have been felt
as irresistibly overmastering voluntary choice. I think we commonly
judge that when this point is reached the individual ceases to be
morally responsible for the act done under such overmastering impulse:
but at any rate the moral problem thus presented is very exceptional;
in ordinary cases of yielding to temptation this consciousness of
the irresistibility of impulse does not come in. Ordinarily, however
strong may be the rush of appetite or anger that comes over me, it does
not present itself as irresistible; and, if I deliberate at such a
moment, I cannot regard the mere force of the impulse as a reason for
doing what I otherwise judge to be unreasonable. I can suppose that my
conviction of free choice _may_ be illusory: that if I knew my own
nature I _might_ see it to be predetermined that, being so constituted
and in such circumstances, I should act on the occasion in question
contrary to my rational judgment. But I cannot conceive myself seeing
this, without at the same time conceiving my whole conception of what
I now call “my” action fundamentally altered: I cannot conceive that
if I contemplated the actions of my organism in this light I should
refer them to my “self”--_i.e._ to the mind so contemplating--in the
sense in which I now refer them. In this conflict of arguments, it is
not surprising that the theoretical question as to the Freedom of the
Will is still differently decided by thinkers of repute; and I do not
myself wish at present to pronounce any decision on it. But I think it
possible and useful to show that the ethical importance of deciding
it one way or another is liable to be exaggerated; and that any one
who will consider the matter soberly and carefully will find this
importance to be of a strictly limited kind.
It is chiefly on the Libertarian side that I find a tendency to the
exaggeration of which I have just spoken. Some Libertarian writers
maintain that the conception of the Freedom of the Will, alien as it
may be to positive science, is yet quite indispensable to Ethics and
Jurisprudence; since in judging that I “ought” to do anything I imply
that I “can” do it, and similarly in praising or blaming the actions
of others I imply that they “could” have acted otherwise. If a man’s
actions are mere links in a chain of causation which, as we trace
it back, ultimately carries us to events anterior to his personal
existence, he cannot, it is said, really have either merit or demerit;
and if he has not merit or demerit, it is repugnant to the common moral
sense of mankind to reward or punish--even to praise or blame--him.
In considering this argument, it will be convenient--for clearness of
discussion--to assume in the first instance that there is no doubt
or conflict in our view of what it is right to do, except such as
may be caused by the present question. It will also be convenient to
separate the discussion of the importance of Free Will in relation to
moral action generally from the special question of its importance in
relation to punishing and rewarding; since, in the latter species of
action, what chiefly claims attention is not the present Freedom of
the agent, but the past Freedom of the person now acted on.
As regards action generally, the Determinist allows that a man is only
morally bound to do what is “in his power”; but he explains “in his
power” to mean that the result in question will be produced if the
man choose to produce it. And this is, I think, the sense in which
the proposition “what I ought to do I can do” is commonly accepted:
it means “can do if I choose,” not “can choose to do.” Still the
question remains “_Can_ I choose to do what in ordinary thought I
judge to be right to do?” Here my own view is that--within the limits
above explained--I inevitably conceive that I _can_ choose; however,
I can suppose myself to regard this conception as illusory, and to
judge, inferring the future from the past, that I certainly shall not
choose, and accordingly that such choice is not really possible to
me. This being supposed, it seems to me undeniable that this judgment
will exclude or weaken the operation of the moral motive in the case
of the act contemplated: I either shall not judge it reasonable to
choose to do what I should otherwise so judge, or if I do pass the
judgment, I shall also judge the conception of duty applied in it to be
illusory, no less than the conception of Freedom. So far I concede the
Libertarian contention as to the demoralising effect of Determinism, if
held with a real force of conviction. But I think the cases are rare in
which it is even on Determinist principles legitimate to conclude it to
be certain--and not merely highly probable--that I shall deliberately
choose to do what I judge to be unwise.[62] Ordinarily the legitimate
inference from a man’s past experience, and from his general knowledge
of human nature, would not go beyond a very strong probability that he
would choose to do wrong: and a mere probability--however strong--that
I shall not will to do right cannot be regarded by me in deliberation
as a reason for not willing:[63] while it certainly supplies a rational
ground for willing strongly--just as a strong probability of any other
evil supplies a rational ground for special exertions to avoid it.
Indeed, I do not see why a Libertarian should not--equally with a
Determinist--accept as valid, and find it instructive to contemplate,
the considerations that render it probable that he will _not_ choose
to do right in any particular circumstances. In all ordinary cases,
therefore, it does not seem to me relevant to ethical deliberation to
determine the metaphysical validity of my consciousness of freedom to
choose whatever I may conclude to be reasonable, unless the affirmation
or negation of the Freedom of the Will somehow modifies my view of what
it would be reasonable to choose to do if I could so choose.
I do not think that any such modification of view can be maintained, as
regards the ultimate ends of rational action which, in chap. i., I took
as being commonly accepted. If Happiness, whether private or general,
be taken as the ultimate end of action on a Libertarian view, the
adoption of a Determinist view affords no ground for rejecting it: and
if Excellence is in itself admirable and desirable, it surely remains
equally so whether any individual’s approximation to it is entirely
determined by inherited nature and external influences or not:--except
so far as the notion of Excellence includes that of Free Will. Now Free
Will is obviously not included in our common ideal of physical and
intellectual perfection: and it seems to me also not to be included
in the common notions of the excellences of character which we call
virtues: the manifestations of courage, temperance, and justice do not
become less admirable because we can trace their antecedents in a happy
balance of inherited dispositions developed by a careful education.[64]
Can, then, the affirmation or negation of Free Will affect our view of
the fittest means for the attainment of either end? In considering this
we have to distinguish between the case of a connexion between means
and end believed to exist on empirical or other scientific grounds, and
the case where the belief in such connexion is an inference from the
belief in a moral government of the world. According to the received
view of the moral government of the world, the performance of Duty
is the best means of attaining the agent’s happiness largely through
its expected consequences in another world, in which virtue will be
rewarded and vice punished by God: if, then, the belief in the moral
government of the world and a future life for men is held to depend
on the assumption of Free Will, this latter becomes obviously of
fundamental ethical importance: not, indeed, in determining a man’s
Duty, but in reconciling it with his Interest. This, I think, is
the main element of truth in the view that the denial of Free Will
removes motives to the performance of Duty: and I admit the validity
of the contention, so far as (1) the course of action conducive to an
individual’s Interest would be thought to diverge from his Duty, apart
from theological considerations, and (2) in the theological reasoning
that removes this divergence Free Will is an indispensable assumption.
The former point will be examined in a subsequent chapter;[65] the
latter it hardly falls within the scope of this treatise to discuss.[66]
If we confine our attention to such connexion between means and ends
as is scientifically cognisable, it does not appear that an act now
deliberated on can be less or more a means to any ulterior end, because
it is predetermined. It may, however, be urged that in considering how
we ought to act in any case, we have to take into account the probable
future actions of others, and also of ourselves; and that with regard
to these it is necessary to decide the question of Free Will, in order
that we may know whether the future is capable of being predicted from
the past. But here, again, it seems to me that no definite practical
consequences would logically follow from this decision. For however far
we may go in admitting Free Will as a cause, the actual operation of
which may falsify the most scientific forecasts of human action, still
since it is _ex hypothesi_ an absolutely unknown cause, our recognition
of it cannot lead us to modify any such forecasts: at most, it can only
affect our reliance on them.
We may illustrate this by an imaginary extreme case. Suppose we were
somehow convinced that all the planets were endowed with Free Will,
and that they only maintained their periodic motions by the continual
exercise of free choice, in resistance to strong centrifugal or
centripetal inclinations. Our general confidence in the future of the
solar system might reasonably be impaired, though it is not easy to say
how much;[67] but the details of our astronomical calculations would
be clearly unaffected: the free wills could in no way be taken as an
element in the reckoning. And the case would be similar, I suppose, in
the forecast of human conduct, if psychology and sociology should ever
become exact sciences. At present, however, they are so far from being
such that this additional element of uncertainty can hardly have even
any emotional effect.
To sum up: we may say that, in so far as we reason to any definite
conclusions as to what the future actions of ourselves or others
will be, we must consider them as determined by unvarying laws: if
they are not completely so determined our reasoning is _pro tanto_
liable to error: but no other is open to us. While on the other
hand, when we are endeavouring to ascertain (on any principles) what
choice it is reasonable to make between two alternatives of present
conduct, Determinist conceptions are as irrelevant as they are in
the former case inevitable. And from neither point of view does it
seem practically important, for the general regulation of conduct, to
decide the metaphysical question at issue in the Free-will Controversy:
unless--passing from Ethics into Theology--we rest the reconciliation
of Duty and Interest on a theological argument that requires the
assumption of Free Will.
§ 4. So far I have been arguing that the adoption of Determinism
will not--except in certain exceptional circumstances or on certain
theological assumptions--reasonably modify a man’s view of what it
is right for him to do or his reasons for doing it. It may, however,
be said that--granting the reasons for right action to remain
unaltered--still the motives that prompt to it will be weakened; since
a man will not feel _remorse_ for his actions, if he regards them as
necessary results of causes anterior to his personal existence. I admit
that so far as the sentiment of remorse implies self-blame irremovably
fixed on the self blamed, it must tend to vanish from the mind of a
convinced Determinist. Still I do not see why the imagination of a
Determinist should not be as vivid, his sympathy as keen, his love of
goodness as strong as a Libertarian’s: and I therefore see no reason
why dislike for his own shortcomings and for the mischievous qualities
of his character which have caused bad actions in the past should not
be as effective a spring of moral improvement as the sentiment of
remorse would be. For it appears to me that men in general take at
least as much pains to cure defects in their circumstances, organic
defects, and defects of intellect--which cause them no remorse--as they
do to cure moral defects; so far as they consider the former to be no
less mischievous and no less removable than the latter.
This leads me to the consideration of the effect of Determinist
doctrines on the allotment of punishment and reward. For it must be
admitted, I think, that the common retributive view of punishment,
and the ordinary notions of “merit,” “demerit,” and “responsibility,”
also involve the assumption of Free Will: if the wrong act, and the
bad qualities of character manifested in it, are conceived as the
necessary effects of causes antecedent or external to the existence of
the agent, the moral responsibility--in the ordinary sense--for the
mischief caused by them can no longer rest on him. At the same time,
the Determinist can give to the terms “ill-desert” and “responsibility”
a signification which is not only clear and definite, but, from an
utilitarian point of view, the only suitable meaning. In this view,
if I affirm that A is responsible for a harmful act, I mean that it
is right to punish him for it; primarily, in order that the fear of
punishment may prevent him and others from committing similar acts
in future. The difference between these two views of punishment is
theoretically very wide. I shall, however, when I come to examine
in detail the current conception of Justice,[68] endeavour to show
that this admission can hardly have any practical effect; since it is
practically impossible to be guided, either in remunerating services
or in punishing mischievous acts, by any other considerations than
those which the Determinist interpretation of desert would include.
For instance, the treatment of legal punishment as deterrent and
reformatory rather than retributive seems to be forced upon us by the
practical exigences of social order and wellbeing--quite apart from
any Determinist philosophy.[69] Moreover, as I shall hereafter show,
if the retributive view of Punishment be strictly taken--abstracting
completely from the preventive view--it brings our conception of
Justice into conflict with Benevolence, as punishment presents itself
as a purely useless evil. Similarly, as regards the sentiments which
prompt to the expression of moral praise and blame--I admit that in
the mind of a convinced Determinist, the desire to encourage good and
prevent bad conduct must take the place of a desire to requite the one
or the other: but again I see no reason why the Determinist species of
moral sentiments should not be as effective in promoting virtue and
social wellbeing as the Libertarian species.
§ 5. It is, however, of obvious practical importance to ascertain how
far the power of the will (whether metaphysically free or not) actually
extends: for this defines the range within which ethical judgments are
in the strictest sense applicable. This inquiry is quite independent of
the question of metaphysical freedom; we might state it in Determinist
terms as an inquiry into the range of effects which it would be
possible to cause by human volition, provided that adequate motives are
not wanting. These effects seem to be mainly of three kinds: first,
changes in the external world consequent upon muscular contractions;
secondly, changes in the train of ideas and feelings that constitutes
our conscious life; and thirdly, changes in the tendencies to act
hereafter in certain ways under certain circumstances.
I. The most obvious and prominent part of the sphere of volitional
causation is constituted by such events as can be produced by muscular
contractions. As regards these, it is sometimes said that it is
properly the muscular contraction that we will, and not the more
remote effects; for these require the concurrence of other causes, and
therefore we can never be absolutely certain that they will follow.
But no more is it certain, strictly speaking, that the muscular
contraction will follow, since our limb may be paralysed, etc. The
immediate consequent of the volition is some molecular change in the
motor nerves. Since, however, we are not conscious in willing of our
motor nerves and their changes,--nor indeed commonly of the muscular
contractions that follow them,--it seems a misuse of terms to describe
either as the normal ‘object’ of the mind in willing: since it is
almost always some more remote effect which we consciously will and
intend. Still of almost all effects of our will on the external world
some contraction of our muscles is an indispensable antecedent; and
when that is over our part in the causation is completed.
II. We can control to some extent our thoughts and feelings. It would
seem, indeed, that an important part of what we commonly call ‘control
of feeling’ comes under the head just discussed. Our control over
our muscles enables us to keep down the expression of the feeling
and to resist its promptings to action: and as the giving free vent
to a feeling tends, generally speaking, to sustain and prolong it,
this muscular control amounts to a certain power over the emotion.
But there is not the same connexion between our muscular system and
our thoughts: and yet experience shows that most men (though some, no
doubt, much more than others) can voluntarily determine the direction
of their thoughts, and pursue at will a given line of meditation. In
such cases, what is effected by the effort of will seems to be the
concentration of our consciousness on a part of its content, so that
this part grows more vivid and clear, while the rest tends to become
obscure and ultimately to vanish. Frequently this voluntary exertion is
only needed to initiate a train of ideas, which is afterwards continued
without effort: as in recalling a series of past events or going
through a familiar train of reasoning. By such concentration we can
free ourselves of many thoughts and feelings upon which we do not wish
to dwell: but our power to do this is very limited, and if the feeling
be strong and its cause persistent, it requires a very unusual effort
of will to banish it thus.
III. The effect of volition, however, to which I especially wish to
direct the reader’s attention is the alteration in men’s tendencies
to future action which must be assumed to be a consequence of general
resolutions as to future conduct, so far as they are effective. Even
a resolution to do a particular act--if it is worth while to make it,
as experience shows it to be--must be supposed to produce a change
of this kind in the person who makes it: it must somehow modify his
present tendencies to act in a certain way on a foreseen future
occasion. But it is in making general resolutions for future conduct
that it is of most practical importance for us to know what is within
the power of the will. Let us take an example. A man has been in the
habit of drinking too much brandy nightly: one morning he resolves
that he will do so no more. In making this resolve he acts under the
belief that by a present volition he can so far alter his habitual
tendency to indulgence in brandy, that some hours hence he will resist
the full force of his habitual craving for the stimulant. Now whether
this belief is well or ill founded is a different question from that
usually discussed between Determinists and Libertarians: at the same
time the two questions are liable to be confused. It is sometimes
vaguely thought that a belief in Free Will requires us to maintain that
at any moment we can alter our habits to any extent by a sufficiently
strong exertion. And no doubt most commonly when we make such efforts,
we believe at the moment that they will be completely effectual: we
will to do something hours or days hence with the same confidence with
which we will to do something immediately. But on reflection, no one, I
think, will maintain that in such cases the future act appears to be
in his power in the same sense as a choice of alternatives that takes
effect immediately. Not only does continual experience show us that
such resolutions as to the future have a limited and too frequently an
inadequate effect: but the common belief is really inconsistent with
the very doctrine of Free Will that is thought to justify it: for if
by a present volition I can fully determine an action that is to take
place some hours hence, when the time comes to do that act I shall
find myself no longer free. We must therefore accept the conclusion
that each such resolve has only a limited effect: and that we cannot
know when making it how far this effect will exhibit itself in the
performance of the act resolved upon. At the same time it can hardly
be denied that such resolves sometimes succeed in breaking old habits:
and even when they fail to do this, they often substitute a painful
struggle for smooth and easy indulgence. Hence it is reasonable to
suppose that they always produce some effect in this direction; whether
they operate by causing new motives to present themselves on the side
of reason, when the time of inner conflict arrives; or whether they
directly weaken the impulsive force of habit in the same manner as an
actual breach of custom does, though in an inferior degree.[70]
If this account of the range of volition be accepted, it will, I
trust, dispel any lingering doubts which the argument of the preceding
section, as to the practical unimportance of the Free Will controversy,
may have left in the reader’s mind. For it may have been vaguely
thought that while on the Determinist theory it would be wrong, in
certain cases, to perform a single act of virtue if we had no ground
for believing that we should hereafter duly follow it up; on the
assumption of Freedom we should boldly do always what would be best
if consistently followed up, being conscious that such consistency is
in our power. But the supposed difference vanishes, if it be admitted
that by any effort of resolution at the present moment we can only
produce a certain limited effect upon our tendencies to action at some
future time, and that immediate consciousness cannot tell us that this
effect will be adequate to the occasion, nor indeed how great it will
really prove to be. For the most extreme Libertarian must then allow
that before pledging ourselves to any future course of action we ought
to estimate carefully, from our experience of ourselves and general
knowledge of human nature, what the probability is of our keeping
present resolutions in the circumstances in which we are likely to
be placed. It is no doubt morally most important that we should not
tranquilly acquiesce in any weakness or want of self-control: but the
fact remains that such weakness is not curable by a single volition:
and whatever we can do towards curing it by any effort of will at any
moment, is as clearly enjoined by reason on the Determinist theory as
it is on the Libertarian. On neither theory is it reasonable that we
should deceive ourselves as to the extent of our weakness, or ignore it
in the forecast of our conduct, or suppose it more easily remediable
than it really is.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] I have thought it expedient to exclude the Kantian conception
of Free Will from the scope of the discussion in this chapter,
partly on account of the confusion mentioned in the text; partly
because it depends on the conception of a causality not subject to
time-conditions, which appears to me altogether untenable, while it
does not fall within the plan of the present treatise to discuss it.
But considering the widespread influence of Kantian theory on current
ethical thought, I have thought it desirable to give a brief discussion
of his conception of Free Will in an Appendix (I.).
[55] _Elements of Morality_, Book i. chap. ii. At the same time, it is
also true--as I afterwards say--that we sometimes identify ourselves
with passion or appetite in conscious conflict with reason: and then
the rule of reason is apt to appear an external constraint, and
obedience to it a servitude, if not a slavery.
[56] The difficulty which Socrates and the Socratic schools had in
conceiving a man to choose deliberately what he knows to be bad for
him--a difficulty which drives Aristotle into real Determinism in his
account of purposed action, even while he is expressly maintaining the
“voluntariness” and “responsibility” of vice--seems to be much reduced
for the modern mind by the distinction between moral and prudential
judgments, and the _prima facie_ conflict between ‘interest’ and
‘duty.’ Being thus familiar with the conception of deliberate choice
consciously opposed _either_ to interest _or_ to duty, we can without
much difficulty conceive of such choice in conscious opposition to
both. See chap. ix. § 3, of this Book.
[57] It is most convenient to regard “intention” as including not only
such results of volition as the agent _desired_ to realise, but also
any that, without desiring, he foresaw as certain or probable. The
question how far we are responsible for all the foreseen consequences
of our acts, or, in the case of acts prescribed by definite moral
rules, only for their results within a certain range, will be
considered when we come to examine the Intuitional Method.
[58] In a subsequent chapter (chap. ix. of this Book) I shall examine
more fully the relation of the antithesis ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to
the vaguer and wider antithesis ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ in our practical
reasonings.
[59] It is not uncommon for Determinists to conceive of each volition
as connected by uniform laws with our past state of consciousness. But
any uniformities we might trace among a man’s past consciousnesses,
even if we knew them all, would yet give us very imperfect guidance as
to his future action: as there would be left out of account--
(1) All inborn tendencies and susceptibilities, as yet latent or
incompletely exhibited;
(2) All past physical influences, of which the effects had not been
perfectly represented in consciousness.
[60] I do not mean that this is the only view that we take of the
conduct of others: I hold (as will presently appear) that in judging of
their conduct morally, we ordinarily apply the conception of Free Will.
But we do not ordinarily regard it as one kind of causation, limiting
and counteracting the other kind.
[61] It is not the possibility of merely indeterminate choice, of an
“arbitrary freak of unmotived willing,” with which we are concerned
from an ethical point of view, but the possibility of choosing between
rational and irrational motives.
[62] I think that in most cases when a man yields to temptation,
judging that it is “no use trying to resist,” he judges in
semi-conscious self-sophistication, due to the influence of appetite
or passion disturbing the process of reasoning. I do not doubt that
this self-sophistication is likely to take a Determinist form in the
mind of one who has adopted Determinism as a speculative opinion: but
I see no reason for thinking that a Libertarian is not in equal danger
of self-sophistication, though in his case it will take a different
form. _E.g._ where a Determinist would reason “I certainly shall take
my usual glass of brandy to-night, so there is no use resolving not to
take it,” the Libertarian’s reasoning would be “I mean to leave off
that brandy, but it will be just as easy to leave it off to-morrow
as to-day; I will therefore have one more glass, and leave it off
to-morrow.”
[63] There is, however, a special case in which this probability may
be indirectly a reason for not resolving to do what would otherwise be
best; _i.e._ where this resolution would only be right if followed by
subsequent resolutions. The problem thus presented is considered later,
pp. 75, 76.
[64] I should admit, indeed, that the ordinary notion of merit becomes
inapplicable (see pp. 71, 72). But I do not see that Perfection becomes
less an End to be aimed at, because we cease to regard its attainment
as meritorious. The inapplicability of the notion of ‘merit’ to Divine
action has never been felt to detract from the Perfection of the Divine
Nature.
[65] See Book ii. chap. v. and the concluding chapter of the treatise.
[66] I ought, however, to point out that an important section of
theologians who have held the belief in the moral government of the
world in its intensest form have been Determinists.
[67] In order to determine this we should require first to settle
another disputed question, as to the general reasonableness of our
expectation that the future will resemble the past.
[68] See Book iii. chap. v.
[69] Thus we find it necessary to punish negligence, when its effects
were very grave, even when we cannot trace it to wilful disregard of
duty; and to punish rebellion and assassination none the less although
we know that they were prompted by a sincere desire to serve God or to
benefit mankind.
[70] It should be observed that the same kind of change is sometimes
brought about, without volition, by a powerful emotional shock, due
to extraneous causes: and hence it might be inferred that in all
cases it is a powerful impression of an emotional kind that produces
the effect; and that the will is only concerned in concentrating our
attention on the benefits to be gained or evils to be avoided by the
change of habit, and so intensifying the impression of these. But
though this kind of voluntary contemplation is a useful auxiliary to
good resolutions, it does not seem to be this effort of will that
constitutes the resolution: we can clearly distinguish the two. Hence
this third effect of volition cannot be resolved into the second, but
must be stated separately.
CHAPTER VI
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS
§ 1. The results of the three preceding chapters may be briefly stated
as follows:--
The aim of Ethics is to systematise and free from error the apparent
cognitions that most men have of the rightness or reasonableness of
conduct, whether the conduct be considered as right in itself, or as
the means to some end commonly conceived as ultimately reasonable.[71]
These cognitions are normally accompanied by emotions of various
kinds, known as “moral sentiments”: but an ethical judgment cannot be
explained as affirming merely the existence of such a sentiment: indeed
it is an essential characteristic of a moral feeling that it is bound
up with an apparent cognition of something more than mere feeling.
Such cognitions, again, I have called ‘dictates,’ or ‘imperatives’;
because, in so far as they relate to conduct on which any one is
deliberating, they are accompanied by a certain impulse to do the acts
recognised as right, which is liable to conflict with other impulses.
Provided this impulse is effective in producing right volition, it is
not of primary importance for ethical purposes to determine the exact
characteristics of the emotional states that precede such volitions.
And this remains true even if the force actually operating on his will
is mere desire for the pleasures that he foresees will attend right
conduct, or aversion to the pains that will result from doing wrong:
though we observe that in this case his action does not correspond to
our common notion of strictly virtuous conduct; and though there seems
to be no ground for regarding such desires and aversions as the sole,
or even the normal, motives of human volitions. Nor, again, is it
generally important to determine whether we are always, metaphysically
speaking, ‘free’ to do what we clearly see to be right. What I ‘ought’
to do, in the strictest use of the word ‘ought,’ is always ‘in my
power,’ in the sense that there is no obstacle to my doing it except
absence of adequate motive; and it is ordinarily impossible for me,
in deliberation, to regard such absence of motive as a reason for not
doing what I otherwise judge to be reasonable.
What then do we commonly regard as valid ultimate reasons for acting
or abstaining? This, as was said, is the starting-point for the
discussions of the present treatise: which is not primarily concerned
with proving or disproving the validity of any such reasons, but
rather with the critical exposition of the different ‘methods’--or
rational procedures for determining right conduct in any particular
case--which are logically connected with the different ultimate reasons
widely accepted. In the first chapter we found that such reasons were
supplied by the notions of Happiness and Excellence or Perfection
(including Virtue or Moral Perfection as a prominent element),
regarded as ultimate ends, and Duty as prescribed by unconditional
rules. This threefold difference in the conception of the ultimate
reason for conduct corresponds to what seem the most fundamental
distinctions that we apply to human existence; the distinction between
the conscious being and the stream of conscious experience, and the
distinction (within this latter) of Action and Feeling. For Perfection
is put forward as the ideal goal of the development of a human being,
considered as a permanent entity; while by Duty, we mean the kind of
Action that we think ought to be done; and similarly by Happiness or
Pleasure we mean an ultimately desired or desirable kind of Feeling.
It may seem, however, that these notions by no means exhaust the list
of reasons which are widely accepted as ultimate grounds of action.
Many religious persons think that the highest reason for doing anything
is that it is God’s Will: while to others ‘Self-realisation’ or
‘Self-development,’ and to others, again, ‘Life according to nature’
appear the really ultimate ends. And it is not hard to understand why
conceptions such as these are regarded as supplying deeper and more
completely satisfying answers to the fundamental question of Ethics,
than those before named: since they do not merely represent ‘what ought
to be,’ as such; they represent it in an apparently simple relation
to what actually is. God, Nature, Self, are the fundamental facts of
existence; the knowledge of what will accomplish God’s Will, what is,
‘according to Nature,’ what will realise the true Self in each of us,
would seem to solve the deepest problems of Metaphysics as well as
of Ethics. But just because these notions combine the ideal with the
actual, their proper sphere belongs not to Ethics as I define it, but
to Philosophy--the central and supreme study which is concerned with
the relations of all objects of knowledge. The introduction of these
notions into Ethics is liable to bring with it a fundamental confusion
between “what is” and “what ought to be,” destructive of all clearness
in ethical reasoning: and if this confusion is avoided, the strictly
ethical import of such notions, when made explicit, appears always to
lead us to one or other of the methods previously distinguished.
There is least danger of confusion in the case of the theological
conception of ‘God’s Will’; since here the connexion between ‘what
is’ and ‘what ought to be’ is perfectly clear and explicit. The
content of God’s Will we conceive as presently existing, in idea: its
actualisation is the end to be aimed at. There is indeed a difficulty
in understanding how God’s Will can fail to be realised, whether
we do right or wrong: or how, if it cannot fail to be realised in
either case, its realisation can give the ultimate motive for doing
right. But this difficulty it belongs to Theology rather than Ethics
to solve. The practical question is, assuming that God wills in a
special sense what we ought to do, how we are to ascertain this in
any particular case. This must be either by Revelation or by Reason,
or by both combined. If an external Revelation is proposed as the
standard, we are obviously carried beyond the range of our study; on
the other hand, when we try to ascertain by reason the Divine Will,
the conception seems to present itself as a common form under which a
religious mind is disposed to regard whatever method of determining
conduct it apprehends to be rational; since we cannot know any act
to be in accordance with the Divine Will, which we do not also, by
the same exercise of thought, know to be dictated by reason. Thus,
commonly, it is either assumed that God desires the Happiness of men,
in which case our efforts should be concentrated on its production: or
that He desires their Perfection, and that that should be our end: or
that whatever His end may be (into which perhaps we have no right to
inquire) His Laws are immediately cognisable, being in fact the first
principles of Intuitional Morality. Or perhaps it is explained that
God’s Will is to be learnt by examining our own constitution or that
of the world we are in: so that ‘Conformity to God’s Will’ seems to
resolve itself into ‘Self-realisation,’ or ‘Life according to nature.’
In any case, this conception, however important it may be in supplying
new motives for doing what we believe to be right, does not--apart from
Revelation--suggest any special criterion of rightness.
§ 2. Let us pass to consider the notions ‘Nature,’ ‘Natural,’
‘Conformity to Nature.’ I assume--in order to obtain a principle
distinct from ‘Self-realisation,’[72]--that the ‘Nature’ to which we
are to conform is not each one’s own individual nature, but human
nature generally, considered either apart from or in relation to its
environment: that we are to find the standard of right conduct in a
certain type of human existence which we can somehow abstract from
observation of actual human life. Now in a certain sense every rational
man must, of course, “conform to nature”; that is, in aiming at any
ends, he must adapt his efforts to the particular conditions of his
existence, physical and psychical. But if he is to go beyond this, and
conform to ‘Nature’ in the adoption of an ultimate end or paramount
standard of right conduct, it must be on the basis--if not of strictly
Theological assumptions, at any rate--of the more or less definite
recognition of Design exhibited in the empirically known world. If we
find no design in nature, if the complex processes of the world known
to us through experience are conceived as an aimless though orderly
drift of change, the knowledge of these processes and their laws may
indeed limit the aims of rational beings, but I cannot conceive how it
can determine the ends of their action, or be a source of unconditional
rules of duty. And in fact those who use ‘natural’ as an ethical notion
do commonly suppose that by contemplating the actual play of human
impulses, or the physical constitution of man, or his social relations,
we may find principles for determining positively and completely the
kind of life he was designed to live. I think, however, that every
attempt thus to derive ‘what ought to be’ from ‘what is’ palpably
fails, the moment it is freed from fundamental confusions of thought.
For instance, suppose we seek practical guidance in the conception of
human nature regarded as a system of impulses and dispositions, we
must obviously give a special precision to the meaning of “natural”;
since in a sense, as Butler observes, any impulse is natural, but it is
manifestly idle to bid us follow Nature in this sense: for the question
of duty is never raised except when we are conscious of a conflict of
impulses, and wish to know which to follow. Nor does it help us to say
that the supremacy of Reason is Natural, as we have started by assuming
that what Reason prescribes is conformity to Nature, and thus our line
of thought would become circular: the Nature that we are to follow must
be distinguished from our Practical Reason, if it is to become a guide
to it. How then are we to distinguish ‘natural impulses’--in the sense
in which they are to guide rational choice--from the unnatural? Those
who have occupied themselves with this distinction seem generally to
have interpreted the Natural to mean either the _common_ as opposed
to the rare and exceptional, or the _original_ as opposed to what is
later in development; or, negatively, what is not the effect of human
volition. But I have never seen any ground for assuming broadly that
Nature abhors the exceptional, or prefers the earlier in time to the
later; and when we take a retrospective view of the history of the
human race, we find that some impulses which all admire, such as the
love of knowledge and enthusiastic philanthropy, are both rarer and
later in their appearance than others which all judge to be lower.
Again, it is obviously unwarrantable to eschew as unnatural and opposed
to the Divine design all such impulses as have been produced in us
by the institutions of society, or our use of human arrangements and
contrivances, or that result in any way from the deliberate action of
our fellow-men: for this were arbitrarily to exclude society and human
action from the scope of Nature’s purposes. And besides it is clear
that many impulses so generated appear to be either moral or auxiliary
to morality and in other ways beneficial: and though others no doubt
are pernicious and misleading, it seems that we can only distinguish
these latter from the former by taking note of their effects, and
not by any precision that reflection can give to the notion of
‘natural.’ If, again, we fall back upon a more physical view of our
nature and endeavour to ascertain for what end our corporeal frame was
constructed, we find that such contemplation determines very little. We
can infer from our nutritive system that we are intended to take food,
and similarly that we are to exercise our various muscles in some way
or other, and our brain and organs of sense. But this carries us a very
trifling way, for the practical question almost always is, not whether
we are to use our organs or leave them unused, but to what extent or in
what manner we are to use them: and it does not appear that a definite
answer to this question can ever be elicited, by a logical process of
inference, from observations of the human organism, and the actual
physical life of men.
If, finally, we consider man in his social relations--as father, son,
neighbour, citizen--and endeavour to determine the “natural” rights and
obligations that attach to such relations, we find that the conception
‘natural’ presents a problem and not a solution. To an unreflective
mind what is customary in social relations usually appears natural; but
no reflective person is prepared to lay down “conformity to custom” as
a fundamental moral principle: the problem, then, is to find in the
rights and obligations established by custom in a particular society at
a particular time an element that has a binding force beyond what mere
custom can give. And this problem can only be solved by reference to
the ultimate good of social existence--whether conceived as happiness
or as perfection--or by appealing to some intuitively known principle
of social duty, other than the principle of aiming at the happiness or
perfection of society.
Nor, again, does it help us to adopt the more modern view of Nature,
which regards the organic world as exhibiting, not an aggregate of
fixed types, but a continuous and gradual process of changing life. For
granting that this ‘evolution’--as the name implies--is not merely a
process from old to new, but a progress from less to more of certain
definite characteristics; it is surely absurd to maintain that we ought
_therefore_ to take these characteristics as Ultimate Good, and make it
our whole endeavour to accelerate the arrival of an inevitable future.
That whatever is to be will be better than what is, we all hope; but
there seems to be no more reason for summarily identifying ‘what ought
to be’ with ‘what certainly will be,’ than for finding it in ‘what
commonly is,’ or ‘what originally was.’
On the whole, it appears to me that no definition that has ever been
offered of the Natural exhibits this notion as really capable of
furnishing an independent ethical first principle. And no one maintains
that ‘natural’ like ‘beautiful’ is a notion that though indefinable is
yet clear, being derived from a simple unanalysable impression. Hence I
see no way of extracting from it a definite practical criterion of the
rightness of actions.
§ 3. The discussion in the preceding section will have shown that not
all the different views that are taken of the ultimate reason for
doing what is concluded to be right lead to practically different
methods of arriving at this conclusion. Indeed we find that almost
any method may be connected with almost any ultimate reason by means
of some--often plausible--assumption. Hence arises difficulty in the
classification and comparison of ethical systems; since they often
appear to have different affinities according as we consider Method or
Ultimate Reason. In my treatment of the subject, difference of Method
is taken as the paramount consideration: and it is on this account that
I have treated the view in which Perfection is taken to be the Ultimate
End as a variety of the Intuitionism which determines right conduct
by reference to axioms of duty intuitively known; while I have made
as marked a separation as possible between Epicureanism or Egoistic
Hedonism, and the Universalistic or Benthamite[73] Hedonism to which I
propose to restrict the term Utilitarianism.
I am aware that these two latter methods are commonly treated as
closely connected: and it is not difficult to find reasons for this.
In the first place, they agree in prescribing actions as means to an
end distinct from, and lying outside the actions; so that they both
lay down rules which are not absolute but relative, and only valid if
they conduce to the end. Again, the ultimate end is according to both
methods the same in quality, i.e. pleasure; or, more strictly, the
maximum of pleasure attainable, pains being subtracted. Besides, it
is of course to a great extent true that the conduct recommended by
the one principle coincides with that inculcated by the other. Though
it would seem to be only in an ideal polity that ‘self-interest well
understood’ leads to the perfect discharge of all social duties, still,
in a tolerably well-ordered community it prompts to the fulfilment of
most of them, unless under very exceptional circumstances. And, on the
other hand, a Universalistic Hedonist may reasonably hold that his
own happiness is that portion of the universal happiness which it is
most in his power to promote, and which therefore is most especially
entrusted to his charge. And the practical blending of the two systems
is sure to go beyond their theoretical coincidence. It is much
easier for a man to move in a sort of diagonal between Egoistic and
Universalistic Hedonism, than to be practically a consistent adherent
of either. Few men are so completely selfish, whatever their theory of
morals may be, as not occasionally to promote the happiness of others
from natural sympathetic impulse unsupported by Epicurean calculation.
And probably still fewer are so resolutely unselfish as never to find
“all men’s good” in their own with rather too ready conviction.
Further, from Bentham’s psychological doctrine, that every human being
always does aim at his own greatest apparent happiness, it seems to
follow that it is useless to point out to a man the conduct that would
conduce to the general happiness, unless you convince him at the same
time that it would conduce to his own. Hence on this view, egoistic
and universalistic considerations must necessarily be combined in any
practical treatment of morality: and this being so, it was perhaps
to be expected that Bentham[74] or his disciples would go further,
and attempt to base on the Egoism which they accept as inevitable
the Universalistic Hedonism which they approve and inculcate. And
accordingly we find that J. S. Mill does try to establish a logical
connexion between the psychological and ethical principles which he
holds in common with Bentham, and to convince his readers that because
each man naturally seeks his own happiness, therefore he ought to seek
the happiness of other people.[75]
Nevertheless, it seems to me undeniable that the practical affinity
between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism is really much greater than
that between the two forms of Hedonism. My grounds for holding this
will be given at length in subsequent chapters. Here I will only
observe that many moralists who have maintained as practically valid
the judgments of right and wrong which the Common Sense of mankind
seems intuitively to enunciate, have yet regarded General Happiness as
an end to which the rules of morality are the best means, and have held
that a knowledge of these rules was implanted by Nature or revealed by
God for the attainment of this end. Such a belief implies that, though
I am bound to take, as _my_ ultimate standard in acting, conformity to
a rule which is for me absolute, still the natural or Divine reason
for the rule laid down is Utilitarian. On this view, the _method_ of
Utilitarianism is certainly rejected: the connexion between right
action and happiness is not ascertained by a process of reasoning.
But we can hardly say that the Utilitarian principle is altogether
rejected: rather the limitations of the human reason are supposed to
prevent it from apprehending adequately the real connexion between the
true principle and the right rules of conduct. This connexion, however,
has always been to a large extent recognised by all reflective persons.
Indeed, so clear is it that in most cases the observance of the
commonly received moral rules tends to render human life tranquil and
happy, that even moralists (as Whewell) who are most strongly opposed
to Utilitarianism have, in attempting to exhibit the “necessity” of
moral rules, been led to dwell on utilitarian considerations.
And during the first period of ethical controversy in modern England,
after the audacious enunciation of Egoism by Hobbes had roused in
real earnest the search for a philosophical basis of morality,
Utilitarianism appears in friendly alliance with Intuitionism. It was
not to supersede but to support the morality of Common Sense, against
the dangerous innovations of Hobbes, that Cumberland declared “the
common good[76] of all Rationals” to be the end to which moral rules
were the means. We find him quoted with approval by Clarke, who is
commonly taken to represent Intuitionism in an extreme form. Nor does
Shaftesbury, in introducing the theory of a “moral sense,” seem to have
dreamt that it could ever impel us to actions not clearly conducive
to the Good[76] of the Whole: and his disciple Hutcheson expressly
identified its promptings with those of Benevolence. Butler, I think,
was our first influential writer who dwelt on the discrepancies between
Virtue as commonly understood and “conduct likeliest to produce an
overbalance of happiness.”[77] When Hume presented Utilitarianism as
a mode of explaining current morality, it was seen or suspected to
have a partially destructive tendency. But it was not till the time
of Paley and Bentham that it was offered as a method for determining
conduct, which was to overrule all traditional precepts and supersede
all existing moral sentiments. And even this final antagonism relates
rather to theory and method than to practical results: practical
conflict, in ordinary human minds, is mainly between Self-interest and
Social Duty however determined. Indeed, from a practical point of view
the principle of aiming at the “greatest happiness of the greatest
number” is _prima facie_ more definitely opposed to Egoism than the
Common-Sense morality is. For this latter seems to leave a man free to
pursue his own happiness under certain definite limits and conditions:
whereas Utilitarianism seems to require a more comprehensive and
unceasing subordination of self-interest to the common good. And
thus, as Mill remarks, Utilitarianism is sometimes attacked from two
precisely opposite sides: from a confusion with Egoistic Hedonism it is
called base and grovelling; while at the same time it is more plausibly
charged with setting up too high a standard of unselfishness and making
exaggerated demands on human nature.
A good deal remains to be said, in order to make the principle and
method of Utilitarianism perfectly clear and explicit: but it seems
best to defer this till we come to the investigation of its details. It
will be convenient to take this as the final stage of our examination
of methods. For on the one hand it is simpler that the discussion of
Egoistic should precede that of Universalistic Hedonism; and on the
other, it seems desirable that we should obtain in as exact a form as
possible the enunciations of Intuitive Morality, before we compare
these with the results of the more doubtful and difficult calculations
of utilitarian consequences.
In the remaining chapters of this Book I shall endeavour to remove
certain ambiguities as to the general nature and relations of the
other two methods, as designated respectively by the terms Egoism and
Intuitionism, before proceeding to the fuller examination of them in
Books ii. and iii.
NOTE.--I have called the ethical doctrine that takes universal
happiness as the ultimate end and standard of right conduct by the
name of Bentham, because the thinkers who have chiefly taught this
doctrine in England during the present century have referred it to
Bentham as their master. And it certainly seems to me clear--though
Mr. Bain (cf. _Mind_, January 1883, p. 48) appears to doubt it--that
Bentham adopted this doctrine explicitly, in its most comprehensive
scope, at the earliest stage in the formation of his opinions; nor
do I think that he ever consciously abandoned or qualified it. We
find him writing in his common-place book, in 1773-4 (cf. _Works_,
Bowring’s edition, vol. x. p. 70), that Helvetius had “established a
standard of rectitude for actions”;--the standard being that “a sort
of action is a right one, when the tendency of it is to augment the
mass of happiness in the community.” And we find him writing fifty
years later (cf. _Works_, vol. x. p. 79) the following account of his
earliest view, in a passage which contains no hint of later dissent
from it:--“By an early pamphlet of Priestley’s ... light was added
to the warmth. In the phrase ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest
number,’ I then saw delineated, for the first time, a plain as well as
a true standard for whatever is right or wrong ... in human conduct,
_whether in the field of morals or of politics_.”
At the same time I must admit that in other passages Bentham seems
no less explicitly to adopt Egoistic Hedonism as the method of
‘private Ethics,’ as distinct from legislation: and in his posthumous
‘Deontology’ the two principles appear to be reconciled by the
doctrine, that it is always the individual’s true interest, even from
a purely mundane point of view, to act in the manner most conducive
to the general happiness. This latter proposition--which I regard
as erroneous--is not, indeed, definitely put forward in any of the
treatises published by Bentham in his lifetime, or completely prepared
by him for publication: but it may be inferred from his common-place
book that he held it (see his _Works_, vol. x. pp. 560, 561).
FOOTNOTES:
[71] As I have before said, the applicability of a method for
determining right conduct relatively to an ultimate end--whether
Happiness or Perfection--does not necessarily depend on the acceptance
of the end as prescribed by reason: it only requires that it should
be in some way adopted as ultimate and paramount. I have, however,
confined my attention in this treatise to ends which are widely
accepted as reasonable: and I shall afterwards endeavour to exhibit the
self-evident practical axioms which appear to me to be implied in this
acceptance. Cf. _post_, Book iii. chap. xiii.
[72] The notion of ‘Self-realisation’ will be more conveniently
examined in the following chapter: where I shall distinguish different
interpretations of the term ‘Egoism,’ which I have taken to denote one
of the three principal species of ethical method.
[73] See Note at the end of the chapter.
[74] See Note at the end of the chapter.
[75] We shall have occasion to consider Mill’s argument on this point
in a subsequent chapter. Cf. _post_, Book iii. chap. xiii.
[76] It should be observed that neither Cumberland nor Shaftesbury uses
the term “Good” (substantive) in a purely and exclusively hedonistic
sense. But Shaftesbury uses it mainly in this sense: and Cumberland’s
“Good” includes Happiness as well as Perfection.
[77] See Dissertation II. _Of the Nature of Virtue_ appended to the
_Analogy_. It may be interesting to notice a gradual change in Butler’s
view on this important point. In the first of his Sermons on Human
Nature, published some years before the _Analogy_, he does not notice,
any more than Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, any possible want of harmony
between Conscience and Benevolence. A note to Sermon XII., however,
seems to indicate a stage of transition between the view of the first
Sermon and the view of the Dissertation.
CHAPTER VII
EGOISM AND SELF-LOVE
§ 1. In the preceding chapters I have used the term “Egoism,” as it
is most commonly used, to denote a system which prescribes actions
as means to the end of the individual’s happiness or pleasure. The
ruling motive in such a system is commonly said to be “self-love.” But
both terms admit of other interpretations, which it will be well to
distinguish and set aside before proceeding further.
For example, the term “egoistic” is ordinarily and not improperly
applied to the basis on which Hobbes attempted to construct morality;
and on which alone, as he held, the social order could firmly rest, and
escape the storms and convulsions with which it seemed to be menaced
from the vagaries of the unenlightened conscience. But it is not
strictly the end of Egoism as I have defined it--greatest attainable
pleasure for the individual--but rather “self-preservation,” which
determines the first of those precepts of rational egoism which Hobbes
calls “Laws of Nature,” viz., “Seek peace and ensue it.” And in the
development of his system we often find that it is Preservation rather
than Pleasure, or perhaps a compromise between the two,[78] that is
taken as the ultimate end and standard of right conduct.
Again, in Spinoza’s view the principle of rational action is
necessarily egoistic, and is (as with Hobbes) the impulse of
self-preservation. The individual mind, says Spinoza, like everything
else, strives so far as it is able to continue in its state of being:
indeed this effort is its very essence. It is true that the object of
this impulse cannot be separated from pleasure or joy; because pleasure
or joy is “a passion in which the soul passes to higher perfection.”
Still it is not at Pleasure that the impulse primarily aims, but at the
mind’s Perfection or Reality: as we should now say, at Self-realisation
or Self-development. Of this, according to Spinoza, the highest form
consists in a clear comprehension of all things in their necessary
order as modifications of the one Divine Being, and that willing
acceptance of all which springs from this comprehension. In this
state the mind is purely active, without any admixture of passion or
passivity: and thus its essential nature is realised or actualised to
the greatest possible degree.
We perceive that this is the notion of Self-realisation as defined not
only _by_ but _for_ a philosopher: and that it would mean something
quite different in the case of a man of action--such, for example, as
the reflective dramatist of Germany introduces exclaiming:
Ich kann mich nicht
Wie so ein Wortheld, so ein Tugend-Schwätzer
An meinem Willen wärmen, und Gedanken ...
Wenn ich nicht wirke mehr, bin ich vernichtet.[79]
The artist, again, often contemplates his production of the beautiful
as a realisation of self: and moralists of a certain turn of mind, in
all ages, have similarly regarded the sacrifice of inclination to duty
as the highest form of Self-development; and held that true self-love
prompts us always to obey the commands issued by the governing
principle--Reason or Conscience--within us, as in such obedience,
however painful, we shall be realising our truest self.
We see, in short, that the term Egoism, so far as it merely implies
that reference is made to self in laying down first principles of
conduct, does not really indicate in any way the substance of such
principles. For all our impulses, high and low, sensual and moral
alike, are so far similarly related to self, that--except when two
or more impulses come into conscious conflict--we tend to identify
ourselves with each as it arises. Thus self-consciousness may be
prominent in yielding to any impulse: and egoism, in so far as it
merely implies such prominence, is a common form applicable to all
principles of action.
It may be said, however, that we do not, properly speaking, ‘develop’
or ‘realise’ self by yielding to the impulse which happens to be
predominant in us; but by exercising, each in its due place and proper
degree, all the different faculties, capacities, and propensities, of
which our nature is made up. But here there is an important ambiguity.
What do we mean by ‘due proportion and proper degree’? These terms
may imply an ideal, into conformity with which the individual mind
has to be trained, by restraining some of its natural impulses and
strengthening others, and developing its higher faculties rather
than its lower: or they may merely refer to the original combination
and proportion of tendencies in the character with which each is
born; to this, it may be meant, we ought to adapt as far as possible
the circumstances in which we place ourselves and the functions
which we choose to exercise, in order that we may “be ourselves,”
“live our own life,” etc. According to the former interpretation
rational Self-development is merely another term for the pursuit of
Perfection for oneself: while in the latter sense it hardly appears
that Self-development (when clearly distinguished) is really put
forward as an absolute end, but rather as a means to happiness; for
supposing a man to have inherited propensities clearly tending to
his own unhappiness, no one would recommend him to develop these as
fully as possible, instead of modifying or subduing them in some way.
Whether actually the best way of seeking happiness is to give free
play to one’s nature, we will hereafter consider in the course of our
examination of Hedonism.
On the whole, then, I conclude that the notion of Self-realisation
is to be avoided in a treatise on ethical method, on account of its
indefiniteness: and for a similar reason we must discard a common
account of Egoism which describes its ultimate end as the ‘good’ of
the individual; for the term ‘good’ may cover all possible views of
the ultimate end of rational conduct. Indeed it may be said that
Egoism in this sense was assumed in the whole ethical controversy of
ancient Greece; that is, it was assumed on all sides that a rational
individual[80] would make the pursuit of his own good his supreme
aim: the controverted question was whether this Good was rightly
conceived as Pleasure or Virtue, or any _tertium quid_. Nor is the
ambiguity removed if we follow Aristotle in confining our attention to
the Good attainable in human life, and call this Well-being
(Εὐδαιμονία). For we may still argue with the Stoics, that virtuous or
excellent activities and not pleasures are the elements of which true
human Well-being is composed. Indeed Aristotle himself adopts this
view, so far as to determine the details of Well-being accordingly:
though he does not, with the Stoics, regard the pursuit of Virtue and
that of Pleasure as competing alternatives, holding rather that the
“best pleasure” is an inseparable concomitant of the most excellent
action. Even the English term Happiness is not free from a similar
ambiguity.[81] It seems, indeed, to be commonly used in Bentham’s way
as convertible with Pleasure,--or rather as denoting that of which the
constituents are pleasures;--and it is in this sense that I think it
most convenient to use it. Sometimes, however, in ordinary discourse,
the term is rather employed to denote a particular kind of agreeable
consciousness, which is distinguished from and even contrasted with
definite specific pleasures--such as the gratifications of sensual
appetite or other keen and vehement desires--as being at once calmer
and more indefinite: we may characterise it as the feeling which
accompanies the normal activity of a “healthy mind in a healthy body,”
and of which specific pleasures seem to be rather stimulants than
elements. Sometimes, again--though, I think, with a more manifest
divergence from common usage--“happiness” or “true happiness” is
understood in a definitely non-hedonistic sense, as denoting results
other than agreeable feelings of any kind.[82]
§ 2. To be clear, then, we must particularise as the object of
Self-love, and End of the method which I have distinguished as Egoistic
Hedonism, Pleasure, taken in its widest sense, as including every
species of “delight,” “enjoyment,” or “satisfaction”; except so far
as any particular species may be excluded by its incompatibility with
some greater pleasures, or as necessarily involving concomitant or
subsequent pains. It is thus that Self-love seems to be understood
by Butler[83] and other English moralists after him; as a desire
of one’s own pleasure generally, and of the greatest amount of it
obtainable, from whatever source it may be obtained. In fact, it
is upon this generality and comprehensiveness that the ‘authority’
and ‘reasonableness’ attributed to Self-love in Butler’s system are
founded. For satisfaction or pleasure of some kind results from
gratifying any impulse; thus when antagonistic impulses compete for
the determination of the Will, we are prompted by the desire for
pleasure in general to compare the pleasures which we foresee will
respectively attend the gratification of either impulse, and when we
have ascertained which set of pleasures is the greatest, Self-love
or the desire for pleasure in general reinforces the corresponding
impulse. It is thus called into play whenever impulses conflict, and
is therefore naturally regulative and directive (as Butler argues) of
other springs of action. On this view, so far as Self-love operates,
we merely consider the _amount_ of pleasure or satisfaction: to use
Bentham’s illustration, “quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is
as good as poetry.”
This position, however, seems to many offensively paradoxical; and
J. S. Mill[84] in his development of Bentham’s doctrine thought it
desirable to abandon it and to take into account differences in quality
among pleasures as well as differences in degree. Now here we may
observe, first, that it is quite consistent with the view quoted as
Bentham’s to describe some kinds of pleasure as inferior in quality to
others, if by ‘a pleasure’ we mean (as is often meant) a whole state of
consciousness which is only partly pleasurable; and still more if we
take into view subsequent states. For many pleasures are not free from
pain even while enjoyed; and many more have painful consequences. Such
pleasures are, in Bentham’s phrase, “impure”: and as the pain has to be
set off as a drawback in valuing the pleasure, it is in accordance with
strictly quantitative measurement of pleasure to call them inferior
in kind. And again, we must be careful not to confound intensity of
_pleasure_ with intensity of _sensation_: as a pleasant feeling may be
strong and absorbing, and yet not so pleasant as another that is more
subtle and delicate. With these explanations, it seems to me that in
order to work out consistently the method that takes pleasure as the
sole ultimate end of rational conduct, Bentham’s proposition must be
accepted, and all _qualitative_ comparison of pleasures must really
resolve itself into quantitative. For all pleasures are understood
to be so called because they have a common property of pleasantness,
and may therefore be compared in respect of this common property. If,
then, what we are seeking is pleasure as such, and pleasure alone, we
must evidently always prefer the more pleasant pleasure to the less
pleasant: no other choice seems reasonable, unless we are aiming at
something besides pleasure. And often when we say that one kind of
pleasure is better than another--as (_e.g._) that the pleasures of
reciprocated affection are superior in quality to the pleasures of
gratified appetite--we mean that they are more pleasant. No doubt we
may mean something else: we may mean, for instance, that they are
nobler and more elevated, although less pleasant. But then we are
clearly introducing a non-hedonistic ground of preference: and if this
is done, the method adopted is a perplexing mixture of Intuitionism and
Hedonism.
To sum up: Egoism, if we merely understand by it a method that aims
at Self-realisation, seems to be a form into which almost any ethical
system may be thrown, without modifying its essential characteristics.
And even when further defined Egoistic Hedonism, it is still
imperfectly distinguishable from Intuitionism if quality of pleasures
is admitted as a consideration distinct from and overruling quantity.
There remains then Pure or Quantitative Egoistic Hedonism, which, as
a method essentially distinct from all others and widely maintained
to be rational, seems to deserve a detailed examination. According to
this the rational agent regards quantity of consequent pleasure and
pain to himself as alone important in choosing between alternatives of
action; and seeks always the greatest attainable surplus of pleasure
over pain--which, without violation of usage, we may designate as
his ‘greatest happiness.’ It seems to be this view and attitude of
mind which is most commonly intended by the vaguer terms ‘egoism,’
‘egoistic’: and therefore I shall allow myself to use these terms in
this more precise signification.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] Thus the end for which an individual is supposed to renounce the
unlimited rights of the State of Nature is said (_Leviathan_, chap.
xiv.) to be “nothing else but the security of a man’s person in this
life, and the means of preserving life so as not to be weary of it.”
[79] Schiller’s _Wallenstein_.
[80] I shall afterwards try to explain how it comes about that, in
modern thought, the proposition ‘My own Good is my only reasonable
ultimate end’ is not a mere tautology, even though we define ‘Good’ as
that at which it is ultimately reasonable to aim. Cf. _post_, chap. ix.
and Book iii. chaps. xiii. xiv.
[81] Aristotle’s selection of εὐδαιμονία to denote what he
elsewhere calls “Human” or “Practicable” good, and the fact that,
after all, we have no better rendering for εὐδαιμονία than
“Happiness” or “Felicity,” has caused no little misunderstanding of his
system. Thus when Stewart (_Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers_,
Book ii. chap. ii.) says that “by many of the best of the ancient
moralists ... the whole of ethics was reduced to this question ... What
is most conducive on the whole to our happiness?” the remark, if not
exactly false, is certain to mislead his readers; since by Stewart,
as by most English writers, “Happiness” is definitely conceived as
consisting of “Pleasures” or “Enjoyments.”
[82] Thus Green (_Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book iii. chap. iv. § 228)
says, “It is the realisation of those objects in which we are mainly
interested, _not the succession of enjoyments which we shall experience
in realising them_, that forms the definite content of our idea of
true happiness, so far as it has such content at all.” Cf. also § 238.
It is more remarkable to find J. S. Mill (_Utilitarianism_, chap.
iv.) declaring that “money”--no less than “power” or “fame”--comes by
association of ideas to be “a part of happiness,” an “ingredient in
the individual’s conception of happiness.” But this seems to be a mere
looseness of phraseology, venial in a treatise aiming at a popular
style; since Mill has expressly said that “by happiness is intended
pleasure and the absence of pain,” and he cannot mean that money is
either the one or the other. In fact he uses in the same passage--as
an alternative phrase for “parts of happiness”--the phrases “sources
of happiness” and “sources of pleasure”: and his real meaning is more
precisely expressed by these latter terms. That is, the distinction
which he is really concerned to emphasise is that between the state
of mind in which money is valued solely as a means of buying other
things, and the state of mind--such as the miser’s--in which the mere
consciousness of possessing it gives pleasure, apart from any idea of
spending it.
[83] See Sermon XI. “... the cool principle of self-love or general
desire of our own happiness.”
[84] _Utilitarianism_, chap. ii.
CHAPTER VIII
INTUITIONISM
§ 1. I have used the term ‘Intuitional’ to denote the view of ethics
which regards as the practically ultimate end of moral actions their
conformity to certain rules or dictates[85] of Duty unconditionally
prescribed. There is, however, considerable ambiguity as to the exact
antithesis implied by the terms ‘intuition,’ ‘intuitive,’ and their
congeners, as currently used in ethical discussion, which we must now
endeavour to remove. Writers who maintain that we have ‘intuitive
knowledge’ of the rightness of actions usually mean that this rightness
is ascertained by simply “looking at” the actions themselves, without
considering their ulterior consequences. This view, indeed, can hardly
be extended to the whole range of duty; since no morality ever existed
which did not consider ulterior consequences to some extent. Prudence
or Forethought has commonly been reckoned a virtue: and all modern
lists of Virtues have included Rational Benevolence, which aims at the
happiness of other human beings generally, and therefore necessarily
takes into consideration even remote effects of actions. It must be
observed, too, that it is difficult to draw the line between an act and
its consequences: as the effects consequent on each of our volitions
form a continuous series of indefinite extension, and we seem to be
conscious of causing all these effects, so far as at the moment of
volition we foresee them to be probable. However, we find that in the
common notions of different kinds of actions, a line is actually drawn
between the results included in the notion and regarded as forming part
of the act, and those considered as its consequences. For example,
in speaking truth to a jury, I may possibly foresee that my words,
operating along with other statements and indications, will unavoidably
lead them to a wrong conclusion as to the guilt or innocence of
the accused, as certainly as I foresee that they will produce a
right impression as to the particular matter of fact to which I am
testifying: still, we should commonly consider the latter foresight or
intention to determine the nature of the act as an act of veracity,
while the former merely relates to a consequence. We must understand
then that the disregard of consequences, which the Intuitional view is
here taken to imply, only relates to certain determinate classes of
action (such as Truth-speaking) where common usage of terms adequately
defines what events are to be included in the general notions of the
acts, and what regarded as their consequences.
But again: we have to observe that men may and do judge remote as well
as immediate results to be in themselves good, and such as we ought to
seek to realise, without considering them in relation to the feelings
of sentient beings. I have already assumed this to be the view of those
who adopt the general Perfection, as distinct from the Happiness, of
human society as their ultimate end; and it would seem to be the view
of many who concentrate their efforts on some more particular results,
other than morality, such as the promotion of Art or Knowledge. Such
a view, if expressly distinguished from Hedonism, might properly be
classed as Intuitional, but in a sense wider than that defined in
the preceding paragraph: _i.e._ it would be meant that the results in
question are judged to be good _immediately_, and not by inference from
experience of the pleasures which they produce. We have, therefore,
to admit a wider use of ‘Intuition,’ as equivalent to ‘immediate
judgment as to what ought to be done or aimed at.’ It should, however,
be observed that the current contrast between ‘intuitive’ or ‘_a
priori_’ and ‘inductive’ or ‘_a posteriori_’ morality commonly involves
a certain confusion of thought. For what the ‘inductive’ moralist
professes to know by induction, is commonly not the same thing as what
the ‘intuitive’ moralist professes to know by intuition. In the former
case it is the conduciveness to pleasure of certain kinds of action
that is methodically ascertained: in the latter case, their rightness:
there is therefore no proper opposition. If Hedonism claims to give
authoritative guidance, this can only be in virtue of the principle
that pleasure is the only reasonable ultimate end of human action: and
this principle cannot be known by induction from experience. Experience
can at most tell us that all men always do seek pleasure as their
ultimate end (that it does not support this conclusion I have already
tried to show): it cannot tell us that any one ought so to seek it.
If this latter proposition is legitimately affirmed in respect either
of private or of general happiness, it must either be immediately
known to be true,--and therefore, we may say, a moral intuition--or be
inferred ultimately from premises which include at least one such moral
intuition; hence either species of Hedonism, regarded from the point
of view primarily[86] taken in this treatise, might be legitimately
said to be in a certain sense ‘intuitional.’ It seems, however, to be
the prevailing opinion of ordinary moral persons, and of most of the
writers who have maintained the existence of moral intuitions, that
certain kinds of actions are unconditionally prescribed without regard
to ulterior consequences: and I have accordingly treated this doctrine
as a distinguishing characteristic of the Intuitional method, during
the main[87] part of the detailed examination of that method which I
attempt in Book iii.
§ 2. Further; the common antithesis between ‘intuitive’ and ‘inductive’
morality is misleading in another way: since a moralist may hold the
rightness of actions to be cognisable apart from the pleasure produced
by them, while yet his method may be properly called Inductive. For he
may hold that, just as the generalisations of physical science rest
on particular observations, so in ethics general truths can only be
reached by induction from judgments or perceptions relating to the
rightness or wrongness of particular acts.
For example, when Socrates is said by Aristotle to have applied
inductive reasoning to ethical questions, it is this kind of induction
which is meant.[88] He discovered, as we are told, the latent ignorance
of himself and other men: that is, that they used general terms
confidently, without being able, when called upon, to explain the
meaning of those terms. His plan for remedying this ignorance was
to work towards the true definition of each term, by examining and
comparing different instances of its application. Thus the definition
of Justice would be sought by comparing different actions commonly
judged to be just, and framing a general proposition that would
harmonise with all these particular judgments.
So again, in the popular view of Conscience it seems to be often
implied that particular judgments are the most trustworthy.
‘Conscience’ is the accepted popular term for the faculty of moral
judgment, as applied to the acts and motives of the person judging;
and we most commonly think of the dictates of conscience as relating
to particular actions. Thus when a man is bidden, in any particular
case, to ‘trust to his conscience,’ it commonly seems to be meant
that he should exercise a faculty of judging morally this particular
case without reference to general rules, and even in opposition to
conclusions obtained by systematic deduction from such rules. And
it is on this view of Conscience that the contempt often expressed
for ‘Casuistry’ may be most easily justified: for if the particular
case can be satisfactorily settled by conscience without reference
to general rules, ‘Casuistry,’ which consists in the application
of general rules to particular cases, is at best superfluous. But
then, on this view, we shall have no practical need of any such
general rules, or of scientific Ethics at all. We may of course form
general propositions by induction from these particular conscientious
judgments, and arrange them systematically: but any interest which
such a system may have will be purely speculative. And this accounts,
perhaps, for the indifference or hostility to systematic morality
shown by some conscientious persons. For they feel that they can at
any rate do without it: and they fear that the cultivation of it may
place the mind in a wrong attitude in relation to practice, and prove
rather unfavourable than otherwise to the proper development of the
practically important faculty manifested or exercised in particular
moral judgments.
The view above described may be called, in a sense,
‘ultra-intuitional,’ since, in its most extreme form, it recognises
simple immediate intuitions alone and discards as superfluous all modes
of reasoning to moral conclusions: and we may find in it one phase or
variety of the Intuitional method,--if we may extend the term ‘method’
to include a procedure that is completed in a single judgment.
§ 3. But though probably all moral agents have experience of such
particular intuitions, and though they constitute a great part of the
moral phenomena of most minds, comparatively few are so thoroughly
satisfied with them, as not to feel a need of some further moral
knowledge even from a strictly practical point of view. For these
particular intuitions do not, to reflective persons, present themselves
as quite indubitable and irrefragable: nor do they always find when
they have put an ethical question to themselves with all sincerity,
that they are conscious of clear immediate insight in respect of
it. Again, when a man compares the utterances of his conscience at
different times, he often finds it difficult to make them altogether
consistent: the same conduct will wear a different moral aspect at one
time from that which it wore at another, although our knowledge of
its circumstances and conditions is not materially changed. Further,
we become aware that the moral perceptions of different minds, to
all appearance equally competent to judge, frequently conflict: one
condemns what another approves. In this way serious doubts are aroused
as to the validity of each man’s particular moral judgments: and we are
led to endeavour to set these doubts at rest by appealing to general
rules, more firmly established on a basis of common consent.
And in fact, though the view of conscience above discussed is one
which much popular language seems to suggest, it is not that which
Christian and other moralists have usually given. They have rather
represented the process of conscience as analogous to one of jural
reasoning, such as is conducted in a Court of Law. Here we have always
a system of universal rules given, and any particular action has to be
brought under one of these rules before it can be pronounced lawful or
unlawful. Now the rules of positive law are usually not discoverable
by the individual’s reason: this may teach him that law ought to be
obeyed, but what law is must, in the main, be communicated to him
from some external authority. And this is not unfrequently the case
with the conscientious reasoning of ordinary persons when any dispute
or difficulty forces them to reason: they have a genuine impulse to
conform to the right rules of conduct, but they are not conscious, in
difficult or doubtful cases, of seeing for themselves what these are:
they have to inquire of their priest, or their sacred books, or perhaps
the common opinion of the society to which they belong. In so far as
this is the case we cannot strictly call their method Intuitional.
They follow rules generally received, not intuitively apprehended.
Other persons, however (or perhaps all to some extent), do seem to
see for themselves the truth[89] and bindingness of all or most of
these current rules. They may still put forward ‘common consent’ as an
argument for the validity of these rules: but only as supporting the
individual’s intuition, not as a substitute for it or as superseding it.
Here then we have a second Intuitional Method: of which the fundamental
assumption is that we can discern certain general rules with really
clear and finally valid intuition. It is held that such general rules
are implicit in the moral reasoning of ordinary men, who apprehend
them adequately for most practical purposes, and are able to enunciate
them roughly; but that to state them with proper precision requires
a special habit of contemplating clearly and steadily abstract moral
notions. It is held that the moralist’s function then is to perform
this process of abstract contemplation, to arrange the results as
systematically as possible, and by proper definitions and explanations
to remove vagueness and prevent conflict. It is such a system as this
which seems to be generally intended when Intuitive or _a priori_
morality is mentioned, and which will chiefly occupy us in Book iii.
§ 4. By philosophic minds, however, the ‘Morality of Common Sense’ (as
I have ventured to call it), even when made as precise and orderly as
possible, is often found unsatisfactory as a system, although they have
no disposition to question its general authority. It is found difficult
to accept as scientific first principles the moral generalities that
we obtain by reflection on the ordinary thought of mankind, even
though we share this thought. Even granting that these rules can be so
defined as perfectly to fit together and cover the whole field of human
conduct, without coming into conflict and without leaving any practical
questions unanswered,--still the resulting code seems an accidental
aggregate of precepts, which stands in need of some rational synthesis.
In short, without being disposed to deny that conduct commonly
judged to be right is so, we may yet require some deeper explanation
_why_ it is so. From this demand springs a third species or phase of
Intuitionism, which, while accepting the morality of common sense as in
the main sound, still attempts to find for it a philosophic basis which
it does not itself offer: to get one or more principles more absolutely
and undeniably true and evident, from which the current rules might
be deduced, either just as they are commonly received or with slight
modifications and rectifications.[90]
The three phases of Intuitionism just described may be treated as
three stages in the formal development of Intuitive Morality: we may
term them respectively Perceptional, Dogmatic, and Philosophical. The
last-mentioned I have only defined in the vaguest way: in fact, as
yet I have presented it only as a problem, of which it is impossible
to foresee how many solutions may be attempted: but it does not seem
desirable to investigate it further at present, as it will be more
satisfactorily studied after examining in detail the Morality of Common
Sense.
It must not be thought that these three phases are sharply
distinguished in the moral reasoning of ordinary men: but then no more
is Intuitionism of any sort sharply distinguished from either species
of Hedonism. A loose combination or confusion of methods is the most
common type of actual moral reasoning. Probably most moral men believe
that their moral sense or instinct in any case will guide them fairly
right, but also that there are general rules for determining right
action in different departments of conduct: and that for these again
it is possible to find a philosophical explanation, by which they may
be deduced from a smaller number of fundamental principles. Still for
systematic direction of conduct, we require to know on what judgments
we are to rely as ultimately valid.
So far I have been mainly concerned with differences in intuitional
method due to difference of generality in the intuitive beliefs
recognised as ultimately valid. There is, however, another class of
differences arising from a variation of view as to the precise quality
immediately apprehended in the moral intuition. These are peculiarly
subtle and difficult to fix in clear and precise language, and I
therefore reserve them for a separate chapter.
NOTE.--Intuitional moralists have not always taken sufficient
care in expounding their system to make clear whether they regard
as ultimately valid, moral judgments on single acts, or general
rules prescribing particular kinds of acts, or more universal and
fundamental principles. For example, Dugald Stewart uses the term
“perception” to denote the immediate operation of the moral faculty;
at the same time, in describing what is thus perceived, he always
seems to have in view general rules.
Still we can tolerably well distinguish among English ethical writers
those who have confined themselves mainly to the definition and
arrangement of the Morality of Common Sense, from those who have
aimed at a more philosophical treatment of the content of moral
intuition. And we find that the distinction corresponds in the main
to a difference of periods: and that--what perhaps we should hardly
have expected--the more philosophical school is the earlier. The
explanation of this may be partly found by referring to the doctrines
in antagonism to which, in the respective periods, the Intuitional
method asserted and developed itself. In the first period all orthodox
moralists were occupied in refuting Hobbism. But this system, though
based on Materialism and Egoism, was yet intended as ethically
constructive. Accepting in the main the commonly received rules of
social morality, it explained them as the conditions of peaceful
existence which enlightened self-interest directed each individual to
obey; provided only the social order to which they belonged was not
merely ideal, but made actual by a strong government. Now no doubt
this view renders the theoretical basis of duty seriously unstable;
still, assuming a decently good government, Hobbism may claim to at
once explain and establish, instead of undermining, the morality
of Common Sense. And therefore, though some of Hobbes’ antagonists
(as Cudworth) contented themselves with simply reaffirming the
absoluteness of morality, the more thoughtful felt that system must
be met by system and explanation by explanation, and that they must
penetrate beyond the dogmas of common sense to some more irrefragable
certainty. And so, while Cumberland found this deeper basis in the
notion of “the common good of all Rationals” as an ultimate end,
Clarke sought to exhibit the more fundamental of the received rules
as axioms of perfect self-evidence, necessarily forced upon the
mind in contemplating human beings and their relations. Clarke’s
results, however, were not found satisfactory: and by degrees the
attempt to exhibit morality as a body of scientific truth fell into
discredit, and the disposition to dwell on the emotional side of the
moral consciousness became prevalent. But when ethical discussion
thus passed over into psychological analysis and classification, the
conception of the objectivity of duty, on which the authority of moral
sentiment depends, fell gradually out of view: for example, we find
Hutcheson asking why the moral sense should not vary in different
human beings, as the palate does, without dreaming that there is any
peril to morality in admitting such variations as legitimate. When,
however, the new doctrine was endorsed by the dreaded name of Hume,
its dangerous nature, and the need of bringing again into prominence
the cognitive element of moral consciousness, were clearly seen: and
this work was undertaken as a part of the general philosophic protest
of the Scottish School against the Empiricism that had culminated
in Hume. But this school claimed as its characteristic merit that
it met Empiricism on its own ground, and showed among the facts of
psychological experience which the Empiricist professed to observe,
the assumptions which he repudiated. And thus in Ethics it was led
rather to expound and reaffirm the morality of Common Sense, than to
offer any profounder principles which could not be so easily supported
by an appeal to common experience.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] I use the term “dictates” to include the view afterwards mentioned
(§ 2) in which the ultimately valid moral imperatives are conceived as
relating to particular acts.
[86] I have explained in the concluding paragraph of chap. iii. that a
different view of hedonistic systems is admissible.
[87] The wider of the two meanings of ‘Intuition’ here distinguished is
required in treating of Philosophical Intuitionism. See Book iii. chap.
xiii.
[88] It must, however, be remembered that Aristotle regarded the
general proposition obtained by induction as really more certain (and
in a higher sense knowledge) than the particulars through which the
mind is led up to it.
[89] Strictly speaking, the attributes of truth and falsehood only
belong formally to Rules when they are changed from the imperative mood
(“Do _X_”) into the indicative (“_X_ ought to be done”).
[90] It should be observed that such principles will not necessarily
be “intuitional” in the narrower sense that excludes consequences; but
only in the wider sense as being self-evident principles relating to
‘what ought to be.’
CHAPTER IX
GOOD
§ 1. We have hitherto spoken of the quality of conduct discerned by
our moral faculty as ‘rightness,’ which is the term commonly used by
English moralists. We have regarded this term, and its equivalents in
ordinary use, as implying the existence of a dictate or imperative of
reason, which prescribes certain actions either unconditionally, or
with reference to some ulterior end.
It is, however, possible to take a view of virtuous action in which,
though the validity of moral intuitions is not disputed, this notion
of rule or dictate is at any rate only latent or implicit, the moral
ideal being presented as attractive rather than imperative. Such a view
seems to be taken when the action to which we are morally prompted,
or the quality of character manifested in it, is judged to be ‘good’
in itself (and not merely as a means to some ulterior Good). This,
as was before noticed, was the fundamental ethical conception in
the Greek schools of Moral Philosophy generally; including even the
Stoics, though their system, from the prominence that it gives to the
conception of Natural Law, forms a transitional link between ancient
and modern ethics. And this historical illustration may serve to
exhibit one important result of substituting the idea of ‘goodness’ for
that of ‘rightness’ of conduct, which at first sight might be thought
a merely verbal change. For the chief characteristics of ancient
ethical controversy as distinguished from modern may be traced to the
employment of a generic notion instead of a specific one in expressing
the common moral judgments on actions. Virtue or Right action is
commonly regarded as only a species of the Good: and so, on this view
of the moral intuition, the first question that offers itself, when we
endeavour to systematise conduct, is how to determine the relation of
this species of good to the rest of the genus. It was on this question
that the Greek thinkers argued, from first to last. Their speculations
can scarcely be understood by us unless with a certain effort we throw
the quasi-jural notions of modern ethics aside, and ask (as they did)
not “What is Duty and what is its ground?” but “Which of the objects
that men think good is truly Good or the Highest Good?” or, in the more
specialised form of the question which the moral intuition introduces,
“What is the relation of the kind of Good we call Virtue, the qualities
of conduct and character which men commend and admire, to other good
things?”
This, then, is the first difference to be noticed between the two
forms of the intuitive judgment. In the recognition of conduct as
‘right’ is involved an authoritative prescription to do it: but when we
have judged conduct to be good, it is not yet clear that we ought to
prefer this kind of good to all other good things: some standard for
estimating the relative values of different ‘goods’ has still to be
sought.
I propose, then, to examine the import of the notion ‘Good’ in the
whole range of its application;--premising that, as it is for the
constituents of Ultimate Good that we require a standard of comparison,
we are not directly concerned with anything that is clearly only good
as a means to the attainment of some ulterior end. If, indeed, we had
only this latter case to consider, it would be plausible to interpret
‘good’ without reference to human desire or choice, as meaning merely
‘fit’ or ‘adapted’ for the production of certain effects--a good horse
for riding, a good gun for shooting, etc. But as we apply the notion
also to ultimate ends, we must seek a meaning for it which will cover
both applications.
§ 2. There is, however, a simple interpretation of the term--which is
widely maintained to be the true one--according to which everything
which we judge to be good is implicitly conceived as a means to
the end of pleasure, even when we do not make in our judgment any
explicit reference to this or any other ulterior end. On this view,
any comparison of things in respect of their ‘goodness’ would seem
to be really a comparison of them as sources of pleasure; so that any
attempt to systematise our intuitions of goodness, whether in conduct
and character or in other things, must reasonably lead us straight to
Hedonism. And no doubt, if we consider the application of the term,
outside the sphere of character and conduct, to things that are not
definitely regarded as means to the attainment of some ulterior object
of desire, we find a close correspondence between our apprehension
of pleasure derived from an object, and our recognition that the
object is in itself ‘good.’ The good things of life are things which
give pleasure, whether sensual or emotional: as good dinners, wines,
poems, pictures, music: and this gives a _prima facie_ support to the
interpretation of ‘good’ as equivalent to ‘pleasant.’ I think, however,
that if we reflect on the application of the term to the cases most
analogous to that of conduct--_i.e._ to what we may call ‘objects of
taste’--we shall find that this interpretation of it has not clearly
the support of common sense. In the first place, allowing that the
judgment that any object is good of its kind is closely connected with
the apprehension of pleasure derived from it, we must observe that
it is generally to a specific kind of pleasure that the affirmation
of goodness corresponds; and that if the object happens to give us
pleasure of a different kind, we do not therefore call it good--at
least without qualification. For instance, we should not call a wine
good solely because it was very wholesome; nor a poem on account of
its moral lessons. And hence when we come to consider the meaning of
the term ‘good’ as applied to conduct, there is no reason, so far,
to suppose that it has any reference or correspondence to _all_ the
pleasures that may result from the conduct. Rather the perception
of goodness or virtue in actions would seem to be analogous to the
perception of beauty[91] in material things: which is normally
accompanied with a specific pleasure which we call ‘æsthetic,’ but
has often no discoverable relation to the general usefulness or
agreeableness of the thing discerned to be beautiful: indeed, we often
recognise this kind of excellence in things hurtful and dangerous.
But further: as regards æsthetic pleasures, and the sources of such
pleasures that we commonly judge to be good, it is the received opinion
that some persons have more and others less ‘good taste’: and it is
only the judgment of persons of good taste that we recognise as valid
in respect of the real goodness of the things enjoyed. We think that of
his own pleasure each individual is the final judge, and there is no
appeal from his decision,--at least so far as he is comparing pleasures
within his actual experience; but the affirmation of goodness in any
object involves the assumption of a universally valid standard, which,
as we believe, the judgment of persons to whom we attribute good taste
approximately represents. And it seems clear that the term ‘good’ as
applied to ‘taste’ does not mean ‘pleasant’; it merely imports the
conformity of the æsthetic judgment so characterised to the supposed
ideal, deviation from which implies error and defect. Nor does it
appear to be always the person of best taste who derives the greatest
enjoyment from any kind of good and pleasant things. We are familiar
with the fact that connoisseurs of wines, pictures, etc., often retain
their intellectual faculty of appraising the merits of the objects
which they criticise, and deciding on their respective places in the
scale of excellence, even when their susceptibilities to pleasure
from these objects are comparatively blunted and exhausted. And more
generally we see that freshness and fulness of feeling by no means go
along with taste and judgment: and that a person who possesses the
former may derive more pleasure from inferior objects than another may
from the best.
To sum up: the general admission that things which are called ‘good’
are productive of pleasure, and that the former quality is inseparable
in thought from the latter, does not involve the inference that the
common estimates of the goodness of conduct may be fairly taken as
estimates of the amount of pleasure resulting from it. For (1) analogy
would lead us to conclude that the attribution of goodness, in the case
of conduct as of objects of taste generally, may correspond not to all
the pleasure that is caused by the conduct, but to a specific pleasure,
in this case the contemplative satisfaction which the conduct causes to
a disinterested spectator: and (2) it may not excite even this specific
pleasure generally in proportion to its goodness, but only (at most) in
persons of good moral taste: and even in their case we can distinguish
the intellectual apprehension of goodness--which involves the
conception of an ideal objective standard--from the pleasurable emotion
which commonly accompanies it; and may suppose the latter element of
consciousness diminished almost indefinitely.
Finally, when we pass from the _adjective_ to the _substantive_
‘good,’ it is at once evident that this latter cannot be understood as
equivalent to ‘pleasure’ or ‘happiness’ by any persons who affirm--as
a significant proposition and not as a mere tautology--that the
Pleasure or Happiness of human beings is their Good or Ultimate
Good. Such affirmation, which would, I think, be ordinarily made by
Hedonists, obviously implies that the _meaning_ of the two terms is
different, however closely their denotation may coincide. And it does
not seem that any fundamental difference of meaning is implied by the
grammatical variation from adjective to substantive.
§ 3. What then can we state as the general meaning of the term ‘good’?
Shall we say--with Hobbes, and many since Hobbes--that ‘whatsoever
is the object of any man’s Desire, that it is which he for his part
calleth Good, and the object of his aversion, Evil’? To simplify the
discussion, we will consider only what a man desires for itself--not
as a means to an ulterior result,--and for himself--not benevolently
for others: his own Good[92] and ultimate Good. We have first to meet
the obvious objection that a man often desires what he knows is on the
whole bad for him: the pleasure of drinking champagne which is sure
to disagree with him, the gratification of revenge when he knows that
his true interest lies in reconciliation. The answer is that in such
cases the desired result is accompanied or followed by other effects
which when they come excite aversion stronger than the desire for the
desired effect: but that these bad effects, though fore-_seen_ are not
fore-_felt_: the representation of them does not adequately modify
the predominant direction of desire as a present fact. But, granting
this, and fixing attention solely on the result desired, apart from
its concomitants and consequences--it would still seem that what is
desired at any time is, as such, merely apparent Good, which may not
be found good when fruition comes, or at any rate not so good as it
appeared. It may turn out a ‘Dead Sea apple,’ mere dust and ashes in
the eating: more often, fruition will partly correspond to expectation,
but may still fall short of it in a marked degree. And sometimes--even
while yielding to the desire--we are aware of the illusoriness of this
expectation of ‘good’ which the desire carries with it. I conclude,
therefore, that if we are to conceive of the elements of ultimate
Good as capable of quantitative comparison--as we do when we speak of
preferring a ‘greater’ good to a ‘lesser,’--we cannot identify the
object of desire with ‘good’ simply, or ‘true good,’ but only with
‘apparent good.’
But further: a prudent man is accustomed to suppress, with more or less
success, desires for what he regards as out of his power to attain
by voluntary action--as fine weather, perfect health, great wealth
or fame, etc.; but any success he may have in diminishing the actual
intensity of such desires has no effect in leading him to judge the
objects desired less ‘good.’
It would seem then, that if we interpret the notion ‘good’ in relation
to ‘desire,’ we must identify it not with the actually _desired_, but
rather with the _desirable_:--meaning by ‘desirable’ not necessarily
‘what _ought_ to be desired’ but what would be desired, with strength
proportioned to the degree of desirability, if it were judged
attainable by voluntary action, supposing the desirer to possess a
perfect forecast, emotional as well as intellectual, of the state of
attainment or fruition.
It still remains possible that the choice of any particular good, thus
defined as an object of pursuit, may be on the whole bad, on account
of its concomitants and consequences; even though the particular
result when attained is not found other than it was imagined in the
condition of previous desire. If, therefore, in seeking a definition
of ‘ultimate Good’ we mean ‘good on the whole,’ we have--following the
line of thought of the preceding paragraph--to express its relation to
Desire differently. In the first place we have to limit our view to
desire which becomes practical in volition; as I may still regard as
desirable results which I judge it on the whole imprudent to aim at.
But, even with this limitation, the relation of my ‘good on the whole’
to my desire is very complicated. For it is not even sufficient to say
that my Good on the whole is what I should actually desire and seek if
all the consequences of seeking it could be foreknown and adequately
realised by me in imagination at the time of making my choice. No doubt
an equal regard for all the moments of our conscious experience--so
far, at least, as the mere difference of their position in time is
concerned--is an essential characteristic of rational conduct. But the
mere fact, that a man does not afterwards feel for the consequences of
an action aversion strong enough to cause him to regret it, cannot be
accepted as a complete proof that he has acted for his ‘good on the
whole.’ Indeed, we commonly reckon it among the worst consequences
of some kinds of conduct that they alter men’s tendencies to desire,
and make them desire their lesser good more than their greater: and
we think it all the worse for a man--even in this world--if he is
never roused out of such a condition and lives till death the life of
a contented pig, when he might have been something better. To avoid
this objection, it would have to be said that a man’s future good on
the whole is what he would now desire and seek on the whole if all
the consequences of all the different lines of conduct open to him
were accurately foreseen and adequately realised in imagination at the
present point of time.
This hypothetical composition of impulsive forces involves so
elaborate and complex a conception, that it is somewhat paradoxical
to say that this is what we commonly _mean_ when we talk of a man’s
‘good on the whole.’ Still, I cannot deny that this hypothetical
object of a resultant desire supplies an intelligible and admissible
interpretation of the terms ‘good’ (substantive) and ‘desirable,’
as giving philosophical precision to the vaguer meaning with which
they are used in ordinary discourse: and it would seem that a calm
comprehensive desire for ‘good’ conceived somewhat in this way, though
more vaguely, is normally produced by intellectual comparison and
experience in a reflective mind. The notion of ‘Good’ thus attained
has an ideal element: it is something that _is_ not always actually
desired and aimed at by human beings: but the ideal element is entirely
interpretable in terms of _fact_, actual or hypothetical, and does not
introduce any judgment of value, fundamentally distinct from judgments
relating to existence;--still less any ‘dictate of Reason.’[93]
It seems to me, however, more in accordance with common sense to
recognise--as Butler does--that the calm desire for my ‘good on the
whole’ is _authoritative_; and therefore carries with it implicitly
a rational dictate to aim at this end, if in any case a conflicting
desire urges the will in an opposite direction. Still we may keep the
notion of ‘dictate’ or ‘imperative’ merely implicit and latent,--as it
seems to be in ordinary judgments as to ‘my good’ and its opposite--by
interpreting ‘ultimate good on the whole for me’ to mean what I should
practically desire if my desires were in harmony with reason, assuming
my own existence alone to be considered. On this view, “ultimate good
on the whole,” unqualified by reference to a particular subject, must
be taken to mean what as a rational being I should desire and seek to
realise, assuming myself to have an equal concern for _all_ existence.
When conduct is judged to be ‘good’ or ‘desirable’ in itself,
independently of its consequences, it is, I conceive, this latter point
of view that is taken. Such a judgment differs, as I have said, from
the judgment that conduct is ‘right,’ in so far as it does not involve
a definite precept to perform it; since it still leaves it an open
question whether this particular kind of good is the greatest good that
we can under the circumstances obtain. It differs further, as we may
now observe, in so far as good or excellent actions are not implied to
be in our power in the same strict sense as ‘right’ actions--any more
than any other good things: and in fact there are many excellences
of behaviour which we cannot attain by any effort of will, at least
directly and at the moment: hence we often feel that the recognition
of goodness in the conduct of others does not carry with it a clear
precept to do likewise, but rather
the vague desire
That stirs an imitative will.
In so far as this is the case Goodness of Conduct becomes an ulterior
end, the attainment of which lies outside and beyond the range of
immediate volition.
§ 4. It remains to consider by what standard the value of conduct or
character,[94] thus intuitively judged to be good in itself, is to be
co-ordinated and compared with that of other good things. I shall not
now attempt to establish such a standard; but a little reflection may
enable us to limit considerably the range of comparison for which it
is required. For I think that if we consider carefully such permanent
results as are commonly judged to be good, other than qualities of
human beings, we can find nothing that, on reflection, appears to
possess this quality of goodness out of relation to human existence, or
at least to some consciousness or feeling.[95]
For example, we commonly judge some inanimate objects, scenes, etc. to
be good as possessing beauty, and others bad from ugliness: still no
one would consider it rational to aim at the production of beauty in
external nature, apart from any possible contemplation of it by human
beings. In fact when beauty is maintained to be objective, it is not
commonly meant that it exists as beauty out of relation to any mind
whatsoever: but only that there is some standard of beauty valid for
all minds.
It may, however, be said that beauty and other results commonly judged
to be good, though we do not conceive them to exist out of relation to
human beings (or at least minds of some kind), are yet so far separable
as ends from the human beings on whom their existence depends, that
their realisation may conceivably come into competition with the
perfection or happiness of these beings. Thus, though beautiful
things cannot be thought worth producing except as possible objects
of contemplation, still a man may devote himself to their production
without any consideration of the persons who are to contemplate them.
Similarly knowledge is a good which cannot exist except in minds; and
yet one may be more interested in the development of knowledge than in
its possession by any particular minds; and may take the former as an
ultimate end without regarding the latter.
Still, as soon as the alternatives are clearly apprehended, it will, I
think, be generally held that beauty, knowledge, and other ideal goods,
as well as all external material things, are only reasonably to be
sought by men in so far as they conduce either (1) to Happiness or (2)
to the Perfection or Excellence of human existence. I say “human,” for
though most utilitarians consider the pleasure (and freedom from pain)
of the inferior animals to be included in the Happiness which they take
as the right and proper end of conduct, no one seems to contend that we
ought to aim at perfecting brutes, except as a means to our ends, or
at least as objects of scientific or æsthetic contemplation for us.
Nor, again, can we include, as a practical end, the existence of beings
above the human. We certainly apply the idea of Good to the Divine
Existence, just as we do to His work, and indeed in a pre-eminent
manner: and when it is said that “we should do all things to the glory
of God,” it may seem to be implied that the existence of God is made
better by our glorifying Him. Still this inference when explicitly
drawn appears somewhat impious; and theologians generally recoil from
it, and refrain from using the notion of a possible addition to the
Goodness of the Divine Existence as a ground of human duty. Nor can the
influence of our actions on other extra-human intelligences besides the
Divine be at present made matter of scientific discussion.
I shall therefore confidently lay down, that if there be any Good other
than Happiness to be sought by man, as an ultimate practical end, it
can only be the Goodness, Perfection, or Excellence of Human Existence.
How far this notion includes more than Virtue, what its precise
relation to Pleasure is, and to what method we shall be logically led
if we accept it as fundamental, are questions which we shall more
conveniently discuss after the detailed examination of these two other
notions, Pleasure and Virtue, in which we shall be engaged in the two
following Books.
FOOTNOTES:
[91] It is, however, necessary to distinguish between the ideas of
_Moral Goodness_ and _Beauty_ as applied to human actions: although
there is much affinity between them, and they have frequently been
identified, especially by the Greek thinkers. No doubt both the ideas
themselves and the corresponding pleasurable emotions, arising on the
contemplation of conduct, are often indistinguishable: a noble action
affects us like a scene, a picture, or a strain of music: and the
delineation of human virtue is an important part of the means which
the artist has at his disposal for producing his peculiar effects.
Still, on looking closer, we see not only that there is much good
conduct which is not beautiful, or at least does not sensibly impress
us as such; but even that certain kinds of crime and wickedness have
a splendour and sublimity of their own. For example, such a career as
Cæsar Borgia’s, as Renan says, is “beau comme une tempête, comme un
abîme.” It is true, I think, that in all such cases the beauty depends
upon the exhibition in the criminal’s conduct of striking gifts and
excellences mingled with the wickedness: but it does not seem that we
can abstract the latter without impairing the æsthetic effect. And
hence I conceive, we have to distinguish the sense of beauty in conduct
from the sense of moral goodness.
[92] It would seem that, according to the common view of ‘good,’ there
are occasions in which an individual’s sacrifice of his own good on
the whole, according to the most rational conception of it that he
can form, would apparently realise greater good for others. Whether,
indeed, such a sacrifice is ever really required, and whether, if so,
it is truly reasonable for the individual to sacrifice his own good
on the whole, are among the profoundest questions of ethics: and I
shall carefully consider them in subsequent chapters (especially Book
iii. chap. xiv.). I here only desire to avoid any prejudgment of these
questions in my definition of ‘my own good.’
[93] As before said (chap. iii. § 4), so far as my ‘good on the whole’
is adopted as an end of action, the notion of ‘ought’--implying a
dictate or imperative of Reason--becomes applicable to the necessary or
fittest means to the attainment of the adopted end.
[94] Character is only known to us through its manifestation in
conduct; and I conceive that in our common recognition of Virtue as
having value in itself, we do not ordinarily distinguish character from
conduct: we do not raise the question whether character is to be valued
for the sake of the conduct in which it is manifested, or conduct for
the sake of the character that it exhibits and develops. How this
question should be answered when it is raised will be more conveniently
considered at a later stage of the discussion. See Book iii. chap. ii.
§ 2, and chap. xiv. § 1.
[95] No doubt there is a point of view, sometimes adopted with great
earnestness, from which the whole universe and not merely a certain
condition of rational or sentient beings is contemplated as ‘very
good’: just as the Creator in Genesis is described as contemplating it.
But such a view can scarcely be developed into a method of Ethics. For
practical purposes, we require to conceive some parts of the universe
as at least less good than they might be. And we do not seem to have
any ground for drawing such a distinction between different portions of
the non-sentient universe, considered in themselves and out of relation
to conscious or sentient beings.
BOOK II
EGOISTIC HEDONISM
CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF EGOISM
§ 1. The object of the present Book is to examine the method of
determining reasonable conduct which has been already defined in
outline under the name of Egoism: taking this term as equivalent to
Egoistic Hedonism, and as implying the adoption of his own greatest
happiness as the ultimate end of each individual’s actions. It may be
doubted whether this ought to be included among received “methods of
_Ethics_”; since there are strong grounds for holding that a system
of morality, satisfactory to the moral consciousness of mankind in
general, cannot be constructed on the basis of simple Egoism. In
subsequent chapters[96] I shall carefully discuss these reasons: at
present it seems sufficient to point to the wide acceptance of the
principle that it is reasonable for a man to act in the manner most
conducive to his own happiness. We find it expressly admitted by
leading representatives both of Intuitionism and of that Universalistic
Hedonism to which I propose to restrict the name of Utilitarianism.
I have already noticed that Bentham, although he puts forward the
greatest happiness of the greatest number as the “true standard of
right and wrong,” yet regards it as “right and proper” that each
individual should aim at his own greatest happiness. And Butler is
equally prepared to grant “that our ideas of happiness and misery
are of all our ideas the nearest and most important to us ... that,
though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to
and pursuit of what is right and good as such; yet, when we sit down
in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other
pursuit till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at
least not contrary to it.”[97]
And even Clarke[98]--notwithstanding the emphatic terms in which he has
maintained that “Virtue truly deserves to be chosen for its own sake
and Vice to be avoided”--yet admits that it is “not truly reasonable
that men by adhering to Virtue should part with their lives, if thereby
they eternally deprived themselves of all possibility of receiving any
advantage from that adherence.”
And, generally, in the ages of Christian faith, it has been obvious
and natural to hold that the realisation of virtue is essentially an
enlightened and far-seeing pursuit of Happiness for the agent. Nor
has this doctrine been held only by persons of a cold and calculating
turn of mind: we find it urged with emphasis by so chivalrous and
high-minded a preacher as Bishop Berkeley. No doubt this is only one
side or element of the Christian view: the opposite doctrine, that an
action done from motives of self-interest is not properly virtuous,
has continually asserted itself as either openly conflicting or in
some manner reconciled with the former. Still the former, though less
refined and elevated, seems to have been the commoner view. Indeed,
it is hardly going too far to say that common sense assumes that
‘interested’ actions, tending to promote the agent’s happiness, are
_prima facie_ reasonable: and that the _onus probandi_ lies with those
who maintain that disinterested conduct, as such, is reasonable.
But, as has been before said, in the common notions of ‘interest,’
‘happiness,’ etc., there is a certain amount of vagueness and
ambiguity: so that in order to fit these terms for the purposes
of scientific discussion, we must, while retaining the main part
of their signification, endeavour to make it more precise. In my
judgment this result is attained if by ‘greatest possible Happiness’
we understand the greatest attainable surplus of pleasure over pain;
the two terms being used, with equally comprehensive meanings, to
include respectively all kinds of agreeable and disagreeable feelings.
Further, if this quantitative definition of the end be accepted,
consistency requires that pleasures should be sought in proportion
to their pleasantness; and therefore the less pleasant consciousness
must not be preferred to the more pleasant, on the ground of any other
qualities that it may possess. The distinctions of _quality_ that Mill
and others urge may still be admitted as grounds of preference, but
only in so far as they can be resolved into distinctions of quantity.
This is the type to which the practical reasoning that is commonly
called ‘Egoistic’ tends to conform, when we rigorously exclude all
ambiguities and inconsistencies: and it is only in this more precise
form that it seems worth while to subject such reasoning to a detailed
examination. We must therefore understand by an Egoist a man who when
two or more courses of action are open to him, ascertains as accurately
as he can the amounts of pleasure and pain that are likely to result
from each, and chooses the one which he thinks will yield him the
greatest surplus of pleasure over pain.
§ 2. It must, however, be pointed out that the adoption of the
fundamental _principle_ of Egoism, as just explained, by no means
necessarily implies the ordinary empirical method of seeking one’s own
pleasure or happiness. A man may aim at the greatest happiness within
his reach, and yet not attempt to ascertain empirically what amount
of pleasure and pain is likely to attend any given course of action;
believing that he has some surer, deductive method for determining
the conduct which will make him most happy in the long-run. He may
believe this on grounds of Positive Religion, because God has promised
happiness as a reward for obedience to certain definite commands: or
on grounds of Natural Religion, because God being just and benevolent
must have so ordered the world that Happiness will in the long-run be
distributed in proportion to Virtue. It is (_e.g._) by a combination of
both these arguments that Paley connects the Universalistic Hedonism
that he adopts as a method for determining duties, with the Egoism
which seems to him self-evident as a fundamental principle of rational
conduct. Or again, a man may connect virtue with happiness by a process
of _a priori_ reasoning, purely ethical; as Aristotle seems to do by
the assumption that the ‘best’ activity will be always attended by
the greatest pleasure as its inseparable concomitant; ‘best’ being
determined by a reference to moral intuition, or to the common moral
opinions of men generally, or of well-bred and well-educated men. Or
the deduction by which Maximum Pleasure is inferred to be the result of
a particular kind of action may be psychological or physiological: we
may have some general theory as to the connexion of pleasure with some
other physical or psychical fact, according to which we can deduce the
amount of pleasure that will attend any particular kind of behaviour:
as (_e.g._) it is widely held that a perfectly healthy and harmonious
exercise of our different bodily and mental functions is the course of
life most conducive to pleasure in the long-run. In this latter case,
though accepting unreservedly the Hedonistic principle, we shall not be
called upon to estimate and compare particular pleasures, but rather to
define the notions of ‘perfect health’ and ‘harmony of functions’ and
consider how these ends may be attained. Still those who advocate such
deductive methods commonly appeal to ordinary experience, at least as
supplying confirmation or verification; and admit that the pleasantness
and painfulness of pleasures and pains are only directly known to the
individual who experiences them. It would seem, therefore, that--at
any rate--the obvious method of Egoistic Hedonism is that which we may
call Empirical-reflective: and it is this I conceive that is commonly
used in egoistic deliberation. It will be well, therefore, to examine
this method in the first instance; to ascertain clearly the assumptions
which it involves, and estimate the exactness of its results.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] See chap. iii. § 2, and chap. v. of this Book.
[97] Butler, Serm. xi.
[98] _Boyle Lectures_ (1705). Prop. i. p. 116.
CHAPTER II
EMPIRICAL HEDONISM
§ 1. The first and most fundamental assumption, involved not only in
the empirical method of Egoistic Hedonism, but in the very conception
of ‘Greatest Happiness’ as an end of action, is the commensurability of
Pleasures and Pains. By this I mean that we must assume the pleasures
sought and the pains shunned to have determinate quantitative relations
to each other; for otherwise they cannot be conceived as possible
elements of a total which we are to seek to make as great as possible.
It is not absolutely necessary to exclude the supposition that there
are some kinds of pleasure so much more pleasant than others, that the
smallest conceivable amount of the former would outweigh the greatest
conceivable amount of the latter; since, if this were ascertained to
be the case, the only result would be that any hedonistic calculation
involving pleasures of the former class might be simplified by
treating those of the latter class as practically non-existent.[99]
I think, however, that in all ordinary prudential reasoning, at any
rate, the assumption is implicitly made that all the pleasures and
pains that man can experience bear a finite ratio to each other in
respect of pleasantness and its opposite. So far as this ratio can be
made definite the Intensity of a pleasure (or pain) can be balanced
against its Duration:[100] for if we conceive one pleasure (or pain),
finite in duration, to be intensively greater than another in some
definite ratio, it seems to be implied in this conception that the
latter if continuously increased in extent--without change in its
intensity--would at a certain point just balance the former in amount.
If pleasures, then, can be arranged in a scale, as greater or less
in some finite degree; we are led to the assumption of a hedonistic
zero, or perfectly neutral feeling, as a point from which the positive
quantity of pleasures may be measured. And this latter assumption
emerges still more clearly when we consider the comparison and
balancing of pleasures with pains, which Hedonism necessarily involves.
For pain must be reckoned as the negative quantity of pleasure, to
be balanced against and subtracted from the positive in estimating
happiness on the whole; we must therefore conceive, as at least ideally
possible, a point of transition in consciousness at which we pass
from the positive to the negative. It is not absolutely necessary to
assume that this strictly indifferent or neutral feeling ever actually
occurs. Still experience seems to show that a state at any rate very
nearly approximating to it is even common: and we certainly experience
continual transitions from pleasure to pain and _vice versa_, and thus
(unless we conceive all such transitions to be abrupt) we must exist at
least momentarily in this neutral state.
In what I have just said, I have by implication denied the paradox
of Epicurus[101] that the state of painlessness is equivalent to
the highest possible pleasure; so that if we can obtain absolute
freedom from pain, the goal of Hedonism is reached, after which
we may vary, but cannot increase, our pleasure. This doctrine is
opposed to common sense and common experience. But it would, I think,
be equally erroneous, on the other hand, to regard this neutral
feeling--hedonistic zero, as I have called it--as the normal condition
of our consciousness, out of which we occasionally sink into pain, and
occasionally rise into pleasure. Nature has not been so niggardly to
man as this: so long as health is retained, and pain and irksome toil
banished, the mere performance of the ordinary habitual functions of
life is, according to my experience, a frequent source of moderate
pleasures, alternating rapidly with states nearly or quite indifferent.
Thus we may venture to say that the ‘apathy’ which so large a
proportion of Greek moralists in the post-Aristotelian period regarded
as the ideal state of existence, was not really conceived by them as
“without one pleasure and without one pain”; but rather as a state of
placid intellectual contemplation, which in philosophic minds might
easily reach a high degree of pleasure.
§ 2. We have yet to give to the notions of pleasure and pain the
precision required for quantitative comparison. In dealing with this
point, and in the rest of the hedonistic discussion, it will be
convenient for the most part to speak of pleasure only, assuming that
pain may be regarded as the negative quantity of pleasure, and that
accordingly any statements made with respect to pleasure may be at once
applied, by obvious changes of phrase, to pain.
The equivalent phrase for Pleasure, according to Mr. Spencer,[102]
is “a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain
there”; and similarly, Mr. Bain says that “pleasure and pain, in the
actual or real experience, are to be held as identical with motive
power.” But--granting that pleasures normally excite desire--it still
does not seem to me that I judge pleasures to be greater and less
exactly in proportion as they stimulate the will to actions tending
to sustain them. Of course neither Mr. Bain nor Mr. Spencer must be
understood to lay down that all pleasures when actually felt actually
stimulate to exertion of some kind; since this is obviously not true of
the pleasures of repose, a warm bath, etc. The stimulus must in such
cases be understood to be latent and potential; only becoming actual
when action is required to prevent the cessation or diminution of the
pleasure. Thus a man enjoying rest after fatigue is vaguely conscious
of a strong clinging to his actual condition, and of a latent readiness
to resist any impulse to change it. Further, the stimulus of moderate
pleasures and pains may become unfelt through habitual repression.
For instance, in a habitually temperate man the stimulus to prolong
the pleasure of eating or drinking usually ceases before the pleasure
ceases: it is only occasionally that he feels the need of controlling
an impulse to eat or drink up to the point of satiety. So again, a
protracted pain of moderate intensity and free from alarm--such as a
dull prolonged toothache--seems sometimes to lose its felt stimulus to
action without losing its character as pain. Here again the stimulus
may be properly conceived as latent: since if asked whether we should
like to get rid of even a mild toothache, we should certainly answer
yes.
But even if we confine our attention to cases where the stimulus is
palpable and strong, Mr. Bain’s identification of “pleasure and pain”
with motive power does not appear to me to accord exactly with our
common empirical judgments. He himself contrasts the “disproportionate
strain of active powers in one direction,” to which “any sudden and
great delight may give rise,” with the “proper frame of mind under
delight,” which is “to inspire no endeavours except what the charm
of the moment justifies.”[103] And he elsewhere explains that “our
pleasurable emotions are all liable to detain the mind unduly,” through
the “atmosphere of excitement” with which they are surrounded, carrying
the mind “beyond the estimate of pleasure and pain, to the state
named ‘passion,’” in which a man is not “moved solely by the strict
value of the pleasure,” but also by “the engrossing power of the
excitement.”[104] It is true that in such cases Mr. Bain seems to hold
that these “disturbances and anomalies of the will _scarcely_ begin
to tell in the actual feeling,”[105] but it seems to me clear that
exciting pleasures are liable to exercise, even when actually felt, a
volitional stimulus out of proportion to their intensity as pleasures;
and Mr. Bain himself seems to recognise this in a passage where he
says that “acute pleasures and pains stimulate the will perhaps more
strongly than an equivalent stimulation of the massive kind.”[106] I
also find that some feelings which stimulate strongly to their own
removal are either not painful at all or only slightly painful:--_e.g._
ordinarily the sensation of being tickled. If this be so, it is
obviously inexact to define pleasure, _for purposes of measurement_,
as the kind of feeling that we seek to retain in consciousness. Shall
we then say that there is a measurable quality of feeling expressed by
the word “pleasure,” which is independent of its relation to volition,
and strictly undefinable from its simplicity?--like the quality of
feeling expressed by “sweet,” of which also we are conscious in varying
degrees of intensity. This seems to be the view of some writers: but,
for my own part, when I reflect on the notion of pleasure,--using the
term in the comprehensive sense which I have adopted, to include the
most refined and subtle intellectual and emotional gratifications, no
less than the coarser and more definite sensual enjoyments,--the only
common quality that I can find in the feelings so designated seems to
be that relation to desire and volition expressed by the general term
“desirable,” in the sense previously explained. I propose therefore
to define Pleasure--when we are considering its “strict value”
for purposes of quantitative comparison--as a feeling which, when
experienced by intelligent beings, is at least implicitly apprehended
as desirable or--in cases of comparison--preferable.
Here, however, a new question comes into view. When I stated in the
preceding chapter, as a fundamental assumption of Hedonism, that it is
reasonable to prefer pleasures in proportion to their intensity, and
not to allow this ground of preference to be outweighed by any merely
qualitative difference, I implied that the preference of pleasures on
grounds of quality as opposed to quantity--as ‘higher’ or ‘nobler’--is
actually possible: and indeed such non-hedonistic preference is
commonly thought to be of frequent occurrence. But if we take the
definition of pleasure just given--that it is the kind of feeling
which we apprehend to be desirable or preferable--it seems to be a
contradiction in terms to say that the less pleasant feeling can ever
be thought preferable to the more pleasant.
This contradiction may be avoided as follows. It will be generally
admitted that the pleasantness of a feeling is only directly cognisable
by the individual who feels it at the time of feeling it. Thus,
though (as I shall presently argue), in so far as any estimate of
pleasantness involves comparison with feelings only represented in
idea, it is liable to be erroneous through imperfections in the
representation--still, no one is in a position to controvert the
preference of the sentient individual, so far as the quality of the
present feeling alone is concerned. When, however, we judge of the
preferable quality (as ‘elevation’ or ‘refinement’) of a state of
consciousness as distinct from its pleasantness,[107] we seem to appeal
to some common standard which others can apply as well as the sentient
individual. Hence I should conclude that when one kind of pleasure is
judged to be qualitatively superior to another, although less pleasant,
it is not really the feeling itself that is preferred, but something in
the mental or physical conditions or relations under which it arises,
regarded as cognisable objects of our common thought. For certainly
if I in thought distinguish any feeling from all its conditions and
concomitants--and also from all its effects on the subsequent feelings
of the same individual or of others--and contemplate it merely as the
transient feeling of a single subject; it seems to me impossible to
find in it any other preferable quality than that which we call its
pleasantness, the degree of which is only cognisable directly by the
sentient individual.
It should be observed that if this definition of pleasure be accepted,
and if, as before proposed, ‘Ultimate Good’ be taken as equivalent
to ‘what is ultimately desirable,’ the fundamental proposition of
ethical Hedonism has chiefly a negative significance; for the statement
that ‘Pleasure is the Ultimate Good’ will only mean that nothing is
ultimately desirable except desirable feeling, apprehended as desirable
by the sentient individual at the time of feeling it. This being so, it
may be urged against the definition that it could not be accepted by
a moralist of stoical turn, who while recognising pleasure as a fact
refused to recognise it as in any degree ultimately desirable. But I
think such a moralist ought to admit an implied judgment that a feeling
is _per se_ desirable to be inseparably connected with its recognition
as pleasure; while holding that sound philosophy shows the illusoriness
of such judgments. This, in fact, seems to have been substantially the
view of the Stoic school.
However this may be, I conceive that the preference which pure Hedonism
regards as ultimately rational, should be defined as the preference of
feeling valued merely as feeling, according to the estimate implicitly
or explicitly made by the sentient individual at the time of feeling
it; without any regard to the conditions and relations under which
it arises. Accordingly we may state as the fundamental assumption of
what I have called Quantitative Hedonism,--implied in the adoption of
“greatest surplus of pleasure over pain” as the ultimate end,--that
all pleasures and pains, estimated merely as feelings, have for the
sentient individual cognisable degrees of desirability, positive or
negative; observing further, that the empirical method of Hedonism can
only be applied so far as we assume that these degrees of desirability
are definitely given in experience.
There is one more assumption of a fundamental kind, which is not
perhaps involved in the acceptance of the Hedonistic calculus
considered as purely theoretical, but is certainly implied if it be
put forward as a practical method for determining right conduct: the
assumption, namely, that we can by foresight and calculation increase
our pleasures and decrease our pains. It may perhaps be thought
pedantic to state it formally: and in fact no one will deny that the
conditions upon which our pleasures and pains depend are to some
extent cognisable by us and within our own control. But, as we shall
see, it has been maintained that the practice of Hedonistic observation
and calculation has an inevitable tendency to decrease our pleasures
generally, or the most important of them: so that it becomes a question
whether we can gain our greatest happiness by seeking it, or at any
rate by trying to seek it with scientific exactness.
NOTE.--It is sometimes thought to be a necessary assumption of
Hedonists that a surplus of pleasure over pain is actually attainable
by human beings: a proposition which an extreme pessimist would deny.
But the conclusion that life is always on the whole painful would not
prove it to be unreasonable for a man to aim ultimately at minimising
pain, if this is still admitted to be possible; though it would, no
doubt, render immediate suicide, by some painless process, the only
reasonable course for a perfect egoist--unless he looked forward to
another life.
FOOTNOTES:
[99] We find it sometimes asserted by persons of enthusiastic and
passionate temperament, that there are feelings so exquisitely
delightful, that one moment of their rapture is preferable to an
eternity of agreeable consciousness of an inferior kind. These
assertions, however, are perhaps consciously hyperbolical, and not
intended to be taken as scientific statements: but in the case of
pain, it has been deliberately maintained by a thoughtful and subtle
writer, with a view to important practical conclusions, that “torture”
so extreme as to be “incommensurable with moderate pain” is an actual
fact of experience. (See “A Chapter in the Ethics of Pain,” by the late
Edmund Gurney, in a volume of essays entitled _Tertium Quid_.) This
doctrine, however, does not correspond to my own experience; nor does
it appear to me to be supported by the common sense of mankind:--at
least I do not find, in the practical forethought of persons noted for
caution, any recognition of the danger of agony such that, in order to
avoid the smallest extra risk of it, the greatest conceivable amount of
moderate pain should reasonably be incurred.
[100] Bentham gives four qualities of any pleasure or pain (taken
singly) as important for purposes of Hedonistic calculation: (1)
Intensity, (2) Duration, (3) Certainty, (4) Proximity. If we assume
(as above argued) that Intensity must be commensurable with Duration,
the influence of the other qualities on the comparative value of
pleasures and pains is not difficult to determine: for we are
accustomed to estimate the value of chances numerically, and by this
method we can tell exactly (in so far as the degree of uncertainty
can be exactly determined) how much the doubtfulness of a pleasure
detracts from its value: and _proximity_ is a property which it is
reasonable to disregard except in so far as it diminishes uncertainty.
For my feelings a year hence should be just as important to me as my
feelings next minute, if only I could make an equally sure forecast of
them. Indeed this equal and impartial concern for all parts of one’s
conscious life is perhaps the most prominent element in the common
notion of the _rational_--as opposed to the merely _impulsive_--pursuit
of pleasure.
[101] Cf. Cic. _de Fin._ Book i. chap. xi. § 38.
[102] _Principles of Psychology_, Part ii. chap. ix. § 125.
[103] _The Emotions and the Will_, 3rd Edition, p. 392.
[104] _Mental and Moral Science_, Book iv. chap. iv. § 4.
[105] _Ibid._ Book iv. chap. v. § 4.
[106] _Ibid._ Book iii. chap. i. § 8.
[107] It was before observed that by saying that one pleasure is
superior in _quality_ to another we may mean that it is preferable
when considered merely as pleasant: in which case difference in kind
resolves itself into difference in degree.
CHAPTER III
EMPIRICAL HEDONISM--_Continued_
§ 1. Let, then, pleasure be defined as feeling which the sentient
individual at the time of feeling it implicitly or explicitly
apprehends to be desirable;--desirable, that is, when considered
merely as feeling, and not in respect of its objective conditions or
consequences, or of any facts that come directly within the cognisance
and judgment of others besides the sentient individual. And let it be
provisionally assumed that feelings generally can be compared from this
point of view, with sufficient definiteness for practical purposes,
and empirically known to be more or less pleasant in some definite
degree. Then the empirical-reflective method of Egoistic Hedonism will
be, to represent beforehand the different series of feelings that
our knowledge of physical and psychical causes leads us to expect
from the different lines of conduct that lie open to us; judge which
series, as thus represented, appears on the whole preferable, taking
all probabilities into account; and adopt the corresponding line of
conduct. It may be objected that the calculation is too complex for
practice; since any complete forecast of the future would involve a
vast number of contingencies of varying degrees of probability, and
to calculate the Hedonistic value of each of these chances of feeling
would be interminable. Still we may perhaps reduce the calculation
within manageable limits, without serious loss of accuracy, by
discarding all manifestly imprudent conduct, and neglecting the less
probable and less important contingencies; as we do in some of the
arts that have more definite ends, such as strategy and medicine. For
if the general in ordering a march, or the physician in recommending
a change of abode, took into consideration all the circumstances that
were at all relevant to the end sought, their calculations would
become impracticable; accordingly they confine themselves to the most
important; and we may deal similarly with the Hedonistic art of life.
There are, however, objections urged against the Hedonistic method
which go much deeper; and by some writers are pressed to the extreme
of rejecting the method altogether. A careful examination of these
objections seems to be the most convenient way of obtaining a clear
view, both of the method itself and of the results that may reasonably
be expected from it.
I should, however, point out that we are now only concerned with what
may be called _intrinsic_ objections to Egoistic Hedonism; arguments,
that is, against the possibility of obtaining by it the results at
which it aims. We are not now to consider whether it is reasonable for
an individual to take his own happiness as his ultimate end; or how far
the rules of action deduced from the adoption of this end, and from the
actual conditions of the individual’s existence, will coincide with
current opinions as to what is right. These questions, according to the
plan of my work, are postponed for future consideration:[108] our sole
concern at present is with objections tending to show the intrinsic
impracticability of Hedonism as a rational method.
We are met, in the first place, by an objection which, if valid at
all, must be admitted to be decisive. It has been affirmed[109] by
Green that “pleasure as feeling, in distinction from its conditions
that are not feelings, cannot be conceived.” If so, Rational Hedonism
would certainly be impossible: but the proposition seems equally
opposed to common sense, and to the universal assumption of empirical
psychologists; who, in investigating elaborately and systematically
the conditions, mental and physical, of pleasure and pain, necessarily
assume that these feelings can be distinguished in thought from their
“conditions which are not feelings.” I also find that the writer
himself from whom I have quoted, in a later treatise,[110] conducts
long arguments respecting pleasure which are only intelligible if the
distinction between pleasure and its conditions is thoroughly grasped
and steadily contemplated. Indeed he carries a distinction of this
kind to an extreme point of subtlety; as he requires us to distinguish
the “self-satisfaction sought in all desire that amounts to will” from
the “pleasure” that “there is in all self-satisfaction if attained”:
whereas other moralists regard self-satisfaction as a species of
pleasure.[111] To maintain that we can distinguish pleasure from
self-satisfaction, and cannot distinguish it from its conditions, seems
to me too violent a paradox to need refutation. It is possible that
Green may only mean that pleasure cannot be thought to exist apart from
conditions which are not feelings, and that it necessarily varies with
any variation in its conditions. The statement thus interpreted I do
not deny: but it is quite irrelevant to the question whether pleasure
can be _estimated_ separately from its conditions, or whether pleasures
received under different conditions can be quantitatively compared.
I cannot have the pleasure of witnessing a tragedy or the pleasure
of witnessing a farce, without having along with either a complex of
innumerable thoughts and images, very diverse in quality in the two
cases: but this does not prevent me from deciding confidently whether
the tragedy or the farce will afford me most pleasure on the whole.
I pass to another objection made by the same writer to the Hedonistic
conception of the supreme end of action as “the greatest possible
sum of pleasures.” (It should be “the greatest possible surplus of
pleasure over pain”: but the difference is unimportant for the present
argument.) The phrase, he says, is “intrinsically unmeaning”: but his
justification for this statement appears to be different in different
treatises. At first he boldly affirmed that “pleasant feelings are not
quantities that can be added,”[112] apparently because “each is over
before the other begins.” The latter statement, however, is equally
true of the parts of time: but it would be obviously absurd to say that
hours, days, years are “not quantities that can be added.” Possibly
this consideration occurred to Green before writing the _Prolegomena
to Ethics_: at any rate in the latter treatise he admits that states
“of pleasant feeling” can be added together in “thought,” only denying
that they can be added “in enjoyment or imagination of enjoyment.”[113]
But this concedes all that is required for the Hedonistic valuation
of future feelings; no Hedonist ever supposed that the happiness he
aims at making as great as possible was something to be enjoyed all
at once, or ever wanted to imagine it as so enjoyed. And unless the
transiency of pleasure diminishes its pleasantness--a point which I
will presently consider--I cannot see that the possibility of realising
the Hedonistic end is at all affected by the necessity of realising
it in successive parts. Green, in another passage,[114] appears to
lay down that “an end” which is “to serve the purpose of a criterion”
must “enable us to distinguish actions that bring men nearer to it
from those which do not.” This, however, would only be the case if by
an “end” is necessarily meant a goal or consummation, which, after
gradually drawing nearer to it, we reach all at once: but this is not,
I conceive, the sense in which the word is ordinarily understood by
ethical writers: and certainly all that I mean by it is an object of
rational aim--whether attained in successive parts or not--which is
not sought as a means to the attainment of any ulterior object, but
for itself. And so long as any one’s prospective balance of pleasure
over pain admits of being made greater or less by immediate action in
one way or another,[115] there seems no reason why ‘Maximum Happiness’
should not provide as serviceable a criterion of conduct as any
‘chief good’ capable of being possessed all at once, or in some way
independent of the condition of time.
§ 2. If, however, it be maintained, that the consciousness of the
transiency of pleasure either makes it less pleasant at the time or
causes a subsequent pain, and that the deliberate and systematic
pursuit of pleasure tends to intensify this consciousness; the
proposition, if borne out by experience, would certainly constitute
a relevant objection to the method of Egoistic Hedonism. And this
view would seem to be in the mind of the writer above quoted (though
it is nowhere clearly put forward): since he affirms that it is
“impossible that self-satisfaction should be found in any succession
of pleasures”;[116] as self-satisfaction being “satisfaction for a
self that abides and contemplates itself as abiding” must be at least
relatively permanent:[117] and it is, I suppose, implied that the
disappointment of the Hedonist, who fails to find self-satisfaction
where he seeks for it, is attended with pain or loss of pleasure.[118]
If this be so, and if the self-satisfaction thus missed can be obtained
by the resolute adoption of some other principle of action, it would
certainly seem that the systematic pursuit of pleasure is in some
danger of defeating itself: it is therefore important to consider
carefully how far this is really the case.
So far as my own experience goes, it does not appear to me that the
mere transiency of pleasures is a serious source of discontent, so
long as one has a fair prospect of having as valuable pleasures in
the future as in the past--or even so long as the life before one has
any substantial amount of pleasure to offer. But I do not doubt that
an important element of happiness, for all or most men, is derived
from the consciousness of possessing “relatively permanent” sources
of pleasure--whether external, as wealth, social position, family,
friends; or internal, as knowledge, culture, strong and lively interest
in the wellbeing of fairly prosperous persons or institutions. This,
however, does not, in my opinion, constitute an objection to Hedonism:
it rather seems obvious, from the hedonistic point of view, that “as
soon as intelligence discovers that there are fixed objects, permanent
sources of pleasure, and large groups of enduring interests, which
yield a variety of recurring enjoyments, the rational will, preferring
the greater to the less, will unfailingly devote its energies to the
pursuit of these.”[119] It may be replied that if these permanent
sources of pleasure are consciously sought merely as a means to the
hedonistic end, they will not afford the happiness for which they
are sought. With this I to some extent agree; but I think that if
the normal complexity of our impulses be duly taken into account,
this statement will be found not to militate against the adoption of
Hedonism, but merely to signalise a danger against which the Hedonist
has to guard. In a previous chapter[120] I have, after Butler, laid
stress on the difference between impulses that are, strictly speaking,
directed towards pleasure, and ‘extra-regarding’ impulses which do not
aim at pleasure,--though much, perhaps most, of our pleasure consists
in the gratification of these latter, and therefore depends upon
their existence. I there argued that in many cases the two kinds of
impulse are so far incompatible that they do not easily coexist in the
same moment of consciousness. I added, however, that in the ordinary
condition of our activity the incompatibility is only momentary, and
does not prevent a real harmony from being attained by a sort of
alternating rhythm of the two impulses in consciousness. Still it
seems undeniable that this harmony is liable to be disturbed; and that
while on the one hand individuals may and do sacrifice their greatest
apparent happiness to the gratification of some imperious particular
desire, so, on the other hand, self-love is liable to engross the mind
to a degree incompatible with a healthy and vigorous outflow of those
‘disinterested’ impulses towards particular objects, the pre-existence
of which is necessary to the attainment, in any high degree, of the
happiness at which self-love aims. I should not, however, infer from
this that the pursuit of pleasure is necessarily self-defeating
and futile; but merely that the principle of Egoistic Hedonism,
when applied with a due knowledge of the laws of human nature, is
practically self-limiting; _i.e._ that a rational method of attaining
the end at which it aims requires that we should to some extent put
it out of sight and not directly aim at it. I have before spoken of
this conclusion as the ‘Fundamental Paradox of Egoistic Hedonism’;
but though it presents itself as a paradox, there does not seem to
be any difficulty in its practical realisation, when once the danger
indicated is clearly seen. For it is an experience only too common
among men, in whatever pursuit they may be engaged, that they let the
original object and goal of their efforts pass out of view, and come
to regard the means to this end as ends in themselves: so that they
at last even sacrifice the original end to the attainment of what is
only secondarily and derivatively desirable. And if it be thus easy and
common to forget the end in the means overmuch, there seems no reason
why it should be difficult to do it to the extent that Rational Egoism
prescribes: and, in fact, it seems to be continually done by ordinary
persons in the case of amusements and pastimes of all kinds.
It is true that, as our desires cannot ordinarily be produced by an
effort of will--though they can to some extent be repressed by it--if
we started with no impulse except the desire of pleasure, it might
seem difficult to execute the practical paradox of attaining pleasure
by aiming at something else. Yet even in this hypothetical case the
difficulty is less than it appears. For the reaction of our activities
upon our emotional nature is such that we may commonly bring ourselves
to take an interest in any end by concentrating our efforts upon its
attainment. So that, even supposing a man to begin with absolute
indifference to everything except his own pleasure, it does not follow
that if he were convinced that the possession of other desires and
impulses were necessary to the attainment of the greatest possible
pleasure, he could not succeed in producing these. But this supposition
is never actually realised. Every man, when he commences the task of
systematising his conduct, whether on egoistic principles or any other,
is conscious of a number of different impulses and tendencies within
him, other than the mere desire for pleasure, which urge his will in
particular directions, to the attainment of particular results: so that
he has only to place himself under certain external influences, and
these desires and impulses will begin to operate without any effort of
will.
It is sometimes thought, however, that there is an important class of
refined and elevated impulses with which the supremacy of self-love is
in a peculiar way incompatible, such as the love of virtue, or personal
affection, or the religious impulse to love and obey God. But at any
rate in the common view of these impulses, this difficulty does not
seem to be recognised. None of the school of moralists that followed
Shaftesbury in contending that it is a man’s true interest to foster
in himself strictly disinterested social affections, has noted any
inherent incompatibility between the existence of these affections and
the supremacy of rational self-love. And similarly Christian preachers
who have commended the religious life as really the happiest, have not
thought genuine religion irreconcilable with the conviction that each
man’s own happiness is his most near and intimate concern.
Other persons, however, seem to carry the religious consciousness
and the feeling of human affection to a higher stage of refinement,
at which a stricter disinterestedness is exacted. They maintain
that the essence of either feeling, in its best form, is absolute
self-renunciation and self-sacrifice. And certainly these seem
incompatible with self-love, however cautiously self-limiting. A man
cannot both wish to secure his own happiness and be willing to lose it.
And yet how if willingness to lose it is the true means of securing
it? Can self-love not merely reduce indirectly its prominence in
consciousness, but directly and unreservedly annihilate itself?
This emotional feat does not seem to me possible: and therefore I
must admit that a man who embraces the principle of Rational Egoism
cuts himself off from the special pleasure that attends this absolute
sacrifice and abnegation of self. But however exquisite this may be,
the pitch of emotional exaltation and refinement necessary to attain it
is comparatively so rare, that it is scarcely included in men’s common
estimate of happiness. I do not therefore think that an important
objection to Rational Egoism can be based upon its incompatibility
with this particular consciousness: nor that the common experience
of mankind really sustains the view that the desire of one’s own
happiness, if accepted as supreme and regulative, inevitably defeats
its own aim through the consequent diminution and desiccation of the
impulses and emotional capacities necessary to the attainment of
happiness in a high degree; though it certainly shows a serious and
subtle danger in this direction.
§ 3. There is, however, another way in which the habit of mind
necessarily resulting from the continual practice of hedonistic
comparison is sometimes thought to be unfavourable to the attainment
of the hedonistic end: from a supposed incompatibility between the
habit of reflectively observing and examining pleasure, and the
capacity for experiencing pleasure in normal fulness and intensity.
And it certainly seems important to consider what effect the continual
attention to our pleasures, in order to observe their different
degrees, is likely to have on these feelings themselves. The inquiry
at first sight seems to lead to irreconcilable contradiction in our
view of pleasure. For if pleasure only exists as it is felt, the more
conscious we are of it, the more pleasure we have: and it would seem
that the more our attention is directed towards it, the more fully we
shall be conscious of it. On the other hand Hamilton’s statement that
“knowledge and feeling” (cognition and pleasure or pain) are always
“in a certain inverse proportion to each other,” corresponds _prima
facie_ to our common experience: for the purely cognitive element of
consciousness seems to be neither pleasurable nor painful, so that the
more our consciousness is occupied with cognition, the less room there
seems to be for feeling.
This view, however, rests on the assumption that the total intensity
of our consciousness is a constant quantity; so that when one element
of it positively increases, the rest must positively--as well as
relatively--diminish. And it does not appear to me that experience
gives us any valid ground for making this general assumption: it rather
seems that at certain times in our life intellect and feeling are
simultaneously feeble; so that the same mental excitement may intensify
both simultaneously.
Still it seems to be a fact that any very powerful feeling, reaching to
the full intensity of which our consciousness is normally capable, is
commonly diminished by a contemporaneous stroke of cognitive effort:
hence it is a general difficulty in the way of exact observation of
our emotions that the object cognised seems to shrink and dwindle in
proportion as the cognitive regard grows keen and eager. How then
are we to reconcile this with the proposition first laid down, that
pleasure only exists as we are conscious of it? The answer seems to
be that the mere consciousness of a present feeling--apart from any
distinct representative elements--cannot diminish the feeling of which
it is an indispensable and inseparable condition: but in introspective
cognition we go beyond the present feeling, comparing and classifying
it with remembered or imagined feelings; and the effort of representing
and comparing these other feelings tends to decrease the mere
presentative consciousness of the actual pleasure.
I conclude, then, that there is a real danger of diminishing pleasure
by the attempt to observe and estimate it. But the danger seems only to
arise in the case of very intense pleasures, and only if the attempt is
made at the moment of actual enjoyment; and since the most delightful
periods of life have frequently recurring intervals of nearly neutral
feeling, in which the pleasures immediately past may be compared and
estimated without any such detriment, I do not regard the objection
founded on this danger as particularly important.
§ 4. More serious, in my opinion, are the objections urged against the
possibility of performing, with definite and trustworthy results, the
comprehensive and methodical comparison of pleasures and pains which
the adoption of the Hedonistic standard involves. I cannot indeed
doubt that men habitually compare pleasures and pains in respect
of their intensity: that (_e.g._) when we pass from one state of
consciousness to another, or when in any way we are led to recall a
state long past, we often unhesitatingly declare the present state
to be more or less pleasant than the past: or that we declare some
pleasant experiences to have been ‘worth,’ and others ‘not worth,’ the
trouble it took to obtain them, or the pain that followed them. But,
granting this, it may still be maintained (1) that this comparison as
ordinarily made is both occasional and very rough, and that it can
never be extended as systematic Hedonism requires, nor applied, with
any accuracy, to all possible states however differing in quality; and
(2) that as commonly practised it is liable to illusion, of which we
can never measure the precise amount, while we are continually forced
to recognise its existence. This illusion was even urged by Plato as
a ground for distrusting the apparent affirmation of consciousness
in respect of _present_ pleasure. Plato thought that the apparent
intensity of the coarser bodily pleasures was illusory; because these
states of consciousness, being preceded by pain, were really only
states of relief from pain, and so properly neutral, neither pleasant
nor painful--examples of what I have called the hedonistic zero--only
appearing pleasant from contrast with the preceding pain.
To this, however, it has been answered, that in estimating pleasure
there is no conceivable appeal from the immediate decision of
consciousness: that here the Phenomenal is the Real--there is no other
real that we can distinguish from it. And this seems to me true, in so
far as we are concerned only with the present state. But then--apart
from the difficulty just noticed of observing a pleasure while it is
felt without thereby diminishing it--it is obvious that in any estimate
of its intensity we are necessarily comparing it with some other state.
And this latter must generally be a representation, not an actual
feeling: for though we can sometimes experience two or perhaps more
pleasures at once, we are rarely in such cases able to compare them
satisfactorily: for either the causes of the two mutually interfere, so
that neither reaches its normal degree of intensity; or, more often,
the two blend into one state of pleasant consciousness the elements of
which we cannot estimate separately. But if it is therefore inevitable
that one term at least in our comparison should be an imagined
pleasure, we see that there is a possibility of error in any such
comparison; for the imagined feeling may not adequately represent the
pleasantness of the corresponding actual feeling. And in the egoistic
comparison, the validity of which we are now discussing, the objects
primarily to be compared are all represented elements of consciousness:
for we are desiring to choose between two or more possible courses of
conduct, and therefore to forecast future feelings.
Let us then examine more closely the manner in which this comparison is
ordinarily performed, that we may see what positive grounds we have for
mistrusting it.
In estimating for practical purposes the value of different pleasures
open to us, we commonly trust most to our prospective imagination:
we project ourselves into the future, and imagine what such and
such a pleasure will amount to under hypothetical conditions. This
imagination, so far as it involves conscious inference, seems to be
chiefly determined by our own experience of past pleasures, which are
usually recalled generically, or in large aggregates, though sometimes
particular instances of important single pleasures occur to us as
definitely remembered: but partly, too, we are influenced by the
experience of others sympathetically appropriated: and here again we
sometimes definitely refer to particular experiences which have been
communicated to us by individuals, and sometimes to the traditional
generalisations which are thought to represent the common experience of
mankind.
Now it does not seem that such a process as this is likely to be free
from error: and, indeed, no one pretends that it is. In fact there is
scarcely any point upon which moralisers have dwelt with more emphasis
than this, that man’s forecast of pleasure is continually erroneous.
Each of us frequently recognises his own mistakes: and each still more
often attributes to others errors unseen by themselves, arising either
from misinterpretation of their own experience, or from ignorance or
neglect of that of others.
How then are these errors to be eliminated? The obvious answer is that
we must substitute for the instinctive, largely implicit, inference
just described a more scientific process of reasoning: by deducing
the probable degree of our future pleasure or pain in any given
circumstances from inductive generalisations based on a sufficient
number of careful observations of our own and others’ experience. We
have then to ask, first, how far can each of us estimate accurately his
own past experience of pleasures and pains? secondly, how far can this
knowledge of the past enable him to forecast, with any certainty, the
greatest happiness within his reach in the future? thirdly, how far can
he appropriate, for the purposes of such forecasts, the past experience
of others?
As regards the first of these questions, it must be remembered that
it is not sufficient to know generally that we derive pleasures and
pains from such and such sources; we require to know approximately
the positive or negative degree of each feeling; unless we can form
some quantitative estimate of them, it is futile to try to attain our
_greatest possible_ happiness--at least by an empirical method. We
have therefore to compare quantitatively each pleasure as it occurs,
or as recalled in imagination, with other imagined pleasures: and the
question is, how far such comparisons can be regarded as trustworthy.
Now for my own part, when I reflect on my pleasures and pains, and
endeavour to compare them in respect of intensity, it is only to
a very limited extent that I can obtain clear and definite results
from such comparisons, even taking each separately in its simplest
form:--whether the comparison is made at the moment of experiencing
one of the pleasures, or between two states of consciousness recalled
in imagination. This is true even when I compare feelings of the same
kind: and the vagueness and uncertainty increases, in proportion as
the feelings differ in kind. Let us begin with sensual gratifications,
which are thought to be especially definite and palpable. Suppose I
am enjoying a good dinner: if I ask myself whether one kind of dish
or wine gives me more pleasure than another, sometimes I can decide,
but very often not. So if I reflect upon two modes of bodily exercise
that I may have taken: if one has been in a marked degree agreeable or
tedious, I take note of it naturally; but it is not natural to me to go
further than this in judging of their pleasurableness or painfulness,
and the attempt to do so does not seem to lead to any clear
affirmation. And similarly of intellectual exercises and states of
consciousness predominantly emotional: even when the causes and quality
of the feelings compared are similar, it is only when the differences
in pleasantness are great, that hedonistic comparison seems to yield
any definite result. But when I try to arrange in a scale pleasures
differing in kind; to compare (_e.g._) labour with rest, excitement
with tranquillity, intellectual exercise with emotional effusion, the
pleasure of scientific apprehension with that of beneficent action, the
delight of social expansion with the delight of æsthetic reception; my
judgment wavers and fluctuates far more, and in the majority of cases
I cannot give any confident decision. And if this is the case with
what Bentham calls ‘pure’--_i.e._ painless--pleasures, it is still
more true of those even commoner states of consciousness, where a
certain amount of pain or discomfort is mixed with pleasure, although
the latter preponderates. If it is hard to say which of two different
states of contentment was the greater pleasure, it seems still harder
to compare a state of placid satisfaction with one of eager but hopeful
suspense, or with triumphant conquest of painful obstacles. And perhaps
it is still more difficult to compare pure pleasures with pure pains,
and to say how much of the one kind of feeling we consider to be
exactly balanced by a given amount of the other when they do not occur
simultaneously: while an estimate of simultaneous feelings is, as we
have seen, generally unsatisfactory from the mutual interference of
their respective causes.
§ 5. But again, if these judgments are not clear and definite, still
less are they consistent. I do not now mean that one man’s estimate
of the value of any kind of pleasures differs from another’s: for we
have assumed each sentient individual to be the final judge of the
pleasantness and painfulness of his own feelings, and therefore this
kind of discrepancy does not affect the validity of the judgments,
and creates no difficulty until any one tries to appropriate the
experience of others. But I mean that each individual’s judgment of
the comparative value of his own pleasures is apt to be different at
different times, though it relates to the same past experiences; and
that this variation is a legitimate ground for distrusting the validity
of any particular comparison.
The causes of this variation seem to be partly due to the nature of
the represented feeling, and partly to the general state of the mind
at the time of making the representation. To begin with the former: we
find that different kinds of past pleasures and pains do not equally
admit of being revived in imagination. Thus, generally speaking, our
more emotional and more representative pains are more easily revived
than the more sensational and presentative: for example, it is at this
moment much more easy for me to imagine the discomfort of expectancy
which preceded a past sea-sickness than the pain of the actual nausea:
although I infer--from the recollection of judgments passed at the
time--that the former pain was trifling compared with the latter. To
this cause it seems due that past hardships, toils, and anxieties often
appear pleasurable when we look back upon them, after some interval;
for the excitement, the heightened sense of life that accompanied the
painful struggle, would have been pleasurable if taken by itself; and
it is this that we recall rather than the pain. In estimating pleasures
the other cause of variation is more conspicuous; we are conscious of
changes occasional or periodic in our estimate of them, depending upon
changes in our mental or bodily condition. _E.g._ it is a matter of
common remark with respect to the gratifications of appetite that we
cannot estimate them adequately in the state of satiety, and that we
are apt to exaggerate them in the state of desire. (I do not deny that
intensity of antecedent desire intensifies the pleasure of fruition; so
that this pleasure not only _appears_, as Plato thought, but actually
is greater owing to the strength of the desire that has preceded. Still
it is a matter of common experience that pleasures which have been
intensely desired are often found to disappoint expectation.)
There seem to be no special states of aversion, determined by bodily
causes, and related to certain pains as our appetites to their
correspondent pleasures; but most persons are liable to be thrown by
the prospect of certain pains into the state of passionate aversion
which we call fear, and to be thereby led to estimate such pains as
worse than they would be judged to be in a calmer mood.
Further, when feeling any kind of pain or uneasiness we seem liable
to underrate pain of a very dissimilar kind: thus in danger we value
repose, overlooking its _ennui_, while the tedium of security makes
us imagine the mingled excitement of past danger as almost purely
pleasurable. And again when we are absorbed in any particular pleasant
activity, the pleasures attending dissimilar activities are apt to be
contemned: they appear coarse or thin, as the case may be: and this
constitutes a fundamental objection to noting the exact degree of
a pleasure at the time of experiencing it. The eager desire, which
often seems an indispensable element of the whole state of pleasurable
activity, generally involves a similar bias: indeed any strong
excitement, in which our thought is concentrated on a single result or
group of results--whether it be the excitement of aversion, fear, hope,
or suspense--tends to make us inappreciative of alien pleasures and
pains alike. And, speaking more generally, we cannot imagine as very
intense a pleasure of a kind that at the time of imagining it we are
incapable of experiencing: as (_e.g._) the pleasures of intellectual
or bodily exercise at the close of a wearying day; or any emotional
pleasure when our susceptibility to the special emotion is temporarily
exhausted. On the other hand, it is not easy to guard against error, as
philosophers have often thought, by making our estimate in a cool and
passionless state. For there are many pleasures which require precedent
desire, and even enthusiasm and highly wrought excitement, in order to
be experienced in their full intensity; and it is not likely that we
should appreciate these adequately in a state of perfect tranquillity.
§ 6. These considerations make clearer the extent of the assumptions
of Empirical Quantitative Hedonism, stated in the preceding chapter:
viz. (1) that our pleasures and pains have each a definite degree, and
(2) that this degree is empirically cognisable. Firstly, if pleasure
only exists as it is felt, the belief that every pleasure and pain
has a definite intensive quantity or degree must remain an _a priori_
assumption, incapable of positive empirical verification. For the
pleasure can only have the degree as compared with other feelings, of
the same or some different kind; but, generally speaking, since this
comparison can only be made in imagination, it can only yield the
hypothetical result that if certain feelings could be felt together,
precisely as they have been felt separately, one would be found more
desirable than the other in some definite ratio. If, then, we are asked
what ground we have for regarding this imaginary result as a valid
representation of reality, we cannot say more than that the belief
in its general validity is irresistibly suggested in reflection on
experience, and remains at any rate uncontradicted by experience.
But secondly, granting that each of our pleasures and pains has
really a definite degree of pleasantness or painfulness, the question
still remains whether we have any means of accurately measuring
these degrees. Is there any reason to suppose that the mind is ever
in such a state as to be a perfectly neutral and colourless medium
for imagining all kinds of pleasures? Experience certainly shows us
the frequent occurrence of moods in which we have an apparent bias
for or against a particular kind of feeling. Is it not probable that
there is always some bias of this kind? that we are always more in
tune for some pleasures, more sensitive to some pains, than we are to
others? It must, I think, be admitted that the exact cognition of the
place of each kind of feeling in a scale of desirability, measured
positively and negatively from a zero of perfect indifference, is at
best an ideal to which we can never tell how closely we approximate.
Still in the variations of our judgment and the disappointment of our
expectations we have experience of errors of which we can trace the
causes and allow for them, at least roughly; correcting in thought
the defects of imagination. And since what we require for practical
guidance is to estimate not individual past experiences, but the value
of a kind of pleasure or pain, as obtained under certain circumstances
or conditions; we can to some extent diminish the chance of error
in this estimate by making a number of observations and imaginative
comparisons, at different times and in different moods. In so far
as these agree we may legitimately feel an increased confidence in
the result: and in so far as they differ, we can at least reduce our
possible error by striking an average of the different estimates. It
will be evident, however, that such a method as this cannot be expected
to yield more than a rough approximation to the supposed truth.
§ 7. We must conclude then that our estimate of the hedonistic value
of any past pleasure or pain, is liable to an amount of error which
we cannot calculate exactly; because the represented pleasantness of
different feelings fluctuates and varies indefinitely with changes in
the actual condition of the representing mind. We have now to observe
that, for similar reasons, even supposing we could adequately allow
for, and so exclude, this source of error in our comparison of past
pleasures, it is liable to intrude again in arguing from the past to
the future. For our capacity for particular pleasures may be about
to change, or may have actually changed since the experiences that
form the data of our calculation. We may have reached the point of
satiety in respect of some of our past pleasures, or otherwise lost our
susceptibility to them, owing to latent changes in our constitution: or
we may have increased our susceptibility to pains inevitably connected
with them: or altered conditions of life may have generated in us new
desires and aversions, and given relative importance to new sources of
happiness. Or any or all of these changes may be expected to occur,
before the completion of the course of conduct upon which we are now
deciding. The most careful estimate of a girl’s pleasures (supposing
a girl gifted with the abnormal habit of reflection that would be
necessary) would not much profit a young woman: and the hedonistic
calculations of youth require modification as we advance in years.
It may be said, however, that no one, in making such a forecast, can
or does rely entirely on his own experience: when endeavouring to
estimate the probable effect upon his happiness of new circumstances
and influences, untried rules of conduct and fashions of life, he
always argues partly from the experience of others. This is, I
think, generally true: but by including inferences from other men’s
experience we inevitably introduce a new possibility of error; for
such inference proceeds on the assumption of a similarity of nature
among human beings, which is never exactly true, while we can never
exactly know how much it falls short of the truth; though we have
sufficient evidence of the striking differences between the feelings
produced in different men by similar causes, to convince us that the
assumption would in many cases be wholly misleading. On this ground
Plato’s reason for claiming that the life of the Philosopher has more
pleasure than that of the Sensualist is palpably inadequate. The
philosopher, he argues, has tried both kinds of pleasure, sensual as
well as intellectual, and prefers the delights of philosophic life;
the sensualist ought therefore to trust his decision and follow his
example. But who can tell that the philosopher’s constitution is
not such as to render the enjoyments of the senses, in his case,
comparatively feeble? while on the other hand the sensualist’s mind
may not be able to attain more than a thin shadow of the philosopher’s
delight. And so, generally speaking, if we are to be guided by
another’s experience, we require to be convinced not only that he
is generally accurate in observing, analysing, and comparing his
sensations, but also that his relative susceptibility to the different
kinds of pleasure and pain in question coincides with our own. If he
is unpractised in introspective observation, it is possible that he
may mistake even the external conditions of his own happiness; and so
the communication of his experience may be altogether misleading. But
however accurately he has analysed and determined the causes of his
feelings, that similar causes would produce similar effects in us must
always be uncertain. And the uncertainty is increased indefinitely if
our adviser has to recall in memory out of a distant past some of the
pleasures or pains to be compared. Thus in the ever-renewed controversy
between Age and Youth, wisdom is not after all so clearly on the side
of maturer counsels as it seems to be at first sight. When a youth is
warned by his senior to abstain from some pleasure, on the ground of
prudence, because it is not worth the possible pleasures that must
be sacrificed for it and the future pains that it will entail; it is
difficult for him to know how far the elder man can recall--even if he
could once feel--the full rapture of the delight that he is asking the
younger to renounce.
And further, this source of error besets us in a more extended and
more subtle manner than has yet been noticed. For our sympathetic
apprehension of alien experiences of pleasure and pain has been so
continually exercised, in so many ways, during the whole of our life,
both by actual observation and oral communication with other human
beings, and through books and other modes of symbolic suggestion; that
it is impossible to say how far it has unconsciously blended with our
own experience, so as to colour and modify it when represented in
memory. Thus we may easily overlook the discrepancy between our own
experience and that of others, in respect of the importance of certain
sources of pleasure and pain, if no sudden and striking disappointment
of expectations forces it on our notice. Only with considerable care
and attention can sympathetic persons separate their own real likes and
dislikes from those of their associates: and we can never tell whether
this separation has been completely effected.
But again: the practical inference from the past to the future is
further complicated by the fact that we can alter ourselves. For it
may be that our past experience has been greatly affected by our being
not properly attuned to certain pleasures, as (_e.g._) those of art,
or study, or muscular exercise, or society, or beneficent action;
or not duly hardened against certain sources of pain, such as toil,
or anxiety, or abstinence from luxuries: and there may be within
our power some process of training or hardening ourselves which may
profoundly modify our susceptibilities. And this consideration is
especially important,--and at the same time especially difficult to
deal with,--when we attempt to appropriate the experience of another.
For we may find that he estimates highly pleasures which we not only
have never experienced at all, but cannot possibly experience without
a considerable alteration of our nature. For example, the pleasures of
the religious life, the raptures of prayer and praise and the devotion
of the soul to God, are commonly thought to require Conversion or
complete change of nature before they can be experienced. And in the
same way the sacrifice of sensual inclination to duty is disagreeable
to the non-moral man when he at first attempts it, but affords to the
truly virtuous man a deep and strong delight. And similarly almost all
the more refined intellectual and emotional pleasures require training
and culture in order to be enjoyed; and since this training does not
always succeed in producing any considerable degree of susceptibility,
it may always be a matter of doubt for one from whom it would require
the sacrifice of other pleasures, whether such sacrifice is worth
making.
The foregoing considerations must, I think, seriously reduce our
confidence in what I have called the Empirical-reflective method
of Egoistic Hedonism. I do not conclude that we should reject it
altogether: I am conscious that, in spite of all the difficulties that
I have urged, I continue to make comparisons between pleasures and
pains with practical reliance on their results. But I conclude that
it would be at least highly desirable, with a view to the systematic
direction of conduct, to control and supplement the results of such
comparisons by the assistance of some other method: if we can find any
on which we see reason to rely.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] See chap. v. of this Book, chap. xiv. of Book iii., and the
concluding chapter of the treatise.
[109] See Green’s Introduction to vol. ii. of Hume’s _Treatise on Human
Nature_, § 7. The statement is substantially repeated in the same
writer’s _Prolegomena to Ethics_.
[110] _Prolegomena to Ethics_, § 158.
[111] _E.g._ Butler, _Sermon_ xi. says, “Every man hath a desire for
his own happiness ... the object [desired] is our own happiness,
enjoyment, satisfaction.”
[112] Introduction to Hume, _l.c._
[113] _Prolegomena to Ethics_, § 221.
[114] _Ibid._ § 359.
[115] This Green in several passages seems expressly to admit _e.g._
(§ 332) he says that certain measures “needed in order to supply
conditions favourable to good character, tend also to make life more
pleasant on the whole”: and, elsewhere, that “it is easy to show that
an overbalance of pain would result to those capable of being affected
by it” from the neglect of certain duties.
[116] _Prolegomena to Ethics_, § 176.
[117] _Op. cit._ § 232.
[118] I cannot state this positively, because--as I have said--Green
expressly distinguishes self-satisfaction from pleasure, and does not
expressly affirm that its absence is attended by pain.
[119] Sully, _Pessimism_, chap. xi. p. 282.
[120] Book i. chap. iv.
CHAPTER IV
OBJECTIVE HEDONISM AND COMMON SENSE
§ 1. Before we examine those methods of seeking one’s own happiness
which are more remote from the empirical, it will be well to consider
how far we may reasonably avoid the difficulties and uncertainties of
the method of reflective comparison, by relying on the current opinions
and accepted estimates of the value of different objects commonly
sought as sources of pleasure.
It certainly seems more natural to men, at least in the main plan and
ordering of their lives, to seek and consciously estimate the objective
conditions and sources of happiness, rather than happiness itself;
and it may plausibly be said that by relying on such estimates of
objects we avoid the difficulties that beset the introspective method
of comparing feelings: and that the common opinions as to the value of
different sources of pleasure express the net result of the combined
experience of mankind from generation to generation: in which the
divergences due to the limitations of each individual’s experience, and
to the differently tinged moods in which different estimates have been
taken, have balanced and neutralised each other and so disappeared.
I do not wish to undervalue the guidance of common sense in our pursuit
of happiness. I think, however, that when we consider these common
opinions as premises for the deductions of systematic egoism, they must
be admitted to be open to the following grave objections.
In the first place, Common Sense gives us only, at the best, an
estimate true for an average or typical human being: and, as we have
already seen, it is probable that any particular individual will be
more or less divergent from this type. In any case, therefore, each
person will have to correct the estimate of common opinion by the
results of his own experience in order to obtain from it trustworthy
guidance for his own conduct: and this process of correction, it
would seem, must be involved in all the difficulties from which we
are trying to escape. But, secondly, the experience of the mass of
mankind is confined within limits too narrow for its results to be of
much avail in the present inquiry. The majority of human beings spend
most of their time in labouring to avert starvation and severe bodily
discomfort: and the brief leisure that remains to them, after supplying
the bodily needs of food, sleep, etc., is spent in ways determined
rather by impulse, routine, and habit, than by a deliberate estimate of
probable pleasure. It would seem, then, that the common sense to which
we have here to refer can only be that of a minority of comparatively
rich and leisured persons.
But again, we cannot tell that the mass of mankind, or any section of
the mass, is not generally and normally under the influence of some
of the causes of mal-observation previously noticed. We avoid the
“idols of the cave” by trusting Common Sense, but what is to guard us
against the “idols of the tribe”? Moreover, the common estimate of
different sources of happiness seems to involve all the confusion of
ideas and points of view, which in defining the empirical method of
Hedonism we have taken some pains to eliminate. In the first place it
does not distinguish between objects of natural desire and sources
of experienced pleasure. Now we have seen (Book i. chap. iv.) that
these two are not exactly coincident--indeed we find numerous examples
of men who continue not only to feel but to indulge desires, the
gratification of which they know by ample experience to be attended
with more pain than pleasure. And therefore the current estimate of
the desirability of objects of pursuit cannot be taken to express
simply men’s experience of pleasure and pain: for men are apt to think
desirable what they strongly desire, whether or not they have found it
conducive to happiness on the whole: and so the common opinion will
tend to represent a compromise between the average force of desires and
the average experience of the consequences of gratifying them.
We must allow again for the intermingling of moral with purely
hedonistic preferences in the estimate of common sense. For even when
men definitely expect greater happiness from the course of conduct
which they choose than from any other, it is often because they think
it the right, or more excellent, or more noble course; making, more
or less unconsciously, the assumption (which we shall presently have
to consider) that the morally best action will prove to be also the
most conducive to the agent’s happiness. And a similar assumption
seems to be made--without adequate warrant--as regards merely æsthetic
preferences.
Again, the introduction of the moral and æsthetic points of view
suggests the following doubt:--Are we to be guided by the preferences
which men avow, or by those which their actions would lead us to infer?
On the one hand, we cannot doubt that men often, from weakness of
character, fail to seek what they sincerely believe will give them most
pleasure in the long-run: on the other hand, as a genuine preference
for virtuous or refined pleasure is a mark of genuine virtue or refined
taste, men who do not really feel such preference are unconsciously or
consciously influenced by a desire to gain credit for it, and their
express estimate of pleasures is thus modified and coloured.
§ 2. But, even if we had no doubt on general grounds that Common Sense
would prove our best guide in the pursuit of happiness, we should still
be perplexed by finding its utterances on this topic very deficient in
clearness and consistency. I do not merely mean that they are different
in different ages and countries--that we might explain as due to
variations in the general conditions of human life--: but that serious
conflicts and ambiguities are found if we consider only the current
common sense of our own age and country. We can make a list of sources
of happiness apparently recommended by an overwhelming _consensus_ of
current opinion: as health, wealth, friendship and family affections,
fame and social position, power, interesting and congenial occupation
and amusement,--including the gratification, in some form, of the love
of knowledge, and of those refined, partly sensual, partly emotional,
susceptibilities which we call æsthetic.[121] But if we inquire
into the relative value of these objects of common pursuit, we seem
to get no clear answer from Common Sense--unless, perhaps, it would
be generally agreed that health ought to be paramount to all other
secondary ends: though even on this point we could not infer general
agreement from observation of the actual conduct of mankind. Nay,
even as regards the positive estimate of these sources of happiness,
we find on closer examination that the supposed _consensus_ is much
less clear than it seemed at first. Not only are there numerous and
important bodies of dissidents from the current opinions: but the very
same majority, the same Common Sense of Mankind that maintains these
opinions, is found in a singular and unexpected manner to welcome and
approve the paradoxes of these dissidents. Men show a really startling
readiness to admit that the estimates of happiness which guide them in
their ordinary habits and pursuits are erroneous and illusory; and that
from time to time the veil is, as it were, lifted, and the error and
illusion made manifest.
For, first, men seem to attach great value to the ample gratification
of bodily appetites and needs: the wealthier part of mankind spend
a considerable amount of money and forethought upon the means of
satisfying these in a luxurious manner: and though they do not often
deliberately sacrifice health to this gratification--common sense
condemns that as irrational--still one may say that they are habitually
courageous in pressing forward to the very verge of this imprudence.
And yet the same people are fond of saying that “hunger is the best
sauce,” and that “temperance and labour will make plain food more
delightful than the most exquisite products of the culinary art.” And
they often argue with perfect sincerity that the rich have really no
advantage, or scarcely any advantage, over the comparatively poor, in
respect of these pleasures; for habit soon renders the more luxurious
provision for the satisfaction of their acquired needs no more pleasant
to the rich than the appeasing of his more primitive appetites is
to the poor man. And the same argument is often extended to all the
material comforts that wealth can purchase. It is often contended that
habit at once renders us indifferent to these while they are enjoyed,
and yet unable to dispense with them without annoyance: so that the
pleasures of the merely animal life are no greater to the rich than to
the poor, but only more insecure. And from this there is but a short
step to the conclusion, that wealth, in the pursuit of which most men
agree in concentrating their efforts, and on the attainment of which
all congratulate each other,--wealth, for which so many risk their
health, shorten their lives, reduce their enjoyments of domestic life,
and sacrifice the more refined pleasures of curiosity and art,--is
really a very doubtful gain, in the majority of cases; because the
cares and anxieties which it entails balance, for most men, the slight
advantage of the luxuries which it purchases.[122]
And similarly, although social rank and status is, in England, an
object of passionate pursuit, yet it is continually said, with general
approval, that it is of no intrinsic value as a means of happiness;
that though the process of ascending from a lower grade to a higher
is perhaps generally agreeable, and the process of descending from a
higher to a lower certainly painful, yet permanent existence on the
loftier level is no more pleasant than on the humbler; that happiness
is to be found as easily in a cottage as in a palace (if not, indeed,
more easily in the cottage): and so forth.
Still more trite are the commonplaces as to the emptiness and vanity
of the satisfaction to be derived from Fame and Reputation. The case
of posthumous fame, indeed, is a striking instance of the general
proposition before laid down, that the commonly accepted ends of action
are determined partly by the average force of desires that are not
directed towards pleasure, nor conformed to experiences of pleasure.
For posthumous fame seems to rank pretty high among the objects that
common opinion regards as good or desirable for the individual:
and the pursuit of it is not ordinarily stigmatised as contrary to
prudence, even if it leads a man to sacrifice other important sources
of happiness to a result of which he never expects to be actually
conscious. Yet the slightest reflection shows such a pursuit to be
_prima facie_ irrational,[123] from an egoistic point of view; and
every moraliser has found this an obvious and popular topic. The actual
consciousness of present fame is no doubt very delightful to most
persons: still the moraliser does not find it difficult to maintain
that even this is attended with such counterbalancing disadvantages as
render its hedonistic value very doubtful.
Again, the current estimate of the desirability of Power is tolerably
high, and perhaps the more closely and analytically we examine the
actual motives of men, the more widespread and predominant its pursuit
will appear: for many men seem to seek wealth, knowledge, even
reputation, as a means to the attainment of power, rather than for
their own sakes or with a view to other pleasures. And yet men assent
willingly when they are told that the pursuit of power, as of fame,
is prompted by a vain ambition, never satisfied, but only rendered
more uneasy by such success as is possible for it: that the anxieties
which attend not only the pursuit but the possession of power, and the
jealousies and dangers inseparable from the latter, far outweigh its
pleasures.
Society of some sort no one can deny to be necessary to human
happiness: but still the kind and degree of social intercourse which
is actually sought by the more wealthy and leisured portion of the
community, with no little expenditure of time, trouble, and means, is
often declared to yield a most thin and meagre result of pleasure.
We find, no doubt, great agreement among modern moralisers as to the
importance of the exercise of the domestic affections as a means of
happiness: and this certainly seems to have a prominent place in the
plan of life of the majority of mankind. And yet it may fairly be
doubted whether men in general do value domestic life very highly,
apart from the gratification of sexual passion. Certainly whenever
any part of civilised society is in such a state that men can freely
indulge this passion and at the same time avoid the burden of a
family, without any serious fear of social disapprobation, celibacy
tends to become common: it has even become so common as to excite
the grave anxiety of legislators. And though such conduct has always
been disapproved by common sense, it seems to be rather condemned as
anti-social than as imprudent.
Thus our examination shows great instability and uncertainty in the
most decisive judgments of common sense; since, as I have said, bodily
comfort and luxury, wealth, fame, power, society are the objects which
common opinion seems most clearly and confidently to recommend as
sources of pleasure. For though the pleasures derived from Art and the
contemplation of the beautiful in Nature, and those of curiosity and
the exercise of the intellect generally, are highly praised, it is
difficult to formulate a “common opinion” in respect of them, since the
high estimates often set upon them seem to express the real experience
of only small minorities. And though these have persuaded the mass
of mankind, or that portion of it which is possessed of leisure, to
let Culture be regarded as an important source of happiness; they can
scarcely be said to have produced any generally accepted opinion as to
its importance in comparison with the other sources before mentioned,
the pleasures of which are more genuinely appreciated by the majority;
still less as to the relative value of different elements of this
culture.
But even supposing the _consensus_, in respect of sources of happiness,
were far more complete and clear than impartial reflection seems to
show, its value would still be considerably impaired by the dissent of
important minorities, which we have not yet noticed. For example, many
religious persons regard all mundane pleasures as mean and trifling;
so full of vanity and emptiness that the eager pursuit of them is
only possible through ever-renewed illusion, leading to ever-repeated
disappointment. And this view is shared by not a few reflective persons
who have no religious bias: as is evident from the numerous adherents
that Pessimism has won in recent times. Indeed a somewhat similar
judgment, on the value of the ordinary objects of human pursuit, has
been passed by many philosophers who have not been pessimists: and
when we consider that it is the philosopher’s especial business to
reflect with care and precision on the facts of consciousness, we
shall hesitate, in any dispute between philosophers and the mass of
mankind, to let our conclusion be determined by merely counting heads.
On the other hand, as has been already observed, the philosopher’s
susceptibilities and capacities of feeling do not fairly represent
those of humanity in general: and hence if he ventures to erect the
results of his individual experience into a universal standard, he is
likely to overrate some pleasures and underrate others. Perhaps the
most convincing illustrations of this are furnished by thinkers not
of the idealist or transcendental type, but professed Hedonists, such
as Epicurus and Hobbes. We cannot accept as fair expressions of the
ordinary experience of the human race either Epicurus’s identification
of painlessness with the highest degree of pleasure, or Hobbes’s
asseveration that the gratifications of curiosity “far exceed in
intensity all carnal delights.” Thus we seem to be in this dilemma:
the mass of mankind, to whose common opinion we are naturally referred
for catholically authoritative beliefs respecting the conditions of
happiness, are deficient in the faculty or the habit of observing and
recording their experience: and usually, in proportion as a man is, by
nature and practice, a better observer, the phenomena that he has to
observe are more and more divergent from the ordinary type.
§ 3. On the whole, it must, I think, be admitted that the Hedonistic
method cannot be freed from inexactness and uncertainty by appealing
to the judgments of common sense respecting the sources of happiness.
At the same time I would not exaggerate the difficulty of combining
these into a tolerably coherent body of probable doctrine, not
useless for practical guidance. For first, it must be observed, that
it is only occasionally and to a limited extent that these commonly
commended sources of happiness come into competition with one
another and are presented as alternatives. For example, the pursuit
of wealth often leads also to power (besides the power that lies in
wealth) and to reputation: and again, these objects of desire can
usually be best attained--as far as it is in our power to attain
them at all--by employment which in itself gives the pleasure that
normally attends energetic exercise of one’s best faculties: and this
congenial employment is not incompatible with adequate exercise of
the affections, social and domestic; nor with cultivated amusement
(which must always be carefully limited in amount if it is to be
really amusing). And no one doubts that to carry either employment
or amusement to a degree that injures health involves generally a
sacrifice of happiness, no less than over-indulgence in sensual
gratifications.
And as for the philosophical or quasi-philosophical paradoxes as to
the illusoriness of sensual enjoyments, wealth, power, fame, etc., we
may explain the widespread acceptance which these find by admitting
a certain general tendency to exaggeration in the common estimates
of such objects of desire, which from time to time causes a reaction
and an equally excessive temporary depreciation of them. As we saw
(chap. iii.) it is natural for men to value too highly the absent
pleasures for which they hope and long: power and fame, for example,
are certainly attended with anxieties and disgusts which are not
foreseen when they are represented in longing imagination: yet it may
still be true that they bring to most men a clear balance of happiness
on the whole. It seems clear, again, that luxury adds _less_ to the
ordinary enjoyment of life than most men struggling with penury
suppose: there are special delights attending the hard-earned meal,
and the rarely-recurring amusement, which must be weighed against the
profuser pleasures that the rich can command: so that we may fairly
conclude that increase of happiness is very far from keeping pace
with increase of wealth. On the other hand, when we take into account
all the pleasures of Culture, Power, Fame, and Beneficence, and still
more the security that wealth gives against the pains of privation
and the anxieties of penury--for the owner himself and those whom
he loves--we can hardly doubt that increase of wealth brings on the
average _some_ increase of happiness: at least until a man reaches an
income beyond that of the great majority in any actual community. Thus
on the whole it would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that, while
it is extravagant to affirm that happiness is “equally distributed
through all ranks and callings,” it is yet _more_ equally distributed
than the aspect of men’s external circumstances would lead us to infer:
especially considering the importance of the pleasures that attend the
exercise of the affections. Again, common sense is quite prepared to
recognise that there are persons of peculiar temperament to whom the
ordinary pleasures of life are really quite trifling in comparison with
more refined enjoyments: and also that men generally are liable to
fall, for certain periods, under the sway of absorbing impulses, which
take them out of the range within which the judgments of common sense
are even broadly and generally valid. No one (_e.g._) expects a lover
to care much for anything except the enjoyments of love; nor considers
that an enthusiast sacrifices happiness in making everything give way
to his hobby.
In fact we may say that common sense scarcely claims to provide more
than rather indefinite general rules, which no prudent man should
neglect without giving himself a reason for doing so. Such reasons
may either be drawn from one’s knowledge of some peculiarities in
one’s nature, or from the experience of others whom one has ground
for believing to be more like oneself than the average of mankind
are. Still, as we saw, there is considerable risk of error in thus
appropriating the special experience of other individuals: and, in
short, it does not appear that by any process of this kind,--either
by appealing to the common opinion of the many, or to that of
cultivated persons, or to that of those whom we judge most to resemble
ourselves,--we can hope to solve with precision or certainty the
problems of egoistic conduct.
The question then remains, whether any general theory can be attained
of the causes of pleasure and pain so certain and practically
applicable that we may by its aid rise above the ambiguities and
inconsistencies of common or sectarian opinion, no less than the
shortcomings of the empirical-reflective method, and establish the
Hedonistic art of life on a thoroughly scientific basis. To the
consideration of this question I shall proceed in the last chapter of
this book: but before entering upon it, I wish to examine carefully
a common belief as to the means of attaining happiness which--though
it hardly claims to rest upon a scientific basis--is yet generally
conceived by those who hold it to have a higher degree of certainty
than most of the current opinions that we have been examining. This
is the belief that a man will attain the greatest happiness open
to him by the performance of his Duty as commonly recognised and
prescribed--except so far as he may deviate from this standard in
obedience to a truer conception of the conduct by which universal good
is to be realised or promoted.[124] The special importance of this
opinion to a writer on Morals renders it desirable to reserve our
discussion of it for a separate chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[121] The consideration of the importance of Morality as a source of
happiness is reserved for the next chapter.
[122] It is striking to find the author of the _Wealth of Nations_, the
founder of a long line of plutologists who are commonly believed to
exalt the material means of happiness above all other, declaring that
“wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility,” and that
“in ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are
nearly upon a level, and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the
highway possesses that security which kings are fighting for.” Adam
Smith, _Moral Sentiments_, Part iv. chap. i.
[123] No doubt such a pursuit may be justified to self-love by dwelling
on the pleasures of hope and anticipation which attend it. But this is
obviously an after-thought. It is not for the sake of these originally
that posthumous fame is sought by him whom it spurs
“To scorn delights and live laborious days.”
[124] In the following chapter I have not entered into any particular
consideration of the case in which the individual’s conscience is
definitely in conflict with the general moral consciousness of his
age and country: because, though it is commonly held to be a man’s
duty always to obey the dictates of his own conscience, even at the
risk of error, it can hardly be said to be a current opinion that he
will always attain the greatest happiness open to him by conforming to
the dictates of his conscience even when it conflicts with received
morality.
CHAPTER V
HAPPINESS AND DUTY
§ 1. The belief in the connexion of Happiness with Duty is one to
which we find a general tendency among civilised men, at least after
a certain stage in civilisation has been reached. But it is doubtful
whether it would be affirmed, among ourselves, as a generalisation from
experience, and not rather as a matter of direct Divine Revelation, or
an inevitable inference from the belief that the world is governed by a
perfectly Good and Omnipotent Being. To examine thoroughly the validity
of the latter belief is one of the most important tasks that human
reason can attempt: but involving as it does an exhaustive inquiry
into the evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, it could hardly
be included within the scope of the present treatise.[125] Here, then,
I shall only consider the coincidence of Duty and Happiness in so far
as it is maintained by arguments drawn from experience and supposed to
be realised in our present earthly life. Perhaps, as so restricted,
the coincidence can hardly be said to be “currently believed”: indeed
it may be suggested that the opposite belief is implied in the general
admission of the necessity of rewards and punishments in a future
state, in order to exhibit and realise completely the moral government
of the world. But reflection will show that this implication is not
necessary; for it is possible to hold that even here virtue is always
rewarded and vice punished, so far as to make the virtuous course of
action always the most prudent; while yet the rewards and punishments
are not sufficient to satisfy our sense of justice. Admitting that
the virtuous man is often placed on earth in circumstances so
adverse that his life is not as happy as that of many less virtuous;
it is still possible to maintain that by virtue he will gain the
maximum of happiness that can be gained under these circumstances,
all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. And this view has
certainly been held by moralists of reputation on grounds drawn from
actual experience of human life; and seems often to be confidently put
forward on similar grounds by popular preachers and moralisers. It
appears therefore desirable to subject this opinion to a careful and
impartial examination. In conducting this examination, at the present
stage of our inquiry, we shall have to use the received notions of Duty
without further definition or analysis: but it is commonly assumed
by those whose view we are to examine that these conceptions--as
they are found in the moral consciousness of ordinary well-meaning
persons--are at least approximately valid and trustworthy; and the
preceding chapters will have fully shown that the generalisations of
Hedonism must be established, if at all, by large considerations and
decisive preponderances, and that it would be idle in considering a
question of this kind to take account of slight differences, and to
pretend to weigh in our mental scales comparatively small portions of
happiness.[126]
§ 2. Accepting, then, the common division[127] of duties into
self-regarding and social, it may be conceded that as far as the first
are concerned the view that we are examining is not likely to provoke
any controversy: for by ‘duties towards oneself’ are commonly meant
acts that tend directly or indirectly to promote one’s happiness. We
may therefore confine our attention to the social department of Duty,
and consider whether by observing the moral rules that prescribe
certain modes of behaviour towards others we shall always tend to
secure the greatest balance of happiness to ourselves.
Here it will be convenient to adopt with some modification the
terminology of Bentham; and to regard the pleasures consequent on
conformity to moral rules, and the pains consequent on their violation,
as the ‘sanctions’ of these rules. These ‘sanctions’ we may classify
as External and Internal. The former class will include both ‘Legal
Sanctions,’ or penalties inflicted by the authority, direct or
indirect, of the sovereign; and ‘Social Sanctions,’ which are either
the pleasures that may be expected from the approval and goodwill of
our fellow-men generally, and the services that they will be prompted
to render both by this goodwill and by their appreciation of the
usefulness of good conduct, or the annoyance and losses that are to
be feared from their distrust and dislike. The internal sanctions
of duty--so far as it diverges from the conduct which self-interest
apart from morality would dictate--will lie in the pleasurable emotion
attending virtuous action, or in the absence of remorse, or will
result more indirectly from some effect on the mental constitution of
the agent produced by the maintenance of virtuous dispositions and
habits. This classification is important for our present purpose,
chiefly because the systems of rules to which these different sanctions
are respectively attached may be mutually conflicting. The Positive
Morality of any community undergoes development, and is thus subject
to changes which affect the consciences of the few before they are
accepted by the many; so that the rules at any time sustained by the
strongest social sanctions may not only fall short of, but even clash
with, the intuitions of those members of the community who have most
moral insight. For similar reasons Law and Positive Morality may be
at variance, in details. For though a law could not long exist, which
it was universally thought wrong to obey; there may easily be laws
commanding conduct that is considered immoral by some more or less
enlightened fraction of the community, especially by some sect or party
that has a public opinion of its own: and any individual may be so much
more closely connected with this fraction than with the rest of the
community, that the social sanction may in his case practically operate
against the legal.
This conflict of sanctions is of great importance in considering
whether these sanctions, as at present capable of being foreseen,
are sufficient in all cases to determine a rational egoist to the
performance of social duty: for the more stress we lay on either the
legal or the social sanctions of moral conduct, the greater difficulty
we shall have in proving the coincidence of duty and self-interest in
the exceptional cases in which we find these sanctions arrayed against
what we conceive to be duty.
But even if we put these cases out of sight, it still seems clear that
the external sanctions of morality alone are not always sufficient to
render immoral conduct also imprudent. We must indeed admit that in an
even tolerably well-ordered society--_i.e._ in an ordinary civilised
community in its normal condition--all serious open violation of law is
contrary to prudence, unless it is an incident in a successful process
of violent revolution: and further, that violent revolutions would
very rarely--perhaps never--be made by a combination of persons, all
perfectly under the control of enlightened self-love; on account of
the general and widespread destruction of security and of other means
of happiness which such disturbances inevitably involve. Still, so
long as actual human beings are not all rational egoists, such times
of disorder will be liable to occur: and we cannot say that _under
existing circumstances_ it is a clear universal precept of Rational
Self-love that a man should “seek peace and ensue it”; since the
disturbance of political order may offer to a cool and skilful person,
who has the art of fishing in troubled waters, opportunities of gaining
wealth, fame, and power, far beyond what he could hope for in peaceful
times. In short, though we may admit that a society composed entirely
of rational egoists would, when once organised, tend to remain in a
stable and orderly condition, it does not follow that any individual
rational egoist will always be on the side of order in any existing
community.[128]
But at any rate, in the most orderly societies with which we are
acquainted, the administration of law and justice is never in so
perfect a state as to render _secret_ crimes always acts of folly, on
the score of the legal penalties attached to them. For however much
these may outweigh the advantages of crime, cases must inevitably
occur in which the risk of discovery is so small, that on a sober
calculation the almost certain gain will more than compensate for the
slight chance of the penalty. And finally, in no community is the law
actually in so perfect a state that there are not certain kinds of
flagrantly anti-social conduct which slip through its meshes and escape
legal penalties altogether, or incur only such legal penalties as are
outweighed by the profit of law-breaking.
§ 3. Let us proceed, then, to consider how far the social sanction in
such cases supplies the defects of the legal. No doubt the hope of
praise and liking and services from one’s fellow-men, and the fear
of forfeiting these and incurring instead aversion, refusal of aid,
and social exclusion, are considerations often important enough to
determine the rational egoist to law-observance, even in default of
adequate legal penalties. Still these sanctions are liable to fail
just where the legal penalties are defective; social no less than
legal penalties are evaded by secret crimes; and in cases of criminal
revolutionary violence, the efficacy of the social sanction is apt
to be seriously impaired by the party spirit enlisted on the side of
the criminal. For it has to be observed that the force of the social
sanction diminishes very rapidly, in proportion to the number of
dissidents from the common opinion that awards it. Disapprobation that
is at once intense and quite universal would be so severe a penalty
as perhaps to outweigh any imaginable advantages; since it seems
impossible for a human being to live happily, whatever other goods
he may enjoy, without the kindly regards of some of his fellows: and
so, in contemplating the conventional portrait of the tyrant, who is
represented as necessarily suspicious of those nearest him, even of
the members of his own family, we feel prepared to admit that such
a life must involve the extreme of unhappiness. But when we turn
to contemplate the actual tyrannical usurpers, wicked statesmen,
successful leaders of unwarranted rebellion, and, speaking generally,
the great criminals whose position raises them out of the reach of
legal penalties, it does not appear that the moral odium under which
they lie must necessarily count for much in an egoistic calculation of
the gain and loss resulting from their conduct. For this disesteem
is only expressed by a portion of the community: and its utterance
is often drowned in the loud-voiced applause of the multitude whose
admiration is largely independent of moral considerations. Nor are
there wanting philosophers and historians whose judgment manifests a
similar independence.
It seems, then, impossible to affirm that the external sanctions of
men’s legal duties will always be sufficient to identify duty with
interest. And a corresponding assertion would be still more unwarranted
in respect of moral duties not included within the sphere of Law. In
saying this, I am fully sensible of the force of what may be called
the Principle of Reciprocity, by which certain utilitarians have
endeavoured to prove the coincidence of any individual’s interest with
his social duties. Virtues (they say) are qualities either useful or
directly agreeable to others: thus they either increase the market
value of the virtuous man’s services, and cause others to purchase them
at a higher rate and to allot to him more dignified and interesting
functions; or they dispose men to please him, both out of gratitude
and in order to enjoy the pleasures of his society in return: and
again--since man is an imitative animal--the exhibition of these
qualities is naturally rewarded by a reciprocal manifestation of them
on the part of others, through the mere influence of example. I do
not doubt that the prospect of these advantages is an adequate motive
for cultivating many virtues and avoiding much vice. Thus on such
grounds a rational egoist will generally be strict and punctual in the
fulfilment of all his engagements, and truthful in his assertions,
in order to win the confidence of other men; and he will be zealous
and industrious in his work, in order to obtain gradually more
important and therefore more honourable and lucrative employment; and
he will control such of his passions and appetites as are likely to
interfere with his efficiency; and will not exhibit violent anger or
use unnecessary harshness even towards servants and subordinates; and
towards his equals and superiors in rank he will be generally polite
and complaisant and good-humoured, and prompt to show them all such
kindness as costs but little in proportion to the pleasure it gives.
Still, reflection seems to show that the conduct recommended by this
line of reasoning does not really coincide with moral duty. For, first,
what one requires for social success is that one should _appear_,
rather than _be_, useful to others: and hence this motive will not
restrain one from doing secret harm to others, or even from acting
openly in a way that is really harmful, though not perceived to be
so. And again, a man is not useful to others by his virtue only, but
sometimes rather by his vice; or more often by a certain admixture
of unscrupulousness with his good and useful qualities. And further,
morality prescribes the performance of duties equally towards all, and
that we should abstain as far as possible from harming any: but on the
principle of Reciprocity we should exhibit our useful qualities chiefly
towards the rich and powerful, and abstain from injuring those who can
retaliate; while we may reasonably omit our duties to the poor and
feeble, if we find a material advantage in so doing, unless they are
able to excite the sympathy of persons who can harm us. Moreover, some
vices (as for example, many kinds of sensuality and extravagant luxury)
do not inflict any immediate or obvious injury on any individual,
though they tend in the long-run to impair the general happiness: hence
few persons find themselves strongly moved to check or punish this kind
of mischief.
Doubtless in the last-mentioned cases the mere disrepute inevitably
attaching to open immorality is an important consideration. But I do
not think that this will be seriously maintained to be sufficient
always to turn the scales of prudence against vice--at least by
any one who has duly analysed the turbid and fluctuating streams
of social opinion upon which the good or ill repute of individuals
mainly depends, and considered the conflicting and divergent elements
that they contain. Many moralists have noticed the discrepancy in
modern Europe between the Law of Honour (or the more important rules
maintained by the social sanction of polite persons) and the morality
professed in society at large. This is, however, by no means the only
instance of a special code, divergent in certain points from the
moral rules generally accepted in the community where it exists. Most
religious sects and parties, and probably the majority of trades and
professions, exhibit this phenomenon in some degree. I do not mean
merely that special rules of behaviour are imposed upon members of
each profession, corresponding to their special social functions and
relations: I mean that a peculiar moral opinion is apt to grow up,
conflicting to a certain extent with the opinion of the general public.
The most striking part of this divergence consists generally in the
approval or excusal of practices disapproved by the current morality:
as (_e.g._) licence among soldiers, bribery among politicians in
certain ages and countries, unveracity of various degrees among priests
and advocates, fraud in different forms among tradesmen. In such cases
there are generally strong natural inducements to disobey the stricter
rule (in fact it would seem to be to the continual pressure of these
inducements that the relaxation of the rule has been due): while at the
same time the social sanction is weakened to such an extent that it
is sometimes hard to say whether it outweighs a similar force on the
other side. For a man who, under these circumstances, conforms to the
stricter rule, if he does not actually meet with contempt and aversion
from those of his calling, is at least liable to be called eccentric
and fantastic: and this is still more the case if by such conformity
he foregoes advantages not only to himself but to his relatives or
friends or party. Very often this professional or sectarian excusal of
immorality of which we are speaking is not so clear and explicit as to
amount to the establishment of a rule, conflicting with the generally
received rule: but is still sufficient to weaken indefinitely the
social sanction in favour of the latter. And, apart from these special
divergences, we may say generally that in most civilised societies
there are two different degrees of positive morality, both maintained
in some sort by common consent; a stricter code being publicly taught
and avowed, while a laxer set of rules is privately admitted as the
only code which can be supported by social sanctions of any great
force. By refusing to conform to the stricter code a man is often not
liable to incur exclusion from social intercourse, or any material
hindrance to professional advancement, or even serious dislike on the
part of any of the persons whose society he will most naturally seek;
and under such circumstances the mere loss of a certain amount of
reputation is not likely to be felt as a very grave evil, except by
persons peculiarly sensitive to the pleasures and pains of reputation.
And there would seem to be many men whose happiness does not depend
on the approbation or disapprobation of the moralist--and of mankind
in general in so far as they support the moralist--to such an extent
as to make it prudent for them to purchase this praise by any great
sacrifice of other goods.
§ 4. We must conclude, then, that if the conduct prescribed to the
individual by the avowedly accepted morality of the community of which
he is a member, can be shown to coincide with that to which Rational
Self-love would prompt, it must be, in many cases, solely or chiefly on
the score of the internal sanctions. In considering the force of these
sanctions, I shall eliminate those pleasures and pains which lie in the
anticipation of rewards and punishments in a future life: for as we
are now supposing the calculations of Rational Egoism to be performed
without taking into account any feelings that are beyond the range of
experience, it will be more consistent to exclude also the pleasurable
or painful anticipations of such feelings.
Let us, then, contemplate by itself the satisfaction that attends the
performance of duty as such (without taking into consideration any
ulterior consequences), and the pain that follows on its violation.
After the discussions of the two preceding chapters I shall not of
course attempt to weigh exactly these pleasures and pains against
others; but I see no empirical grounds for believing that such feelings
are always sufficiently intense to turn the balance of prospective
happiness in favour of morality. This will hardly be denied if the
question is raised in respect of isolated acts of duty. Let us take
an extreme case, which is yet quite within the limits of experience.
The call of duty has often impelled a soldier or other public servant,
or the adherent of a persecuted religion, to face certain and painful
death, under circumstances where it might be avoided with little or
no loss even of reputation. To prove such conduct always reasonable
from an egoistic point of view, we have to assume that, in all cases
where such a duty could exist and be recognised, the mere pain[129]
that would follow on evasion of duty would be so great as to render
the whole remainder of life hedonistically worthless. Surely such an
assumption would be paradoxical and extravagant. Nothing that we know
of the majority of persons in any society would lead us to conclude
that their moral feelings taken alone form so preponderant an element
of their happiness. And a similar conclusion seems irresistible even in
more ordinary cases, where a man is called on to give up, for virtue’s
sake, not life, but a considerable share of the ordinary sources
of human happiness. Can we say that all, or even most, men are so
constituted that the satisfactions of a good conscience are certain to
repay them for such sacrifices, or that the pain and loss involved in
them would certainly be outweighed by the remorse that would follow the
refusal to make them?[130]
Perhaps, however, so much as this has scarcely ever been expressly
maintained. What Plato in his _Republic_ and other writers on the same
side have rather tried to prove, is not that at any particular moment
duty will be, to every one on whom it may devolve, productive of more
happiness than any other course of conduct; but rather that it is every
one’s interest on the whole to choose the life of the virtuous man. But
even this it is very difficult even to render probable: as will appear,
I think, if we examine the lines of reasoning by which it is commonly
supported.
To begin with Plato’s argument. He represents the soul of the virtuous
man as a well-ordered polity of impulses, in which every passion and
appetite is duly obedient to the rightful sovereignty of reason, and
operates only within the limits laid down by the latter. He then
contrasts the tranquil peace of such a mind with the disorder of
one where a succession of baser impulses, or some ruling passion,
lords it over reason: and asks which is the happiest, even apart from
external rewards and punishments. But we may grant all that Plato
claims, and yet be no further advanced towards the solution of the
question before us. For here the issue does not lie between Reason and
Passion, but rather--in Butler’s language--between Rational Self-love
and Conscience. We are supposing the Egoist to have all his impulses
under control, and are only asking how this control is to be exercised.
Now we have seen that the regulation and organisation of life best
calculated to attain the end of self-interest appears _prima facie_
divergent at certain points from that to which men in general are
prompted by a sense of duty. In order to maintain Plato’s position it
has to be shown that this appearance is false; and that a system of
self-government, which under certain circumstances leads us to pain,
loss, and death, is still that which self-interest requires. It can
scarcely be said that our nature is such that only this anti-egoistic
kind of regulation is possible; that the choice lies between this
and none at all. It is easy to imagine a rational egoist, strictly
controlling each of his passions and impulses--including his social
sentiments--within such limits that its indulgence should not involve
the sacrifice of some greater gratification: and experience seems to
show us many examples of persons who at least approximate as closely to
this type as any one else does to the ideal of the orthodox moralist.
Hence if the regulation of Conscience be demonstrably the best means
to the individual’s happiness, it must be because the order kept by
Self-love involves a sacrifice of pleasure on the whole, as compared
with the order kept by Conscience. And if this is the case, it would
seem that it can only be on account of the special emotional pleasure
attending the satisfaction of the moral sentiments, or special pain or
loss of happiness consequent on their repression and violation.
Before, however, we proceed further, a fundamental difficulty must be
removed which has probably some time since suggested itself to the
reader. If a man thinks it reasonable to seek his own interest, it
is clear that he cannot himself disapprove of any conduct that comes
under this principle or approve of the opposite. And hence it may
appear that the pleasures and pains of conscience cannot enter into
the calculation whether a certain course of conduct is or is not in
accordance with Rational Egoism, because they cannot attach themselves
in the egoist’s mind to any modes of action which have not been already
decided, on other grounds, to be reasonable or the reverse. And this
is to a certain extent true; but we must here recur to the distinction
(indicated in Book i. chap. iii. § 1) between the general impulse
to do what we believe to be reasonable, and special sentiments of
liking or aversion for special kinds of conduct, independent of their
reasonableness. In the moral sentiments as they exist in ordinary men,
these two kinds of feeling are indistinguishably blended; because it
is commonly believed that the rules of conduct to which the common
moral sentiments are attached are in some way or other reasonable. We
can, however, conceive the two separated: and in fact, as was before
said, we have experience of such separation whenever a man is led by a
process of thought to adopt a different view of morality from that in
which he has been trained; for in such a case there will always remain
in his mind some quasi-moral likings and aversions, no longer sustained
by his deliberate judgment of right and wrong. And thus there is every
reason to believe that most men, however firmly they might adopt the
principles of Egoistic Hedonism, would still feel sentiments prompting
to the performance of social duty, as commonly recognised in their
society, independently of any conclusion that the actions prompted by
such sentiments were reasonable and right. For such sentiments would
always be powerfully supported by the sympathy of others, and their
expressions of praise and blame, liking and aversion: and since it is
agreed that the conduct commonly recognised as virtuous is _generally_
coincident with that which enlightened self-love would dictate, a
rational egoist’s habits of conduct will be such as naturally to
foster these (for him) ‘quasi-moral’ feelings. The question therefore
arises--not whether the egoist should cherish and indulge these
sentiments up to a certain point, which all would admit--but whether he
can consistently encourage them to grow to such a pitch that they will
always prevail over the strongest opposing considerations; or, to put
it otherwise, whether prudence requires him to give them the rein and
let them carry him whither they will. We have already seen ground for
believing that Rational Self-love will best attain its end by limiting
its conscious operation and allowing free play to disinterested
impulses: can we accept the further paradox that it is reasonable for
it to abdicate altogether its supremacy over some of these impulses?
On a careful consideration of the matter, it will appear, I think,
that this abdication of self-love is not really a possible occurrence
in the mind of a sane person, who still regards his own interest as
the reasonable ultimate end of his actions. Such a man may, no doubt,
resolve that he will devote himself unreservedly to the practice of
virtue, without any particular consideration of what appears to him
to be his interest: he may perform a series of acts in accordance
with this resolution, and these may gradually form in him strong
habitual tendencies to acts of a similar kind. But it does not seem
that these habits of virtue can ever become so strong as to gain
irresistible control over a sane and reasonable will. When the
occasion comes on which virtue demands from such a man an extreme
sacrifice--the imprudence of which must force itself upon his notice,
however little he may be in the habit of weighing his own pleasures
and pains--he must always be able to deliberate afresh, and to act (as
far as the control of his will extends) without reference to his past
actions. It may, however, be said that, though an egoist retaining
his belief in rational egoism cannot thus abandon his will to the
sway of moral enthusiasm, still, supposing it possible for him to
change his conviction and prefer duty to interest,--or supposing we
compare him with another man who makes this choice,--we shall find
that a gain in happiness on the whole results from this preference.
It may be held that the pleasurable emotions attendant upon such
virtuous or quasi-virtuous habits as are compatible with adhesion
to egoistic principles are so inferior to the raptures that attend
the unreserved and passionate surrender of the soul to virtue, that
it is really a man’s interest--even with a view to the present life
only--to obtain, if he can, the convictions that render this surrender
possible; although under certain circumstances it must necessarily
lead him to act in a manner which, considered by itself, would be
undoubtedly imprudent. This is certainly a tenable proposition, and
I am quite disposed to think it true of persons with specially
refined moral sensibilities. But--though from the imperfections of the
hedonistic calculus the proposition cannot in any case be conclusively
disproved--it seems, as I have said, to be opposed to the broad results
of experience, so far as the great majority of mankind are concerned.
Observation would lead me to suppose that most men are so constituted
as to feel far more keenly pleasures (and pains) arising from some
other source than the conscience; either from the gratifications of
sense, or from the possession of power and fame, or from strong human
affections, or from the pursuit of science, art, etc.; so that in many
cases perhaps not even early training could have succeeded in giving
to the moral feelings the requisite predominance: and certainly where
this training has been wanting, it seems highly improbable that a mere
change of ethical conviction could develop their moral susceptibilities
so far as to make it clearly their earthly interest to resolve on
facing all sacrifices for the fulfilment of duty.
To sum up: although the performance of duties towards others and
the exercise of social virtue seem to be _generally_ the best means
to the attainment of the individual’s happiness, and it is easy to
exhibit this coincidence between Virtue and Happiness rhetorically
and popularly; still, when we carefully analyse and estimate the
consequences of Virtue to the virtuous agent, it appears improbable
that this coincidence is complete and universal. We may conceive
the coincidence becoming perfect in a Utopia where men were as much
in accord on moral as they are now on mathematical questions, where
Law was in perfect harmony with Moral Opinion, and all offences were
discovered and duly punished: or we may conceive the same result
attained by intensifying the moral sentiments of all members of the
community, without any external changes (which indeed would then be
unnecessary). But just in proportion as existing societies and existing
men fall short of this ideal, rules of conduct based on the principles
of Egoistic Hedonism seem liable to diverge from those which most men
are accustomed to recognise as prescribed by Duty and Virtue.
FOOTNOTES:
[125] Such discussion of the question as seemed desirable in a work
like this will be found in the concluding chapter of the treatise.
[126] For a similar reason I shall here treat the notions of ‘Duty’
and ‘Virtuous action’ as practically coincident; reserving for future
discussion the divergences between the two which reflection on the
common usage of the terms appears to indicate. See Book iii. chap. ii.
[127] Whatever modifications of this division may afterwards appear to
be necessary (cf. Book iii. chap. ii. § 1, and chap. vii. § 1) will
not, I think, tend to invalidate the conclusions of the present chapter.
[128] I do not here consider the case of revolutionists aiming
sincerely at the general wellbeing; since the morality of such
revolutions will generally be so dubious, that these cases cannot
furnish any clear argument on either side of the question here
discussed.
[129] Under the notion of ‘moral pain’ (or pleasure) I intend to
include, in this argument, all pain (or pleasure) that is due to
sympathy with the feelings of others. It is not convenient to enter, at
this stage of the discussion, into a full discussion of the relation
of Sympathy to Moral Sensibility; but I may say that it seems to me
certain, on the one hand, that these two emotional susceptibilities
are actually distinct in most minds, whatever they may have been
originally; and on the other hand that sympathetic and strictly
moral feelings are almost inextricably blended in the ordinary moral
consciousness: so that, for the purposes of the present argument it is
not of fundamental importance to draw a distinction between them. I
have, however, thought it desirable to undertake a further examination
of sympathy--as the internal sanction on which Utilitarians specially
lay stress--in the concluding chapter of this treatise: to which,
accordingly, the reader may refer.
[130] A striking confirmation of this is furnished by those Christian
writers of the last century who treat the _moral_ unbeliever as a fool
who sacrifices his happiness both here and hereafter. These men were,
for the most part, earnestly engaged in the practice of virtue, and yet
this practice had not made them love virtue so much as to prefer it,
even under ordinary circumstances, to the sensual and other enjoyments
that it excludes. It seems then absurd to suppose that, in the case of
persons who have not developed and strengthened by habit their virtuous
impulses, the pain that might afterwards result from resisting the call
of duty would always be sufficient to neutralise all other sources of
pleasure.
CHAPTER VI
DEDUCTIVE HEDONISM
§ 1. In the preceding chapter we have seen reason to conclude that,
while obedience to recognised rules of duty tends, under ordinary
circumstances, to promote the happiness of the agent, there are yet no
adequate empirical grounds for regarding the performance of duty as
a universal or infallible means to the attainment of this end. Even,
however, if it were otherwise, even if it were demonstrably reasonable
for the egoist to choose duty at all costs under all circumstances, the
systematic endeavour to realise this principle would not--according
to common notions of morality--solve or supersede the problem of
determining the right method for seeking happiness. For the received
moral code allows within limits the pursuit of our own happiness,
and even seems to regard it as morally prescribed;[131] and still
more emphatically inculcates the promotion of the happiness of other
individuals, with whom we are in various ways specially connected: so
that, under either head, the questions that we have before considered
as to the determination and measurement of the elements of happiness
would still require some kind of answer.
It remains to ask how far a scientific investigation of the causes of
pleasure and pain can assist us in dealing with this practical problem.
Now it is obvious that for deciding which of two courses of action
is preferable on hedonistic grounds, we require not only to measure
pains and pleasures of different kinds, but also to ascertain how they
may be produced or averted. In most important prudential decisions,
complex chains of consequences are foreseen as intervening between
the volition we are immediately to initiate and the feelings which
constitute the ultimate end of our efforts; and the degree of accuracy
with which we forecast each link of these chains obviously depends
upon our knowledge, implicit or explicit, of the relations of cause
and effect among various natural phenomena. But if we suppose the
different elements and immediate sources of happiness to have been
duly ascertained and valued, the investigation of the conditions
of production of each hardly belongs to a general treatise on the
method of ethics; but rather to some one or other of the special
arts subordinate to the general art of conduct. Of these subordinate
arts some have a more or less scientific basis, while others are in
a merely empirical stage; thus if we have decided how far health is
to be sought, it belongs to the systematic art of hygiene, based on
physiological science, to furnish a detailed plan of seeking it; so
far, on the other hand, as we aim at power or wealth or domestic
happiness, such instruction as the experience of others can give
will be chiefly obtained in an unsystematic form, either from advice
relative to our own special circumstances, or from accounts of success
and failure in analogous situations. In either case the exposition
of such special arts does not appear to come within the scope of the
present treatise; nor could it help us in dealing with the difficulties
of measuring pleasures and pains which we have considered in the
previous chapters.
It may, however, be thought that a knowledge of the causes of pleasure
and pain may carry us beyond the determination of the means of gaining
particular kinds of pleasure and avoiding particular kinds of pain; and
enable us to substitute some deductive method of evaluing the elements
of happiness for the empirical-reflective method of which we have seen
the defects.[132]
A hedonistic method, indeed, that would dispense altogether with direct
estimates of the pleasurable and painful consequences of actions is
almost as inconceivable as a method of astronomy that would dispense
with observations of the stars. It is, however, conceivable that by
induction from cases in which empirical measurement is easy we may
obtain generalisations that will give us more trustworthy guidance
than such measurement can do in complicated cases; we may be able to
ascertain some general psychical or physical concomitant or antecedent
of pleasure and pain, more easy to recognise, foresee, measure, and
produce or avert in such cases, than pleasure and pain themselves. I
am willing to hope that this refuge from the difficulties of Empirical
Hedonism may some time or other be open to us: but I cannot perceive
that it is at present available. There is at present, so far as I can
judge, no satisfactorily established general theory of the causes of
pleasure and pain; and such theories as have gained a certain degree of
acceptance, as partially true or probable, are manifestly not adapted
for the practical application that we here require.
The chief difficulty of finding a universally applicable theory of
the causes of pleasures and pains is easily explained. Pleasures
and pains may be assumed to have universally--like other psychical
facts--certain cerebral nerve-processes, specifically unknown, as
their inseparable concomitants: accordingly, we may seek their causes
either in antecedent physical or antecedent psychical facts. But in
one important class of cases the chief cognisable antecedents are
obviously of the former kind, while in another important class they
are obviously of the latter kind: the difficulty is to establish any
theory equally applicable to both classes, or to bring the results of
the two lines of inquiry under a single generalisation without palpably
unsupported hypotheses. In the case of pleasures and pains--especially
pains--connected with sensation the most important cognisable
antecedents are clearly physical. I do not deny that, when the pain
is foreseen, the attitude of mind in which it is met may materially
influence its magnitude: indeed, in the hypnotic condition of the
brain, the feeling of pain may be apparently altogether prevented by an
antecedent belief that it will not be felt. Still in the main, under
ordinary conditions, the pains of sensation--probably the intensest
in the experience of most persons--invade and interrupt our psychical
life from without; and it would be idle to look for the chief causes
of their intensity or quality among antecedent psychical facts. This
is not equally true of the most prominent pleasures of sense: since
antecedent desire, if not an absolutely indispensable condition of
such pleasures, seems at any rate necessary to their attaining a high
degree of intensity. Still the chief causes of these desires themselves
are clearly physical states and processes--not merely neural--in the
organism of the sentient individual: and this is also true of a more
indefinite kind of pleasure, which is an important element of ordinary
human happiness,--the “well-feeling” that accompanies and is a sign of
physical well-being.
On the other hand, when we investigate the causes of the pleasures and
pains that belong to intellectual exercises or the play of personal
affections,--or of the pleasures (and to some extent pains) that belong
to the contemplation of beauty (or its opposite) in art or nature,--no
physiological theory can carry us far, owing to our ignorance of the
neural processes that accompany or antecede these feelings.
This is my general conclusion: the grounds for which I propose to
illustrate and explain further in the present chapter. It would,
however, seem to be quite beyond my limits to attempt anything like an
exhaustive discussion of either psychological or physiological theories
of the causes of pleasure and pain. I shall confine myself to certain
leading generalisations, which seem to have a special interest for
students of ethics; either because ethical motives have had a share in
causing their acceptance; or because--though inadequately grounded as
general theories--they appear to have a partial and limited value for
practical guidance.
§ 2. Let us begin by considering a theory, primarily psychological,
which has at least the merit of antiquity--as it is admittedly
derived from Aristotle,[133]--and is, in some form or other, still
current.[134] It is that expressed by Sir W. Hamilton[135] in the
following propositions: “Pleasure is the reflex of the spontaneous
and unimpeded exertion of a power of whose energy we are conscious:
pain, a reflex of the overstrained or repressed exertion of such a
power.” The phrases suggest _active_ as ordinarily distinguished from
_passive_ states; but Hamilton explains that “energy” and similar terms
“are to be understood to denote indifferently all the processes of our
higher and lower life of which we are conscious,”--on the ground that
consciousness itself implies more than a mere passivity of the subject.
I think, however, that the theory is evidently framed primarily to
suit the pleasures and pains that belong to the intellectual life
as such, and is only applied by a somewhat violent straining to an
important class among the pleasures and pains that belong to man’s
animal life. For Hamilton explains his terms (_a_) “spontaneous” and
(_b_) “unimpeded” to imply respectively (_a_) absence of “forcible
repression” or “forcible stimulation” of the power exercised, and (_b_)
absence of checks or hindrances on the part of the object about which
it is conversant. But these terms seem to have no clear psychical
import in application to organic sensations of the kind ordinarily
called passive. _E.g._ the feelings and vague representations of bodily
processes which constitute the consciousness of a toothache are as free
from conscious repression or stimulation as those which constitute
the consciousness that accompanies a warm bath:--except so far as
the mere presence of pain implies constraint, since we experience it
unwillingly, and the mere presence of pleasure implies the opposite:
but in this sense constraint and its opposite are characteristics of
the effects to be explained, and cannot therefore be regarded as their
causes.
Indeed, the ethical interest and value of the theory appears to me
to lie in its very one-sidedness. It tends to correct a vulgar error
in the estimate of pleasure, by directing attention strongly to the
importance of a class of pleasures which ordinary pleasure-seeking
probably undervalues,--the pleasures that specially belong to a life
filled with strenuous activity, whether purely intellectual, or
practical and partly physical.[136] In the same way it effectively
dispels the popular inadvertence of regarding labour as normally
painful because some labour is so, and because the pleasures connected
with relief from toil--the pleasures of repose and play--are in
the experience of most persons more striking than the pleasures of
strenuous activity. At the same time, even if we limit the theory
to the pleasures and pains immediately connected with voluntary
activity--intellectual or physical--it seems to me devoid not only
of definite guidance, but also of adequate theoretical precision.
For it seems to imply that the exercise of our powers is always made
less pleasant by the presence of impediments; but this is obviously
not true either of mainly intellectual or mainly physical activities.
Some obstacles undeniably increase pleasure by drawing out force and
skill to overcome them, as is clearly shown in the case of games and
sports: and even if we understand pain-causing impediments to be only
such hindrances as repress and diminish action, I do not find that the
theory is supported by experience, except so far as the repression
causes the specific discomfort of unsatisfied desire. _E.g._ I find
entertainment rather than discomfort in trying to make out objects in a
dim light, or the meaning of a speech in a strange language, provided
that failure does not interfere with the attainment of any end to which
I attach importance. It is a fundamental defect in Hamilton’s theory,
even in its more limited application, that it ignores the teleological
character of normal human activity.
This defect is avoided in a modification of the theory that a recent
writer has adopted. “The antithesis,” says Mr. Stout,[137] “between
pleasure and pain is coincident with the antithesis between free
and impeded progress towards an end. Unimpeded progress is pleasant
in proportion to the intensity and complexity of mental excitement.
An activity which is ... thwarted and retarded ... is painful in
proportion to its intensity and complexity and to the degree of
the hindrance.” Mr. Stout admits the difficulty of applying this
principle of explanation to the pleasures and pains of sense:[138]
and--unlike Hamilton--he expressly recognises that “a struggle with
difficulties which is not too prolonged or too intense may enhance the
pleasure of success out of all proportion to its own painfulness.”
But this qualification seems to render the propositions first laid
down unimportant from our present practical point of view, whatever
may be their theoretical value. I think, too, that the importance of
antecedent desire, as a condition of the pleasures and pains attendant
on voluntary activities, should be more expressly recognised. When
desire is strong, hopeful effort to overcome difficulties in the
way of fruition tends to be proportionally pleasurable--apart from
actual success--while disappointment or the fear of disappointment
similarly tends to be painful: but when desire is not strong, the
shock of thwarted activity and unfulfilled expectation may be rather
agreeable than otherwise. Thus, suppose I take a walk for pleasure,
intending to reach a neighbouring village, and find an unexpected
flood crossing my road; if I have no strong motive for arriving at the
village, the surprise and consequent change in the plan of my walk
will probably be on the whole a pleasurable incident.
The importance of eager desire as a condition of pleasure is noteworthy
from an ethical point of view: as it gives the psychological
basis for the familiar precept to repress--with a view to private
happiness--desires for ends that are either unattainable or
incompatible with the course of life which prudence marks out; and for
the somewhat less trite maxim of encouraging and developing desires
that prompt in the same direction as rational choice.
Suppose now we drop the dubious term “unimpeded”--retaining Hamilton’s
idea of “overstrained or repressed exertion” as the condition of
pain--and at the same time passing to a physical point of view,
mean by “activity” the activity of an _organ_. We thus reach
what is substantially Mr. Spencer’s doctrine, that pains are the
psychical concomitants of excessive or deficient actions of organs,
while pleasures are the concomitants of medium activities.[139] In
considering this theory it will be convenient to take pains and
pleasures separately: as it is obviously based primarily on experiences
of pain rather than of pleasure,--especially of the pains of sense to
which Hamilton’s theory seemed palpably inapplicable. Instances are
abundant in which pain is obviously caused by excessive stimulation of
nerves. Thus when we gradually increase the intensity of sensible heat,
pressure, muscular effort, we encounter pain at a certain point of the
increase; “deafening” sounds are highly disagreeable; and to confront
a tropical sun with unprotected eyeballs would soon become torture.
Some pains, again, as Spencer points out, arise from the excessive
actions of organs whose normal actions yield no feelings: as when the
digestive apparatus is overtaxed. Still in none of these cases does
it seem clear that pain supervenes through a mere intensification _in
degree_ of the action of the organ in question; and not rather through
some change in the kind of action--some inchoate disintegration or
disorganisation. And this latter cause--rather than mere quantity of
stimulation--is strongly suggested by a consideration of the pains due
to wounds and diseases, and even of the transient digestive discomforts
which arise from an improper kind rather than an improper quantity
of food. And a similar explanation seems to me most probable in the
case of pains which, according to Mr. Spencer, arise from “deficient”
action. He speaks of these as “discomforts or cravings”; but, as I
have before pointed out,[140] bodily appetites and other desires may
be strongly-felt impulses to action without being appreciably painful:
and, in my experience, when they become decidedly painful, some
disturbance tending to derangement may be presumed either in the organ
primarily concerned or in the organism as a whole. Thus hunger, in my
experience, may be extremely keen without being appreciably painful:
and when I find it painful, experience leads me to expect a temporarily
reduced power of assimilation, indicating some disorganisation in the
digestive apparatus.[141]
In any case, empirical evidence supports “excessive action” of an organ
as a cause of pain far more clearly than “deficient action.” Indeed a
consideration of this evidence has led some psychologists to adopt the
generalisation[142] that there is no quality of sensation absolutely
pleasant or unpleasant, but that every kind of sensation as it grows in
intensity begins at a certain point to be pleasurable, and continues
such up to a certain further point at which it passes rapidly through
indifference into pain. My own experience, however, fails to support
this generalisation. I agree with Gurney[143] that “of many tastes and
odours the faintest possible suggestion is disagreeable”; while other
feelings resulting from stimulation of sense-organs appear to remain
highly pleasurable at the highest degree of stimulation which the
actual conditions of physical life appear to allow.
However this may be, whether we conceive the nervous action of which
pain is an immediate consequent or concomitant as merely excessive in
quantity, or in some way discordant or disorganised in quality, it
is obvious that neither explanation can furnish us with any important
practical guidance: since we have no general means of ascertaining,
independently of our experience of pain itself, what nervous actions
are excessive or disorganised: and the cases where we have such means
do not present any practical problems which the theory enables us to
solve. No one doubts that wounds and diseases are to be avoided under
all ordinary circumstances: and in the exceptional circumstances in
which we may be moved to choose them as the least of several evils, the
exactest knowledge of their precise operation in causing pain is not
likely to assist our choice.
It may be said, however,--turning from pain to pleasure,--that the
generalisation which we have been considering at any rate gives us a
psychophysical basis for the ancient maxim of “avoiding excess” in
the pursuit of pleasure. But we have to observe that the practical
need of this maxim is largely due to the qualifications which the
psychophysical generalisation requires to make it true. Thus it is
especially needed in the important cases in which over-stimulation is
followed by pain not at once but after an interval of varying length.
_E.g._ alcoholic drinking, to many, remains pleasurable at the time up
to the point of excess at which the brain can no longer perform its
functions: it is “next morning” that the pain comes, or perhaps--in the
case of “well-seasoned” topers--not till after many years of habitual
excess. It should be noted also that it is not always the organ of
which the exercise gives pleasure that also, through over-exercise,
causes the pain of excess. Thus when we are tempted to eat too much,
the seductive pleasure is mainly due to the nerves of taste which are
not overtaxed; the pains come from the organs of digestion, whose
faint, vague pleasures alone would hardly tempt the voluptuary to
excess. In the case of dangerous mental excitements the penalty on
excess is usually still more indirect.
On the whole, granting that pleasure like virtue resides somewhere
in the mean, it must be admitted that this proposition gives no
practical directions for attaining it. For first, granting that both
excessive and deficient activities of organs cause pain, the question
still remains--as Spencer himself says--What determines in any case
the lower and the higher limits within which action is pleasurable?
Spencer’s answer to this question I will consider presently. But
there is a question no less obvious to which he does not expressly
advert, viz. why among the normal activities of our physical organs,
that have counterparts in consciousness, some only are pleasurable in
any appreciable degree, while many if not most are nearly or quite
indifferent. It seems undeniable (_e.g._) that while tastes and
smells are mostly either agreeable or disagreeable, most sensations
of touch and many of sight and sound are not appreciably[144] either;
and that, in the daily routine of healthy life, eating and drinking
are ordinarily pleasant, while dressing and undressing, walking and
muscular movements generally are practically indifferent.
It does not seem that an adequate explanation can be found in the
operation of habit.[145] It is no doubt true that actions through
frequent uniform repetition tend to become automatic and lose their
conscious counterparts, and hedonic indifference certainly seems in
some cases to be a stage through which such actions pass on the way
to unconsciousness. Thus even a business walk in a strange town is
normally pleasant through the novelty of the sights: but a similar walk
in the town where one lives is ordinarily indifferent, or nearly so;
while if one’s attention is strongly absorbed by the business, it may
be performed to a great extent unconsciously. On the other hand, the
operations of habit often have the opposite effect of making activities
pleasant which were at first indifferent or even disagreeable: as in
the case of acquired tastes, physical or intellectual. Indeed such
experiences have long been--I think, quite legitimately--used by
moralists as an encouragement to irksome duties, on the ground that
their irksomeness will be transient, through the operation of habit,
while the gain of their performance will be permanent. Mr. Spencer,
indeed, regards such experiences as so important that he ventures to
base on them the prediction that “pleasure will eventually accompany
every mode of action demanded by social conditions.” This, however,
seems unduly optimistic, in view not only of the first-mentioned
tendency of habit to hedonic indifference, but also of a third tendency
to render actions, at first indifferent or even pleasant, gradually
more irksome. Thus our intellect gradually wearies of monotonous
activities, and the _ennui_ may sometimes become intense: so again the
relish of a kind of diet at first agreeable may turn through monotony
into disgust.
Some quite different explanation must therefore be sought for the
varying degrees in which pleasure accompanies normal activities. Can
we find this in a suggestion of Mr. Spencer’s, developed by Mr. Grant
Allen,[146] that the pleasurableness of normal organic activities
depends on their _intermittence_, and that “the amount of pleasure
is probably ... in the inverse ratio of the natural frequency of
excitation” of the nerve-fibres involved? This theory certainly
finds some support in the fact that the sensual pleasures generally
recognised as greatest are those attending the activities of organs
which are normally left unexercised for considerable intervals.
Still, there are many facts that it does not explain--_e.g._ the
great differences in the pleasures obtainable at any given time by
different stimulations of the same sense; the phenomenon expressed in
the proverbial phrase “L’appétit vient en mangeant”; and the fact that
the exercise of the visual organs after apparently dreamless sleep does
not give appreciably keener pleasure than it does at ordinary times. It
would seem that we must seek for some special cause of the pleasurable
effect of intermittence in certain cases. And this cannot be merely
the greater intensity of the nervous action that takes place when
long-unexercised and well-nourished nerve-centres are stimulated: for
why, if that were the explanation, should the normal consciousness of
full nervous activity, gradually attained--as when we are in full swing
of energetic unwearied work of a routine kind--be often nearly or quite
indifferent?
Among the various competing hypotheses offered at this point of our
inquiry--no one of which, I believe, has attained anything like general
acceptance as covering the whole ground--I select for discussion one
that has special ethical interest.
According to this hypothesis,[147] the organic process accompanied
by pleasure is to be conceived as a “restoration of equilibrium”
after “disturbance”: so that the absence of appreciable pleasure in
the case of certain normal activities is explained by the absence of
antecedent disturbance. This view is obviously applicable to certain
classes of pleasures which, though by no means rare are incidental
in a normal life:--the pleasure of relief after physical pain, or
after the strain of great anxiety, and the pleasure of repose after
unusual exertions, intellectual or muscular. But when we attempt to
apply it to sensational pleasures generally, the indefiniteness of
the notion of “equilibrium,” as applied to the processes of a living
organism, becomes manifest. For our physical life consists of a series
of changes, for the most part periodically recurrent with slight
modification after short intervals: and it is difficult to see why we
should attach the idea of “disturbance” or “restoration of equilibrium”
to any one among these normal processes rather than any other:--_e.g._
it is difficult to see why the condition of having expended energy
should be regarded as a departure from equilibrium any more than the
condition of having just taken in nutriment. In fact, to render the
hypothesis we are considering at all applicable to normal pleasures
of sense, we have to pass from the physiological to the psychological
point of view, and take note of the psychical state of _desire_, as
a consciously _unrestful_ condition, of which the essence is a felt
impulse to pass out of this state towards the attainment of the desired
object. Our hypothesis, then, may take this unrestful consciousness as
a sign of what, from a physiological point of view, is “disturbance of
equilibrium,” and similarly, the satisfaction of desire may be taken to
be, physiologically, a restoration of equilibrium. On this assumption,
the theory becomes undeniably applicable to those gratifications of
sensual appetite which form the most prominent element of the pleasures
of sense, as popularly conceived.
Now we have already noted that by a wide-spread confusion of thought,
desire has often been regarded as a species of pain. Accordingly, the
theory that we are considering was originally prompted by the ethical
motive of depreciating the vulgarly overvalued pleasures of satisfied
bodily appetite, by laying stress on their inseparable connexion
with antecedent pain. The depreciation, however, fails so far as the
appetite which is a necessary antecedent condition of the pleasure
is--though an unrestful state--not appreciably painful.[148]
In any case, admitting the physical counterpart of conscious desire
to be a ‘disturbance of equilibrium,’ or an effect and sign of such
disturbance, the theory seems open to obvious objections, if it is
extended to cover the whole range of the pleasures of sense. For
conscious desire is certainly not a necessary condition of experiencing
the simple pleasures of the special senses: normally no sense of
want has preceded the experience of pleasant sights, sounds, odours,
flavours, or of the more important pleasures, more complex in their
psychical conditions, which we call æsthetic. No doubt in special cases
antecedent privation may produce a conscious want of these latter
pleasures which may increase their intensity when they are at length
attained: or even without any felt privation, the prospect of enjoying
such pleasures may produce a keen desire for the enjoyment, which may
be regarded as a “disturbance of equilibrium” no less plausibly than
a bodily appetite. But it would be quite unwarrantable therefore to
suppose a similar disturbance, though unfelt, in the ordinary cases
where pleasures of this kind are experienced without any antecedent
consciousness of desire or want.
I have perhaps said enough to support my general conclusion that
psychophysical speculation as to the causes of pleasure and pain does
not at present afford a basis for a deductive method of practical
Hedonism. But, before passing from this topic, I may remark that the
difficulties in the way of any such theory seem especially great in
the case of the complex pleasures which we distinguish as “æsthetic.”
All would agree that æsthetic gratification, when at all high, depends
on a subtle harmony of different elements in a complex state of
consciousness; and that the pleasure resulting from such harmonious
combination is indefinitely greater than the sum of the simpler
pleasures which the uncombined elements would yield. But even those
who estimate most highly the success that has so far been attained
in discovering the conditions of this harmony, in the case of any
particular art, would admit that mere conformity to the conditions
thus ascertained cannot secure the production of æsthetic pleasure
in any considerable degree. However subtly we state in general terms
the objective relations of elements in a delightful work of art, on
which its delight seems to depend, we must always feel that it would
be possible to produce out of similar elements a work corresponding to
our general description which would give no delight at all; the touch
that gives delight depends upon an instinct for which no deductive
reasoning can supply a substitute. This is true, even without taking
into account the wide divergences that we actually find in the æsthetic
sensibilities of individuals: still less, therefore, is it needful to
argue that, from the point of view of an individual seeking his own
greatest happiness, none but a mainly inductive and empirical method of
estimating æsthetic pleasures can be made available.
§ 3. I now pass to consider a theory which may be distinguished from
those discussed in the preceding section as being biological rather
than psychophysical: since it directs attention not to the actual
present characteristics of the organic states or changes of which
pleasures and pains are the concomitants or immediate consequents,
but to their relations to the life of the organism as a whole. I mean
the theory that “pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to
the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of acts conducive
to its welfare.” Mr. Spencer, from whom the above propositions are
quoted,[149] subsequently explains “injurious” and “conducive to
welfare” to mean respectively “tending to decrease or loss of life,”
and “tending to continuance or increase of life”: but in his deduction
by which the above conclusion is summarily established, “injurious”
and “beneficial” are used as equivalent simply to “destructive” and
“preservative” of organic life: and it will be more convenient to take
the terms first in this simpler signification.
Mr. Spencer’s argument is as follows:--
“If we substitute for the word Pleasure the equivalent phrase--a
feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there;
and if we substitute for the word Pain the equivalent phrase--a
feeling which we seek to get out of consciousness and to keep out;
we see at once that, if the states of consciousness which a creature
endeavours to maintain are the correlatives of injurious actions,
and if the states of consciousness which it endeavours to expel are
the correlatives of beneficial actions, it must quickly disappear
through persistence in the injurious and avoidance of the beneficial.
In other words, those races of beings only can have survived in
which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with
activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable
and habitually-avoided feelings went along with activities directly or
indirectly destructive of life; and there must ever have been, other
things equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among
races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best,
tending ever to bring about perfect adjustment.”
Now I am not concerned to deny the value of this summary deduction
for certain purposes. But it can easily be shown to be inadequate to
afford a basis for a deductive method of seeking maximum happiness for
the individual, by substituting Preservation for Pleasure as the end
directly aimed at. In the first place, Mr. Spencer only affirms the
conclusion to be true, as he rather vaguely says, “on the average”: and
it is obvious that though the tendency to find injurious acts pleasant
or preservative acts painful must be a disadvantage to any species
of animal in the struggle for existence, it may--if existing only
to a limited extent--be outweighed by other advantages, so that the
organism in which it exists may survive in spite of it. This, I say,
is obvious _a priori_: and common experience, as Mr. Spencer admits,
shows “in many conspicuous ways” that this has been actually the case
with civilised man during the whole period of history that we know:
owing to the changes caused by the course of civilisation, “there has
arisen and must long continue a deep and involved derangement of the
natural connexions between pleasures and beneficial actions and between
pains and detrimental actions.” This seems to be in itself a sufficient
objection to founding a deductive method of Hedonism on Mr. Spencer’s
general conclusion. It is, indeed, notorious that civilised men take
pleasure in various forms of unhealthy conduct and find conformity to
the rules of health irksome; and it is also important to note that they
may be, and actually are, susceptible of keen pleasure from acts and
processes that have no material tendency to preserve life. Nor is there
any difficulty in explaining this on the “evolution hypothesis”; since
we cannot argue _a priori_ from this hypothesis that the development
of the nervous system in human beings may not bring with it intense
susceptibilities to pleasure from non-preservative processes, if only
the preservation of the individuals in whom such susceptibilities
are developed is otherwise adequately provided for. Now this latter
supposition is obviously realised in the case of persons of leisure
in civilised society; whose needs of food, clothing, shelter, etc.,
are abundantly supplied through the complex social habit which we call
the institution of private property: and I know no empirical ground
for supposing that a cultivated man tends, in consequence of the keen
and varied pleasure which he seeks and enjoys, to live longer than a
man who goes through a comparatively dull round of monotonous routine
activity, interspersed by slightly pleasurable intervals of repose and
play.
§ 4. If, however, the individual is not likely to obtain a maximum
of Pleasure by aiming merely at Preservation, it remains to consider
whether “quantity of life” will serve any better. Now it is of course
true that so far as nervous action is attended by consciousness
pleasurable in quality, the more there is of it, the happier we shall
be. But even if we assume that the more intense and full life is “on
the average” the happier, it by no means follows that we shall gain
_maximum_ pleasure by aiming merely at intensity of consciousness:
for we experience intense pains even more indubitably than intense
pleasures, and in those “full tides of soul,” in which we seem to
be most alive, painful consciousness may be mixed in almost any
proportion. And further we often experience excitement nearly or quite
neutral in quality (_i.e._ not distinctly pleasurable or painful),
which reaches a great pitch of intensity, as in the case of laborious
struggles with difficulties, and perplexing conflicts of which the
issue is doubtful.
It may, however, be replied that “quantity of life” must be taken to
imply not merely intensity of consciousness, but multiplicity and
variety--a harmonious and many-sided development of human nature. And
experience certainly seems to support the view that men lose happiness
by allowing some of their faculties or capacities to be withered
and dwarfed for want of exercise, and thus not leaving themselves
sufficient variety of feelings or activities: especially as regards
the bodily organs, it will be agreed that the due exercise of most, if
not all, is indispensable to the health of the organism; and further,
that the health maintained by this balance of functions is a more
important source of the individual’s happiness than the unhealthy
over-exercise of any one organ can be. Still, it would appear that the
harmony of functions necessary to health is a very elastic one, and
admits of a very wide margin of variation, as far as the organs under
voluntary control are concerned. A man (_e.g._) who exercises his brain
alone will probably be ill in consequence: but he may exercise his
brain much and his legs little, or _vice versa_, without any morbid
results. And, in the same way, we cannot lay down the proposition, that
a varied and many-sided life is the happiest, with as much precision
as would be necessary if it were to be accepted as a basis for
deductive Hedonism. For it seems to be also largely true, on the other
side, that the more we come to exercise any faculty with sustained
and prolonged concentration, the more pleasure we derive from such
exercise, up to the point at which it becomes wearisome, or turns into
a semi-mechanical routine which renders consciousness dull and languid.
It is, no doubt, important for our happiness that we should keep
within this limit: but we cannot fix it precisely in any particular
case without special experience: especially as there seems always to
be a certain amount of weariness and tedium which must be resisted and
overcome, if we would bring our faculties into full play, and obtain
the full enjoyment of our labour. And similarly in respect of passive
emotional consciousness: if too much sameness of feeling results in
languor, too much variety inevitably involves shallowness. The point
where concentration ought to stop, and where dissipation begins, varies
from man to man, and must, it would seem, be decided by the specific
experience of individuals.
There is, however, another and simpler way in which the maxim
of ‘giving free development to one’s nature’ may be understood:
_i.e._ in the sense of yielding to spontaneous impulses, instead of
endeavouring to govern these by elaborate forecasts of consequences:
a scientific justification for this course being found in the theory
that spontaneous or instinctive impulses really represent the effects
of previous experiences of pleasure and pain on the organism in which
they appear, or its ancestors. On this ground, it has been maintained
that in complicated problems of conduct, experience will “enable
the constitution to estimate the respective amounts of pleasure and
pain consequent upon each alternative,” where it is “impossible for
the intellect” to do this: and “will further cause the organism
instinctively to shun that course which produces on the whole most
suffering.”[150] That there is an important element of truth in this
contention I would not deny. But any broad conclusion that non-rational
inclination is a better guide than reason to the individual’s happiness
would be quite unwarranted by anything that we know or can plausibly
conjecture respecting biological evolution. For--overlooking the effect
of natural selection to foster impulses tending to the preservation
of the race rather than the pleasure of the individual, and granting
that every sentient organism tends to adapt itself to its environment,
in such a manner as to acquire instincts of some value in guiding
it to pleasure and away from pain--it by no means follows that in
the human organism one particular kind of adaptation, that which
proceeds by unconscious modification of instinct, is to be preferred
to that other kind of adaptation which is brought about by conscious
comparison and inference. It rather seems clear, that this proposition
can only be justified by a comparison of the consequences of yielding
to instinctive impulses with the consequences of controlling them by
calculations of resulting pleasure and pain. But it will hardly be
maintained that in the majority of clear instances where non-rational
impulse conflicts with rational forecast, a subsequent calculation of
consequences appears to justify the former; the assertion would be in
too flagrant conflict with the common sense and common experience of
mankind. Hence, however true it may be that in certain cases instinct
is on the whole a safer guide than prudential calculation, it would
still seem that we can only ascertain these cases by careful reflection
on experience: we cannot determine the limits to which prudential
calculation may prudently be carried, except by this very calculation
itself.
We seem, then, forced to conclude that there is no scientific short-cut
to the ascertainment of the right means to the individual’s happiness:
every attempt to find a ‘high priori road’ to this goal brings us back
inevitably to the empirical method. For instead of a clear principle
universally valid, we only get at best a vague and general rule, based
on considerations which it is important not to overlook, but the
relative value of which we can only estimate by careful observation
and comparison of individual experience. Whatever uncertainty besets
these processes must necessarily extend to all our reasonings about
happiness. I have no wish to exaggerate these uncertainties, feeling
that we must all continue to seek happiness for ourselves and for
others, in whatever obscurity we may have to grope after it: but there
is nothing gained by underrating them, and it is idle to argue as if
they did not exist.
FOOTNOTES:
[131] “It should seem that a due concern about our own interest or
happiness, and a reasonable endeavour to secure and promote it, ... is
virtue, and the contrary behaviour faulty and blamable.” Butler (in the
Dissertation _Of the Nature of Virtue_ appended to the _Analogy_).
[132] This view is suggested by Mr. Herbert Spencer’s statement--in
a letter to J. S. Mill, published in Mr. Bain’s _Mental and Moral
Science_; and partially reprinted in Mr. Spencer’s _Data of Ethics_,
chap. iv. § 21--that “it is the business of moral science to deduce,
from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds
of actions necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to
produce unhappiness,” and that when it has done this, “its deductions
are to be recognised as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to
irrespective of a direct estimate of happiness or misery.” I ought,
however, to say that Mr. Spencer has made it clear in his latest
treatise that the only cogent deductions of this kind which he
conceives to be possible relate to the behaviour not of men here and
now, but of ideal men living in an ideal society, and living under
conditions so unlike those of actual humanity that all their actions
produce “pleasure unalloyed with pain anywhere” (_Data of Ethics_, §
101). The laws of conduct in this Utopia constitute, in Mr. Spencer’s
view, the subject-matter of “Absolute Ethics”; which he distinguishes
from the “Relative Ethics” that concerns itself with the conduct
of the imperfect men who live under the present imperfect social
conditions, and of which the method is, as he admits, to a great
extent “necessarily empirical” (_Data of Ethics_, § 108). How far
such a system as Mr. Spencer calls Absolute Ethics can be rationally
constructed, and how far its construction would be practically useful,
I shall consider in a later part of this treatise (Book iv. chap. iv.),
when I come to deal with the method of Universalistic Hedonism: at
present I am only concerned with the question how far any deductive
Ethics is capable of furnishing practical guidance to an individual
seeking his own greatest happiness here and now.
[133] Aristotle’s theory is, briefly, that every normal
sense-perception or rational activity has its correspondent pleasure,
and that the most perfect is the most pleasant: the most perfect in the
case of any faculty being the exercise of the faculty in good condition
on the best object. The pleasure follows the activity immediately,
giving it a kind of finish, “like the bloom of youth.” Pleasures
vary in kind, as the activities that constitute life vary: the best
pleasures are those of the philosophic life.
[134] See Bouillier, _Du plaisir et de la douleur_, chap. iii.; L.
Dumont, _Théorie scientifique de la sensibilité_, chap. iii.; as well
as Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii.--to which I refer later.
[135] _Lectures on Metaphysics_, vol. ii. Lect. xlii.
[136] In Aristotle’s exposition of this theory--which with him is only
a theory of pleasure--the ethical motive of exhibiting the philosophic
life as preferable to that of the sensualist, in respect of the
pleasures it affords, is quite unmistakable.
[137] _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii. 2.
[138] The physiological theory which Mr. Stout puts forward, as at once
correspondent and supplementary to his psychological generalisation,
will be noticed later.
[139] _Psychology_, chap. ix. § 128.
[140] Book i. chap. iv.
[141] It may be added that in the case of emotional pains and
pleasures, the notion of _quantitative_ difference between the cerebral
nerve-processes, antecedent respectively to the one and the other,
seems altogether unwarrantable: the pains of shame, disappointed
ambition, wounded love, do not appear to be distinguishable from the
pleasures of fame, success, reciprocated affection, by any difference
of intensity in the impressions or ideas accompanied by the pleasures
and pains respectively.
[142] See Wundt, _Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie_, chap. x.
[143] _Power of Sound_, chap. i. § 2.
[144] I say “appreciably” because the controverted psychological
question whether there are any _strictly_ neutral or indifferent
modifications of consciousness seems to me unimportant from a practical
point of view. See Sully, _Human Mind_, chap. xiii. § 2.
[145] See Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, _l.c._
[146] _Physiological Æsthetics_, chap. ii.
[147] See Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii. § 4.
[148] See Book i. chap. iv. _Note_.
[149] _Principles of Psychology_, § 125, and _Data of Ethics_, § 33.
[150] The quotations are from Mr. Spencer’s _Social Statics_, chap.
iv.: but I should explain that in the passage quoted Mr. Spencer is not
writing from the point of view of Egoistic Hedonism.
BOOK III
INTUITIONISM
CHAPTER I
INTUITIONISM
§ 1. The effort to examine, closely but quite neutrally, the system
of Egoistic Hedonism, with which we have been engaged in the last
Book, may not improbably have produced on the reader’s mind a certain
aversion to the principle and method examined, even though (like
myself) he may find it difficult not to admit the ‘authority’ of
self-love, or the ‘rationality’ of seeking one’s own individual
happiness. In considering ‘enlightened self-interest’ as supplying a
_prima facie_ tenable principle for the systematisation of conduct, I
have given no expression to this sentiment of aversion, being anxious
to ascertain with scientific impartiality the results to which this
principle logically leads. When, however, we seem to find on careful
examination of Egoism (as worked out on a strictly empirical basis)
that the common precepts of duty, which we are trained to regard as
sacred, must be to the egoist rules to which it is only generally
speaking and for the most part reasonable to conform, but which under
special circumstances must be decisively ignored and broken,--the
offence which Egoism in the abstract gives to our sympathetic and
social nature adds force to the recoil from it caused by the perception
of its occasional practical conflict with common notions of duty. But
further, we are accustomed to expect from Morality clear and decisive
precepts or counsels: and such rules as can be laid down for seeking
the individual’s greatest happiness cannot but appear wanting in these
qualities. A dubious guidance to an ignoble end appears to be all that
the calculus of Egoistic Hedonism has to offer. And it is by appealing
to the superior certainty with which the dictates of Conscience or the
Moral Faculty are issued, that Butler maintains the practical supremacy
of Conscience over Self-love, in spite of his admission (in the passage
before quoted[151]) of theoretical priority in the claims of the
latter.[152] A man knows certainly, he says, what he ought to do: but
he does not certainly know what will lead to his happiness.
In saying this, Butler appears to me fairly to represent the common
moral sense of ordinary mankind, in our own age no less than in his.
The moral judgments that men habitually pass on one another in ordinary
discourse imply for the most part that duty is usually not a difficult
thing for an ordinary man to _know_, though various seductive impulses
may make it difficult for him to _do_ it. And in such maxims as that
duty should be performed ‘advienne que pourra,’ that truth should be
spoken without regard to consequences, that justice should be done
‘though the sky should fall,’ it is implied that we have the power of
seeing clearly that certain kinds of actions are right and reasonable
in themselves, apart from their consequences;--or rather with a merely
partial consideration of consequences, from which other consequences
admitted to be possibly good or bad are definitely excluded.[153] And
such a power is claimed for the human mind by most of the writers who
have maintained the existence of moral intuitions; I have therefore
thought myself justified in treating this claim as characteristic of
the method which I distinguish as Intuitional. At the same time,
as I have before observed, there is a wider sense in which the term
‘intuitional’ might be legitimately applied to either Egoistic or
Universalistic Hedonism; so far as either system lays down as a first
principle--which if known at all must be intuitively known--that
happiness is the only rational ultimate end of action. To this meaning
I shall recur in the concluding chapters (xiii. and xiv.) of this Book;
in which I shall discuss more fully the intuitive character of these
hedonistic principles. But since the adoption of this wider meaning
would not lead us to a distinct ethical method, I have thought it best,
in the detailed discussion of Intuitionism which occupies the first
eleven chapters of this Book, to confine myself as far as possible to
Moral Intuition understood in the narrower sense above defined.
§ 2. Here, perhaps, it may be said that in thus defining Intuitionism I
have omitted its most fundamental characteristic; that the Intuitionist
properly speaking--in contrast with the Utilitarian--does not judge
actions by an external standard at all; that true morality, in his
view, is not concerned with outward actions as such, but with the
state of mind in which acts are done--in short with “intentions” and
“motives.”[154] I think, however, that this objection is partly due to
a misunderstanding. Moralists of all schools, I conceive, would agree
that the moral judgments which we pass on actions relate primarily to
intentional actions regarded as intentional. In other words, what we
judge to be ‘wrong’--in the strictest ethical sense--is not any part
of the actual effects, as such, of the muscular movements immediately
caused by the agent’s volition, but the effects which he foresaw in
willing the act; or, more strictly, his volition or choice of realising
the effects as foreseen.[155] When I speak therefore of acts, I must be
understood to mean--unless the contrary is stated--acts presumed to be
intentional and judged as such: on this point I do not think that any
dispute need arise.
The case of motives is different and requires careful discussion. In
the first place the distinction between “motive” and “intention” in
ordinary language is not very precise: since we apply the term “motive”
to foreseen consequences of an act, so far as they are conceived to be
objects of desire to the agent, or to the desire of such consequences:
and when we speak of the intention of an act we usually, no doubt,
have desired consequences in view. I think, however, that for purposes
of exact moral or jural discussion, it is best to include under the
term ‘intention’ all the consequences of an act that are foreseen as
certain or probable; since it will be admitted that we cannot evade
responsibility for any foreseen bad consequences of our acts by the
plea that we felt no desire for them, either for their own sake or
as means to ulterior ends:[156] such undesired accompaniments of the
desired results of our volitions are clearly chosen or willed by
us. Hence the intention of an act may be judged to be wrong, while
the motive is recognised as good; as when a man commits perjury to
save a parent’s or a benefactor’s life. Such judgments are, in fact,
continually passed in common moral discourse. It may, however, be said
that an act cannot be right, even when the intention is such as duty
would prescribe, if it be done from a bad motive: that--to take a case
suggested by Bentham--a man who prosecutes from malice a person whom
he believes to be guilty, does not really act rightly; for, though it
may be his duty to prosecute, he ought not to do it from malice. It is
doubtless true that it is our duty to get rid of bad motives if we can;
so that a man’s intention cannot be _wholly_ right, unless it includes
the repression, so far as possible, of a motive known to be bad. But
no one, I think, will contend that we can always suppress entirely
a strong emotion; and such suppression will be especially difficult
if we are to do the act to which the wrong impulse prompts; while
yet, if that act be clearly a duty which no one else can so properly
perform, it would be absurd to say that we ought to omit it because
we cannot altogether exclude an objectionable motive. It is sometimes
said that, though we may not be able in doing our duty to exclude a
bad motive altogether from our minds, it is still possible to refuse
to act from it. But I think that this is only possible so far as the
details of action to which a right motive would prompt differ to some
extent from those to which a wrong motive would prompt. No doubt this
is often the case:--thus, in Bentham’s example, a malevolent prosecutor
may be prompted to take unfair advantage of his enemy, or cause him
needless pain by studied insults; and it is obviously possible for
him--and his duty--to resist such promptings. But so far as precisely
the same action is prompted by two different motives, both present in
my consciousness, I am not conscious of any power to cause this action
to be determined by one of the two motives to the exclusion of the
other. In other words, while a man can resolve to aim at any end which
he conceives as a possible result of his voluntary action, he cannot
simultaneously resolve _not_ to aim at any other end which he believes
will be promoted by the same action; and if that other end be an object
of desire to him, he cannot, while aiming at it, refuse to act from
this desire.[157]
On the whole, then, I conclude (1) that while many actions are
commonly judged to be made _better_ or _worse_ by the presence or
absence of certain motives, our judgments of _right_ and _wrong_
strictly speaking relate to intentions, as distinguished from
motives;[158] and (2) that while intentions affecting the agent’s own
feelings and character are morally prescribed no less than intentions
to produce certain external effects, still, the latter form the
primary--though not the sole--content of the main prescriptions of
duty, as commonly affirmed and understood: but the extent to which this
is the case, will become more clear as we proceed.
It has indeed been maintained by moralists of influence that the moral
value of our conduct depends upon the degree to which we are actuated
by the one motive which they regard as truly moral: viz. the desire
or free choice[159] of doing what is right as such, realising duty or
virtue for duty or virtue’s sake:[160] and that a perfectly good act
must be done entirely from this motive. I think, however, that it is
difficult to combine this view--which I may conveniently distinguish as
Stoical--with the belief, which modern orthodox moralists have usually
been concerned to maintain, that it is always a man’s true interest
to act virtuously. I do not mean that a man who holds this belief
must necessarily be an egoist: but it seems to me impossible for him
to exclude from his motives a regard for his own interest, while yet
believing that it will be promoted by the act which he is willing.
If, therefore, we hold that this self-regard impairs the moral value
of an act otherwise virtuous, and at the same time hold that virtue
is always conducive to the virtuous agent’s interest, we seem driven
to the conclusion that knowledge of the true relation between virtue
and happiness is an insuperable obstacle to the attainment of moral
perfection. I cannot accept this paradox: and in subsequent chapters
I shall try to show that the Stoical view of moral goodness is not on
the whole sustained by a comprehensive survey and comparison of common
moral judgments: since in some cases acts appear to have the quality
of virtue even more strikingly when performed from some motive other
than the love of virtue as such. For the present I wish rather to point
out that the doctrine above stated is diametrically opposed to the
view that the universal or normal motives of human action are either
particular desires of pleasure or aversions to pain for the agent
himself, or the more general regard to his happiness on the whole which
I term Self-love; that it also excludes the less extreme doctrine that
duties may be to some extent properly done from such self-regarding
motives; and that one or other of these positions has frequently been
held by writers who have expressly adopted an Intuitional method of
Ethics. For instance, we find Locke laying down, without reserve or
qualification, that “good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain,
or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us:”[161] so
that “it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to the free
actions of man, without annexing it to some reward or punishment to
determine his will.” On the other hand, he expresses, with no less
emphasis, the conviction that “from self-evident propositions, by
necessary consequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the
measures of right and wrong might be made out,”[162] so that “morality
might be placed among the sciences capable of demonstration.” The
combination of these two doctrines gives us the view that moral rules
are essentially laws of God, which men are impelled to obey, solely or
mainly, from fear or hope of divine punishments or rewards; and some
such view as this seems to be widely accepted, by plain men without
very refined moral sensibilities.
As an example, again, of thinkers who, while recognising in human
nature a disinterested regard for duty or virtue as such, still
consider that self-love is a proper and legitimate motive to right
conduct, we may refer to Butler and his disciples. Butler regards
“reasonable self-love” as not merely a normal motive to human action,
but as being--no less than conscience--a “chief or superior principle
in the nature of man”; so that an action “becomes unsuitable” to this
nature, if the principle of self-love be violated. Accordingly the
aim of his teaching is not to induce men to choose duty rather than
interest, but to convince them that there is no inconsistency between
the two; that self-love and conscience lead “to one and the same course
of life.”
This intermediate doctrine appears to me to be more in harmony with
the common sense of mankind on the whole than either of the extreme
views before contrasted. But I do not conceive that any one of the
three positions is inconsistent with fundamental assumptions of the
Intuitional method. Even those who hold that human beings cannot
reasonably be expected to conform to moral rules disinterestedly, or
from any other motive than that supplied by the sanctions divinely
attached to them, still commonly conceive God as supreme Reason,
whose laws must be essentially reasonable: and so far as such laws
are held to be cognisable by the ‘light of nature’--so that morality,
as Locke says, may be placed among demonstrative sciences--the method
of determining them will be none the less intuitional because it is
combined with the belief that God will reward their observance and
punish their violation. On the other hand those who hold that regard
for duty as duty is an indispensable condition of acting rightly,
would generally admit that acting rightly is not adequately defined as
acting from a pure desire to act rightly; that though, in a certain
sense, a man who sincerely desires and intends to act rightly does all
he can, and completely fulfils duty, still such a man may have a wrong
judgment as to the particulars of his duty, and therefore, in another
sense, may act wrongly. If this be admitted, it is evident that, even
on the view that the desire or resolution to fulfil duty as such is
essential to right action, a distinction between two kinds of rightness
is required; which we may express by saying that an act is--on this
view--“formally”[163] right, if the agent in willing is moved by pure
desire to fulfil duty or chooses duty for duty’s sake; “materially”
right, if he intends the right particular effects. This distinction
being taken, it becomes plain that there is no reason why the same
principles and method for determining material rightness, or rightness
of particular effects, should not be adopted by thinkers who differ
most widely on the question of formal rightness; and it is, obviously,
with material rightness that the work of the systematic moralist is
mainly concerned.
§ 3. The term ‘formal rightness,’ as above used, implying a _desire_ or
choice of the act as right, implies also a _belief_ that it is so. But
the latter condition may exist without the former: I cannot perform an
act from pure love of duty without believing it to be right: but I can
believe it to be right and yet do it from some other motive. And there
seems to be more agreement among moralists who adopt the Intuitional
Method as to the moral indispensability of such a belief, than we have
found with respect to the question of motive: at least, it would, I
conceive, be universally held that no act can be absolutely right,
whatever its external aspect and relations, which is believed by the
agent to be wrong.[164] Such an act we may call “subjectively” wrong,
even though “objectively” right. It may still be asked whether it is
better in any particular case that a man should do what he mistakenly
believes to be his duty, or what really is his duty in the particular
circumstances--considered apart from his mistaken belief--and would
be completely right if he could only think so. The question is rather
subtle and perplexing to Common Sense: it is therefore worth while to
point out that it can have only a limited and subordinate practical
application. For no one, in considering what he ought himself to do
in any particular case, can distinguish what he believes to be right
from what really is so: the necessity for a practical choice between
‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ rightness can only present itself in
respect of the conduct of another person whom it is in our power to
influence. If another is about to do what we think wrong while he
thinks it right, and we cannot alter his belief but can bring other
motives to bear on him that may overbalance his sense of duty, it
becomes necessary to decide whether we ought thus to tempt him to
realise what we believe to be objectively right against his own
convictions. I think that the moral sense of mankind would pronounce
against such temptation,--thus regarding the Subjective rightness
of an action as more important than the Objective,--unless the evil
of the act prompted by a mistaken sense of duty appeared to be very
grave.[165] But however essential it may be that a moral agent should
do what he believes to be right, this condition of right conduct is
too simple to admit of systematic development: it is, therefore, clear
that the details of our investigation must relate mainly to ‘objective’
rightness.
There is, however, one practical rule of some value, to be obtained by
merely reflecting on the general notion of rightness,[166] as commonly
conceived. In a previous chapter[167] I endeavoured to make this notion
clearer by saying that ‘what I judge to be right must, unless I am
in error, be judged to be so by all rational beings who judge truly
of the matter.’ This statement does not imply that what is judged
to be right for one man must necessarily be judged so for another:
‘objective’ rightness may vary from _A_ to _B_ no less than the
‘objective’ facts of their nature and circumstances vary. There seems,
however, to be this difference between our conceptions of ethical and
physical objectivity respectively: that we commonly refuse to admit
in the case of the former--what experience compels us to admit as
regards the latter--variations for which we can discover no rational
explanation. In the variety of coexistent physical facts we find an
accidental or arbitrary element in which we have to acquiesce, as we
cannot conceive it to be excluded by any extension of our knowledge
of physical causation. If we ask, for example, why any portion of
space empirically known to us contains more matter than any similar
adjacent portion, physical science can only answer by stating (along
with certain laws of change) some antecedent position of the parts of
matter which needs explanation no less than the present; and however
far back we carry our ascertainment of such antecedent positions, the
one with which we leave off seems as arbitrary as that with which we
started. But within the range of our cognitions of right and wrong, it
will be generally agreed that we cannot admit a similar unexplained
variation. We cannot judge an action to be right for _A_ and wrong for
_B_, unless we can find in the natures or circumstances of the two some
difference which we can regard as a reasonable ground for difference in
their duties. If therefore I judge any action to be right for myself, I
implicitly judge it to be right for any other person whose nature and
circumstances do not differ from my own in some important respects.
Now by making this latter judgment explicit, we may protect ourselves
against the danger which besets the conscience, of being warped and
perverted by strong desire, so that we too easily think that we ought
to do what we very much wish to do. For if we ask ourselves whether
we believe that any similar person in similar circumstances ought to
perform the contemplated action, the question will often disperse
the false appearance of rightness which our strong inclination has
given to it. We see that we should not think it right for another,
and therefore that it cannot be right for us. Indeed this test of
the rightness of our volitions is so generally effective, that Kant
seems to have held that all particular rules of duty can be deduced
from the one fundamental rule “Act as if the maxim of thy action
were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.”[168] But this
appears to me an error analogous to that of supposing that Formal
Logic supplies a complete criterion of truth. I should agree that a
volition which does not stand this test[169] is to be condemned; but I
hold that a volition which does stand it may after all be wrong. For
I conceive that all (or almost all) persons who act conscientiously
could sincerely will the maxims on which they act to be universally
adopted: while at the same time we continually find such persons in
thoroughly conscientious disagreement as to what each ought to do in a
given set of circumstances. Under these circumstances, to say that all
such persons act rightly--in the objective sense--because their maxims
all conform to Kant’s fundamental rule, would obliterate altogether
the distinction between subjective and objective rightness; it would
amount to affirming that whatever any one thinks right is so, unless he
is in error as to the facts of the case to which his judgment applies.
But such an affirmation is in flagrant conflict with common sense;
and would render the construction of a scientific code of morality
futile: as the very object of such a code is to supply a standard for
rectifying men’s divergent opinions.
We may conclude then that the moral judgments which the present method
attempts to systematise are primarily and for the most part intuitions
of the rightness or goodness (or the reverse) of particular kinds of
external effects of human volition, presumed to be intended by the
agent, but considered independently of the agent’s own view as to the
rightness or wrongness of his intention; though the quality of motives,
as distinct from intentions, has also to be taken into account.
§ 4. But the question may be raised, whether it is legitimate to take
for granted (as I have hitherto been doing) the existence of such
intuitions? And, no doubt, there are persons who deliberately deny
that reflection enables them to discover any such phenomenon in their
conscious experience as the judgment or apparent perception that an act
is in itself right or good, in any other sense than that of being the
right or fit means to the attainment of some ulterior end. I think,
however, that such denials are commonly recognised as paradoxical, and
opposed to the common experience of civilised men:--at any rate if the
psychological question, as to the _existence_ of such moral judgments
or apparent perceptions of moral qualities, is carefully distinguished
from the ethical question as to their _validity_, and from what we
may call the ‘psychogonical’ question as to their _origin_. The first
and second of these questions are sometimes confounded, owing to an
ambiguity in the use of the term “intuition”; which has sometimes
been understood to imply that the judgment or apparent perception
so designated is _true_. I wish therefore to say expressly, that by
calling any affirmation as to the rightness or wrongness of actions
“intuitive,” I do not mean to prejudge the question as to its ultimate
validity, when philosophically considered: I only mean that its truth
is apparently known immediately, and not as the result of reasoning. I
admit the possibility that any such “intuition” may turn out to have an
element of error, which subsequent reflection and comparison may enable
us to correct; just as many apparent perceptions through the organ of
vision are found to be partially illusory and misleading: indeed the
sequel will show that I hold this to be to an important extent the case
with moral intuitions commonly so called.
The question as to the validity of moral intuitions being thus
separated from the simple question ‘whether they actually exist,’ it
becomes obvious that the latter can only be decided for each person by
direct introspection or reflection. It must not therefore be supposed
that its decision is a simple matter, introspection being always
infallible: on the contrary, experience leads me to regard men as often
liable to confound with moral intuitions other states or acts of mind
essentially different from them,--blind impulses to certain kinds of
action or vague sentiments of preference for them, or conclusions from
rapid and half-unconscious processes of reasoning, or current opinions
to which familiarity has given an illusory air of self-evidence. But
any errors of this kind, due to careless or superficial reflection,
can only be cured by more careful reflection. This may indeed be much
aided by communication with other minds; it may also be aided, in a
subordinate way, by an inquiry into the antecedents of the apparent
intuition, which may suggest to the reflective mind sources of error
to which a superficial view of it is liable. Still the question
whether a certain judgment presents itself to the reflective mind as
intuitively known cannot be decided by any inquiry into its antecedents
or causes.[170]
It is, however, still possible to hold that an inquiry into the
Origin of moral intuitions must be decisive in determining their
Validity. And in fact it has been often assumed, both by Intuitionists
and their opponents, that if our moral faculty can be shown to be
‘derived’ or ‘developed’ out of other pre-existent elements of mind
or consciousness, a reason is thereby given for distrusting it; while
if, on the other hand, it can be shown to have existed in the human
mind from its origin, its trustworthiness is thereby established.
Either assumption appears to me devoid of foundation. On the one hand,
I can see no ground for supposing that a faculty thus derived, is, as
such, more liable to error than if its existence in the individual
possessing it had been differently caused:[171] to put it otherwise,
I cannot see how the mere ascertainment that certain apparently
self-evident judgments have been caused in known and determinate ways,
can be in itself a valid ground for distrusting this class of apparent
cognitions. I cannot even admit that those who affirm the truth of such
judgments are bound to show in their causes a tendency to make them
true: indeed the acceptance of any such _onus probandi_ would seem to
me to render the attainment of philosophical certitude impossible.
For the premises of the required demonstration must consist of caused
beliefs, which as having been caused will equally stand in need of
being proved true, and so on _ad infinitum_: unless it be held that
we can find among the premises of our reasonings certain apparently
self-evident judgments which have had no antecedent causes, and that
these are therefore to be accepted as valid without proof. But such an
assertion would be an extravagant paradox: and, if it be admitted that
all beliefs are equally in the position of being effects of antecedent
causes, it seems evident that this characteristic alone cannot serve to
invalidate any of them.
I hold, therefore, that the _onus probandi_ must be thrown the other
way: those who dispute the validity of moral or other intuitions on the
ground of their derivation must be required to show, not merely that
they are the effects of certain causes, but that these causes are of a
kind that tend to produce invalid beliefs. Now it is not, I conceive,
possible to prove by any theory of the derivation of the moral faculty
that the fundamental ethical conceptions ‘right’ or ‘what ought to
be done,’ ‘good’ or ‘what it is reasonable to desire and seek,’ are
invalid, and that consequently _all_ propositions of the form ‘_X_ is
right’ or ‘good’ are untrustworthy: for such ethical propositions,
relating as they do to matter fundamentally different from that with
which physical science or psychology deals, cannot be inconsistent
with any physical or psychological conclusions. They can only be shown
to involve error by being shown to contradict each other: and such a
demonstration cannot lead us cogently to the sweeping conclusion that
all are false. It may, however, be possible to prove that some ethical
beliefs have been caused in such a way as to make it probable that they
are wholly or partially erroneous: and it will hereafter be important
to consider how far any Ethical intuitions, which we find ourselves
disposed to accept as valid, are open to attack on such psychogonical
grounds. At present I am only concerned to maintain that no general
demonstration of the derivedness or developedness of our moral faculty
can supply an adequate reason for distrusting it.
On the other hand, if we have been once led to distrust our moral
faculty on other grounds--as (_e.g._) from the want of clearness and
consistency in the moral judgments of the same individual, and the
discrepancies between the judgments of different individuals--it seems
to me equally clear that our confidence in such judgments cannot
properly be re-established by a demonstration of their ‘originality.’
I see no reason to believe that the ‘original’ element of our moral
cognition can be ascertained; but if it could, I see no reason to hold
that it would be especially free from error.
§ 5. How then can we hope to eliminate error from our moral intuitions?
One answer to this question was briefly suggested in a previous chapter
where the different phases of the Intuitional Method were discussed.
It was there said that in order to settle the doubts arising from the
uncertainties and discrepancies that are found when we compare our
judgments on particular cases, reflective persons naturally appeal
to general rules or formulæ: and it is to such general formulæ that
Intuitional Moralists commonly attribute ultimate certainty and
validity. And certainly there are obvious sources of error in our
judgments respecting concrete duty which seem to be absent when we
consider the abstract notions of different kinds of conduct; since
in any concrete case the complexity of circumstances necessarily
increases the difficulty of judging, and our personal interests or
habitual sympathies are liable to disturb the clearness of our moral
discernment. Further, we must observe that most of us feel the need
of such formulæ not only to correct, but also to supplement, our
intuitions respecting particular concrete duties. Only exceptionally
confident persons find that they always seem to see clearly what ought
to be done in any case that comes before them. Most of us, however
unhesitatingly we may affirm rightness and wrongness in ordinary
matters of conduct, yet not unfrequently meet with cases where our
unreasoned judgment fails us; and where we could no more decide the
moral issue raised without appealing to some general formula, than we
could decide a disputed legal claim without reference to the positive
law that deals with the matter.
And such formulæ are not difficult to find: it only requires a little
reflection and observation of men’s moral discourse to make a
collection of such general rules, as to the validity of which there
would be apparent agreement at least among moral persons of our own age
and civilisation, and which would cover with approximate completeness
the whole of human conduct. Such a collection, regarded as a code
imposed on an individual by the public opinion of the community
to which he belongs, we have called the Positive Morality of the
community: but when regarded as a body of moral truth, warranted to
be such by the _consensus_ of mankind,--or at least of that portion
of mankind which combines adequate intellectual enlightenment with
a serious concern for morality--it is more significantly termed the
morality of Common Sense.
When, however, we try to apply these currently accepted principles, we
find that the notions composing them are often deficient in clearness
and precision. For instance, we should all agree in recognising Justice
and Veracity as important virtues; and we shall probably all accept the
general maxims, that ‘we ought to give every man his own’ and that ‘we
ought to speak the truth’: but when we ask (1) whether primogeniture
is just, or the disendowment of corporations, or the determination of
the value of services by competition, or (2) whether and how far false
statements may be allowed in speeches of advocates, or in religious
ceremonials, or when made to enemies or robbers, or in defence of
lawful secrets, we do not find that these or any other current maxims
enable us to give clear and unhesitating decisions. And yet such
particular questions are, after all, those to which we naturally expect
answers from the moralist. For we study Ethics, as Aristotle says, for
the sake of Practice: and in practice we are concerned with particulars.
Hence it seems that if the formulæ of Intuitive Morality are really to
serve as scientific axioms, and to be available in clear and cogent
demonstrations, they must first be raised--by an effort of reflection
which ordinary persons will not make--to a higher degree of precision
than attaches to them in the common thought and discourse of mankind
in general. We have, in fact, to take up the attempt that Socrates
initiated, and endeavour to define satisfactorily the general notions
of duty and virtue which we all in common use for awarding approbation
or disapprobation to conduct. This is the task upon which we shall be
engaged in the nine chapters that follow. I must beg the reader to
bear in mind that throughout these chapters I am not trying to prove or
disprove Intuitionism, but merely by reflection on the common morality
which I and my reader share, and to which appeal is so often made in
moral disputes, to obtain as explicit, exact, and coherent a statement
as possible of its fundamental rules.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] See p. 119.
[152] It may seem, he admits, that “since interest, one’s own
happiness, is a manifest obligation,” in any case in which virtuous
action appears to be not conducive to the agent’s interest, he would
be “under two contrary obligations, _i.e._ under none at all. But,” he
urges, “the obligation on the side of interest really does not remain.
For the natural authority of the principle of reflection or conscience
is an obligation ... the most certain and known: whereas the contrary
obligation can at the utmost appear no more than probable: since no
man can be _certain_ in any circumstances that vice is his interest in
the present world, much less can he be certain against another: and
thus the certain obligation would entirely supersede and destroy the
uncertain one.”--(Preface to Butler’s _Sermons_.)
[153] I have before observed (Book i. chap. viii. § 1) that in the
common notion of an act we include a certain portion of the whole
series of changes partly caused by the volition which initiated the
so-called act.
[154] Some would add “character” and “disposition.” But since
characters and disposition not only cannot be known directly but can
only be definitely conceived by reference to the volitions and feelings
in which they are manifested, it does not seem to me possible to regard
them as the primary objects of intuitive moral judgments. See chap. ii.
§ 2 of this Book.
[155] No doubt we hold a man responsible for unintended bad
consequences of his acts or omissions, when they are such as he might
with ordinary care have foreseen; still, as I have before said (p. 60),
we admit on reflection that moral blame only attaches to such careless
acts or omissions indirectly, in so far as the carelessness is the
result of some previous wilful neglect of duty.
[156] I think that common usage, when carefully considered, will be
found to admit this definition. Suppose a nihilist blows up a railway
train containing an emperor and other persons: it will no doubt be held
correct to say simply that his intention was to kill the emperor; but
it would be thought absurd to say that he ‘did not intend’ to kill the
other persons, though he may have had no desire to kill them and may
have regarded their death as a lamentable incident in the execution of
his revolutionary plans.
[157] A further source of confusion between “intention” and “motive”
arises from the different points of view from which either may be
judged. Thus an act may be one of a series which the agent purposes
to do for the attainment of a certain end: and our moral judgment of
it may be very different, according as we judge the intention of the
particular act, or the general intention of the series regarded as a
whole. Either point of view is legitimate, and both are often required;
for we commonly recognise that, of the series of acts which a man does
to attain (_e.g._) any end of ambition, some may be right or allowable,
while others are wrong; while the general intention to attain the end
by wrong means, if necessary, as well as right--
“Get place and wealth, if possible with grace;
If not, by any means get wealth and place”--
is clearly a wrong intention. So again, in judging a motive to be good
or bad, we may either consider it simply in itself, or in connexion
with other balancing and controlling motives--either actually present
along with it, or absent when they ought to be present. Thus in the
above case we do not commonly think the desire for wealth or rank bad
in itself; but we think it bad as the sole motive of a statesman’s
public career. It is easy to see that one or other of these different
distinctions is apt to blend with and confuse the simple distinction
between intention and motive.
[158] The view that moral judgments relate primarily or most properly
to motives will be more fully discussed in chap. xii. of this Book.
[159] I use these alternative terms in order to avoid the Free Will
Controversy.
[160] Many religious persons would probably say that the motive of
obedience or love to God was the highest. But those who take this view
would generally say that obedience and love are due to God as a Moral
Being, possessing the attributes of Infinite Wisdom and Goodness, and
not otherwise: and if so, these religious motives would seem to be
substantially identical with regard for duty and love of virtue, though
modified and complicated by the addition of emotions belonging to
relations between persons.
[161] Locke’s _Essay_, II. c. 28, §§ 5, 6.
[162] _Ibid._ IV. c. 3, § 18.
[163] I do not myself usually employ the antithesis of Form and Matter
in philosophical exposition, as it appears to me open to the charge of
obscurity and ambiguity. In the present case we may interpret “formal
rightness” as denoting at once a _universal_ and _essential_, and a
_subjective_ or _internal_ condition of the rightness of actions.
[164] It is not, I conceive, commonly held to be indispensable, in
order to constitute an act completely right, that a belief that it
is right should be actually present in the agent’s mind: it might be
completely right, although the agent never actually raised the question
of its rightness or wrongness. See p. 225.
[165] The decision would, I think, usually be reached by weighing
bad consequences to the agent’s character against bad consequences
of a different kind. In extreme cases the latter consideration would
certainly prevail in the view of common sense. Thus we should generally
approve a statesman who crushed a dangerous rebellion by working on the
fear or cupidity of a leading rebel who was rebelling on conscientious
grounds. Cf. _post_, Book iv. chap. iii. § 3.
[166] The antithesis of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ cannot be applied
to the condition of right conduct considered in this paragraph: for
this formal condition is at once subjective and objective; being,
as I argue, involved in our common notion of right conduct, it
is, therefore, necessarily judged by us to be of really universal
application: and, though it does not secure complete objective
rightness, it is an important protection against objective wrongness.
[167] Cf. Book i. chap. iii. § 3.
[168] See the _Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten_ (pp. 269-273,
Hartenstein; Abbott’s transl. [1879] pp. 54-61). Here Kant first says,
“There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: _Act
only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it
should become a universal law_. Now, if all imperatives of duty can be
deduced from this one imperative as from their principle ... we shall
at least be able to show what we understand by [duty] and what this
notion means.” He then demonstrates the application of the principle
to four cases, selected as representative of “the many actual duties”;
and continues: “if now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any
transgression of duty, we shall find that we in fact do not will that
our maxim should be a universal law, for that is impossible for us”
...: then, summing up the conclusion of this part of his argument, he
says, “we have exhibited clearly and definitely for _every practical
application_ the content of the categorical imperative which must
contain the principle of all duty, if there is such a thing at all.”
[169] I do not mean that I am prepared to accept Kant’s fundamental
maxim, in the precise form in which he has stated it: but the
qualifications which it seems to me to require will be more
conveniently explained later.
[170] See Book i. chap. iii. p. 32.
[171] I cannot doubt that every one of our cognitive faculties,--in
short the human mind as a whole,--has been derived and developed,
through a gradual process of physical change, out of some lower life
in which cognition, properly speaking, had no place. On this view, the
distinction between ‘original’ and ‘derived’ reduces itself to that
between ‘prior’ and ‘posterior’ in development: and the fact that the
moral faculty appears somewhat later in the process of evolution than
other faculties can hardly be regarded as an argument against the
validity of moral intuition; especially since this process is commonly
conceived to be homogeneous throughout. Indeed such a line of reasoning
would be suicidal; as the cognition that the moral faculty is developed
is certainly later in development than moral cognition, and would
therefore, by this reasoning, be less trustworthy.
CHAPTER II
VIRTUE AND DUTY
§ 1. Before, however, we attempt to define particular virtues or
departments of duty, it will be well to examine further the notions
of Duty and Virtue in general, and the relations between the two, as
we find them implicitly conceived by the common sense of mankind,
which we are endeavouring to express. Hitherto I have taken Duty to
be broadly convertible with Right conduct: I have noticed, however,
that the former term--like “ought” and “moral obligation”--implies at
least the _potential_ presence of motives prompting to wrong conduct;
and is therefore not applicable to beings to whom no such conflict of
motives can be attributed. Thus God is not conceived as performing
duties, though He is conceived as realising Justice and other kinds of
Rightness in action. For a similar reason, we do not commonly apply the
term ‘duty’ to right actions--however necessary and important--when
we are so strongly impelled to them by non-moral inclinations that no
moral impulse is conceived to be necessary for their performance. Thus
we do not say generally that it is a duty to eat and drink enough:
though we do often say this to invalids who have lost their appetite.
We should therefore perhaps keep most close to usage if we defined
Duties as ‘those Right actions or abstinences, for the adequate
accomplishment of which a moral impulse is conceived to be at least
occasionally necessary.’ But as this line of distinction is vague, and
continually varying, I shall not think it necessary to draw attention
to it in the detailed discussion of duties: it seems sufficient to
point out that we shall be chiefly concerned with such right conduct as
comes within the definition just suggested.
It may be said, however, that there is another implication in the term
“duty” which I have so far overlooked, but which its derivation--and
that of the equivalent term ‘obligation’--plainly indicates: viz.
that it is “due” or owed to some one. But I think that here the
derivation does not govern the established usage: rather, it is
commonly recognised that duties owed _to_ persons, or “relative”
duties, are only one species, and that some duties--as (_e.g._)
Truth-speaking--have no such relativity. No doubt it is possible
to view any duty as relative to the person or persons immediately
affected by its performance; but it is not usual to do this where
the immediate effects are harmful--as where truth-speaking causes a
physically injurious shock to the person addressed--: and though it
may still be conceived to be ultimately good for society, and so “due”
to the community or to humanity at large, that truth should even in
this case be spoken, this conception hardly belongs to the intuitional
view that ‘truth should be spoken regardless of consequences.’ Again,
it may be thought by religious persons that the performance of duties
is owed not to the human or other living beings affected by them, but
to God as the author of the moral law. And I certainly would not deny
that our common conception of duty involves an implied relation of an
individual will to a universal will conceived as perfectly rational:
but I am not prepared to affirm that this implication is necessary, and
an adequate discussion of the difficulties involved in it would lead to
metaphysical controversies which I am desirous of avoiding. I propose,
therefore, in this exposition of the Intuitional method, to abstract
from this relation of Duty generally to a Divine Will: and, for reasons
partly similar, to leave out of consideration the particular “duties to
God” which Intuitionists have often distinguished and classified. Our
view of the general rules of “duty to man” (or to other animals)--so
far as such rules are held to be cognisable by moral intuition--will,
I conceive, remain the same, whether or not we regard such rules as
imposed by a Supreme Rational Will: since in any case they will be
such as we hold it rational for all men to obey, and therefore such
as a Supreme Reason would impose. I shall not therefore treat the
term “Duty” as implying necessarily a relation either to a universal
Imponent or to the individuals primarily affected by the performance
of duties: but shall use it as equivalent generally to Right conduct,
while practically concentrating attention on acts and abstinences for
which a moral impulse is thought to be more or less required.
The notion of Virtue presents more complexity and difficulty, and
requires to be discussed from different points of view. We may begin
by noticing that there seem to be some particular virtues (such as
Generosity) which may be realised in acts objectively--though not
subjectively--wrong, from want of insight into their consequences: and
even some (such as Courage) which may be exhibited in wrong acts that
are known by the agent to be such. But though the contemplation of such
acts excites in us a quasi-moral admiration, in the latter case we
certainly should not call them virtuous, and it is doubtful whether we
should do so in the former case, if we were using the term strictly.
It will therefore involve no material deviation from usage, if we
limit the term “Virtue” to qualities exhibited in right conduct:[172]
accordingly I propose to adopt this limitation in subsequent
discussions.
How far, then, are we to regard the spheres of Duty and Virtue (thus
defined) as co-extensive? To a great extent they undoubtedly are so,
in the common application of the terms, but not altogether: since in
its common use each term seems to include something excluded from the
other. We should scarcely say that it was virtuous--under ordinary
circumstances--to pay one’s debts, or give one’s children a decent
education, or keep one’s aged parents from starving; these being duties
which most men perform, and only bad men neglect. On the other hand,
there are acts of high and noble virtue which we commonly regard as
going beyond the strict duty of the agent; since, while we praise their
performance, we do not condemn their non-performance. Here, however,
a difficulty seems to arise; for we should not deny that it is, in
some sense, a man’s strict duty to do whatever action he judges most
excellent, so far as it is in his power.
But can we say that it is as much in a man’s power to realise Virtue
as it is to fulfil Duty?[173] To some extent, no doubt, we should
say this: no quality of conduct is ever called a virtue unless it
is thought to be _to some extent_ immediately attainable at will
by all ordinary persons, when circumstances give opportunity for
its manifestation. In fact the line between virtues and other
excellences of behaviour is commonly drawn by this characteristic of
voluntariness;--an excellence which we think no effort of will could at
once enable us to exhibit in any appreciable degree is called a gift,
grace, or talent, but not properly a virtue. Writers like Hume,[174]
who obliterate this line, diverge manifestly from common sense. Still
I regard it as manifestly paradoxical to maintain that it is in the
power of any one at any time to realise virtue in the highest form or
degree; (_e.g._) no one would affirm that any ordinary man can at will
exhibit the highest degree of courage in the sense in which courage
is a virtue--when occasion arises. It would seem, therefore, that we
can distinguish a margin of virtuous conduct, which may be beyond the
strict duty of any individual as being beyond his power.
Can we then, excluding this margin, say that virtuous conduct, so
far as it is in a man’s power, coincides completely with his duty?
Certainly we should agree that a truly moral man cannot say to himself,
“This is the best thing on the whole for me to do, but yet it is not
my duty to do it though it is in my power”: this would certainly seem
to common sense an immoral paradox.[175] And yet there seem to be acts
and abstinences which we praise as virtuous, without imposing them as
duties upon all who are able to do them; as for a rich man to live very
plainly and devote his income to works of public beneficence.
Perhaps we may harmonise these inconsistent views by distinguishing
between the questions ‘what a man ought to do or forbear’ and ‘what
other men ought to blame him for not doing or forbearing’: and
recognising that the standard normally applied in dealing with the
latter question is laxer than would be right in dealing with the
former. But how is this double standard to be explained? We may
partly explain it by the different degrees of our knowledge in the
two cases: there are many acts and forbearances of which we cannot
lay down definitely that they ought to be done or forborne, unless
we have the complete knowledge of circumstances which a man commonly
possesses only in his own case, and not in that of other men. Thus I
may easily assure myself that I ought to subscribe to a given hospital:
but I cannot judge whether my neighbour ought to subscribe, as I do
not know the details of his income and the claims which he is bound
to satisfy. I do not, however, think that this explanation is always
applicable: I think that there are not a few cases in which we refrain
from blaming others for the omission of acts which we do not doubt that
we in their place should have thought it our duty to perform. In such
cases the line seems drawn by a more or less conscious consideration of
what men ordinarily do, and by a social instinct as to the practical
effects of expressed moral approbation and disapprobation: we think
that moral progress will on the whole be best promoted by our praising
acts that are above the level of ordinary practice, and confining our
censure--at least if precise and particular--to acts that fall clearly
below this standard. But a standard so determined must be inevitably
vague, and tending to vary as the average level of morality varies
in any community, or section of a community: indeed it is the aim of
preachers and teachers of morality to raise it continually. Hence it is
not convenient to use it in drawing a theoretical line between Virtue
and Duty: and I have therefore thought it best to employ the terms so
that virtuous conduct may include the performance of duty as well as
whatever good actions may be commonly thought to go beyond duty; though
recognising that Virtue in its ordinary use is most conspicuously
manifested in the latter.
§ 2. So far I have been considering the term ‘Virtuous’ as applied to
conduct. But both this general term, and the names connoting particular
virtues--“just,” “liberal,” “brave,” etc.--are applied to persons as
well as to their acts: and the question may be raised which application
is most appropriate or primary. Here reflection, I think, shows that
these attributes are not thought by us to belong to acts considered
apart from their agents: so that Virtue seems to be primarily a
quality of the soul or mind, conceived as permanent in comparison
with the transient acts and feelings in which it is manifested. As so
conceived it is widely held to be a possession worth aiming at for
its own sake; to be, in fact, a part of that Perfection of man which
is by some regarded as the sole Ultimate Good. This view I shall
consider in a subsequent chapter.[176] Meanwhile it may be observed
that Virtues, like other habits and dispositions, though regarded as
comparatively permanent attributes of the mind, are yet attributes of
which we can only form definite notions by conceiving the particular
transient phenomena in which they are manifested. If then we ask in
what phenomena Virtuous character is manifested, the obvious answer is
that it is manifested in voluntary actions, so far as intentional; or,
more briefly, in volitions. And many, perhaps most, moralists would
give this as a complete answer. If they are not prepared to affirm with
Kant that a good will is the only absolute and unconditional Good,
they will at any rate agree with Butler that “the object of the moral
faculty is actions, comprehending under that name active or practical
principles: those principles from which men would act if occasions
and circumstances gave them power.” And if it be urged that more than
this is included (_e.g._) in the Christian conception of the Virtue
of Charity, the “love of our neighbour,” they will explain with Kant
that by this love we must not understand the emotion of affection, but
merely the resolution to benefit, which alone has “true moral worth.”
I do not, however, think that the complete exclusion of an emotional
element from the conception of Virtue would be really in harmony
with the common sense of mankind. I think that in our common moral
judgments certain kinds of virtuous actions are held to be at any
rate adorned and made better by the presence of certain emotions in
the virtuous agent: though no doubt the element of volition is the
more important and indispensable. Thus the Virtue of Chastity or
Purity, in its highest form, seems to include more than a mere settled
resolution to abstain from unlawful lust; it includes some sentiment
of repugnance to impurity. Again, we recognise that benefits which
spring from affection and are lovingly bestowed are more acceptable to
the recipients than those conferred without affection, in the taste of
which there is admittedly something harsh and dry: hence, in a certain
way, the affection, if practical and steady, seems a higher excellence
than the mere beneficent disposition of the will, as resulting in more
excellent acts. In the case of Gratitude even the rigidity of Kant[177]
seems to relax, and to admit an element of emotion as indispensable to
the virtue: and there are various other notions, such as Loyalty and
Patriotism, which it is difficult--without paradox--either to exclude
from a list of virtues or to introduce stripped bare of all emotional
elements.
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.
At the same time I admit that Common Sense seems liable to some
perplexity as to the relation of virtue to the moral effort required
for resisting unvirtuous impulses. On the one hand a general assent
would be given to the proposition that virtue is especially drawn out
and exhibited in a successful conflict with natural inclination: and
perhaps even to the more extreme statement that there is no virtue[178]
in doing what one likes. On the other hand we should surely agree
with Aristotle that Virtue is imperfect so long as the agent cannot
do the virtuous action without a conflict of impulses; since it is
from a wrong bent of natural impulse that we find it hard to do what
is best, and it seems absurd to say that the more we cure ourselves
of this wrong bent, the less virtuous we grow. Perhaps we may solve
the difficulty by recognising that our common idea of Virtue includes
two distinct elements, the one being the most perfect ideal of moral
excellence that we are able to conceive for human beings, while the
other is manifested in the effort of imperfect men to attain this
ideal. Thus in proportion as a man comes to like any particular kind of
good conduct and to do it without moral effort, we shall not say that
his conduct becomes less virtuous but rather more in conformity with
a true moral ideal; while at the same time we shall recognise that in
this department of his life he has less room to exhibit that other kind
of virtue which is manifested in resistance to seductive impulses, and
in the energetic striving of the will to get nearer to ideal perfection.
So far I have been considering the manifestation of virtue in emotions
and volitions, and have not expressly adverted to the intellectual
conditions of virtuous acts: though in speaking of such acts it is of
course implied that the volition is accompanied with an intellectual
representation of the particular effects willed. It is not, however,
implied that in willing such effects we must necessarily think of
them as right or good: and I do not myself think that, in the view of
common sense, this is an indispensable condition of the virtuousness
of an act; for it seems that some kinds of virtuous acts may be done
so entirely without deliberation that no moral judgment was passed
on them by the agent. This might be the case, for instance, with
an act of heroic courage, prompted by an impulse of sympathy with
a fellow-creature in sudden peril. But it is, I conceive, clearly
necessary that such an act should not be even vaguely thought to be
bad. As I have already said, it is more doubtful how far an act which
is conceived by the agent to be good, but which is really bad, is ever
judged by common sense to be virtuous[179]: but if we agree to restrict
the term to acts which we regard as right, it is again obvious
that the realisation of virtue may not be in the power of any given
person at any given time, through lack of the requisite intellectual
conditions.[180]
To sum up the results of a rather complicated discussion: I consider
Virtue as a quality manifested in the performance of duty (or good
acts going beyond strict duty): it is indeed primarily attributed to
the mind or character of the agent; but it is only known to us through
its manifestations in feelings and acts. Accordingly, in endeavouring
to make precise our conceptions of the particular virtues, we have
to examine the states of consciousness in which they are manifested.
Examining these, we find that the element of volition is primarily
important, and in some cases almost of sole importance, but yet
that the element of emotion cannot be altogether discarded without
palpable divergence from common sense. Again, concentrating our
attention on the volitional element, we find that in most cases what
we regard as manifestations of virtue are the volitions to produce
certain particular effects; the general determination to do right as
right, duty for duty’s sake, is indeed thought to be of fundamental
importance as a generally necessary spring of virtuous action; but it
is not thought to be an indispensable condition of the existence of
virtue in any particular case. Similarly in considering the emotional
element, though an ardent love of virtue or aversion to vice generally
is a valuable stimulus to virtuous conduct, it is not a universally
necessary condition of it: and in the case of some acts the presence
of other emotions--such as kind affection--makes the acts better than
if they were done from a purely moral motive. Such emotions, however,
cannot be commanded at will: and this is also true of the knowledge of
what ought to be done in any particular case,--which, if we restrict
the term ‘virtuous’ to right acts, is obviously required to render
conduct perfectly virtuous. For these and other reasons I consider that
though Virtue is distinguished by us from other excellences by the
characteristic of voluntariness--it must be _to some extent_ capable
of being realised at will when occasion arises--this voluntariness
attaches to it only in a certain degree; and that, though a man can
always do his Duty if he knows it, he cannot always realise virtue in
the highest degree.
It should, however, be observed that even when it is beyond our
power to realise virtue immediately at will, we recognise a duty of
cultivating it and seeking to develop it: and this duty of cultivation
extends to all virtuous habits or dispositions in which we are found
to be deficient, so far as we can thus increase our tendency to do the
corresponding acts in future; however completely such acts may on each
occasion be within the control of the will. It is true that for acts of
this latter kind, so far as they are perfectly deliberate, we do not
seem to need any special virtuous habits; if only we have knowledge of
what is right and best to be done, together with a sufficiently strong
wish to do it.[181] But, in order to fulfil our duties thoroughly,
we are obliged to act during part of our lives suddenly and without
deliberation: on such occasions there is no room for moral reasoning,
and sometimes not even for explicit moral judgment; so that in order to
act virtuously, we require such particular habits and dispositions as
are denoted by the names of the special virtues: and it is a duty to
foster and develop these in whatever way experience shows this to be
possible.
The complicated relation of virtue to duty, as above determined, must
be borne in mind throughout the discussion of the particular virtues,
to which I shall proceed in the following chapters. But, as we have
seen, the main part of the manifestation of virtue in conduct consists
in voluntary actions, which it is within the power of any individual
to do--so far as they are recognised by him as right,--and which
therefore come within our definition of Duty, as above laid down; it
will not therefore be necessary, during the greater part of the ensuing
discussion, to distinguish between principles of virtuous conduct and
principles of duty; since the definitions of the two will coincide.
§ 3. Here, however, a remark is necessary, which to some extent
qualifies what was said in the preceding chapter, where I characterised
the common notions of particular virtues--justice, etc.--as too vague
to furnish exact determinations of the actions enjoined under them. I
there assumed that rules of duty ought to admit of precise definition
in a universal form: and this assumption naturally belongs to the
ordinary or jural view of Ethics as concerned with a moral code: since
we should agree that if obligations are imposed on any one he ought at
least to know what they are, and that a law indefinitely drawn must
be a bad law. But so far as we contemplate virtue as something that
goes beyond strict duty and is not always capable of being realised at
will, this assumption is not so clearly appropriate: since from this
point of view we naturally compare excellence of conduct with beauty
in the products of the Fine Arts. Of such products we commonly say,
that though rules and definite prescriptions may do much, they can
never do all; that the highest excellence is always due to an instinct
or tact that cannot be reduced to definite formulæ. We can describe
the beautiful products when they are produced, and to some extent
classify their beauties, giving names to each; but we cannot prescribe
any certain method for producing each kind of beauty. So, it may be
said, stands the case with virtues: and hence the attempt to state an
explicit maxim, by applying which we may be sure of producing virtuous
acts of any kind, must fail: we can only give a general account of
the virtue--a description, not a definition--and leave it to trained
insight to find in any particular circumstances the act that will
best realise it. On this view, which I may distinguish as Æsthetic
Intuitionism, I shall have something to say hereafter.[182] But I
conceive that our primary business is to examine the larger claims of
those Rational or Jural Intuitionists, who maintain that Ethics admits
of exact and scientific treatment, having for its first principles
the general rules of which we have spoken, or the most fundamental
of them: and who thus hold out to us a hope of getting rid of the
fluctuations and discrepancies of opinion, in which we acquiesce
in æsthetic discussions, but which tend to endanger seriously the
authority of ethical beliefs. And we cannot, I think, decide on the
validity of such claims without examining in detail the propositions
which have been put forward as ethical axioms, and seeing how far they
prove to be clear and explicit, or how far others may be suggested
presenting these qualities. For it would not be maintained, at least
by the more judicious thinkers of this school, that such axioms are
always to be found with proper exactness of form by mere observation of
the common moral reasonings of men; but rather that they are at least
implied in these reasonings, and that when made explicit their truth
is self-evident, and must be accepted at once by an intelligent and
unbiassed mind. Just as some mathematical axioms are not and cannot
be known to the multitude, as their certainty cannot be seen except
by minds carefully prepared,--but yet, when their terms are properly
understood, the perception of their absolute truth is immediate and
irresistible. Similarly, if we are not able to claim for a proposed
moral axiom, in its precise form, an explicit and actual assent of
“_orbis terrarum_,” it may still be a truth which men before vaguely
apprehended, and which they will now unhesitatingly admit.
In this inquiry it is not of great importance in what order we take
the virtues. We are not to examine the system of any particular
moralist, but the Morality (as it was called) of Common Sense; and the
discussion of the general notions of Duty and Virtue, in which we have
been engaged in the present chapter, will have shown incidentally the
great difficulty of eliciting from Common Sense any clear principle
of classification of the particular duties and virtues. Hence I
have thought it best to reserve what I have to say on the subject
of classification till a later period of the discussion; and in the
first place to take the matter to be investigated quite empirically,
as we find it in the common thought expressed in the common language
of mankind. The systems of moralists commonly attempt to give some
definite arrangement to this crude material: but in so far as they are
systematic they generally seem forced to transcend Common Sense, and
define what it has left doubtful; as I shall hereafter try to show.
For the present, then, it seems best, in this empirical investigation,
to take the virtues rather in the order of their importance; and, as
there are some that seem to have a special comprehensiveness of range,
and to include under them, in a manner, all or most of the others, it
will be convenient to begin with these. Of these Wisdom is perhaps the
most obvious: in the next chapter, therefore, I propose to examine our
common conceptions of Wisdom, and certain other cognate or connected
virtues or excellences.
FOOTNOTES:
[172] It is more convenient, for the purpose of expounding the morality
of common sense, to understand by Virtue a quality exhibited in right
conduct; for then we can use the common notions of the particular
virtues as heads for the classification of the most important kinds or
aspects of right conduct as generally recognised. And I think that this
employment of the term is as much in accordance with ordinary usage as
any other equally precise use would be.
[173] In Book i. chap. v. § 3 I have explained the sense in which
Determinists no less than Libertarians hold that it is in a man’s power
to do his duty.
[174] Cf. _Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_, Appendix iv.
[175] If the phrase in the text were used by a moral person, with a
sincere and predominant desire to do his duty, it must, I conceive, be
used in one of two senses: either (1) half-ironically, in recognition
of a customary standard of virtuous conduct which the speaker is not
prepared expressly to dispute, but which he does not really adopt as
valid--as when we say that it would be virtuous to read a new book,
hear a sermon, pay a visit, etc.; or (2) it might be used loosely to
mean that such and such conduct _would_ be best if the speaker were
differently constituted.
[176] Chap. xiv. of this Book.
[177] Cf. _Met. Anf. d. Tugendlehre_, § 33: “diese Tugend, welche
mit Innigkeit der wohlwollenden Gesinnung zugleich Zärtlichkeit des
Wohlwollens verbindet.”
[178] Or no “merit”:--but so far as this latter notion is precisely
applied, it will be more appropriately considered in ch. v. of this
Book (on Justice).
[179] I have before said that decidedly wrong acts are frequently
considered to exhibit in a high degree the tendencies which, when
exhibited in right acts, we call particular virtues--generosity,
courage, patriotism, etc.: and this is especially true of acts bad
through ignorance.
[180] This, I think, is a conclusion which common sense on the whole
accepts: though I note a considerable reluctance to accept it; which,
however, is not shown in the attribution of virtue to persons who do
clearly wrong acts, but rather in an effort to explain their ignorance
as caused by some previous wilful wrongdoing. We try to persuade
ourselves that if (_e.g._) Torquemada did not know that it was wrong to
torture heretics, he might have known if he had not wilfully neglected
means of enlightenment: but there are many cases in which this kind of
explanation is unsupported by facts, and I see no ground for accepting
it as generally true.
[181] Hence the Socratic doctrine that ‘all virtue is knowledge’; on
the assumption that a rational being must necessarily wish for what is
good.
[182] See chap. xiv. § 1 of this Book.
CHAPTER III
WISDOM AND SELF-CONTROL
§ 1. Wisdom was always placed by the Greek philosophers first in the
list of virtues, and regarded as in a manner comprehending all the
others: in fact in the post-Aristotelian schools the notion of the
Sage or ideally Wise man (σοφός) was regularly employed to
exhibit in a concrete form the rules of life laid down by each system.
In common Greek usage, however, the term just mentioned would signify
excellence in purely speculative science, no less than practical
wisdom[183]: and the English term Wisdom has, to some extent, the same
ambiguity. It is, however, chiefly used in reference to practice: and
even when applied to the region of pure speculation suggests especially
such intellectual gifts and habits as lead to sound practical
conclusions: namely, comprehensiveness of view, the habit of attending
impartially to a number of diverse considerations difficult to estimate
exactly, and good judgment as to the relative importance of each. At
any rate, it is only Practical Wisdom which we commonly class among
Virtues, as distinguished from purely intellectual excellences. How
then shall we define Practical Wisdom? The most obvious part of its
meaning is a tendency to discern, in the conduct of life generally,
the best means to the attainment of any ends that the natural play
of human motives may lead us to seek: as contrasted with technical
skill, or the faculty of selecting the best means to given ends in a
certain limited and special department of human action. Such skill in
the special arts is partly communicable by means of definite rules,
and partly a matter of tact or instinct, depending somewhat on natural
gifts and predispositions, but to a great extent acquired by exercise
and imitation; and similarly practical Wisdom, if understood to be
Skill in the Art of Life, would involve a certain amount of scientific
knowledge, the portions of different sciences bearing directly on
human action, together with empirical rules relating to the same
subject-matter; and also the tact or trained instinct just mentioned,
which would even be more prominent here, on account of the extreme
complexity of the subject-matter. But it does not appear from this
analysis why this skill should be regarded as a virtue: and reflection
will show that we do not ordinarily mean by wisdom merely the faculty
of finding the best means to any ends: for we should not call the
most accomplished swindler wise; whereas we should not hesitate to
attribute to him cleverness, ingenuity, and other purely intellectual
excellences. So again we apply the term “worldly-wise” to a man who
skilfully chooses the best means to the end of ambition; but we should
not call such a man ‘wise’ without qualification. Wisdom, in short,
appears to me to imply right judgment in respect of ends as well as
means.
Here, however, a subtle question arises. For the assumption on which
this treatise proceeds is that there are several ultimate ends of
action, which all claim to be rational ends, such as every man ought
to adopt. Hence, if Wisdom implies right judgment as to ends, it is
clear that a person who regards some one end as the sole right or
rational ultimate end will not consider a man wise who adopts any
other ultimate end. Can we say then that in the common use of the word
Wisdom any one ultimate end is distinctly implied to the exclusion of
others? It may be suggested, perhaps, that in the moral view of Common
Sense which we are now trying to make clear, since Wisdom itself is
prescribed or commended as a quality of conduct intuitively discerned
to be right or good, the ultimate end which the wise man prefers must
be just this attainment of rightness or goodness in conduct generally;
rather than pleasure for himself or others, or any other ulterior end.
I think, however, that in the case of this notion it is impossible to
carry out that analysis of ordinary practical reasoning into several
distinct methods, each admitting and needing separate development,
upon which the plan of this treatise is founded. For, as we saw, it
is characteristic of Common Sense to assume coincidence or harmony
among these different competing methods. And hence, while as regards
most particular virtues and duties, the exercise of moral judgment in
ordinary men is _prima facie_ independent of hedonistic calculations,
and occasionally in apparent conflict with their results,--so that the
reconciliation of the different procedures presents itself as a problem
to be solved--in the comprehensive notion of Wisdom the antagonism is
latent. Common Sense seems to mean by a Wise man, a man who attains
at once all the different rational ends; who by conduct in perfect
conformity with the true moral code attains the greatest happiness
possible both for himself and for mankind (or that portion of mankind
to which his efforts are necessarily restricted). But if we find this
harmony unattainable,--if, for example, Rational Egoism seems to
lead to conduct opposed to the true interests of mankind in general,
and we ask whether we are to call Wise the man who seeks, or him who
sacrifices, his private interests,--Common Sense gives no clear reply.
§ 2. Let us now return to the question whether Wisdom, as exhibited
in right judgment as to ends, is in any degree attainable at will,
and so, according to our definition, a Virtue. At first sight, the
perception of the right end may seem not to be voluntary any more than
the cognition of any other kind of truth; and though in most cases
the attainment of truth requires voluntary effort, still we do not
generally think it possible for any man, by this alone, to attain even
approximately the right solution of a difficult intellectual problem.
It is often said, however, that the cognition of Moral truth depends
largely upon the ‘heart,’ that is, upon a certain condition of our
desires and other emotions: and it would seem to be on this view that
Wisdom is regarded as a Virtue; and we may admit it as such, according
to the definition before given, so far as this condition of feeling
is attainable at will. Still, on closer scrutiny, there hardly seems
to be agreement as to the right emotional conditions of the cognition
of ends: as some would say that prayer or ardent aspiration produced
the most favourable state, while others would urge that emotional
excitement is likely to perturb the judgment, and would say that we
need for right apprehension rather tranquillity of feeling: and some
would contend that a complete suppression of selfish impulses was the
essential condition, while others would regard this as chimerical and
impossible, or, if possible, a plain misdirection of effort. On these
points we cannot decide in the name of Common Sense: but it would be
generally agreed that there are certain violent passions and sensual
appetites which are known to be liable to pervert moral apprehensions,
and that these are to some extent under the control of the Will; so
that a man who exercises moral effort to resist their influence,
when he wishes to decide on ends of action, may be said to be so far
voluntarily wise.
And this applies to some extent even to that other function of Wisdom,
first discussed, which consists in the selection of the best means
to the attainment of given ends. For experience seems to show that
our insight in practical matters is liable to be perverted by desire
and fear, and that this perversion may be prevented by an effort of
self-control: so that unwisdom, even here, is at least not altogether
involuntary. Thus in a dispute which may lead to a quarrel, I may
be entirely unable to show foresight and skill in maintaining my
right in such a manner as to avoid needless exasperation, and so far
may be unable to conduct the dispute wisely: but it is always in my
power, before taking each important step, to reduce the influence of
anger or wounded _amour propre_ on my decisions, and I may avoid much
unwisdom in this way. And it is to be observed that volition has a more
important part to play in developing or protecting our insight into the
right conduct of life, than it has in respect of the technical skill to
which we compared Practical Wisdom; in proportion as the reasonings in
which Practical Wisdom is exhibited are less clear and exact, and the
conclusions inevitably more uncertain. For desire and fear could hardly
make one go wrong in an arithmetical calculation; but in estimating a
balance of complicated practical probabilities it is more difficult to
resist the influence of strong inclination: and it would seem to be
a more or less definite consciousness of the continual need of such
resistance, which leads us to regard Wisdom as a Virtue.
We may say then that Practical Wisdom, so far as it is a virtue,
involves a habit of resistance to desires and fears which is commonly
distinguished as Self-control. But suppose a man has determined with
full insight the course of conduct that it is reasonable for him to
adopt under any given circumstances, the question still remains whether
he will certainly adopt it. Now I hardly think that Common Sense
considers the _choice_, as distinct from the _cognition_, of right ends
to belong to Wisdom; and yet we should scarcely call a man wise who
deliberately chose to do what he knew to be contrary to reason. The
truth seems to be that the notion of such a choice, though the modern
mind admits it as possible,[184] is somewhat unfamiliar in comparison
with either (1) impulsive irrationality, or (2) mistaken choice of bad
for good. In the last case, if the mistake is entirely involuntary,
the choice has, of course, no subjective wrongness: often, however,
the mistaken conclusion is caused by a perverting influence of desire
or fear of which the agent is obscurely conscious, and which might be
resisted and dispelled by an effort of will. As so caused, the mistake
falls under the head of culpable unwisdom, due to want of self-control
similar in kind--though not in degree--to that which is exhibited in
the rarer phenomenon of a man deliberately choosing to do what he knows
to be bad for him.
The case of impulsive wrongdoing is somewhat different. It is clear
that a resolution made after deliberation, in accordance with our
view of what is right, should not be abandoned or modified except
deliberately--at least if time for fresh deliberation be allowed--:
and the self-control required to resist impulses prompting to such
abandonment or modification--which we may perhaps call Firmness,--is
an indispensable auxiliary to Wisdom. But the gusts of impulse that
the varying occasions of life arouse sometimes take effect so rapidly
that the resolution to which they run counter is not actually recalled
at the time: and in this case the self-control or firmness required to
prevent unreasonable action seems to be not attainable at will, when
it is most wanted. We can, however, cultivate this important habit
by graving our resolves deeper in the moments of deliberation that
continually intervene among the moments of impulsive action.
§ 3. In examining the functions of Wisdom, other subordinate
excellences come into view, which are partly included in our ideal
conception of Wisdom, and partly auxiliary or supplementary. Some of
these, however, no one would exactly call virtues: such as Sagacity in
selecting the really important points amid a crowd of others, Acuteness
in seeing aids or obstacles that lie somewhat hidden. Ingenuity in
devising subtle or complicated means to our ends, and other cognate
qualities more or less vaguely defined and named. We cannot be acute,
or ingenious, or sagacious when we please, though we may become more
so by practice. The same may be said of Caution, so far as Caution
implies taking into due account _material_ circumstances unfavourable
to our wishes and aims: for by no effort of will can we certainly
see what circumstances are material; we can only look steadily and
comprehensively. The term ‘Caution,’ however, may also be legitimately
applied to a species of Self-control which we shall properly regard
as a Virtue: viz. the tendency to deliberate whenever and so long as
deliberation is judged to be required, even though powerful impulses
urge us to immediate action.[185]
And, in antithesis to Caution, we may notice as another minor virtue
the quality called Decision, so far as we mean by Decision the habit of
resisting an irrational impulse to which men are liable, of continuing
to some extent in the deliberative attitude when they know that
deliberation is no longer expedient, and that they ought to be acting.
‘Decision,’ however, is often applied (like ‘Caution’) to denote solely
or chiefly a merely intellectual excellence; viz. the tendency to judge
rightly as to the time for closing deliberation.
I conclude then that so far as such qualities as those which I have
distinguished as Caution, and Decision, are recognised as Virtues and
not merely as intellectual excellences, it is because they are, in
fact, species of Self-control; _i.e._ because they involve voluntary
adoption of and adhesion to rational judgments as to conduct, in spite
of certain irrational motives prompting in an opposite direction. Now
it may seem at first sight that if we suppose perfect correctness of
judgment combined with perfect self-control, the result will be a
perfect performance of duty in all departments; and the realisation of
perfect Virtue, except so far as this involves the presence of certain
special emotions not to be commanded at will.[186] And no doubt a
perfectly wise and self-controlled man cannot be conceived as breaking
or neglecting any moral rule. But it is important to observe that even
sincere and single-minded efforts to realise what we see to be right
may vary in intensity; and that therefore the tendency to manifest a
high degree of intensity in such efforts is properly praised as Energy,
if the quality be purely volitional; or under some such name as Zeal
or Moral Ardour, if the volitional energy be referred to intensity of
emotion, and yet not connected with any emotion more special than the
general love of what is Right or Good.
NOTE.--It is to be observed that in the discussions of this chapter
the question at issue between Intuitional and Utilitarian Ethics is
not yet reached. For, granting that we can elicit by reflection clear
rules of duty under the heads of Wisdom, Caution and Decision, the
rules are obviously not independent; they presuppose an intellectual
judgment otherwise obtained, or capable of being obtained, as to what
is right or expedient to do.
FOOTNOTES:
[183] Indeed Aristotle, who stood alone among the schools sprung from
Socrates in distinguishing sharply ‘theoretic’ from ‘practical’ wisdom,
restricts the term σοφία to the former, and uses another word
(φρόνησις) to denote the latter.
[184] I have already adverted to the difference between ancient and
modern thought in this respect. Cf. _ante_, Book i. chap. v. § 1, p.
59, note.
[185] It may be observed that there is another meaning again in which
the term ‘Caution’ is sometimes used. Since of the various means which
we may use to gain any end, some are more and some less certain;
and some are dangerous--that is, involve a chance of consequences
either antagonistic to our pursuit, or on different grounds to be
avoided--while others are free from such danger; ‘Caution’ is often
used to denote the temper of mind which inclines to the more certain
and less dangerous means. In this sense, in so far as the chance in
each case of winning the end, and the value of the end as compared with
other ends, and as weighed against the detriment which its pursuit may
entail, can be precisely estimated, the limits of the duty of Caution
may obviously be determined without difficulty.
[186] See p. 223, and § 2 of the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV
BENEVOLENCE
§ 1. We have seen that the virtue of Practical Wisdom comprehends all
others, so far as virtuous conduct in each department necessarily
results from a clear knowledge and choice of the true ultimate end or
ends of action, and of the best means to the attainment of such end
or ends.[187] From this point of view, we may consider the names of
the special virtues as denoting special departments of this knowledge;
which it is now our business to examine more closely.
When, however, we contemplate these, we discern that there are
other virtues, which, in different ways, may be regarded as no less
comprehensive than Wisdom. Especially in modern times, since the
revival of independent ethical speculation, there have always been
thinkers who have maintained, in some form, the view that Benevolence
is a supreme and architectonic virtue, comprehending and summing up
all the others, and fitted to regulate them and determine their proper
limits and mutual relations.[188] This widely supported claim to
supremacy seems an adequate reason for giving to Benevolence the first
place after Wisdom, in our examination of the commonly received maxims
of Duty and Virtue.
The general maxim of Benevolence would be commonly said to be, “that
we ought to love all our fellow-men,” or “all our fellow-creatures”:
but, as we have already seen, there is some doubt among moralists as
to the precise meaning of the term “love,” in this connexion: since,
according to Kant and others, what is morally prescribed as the Duty
of Benevolence is not strictly the affection of love or kindness, so
far as this contains an emotional element, but only the determination
of the will to seek the good or happiness of others. And I agree that
it cannot be a strict duty to feel an emotion, so far as it is not
directly within the power of the Will to produce it at any given time.
Still (as I have said) it seems to me that this emotional element is
included in our common notion of Charity or Philanthropy, regarded
as a Virtue: and I think it paradoxical[189] to deny that it raises
the mere beneficent disposition of the will to a higher degree of
excellence, and renders its effects better. If this be so, it will be
a duty to cultivate the affection so far as it is possible to do so:
and indeed this would seem (no less than the permanent disposition to
do good) to be a normal effect of repeated beneficent resolves and
actions: since, as has often been observed, a benefit tends to excite
love in the agent towards the recipient of the benefit, no less than
in the recipient towards the agent. It must be admitted, however, that
this effect is less certain than the production of the benevolent
disposition; and that some men are naturally so unattractive to others
that the latter can feel no affection, though they may entertain
benevolent dispositions, towards the former. At any rate, it would
seem to be a duty generally, and till we find the effort fruitless,
to cultivate kind affections towards those whom we ought to benefit;
not only by doing kind actions, but by placing ourselves under any
natural influences which experience shows to have a tendency to produce
affection.
But we have still to ascertain more particularly the nature of the
actions in which this affection or disposition of will is shown. They
are described popularly as ‘doing good.’ Now we have before[190]
noticed that the notion ‘good,’ in ordinary thought, includes,
undistinguished and therefore unharmonised, the different conceptions
that men form of the ultimate end of rational action. It follows
that there is a corresponding ambiguity in the phrase ‘doing good’:
since, though many would unhesitatingly take it to mean the promotion
of Happiness, there are others who, holding that Perfection and not
Happiness is the true ultimate Good, consistently maintain that the
real way to ‘do good’ to people is to increase their virtue or aid
their progress towards Perfection. There are, however, even among
anti-Epicurean moralists, some--such as Kant--who take an opposite
view, and argue that my neighbour’s Virtue or Perfection cannot be
an end to me, because it depends upon the free exercise of his own
volition, which I cannot help or hinder. But on the same grounds it
might equally well be argued that I cannot _cultivate_ Virtue in
myself, but only practise it from moment to moment: whereas even Kant
does not deny that we can cultivate virtuous dispositions in ourselves,
and that in other ways than by the performance of virtuous acts: and
Common Sense always assumes this to be possible and prescribes it as a
duty. And surely it is equally undeniable that we can cultivate virtue
in others: and indeed such cultivation is clearly the object not only
of education, but of a large part of social action, especially of our
expression of praise and blame. And if Virtue is an ultimate end for
ourselves, to be sought for its own sake, benevolence must lead us to
do what is possible to obtain it for our neighbour. And indeed we see
that in the case of intense individual affection, the friend or lover
generally longs that the beloved should be excellent and admirable
as well as happy: perhaps, however, this is because love involves
preference, and the lover desires that the beloved should be really
worthy of preference as well as actually preferred by him, as otherwise
there is a conflict between Love and Reason.
On the whole then, I do not find, in the common view of what
Benevolence bids us promote for others, any clear selection indicated
between the different and possibly conflicting elements of Good as
commonly conceived. But we may say, I think, that the promotion of
Happiness is practically the chief part of what Common Sense considers
to be prescribed as the external duty of Benevolence: and for
clearness’ sake we will confine our attention to this in the remainder
of the discussion.[191] It should be observed that by happiness we are
not to understand simply the gratification of the actual desires of
others, for men too often desire what would tend to their unhappiness
in the long run: but the greatest possible amount of pleasure or
satisfaction for them on the whole--in short, such happiness as was
taken to be the rational end for each individual in the system of
Egoistic Hedonism. It is this that Rational Benevolence bids us provide
for others; and if one who loves is led from affectionate sympathy
with the longings of the beloved to gratify those longings believing
that the gratification will be attended with an overplus of painful
consequences, we commonly say that such affection is weak and foolish.
§ 2. It remains to ask towards whom this disposition or affection is to
be maintained, and to what extent. And, firstly, it is not quite clear
whether we owe benevolence to men alone, or to other animals also. That
is, there is a general agreement that we ought to treat all animals
with kindness, so far as to avoid causing them unnecessary pain; but it
is questioned whether this is directly due to sentient beings as such,
or merely prescribed as a means of cultivating kindly dispositions
towards men. Intuitional moralists of repute have maintained this
latter view: I think, however, that Common Sense is disposed to regard
this as a hard-hearted paradox, and to hold with Bentham that the
pain of animals is _per se_ to be avoided. Passing to consider how
our benevolence ought to be distributed among our fellow-men, we may
conveniently make clear the Intuitional view by contrasting it with
that of Utilitarianism. For Utilitarianism is sometimes said to resolve
all virtue into universal and impartial Benevolence: it does not,
however, prescribe that we should love all men equally, but that we
should aim at Happiness generally as our ultimate end, and so consider
the happiness of any one individual as equally important with the
equal happiness of any other, as an element of this total; and should
distribute our kindness so as to make this total as great as possible,
in whatever way this result may be attained. Practically of course the
distribution of any individual’s services will, even on this view,
be unequal: as each man will obviously promote the general happiness
best by rendering services to a limited number, and to some more than
others: but the inequality, on the Utilitarian theory, is secondary
and derivative. Common Sense, however, seems rather to regard it as
immediately certain without any such deduction that we owe special dues
of kindness to those who stand in special relations to us. The question
then is, on what principles, when any case of doubt or apparent
conflict of duties arises, we are to determine the nature and extent of
the special claims to affection and kind services which arise out of
these particular relations of human beings. Are problems of this kind
to be solved by considering which course of conduct is on the whole
most conducive to the general happiness, or can we find independent
and self-evident principles sufficiently clear and precise to furnish
practical guidance in such cases? The different answers given to this
fundamental question will obviously constitute the main difference
between the Intuitional and Utilitarian methods; so far as the ‘good’
which the benevolent man desires and seeks to confer on others is
understood to be Happiness.
When, however, we come to investigate this question we are met with
a difficulty in the arrangement of the subject, which, like most
difficulties of classification, deserves attentive consideration,
as it depends upon important characteristics of the matter that has
to be arranged. In a narrower sense of the term, Benevolence is not
unfrequently distinguished from--and even contrasted with--Justice; we
may of course exercise both towards the same persons, but we commonly
assume that the special function of Benevolence begins where Justice
ends; and it is rather with this special function that we are concerned
in considering claims to affection, and to kind services normally
prompted by affection. At the same time, if we consider these services
as strictly due to persons in certain relations, the moral notion under
which these duties are presented to us is not easily distinguishable
from that of Justice; while yet these duties can hardly be withdrawn
from the sphere of Benevolence in the narrowest sense. It is sometimes
given as a distinction between Justice and Benevolence, that the
services which Justice prescribes can be claimed as a right by their
recipient, while Benevolence is essentially unconstrained: but we
certainly think (_e.g._) that parents have a right to filial affection
and to the services that naturally spring from it. It is further said
that the duties of Affection are essentially indefinite, while those
we classify under the head of Justice are precisely defined: and no
doubt this is partly true. We not only find it hard to say exactly
how much a son owes his parents, but we are even reluctant[192] to
investigate this: we do not think that he ought to ask for a precise
measure of his duty, in order that he may do just so much and no
more; while a great part of Justice consists in the observance of
stated agreements and precise rules. At the same time it is difficult
to maintain this distinction as a ground of classification; for the
duties of Affection are admittedly liable to come into competition with
each other, and with other duties; and when this apparent conflict of
duties occurs, we manifestly need as precise a definition as possible
of the conflicting obligations, in order to make a reasonable choice
among the alternatives of conduct presented to us. Accordingly in the
following chapter (§ 2) I shall show how this competition of claims
renders our common notion of Justice applicable to these no less than
to other duties: meanwhile, it seems proper to treat here separately
of all duties that arise out of relations where affection normally
exists, and where it ought to be cultivated, and where its absence is
deplored if not blamed. For all are agreed that there are such duties,
the non-performance of which is a ground for censure, beyond the
obligations imposed by law, or arising out of specific contract, which
will come under a different head.
Beyond these duties, again, there seems to be a region of performance
where the services rendered cannot properly be claimed as of debt, and
blame is not felt to be due for non-performance: and with regard to
this region, too,--which clearly belongs to Benevolence as contrasted
with Justice--there is some difficulty in stating the view of Common
Sense morality. There are two questions to be considered. We have to
ask, firstly, whether services rendered from affection, over and above
what strict Duty is thought to require, are to be deemed Virtuous;
and secondly, whether the affection itself is to be considered worthy
of admiration as a moral excellence, and therefore a mental condition
that we should strive to attain. I think that Common Sense clearly
regards as virtuous the disposition to render substantial positive
services to men at large, and promote their well-being,--whether such
a disposition springs out of natural kindliness of feeling towards
human beings generally, or whether it is merely the result of moral
effort and resolve--provided it is accompanied by an adequate degree
of intellectual enlightenment.[193] And the same may be said of the
less comprehensive affection that impels men to promote the well-being
of the community of which they are members; and again of the affection
that normally tends to accompany the recognition of rightful rule or
leadership in others. In some ages and countries Patriotism and Loyalty
have been regarded as almost supreme among the virtues; and even now
Common Sense gives them a high place.
But when we pass to more restricted, and, ordinarily more intense,
affections, such as those which we feel for relations and friends, it
becomes more difficult to determine whether they are to be considered
as moral excellences and cultivated as such.
First, to avoid confusion, we must remark that Love is not merely a
desire to do good to the object beloved, although it always involves
such a desire. It is primarily a pleasurable emotion, which seems
to depend upon a certain sense of union with another person, and it
includes, besides the benevolent impulse, a desire of the society of
the beloved: and this element may predominate over the former, and
even conflict with it, so that the true interests of the beloved may
be sacrificed. In this case we call the affection selfish, and do
not praise it at all, but rather blame. If now we ask whether intense
Love for an individual, considered merely as a benevolent impulse,
is in itself a moral excellence, it is difficult to extract a very
definite answer from Common Sense: but I think it inclines on the
whole to the negative. We are no doubt generally inclined to admire
any kind of conspicuously ‘altruistic’ conduct and any form of intense
love, however restricted in its scope; yet it hardly seems that the
susceptibility to such individualised benevolent emotions is exactly
regarded as an essential element of moral Perfection, which we ought
to strive after and cultivate like other moral excellences; we seem,
in fact, to doubt whether such effort is desirable in this case, at
least beyond the point up to which such affection is thought to be
required for the performance of recognised duties. Again, we think it
natural and desirable that--as generally speaking each person feels
strong affection for only a few individuals,--in his efforts to promote
directly the well-being of others he should, to a great extent, follow
the promptings of such restricted affection: but we are hardly prepared
to recommend that he should render services to special individuals
beyond what he is bound to render, and such as are the natural
expression of an eager and overflowing affection, without having any
such affection to express: although, as was before said, in certain
intimate relations we do not approve of the limits of duty being too
exactly measured.
On the whole, then, I conclude that--while we praise and admire
enthusiastic Benevolence and Patriotism, and are touched and charmed
by the spontaneous lavish outflow of Gratitude, Friendship, and the
domestic affections--still what chiefly concerns us as moralists,
under the present head, is the ascertainment of the right rules of
distribution of services and kind acts, in so far as we consider
the rendering of these to be morally obligatory. For provided a man
fulfils these duties (and observes the other recognised rules of
morality) Common Sense is not prepared to say how far it is right or
good that he should sacrifice any other noble and worthy aim--such as
the cultivation of knowledge or any of the fine arts--to the claims
of philanthropy or personal affection: there seem to be no generally
accepted “intuitional” principles for determining such a choice of
alternatives.[194]
§ 3. What then are the duties that we owe to our fellow-men--so far as
they do not seem to come under the head of Justice more properly than
Benevolence? Perhaps the mere enumeration of them is not difficult.
We should all agree that each of us is bound to show kindness to
his parents and spouse and children, and to other kinsmen in a less
degree: and to those who have rendered services to him, and any others
whom he may have admitted to his intimacy and called friends: and to
neighbours and to fellow-countrymen more than others: and perhaps we
may say to those of our own race more than to black or yellow men, and
generally to human beings in proportion to their affinity to ourselves.
And to our country as a corporate whole we believe ourselves to owe
the greatest sacrifices when occasion calls (but in a lower stage
of civilisation this debt is thought to be due rather to one’s king
or chief): and a similar obligation seems to be recognised, though
less definitely and in a less degree, as regards minor corporations
of which we are members. And to all men with whom we may be brought
into relation we are held to owe slight services, and such as may be
rendered without inconvenience: but those who are in distress or urgent
need have a claim on us for special kindness. These are generally
recognised claims: but we find considerable difficulty and divergence,
when we attempt to determine more precisely their extent and relative
obligation: and the divergence becomes indefinitely greater when we
compare the customs and common opinions now existing among ourselves
in respect of such claims, with those of other ages and countries. For
example, in earlier ages of society a peculiar sacredness was attached
to the tie of hospitality, and claims arising out of it were considered
peculiarly stringent: but this has changed as hospitality in the
progress of civilisation has become a luxury rather than a necessary,
and we do not think that we owe much to a man because we have asked
him to dinner. Or again we may take an instance where the alteration
is perhaps actually going on--the claims of kindred in respect of
bequest. We should now commonly think that a man ought usually to
leave his property to his children: but that if he has no children we
think he may do what he likes with it, unless any of his brothers or
sisters are in poverty, in which case compassion seems to blend with
and invigorate the evanescent claim of consanguinity. But in an age
not long past a childless man was held to be morally bound to leave
his money to his collateral relatives: and thus we are naturally led
to conjecture that in the not distant future, any similar obligation
to children--unless they are in want or unless their education is not
completed--may have vanished out of men’s minds. A similar change might
be traced in the commonly recognised duty of children to parents.
It may however be urged that this variation of custom is no obstacle to
the definition of duty, because we may lay down that the customs of any
society ought to be obeyed so long as they are established, just as the
laws ought, although both customs and laws may be changed from time to
time. And no doubt it is generally expedient to conform to established
customs: still, on reflection, we see that it cannot be laid down as
an absolute duty. For the cases of Custom and Law are not similar: as
in every progressive community there is a regular and settled mode of
abrogating laws that are found bad: but customs cannot be thus formally
abolished, and we only get rid of them through the refusal of private
individuals to obey them; and therefore it must be sometimes right to
do this, if some customs are vexatious and pernicious, as we frequently
judge those of antique and alien communities to be. And if we say that
customs should generally be obeyed, but that they may be disobeyed
when they reach a certain degree of inexpediency, our method seems to
resolve itself into Utilitarianism: for we cannot reasonably rest the
general obligation upon one principle, and determine its limits and
exceptions by another. If the duties above enumerated can be referred
to independent and self-evident principles, the limits of each must be
implicitly given in the intuition that reveals the principle.
§ 4. In order then to ascertain how far we possess such principles, let
us examine in more detail what Common Sense seems to affirm in respect
of these duties.
They seem to range themselves under four heads. There are (1)
duties arising out of comparatively permanent relationships not
voluntarily chosen, such as Kindred and in most cases Citizenship
and Neighbourhood: (2) those of similar relationships voluntarily
contracted, such as Friendship: (3) those that spring from special
services received, or Duties of Gratitude: and (4) those that seem due
to special need, or Duties of Pity. This classification is, I think,
convenient for discussion: but I cannot profess that it clearly and
completely avoids cross divisions; since, for example, the principle
of Gratitude is often appealed to as supplying the _rationale_ for
the duties owed by children to parents. Here, however, we come upon a
material disagreement and difficulty in determining the maxim of this
species of duty. It would be agreed that children owe to their parents
respect and kindness generally, and assistance in case of infirmity or
any special need: but it seems doubtful how far this is held by Common
Sense to be due on account of the relationship alone, or on account of
services rendered during infancy, and how far it is due to cruel or
neglectful parents. Most perhaps would say, here and in other cases,
that mere nearness of blood constituted a certain claim: but they would
find it hard to agree upon its exact force.[195]
But, apart from this, there seems great difference of opinion as to
what is due from children to parents who have performed their duty; as,
for example, how far obedience is due from a child who is no longer in
its parents’ guardianship or dependent on them for support:--whether
(_e.g._) a son or a daughter is bound not to oppose a parent’s wishes
in marrying or choosing a profession. Practically we find that parental
control is greater in the case of persons who can enrich their children
by testament: still we can hardly take this into consideration in
determining the ideal of filial duty: for to this, whatever it may be,
the child is thought to be absolutely bound, and not as a _quidproquo_
in anticipation of future benefits: and many would hold that a parent
had no moral right to disinherit a child, except as a penalty for a
transgression of duty.
And this leads to what we may conveniently examine next, the duty
of parents to children. This too we might partly classify under a
different head, viz. that of duties arising out of special needs: for
no doubt children are naturally objects of compassion, on account
of their helplessness, to others besides their parents. But on the
latter they have a claim of a different kind, springing from the
universally recognised duty of not causing pain or any harm to other
human beings, directly or indirectly, except in the way of deserved
punishment: for the parent, being the cause of the child’s existing in
a helpless condition, would be indirectly the cause of the suffering
and death that would result to it if neglected. Still this does not
seem an adequate explanation of parental duty, as recognised by
Common Sense. For we commonly blame a parent who leaves his children
entirely to the care of others, even if he makes ample provision for
their being nourished and trained up to the time at which they can
support themselves by their own labour. We think that he owes them
affection (as far as this can be said to be a duty) and the tender and
watchful care that naturally springs from affection: and, if he can
afford it, somewhat more than the necessary minimum of food, clothing,
and education. Still it does not seem clear how far beyond this he
is bound to go. It is easy to say broadly that he ought to promote
his children’s happiness by all means in his power: and no doubt it
is natural for a good parent to find his own best happiness in his
children’s, and we are disposed to blame any one who markedly prefers
his own interest to theirs: still it seems unreasonable that he should
purchase a small increase of their happiness by a great sacrifice of
his own: and moreover there are other worthy and noble ends which may
(and do) come into competition with this. To take instances of actual
occurrence: one parent is led to give up some important and valuable
work, which perhaps no one else can or will do, in order to leave his
children a little more wealth: another brings them to the verge of
starvation in order to perfect an invention or prosecute scientific
researches. We seem to condemn either extreme: yet what clear and
accepted principle can be stated for determining the true mean?
Again, as we have seen, some think that a parent has no right to
bequeath his inheritance away from his children, unless they have been
undutiful: and in some states this is even forbidden by law. Others,
however, hold that children as such have no claims to their parents’
wealth: but only if there is a tacit understanding that they will
succeed to it, or, at any rate, if they have been reared in such habits
of life and social relations as will render it difficult and painful
for them to live without inherited wealth.
It would be tedious to go in detail through all the degrees of
consanguinity, as it is clear that our conception of the mutual duties
of kinsmen becomes vaguer as the kinship becomes more remote. Among
children of the same parents, brought up together, affection of more
or less strength grows up so naturally and commonly, that we regard
those who feel no affection for their brothers and sisters with a
certain aversion and moral contempt, as somewhat inhuman: and we think
that in any case the services and kind acts which naturally spring
from affection ought to be rendered to some extent; but the extent
seems quite undefined. And even towards remoter kinsmen we think that
a certain flow of kindly feeling will attend the representation of
consanguinity in men of good dispositions. Some indeed still think that
cousins have a moral right to a man’s inheritance in default of nearer
heirs, and to assistance in any need; but it seems equally common to
hold that they can at most claim to be selected _ceteris paribus_ as
the recipients of bounty, and that an unpromising cousin should not be
preferred to a promising stranger.
§ 5. I have placed Neighbourhood along with Kindred among the relations
out of which a certain claim for mutual services is thought to spring.
However, no one perhaps would say that mere local juxtaposition is in
itself a ground of duties: it seems rather that neighbours naturally
feel more sympathy with one another than with strangers, as the tie of
common humanity is strengthened even by such conjunction and mutual
association as mere neighbourhood (without co-operation or friendship)
may involve, and a man in whom this effect is not produced is thought
more or less inhuman. And so in large towns where this mutual sympathy
does not so naturally grow up (for all the townsmen are in a sense
neighbours, and one cannot easily sympathise with each individual
in a multitude), the tie of neighbourhood is felt to be relaxed, and
neighbour only claims from neighbour, as the nearest man, what one
man may claim from another. For there are some services, slight in
ordinary times but greater in the case of exceptional need, which
any man is thought to have a right to ask from any other: so that a
comparatively trifling circumstance may easily give a special direction
to this general claim, and make it seem reasonable that the service
should be asked from one person rather than another. Thus any degree
of kinship seems to have this effect (since the representation of this
tends to produce a feeling of union and consequent sympathy), and so
even the fact of belonging to the same province, as creating a slight
probability of community of origin; and again similarities of various
kinds, as one sympathises more easily with one’s like, and so persons
naturally seek aid in distress from those of the same age, or sex, or
rank, or profession. The duty of neighbourhood seems therefore only a
particular application of the duty of general benevolence or humanity.
And the claim of fellow-countrymen is of the same kind: that is, if
they are taken as individuals; for one’s relation to one’s country as
a whole is thought to be of a different kind, and to involve much more
stringent obligations.
Still the duties of Patriotism are difficult to formulate. For the
mere obedience to the laws of a country which morality requires from
all its inhabitants seems to come under another head: and aliens are
equally bound to this. And in the case of most social functions which
men undertake, patriotism is at least not a prominent nor indispensable
motive: for they undertake them primarily for the sake of payment; and
having undertaken them, are bound by Justice and Good Faith to perform
them adequately. However, if any of the functions of Government are
unpaid, we consider that men exhibit patriotism in performing them:
for though it is plausible to say that they get their payment in
social distinction, still on reflection this view does not appear to
be quite appropriate; since social distinction is intended to express
feelings of honour and respect, and we cannot properly render these as
part of a bargain, but only as a tribute paid to virtue or excellence
of some kind. But how far any individual is bound to undertake such
functions is not quite clear: and the question seems generally decided
by considerations of expediency,--except in so far as duties of this
kind devolve, legally or constitutionally, upon all the citizens in a
free country, as is ordinarily the case to some extent. Among these the
duty of fighting the national enemies is prominent in many countries:
and even where this function has become a salaried and voluntarily
adopted profession, it is often felt to be in a special sense the
‘service of one’s country,’ and we think it at least desirable and
best that it should be performed with feelings of patriotism: as we
find it somewhat degrading and repulsive that a man should slaughter
his fellow-men for hire. And in great crises of national existence
the affection of Patriotism is naturally intensified: and even in
ordinary times we praise a man who renders services to his country
over and above the common duties of citizenship. But whether a
citizen is at any time morally bound to more than certain legally or
constitutionally determined duties, does not seem to be clear: nor,
again, is there general agreement on the question whether by voluntary
expatriation[196] he can rightfully relieve himself of all moral
obligations to the community in which he was born.
Nor, finally, does there seem to be any _consensus_ as to what each man
owes to his fellow-men, as such. The Utilitarian doctrine, as we have
seen, is that each man ought to consider the happiness of any other
as _theoretically_ of equal importance with his own, and only of less
importance _practically_, in so far as he is better able to realise
the latter. And it seems to me difficult to say decidedly that this
is _not_ the principle of general Benevolence, as recognised by the
common sense of mankind. But it must be admitted that there is also
current a lower and narrower estimate of the services that we are held
to be strictly bound to render to our fellow-men generally. This lower
view seems to recognise (1)--as was before noticed--a negative duty to
abstain from causing pain or harm to any of our fellow-men, except in
the way of deserved punishment; to which we may add, as an immediate
corollary, the duty of making reparation for any harm that we may
have done them:[197] and (2) a positive duty to render, when occasion
offers, such services as require either no sacrifice on our part, or
at least one very much less in importance than the service rendered.
Further, a general obligation of being ‘useful to society’ by some kind
of systematic work is vaguely recognised; rich persons who are manifest
drones incur some degree of censure from the majority of thoughtful
persons. Beyond this somewhat indefinite limit of Duty extends the
Virtue of Benevolence without limit: for excess is not thought to be
possible in doing good to others, nor in the disposition to do it,
unless it leads us to neglect definite duties.
Under the notion of Benevolence as just defined, the minor rules of
Gentleness, Politeness, Courtesy, etc. may be brought, in so far as
they prescribe the expression of general goodwill and abstinence from
anything that may cause pain to others in conversation and social
demeanour. There is, however, an important part of Politeness which
it may be well to notice and discuss separately; the duty, namely, of
showing marks of Reverence to those to whom they are properly due.
Reverence we may define as the feeling which accompanies the
recognition of Superiority or Worth in others. It does not seem to be
necessarily in itself benevolent, though often accompanied by some
degree of love. But its ethical characteristics seem analogous to
those of benevolent affection, in so far as, while it is not a feeling
directly under the control of the will, we yet expect it under certain
circumstances and morally dislike its absence, and perhaps commonly
consider the expression of it to be sometimes a duty, even when the
feeling itself is absent.
Still, as to this latter duty of expressing reverence, there seems to
be great divergence of opinion. For the feeling seems to be naturally
excited by all kinds of superiority,--not merely moral and intellectual
excellences, but also superiorities of rank and position: and indeed
in the common behaviour of men it is to the latter that it is more
regularly and formally rendered. And yet, again, it is commonly said
that Reverence is more properly due to the former, as being more real
and intrinsic superiorities: and many think that to show any reverence
to men of rank and position rather than to others is servile and
degrading: and some even dislike the marks of respect which in most
countries are exacted by official superiors from their subordinates,
saying that obedience legally defined is all that is properly owed in
this relation.
A more serious difficulty of a somewhat similar kind arises when
we consider how far it is a duty to cultivate the affection of
Loyalty: meaning by this term--which is used in various senses--the
affection that is normally felt by a well-disposed servant or official
subordinate towards a good master or official superior. On the one hand
it is widely thought that the duties of obedience which belong to these
relations will be better performed if affection enters into the motive,
no less than the duties of the family relations: but in the former
case it seems to be a tenable view that the habits of orderliness and
good faith--ungrudging obedience to law and ungrudging fulfilment of
contract--will ordinarily suffice, without personal affection; and,
on the other hand, a disposition to obey superiors, beyond the limits
of their legal or contractual rights to issue commands, may easily be
mischievous in its effects, if the superiors are ill-disposed. In the
case of a wise and good superior it is, indeed, clearly advantageous
that inferiors should be disposed to obey beyond these limits; but it
is not therefore clear that this disposition is one which it should
be made a duty to cultivate beyond the degree in which it results
spontaneously from a sense of the superior’s goodness and wisdom. Nor
do I think that any decided enunciation of duty on this point can be
extracted from Common Sense.
§ 6. We have next to consider the duties of Affection that arise out of
relationships voluntarily assumed. Of these the most important is the
Conjugal Relation. And here we may begin by asking whether it be the
duty of human beings generally to enter into this relation. It is no
doubt normal to do so, and most persons are prompted to it by strong
desires: but in so far as it can be said to be prescribed by Common
Sense, it does not seem an independent duty, but derivative from and
subordinate to the general maxims of Prudence and Benevolence.[198] And
in all modern civilised societies, law and custom leave the conjugal
union perfectly optional: but the conditions under which it may be
formed, and to a certain extent the mutual rights and duties arising
out of it, are carefully laid down by law; and it is widely thought
that this department of law more than others ought to be governed
by independent moral principles, and to protect, as it were, by an
outer barrier, the kind of relation which morality prescribes. If
we ask what these principles are, Common Sense--in modern European
communities--seems to answer that the marriage union ought to be (1)
exclusively monogamic, (2) at least designed to be permanent, and (3)
not within certain degrees of consanguinity. I do not, however, think
that any of these propositions can on reflection be maintained to be
self-evident. Even against incest we seem to have rather an intense
sentiment than a clear intuition; and it is generally recognised that
the prohibition of all but monogamic unions can only be rationally
maintained on utilitarian grounds.[199] As regards the permanence
of the marriage-contract all would no doubt agree that fidelity is
admirable in all affections, and especially in so close and intimate
a relation as the conjugal: but we cannot tell _a priori_ how far it
is possible to prevent decay of love in all cases: and it is certainly
not self-evident that the conjugal relation ought to be maintained
when love has ceased; nor that if the parties have separated by mutual
consent they ought to be prohibited from forming fresh unions. In so
far as we are convinced of the rightness of this regulation, it is
always, I think, from a consideration of the generally mischievous
consequences that would ensue if it were relaxed.
Further, in considering the evils on the opposite side we are led
to see that there is no little difference of opinion among moral
persons as to the kind of feeling which is morally indispensable to
this relation. For some would say that marriage without intense and
exclusive affection is degrading even though sanctioned by law: while
others would consider this a mere matter of taste, or at least of
prudence, provided there was no mutual deception: and between these two
views we might insert several different shades of opinion.
Nor, again, is there agreement as to the external duties arising out of
the relationship. For all would lay down conjugal fidelity, and mutual
assistance (according to the customary division of labour between men
and women--unless this should be modified by mutual agreement). But
beyond this we find divergence: for some state that “the marriage
contract binds each party, whenever individual gratification is
concerned, to prefer the happiness of the other party to its own[200]”:
while others would say that this degree of unselfishness is certainly
admirable, but as a mere matter of duty it is enough if each considers
the other’s happiness equally with his (or her) own. And as to the
powers and liberties that ought to be allowed to the wife, and the
obedience due from her to the husband--I need scarcely at the present
time (1874) waste space in proving that there is no _consensus_ of
moral opinion.
§ 7. The conjugal relation is, in its origin, of free choice, but
when it has once been formed, the duties of affection that arise out
of it are commonly thought to be analogous to those arising out of
relations of consanguinity. It therefore holds an intermediate position
between these latter, and ordinary friendships, partnerships, and
associations, which men are equally free to make and to dissolve.
Now most associations that men form are for certain definite ends,
determined by express contract or tacit understanding: accordingly the
duty arising out of them is merely that of fidelity to such contract
or understanding, which will be considered later under the heads of
Justice and Good Faith. But this does not seem to be the case with what
in a strict sense of the term are called Friendships[201]: for although
Friendship frequently arises among persons associated for other ends,
yet the relation is always conceived to have its end in itself, and to
be formed primarily for the development of mutual affection between the
friends, and the pleasure which attends this. Still, it is thought that
when such an affection has once been formed it creates mutual duties
which did not previously exist: we have therefore to inquire how far
this is the case, and on what principles these can be determined.
Now here a new kind of difficulty has to be added to those which we
have already found in attempting to formulate Common Sense. For we
find some who say that, as it is essential to Friendship that the
mutual kindly feeling, and the services springing from it, should be
spontaneous and unforced, neither the one nor the other should be
imposed as a duty; and, in short, that this department of life should
be fenced from the intrusion of moral precepts, and left to the free
play of natural instinct. And this doctrine all would perhaps admit to
a certain extent: as, indeed, we have accepted it with regard to all
the deeper flow and finer expression of feeling even in the domestic
relations: for it seemed pedantic and futile to prescribe rules for
this, or even (though we naturally admire and praise any not ungraceful
exhibition of intense and genuine affection) to delineate an ideal of
excellence for all to aim at. Still, there seemed to be an important
sphere of strict duty--however hard to define--in the relations of
children to parents, etc., and even in the case of friendship it
seems contrary to common sense to recognise no such sphere; as it not
unfrequently occurs to us to judge that one friend has behaved wrongly
to another, and to speak as if there were a clearly cognisable code of
behaviour in such relations.
Perhaps, however, we may say that all clear cases of wrong conduct
towards friends come under the general formula of breach of
understanding. Friends not unfrequently make definite promises of
service, but we need not consider these, as their violation is
prohibited by a different and clearer moral rule. But further, as all
love is understood to include[202] a desire for the happiness of its
object, the profession of friendship seems to bind one to seek this
happiness to an extent proportionate to such profession. Now common
benevolence (cf. _ante_, § 5) prescribes at least that we should render
to other men such services as we can render without any sacrifice,
or with a sacrifice so trifling as to be quite out of proportion to
the service rendered. And since the profession of friendship--though
the term is used to include affections of various degree--must imply
a greater interest in one’s friend’s happiness than in that of men
in general, it must announce a willingness to make more or less
considerable sacrifices for him, if occasion offers. If then we decline
to make such sacrifices, we do wrong by failing to fulfil natural and
legitimate expectations. So far there seems no source of difficulty
except the indefiniteness inevitably arising from the wide range of
meanings covered by the term Friendship. But further questions arise in
consequence of the changes of feeling to which human nature is liable:
first, whether it is our duty to resist such changes as much as we can;
and secondly, whether if this effort fails, and love diminishes or
departs, we ought still to maintain a disposition to render services
corresponding to our past affection. And on these points there does
not seem to be agreement among moral and refined persons. For, on the
one hand, it is natural to us to admire fidelity in friendship and
stability of affections, and we commonly regard these as most important
excellences of character: and so it seems strange if we are not to aim
at these as at all other excellences, as none more naturally stir us to
imitation. And hence many would be prepared to lay down that we ought
not to withdraw affection once given, unless the friend behaves ill:
while some would say that even in this case we ought not to break the
friendship unless the crime is very great. Yet, on the other hand, we
feel that such affection as is produced by deliberate effort of will is
but a poor substitute for that which springs spontaneously, and most
refined persons would reject such a boon: while, again, to conceal the
change of feeling seems insincere and hypocritical.
But as for services, a refined person would not accept such from a
former friend who no longer loves him: unless in extreme need, when
any kind of tie is, as it were, invigorated by the already strong
claim which common humanity gives each man upon all others. Perhaps,
therefore, there cannot be a duty to offer such services in any case,
when the need is not extreme. Though this inference is not quite clear:
for in relations of affection we often praise one party for offering
what we rather blame the other for accepting. But it seems that
delicate questions of this kind are more naturally referred to canons
of good taste and refined feeling than of morality proper: or at least
only included in the scope of morality in so far as we have a general
duty to cultivate good taste and refinement of feeling, like other
excellences.
On the whole, then, we may say that the chief difficulties in
determining the moral obligations of friendship arise (1) from the
indefiniteness of the tacit understanding implied in the relation,
and (2) from the disagreement which we find as to the extent to which
Fidelity is a positive duty. It may be observed that the latter
difficulty is especially prominent in respect of those intimacies
between persons of different sex which precede and prepare the way for
marriage.
§ 8. I pass now to the third head, Gratitude. It has been already
observed that the obligation of children to parents is sometimes based
upon this: and in other affectionate relationships it commonly blends
with and much strengthens the claims that are thought to arise out
of the relations themselves; though none of the duties that we have
discussed seem referable entirely to gratitude. But where gratitude
is due, the obligation is especially clear and simple. Indeed the
duty of requiting benefits seems to be recognised wherever morality
extends; and Intuitionists have justly pointed to this recognition as
an instance of a truly universal intuition. Still, though the general
force of the obligation is not open to doubt (except of the sweeping
and abstract kind with which we have not here to deal), its nature and
extent are by no means equally clear.
In the first place, it may be asked whether we are only bound to repay
services, or whether we owe the special affection called Gratitude;
which seems generally to combine kindly feeling and eagerness to
requite with some sort of emotional recognition of superiority, as the
giver of benefits is in a position of superiority to the receiver. On
the one hand we seem to think that, in so far as any affection can
possibly be a duty, kindly feeling towards benefactors must be such:
and yet to persons of a certain temperament this feeling is often
peculiarly hard to attain, owing to their dislike of the position of
inferiority; and this again we consider a right feeling to a certain
extent, and call it ‘independence’ or ‘proper pride’; but this feeling
and the effusion of gratitude do not easily mix, and the moralist finds
it difficult to recommend a proper combination of the two. Perhaps
it makes a great difference whether the service be lovingly done: as
in this case it seems inhuman that there should be no response of
affection: whereas if the benefit be coldly given, the mere recognition
of the obligation and settled disposition to repay it seem to suffice.
And ‘independence’ alone would prompt a man to repay the benefit in
order to escape from the burden of obligation. But it seems doubtful
whether in any case we are morally satisfied with this as the sole
motive.
It is partly this impatience of obligation which makes a man desirous
of giving as requital more than he has received; for otherwise his
benefactor has still the superiority of having taken the initiative.
But also the worthier motive of affection urges us in the same
direction: and here, as in other affectionate services, we do not
like too exact a measure of duty; a certain excess falling short of
extravagance seems to be what we admire and praise. In so far, however,
as conflict of claims makes it needful to be exact, we think perhaps
that an equal return is what the duty of gratitude requires, or rather
willingness to make such a return, if it be required, and if it is in
our power to make it without neglecting prior claims. For we do not
think it obligatory to requite services in all cases, even if it be
in our power to do so, if the benefactor appear to be sufficiently
supplied with the means of happiness: but if he either demand it or
obviously stand in need of it, we think it ungrateful not to make an
equal return. But when we try to define this notion of ‘equal return,’
obscurity and divergence begin. For (apart from the difficulty of
comparing different kinds of services where we cannot make repayment
in kind) Equality has two distinct meanings, according as we consider
the effort made by the benefactor, or the service rendered to the
benefited. Now perhaps if either of these be great, the gratitude
is naturally strong: for the apprehension of great earnestness in
another to serve us tends to draw from us a proportionate response
of affection: and any great pleasure or relief from pain naturally
produces a corresponding emotion of thankfulness to the man who has
voluntarily caused this, even though his effort may have been slight.
And hence it has been suggested, that in proportioning the dues of
gratitude we ought to take whichever of the two considerations will
give the highest estimate. But this does not seem in accordance with
Common Sense: for the benefit may be altogether unacceptable, and it
is hard to bind us to repay in full every well-meant blundering effort
to serve us; though we feel vaguely that some return should be made
even for this. And though it is more plausible to say that we ought
to requite an accepted service without weighing the amount of our
benefactor’s sacrifice, still when we take extreme cases the rule seems
not to be valid: _e.g._ if a poor man sees a rich one drowning and
pulls him out of the water, we do not think that the latter is bound to
give as a reward what he would have been willing to give for his life.
Still, we should think him niggardly if he only gave his preserver
half-a-crown: which might, however, be profuse repayment for the cost
of the exertion. Something between the two seems to suit our moral
taste: but I find no clear accepted principle upon which the amount can
be decided.
The last claim to be considered is that of Special Need. This has
been substantially stated already, in investigating the obligation of
General Benevolence or Common Humanity. For it was said that we owe to
all men such services as we can render by a sacrifice or effort small
in comparison with the service: and hence, in proportion as the needs
of other men present themselves as urgent, we recognise the duty of
relieving them out of our superfluity. But I have thought it right
to notice the duty separately, because we are commonly prompted to
fulfil it by the specific emotion of Pity or Compassion. Here, again,
there seems a doubt how far it is good to foster and encourage this
emotion--as distinct from the practical habit of rendering prompt aid
and succour in distress, whenever such succour is judged to be right.
On the one hand, the emotional impulse tends to make the action of
relieving need not only easier to the agent, but more graceful and
pleasing: on the other hand, it is generally recognised that mistaken
pity is more likely to lead us astray than--_e.g._--mistaken gratitude:
as it is more liable to interfere dangerously with the infliction of
penalties required for the maintenance of social order, or with the
operation of motives to industry and thrift, necessary for economic
well-being.
And when--to guard against the last-mentioned danger--we try to define
the external duty of relieving want, we find ourselves face to face
with what is no mere problem of the closet, but a serious practical
perplexity to most moral persons at the present day. For many ask
whether it is not our duty to refrain from all superfluous indulgences,
until we have removed the misery and want that exist around us, as far
as they are removable by money. And in answering this question Common
Sense seems to be inevitably led to a consideration of the economic
consequences of attempting--either by taxation and public expenditure,
or by the voluntary gifts of private persons--to provide a sufficient
income for all needy members of the community; and is thus gradually
brought to substitute for the Intuitional method of dealing with
problems of this kind a different procedure, having at least much
affinity with the Utilitarian method.[203]
In conclusion, then, we must admit that while we find a number of
broad and more or less indefinite rules unhesitatingly laid down by
Common Sense in this department of duty, it is difficult or impossible
to extract from them, so far as they are commonly accepted, any clear
and precise principles for determining the extent of the duty in any
case. And yet, as we saw, such particular principles of distribution of
the services to which good-will prompts seem to be required for the
perfection of practice no less than for theoretical completeness; in
so far as the duties which we have been considering are liable to come
into apparent conflict with each other and with other prescriptions of
the moral code.
In reply it may perhaps be contended that if we are seeking exactness
in the determination of duty, we have begun by examining the wrong
notion: that, in short, we ought to have examined Justice rather
than Benevolence. It may be admitted that we cannot find as much
exactness as we sometimes practically need, by merely considering the
common conceptions of the duties to which men are prompted by natural
affections; but it may still be maintained that we shall at any rate
find such exactness adequately provided for under the head of Justice.
This contention I will proceed to examine in the next chapter.
NOTE.--It should be borne in mind throughout the discussion carried
on in this and the next six chapters that what we are primarily
endeavouring to ascertain is not true morality but the morality of
Common Sense: so that if any moral proposition is admitted to be
paradoxical, the admission excludes it,--not as being necessarily
false, but as being not what Common Sense holds.
FOOTNOTES:
[187] The qualifications which this proposition requires have been
already noticed, and will be further illustrated as we proceed.
[188] The phase of this view most current at present would seem to be
Utilitarianism, the principles and method of which will be more fully
discussed hereafter: but in some form or degree it has been held by
many whose affinities are rather with the Intuitional school.
[189] See note at end of chapter.
[190] Cf. Book i. chaps. vii. ix.
[191] A further reason for so doing will appear in the sequel; when
we come to survey the general relation of Virtue to Happiness, as the
result of that detailed examination of the particular virtues which
forms the main subject of the present book. Cf. _post_, chap. xiv. of
this Book.
[192] This reluctance, however, seems largely due to the fact that this
precise measure of duty is most frequently demanded when the issue lies
between Duty and Self-interest.
[193] It must be admitted that the more the benevolent impulse is
combined with the habit of considering the complex consequences of
different courses of action that may be presented as alternatives, and
comparing the amounts of happiness to others respectively resulting
from them, the more good, _ceteris paribus_, is likely to be caused
by it on the whole. And so far as there seems to be a certain natural
incompatibility between this habit of calculation and comparison and
the spontaneous fervour of kindly impulse, Common Sense is somewhat
puzzled which to prefer; and takes refuge in an ideal that transcends
this incompatibility and includes the two.
[194] This question will be further discussed in the concluding chapter
of this Book (chap. xiv.).
[195] It may be said that a child owes gratitude to the authors of its
existence. But life alone, apart from any provision for making life
happy, seems a boon of doubtful value, and one that scarcely excites
gratitude when it was not conferred from any regard for the recipient.
[196] In 1868 it was affirmed, in an Act passed by the Congress of
the United States, that “the right of expatriation is a natural and
inherent right of all people.” I do not know how far this would be
taken to imply that a man has a moral right to leave his country
whenever he finds it convenient--provided no claims except those of
Patriotism retain him there. But if it was intended to imply this, I
think the statement would not be accepted in Europe without important
limitations: though I cannot state any generally accepted principle
from which such limitations could be clearly deduced.
[197] How far we are bound to make reparation when the harm is
involuntary, and such as could not have been prevented by ordinary
care on our part, is not clear: but it will be convenient to defer the
consideration of this till the next chapter (§ 5): as the whole of this
department of duty is more commonly placed under the head of Justice.
[198] I raise this question, because if the rule of ‘living according
to Nature’ were really adopted as a first principle, in any ordinary
meaning of the term ‘nature,’ it would certainly seem to be the duty of
all normal human beings to enter into conjugal relations: but just this
instance seems to show that the principle is not accepted by Common
Sense. See Book i. chap. vi. § 2.
[199] The moral necessity of prohibiting polygamy is sometimes put
forward as an immediate inference from the equality of the numbers of
the two sexes. This argument, however, seems to require the assumption
that all men and women ought to marry: but this scarcely any one will
expressly affirm: and actually considerable numbers remain unmarried,
and there is no reason to believe that in countries where polygamy is
allowed, paucity of supply has ever made it practically difficult for
any man to find a mate.
[200] Cf. Wayland, _Elements of Moral Science_, Book ii. part ii. class
2, § 2.
[201] I use the term here to imply a mutual affection more intense
than the kindly feeling which a moral man desires to find towards
all persons with whom he is brought into continual social relations,
through business or otherwise.
[202] It was before observed that this is only one--and not always the
most prominent--element of the whole emotional state which we call love.
[203] See Book iv. chap. iii. § 3.
CHAPTER V
JUSTICE
§ 1. We have seen that in delineating the outline of duty, as
intuitively recognised, we have to attempt to give to common terms
a definite and precise meaning. This process of definition always
requires some reflection and care, and is sometimes one of considerable
difficulty. But there is no case where the difficulty is greater, or
the result more disputed, than when we try to define Justice.
Before making the attempt, it may be as well to remind the reader what
it is that we have to do. We have not to inquire into the derivation
of the notion of Justice, as we are not now studying the history of
our ethical thought, but its actual condition. Nor can we profess to
furnish a definition which will correspond to every part of the common
usage of the term; for many persons are undoubtedly vague and loose in
their application of current moral notions. But it is an assumption of
the Intuitional method[204] that the term ‘justice’ denotes a quality
which it is ultimately desirable to realise in the conduct and social
relations of men; and that a definition may be given of this which
will be accepted by all competent judges as presenting, in a clear
and explicit form, what they have always meant by the term, though
perhaps implicitly and vaguely. In seeking such a definition we may, so
to speak, clip the ragged edge of common usage, but we must not make
excision of any considerable portion.[205]
Perhaps the first point that strikes us when we reflect upon our
notion of Justice is its connexion with Law. There is no doubt that
just conduct is to a great extent determined by Law, and in certain
applications the two terms seem interchangeable. Thus we speak
indifferently of ‘Law Courts’ and ‘Courts of Justice,’ and when a
private citizen demands Justice, or his just rights, he commonly means
to demand that Law should be carried into effect. Still reflection
shows that we do not mean by Justice merely conformity to Law. For,
first, we do not always call the violators of law unjust, but only of
some Laws: not, for example, duellists or gamblers. And secondly, we
often judge that Law as it exists does not completely realise Justice;
our notion of Justice furnishes a standard with which we compare actual
laws, and pronounce them just or unjust. And, thirdly, there is a part
of just conduct which lies outside the sphere even of Law as it ought
to be; for example, we think that a father may be just or unjust to his
children in matters where the law leaves (and ought to leave) him free.
We must then distinguish Justice from what has been called the virtue
or duty of Order, or Law-observance: and perhaps, if we examine the
points of divergence just mentioned, we shall be led to the true
definition of Justice.
Let us therefore first ask, Of what kind of laws is the observance
generally thought to be a realisation of Justice? In most cases they
might be described as laws which define and secure the interests of
assignable individuals. But this description is not complete, as
Justice is admittedly concerned in the apportionment of adequate
punishment to each offender; though we should not say that a man had
an interest in the adequacy of his punishment. Let us say, then,
that the laws in which Justice is or ought to be realised, are laws
which distribute and allot to individuals either objects of desire,
liberties and privileges, or burdens and restraints, or even pains
as such. These latter, however, are only allotted by law to persons
who have broken other laws. And as all law is enforced by penalties,
we see how the administration of law generally may be viewed as
the administration of Justice, in accordance with this definition:
not because all laws are primarily and in their first intention
distributive, but because the execution of law generally involves
the due allotment of pains and losses and restraints to the persons
who violate it. Or, more precisely, we should say that this legal
distribution _ought_ to realise Justice, for we have seen that it
may fail to do so. We have next to ask, therefore, What conditions
must laws fulfil in order that they may be just in their distributive
effects?
Here, however, it may seem that we are transgressing the limit which
divides Ethics from Politics: for Ethics is primarily concerned with
the rules which ought to govern the private conduct of individuals;
and it is commonly thought that private persons ought to obey even
laws that they regard as unjust, if established by lawful authority.
Still, this is doubted in the case of laws that seem extremely unjust:
as (_e.g._) the Fugitive Slave law in the United States before the
rebellion. At any rate it seems desirable that we should here digress
somewhat into political discussion; partly in order to elucidate
the notion of Justice, which seems to be essentially the same in
both regions, and partly because it is of great practical importance
to individuals, in regulating private conduct beyond the range of
Law-observance, to know whether the laws and established order of the
society in which they live are just or unjust.
Now perhaps the most obvious and commonly recognised characteristic
of just laws is that they are Equal: and in some departments of
legislation, at least, the common notion of Justice seems to be
exhaustively expressed by that of Equality. It is commonly thought,
for example, that a system of taxation would be perfectly just if it
imposed exactly equal burdens upon all:[206] and though this notion
of ‘equal burden’ is itself somewhat difficult to define with the
precision required for practical application, still we may say that
Justice here is thought to resolve itself into a kind of equality.
However, we cannot affirm generally that all laws ought to affect all
persons equally, for this would leave no place for any laws allotting
special privileges and burdens to special classes of the community;
but we do not think all such laws necessarily unjust: _e.g._ we think
it not unjust that only persons appointed in a certain way should
share in legislation, and that men should be forced to fight for their
country but not women. Hence some have said that the only sense in
which justice requires a law to be equal is that its execution must
affect equally all the individuals belonging to any of the classes
specified in the law. And no doubt this rule excludes a very real
kind of injustice: it is of the highest importance that judges and
administrators should never be persuaded by money or otherwise to
show ‘respect of persons.’ So much equality, however, is involved
in the very notion of a law, if it be couched in general terms:
and it is plain that laws may be equally executed and yet unjust:
for example, we should consider a law unjust which compelled only
red-haired men to serve in the army, even though it were applied with
the strictest impartiality to all red-haired men. We must therefore
conclude, that, in laying down the law no less than in carrying it
out, all inequality[207] affecting the interests of individuals which
appears arbitrary, and for which no sufficient reason can be given,
is held to be unjust. But we have still to ask, what kind of reasons
for inequality Justice admits and from what general principle (or
principles) all such reasons are to be deduced?
§ 2. Perhaps we shall find it easier to answer this question, if we
examine the notion of Justice as applied to that part of private
conduct which lies beyond the sphere of law. Here, again, we may
observe that the notion of Justice always involves allotment of
something considered as advantageous or disadvantageous: whether it be
money or other material means of happiness; or praise, or affection,
or other immaterial good, or some merited pain or loss. Hence I should
answer the question raised in the preceding chapter (§ 3), as to
the classification of the duties there discussed under the heads of
Justice and Benevolence respectively, by saying that the fulfilment of
any duty of the affections, considered by itself, does not exemplify
Justice: but that when we come to compare the obligations arising
out of different affectionate relations, and to consider the right
allotment of love and kind services, the notion of Justice becomes
applicable. In order to arrange this allotment properly we have to
inquire what is Just. What then do we mean by a just man in matters
where law-observance does not enter? It is natural to reply that we
mean an impartial man, one who seeks with equal care to satisfy all
claims which he recognises as valid and does not let himself be unduly
influenced by personal preferences. And this seems an adequate account
of the virtue of justice so far as we consider it merely subjectively,
and independently of the intellectual insight required for the
realisation of objective justice in action: if we neglect to give due
consideration to any claim which we regard as reasonable, our action
cannot be just in intention. This definition suffices to exclude wilful
injustice: but it is obvious that it does not give us a sufficient
criterion of just acts, any more than the absence of arbitrary
inequality was found to be a sufficient criterion of just laws.[208] We
want to know what are reasonable claims.
Well, of these the most important--apart from the claims discussed in
the preceding chapter--seems to be that resulting from contract. This
is to a certain extent enforced by law: but it is clear to us that a
just man will keep engagements generally, even when there may be no
legal penalty attached to their violation. The exact definition of this
duty, and its commonly admitted qualifications, will be discussed in
the next chapter: but of its general bindingness Common Sense has no
doubt.
Further, we include under the idea of binding engagements not merely
verbal promises, but also what are called ‘implied contracts’ or
‘tacit understandings.’ But this latter term is a difficult one to
keep precise: and, in fact, is often used to include not only the case
where _A_ has in some way positively implied a pledge to _B_, but also
the case where _B_ has certain expectations of which _A_ is aware.
Here, however, the obligation is not so clear: for it would hardly be
said that a man is bound to dispel all erroneous expectations that he
may know to be formed respecting his conduct, at the risk of being
required to fulfil them. Still, if the expectation was such as most
persons would form under the circumstances, there seems to be some sort
of moral obligation to fulfil it, if it does not conflict with other
duties, though the obligation seems less definite and stringent than
that arising out of contract. Indeed I think we may say that Justice is
generally, though somewhat vaguely, held to prescribe the fulfilment
of all such expectations (of services, etc.) as arise naturally and
normally out of the relations, voluntary or involuntary, in which we
stand towards other human beings. But the discussions in the preceding
chapter have shown the difficulty of defining even those duties of this
kind which, in an indefinite form, seemed certain and indisputable:
while others are only defined by customs which to reflection appear
arbitrary. And though while these customs persist, the expectations
springing from them are in a certain sense natural, so that a just man
seems to be under a kind of obligation to fulfil them, this obligation
cannot be regarded as clear or complete, for two reasons that were
given in the last chapter; first, because customs are continually
varying, and as long as any one is in a state of variation, growing or
decaying, the validity of the customary claim is obviously doubtful;
and secondly, because it does not seem right that an irrational and
inexpedient custom should last for ever, and yet it can only be
abolished by being “more honoured in the breach than in the observance.”
This line of reflection therefore has landed us in a real perplexity
respecting the department of duty which we are at present examining.
Justice is something that we conceive to be intrinsically capable of
perfectly definite determination: a scrupulously just man, we think,
must be very exact and precise in his conduct. But when we consider
that part of Justice which consists in satisfying such natural
and customary claims as arise independently of contract, it seems
impossible to estimate these claims with any exactness. The attempt to
map out the region of Justice reveals to us a sort of margin or dim
borderland, tenanted by expectations which are not quite claims and
with regard to which we do not feel sure whether Justice does or does
not require us to satisfy them. For the ordinary actions of men proceed
on the expectation that the future will resemble the past: hence it
seems natural to expect that any particular man will do as others do
in similar circumstances, and, still more, that he will continue to do
whatever he has hitherto been in the habit of doing; accordingly his
fellow-men are inclined to think themselves wronged by his suddenly
omitting any customary or habitual act, if the omission causes them
loss or inconvenience.[209] On the other hand, if a man has given no
pledge to maintain a custom or habit, it seems hard that he should be
bound by the unwarranted expectations of others. In this perplexity,
common sense often appears to decide differently cases similar in
all respects, except in the quantity of disappointment caused by the
change. For instance, if a poor man were to leave one tradesman and
deal with another because the first had turned Quaker, we should hardly
call it an act of injustice, however unreasonable we might think it:
but if a rich country gentleman were to act similarly towards a poor
neighbour, many persons would say that it was unjust persecution.
The difficulty just pointed out extends equally to the duties of
kindness--even to the specially stringent and sacred duties of the
domestic affections and gratitude--discussed in the previous chapter.
We cannot get any new principle for settling any conflict that may
present itself among such duties, by asking ‘what Justice requires of
us’: the application of the notion of Justice only leads us to view
the problem in a new aspect as a question of the right _distribution_
of kind services--it does not help us to solve it. Had we clear and
precise intuitive principles for determining the claims (_e.g._) of
parents on children, children on parents, benefactors on the recipients
of their benefits, we might say exactly at what point or to what
extent the satisfaction of one of these claims ought in justice to
be postponed to the satisfaction of another, or to any worthy aim of
a different kind: but I know no method of determining a problem of
this kind which is not either implicitly utilitarian, or arbitrarily
dogmatic, and unsupported by Common Sense.
§ 3. If now we turn again to the political question, from which we
diverged, we see that we have obtained from the preceding discussion
one of the criteria of the justice of laws which we were seeking--viz.
that they must avoid running counter to natural and normal
expectations--: but we see at the same time that the criterion cannot
be made definite in its application to private conduct, and it is easy
to show that there is the same indefiniteness and consequent difficulty
in applying it to legislation. For Law itself is a main source of
natural expectations; and, since in ordinary times the alterations in
law are very small in proportion to the amount unaltered, there is
always a natural expectation that the existing laws will be maintained:
and although this is, of course, an indefinite and uncertain
expectation in a society like ours, where laws are continually being
altered by lawful authority, it is sufficient for people in general to
rely upon in arranging their concerns, investing their money, choosing
their place of abode, their trade and profession, etc. Hence when such
expectations are disappointed by a change in the law, the disappointed
persons complain of injustice, and it is to some extent admitted that
justice requires that they should be compensated for the loss thus
incurred. But such expectations are of all degrees of definiteness and
importance, and generally extend more widely as they decrease in value,
like the ripples made by throwing a stone into a pond, so that it is
practically impossible to compensate them all: at the same time, I
know no intuitive principle by which we could separate valid claims
from invalid, and distinguish injustice from simple hardship.[210]
But even if this difficulty were overcome further reflection must, I
think, show that the criterion above given is incomplete or imperfectly
stated: otherwise it would appear that no old law could be unjust,
since laws that have existed for a long time must create corresponding
expectations. But this is contrary to Common Sense: as we are
continually becoming convinced that old laws are unjust (_e.g._ laws
establishing slavery): indeed, this continually recurring conviction
seems to be one of the great sources of change in the laws of a
progressive society.
Perhaps we may say that there are natural expectations which grow up
from other elements of the social order, independent of and so possibly
conflicting with laws: and that we call rules unjust which go counter
to these. Thus _e.g._ primogeniture appears to many unjust, because
all the landowner’s children are brought up in equally luxurious
habits, and share equally the paternal care and expenditure, and so
the inequality of inheritance seems paradoxical and harsh. Still, we
cannot explain every case in this way: for example, the conviction that
slavery is unjust can hardly be traced to anything in the established
order of the slave-holding society, but seems to arise in a different
way.
The truth is, this notion of ‘natural expectations’ is worse than
indefinite: the ambiguity of the term conceals a fundamental conflict
of ideas, which appears more profound and far-reaching in its
consequences the more we examine it. For the word ‘natural,’ as used
in this connexion, covers and conceals the whole chasm between the
actual and the ideal--what is and what ought to be. As we before
noticed,[211] the term seems, as ordinarily used, to contain the
distinct ideas of (1) the common as opposed to the exceptional, and
(2) the original or primitive as contrasted with the result of later
conventions and institutions. But it is also used to signify, in more
or less indefinite combination with one or other of these meanings,
‘what would exist in an ideal state of society.’ And it is easy to
see how these different meanings have been blended and confounded.
For since by ‘Nature’ men have really meant God, or God viewed in a
particular aspect--God, we may say, as known to us in experience--when
they have come to conceive a better state of things than that which
actually exists, they have not only regarded this ideal state as
really exhibiting the Divine purposes more than the actual, and as
being so far more ‘natural’: but they have gone further, and supposed
more or less definitely that this ideal state of things must be what
God originally created, and that the defects recognisable in what
now exists must be due to the deteriorating action of men. But if we
dismiss this latter view, as unsupported by historical evidence, we
recognise more plainly the contrast and conflict between the other two
meanings of ‘natural,’ and the corresponding discrepancy between the
two elements of the common notion of Justice. For, from one point of
view, we are disposed to think that the _customary_ distribution of
rights, goods, and privileges, as well as burdens and pains, is natural
and just, and that this ought to be maintained by law, as it usually
is: while, from another point of view, we seem to recognise an ideal
system of rules of distribution which ought to exist, but perhaps have
never yet existed, and we consider laws to be just in proportion as
they conform to this ideal. It is the reconciliation between these two
views which is the chief problem of political Justice.[212]
On what principles, then, is the ideal to be determined? This is, in
fact, the question which has been chiefly in view from the outset of
the chapter; but we could not satisfactorily discuss it until we had
distinguished the two elements of Justice, as commonly conceived--one
conservative of law and custom, and the other tending to reform them.
It is on this latter that we shall now concentrate our attention.
When, however, we examine this ideal, as it seems to show itself in
the minds of different men in different ages and countries, we observe
various forms of it, which it is important to distinguish.
In the first place, it must be noticed that an ideal constitution
of society may be conceived and sought with many other ends in view
besides the right distribution of good and evil among the individuals
that compose it: as (_e.g._) with a view to conquest and success in
war, or to the development of industry and commerce, or to the highest
possible cultivation of the arts and sciences. But any such political
ideal as this is beyond the range of our present consideration, as it
is not constructed on the basis of our common notion of Justice. Our
present question is, Are there any clear principles from which we may
work out an ideally just distribution of rights and privileges, burdens
and pains, among human beings as such? There is a wide-spread view,
that in order to make society just certain Natural Rights should be
conceded to all members of the community, and that positive law should
at least embody and protect these, whatever other regulations it may
contain: but it is difficult to find in Common Sense any definite
agreement in the enumeration of these Natural Rights, still less any
clear principles from which they can be systematically deduced.
§ 4. There is, however, one mode of systematising these Rights
and bringing them under one principle, which has been maintained
by influential thinkers; and which, though now perhaps somewhat
antiquated, is still sufficiently current to deserve careful
examination. It has been held that Freedom from interference is
really the whole of what human beings, originally and apart from
contracts, can be strictly said to _owe_ to each other: at any rate,
that the protection of this Freedom (including the enforcement of
Free Contract) is the sole proper aim of Law, _i.e._ of those rules
of mutual behaviour which are maintained by penalties inflicted
under the authority of Government. All natural Rights, on this view,
may be summed up in the Right to Freedom; so that the complete and
universal establishment of this Right would be the complete realisation
of Justice,--the Equality at which Justice is thought to aim being
interpreted as Equality of Freedom.
Now when I contemplate this as an abstract formula, though I cannot say
that it is self-evident to me as the true fundamental principle of
Ideal Law, I admit that it commends itself much to my mind; and I might
perhaps persuade myself that it is owing to the defect of my faculty
of moral (or jural) intuition that I fail to see its self-evidence.
But when I endeavour to bring it into closer relation to the actual
circumstances of human society, it soon comes to wear a different
aspect.
In the first place, it seems obviously needful to limit the extent of
its application. For it involves the negative principle that no one
should be coerced for his own good alone; but no one would gravely
argue that this ought to be applied to the case of children, or of
idiots, or insane persons. But if so, can we know _a priori_ that it
ought to be applied to all sane adults? since the above-mentioned
exceptions are commonly justified on the ground that children, etc.,
will manifestly be better off if they are forced to do and abstain
as others think best for them; and it is, at least, not intuitively
certain that the same argument does not apply to the majority of
mankind in the present state of their intellectual progress. Indeed,
it is often conceded by the advocates of this principle that it does
not hold even in respect of adults in a low state of civilisation. But
if so, what criterion can be given for its application, except that it
must be applied wherever human beings are sufficiently intelligent to
provide for themselves better than others would provide for them? and
thus the principle would present itself not as absolute, but merely a
subordinate application of the wider principle of aiming at the general
happiness or well-being of mankind.
But, again, the term Freedom is ambiguous. If we interpret it strictly,
as meaning Freedom of Action alone, the principle seems to allow any
amount of mutual annoyance except constraint. But obviously no one
would be satisfied with such Freedom as this. If, however, we include
in the idea absence of pain and annoyance inflicted by others, it
becomes at once evident that we cannot prohibit all such annoyances
without restraining freedom of action to a degree that would be
intolerable; since there is scarcely any gratification of a man’s
natural impulses which may not cause some annoyance to others. Hence
in distinguishing the mutual annoyances that ought to be allowed from
those that must be prohibited we seem forced to balance the evils of
constraint against pain and loss of a different kind: while if we admit
the Utilitarian criterion so far, it is difficult to maintain that
annoyance to individuals is never to be permitted in order to attain
any positive good result, but only to prevent more serious annoyance.
Thirdly, in order to render a social construction possible on this
basis, we must assume that the right to Freedom includes the right
to limit one’s freedom by contract; and that such contracts, if they
are really voluntary and not obtained by fraud or force, and if they
do not violate the freedom of others, are to be enforced by legal
penalties. But I cannot see that enforcement of Contracts is strictly
included in the notion of realising Freedom; for a man seems to be most
completely free when no one of his volitions is allowed to have any
effect in causing the _external_ coercion of any other. If, again, this
right of limiting Freedom is itself unlimited, a man might thus freely
contract himself out of freedom into slavery, so that the principle
of freedom would turn out suicidal; and yet to deduce from this
principle a limited right of limiting freedom by contract seems clearly
impossible.[213]
But if it be difficult to define freedom as an ideal to be realised
in the merely personal relations of human beings, the difficulty is
increased when we consider the relation of men to the material means of
life and happiness.
For it is commonly thought that the individual’s right to Freedom
includes the right of appropriating material things. But, if Freedom
be understood strictly, I do not see that it implies more than his
right to non-interference while actually using such things as can
only be used by one person at once: the right to prevent others from
using at any future time anything that an individual has once seized
seems an interference with the free action of others beyond what is
needed to secure the freedom, strictly speaking, of the appropriator.
It may perhaps be said that a man, in appropriating a particular
thing, does not interfere with the freedom of others, because the
rest of the world is still open to them. But others may want just
what he has appropriated: and they may not be able to find anything
so good at all, or at least without much labour and search; for many
of the instruments and materials of comfortable living are limited in
quantity. This argument applies especially to property in land: and it
is to be observed that, in this case, there is a further difficulty
in determining how much a man is to be allowed to appropriate by
‘first occupation.’ If it be said that a man is to be understood to
occupy what he is able to use, the answer is obvious that the use of
land by any individual may vary almost indefinitely in extent, while
diminishing proportionally in intensity. For instance, it would surely
be a paradoxical deduction from the principle of Freedom to maintain
that an individual had a right to exclude others from pasturing sheep
on any part of the land over which his hunting expeditions could
extend.[214] But if so can it be clear that a shepherd has such a right
against one who wishes to till the land, or that one who is using the
surface has a right to exclude a would-be miner? I do not see how
the deduction is to be made out. Again, it may be disputed whether
the right of Property, as thus derived, is to include the right of
controlling the disposal of one’s possessions after death. For this
to most persons seems naturally bound up with ownership: yet it is
paradoxical to say that we interfere with a man’s freedom of action by
anything that we may do after his death to what he owned during his
life: and jurists have often treated this right as purely conventional
and not therefore included in ‘natural law.’
Other difficulties might be raised: but we need not pursue them,
for if Freedom be taken simply to mean that one man’s actions are
to be as little as possible restrained by others, it is obviously
more fully realised without appropriation. And if it be said that it
includes, beside this, facility and security in the gratification of
desires, and that it is Freedom in this sense that we think should
be equally distributed, and that this cannot be realised without
appropriation; then it may be replied, that in a society where nearly
all material things are already appropriated, this kind of Freedom
is not and cannot be equally distributed. A man born into such a
society, without inheritance, is not only far less free than those
who possess property, but he is less free than if there had been no
appropriation. It may be said[215] that, having freedom of contract,
he will give his services in exchange for the means of satisfying his
wants; and that this exchange must necessarily give him more than he
could have got if he had been placed in the world by himself; that, in
fact, any human society always renders the part of the earth that it
inhabits more capable of affording gratification of desires to each
and all of its later-born members than it would otherwise be. But
however true this may be as a general rule, it is obviously not so
in all cases: as men are sometimes unable to sell their services at
all, and often can only obtain in exchange for them an insufficient
subsistence. And, even granting it to be true, it does not prove that
society, by appropriation, has not interfered with the natural freedom
of its poorer members: but only that it compensates them for such
interference, and that the compensation is adequate: and it must be
evident that if compensation in the form of material commodities can be
justly given for an encroachment on Freedom, the realisation of Freedom
cannot be the one ultimate end of distributive Justice.
§ 5. It seems, then, that though Freedom is an object of keen and
general desire, and an important source of happiness, both in itself
and indirectly from the satisfaction of natural impulses which it
allows, the attempt to make it the fundamental notion of theoretical
Jurisprudence is attended with insuperable difficulties: and that even
the Natural Rights which it claims to cover cannot be brought under
it except in a very forced and arbitrary manner.[216] But further,
even if this were otherwise, an equal distribution of Freedom does not
seem to exhaust our notion of Justice. Ideal Justice, as we commonly
conceive it, seems to demand that not only Freedom but all other
benefits and burdens should be distributed, if not equally, at any
rate justly,--Justice in distribution being regarded as not identical
with Equality, but merely exclusive of arbitrary inequality.
How, then, shall we find the principle of this highest and most
comprehensive ideal?
We shall be led to it, I think, by referring again to one of the
grounds of obligation to render services, which was noticed in the
last chapter: the claim of Gratitude. It there appeared that we have
not only a natural impulse to requite benefits, but also a conviction
that such requital is a duty, and its omission blameworthy, to some
extent at least; though we find it difficult to define the extent.
Now it seems that when we, so to say, _universalise_ this impulse and
conviction, we get the element in the common view of Justice, which we
are now trying to define. For if we take the proposition ‘that good
done to any individual ought to be requited by him,’ and leave out
the relation to the individual in either term of the proposition, we
seem to have an equally strong conviction of the truth of the more
general statement ‘that good deeds ought to be requited.’[217] And
if we take into consideration all the different kinds and degrees of
services, upon the mutual exchange of which society is based, we get
the proposition ‘that men ought to be rewarded in proportion to their
deserts.’ And this would be commonly held to be the true and simple
principle of distribution in any case where there are no claims arising
from Contract or Custom to modify its operation.
For example, it would be admitted that--if there has been no previous
arrangement--the profits of any work or enterprise should be divided
among those who have contributed to its success in proportion to the
worth of their services. And it may be observed, that some thinkers
maintain the proposition discussed in the previous section--that
Law ought to aim at securing the greatest possible Freedom for each
individual--not as absolute and axiomatic, but as derivative from
the principle that Desert ought to be requited; on the ground that
the best way of providing for the requital of Desert is to leave men
as free as possible to exert themselves for the satisfaction of their
own desires, and so to win each his own requital. And this seems to be
really the principle upon which the Right of Property is rested, when
it is justified by the proposition that ‘every one has an exclusive
right to the produce of his labour.’ For on reflection it is seen that
no labour really ‘produces’ any material thing, but only adds to its
value: and we do not think that a man can acquire a right to a material
thing belonging to another, by spending his labour on it--even if he
does so in the _bona fide_ belief that it is his own property--but
only to adequate _compensation_ for his labour; this, therefore, is
what the proposition just quoted must mean. The principle is, indeed,
sometimes stretched to explain the original right of property in
materials, as being in a sense ‘produced’ (_i.e._ found) by their
first discoverer;[218] but here again, reflection shows that Common
Sense does not grant this (as a _moral_ right) absolutely, but only
in so far as it appears to be not more than adequate compensation for
the discoverer’s trouble. For example, we should not consider that
the first finder of a large uninhabited region had a moral right to
appropriate the whole of it. Hence this justification of the right of
property refers us ultimately to the principle ‘that every man ought to
receive adequate requital for his labour.’ So, again, when we speak of
the world as justly governed by God, we seem to mean that, if we could
know the whole of human existence, we should find that happiness is
distributed among men according to their deserts. And Divine Justice is
thought to be a pattern which Human Justice is to imitate as far as the
conditions of human society allow.
This kind of Justice, as has been said, seems like Gratitude
universalised: and the same principle applied to punishment may
similarly be regarded as Resentment universalised; though the parallel
is incomplete, if we are considering the present state of our moral
conceptions. History shows us a time in which it was thought not only
as natural, but as clearly right and incumbent on a man, to requite
injuries as to repay benefits: but as moral reflection developed in
Europe this notion was repudiated, so that Plato taught that it could
never be right really to harm any one, however he may have harmed us.
And this is the accepted doctrine in Christian societies, as regards
requital by individuals of personal wrongs. But in its universalised
form the old conviction still lingers in the popular view of Criminal
Justice: it seems still to be widely held that Justice requires pain
to be inflicted on a man who has done wrong, even if no benefit result
either to him or to others from the pain. Personally, I am so far from
holding this view that I have an instinctive and strong moral aversion
to it: and I hesitate to attribute it to Common Sense, since I think
that it is gradually passing away from the moral consciousness of
educated persons in the most advanced communities: but I think it is
still perhaps the more ordinary view.
This, then, is one element of what Aristotle calls Corrective Justice,
which is embodied in criminal law. It must not be confounded with
the principle of Reparation, on which legal awards of damages are
based. We have already noticed this as a simple deduction from the
maxim of general Benevolence, which forbids us to do harm to our
fellow-creatures: for if we have harmed them, we can yet approximately
obey the maxim by giving compensation for the harm. Though here the
question arises whether we are bound to make reparation for harm that
has been quite blamelessly caused: and it is not easy to answer it
decisively.[219] On the whole, I think we should condemn a man who
did not offer some reparation for any serious injury caused by him to
another--even if quite involuntarily caused, and without negligence:
but perhaps we regard this rather as a duty of Benevolence--arising
out of the general sympathy that each ought to have for others,
intensified by this special occasion--than as a duty of strict Justice.
If, however, we limit the requirement of Reparation, under the head
of strict Justice, to cases in which the mischief repaired is due to
acts or omissions in some degree culpable, a difficulty arises from
the divergence between the moral view of culpability, and that which
social security requires. Of this I will speak presently.[220] In any
case there is now[221] no danger of confusion or collision between
the principle of Reparative and that of Retributive Justice, as the
one is manifestly concerned with the claims of the injured party, and
the other with the deserts of the wrongdoer: though in the actual
administration of Law the obligation of paying compensation for wrong
may sometimes be treated as a sufficient punishment for the wrongdoer.
When, however, we turn again to the other branch of Retributive
Justice, which is concerned with the reward of services, we
find another notion, which I will call Fitness, often blended
indistinguishably[222] with the notion of Desert, and so needing to be
carefully separated from it; and when the distinction has been made, we
see that the two are liable to come into collision. I do not feel sure
that the principle of ‘distribution according to Fitness’ is found,
strictly speaking, in the analysis of the ordinary notion of Justice:
but it certainly enters into our common conception of the ideal or
perfectly rational order of society, as regards the distribution both
of instruments and functions, and (to some extent at least) of other
sources of happiness. We certainly think it reasonable that instruments
should be given to those who can use them best, and functions allotted
to those who are most competent to perform them: but these may not
be those who have rendered most services in the past. And again, we
think it reasonable that particular material means of enjoyment should
fall to the lot of those who are susceptible of the respective kinds
of pleasure; as no one would think of allotting pictures to a blind
man, or rare wines to one who had no taste: hence we should probably
think it fitting that artists should have larger shares than mechanics
in the social distribution of wealth, though they may be by no means
more deserving. Thus the notions of Desert and Fitness appear at least
occasionally conflicting; but perhaps, as I have suggested, Fitness
should rather be regarded as a utilitarian principle of distribution,
inevitably limiting the realisation of what is abstractly just, than
as a part of the interpretation of Justice proper: and it is with the
latter that we are at present concerned. At any rate it is the Requital
of Desert that constitutes the chief element of Ideal Justice, in so
far as this imports something more than mere Equality and Impartiality.
Let us then examine more closely wherein Desert consists; and we will
begin with Good Desert or Merit, as being of the most fundamental and
permanent importance; for we may hope that crime and its punishment
will decrease and gradually disappear as the world improves, but the
right or best distribution of the means of wellbeing is an object that
we must always be striving to realise.
§ 6. And first, the question which we had to consider in defining
Gratitude again recurs: whether, namely, we are to apportion the
reward to the effort made, or to the results attained. For it may be
said that the actual utility of any service must depend much upon
favourable circumstances and fortunate accidents, not due to any desert
of the agent: or again, may be due to powers and skills which were
connate, or have been developed by favourable conditions of life, or
by good education, and why should we reward him for these? (for the
last-mentioned we ought rather to reward those who have educated
him). And certainly it is only in so far as _moral_ excellences are
exhibited in human achievements that they are commonly thought to be
such as God will reward. But by drawing this line we do not yet get
rid of the difficulty. For it may still be said that good actions are
due entirely, or to a great extent, to good dispositions and habits,
and that these are partly inherited and partly due to the care of
parents and teachers; so that in rewarding these we are rewarding the
results of natural and accidental advantages, and it is unreasonable to
distinguish these from others, such as skill and knowledge, and to say
that it is even ideally just to reward the one and not the other. Shall
we say, then, that the reward should be proportionate to the amount of
voluntary effort for a good end? But Determinists will say that even
this is ultimately the effect of causes extraneous to the man’s self.
On the Determinist view, then, it would seem to be ideally just (if
anything is so) that all men should enjoy equal amounts of happiness:
for there seems to be no justice in making _A_ happier than _B_, merely
because circumstances beyond his own control have first made him
better. But why should we not, instead of ‘all men,’ say ‘all sentient
beings’? for why should men have more happiness than any other animal?
But thus the pursuit of ideal justice seems to conduct us to such a
precipice of paradox that Common Sense is likely to abandon it. At any
rate the ordinary idea of Desert has thus altogether vanished.[223] And
thus we seem to be led to the conclusion which I anticipated in Book i.
chap. v.: that in this one department of our moral consciousness the
idea of Free Will seems involved in a peculiar way in the moral ideas
of Common Sense, since if it is eliminated the important notions of
Desert or Merit and Justice require material modification.[224] At the
same time, the difference between Determinist and Libertarian Justice
can hardly have any practical effect. For in any case it does not seem
possible to separate in practice that part of a man’s achievement which
is due strictly to his free choice from that part which is due to the
original gift of nature and to favouring circumstances:[225] so that
we must necessarily leave to providence the realisation of what we
conceive as the theoretical ideal of Justice, and content ourselves
with trying to reward voluntary actions in proportion to the worth of
the services intentionally rendered by them.
If, then, we take as the principle of ideal justice, so far as this can
be practically aimed at in human society, the requital of voluntary
services in proportion to their worth, it remains to consider on what
principle or principles the comparative worth of different services is
to be rationally estimated. There is no doubt that we commonly assume
such an estimate to be possible; for we continually speak of the ‘fair’
or ‘proper’ price of any kind of services as something generally known,
and condemn the demand for more than this as extortionate. It may be
said that the notion of Fairness or Equity which we ordinarily apply
in such judgments is to be distinguished from that of Justice; Equity
being in fact often contrasted with strict Justice, and conceived as
capable of coming into collision with it. And this is partly true:
but I think the wider and no less usual sense of the term Justice,
in which it includes Equity or Fairness, is the only one that can be
conveniently adopted in an ethical treatise: for in any case where
Equity comes into conflict with strict justice, its dictates are
held to be in a higher sense just, and what ought to be ultimately
carried into effect in the case considered--though not, perhaps, by
the administrators of law. I treat Equity, therefore, as a species of
Justice; though noting that the former term is more ordinarily used
in cases where the definiteness attainable is recognised as somewhat
less than in ordinary cases of rightful claims arising out of law or
contract. On what principle, then, can we determine the “fair” or
“equitable” price of services? When we examine the common judgments
of practical persons in which this judgment occurs, we find, I think,
that the ‘fair’ in such cases is ascertained by a reference to analogy
and custom, and that any service is considered to be ‘fairly worth’
what is usually given for services of the kind. Hence this element
of the notion of Justice may seem, after all, to resolve itself into
that discussed in § 2: and in some states of society it certainly
appears that the payment to be given for services is as completely
fixed by usage as any other customary duty, so that it would be a clear
disappointment of normal expectation to deviate from this usage. But
probably no one in a modern civilised community would maintain in its
full breadth this identification of the Just with the Usual price of
services: and so far as the judgments of practical persons may seem
to imply this, I think it must be admitted that they are superficial
or merely inadvertent, and ignore the established mode of determining
the market prices of commodities by free competition of producers and
traders. For where such competition operates the market value rises
and falls, and is different at different places and times; so that no
properly instructed person can expect any fixity in it, or complain of
injustice merely on account of the variations in it.
Can we then say that ‘market value’ (as determined by free competition)
corresponds to our notion of what is ideally just?
This is a question of much interest, because this is obviously the mode
of determining the remuneration of services that would be universal
in a society constructed on the principle previously discussed, of
securing the greatest possible Freedom to all members of the community.
It should be observed that this, which we may call the Individualistic
Ideal, is the type to which modern civilised communities have, until
lately, been tending to approximate: and it is therefore very important
to know whether it is one which completely satisfies the demands
of morality; and whether Freedom, if not an absolute end or First
Principle of abstract Justice, is still to be sought as the best means
to the realisation of a just social order by the general requital of
Desert.
At first sight it seems plausible to urge that the ‘market value’
represents the estimate set upon anything by mankind generally, and
therefore gives us exactly that ‘common sense’ judgment respecting
value which we are now trying to find. But on examination it seems
likely that the majority of men are not properly qualified to decide on
the value of many important kinds of services, from imperfect knowledge
of their nature and effects; so that, as far as these are concerned,
the true judgment will not be represented in the market-place. Even in
the case of things which a man is generally able to estimate, it may be
manifest in a particular case that he is ignorant of the real utility
of what he exchanges; and in this case the ‘free’ contract hardly
seems to be fair: though if the ignorance was not caused by the other
party to the exchange, Common Sense is hardly prepared to condemn the
latter as unjust for taking advantage of it. For instance, if a man
has discovered by a legitimate use of geological knowledge and skill
that there is probably a valuable mine on land owned by a stranger,
reasonable persons would not blame him for concealing his discovery
until he had bought the mine at its market value: yet it could not
be said that the seller got what it was really worth. In fact Common
Sense is rather perplexed on this point: and the _rationale_ of the
conclusion at which it arrives, must, I conceive, be sought in economic
considerations, which take us quite beyond the analysis of the common
notion of Justice.[226]
Again, there are social services recognised as highly important
which generally speaking have no price in any market, on account of
the indirectness and uncertainty of their practical utility: as,
for instance, scientific discoveries. The extent to which any given
discovery will aid industrial invention is so uncertain, that even if
the secret of it could be conveniently kept, it would not usually be
profitable to buy it.
But even if we confine our attention to products and services generally
marketable, and to bargains thoroughly understood on both sides,
there are still serious difficulties in the way of identifying the
notions of ‘free’ and ‘fair’ exchange. Thus, where an individual, or
combination of individuals, has the monopoly of a certain kind of
services, the market-price of the aggregate of such services can under
certain conditions be increased by diminishing their total amount; but
it would seem absurd to say that the social Desert of those rendering
the services is thereby increased, and a plain man has grave doubts
whether the price thus attained is fair. Still less is it thought fair
to take advantage of the transient monopoly produced by emergency:
thus, if I saw Crœsus drowning and no one near, it would not be held
fair in me to refuse to save him except at the price of half his
wealth. But if so, can it be fair for any class of persons to gain
competitively by the unfavourable economic situation of another class
with which they deal? And if we admit that it would be unfair, where
are we to draw the line? For any increase of the numbers of a class
renders its situation for bargaining less favourable: since the market
price of different services depends partly upon the ease or difficulty
of procuring them--as Political Economists say, ‘on the relation
between the supply of services and the demand for them’--and it does
not seem that any individual’s social Desert can properly be lessened
merely by the increased number or willingness of others rendering the
same services. Nor, indeed, does it seem that it can be decreased by
his own willingness, for it is strange to reward a man less because
he is zealous and eager in the performance of his function; yet in
bargaining the less willing always has the advantage. And, finally, it
hardly appears that the social worth of a man’s service is necessarily
increased by the fact that his service is rendered to those who can pay
lavishly; but his reward is certainly likely to be greater from this
cause.
Such considerations as these have led some political thinkers to hold
that Justice requires a mode of distributing payment for services,
entirely different from that at present effected by free competition:
and that all labourers ought to be paid according to the intrinsic
value of their labour as estimated by enlightened and competent judges.
If the Socialistic Ideal--as we may perhaps call it--could be realised
without counter-balancing evils, it would certainly seem to give a
nearer approximation to what we conceive as Divine Justice than the
present state of society affords. But this supposes that we have found
the rational method of determining value: which, however, is still
to seek. Shall we say that these judges are to take the value of a
service as proportionate to the amount of happiness produced by it? If
so, the calculation is, of course, exposed to all the difficulties of
the hedonistic method discussed in Book ii.: but supposing these can
be overcome, it is still hard to say how we are to compare the value
of different services that must necessarily be combined to produce
happy life. For example, how shall we compare the respective values of
necessaries and luxuries? for we may be more sensible of the enjoyment
derived from the latter, but we could not have this at all without the
former. And, again, when different kinds of labour co-operate in the
same production, how are we to estimate their relative values? for even
if all mere unskilled labour may be brought to a common standard, this
seems almost impossible in the case of different kinds of skill. For
how shall we compare the labour of design with that of achievement?
or the supervision of the whole with the execution of details? or the
labour of actually producing with that of educating producers? or the
service of the _savant_ who discovers a new principle, with that of the
inventor who applies it?
I do not see how these questions, or the difficulties noticed in the
preceding paragraph, can be met by any analysis of our common notion
of Justice. To deal with such points at all satisfactorily we have, I
conceive, to adopt quite a different line of reasoning: we have to ask,
not what services of a certain kind are intrinsically worth, but what
reward can procure them and whether the rest of society gain by the
services more than the equivalent reward. We have, in short, to give up
as impracticable the construction of an ideally just social order,[227]
in which all services are rewarded in exact proportion to their
intrinsic value. And, for similar reasons, we seem forced to conclude,
more generally, that it is impossible to obtain clear premises for
a reasoned method of determining exactly different amounts of Good
Desert. Indeed, perhaps, Common Sense scarcely holds such a method
to be possible: for though it considers Ideal Justice to consist in
rewarding Desert, it regards as Utopian any general attempt to realise
this ideal in the social distribution of the means of happiness. In the
actual state of society it is only within a very limited range that
any endeavour is made to reward Good Desert. Parents attempt this to
some extent in dealing with their children, and the State in rewarding
remarkable public services rendered by statesmen, soldiers, etc.: but
reflection on these cases will show how very rough and imperfect are
the standards used in deciding the amount due. And ordinarily the only
kind of Justice which we try to realise is that which consists in the
fulfilment of contracts and definite expectations; leaving the general
fairness of Distribution by Bargaining to take care of itself.
§ 7. When we pass to consider the case of Criminal Justice, we find,
in the first place, difficulties corresponding to those which we
have already noticed. We find, to begin, a similar implication and
partial confusion of the ideas of Law and Justice. For, as was said,
by ‘bringing a man to Justice’ we commonly mean ‘inflicting legal
punishment’ on him: and we think it right that neither more nor less
than the penalty prescribed by law should be executed, even though
we may regard the legal scale of punishment as unjust. At the same
time, we have no such perplexity in respect of changes in the law as
occurs in the case of Civil Justice; for we do not think that a man can
acquire, by custom, prescriptive rights to over-lenient punishment,
as he is thought to do to an unequal distribution of liberties and
privileges. If now we investigate the ideal of Criminal Justice, as
intuitively determined, we certainly find that in so far as punishment
is not regarded as merely preventive,[228] it is commonly thought that
it ought to be proportioned to the gravity of crime.[229] Still, when
we endeavour to make the method of apportionment perfectly rational and
precise, the difficulties seem at least as great as in the case of Good
Desert. For, first, the assumption of Free Will seems necessarily to
come in here also; since if a man’s bad deeds are entirely caused by
nature and circumstances, it certainly appears, as Robert Owen urged,
that he does not properly deserve to be punished for them; Justice
would rather seem to require us to try to alter the conditions under
which he acts. And we actually do punish deliberate offences more than
impulsive, perhaps as implying a more free choice of evil. Again,
we think that offences committed by persons who have had no moral
training, or a perverted training, are really less criminal; at the
same time it is commonly agreed that men can hardly remit punishment
on this account. Again the gravity--from a moral point of view--of a
crime seems to be at least much reduced, if the motive be laudable,
as when a man kills a villain whose crimes elude legal punishment,
or heads a hopeless rebellion for the good of his country: still it
would be paradoxical to affirm that we ought to reduce punishment
proportionally: Common Sense would hold that--whatever God may do--men
must, generally speaking, inflict severe punishment for any gravely
mischievous act forbidden by law which has been intentionally done,
even though it may have been prompted by a good motive.
But even if we neglect the motive, and take the intention only into
account, it is not easy to state clear principles for determining the
gravity of crimes. For sometimes, as in the case of the patriotic
rebel, the intention of the criminal is to do what is right and good:
and in many cases, though he knows that he is doing wrong, he does
not intend to cause any actual harm to any sentient being; as when
a thief takes what he thinks will not be missed. Again, we do not
commonly think that a crime is rendered less grave by being kept
perfectly secret; and yet a great part of the harm done by a crime is
the ‘secondary evil’ (as Bentham calls it) of the alarm and insecurity
which it causes; and this part is cut off by complete secrecy. It may
be replied that this latter difficulty is not a practical one; because
we are not called upon to punish a crime until it has been discovered,
and then the secondary evil has been caused, and is all the greater
because of the previous secrecy. But it remains true that it was not
designed for discovery; and therefore that this part of the evil caused
by the crime was not intended by the criminal. And if we say that the
heinousness of the crime depends on the loss of happiness that would
generally be caused by such acts if they were allowed to go unpunished,
and that we must suppose the criminal to be aware of this; we seem to
be endeavouring to force a utilitarian theory into an intuitional form
by means of a legal fiction.
We have hitherto spoken of intentional wrong-doing: but positive law
awards punishment also for harm that is due to rashness or negligence;
and the justification of this involves us in further difficulties.
Some jurists seem to regard rashness and negligence as positive states
of mind, in which the agent consciously refuses the attention or
reflection which he knows he ought to give; and no doubt this sort
of wilful recklessness does sometimes occur, and seems as properly
punishable as if the resulting harm had been positively intended. But
the law as actually administered does not require evidence that this
was the agent’s state of mind (which indeed in most cases it would be
impossible to give): but is content with proof that the harm might have
been prevented by such care as an average man would have shown under
the circumstances. And most commonly by ‘carelessness’ we simply mean
a purely negative psychological fact, _i.e._ that the agent did not
perform certain processes of observation or reflection; it is therefore
at the time strictly involuntary, and so scarcely seems to involve
ill-desert. It may be said perhaps that though the present carelessness
is not blameworthy, the past neglect to cultivate habits of care is so.
But in many individual instances we cannot reasonably infer even this
past neglect; and in such cases the utilitarian theory of punishment,
which regards it as a means of preventing similar harmful acts in
the future, seems alone applicable. Similar difficulties arise, as
was before hinted (p. 282), in determining the limits within which
Reparation is due; that is, on the view that it is not incumbent on us
to make compensation for all harm caused by our muscular actions, but
only for harm which--if not intentional--was due to our rashness or
negligence.
The results of this examination of Justice may be summed up as
follows. The prominent element in Justice as ordinarily conceived
is a kind of Equality: that is, Impartiality in the observance or
enforcement of certain general rules allotting good or evil to
individuals. But when we have clearly distinguished this element,
we see that the definition of the virtue required for practical
guidance is left obviously incomplete. Inquiring further for the
right general principles of distribution, we find that our common
notion of Justice includes--besides the principle of Reparation for
injury--two quite distinct and divergent elements. The one, which we
may call Conservative Justice, is realised (1) in the observance of
Law and Contracts and definite understandings, and in the enforcement
of such penalties for the violation of these as have been legally
determined and announced; and (2) in the fulfilment of natural and
normal expectations. This latter obligation, however, is of a somewhat
indefinite kind. But the other element, which we have called Ideal
Justice, is still more difficult to define; for there seem to be
two quite distinct conceptions of it, embodied respectively in what
we have called the Individualistic and the Socialistic Ideals of a
political community. The first of these takes the realisation of
Freedom as the ultimate end and standard of right social relations:
but on examining it closer we find that the notion of Freedom will
not give a practicable basis for social construction without certain
arbitrary[230] definitions and limitations: and even if we admit these,
still a society in which Freedom is realised as far as is feasible does
not completely suit our sense of Justice. _Prima facie_, this is more
satisfied by the Socialistic Ideal of Distribution, founded on the
principle of requiting Desert: but when we try to make this principle
precise, we find ourselves again involved in grave difficulties; and
similar perplexities beset the working out of rules of Criminal Justice
on the same principle.
FOOTNOTES:
[204] How far an independent principle of Justice is required for the
Utilitarian method will be hereafter considered. (Book iv. chap. i.)
[205] Aristotle, in expounding the virtue of Δικαιοσύνη, which
corresponds to our Justice, notices that the word has two meanings; in
the wider of which it includes in a manner all Virtue, or at any rate
the social side or aspect of Virtue generally. The word ‘Justice’ does
not appear to be used in English in this comprehensive manner (except
occasionally in religious writings, from the influence of the Greek
word as used in the New Testament): although the verb “to justify”
seems to have this width of meaning; for when I say that one is
“justified” in doing so and so, I mean no more than that such conduct
is right for him. In the present discussion, at any rate, I have
confined myself to the more precise signification of the term.
[206] I ought to say that, in my view, this only applies to taxes
in the narrower sense in which they are distinguished from payments
for services received by individuals from Government. In the case of
these latter, I conceive that Justice is rather held to lie in duly
proportioning payment to amount of service received. Some persons have
held that all payments made to Government ought to be determined on
this principle: and this view seems to me to be consistent with the
individualistic ideal of political order, which I shall presently
examine: but, as I have elsewhere tried to show (_Princ. of Pol.
Econ._ Book iii. chap. viii.), there is an important department of
Governmental expenditure to which this principle is not applicable.
[207] It may be well to notice a case in which the very equality of
application, which is, as has been said, implied in the mere idea of a
law couched in general terms, is felt to be unjust. This is the case
where the words of a statute, either from being carelessly drawn, or on
account of the inevitable defects of even the most precise terminology,
include (or exclude) persons and circumstances which are clearly not
included in (or excluded from) the real intent and purpose of the law.
In this case a particular decision, strictly in accordance with a law
which generally considered is just, may cause extreme injustice: and so
the difference between actual Law and Justice is sharply brought out.
Still we cannot in this way obtain principles for judging generally of
the justice of laws.
[208] It should be observed that we cannot even say, in treating of
the private conduct of individuals, that _all_ arbitrary inequality
is recognised as unjust: it would not be commonly thought unjust in a
rich bachelor with no near relatives to leave the bulk of his property
in providing pensions exclusively for indigent red-haired men, however
unreasonable and capricious the choice might appear.
[209] It may be observed that sometimes claims generated in this way
have legal validity; as when a right of way is established without
express permission of the landowner, merely by his continued indulgence.
[210] This is the case even, as I say, when laws are altered lawfully:
still more after any exceptional crisis at which there has occurred
a rupture of political order: for then the legal claims arising out
of the new order which is thus rooted in disorder conflict with those
previously established in a manner which admits of no theoretical
solution: it can only be settled by a rough practical compromise. See
next chapter, § 3.
[211] Book i. chap. vi. § 2.
[212] It is characteristic of an unprogressive society that in it these
two points of view are indistinguishable; the Jural Ideal absolutely
coincides with the Customary, and social perfection is imagined to
consist in the perfect observance of a traditional system of rules.
[213] This question, how far the conception of Freedom involves
unlimited right to limit Freedom by free contract, will meet us again
in the next chapter, when we consider the general duty of obedience to
Law.
[214] It has often been urged as a justification for expropriating
savages from the land of new colonies that tribes of hunters have
really no moral right to property in the soil over which they hunt.
[215] This is the argument used by optimistic political economists such
as Bastiat.
[216] The further consideration of Political Freedom, with which
we shall be occupied in the next chapter, will afford additional
illustrations of the difficulties involved in the notion.
[217] If the view given in the text be sound, it illustrates very
strikingly the difference between natural instincts and moral
intuitions. For the impulse to requite a service is, on its emotional
side, quite different from that which prompts us to claim the fruits of
our labour, or “a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.” Still, our
apprehension of the _duty_ of Gratitude seems capable of being subsumed
under the more general intuition ‘that desert ought to be requited.’
[218] It certainly requires a considerable strain to bring the ‘right
of First Discovery’ under the notion of ‘right to the produce of one’s
labour.’ Hence Locke and others have found it necessary to suppose,
as the ultimate justification of the former right, ‘a tacit consent’
of mankind in general that all things previously unappropriated shall
belong to the first appropriator. But this must be admitted to be a
rather desperate device of ethico-political construction: on account
of the fatal facility with which it may be used to justify almost any
arbitrariness in positive law.
[219] The reader will find an interesting illustration of the
perplexity of Common Sense on this point in Mr. O. W. Holmes, Junior’s,
book on _The Common Law_, chap. iii., where the author gives a
penetrating discussion of the struggle, in the development of the
doctrine of torts in English Law, between two opposing views: (1) that
“the risk of a man’s conduct is thrown upon him as the result of some
moral short-coming,” and (2) that “a man acts at his peril always, and
wholly irrespective of the state of his consciousness upon the matter.”
The former is the view that has in the main prevailed in English Law;
and this seems to me certainly in harmony with the Common Sense of
mankind, so far as legal liability is concerned; but I do not think
that the case is equally clear as regards moral obligation.
[220] Cf. _post_, pp. 292-3. It may be added that there is often a
further difficulty in ascertaining the amount of compensation due:
for this frequently involves a comparison of things essentially
disparate, and there are some kinds of harm which it seems impossible
to compensate.
[221] In the earlier stage of moral development, referred to in the
preceding paragraph, retribution inflicted on the wrongdoer was
regarded as the normal mode of reparation to the person injured. But
this view is contrary to the moral Common Sense of Christian Societies.
[222] I think the term “merit” often blends the two notions, as when
we speak of “promotion by merit.” By moralists, however, “merit” is
generally used as exactly equivalent to what I have called “desert.”
[223] The only tenable Determinist interpretation of Desert is, in my
opinion, the Utilitarian: according to which, when a man is said to
deserve reward for any services to society, the meaning is that it is
expedient to reward him, in order that he and others may be induced
to render similar services by the expectation of similar rewards. Cf.
_post_, Book iv. chap. iii. § 4.
[224] Perhaps we may partly attribute to the difficulties above
discussed, that the notion of Desert has sometimes dropped out of the
ideal of Utopian reconstructors of society, and ‘Equality of Happiness’
has seemed to be the only end. Justice, it has been thought, prescribes
simply that each should have an equal share of happiness, as far as
happiness depends on the action of others. But there seems to be much
difficulty in working this out: for (apart from the considerations
of Fitness above mentioned) equal happiness is not to be attained by
equal distribution of objects of desire. For some require more and some
less to be equally happy. Hence, it seems, we must take differences of
_needs_ into consideration. But if merely mental needs are included (as
seems reasonable) we should have to give less to cheerful, contented,
self-sacrificing people than to those who are naturally moody and
_exigeant_, as the former can be made happy with less. And this is too
paradoxical to recommend itself to Common Sense.
[225] No doubt, it would be possible to remove, to some extent, the
inequalities that are attributable to circumstances, by bringing the
best education within the reach of all classes, so that all children
might have an equal opportunity of being selected and trained for
any functions for which they seemed to be fit: and this seems to be
prescribed by ideal justice, in so far as it removes or mitigates
arbitrary inequality. Accordingly in those ideal reconstructions of
society, in which we may expect to find men’s notions of abstract
justice exhibited, such an institution as this has generally found a
place. Still, there will be much natural inequality which we cannot
remove or even estimate.
[226] Cf. _post_, Book iv. chap. iii. § 4.
[227] It is not perhaps necessary that I should here enlarge on the
_practical_ obstacles in the way of any attempt to realise such an
ideal system.
[228] I have already expressed my opinion that this Utilitarian view of
punishment is gradually tending to prevail; but I do not think that it
has yet prevailed.
[229] Of course those who hold that the essence of Justice consists in
securing external Freedom among the members of a community, and that
punishment is only justified as a means to this end, naturally think
that in awarding punishment we ought to consider merely its efficacy as
such means. But this can scarcely be put forward as an interpretation
of the common notion of Just Punishment.
[230] By ‘arbitrary’ I mean such definitions and limitations as destroy
the self-evidence of the principle; and, when closely examined, lead us
to regard it as subordinate.
CHAPTER VI
LAWS AND PROMISES
§ 1. In the discussion of Justice the moral obligations of obedience to
Law and observance of Contract have been included, and have, indeed,
appeared to be the most definite part of the complex system of private
duties commonly included under that term. At the same time, as we have
seen, there are some laws, the violation of which does not interfere
with the rights of others, and therefore has not the characteristics of
an act of Injustice. While again, the duty of Fidelity to promises is
also commonly conceived as independent of any injury that might be done
to the promisee by breaking it: for (_e.g._) men ordinarily judge that
promises to the dead, though they are beyond the reach of injury, ought
to be kept: indeed, some would regard them as even more sacred than
promises made to the living. It seems therefore desirable to examine
the propositions ‘that Law ought to be obeyed’ and ‘that promises ought
to be kept,’ considered as independent principles.
To begin with the former: how are we to ascertain what the Law is
which, as is commonly thought, we are morally bound to obey, as such?
It is plain that we cannot here distinguish Legal from other rules by
considering the sanctions actually attached to them, as we had occasion
to do in a previous chapter.[231] For commands issued by rebels and
usurpers are held to have as such no general bindingness, though they
may be enforced by judicial penalties; it would be generally agreed
that so far as it is our duty to obey such commands this is solely in
order to avoid the greater evils which might result to ourselves and
others from our disobedience; and that the extent of such a duty must
be determined by considerations of expediency. Nor, again, can we say
that all commands even of a legitimate sovereign are to be regarded as
Laws in the sense in which the term must be taken in the proposition
that ‘laws ought to be obeyed’: since we all recognise that a rightful
sovereign may command his subjects to do what is wrong, and that it is
then their duty to disobey him. It seems therefore that for our present
purpose we must define Laws to be Rules of Conduct laid down by a
Rightful Authority, commanding within the limits of its authority.
There are therefore two questions to be settled, if the proposition
that laws ought to be obeyed is to furnish practical guidance: (1) how
we are to distinguish the Rightful Lawmaker--whether individual or
body, and (2) how we are to ascertain the limits of this lawmaker’s
authority. The questions should be distinguished; but, as we shall
see, they can only be partially separated. Beginning with the first
question, we may assume that the authority to make laws resides in
some living man or men. No doubt in some societies, at some stages of
their development, the whole or a part of the code of laws habitually
observed, or at least recognised as binding, has been believed to be
of divine or semi-divine institution; or perhaps from mere antiquity
to possess a sanctity superior to that of any living authority, so as
to be not legitimately alterable. But we hardly find this view in the
Common Sense of civilised Europe, upon which we are now reflecting: at
any rate in our societies there is not thought to be any portion of the
definite prescriptions of positive law which, in virtue of its origin,
is beyond the reach of alteration by any living authority.
Where then is this authority to be found?
In the answers commonly given to this question, the conflict between
the Ideal and the Traditional or Customary, which has perplexed us
in seeking the definition of Justice, meets us again in an even more
complicated form. For not only do some say that obedience is always due
to the traditionally legitimate authority in any country, while others
maintain that an authority constituted in accordance with certain
abstract principles is essentially legitimate, and that a nation has
a right to claim that such an authority shall be established, even at
the risk of civil strife and bloodshed: but often, too, the authority
actually established is not even traditionally legitimate. So that
we have to distinguish _three_ claims to authority, each of which
may come into conflict with either of the other two: (1) that of the
Government held to be ideally or abstractly right, and such as ought to
be established: (2) that of the Government _de jure_, according to the
constitutional traditions in any given country: and (3) that of the _de
facto_ Government.
§ 2. Let us begin by considering the Ideal. Here I do not propose to
consider all views as to the right constitution of supreme authority
which speculative thinkers have put forward; but only such as have
a _prima facie_ claim to express the Common Sense of mankind on the
subject. Of these the most important, and the most widely urged and
admitted, is the principle that the Sovereign in any community can
only be rightly constituted by the Consent of the Subjects. This, as
was noticed in the preceding chapter, is involved in the adoption of
Freedom as the ultimate end of political order: if no one originally
owes anything to another except non-interference, he clearly ought
only to be placed in the relation of Subject to Sovereign by his own
consent. And thus, in order to reconcile the original right of Freedom
with the actual duty of Law-observance, some supposition of a social
compact appears necessary; by means of which Obedience to Law becomes
merely a special application of the duty of keeping compacts.
In what way, then, are the terms of this fundamental compact to be
known? No one now maintains the old view that the transition from the
‘natural’ to the ‘political’ state actually took place by means of
an “original contract,” which conferred indelible legitimacy on some
particular form of social organisation. Shall we say, then, that a man
by remaining a member of a community enters into a ‘tacit undertaking’
to obey the laws and other commands imposed by the authority generally
recognised as lawful in that community? In this way however the Ideal
lapses into the Customary: and the most unlimited despotism, if
established and traditional, might claim to rest on free consent as
well as any other form of government: so that the principle of abstract
Freedom would lead to the justification of the most unqualified
concrete tyranny and servitude; and thus our theory would end by
riveting men’s chains under pretence of exalting their freedom. If
to avoid this result, we suppose that certain ‘Natural Rights’ are
inalienable--or tacitly reserved in the tacit compact--and that laws
are not strictly legitimate which deprive a man of these, we are again
met by the difficulty of deducing these inalienable rights from any
clear and generally accepted principles. For instance, as we have seen,
a widely accepted opinion is that all such rights may be summed up
in the notion of Freedom; but we have also seen that this principle
is ambiguous, and especially that the right of private property as
commonly recognised cannot be clearly deduced from it; and if so it
would certainly be most paradoxical to maintain that no government can
legitimately claim obedience for any commands except such as carry
out the principle of protecting from interference the Freedom of the
individuals governed. It has been thought that we can avoid this
difficulty by constituting the supreme organ of government so that any
law laid down by it will always be a law to which every person called
on to obey it will have consented personally or by his representatives:
and that a government so constituted, in which--to adopt Rousseau’s
phrase--every one “obeys himself alone,” will completely reconcile
freedom and order. But how is this result to be attained? Rousseau held
that it could be attained by pure direct democracy, each individual
subordinating his private will to the “general will” of the sovereign
people of which all are equally members. But this “general will” must
be practically the will of the majority: and it is paradoxical to
affirm that the freedom and natural rights of a dissentient minority
are effectively protected by establishing the condition that the
oppressors must exceed the oppressed in number. Again, if the principle
be absolute it ought to apply to all human beings alike: and if to
avoid this absurdity we exclude children, an arbitrary line has to be
drawn: and the exclusion of women, which even those who regard the
suffrage as a natural right are often disposed to maintain, seems
altogether indefensible. And to suppose--as some have done--that the
ideal of “obeying oneself alone” can be even approximately realised
by Representative Democracy, is even more patently absurd. For a
Representative assembly is normally chosen only by a part of the
nation, and each law is approved only by a part of the assembly: and it
would be ridiculous to say that a man has assented to a law passed by a
mere majority of an assembly against one member of which he has voted.
But, again, to lay down absolutely that the laws of any community ought
to express the will of the majority of its members seems incompatible
with the view so vigorously maintained by Socrates and his most
famous disciples, that laws ought to be made by people who understand
law-making. For though the majority of a representative assembly in a
particular country at a particular time may be more fit to make laws
for their country than any set of experts otherwise selected, it is
certainly not self-evident that this will be universally the case. Yet
surely the Socratic proposition (which is merely a special application
of the principle noticed in the latter part of the preceding chapter,
‘that function should be allotted to the fittest’) has as much claim
to be considered a primary intuition as the one that we have been
discussing. Indeed, the secular controversy between Aristocracy and
Democracy seems ultimately reducible to a conflict between those two
principles: a conflict of which it is impossible to find a solution, so
long as the argument remains in the _a priori_ region.
§ 3. However, to discuss this exhaustively would carry us too far
beyond the range of Ethics proper: but we may perhaps conclude that
it is impossible to elicit from Common Sense any clear and certain
intuitions as to the principles on which an ideal constitution should
be constructed. And there is an equal want of agreement as to the
intrinsic lawfulness of introducing such a constitution in violation
of the traditional and established order in any community. For some
think that a nation has a natural right to a government approximately
conformed to the ideal, and that this right may be maintained by force
in the last resort. Others, however, hold that, though the ideal polity
may rightly be put forward and commended, and every means used to
promote its realisation which the established government in any country
permits,--still, rebellion can never be justifiable for this purpose
alone. While others,--perhaps the majority,--would decide the question
on grounds of expediency, balancing the advantages of improvement
against the evils of disorder.
But further, as we saw, it is not so easy to say what the established
government is. For sometimes an authority declared by law to be
illegitimate issues ordinances and controls the administration of
justice. The question then arises, how far obedience is due to such
an authority. All are agreed that usurpation ought to be resisted;
but as to the right behaviour towards an established government which
has sprung from a successful usurpation, there is a great difference
of opinion. Some think that it should be regarded as legitimate, as
soon as it is firmly established: others that it ought to be obeyed
at once, but under protest, with the purpose of renewing the conflict
on a favourable opportunity: others think that this latter is the
right attitude at first, but that a usurping government, when firmly
established, loses its illegitimacy gradually, and that it becomes,
after a while, as criminal to rebel against it as it was originally to
establish it. And this last seems, on the whole, the view of Common
Sense; but the point at which the metamorphosis is thought to take
place can hardly be determined otherwise than by considerations of
expediency.
But again, it is only in the case of an absolute government, where
customary obedience is unconditionally due to one or more persons,
that the fundamental difficulties of ascertaining the legitimacy of
authority are of the simple kind just discussed. In a constitutionally
governed state numerous other moral disagreements arise. For, in such a
state, while it is of course held that the sovereign is morally bound
to conform to the constitution,[232] it is still disputed whether the
subjects’ obligation to obedience is properly conceived as conditional
upon this conformity: and whether they have the moral right (1) to
refuse obedience to an unconstitutional command; and (2) even to
inflict on the sovereign the penalty of rebellion for violating the
constitution. Again, in determining what the constitutional obligations
really are we find much perplexity and disagreement, not merely as to
the exact ascertainment of the relevant historical facts but as to the
principles on which these facts ought to be treated. For the various
limitations of sovereign authority comprised in the constitution have
often been originally concessions extorted by fear from a sovereign
previously absolute; and it is doubted how far such concessions are
morally binding on the sovereign from whom they were wrested, and
still more how far they are binding on succeeding sovereigns. Or,
_vice versâ_, a people may have allowed liberties once exercised to
fall into disuse; and it is doubted whether it retains the right of
reclaiming them. And, generally, when a constitutional rule has to be
elicited from a comparison of precedents, it is open to dispute whether
a particular act of either party should be regarded as a constitutive
precedent or as an illegitimate encroachment. And hence we find that,
in constitutional countries, men’s view of what their constitution
traditionally is has often been greatly influenced by their view of
what it ideally ought to be: in fact, the two questions have rarely
been kept quite distinct.
§ 4. But even in cases where we can ascertain clearly to what authority
obedience is properly due, further difficulties are liable to arise
when we attempt to define the limits of such obedience. For in modern
society, as we have seen, all admit that any authority ought to be
disobeyed which commands immoral acts; but this is one of those
tautological propositions, so common in popular morality, which convey
no real information; the question is, what acts there are which do
not cease to be immoral when they have been commanded by a rightful
authority. There seems to be no clear principle upon which these
can be determined. It has sometimes been said that the Law cannot
override definite duties; but the obligation of fidelity to contract
is peculiarly definite, and yet we do not consider it right to fulfil
a contract of which a law, passed subsequently to the making of the
contract, has forbidden the execution. And, in fact, we do not find
any practical agreement on this question, among persons who would not
consciously accept the utilitarian method of deciding it by a balance
of conflicting expediences. For some would say that the duties of
the domestic relations must yield to the duty of law-observance, and
that (_e.g._) a son ought not to aid a parent actively or passively
in escaping the punishment of crime: while others would consider this
rule too inhuman to be laid down, and others would draw the line
between assistance and connivance. And similarly, when a rightly
constituted government commands acts unjust and oppressive to others;
Common Sense recoils from saying either that all such commands ought
to be obeyed or that all ought to be disobeyed; but--apart from
utilitarian considerations--I can find no clear accepted principle for
distinguishing those unjust commands of a legitimate government which
ought to be obeyed from those which ought not to be obeyed. Again, some
jurists hold that we are not strictly bound to obey laws, when they
command what is not otherwise a duty, or forbid what is not otherwise
a sin; on the ground that in the case of duties prescribed only by
positive laws, the alternatives of obeying or submitting to the penalty
are morally open to us.[233] Others, however, think this principle too
lax; and certainly if a widespread preference of penalty to obedience
were shown in the case of any particular law, the legislation in
question would be thought to have failed. Nor, on the other hand, does
there seem to be any agreement as to whether one is bound to submit to
unjust penalties.
Since, then, on all these points there is found to be so much
difference of opinion, it seems idle to maintain that there is any
clear and precise axiom or first principle of Order, intuitively seen
to be true by the common reason and conscience of mankind. There is, no
doubt, a vague general habit of obedience to laws as such (even if bad
laws), which may fairly claim the universal _consensus_ of civilised
society: but when we try to state any explicit principle corresponding
to this general habit, the _consensus_ seems to abandon us, and we are
inevitably drawn into controversies which seem to admit of no solution
except that offered by the utilitarian method.[234]
§ 5. We have next to treat of Good Faith, or Fidelity to Promises;
which it is natural to consider in this place, because, as has been
seen, the Duty of Law-observance has by some thinkers been based upon
a prior duty of fulfilling a contract. The Social Contract however, as
above examined, seems at best merely a convenient fiction, a logical
artifice, by which the mutual jural relations of the members of a
civilised community may be neatly expressed: and in stating the ethical
principles of Common Sense, such a fiction would seem to be out of
place. It must, however, be allowed that there has frequently been a
close historical connection between the Duty of Law-observance and
the duty of Good Faith. In the first place, a considerable amount of
Constitutional Law at least, in certain ages and countries, has been
established or confirmed by compacts expressly made between different
sections of the community; who agree that for the future government
shall be carried on according to certain rules. The duty of observing
these rules thus presents itself as a Duty of Fidelity to compact. Yet
more is this the case, when the question is one of imposing not a law,
but a law-giver; whose authority is strengthened by the exaction of
an oath of allegiance from his subjects generally or a representative
portion of them. Still, even in such cases, it can only be by a
palpable fiction that the mass of the citizens can be regarded as bound
by an engagement which only a few of them have actually taken.
We may begin our examination of the duty of Keeping Promises by
noticing that some moralists have classified or even identified it
with Veracity. From one point of view there certainly seems to be an
analogy between the two; as we fulfil the obligations of Veracity and
Good Faith alike by effecting a correspondence between words and
facts--in the one case by making fact correspond with statement, and
in the other by making statement correspond with fact. But the analogy
is obviously superficial and imperfect; for we are not bound to make
our actions correspond with our assertions generally, but only with our
promises. If I merely assert my intention of abstaining from alcohol
for a year, and then after a week take some, I am (at worst) ridiculed
as inconsistent: but if I have pledged myself to abstain, I am blamed
as untrustworthy. Thus the essential element of the Duty of Good Faith
seems to be not conformity to my own statement, but to expectations
that I have intentionally raised in others.
On this view, however, the question arises whether, when a promise
has been understood in a sense not intended by the promiser, he is
bound to satisfy expectations which he did not voluntarily create. It
is, I think, clear to Common Sense that he is so bound in some cases,
if the expectation was natural and such as most men would form under
the circumstances: but this would seem to be one of the more or less
indefinite duties of Justice, and not properly of Good Faith, as there
has not been, strictly speaking, any promise at all. The normal effect
of language is to convey the speaker’s meaning to the person addressed
(here the promiser’s to the promisee), and we always suppose this to
have taken place when we speak of a promise. If through any accident
this normal effect is missed, we may say that there is no promise, or
not a perfect promise.
The moral obligation, then, of a promise is perfectly constituted when
it is understood by both parties in the same sense. And by the term
‘promise’ we include not words only, but all signs and even tacit
understandings not expressly signified in any way, if such clearly form
a part of the engagement. The promiser is bound to perform what both he
and the promisee understood to be undertaken.
§ 6. Is, then, this obligation intuitively seen to be independent and
certain?
It is often said to be so: and perhaps we may say that it seems so to
unreflective common sense. But reflection seems at least to disclose a
considerable number of qualifications of the principle; some clear and
precise, while others are more or less indefinite.
In the first place, thoughtful persons would commonly admit that
the obligation of a promise is relative to the promisee, and may be
annulled by him. And therefore if the promisee be dead, or otherwise
inaccessible and incapable of granting release, there is constituted an
exceptional case, of which the solution presents some difficulty.[235]
Secondly, a promise to do an immoral act is held not to be binding,
because the prior obligation not to do the act is paramount; just
as in law a contract to do what a man is not legally free to do, is
invalid: otherwise one could evade any moral obligation by promising
not to fulfil it, which is clearly absurd.[236] And the same principle
is of course applicable to immoral omissions or forbearances to act:
here however, a certain difficulty arises from the necessity of
distinguishing between different kinds or degrees of obligatoriness
in duties; since it is clear that a promise may sometimes make it
obligatory to abstain from doing what it would otherwise have been a
duty to do. Thus it becomes my duty not to give money to a meritorious
hospital if I have promised all I can spare to an undeserving friend;
though apart from the promise it might have been my duty to prefer the
hospital to the friend. We have, however, already seen the difficulty
of defining the limits of strict duty in many cases: thus (_e.g._)
it might be doubted how far the promise of aid to a friend ought to
override the duty of giving one’s children a good education. The
extent, therefore, to which the obligation of a promise overrides prior
obligations becomes practically somewhat obscure.
§ 7. Further qualifications of the duty of fidelity to promises, the
consideration of which is involved in more difficulty and dispute,
are suggested when we examine more closely the conditions under which
promises are made, and the consequences of executing them. In the first
place, it is much disputed how far promises obtained by ‘fraud or
force’ are binding. As regards fraud, if the promise was understood
to be conditional on the truth of a statement which is found to be
false, it is of course not binding, according to the principle I
originally laid down. But a promise may be made in consequence of such
a fraudulent statement, and yet made quite unconditionally. Even so,
if it were clearly understood that it would not have been made but
for the false statement,[237] probably most persons would regard it
as not binding. But the false statement may be only one consideration
among others, and it may be of any degree of weight; and it seems
doubtful whether we should feel justified in breaking a promise,
because a single fraudulent statement had been a part of the inducement
to make it: still more if there has been no explicit assertion, but
only a suggestion of what is false: or no falsehood at all, stated or
suggested, but only a concealment of material circumstances. We may
observe that certain kinds of concealment are treated as legitimate
by our law: in most contracts of sale, for example, the law adopts
the principle of ‘caveat emptor,’ and does not refuse to enforce the
contract because the seller did not disclose defects in the article
sold, unless by some words or acts he produced the belief that it was
free from such defects. Still, this does not settle the moral question
how far a promise is binding if any material concealment is shown to
have been used to obtain it. We have also to consider the case in which
an erroneous impression has not been wilfully produced, but was either
shared by the promisee or produced in some way unintentionally. Perhaps
in this last case most would say that the bindingness of the promise
is not affected, unless it was expressly conditional. But on all these
points Common Sense seems doubtful: and somewhat similar difficulties
present themselves when we endeavour to define the obligation of
promises partly obtained by some degree of illegal violence and
intimidation.
§ 8. But, secondly, even if a promise has been made quite freely and
fairly, circumstances may alter so much before the time comes to fulfil
it, that the effects of keeping it may be quite other than those which
were foreseen when it was made. In such a case probably all would
agree that the promisee ought to release the promiser. But if he
declines to do this, it seems difficult to decide how far the latter
is bound. Some would say that he is in all cases: while others would
consider that a considerable alteration of circumstances removed the
obligation--perhaps adding that all engagements must be understood to
be taken subject to a general understanding that they are only binding
if material circumstances remain substantially the same. But such a
principle very much impairs the theoretical definiteness of the duty.
This difficulty assumes a new aspect when we consider the case already
noticed, of promises made to those who are now dead or temporarily out
of the reach of communications. For then there is no means of obtaining
release from the promise, while at the same time its performance may be
really opposed to the wishes--or what would have been the wishes--of
both parties. The difficulty is sometimes concealed by saying that
it is our duty to carry out the ‘intention’ of the promise. For as
so used the word Intention is, in common parlance, ambiguous: it
may either mean the signification which the promisee attached to
the terms employed, as distinct from any other signification which
the common usage of words might admit: or it may include ulterior
consequences of the performance of the promise, which he had in view
in exacting it. Now we do not commonly think that the promiser is
concerned with the latter. He certainly has not pledged himself to
aim generally at the end which the promisee has in view, but only so
far as some particular means are concerned: and if he considers these
means not conducive to the end, he is not thereby absolved from his
promise, under ordinary circumstances. But in the case supposed, when
circumstances have materially changed, and the promise does not admit
of revision, probably most persons would say that we ought to take into
consideration the ulterior wishes of the promisee, and carry out what
we sincerely think _would_ have been his intention. But the obligation
thus becomes very vague: since it is difficult to tell from a man’s
wishes under one set of circumstances what he would have desired under
circumstances varying from these in a complex manner: and practically
this view of the obligation of a promise generally leads to great
divergence of opinion. Hence it is not surprising that some hold that
even in such a case the obligation ought to be interpreted strictly:
while others go to the other extreme, and maintain that it ceases
altogether.
But again, it was said that a promise cannot abrogate a prior
obligation; and, as a particular application of this rule, it would be
generally agreed that no promise can make it right to inflict harm on
any one. On further consideration, however, it appears doubtful how
far the persons between whom the promise passed are included in the
scope of this restriction. For, first, it does not seem to be commonly
held that a man is as strictly bound not to injure himself as he is to
avoid harming others; and so it is scarcely thought that a promise is
not binding because it was a foolish one, and will entail an amount of
pain or burden on the promiser out of proportion to the good done to
the promisee. Still, if we take an extreme case, where the sacrifice
is very disproportionate to the gain, many conscientious persons would
think that the promise ought rather to be broken than kept. And,
secondly, a different question arises when we consider the possibility
of injuring the promisee by fulfilling the promise. For when it is said
to be wrong to do harm to any one, we do not commonly mean only what he
thinks harm, but what really is so, though he may think it a benefit;
for it seems clearly a crime for me to give any one what I know to be
poison, even though he may be stubbornly convinced that it is wholesome
food. But now suppose that I have promised _A_ to do something, which,
before I fulfil the promise, I see reason to regard as likely to injure
him. The circumstances may be precisely the same, and only my view of
them have changed. If _A_ takes a different view and calls on me to
fulfil the promise, is it right to obey him? Surely no one would say
this in an extreme case, such as that of the poison. But if the rule
does not hold for an extreme case, where can we draw the line? at what
point ought I to give up my judgment to _A_, unless my own conviction
is weakened? Common Sense seems to give no clear answer.
§ 9. I have laid down that a promise is binding in so far as it
is understood on both sides similarly: and such an understanding
is ordinarily attained with sufficient clearness, as far as the
apprehension of express words or signs is concerned. Still, even here
obscurity and misapprehension sometimes occur; and in the case of
the tacit understandings with which promises are often complicated, a
lack of definite agreement is not improbable. It becomes, therefore,
of practical importance to decide the question previously raised: What
duty rests on the promiser of satisfying expectations which he did not
intend to create? I called this a duty not so much of Good Faith as of
Justice, which prescribes the fulfilment of normal expectations. How
then shall we determine what these are? The method by which we commonly
ascertain them seems to be the following. We form the conception of
an average or normal man, and consider what expectations he would
form under the circumstances, inferring this from the beliefs and
expectations which men generally entertain under similar circumstances.
We refer, therefore, to the customary use of language, and customary
tacit understandings current among persons in the particular relations
in which promiser and promisee stand. Such customary interpretations
and understandings are of course not obligatory upon persons entering
into an engagement: but they constitute a standard which we think
we may presume to be known to all men, and to be accepted by them,
except in so for as it is explicitly rejected. If one of the parties
to an engagement has deviated from this common standard without giving
express notice, we think it right that he should suffer any loss that
may result from the misunderstanding. This criterion then is generally
applicable: but if custom is ambiguous or shifting it cannot be
applied; and then the just claims of the parties become a problem, the
solution of which is very difficult, if not strictly indeterminate.
So far we have supposed that the promiser can choose his own words, and
that if the promisee finds them ambiguous he can get them modified,
or (what comes to the same thing) explained, by the promiser. But we
have now to observe that in the case of promises made to the community,
as a condition of obtaining some office or emolument, a certain
unalterable form of words has to be used if the promise is made at
all. Here the difficulties of moral interpretation are much increased.
It may be said, indeed, that the promise ought to be interpreted in
the sense in which its terms are understood by the community: and, no
doubt, if their usage is quite uniform and unambiguous, this rule of
interpretation is sufficiently obvious and simple. But since words are
often used in different ways by different members of the same society,
and especially with different degrees of strictness and laxity, it
often happens that a promise to the community cannot strictly be said
to be understood in any one sense: the question therefore arises,
whether the promiser is bound to keep it in the sense in which it will
be most commonly interpreted, or whether he may select any of its
possible meanings. And if the formula is one of some antiquity, it is
further questioned, whether it ought to be interpreted in the sense
which its words would now generally bear, or in that which they bore
when it was drawn up; or, if they were then ambiguous, in the sense
which appears to have been attached to them by the government that
imposed the promise. On all these points it is difficult to elicit any
clear view from Common Sense. And the difficulty is increased by the
fact that there are usually strong inducements to make these formal
engagements, which cause even tolerably conscientious persons to
take them in a strained and unnatural sense. When this has been done
continually by many persons, a new general understanding grows up as to
the meaning of the engagements: sometimes they come to be regarded as
‘mere forms,’ or, if they do not reach this point of degradation, they
are at least understood in a sense differing indefinitely from their
original one. The question then arises, how far this process of gradual
illegitimate relaxation or perversion can modify the moral obligation
of the promise for a thoroughly conscientious person. It seems clear
that when the process is complete, we are right in adopting the new
understanding as far as Good Faith is concerned, even if it palpably
conflicts with the natural meaning of language; although it is always
desirable in such cases that the form of the promise should be changed
to correspond with the changed substance. But when, as is ordinarily
the case, the process is incomplete, since a portion of the community
understands the engagement in the original strict sense, the obligation
becomes difficult to determine, and the judgments of conscientious
persons respecting it become divergent and perplexed.
To sum up the results of the discussion: it appears that a clear
_consensus_ can only be claimed for the principle that a promise,
express or tacit, is binding, if a number of conditions are fulfilled:
viz. if the promiser has a clear belief as to the sense in which it was
understood by the promisee, and if the latter is still in a position
to grant release from it, but unwilling to do so, if it was not
obtained by force or fraud, if it does not conflict with definite prior
obligations, if we do not believe that its fulfilment will be harmful
to the promisee, or will inflict a disproportionate sacrifice on the
promiser, and if circumstances have not materially changed since it was
made. If any of these conditions fails, the _consensus_ seems to become
evanescent, and the common moral perceptions of thoughtful persons fall
into obscurity and disagreement.
FOOTNOTES:
[231] Cf. _ante_, Book ii. chap. v. § 2.
[232] It is perhaps hardly necessary that I should here notice the
Hobbist doctrine, revived in a modified form by Austin, that “the
power of the sovereign is incapable of [legal] limitation.” For no
one now maintains pure Hobbism: and Austin is as far as possible from
meaning that there cannot be an express or tacit understanding between
Sovereign and Subjects, the violation of which by the former may make
it morally right for the latter to rebel. In fact, as used by him,
Hobbes’ doctrine reduces itself to the rather unimportant proposition
that a sovereign will not be punished for unconstitutional conduct
through the agency of his own law-courts, so long as he remains
sovereign. I may take this opportunity of observing that Austin’s
definition of Law is manifestly unsuited for our present purpose: since
a law, in his view, is not a command that ought to be obeyed, but a
command for the violation of which we may expect a particular kind of
punishment.
[233] Cf. Blackstone, _Introduction_, § 2. “In relation to those laws
which enjoin only positive duties, and forbid only such things as are
not _mala in se_, but _mala prohibita_ merely, without any intermixture
of moral guilt, annexing a penalty to non-compliance, here I apprehend
conscience is no further concerned, than by directing a submission to
the penalty in case of our breach of those laws ... the alternative is
offered to every man, ‘either abstain from this or submit to such a
penalty.’”
[234] Into the ethical difficulties peculiar to International Law, I
have not thought it worth while to enter.
[235] Vows to God constitute another exception: and it is thought by
many that if these are binding, there must be some way in which God
can be understood to grant release from them. But this it is beyond my
province to discuss.
[236] The case is somewhat different when the act has become immoral
after the promise was made: still, here also, the prior duty of
abstaining from it would be universally held to prevail.
[237] What is here said of a ‘statement’ may be extended to any mode of
producing a false impression.
CHAPTER VII
THE CLASSIFICATION OF DUTIES--VERACITY
§ 1. It may easily seem that when we have discussed Benevolence,
Justice, and the observance of Law and Contract, we have included in
our view the whole sphere of social duty, and that whatever other
maxims we find accepted by Common Sense must be subordinate to the
principles which we have been trying to define.
For whatever we owe definitely to our fellow-men, besides the
observance of special contracts, and of positive laws, seems--at least
by a slight extension of common usage--to be naturally included under
Justice: while the more indefinite obligations which we recognise seem
to correspond to the goodwill which we think ought to exist among all
members of the human family, together with the stronger affections
appropriate to special relations and circumstances. And hence it may
be thought that the best way of treating the subject would have been
to divide Duty generally into Social and Self-regarding, and again to
subdivide the former branch into the heads which I have discussed one
by one; afterwards adding such minor details of duty as have obtained
special names and distinct recognition. And this is perhaps the proper
place to explain why I did not adopt this course. The division of
duties into Social and Self-regarding, though obvious, and acceptable
enough as a rough _prima facie_ classification, does not on closer
examination seem exactly appropriate to the Intuitional Method. For
these titles naturally suggest that the happiness or well-being, of the
agent or of others, is always the end and final determinant of right
action: whereas the Intuitional doctrine is, that at least certain
kinds of conduct are prescribed absolutely, without reference to their
ulterior consequences. And if a more general meaning be given to the
terms, and by Social duties we understand those which consist in the
production of certain effects upon others, while in the Self-regarding
we aim at producing certain effects upon ourselves, the division
is still an unsuitable one. For these consequences are not clearly
recognised in the enunciation of common rules of morality: and in
many cases we produce marked effects both on ourselves and on others,
and it is not easy to say which (in the view of Common Sense) are
most important: and again, this principle of division would sometimes
make it necessary to cut in two the class of duties prescribed under
some common notion; as the same rule may govern both our social and
our solitary conduct. Take, for example, the acts morally prescribed
under the head of Courage. It seems clear that the prominence given to
this Virtue in historic systems of morality has been due to the great
social importance that must always attach to it, so long as communities
of men are continually called upon to fight for their existence and
well-being: but still the quality of bravery is the same essentially,
whether it be exhibited for selfish or social ends.
It is no doubt true that when we examine with a view to definition
the kinds of conduct commended or prescribed in any list of Virtues
commonly recognised, we find, to a great extent, that the maxims we
obtain are clearly not absolute and independent: that the quality
denoted by our term is admittedly only praiseworthy in so far as it
promotes individual or general welfare, and becomes blameworthy--though
remaining in other respects the same--when it operates adversely
to these ends. We have already noticed this result in one or two
instances, and it will be illustrated at length in the following
chapters. But though this is the case to a great extent, it is,
for our present purpose, of special importance to note the--real
or apparent--exceptions to the rule; because they are specially
characteristic of the method that we call Intuitionism.
One of the most important of these exceptions is Veracity: and the
affinity in certain respects of this duty--in spite of fundamental
differences--to the duty of Good Faith or Fidelity to Promises
renders it convenient to examine the two in immediate succession.
Under either head a certain correspondence between words and facts is
prescribed: and hence the questions that arise when we try to make the
maxims precise are somewhat similar in both cases. For example, just
as the duty of Good Faith did not lie in conforming our acts to the
_admissible_ meaning of certain words,[238] but to the meaning which we
knew to be put on them by the promisee; so the duty of Truthspeaking is
not to utter words which _might_, according to common usage, produce
in other minds beliefs corresponding to our own, but words which we
believe will have this effect on the persons whom we address. And this
is usually a very simple matter, as the natural effect of language is
to convey our beliefs to other men, and we commonly know quite well
whether we are doing this or not. A certain difficulty arises, as in
the case of promises, from the use of set forms imposed either by law
or by custom; to which most of the discussion of the similar difficulty
in the preceding chapter applies with obvious modifications. In the
case of formulæ imposed by law--such (_e.g._) as declarations of
religious belief--it is doubtful whether we may understand the terms in
any sense which they commonly bear, or are to take them in the sense
intended by the Legislature that imposed them; and again, a difficulty
is created by the gradual degradation or perversion of their meaning,
which results from the strong inducements offered for their general
acceptance; for thus they are continually strained and stretched until
a new general understanding seems gradually to grow up as to the
meaning of certain phrases; and it is continually disputed whether we
may veraciously use the phrases in this new signification. A similar
process continually alters the meaning of conventional expressions
current in polite society. When a man declares that he ‘has great
pleasure in accepting’ a vexatious invitation, or is ‘the obedient
servant’ of one whom he regards as an inferior, he uses phrases which
were probably once deceptive. If they are so no longer, Common Sense
condemns as over-scrupulous the refusal to use them where it is
customary to do so. But Common Sense seems doubtful and perplexed
where the process of degradation is incomplete, and there are still
persons who may be deceived: as in the use of the reply that one is
‘not at home’ to an inconvenient visitor from the country.
However, apart from the use of conventional phrases, the rule ‘to
speak the truth’ is not generally difficult of application in conduct.
And many moralists have regarded this, from its simplicity and
definiteness, as a quite unexceptionable instance of an ethical axiom.
I think, however, that patient reflection will show that this view is
not really confirmed by the Common Sense of mankind.
§ 2. In the first place, it does not seem clearly agreed whether
Veracity is an absolute and independent duty, or a special application
of some higher principle. We find (_e.g._) that Kant regards it as
a duty owed to oneself to speak the truth, because ‘a lie is an
abandonment or, as it were, annihilation of the dignity of man.’ And
this seems to be the view in which lying is prohibited by the code of
honour, except that it is not thought (by men of honour as such) that
the dignity of man is impaired by _any_ lying: but only that lying for
selfish ends, especially under the influence of fear, is mean and base.
In fact there seems to be circumstances under which the code of honour
prescribes lying. Here, however, it may be said to be plainly divergent
from the morality of Common Sense. Still, the latter does not seem to
decide clearly whether truth-speaking is absolutely a duty, needing
no further justification: or whether it is merely a general right
of each man to have truth spoken to him by his fellows, which right
however may be forfeited or suspended under certain circumstances. Just
as each man is thought to have a natural right to personal security
generally, but not if he is himself attempting to injure others in
life and property: so if we may even kill in defence of ourselves and
others, it seems strange if we may not lie, if lying will defend us
better against a palpable invasion of our rights: and Common Sense does
not seem to prohibit this decisively. And again, just as the orderly
and systematic slaughter which we call war is thought perfectly right
under certain circumstances, though painful and revolting: so in the
word-contests of the law-courts, the lawyer is commonly held to be
justified in untruthfulness within strict rules and limits: for an
advocate is thought to be over-scrupulous who refuses to say what he
knows to be false, if he is instructed to say it.[239] Again, where
deception is designed to benefit the person deceived, Common Sense
seems to concede that it may sometimes be right: for example, most
persons would not hesitate to speak falsely to an invalid, if this
seemed the only way of concealing facts that might produce a dangerous
shock: nor do I perceive that any one shrinks from telling fictions to
children, on matters upon which it is thought well that they should
not know the truth. But if the lawfulness of benevolent deception in
any case be admitted, I do not see how we can decide when and how far
it is admissible, except by considerations of expediency; that is, by
weighing the gain of any particular deception against the imperilment
of mutual confidence involved in all violation of truth.
The much argued question of religious deception (‘pious fraud’)
naturally suggests itself here. It seems clear, however, that Common
Sense now pronounces against the broad rule, that falsehoods may
rightly be told in the interests of religion. But there is a subtler
form in which the same principle is still maintained by moral persons.
It is sometimes said that the most important truths of religion cannot
be conveyed into the minds of ordinary men, except by being enclosed,
as it were, in a shell of fiction; so that by relating such fictions
as if they were facts, we are really performing an act of substantial
veracity.[240] Reflecting upon this argument, we see that it is not
after all so clear wherein Veracity consists. For from the beliefs
immediately communicated by any set of affirmations inferences are
naturally drawn, and we may clearly foresee that they will be drawn.
And though commonly we intend that both the beliefs immediately
communicated and the inferences drawn from them should be true, and
a person who always aims at this is praised as candid and sincere:
still we find relaxation of the rule prescribing this intention claimed
in two different ways by at least respectable sections of opinion.
For first, as was just now observed, it is sometimes held that if
a conclusion is true and important, and cannot be satisfactorily
communicated otherwise, we may lead the mind of the hearer to it
by means of fictitious premises. But the exact reverse of this is
perhaps a commoner view: viz. that it is only an absolute duty to make
our actual affirmations true: for it is said that though the ideal
condition of human converse involves perfect sincerity and candour, and
we ought to rejoice in exhibiting these virtues where we can, still in
our actual world concealment is frequently necessary to the well-being
of society, and may be legitimately effected by any means short of
actual falsehood. Thus it is not uncommonly said that in defence of a
secret we may not indeed _lie_,[241] _i.e._ produce directly beliefs
contrary to fact; but we may “turn a question aside,” _i.e._ produce
indirectly, by natural inference from our answer, a negatively false
belief; or “throw the inquirer on a wrong scent,” _i.e._ produce
similarly a positively false belief. These two methods of concealment
are known respectively as _suppressio veri_ and _suggestio falsi_, and
many think them legitimate under certain circumstances: while others
say that if deception is to be practised at all, it is mere formalism
to object to any one mode of effecting it more than another.
On the whole, then, reflection seems to show that the rule of Veracity,
as commonly accepted, cannot be elevated into a definite moral axiom:
for there is no real agreement as to how far we are bound to impart
true beliefs to others: and while it is contrary to Common Sense
to exact absolute candour under all circumstances, we yet find no
self-evident secondary principle, clearly defining when it is not to be
exacted.
§ 3. There is, however, one method of exhibiting _a priori_ the
absolute duty of Truth, which we must not overlook; as, if it be
valid, it would seem that the exceptions and qualifications above
mentioned have been only admitted by Common Sense from inadvertence and
shallowness of thought.
It is said that if it were once generally understood that lies were
justifiable under certain circumstances, it would immediately become
quite useless to tell the lies, because no one would believe them; and
that the moralist cannot lay down a rule which, if generally accepted,
would be suicidal. To this there seem to be three answers. In the first
place it is not necessarily an evil that men’s confidence in each
other’s assertions should, _under certain peculiar circumstances_,
be impaired or destroyed: it may even be the very result which we
should most desire to produce: _e.g._ it is obviously a most effective
protection for legitimate secrets that it should be universally
understood and expected that those who ask questions which they have
no right to ask will have lies told them: nor, again, should we be
restrained from pronouncing it lawful to meet deceit with deceit,
merely by the fear of impairing the security which rogues now derive
from the veracity of honest men. No doubt the ultimate result of
general unveracity under the circumstances would be a state of things
in which such falsehoods would no longer be told: but unless this
ultimate result is undesirable, the prospect of it does not constitute
a reason why the falsehoods should not be told so long as they are
useful. But, secondly, since the beliefs of men in general are not
formed purely on rational grounds, experience shows that unveracity
may long remain partially effective under circumstances where it is
generally understood to be legitimate. We see this in the case of
the law-courts. For though jurymen are perfectly aware that it is
considered the duty of an advocate to state as plausibly as possible
whatever he has been instructed to say on behalf of any criminal he may
defend, still a skilful pleader may often produce an impression that he
sincerely believes his client to be innocent: and it remains a question
of casuistry how far this kind of hypocrisy is justifiable. But,
finally, it cannot be assumed as certain that it is never right to act
upon a maxim of which the universal application would be an undoubted
evil. This assumption may seem to be involved in what was previously
admitted as an ethical axiom, that what is right for me must be right
for ‘all persons under similar conditions.’[242] But reflection will
show that there is a special case within the range of the axiom in
which its application is necessarily self-limiting, and excludes the
practical universality which the axiom appears to suggest: _i.e._ where
the agent’s conditions include (1) the knowledge that his maxim is not
universally accepted, and (2) a reasoned conviction that his act will
not tend to make it so, to any important extent. For in this case the
axiom will practically only mean that it will be right for all persons
to do as the agent does, if they are sincerely convinced that the act
will not be widely imitated; and this conviction must vanish if it
_is_ widely imitated. It can hardly be said that these conditions are
impossible: and if they are possible, the axiom that we are discussing
can only serve, in its present application, to direct our attention to
an important danger of unveracity, which constitutes a strong--but not
formally conclusive--utilitarian ground for speaking the truth.[243]
NOTE.--Mr. Stephen (_Science of Ethics_, chap. v. § 33) explains the
exceptions to the rule of truth-speaking as follows:--
“The rule, ‘Lie not,’ is the external rule, and corresponds
approximately to the internal rule, ‘Be trustworthy.’ Cases occur
where the rules diverge, and in such cases it is the internal rule
which is morally approved. Truthfulness is the rule because in the
vast majority of cases we trust a man in so far as he speaks the
truth; in the exceptional cases, the mutual confidence would be
violated when the truth, not when the lie, is spoken.”
This explanation seems to me for several reasons inadequate. (1)
If we may sometimes lie to defend the life or secrets of others,
it is paradoxical to say that we may not do so to defend our own;
but a falsehood in self-defence obviously cannot be justified as an
application of the maxim “be trustworthy.” (2) Even when the falsehood
is in legitimate defence of others against attacks, we cannot say
that the speaker manifests “trustworthiness” without qualification;
for the deceived assailant trusts his veracity, otherwise he would
not be deceived: the question therefore is under what circumstances
the confidence of _A_ that I shall speak the truth may legitimately
be disappointed in order not to disappoint the confidence of _B_
that I shall defend his life and honour. This question Mr. Stephen’s
explanation does not in any way aid us to answer.
The general question raised by Mr. Stephen, as to the value of
“internal rules,” expressed in the form “Be this,” in contrast to
external rules, expressed in the form “Do this,” will be dealt with in
a subsequent chapter (xiv. § 1).
FOOTNOTES:
[238] The case where set forms are used being the _exceptio probans
regulam_.
[239] It can hardly be said that the advocate merely _reports_ the
false affirmations of others: since the whole force of his pleading
depends upon his adopting them and working them up into a view of the
case which, for the time at least, he appears to hold.
[240] _E.g._ certain religious persons hold--or held in 1873--that it
is right solemnly to affirm a belief that God created the world in 6
days and rested on the 7th, meaning that 1 : 6 is the divinely ordered
proportion between rest and labour.
[241] Cf. Whewell, _Elements of Morality_, Book ii. chap. xv. § 299.
[242] Cf. chap. i. § 3 of this Book.
[243] See Book iv. chap. v. § 3 for a further discussion of this axiom.
CHAPTER VIII
OTHER SOCIAL DUTIES AND VIRTUES
§ 1. When we proceed to inquire how far the minor social duties
and virtues recognised by Common Sense appear on examination to be
anything more than special applications of the Benevolence--general
or particular--discussed in chap. iv., the department of duty which
most prominently claims our attention, is that which deals with the
existence, and determines the legitimacy, of feelings antithetical to
the benevolent.
For it seems that malevolent affections are as natural to man as
the benevolent: not indeed in the same sense--for man tends to have
normally some kindly feeling for any fellow-man, when there is no
special cause operating to make him love or hate, (though this tendency
is obscured in the lower stages of social development by the habitual
hostility between strange tribes and races); but still such special
causes of malevolent feeling continually occur, and, in the main,
exemplify a psychological law analogous to that by which the growth of
benevolent feelings is explained. For just as we are apt to love those
who are the cause of pleasure to us whether by voluntary benefits or
otherwise: so by strict analogy we naturally dislike those who have
done us harm, either consciously from malevolence or mere selfishness,
or even unconsciously, as when another man is an obstacle to our
attainment of a much-desired end. Thus we naturally feel ill-will to a
rival who deprives us of an object of competition: and so in persons
in whom the desire of superiority is strong, a certain dislike of any
one who is more successful or prosperous than themselves is easily
aroused: and this envy, however repulsive to our moral sense, seems as
natural as any other malevolent emotion. And it is to be observed that
each of the elements into which we can analyse malevolent affection
finds its exact counterpart in the analysis of the benevolent: as the
former includes a dislike of the presence of its object and a desire to
inflict pain on it, and also a capacity of deriving pleasure from the
pain thus inflicted.[244]
If now we ask how far indulgence of malevolent emotions is right and
proper, the answer of Common Sense is not easy to formulate. For some
would say broadly that they ought to be repressed altogether or as
far as possible. And no doubt we blame all envy (though sometimes
to exclude it altogether requires a magnanimity which we praise):
and we regard as virtues or natural excellences the _good-humour_
which prevents one from feeling even pain to a material extent--not
to say resentment--from trifling annoyances inflicted by others,
the _meekness_ which does not resent even graver injuries, the
_mildness_ and _gentleness_ which refrain from retaliating them, and
the _placability_ which accords forgiveness rapidly and easily. We
are even accustomed to praise the _mercy_ which spares even deserved
punishment: because though we never exactly disapprove of the
infliction of deserved punishment, and hold it to be generally a duty
of government--and in certain cases of private persons--to inflict
it, we do not think that this duty admits of no exceptions; we think
that in exceptional cases considerations not strictly relevant to the
question of justice may be properly regarded as reasons for remitting
punishment, and we admire the sympathetic nature that eagerly avails
itself of these legitimate occasions for remission.
On the other hand Common Sense admits instinctive resentment for wrong
to be legitimate and proper: and even a more sustained and deliberate
malevolence is commonly approved as virtuous indignation. The problem,
then, is how to reconcile these diverse approvals. Even as regards
external duty, there is some difficulty; since, though it is clear to
common sense that in a well-ordered society punishment of adults ought
generally to be inflicted by government, and that a private individual
wronged ought not to “take the law into his own hands,”--still there
are in all societies injuries to individuals which the law does not
punish at all or not adequately, and for which effective requital is
often possible without transgressing the limits of legality; and there
seems to be no clear agreement as to the right manner of dealing with
these. For the Christian code is widely thought to prescribe a complete
and absolute forgiveness of such offences, and many Christians have
endeavoured to carry out this rule by dismissing the offences as far
as possible from their minds, or at least allowing the memory of them
to have no effect on their outward conduct. Few, however, would deny
that, so far as a wrong done to me gives ground for expecting future
mischief from the offender to myself or to others, I am bound as a
rational being to take due precautions against this future mischief;
and probably most would admit that such precautions for the future, in
the case we are considering, may include the infliction of punishment
for the past, where impunity would give a dangerous temptation to a
repetition of the unpunished offence. If we ask, therefore, how far
forgiveness is practically possible, the answer seems admittedly to
depend on two considerations: (1) how far the punishment to which
resentment prompts is really required in the interests of society,
and (2) how far, if so, it will be adequately inflicted if the person
wronged refrains from inflicting it. But, obviously, so far as we allow
the question to be settled by these considerations we are introducing a
method difficult to distinguish from the Utilitarian.
And we seem led to a similar result in discussing the legitimacy
of malevolent feeling. Here again we find much disagreement among
thoughtful persons: for many would say that though the emotion of
anger is legitimate, it ought to be directed always against wrong
acts as such, and not against the agent: for even where the anger may
legitimately prompt us to punish him, it ought never to overcome our
kindly feeling towards him. And certainly if this state of mind is
possible, it seems the simplest reconciliation of the general maxim of
Benevolence with the admitted duty of inflicting punishment. On the
other hand, it is urged, with some reason, that to retain a genuine
kindly feeling towards a man, while we are gratifying a strong impulse
of aversion to his acts by inflicting pain on him, requires a subtle
complexity of emotion too far out of the reach of ordinary men to be
prescribed as a duty: and that we must allow as right and proper a
temporary suspension of benevolence towards wrong-doers until they have
been punished. Some, again, make a distinction between Instinctive
and Deliberate Resentment: saying that the former is legitimate in
so far as it is required for the self-defence of individuals and the
repression of mutual violence, but that deliberate resentment is not
similarly needed, for if we act deliberately we can act from a better
motive. Others, however, think that a deliberate and sustained desire
to punish wrong-doers is required in the interests of society, since
the mere desire to realise Justice will not practically be strong
enough to repress offences: and that it is as serious a mistake to
attempt to substitute the desire of Justice for natural resentment as
it would be to substitute prudence for natural appetite in eating and
drinking, or mere dutifulness for filial affection.[245]
Again, a distinction may be taken between the impulse to inflict pain
and the desire of the antipathetic pleasure which the agent will reap
from this infliction; so that, while we approve the former under
certain circumstances, we may still regard the latter as altogether
inadmissible. It would seem, however, that a man under the influence
of a strong passion of resentment can hardly exclude from his mind
altogether an anticipation of the pleasure that he will feel when the
passion is gratified; and if so, he can hardly exclude altogether the
desire of this gratification. If, therefore, it is important for the
well-being of society that men should derive hearty satisfaction from
the punishment of a nefarious criminal, it is perhaps going too far
to prohibit absolutely the desire of this satisfaction; though we may
say that a man ought not to cherish this desire, and gloat over the
anticipated pleasure.
On the whole we may perhaps sum up by saying that a superficial view
of the matter naturally leads us to condemn sweepingly all malevolent
feelings and the acts to which they prompt, as contrary to the general
duty of benevolence: but that the common sense of reflective persons
recognises the necessity of relaxing this rule in the interests of
society: only it is not clear as to the limits or principles of this
relaxation, though inclined to let it be determined by considerations
of expediency.
§ 2. The remaining virtues that are clearly and exclusively social,
will be easily seen to have no independent maxims; the conduct in which
they are respectively realised being merely the fulfilment, under
special conditions, of the rules already discussed. We need not, then,
enter upon an exhaustive examination of these minor virtues--for it
is not our object to frame a complete glossary of ethical terms--:
but for illustration’s sake it may be well to discuss one or two of
them; and I will select for examination Liberality with its cognate
notions, partly on account of the prominence that it has had in the
earlier ages of thought, and partly because of a certain complexity
in the feelings with which it is usually regarded. Considered as a
Virtue, Liberality seems to be merely Benevolence, as exhibited in
the particular service of giving money, beyond the limits of strict
duty as commonly recognised:--for in so far as it can be called a duty
to be liberal, it is because in the performance of the more or less
indefinite duties enumerated in chap. iv. we do not like exactness to
be sought; a certain excess is needful if the duty is to be well done.
And perhaps in the case of the poor this graceful excess is excluded by
prudence: for though a poor man might make a great sacrifice in a small
gift we should call this generous but scarcely liberal; Liberality
appears to require an external abundance in the gift even more than a
self-sacrificing disposition. It seems therefore to be possible only to
the rich: and, as I have hinted, in the admiration commonly accorded to
it there seems to be mingled an element rather æsthetic than moral. For
we are all apt to admire power, and we recognise the latent power of
wealth gracefully exhibited in a certain degree of careless profusion
when the object is to give happiness to others. Indeed the vulgar
admire the same carelessness as manifested even in selfish luxury.
The sphere of Liberality, then, lies generally in the fulfilment
of the indefinite duties of Benevolence. But there is a certain
borderground between Justice and Benevolence where it is especially
shown; namely, in the full satisfaction of all customary expectations,
even when indefinite and uncertain; as (_e.g._) in the remuneration
of services, in so far as this is governed by custom; and even
where it is left entirely to free contract, and therefore naturally
determined by haggling and bargaining (as market value generally), it
is characteristic of a liberal man to avoid this haggling and to give
somewhat higher remuneration than the other party might be induced
to take, and similarly to take for his own services a somewhat lower
payment than he might persuade the other to give. And again, since laws
and promises and especially tacit understandings are sometimes doubtful
and ambiguous, a liberal man will in such cases unhesitatingly adopt
the interpretation which is least in his own favour, and pay the most
that he can by any fairminded person be thought to owe, and exact the
least that reasonably can be thought to be due to himself: that is, if
the margin be, relatively to his resources, not considerable.[246] And
of a man who does the opposite of all this we predicate Meanness; this
being the vice antithetical to Liberality. Here again there seems no
place for this particular vice if the amount at stake be considerable;
for then we think it not mean to exact one’s own rights to the full,
and worse than mean to refuse another what he ought to have; in fact
in such cases we think that any indefiniteness as to rights should
be practically removed by the decision of a judge or arbitrator. The
vice of meanness then is, we may say, bounded on the side of vice by
injustice: the mean man is blamed not for violation of Justice, but,
because he chooses a trifling gain to himself rather than the avoidance
of disappointment to others. And here, again, it should be observed,
an element not strictly moral is included in the common disapprobation
of meanness. For, as we have seen, a certain carelessness of money
is admired as a sign of power and superiority: and the opposite habit
is a symbol of inferiority. The mean man then is apt to be despised
as having the bad taste to show this symbol needlessly, preferring a
little gain to the respect of his fellow-men.
Meanness, however, has a wider sphere than Liberality, and refers not
merely to the taking or refusing of money, but to taking advantages
generally: in this wider sense the opposite virtue is Generosity.
In so far as the sphere of Generosity coincides with that of
Liberality, the former seems partly to transcend the latter, partly to
refer more to feelings than to outward acts, and to imply a completer
triumph of unselfish over selfish impulses. In the wider sense it
is strikingly exhibited in conflict and competition of all kinds.
Here it is sometimes called Chivalry. Reflection shows us that the
essence of this beautiful virtue is the realisation of Benevolence
under circumstances which make it peculiarly difficult and therefore
peculiarly admirable. For Generosity or Chivalry towards adversaries
or competitors seems to consist in showing as much kindness and regard
for their well-being as is compatible with the ends and conditions of
conflict: one prominent form of this being the endeavour to realise
ideal justice in these conditions, not merely by observing all the
rules and tacit understandings under which the conflict is conducted,
but by resigning even accidental advantages. Such resignation, however,
is not considered a strict duty: nor is there any agreement as to how
far it is right and virtuous; for what some would praise and approve,
others would regard as quixotic and extravagant.
To sum up, we may say that the terms Liberality and Generosity, so far
as they are strictly ethical, denote the virtue of Benevolence (perhaps
including Justice to some extent) as exhibited in special ways and
under special conditions. And the examination of the other minor social
virtues would evidently lead to similar general results: though it
might not always be easy to agree on their definitions.
FOOTNOTES:
[244] It is to be observed that men derive pleasure from the pains
and losses of others, in various ways, without the specific emotion
which I distinguish as malevolent affection: either (1) from the sense
of power exercised--which explains much of the wanton cruelty of
schoolboys, despots, etc.--or (2) from a sense of their own superiority
or security in contrast with the failures and struggles of others,
or (3) even merely from the excitement sympathetically caused by the
manifestation or representation of any strong feeling in others; a real
tragedy is interesting in the same way as a fictitious one. But these
facts, though psychologically interesting, present no important ethical
problems; since no one doubts that pain ought not to be inflicted from
such motives as these.
[245] Butler (Sermon VIII., _Upon Resentment_) recognises that
deliberate resentment “has in fact a good influence upon the affairs of
the world”; though “it were much to be wished that men would act from a
better principle.”
[246] If the amount at stake is such as to constitute a real sacrifice,
the conduct seems to be more than liberal, and (unless blamed as
extravagant) is rather praised as generous or highminded.
CHAPTER IX
SELF-REGARDING VIRTUES
§ 1. I conceive that according to the morality of Common Sense, an
ultimate harmony between (1) Self-interest and (2) Virtue is assumed
or postulated; so that the performance of duty and cultivation of
Virtue generally may be regarded as a “duty to self,” as being always
conducive to the agent’s true interest and well-being. But further,
Common Sense (in modern Europe) recognises a strict duty of preserving
one’s own life, even when the prospect life offers is one in which
pain preponderates over pleasure; it is, indeed, held to be right and
praiseworthy to encounter certain death in the performance of strict
duty, or for the preservation of the life of another, or for any very
important gain to society; but not merely in order to avoid pain to
the agent. At the same time, within the limits fixed by this and other
duties, Common Sense considers, I think,[247] that it is a duty to
seek our own happiness, except in so far as we can promote the welfare
of others by sacrificing it. This “due concern about our own interest
or happiness” may be called the Duty of Prudence. It should, however,
be observed that--since it is less evident that men do not adequately
desire their own greatest good, than that their efforts are not
sufficiently well directed to its attainment--in conceiving Prudence as
a Virtue or Excellence, attention is often fixed almost exclusively on
its intellectual side. Thus regarded, Prudence may be said to be merely
Wisdom made more definite by the acceptance of Self-interest as its
sole ultimate end: the habit of calculating carefully the best means
to the attainment of our own interest, and resisting all irrational
impulses which may tend to perturb our calculations or prevent us from
acting on them.
§ 2. There are, however, current notions of particular virtues, which
might be called Self-regarding; but yet with respect to which it is
not quite clear whether they are merely particular applications of
Prudence, or whether they have independent maxims. Of these Temperance,
one of the four cardinal virtues anciently recognised, seems the most
prominent. In its ordinary use, Temperance is the habit of controlling
the principal appetites (or desires which have an immediate corporeal
cause). The habit of moderating and controlling our desires generally
is recognised by Common Sense as useful and desirable, but with less
distinctness and emphasis.
All are agreed that our appetites need control: but in order to
establish a maxim of Temperance, we have to determine within what
limits, on what principle, and to what end they ought to be controlled.
Now in the case of the appetites for food, drink, sleep, stimulants,
etc., no one doubts that bodily health and vigour is the end naturally
subserved by their gratification, and that the latter ought to be
checked whenever it tends to defeat this end (including in the notion
of health the most perfect condition of the mental faculties, so far
as this appears to depend upon the general state of the body). And,
further, the indulgence of a bodily appetite is manifestly imprudent,
if it involves the loss of any greater gratification of whatever kind:
and otherwise wrong if it interferes with the performance of duties;
though it is perhaps doubtful how far this latter indulgence would
commonly be condemned as ‘intemperance.’
Some, however, deduce from the obvious truth, that the maintenance
of bodily health is the chief natural end of the appetites, a more
rigid rule of restraint, and one that goes beyond prudence. They say
that this end ought to fix not only the negative but the positive
limit of indulgence; that the pleasure derived from the gratification
of appetite should never be sought _per se_ (even when it does not
impair health, or interfere with duty, or with a greater pleasure of a
different kind); but only in so far as such gratification is positively
conducive to health. When we consider to what a marked divergence from
the usual habits of the moral rich this principle would lead, we might
be disposed to say that it is clearly at variance with Common Sense:
but it often meets with verbal assent.
There is, again, a third and intermediate view which accepts the
principle that the gratification of appetite is not to be sought for
its own sake, but admits other ends as legitimate besides the mere
maintenance of health and strength:--_e.g._ “cheerfulness, and the
cultivation of the social affections.”[248] Some such principle seems
to be more or less consciously held by many persons: hence we find that
solitary indulgence in the pleasures of the table is very frequently
regarded with something like moral aversion: and that the banquets
which are given and enjoyed by moral persons, are vaguely supposed to
have for their end not the common indulgence of sensual appetites, but
the promotion of conviviality and conversational entertainment. For
it is generally believed that the enjoyment in common of a luxurious
meal develops social emotions, and also stimulates the faculties of
wit and humour and lively colloquy in general; and feasts which are
obviously not contrived with a view to such convivial and colloquial
gratifications seem to be condemned by refined persons. Still it would
be going too far to state, as a maxim supported by Common Sense in
respect of sensual pleasures generally, that they are never to be
sought except they positively promote those of a higher kind.
§ 3. In the last section we have spoken chiefly of the appetites for
food and drink. It is, however, in the case of the appetite of sex
that the regulation morally prescribed most clearly and definitely
transcends that of mere prudence: which is indicated by the special
notion of Purity or Chastity.[249]
At first sight it may perhaps appear that the regulation of the sexual
appetite prescribed by the received moral code merely confines its
indulgence within the limits of the union sanctioned by law: only that
here, as the natural impulse is peculiarly powerful and easily excited,
it is especially necessary to prohibit any acts, internal as well as
external, that tend even indirectly to the transgression of these
limits. And this is to a great extent true: still on reflection it will
appear, I think, that our common notion of purity implies a standard
independent of law; for, first, conformity to this does not necessarily
secure purity: and secondly, all illegitimate sexual intercourse is
not thought to be impure,[250] and it is only by inadvertence that the
two notions are sometimes confounded. But it is not very clear what
this standard is. For when we interrogate the moral consciousness of
mankind, we seem to find two views, a stricter and a laxer, analogous
to the two interpretations of Temperance last noticed. It is agreed
that the sexual appetite ought never to be indulged for the sake of the
sensual gratification merely, but as a means to some higher end: but
some say that the propagation of the species is the only legitimate,
as it is obviously the primary natural, end: while others regard the
development of mutual affection in a union designed to be permanent as
an end perfectly admissible and right. I need not point out that the
practical difference between the two views is considerable; so that
this question is one which it is necessary to raise and decide. But
it may be observed that any attempt to lay down minute and detailed
rules on this subject seems to be condemned by Common Sense as tending
to defeat the end of purity; as such minuteness of moral legislation
invites men in general to exercise their thoughts on this subject to an
extent which is practically dangerous.[251]
I ought to point out that the Virtue of Purity is certainly not merely
self-regarding, and is therefore properly out of place in this chapter:
but the convenience of discussing it along with Temperance has led me
to take it out of its natural order. Some, however, would go further,
and say that it ought to be treated as a distinctly social virtue: for
the propagation and rearing of children is one of the most important of
social interests: and they would maintain that Purity merely connotes
a sentiment protective of these important functions, supporting the
rules which we consider necessary to secure their proper performance.
But it seems clear that, though Common Sense undoubtedly recognises
this tendency of the sentiment of Purity to maintain the best possible
provision for the continuance of the human race, it still does not
regard that as the fundamental point in the definition of this rule
of duty, and the sole criterion in deciding whether acts do or do not
violate the rule.
There seem to be no similar special questions with respect to most
other desires. We recognise, no doubt, a general duty of self-control:
but this is merely as a means to the end of acting rationally
(whatever our interpretation of rational action may be); it only
prescribes that we should yield to no impulse which prompts us to act
in antagonism to ends or rules deliberately accepted. Further, there
is a certain tendency among moral persons to the ascetic opinion that
the gratification of merely sensual impulse is in itself somewhat
objectionable: but this view does not seem to be taken by Common Sense
in particular cases;--we do not (_e.g._) commonly condemn the most
intense enjoyment of muscular exercise, or warmth, or bathing. The only
other case, besides that of the appetites above discussed, in which
the Common Sense of our age and country seems to regard as right or
admirable the repression of natural impulses, beyond what Prudence and
Benevolence would dictate, is that of the promptings of pain and fear.
An important instance of this is to be found in the before-mentioned
rule prohibiting suicide absolutely, even in face of the strongest
probability that the rest of a man’s life will be both miserable and
burdensome to others. But in other cases also praise is apparently
bestowed on endurance of pain and danger, beyond what is conducive to
happiness; as we shall have occasion to observe in the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[247] Kant argues (_Met. Anfangsgr. d. Tugendlehre_, Th. I., § iv.)
that as every one “inevitably wills” means to promote his own happiness
this cannot be regarded as a duty. But, as I have before urged (Book i.
chap. iv. § 1), a man does not “inevitably will” to do what he believes
will be most conducive to his own _greatest_ happiness.
The view in the text is that of Butler (Dissertation _Of the nature
of Virtue_); who admits that “nature has not given us so sensible a
disapprobation of imprudence and folly as of falsehood, injustice,
and cruelty”; but points out that such sensible disapprobation is for
various reasons less needed in the former case.
[248] See Whewell’s _Elements of Morality_, Book ii. chap. x.
[249] The notion of Chastity is nearly equivalent to that of Purity,
only somewhat more external and superficial.
[250] In so far as mere illegitimacy of union is conceived to be
directly and specially prohibited, and not merely from considerations
of Prudence and Benevolence, it is regarded as a violation of Order
rather than of Purity.
[251] It was partly owing to the serious oversight of not perceiving
that Purity itself forbids too minute a system of rules for the
observance of purity that the mediæval Casuistry fell into disrepute.
CHAPTER X
COURAGE, HUMILITY, ETC.
§ 1. Besides the Virtue of Purity, which we found it convenient
to discuss in the last chapter, there remain one or two prominent
excellences of character which do not seem to be commonly admired and
inculcated with any distinct reference either to private or to general
happiness; and which, though in most cases obviously conducive to
one or other of these ends, sometimes seem to influence conduct in a
direction at variance with them.
For example, Courage is a quality which excites general admiration,
whether it is shown in self-defence, or in aiding others, or even when
we do not see any benefit resulting from the particular exhibition of
it. Again, in Christian societies, Humility (if believed sincere) often
obtains unqualified praise, in spite of the loss that may evidently
result from a man’s underrating his own abilities. It will be well,
therefore, to examine how far in either case we can elicit a clear and
independent maxim defining the conduct commended under each of these
notions.
To begin with Courage. We generally denote by this term a disposition
to face danger of any kind without shrinking. We sometimes also call
those who bear pain unflinchingly courageous: but this quality of
character we more commonly distinguish as Fortitude. Now it seems
plain that if we seek for a definition of _strict duty_, as commonly
recognised, under the head either of Courage or of Fortitude, we can
find none that does not involve a reference to other maxims and ends.
For no one would say that it is our _duty_ to face danger or to bear
avoidable pain generally, but only if it meets us in the course of
duty.[252] And even this needs further qualification: for as regards
such duties as those (_e.g._) of general Benevolence, it would be
commonly allowed that the agent’s pain and danger are to be taken into
account in practically determining their extent: it would be held
that we are not bound to endure any pain except for the prevention
of manifestly greater pain to another, or the attainment of a more
important amount of positive good: nor to run any risk, unless the
chance of additional benefit to be gained for another outweighs the
cost and chance of loss to ourselves if we fail. Indeed it is doubtful
whether the common estimate of the duty of Benevolence could be said to
amount quite to this.[253]
When, however, we consider Courage as an Excellence rather than a duty,
it seems to hold a more independent position in our moral estimation.
And this view corresponds more completely than the other to the common
application of the notion; as there are many acts of courage, which are
not altogether within the control of the Will, and therefore cannot
be regarded as strict duties. For (1) danger is frequently sudden and
needs to be met without deliberation, so that our manner of meeting
it can only be semi-voluntary. And (2) though naturally timid persons
can perhaps with effort control fear as they can anger or appetite,
if time be allowed for deliberation, and can prevent it from taking
effect in dereliction of duty: still this result is not all that is
required for the performance of such courageous acts as need more than
ordinary energy--for the energy of the timid virtuous man is liable to
be exhausted in the effort to control his fear: _e.g._ in battle he can
perhaps stand still to be killed as well as the courageous man, but not
charge with the same impetuosity or strike with the same vigour and
precision.[254]
So far then as Courage is not completely voluntary, we have to consider
whether it is a desirable quality rather than whether we are strictly
bound to exhibit it. And here there seems no doubt that we commonly
find it morally admirable without reference to any end served by it,
and when the dangers which call it forth might be avoided without any
dereliction of duty. At the same time we call a man foolhardy who runs
unnecessarily into danger beyond a certain degree. Where then is the
limit to be fixed? On utilitarian principles we should endeavour to
strike as exact a balance as possible between the amount of danger
incurred in any case and the probable benefit of cultivating and
developing by practice a habit so frequently necessary for the due
performance of important duties. This will obviously give a different
result for different states of society and different callings and
professions; as most people need this instinctive courage less in
civilised societies than in semi-barbarous ones, and civilians less
than soldiers. Perhaps the instinctive admiration of mankind for acts
of daring does not altogether observe this limit: but we may say, I
think, that in so far as it attempts to justify itself on reflection,
it is commonly in some such way as this; and Common Sense does not seem
to point to any limit depending on a different principle.
§ 2. As the Virtue of Courage is prominent in Pagan ethics, and in
the Code of Honour which may be regarded as a sort of survival of the
pagan view of morality, so Humility especially belongs to the ideal
set before mankind by Christianity. The common account, however, of
this virtue is somewhat paradoxical. For it is generally said that
Humility prescribes a low opinion of our own merits: but if our merits
are comparatively high, it seems strange to direct us to have a low
opinion of them. It may be replied, that though our merits may be
high when compared with those of ordinary men, there are always some
to be found superior, and we can compare ourselves with these, and in
the extreme case with ideal excellence, of which all fall far short;
and that we ought to make this kind of comparison and not the other
kind, and contemplate our faults--of which we shall assuredly find
a sufficiency--and not our merits. But surely in the most important
deliberations which human life offers, in determining what kind of
work we shall undertake and to what social functions we shall aspire,
it is often necessary that we should compare our qualifications
carefully with those of average men, if we are to decide rightly. And
it would seem just as irrational to underrate ourselves as to overrate;
and though most men are more prone to the latter mistake, there are
certainly some rather inclined to the former.
I think that if we reflect carefully on the common judgments in which
the notion of Humility is used, we shall find that the quality commonly
_praised_ under this name (which is not always used eulogistically), is
not properly regulative of the opinions we form of ourselves--for here
as in other opinions we ought to aim at nothing but Truth--but tends
to the repression of two different seductive emotions, one entirely
self-regarding, the other relating to others and partly taking effect
in social behaviour. Partly, the Virtue of Humility is manifested in
repressing the emotion of self-admiration, which springs naturally from
the contemplation of our own merits, and as it is highly agreeable,
prompts to such contemplation. This admiring self-complacency is
generally condemned: but not, I think, by an intuition that claims
to be ultimate, as it is commonly justified by the reason that such
self-admiration, even if well-grounded, tends to check our progress
towards higher virtue. The mere fact of our feeling this admiration is
thought to be evidence that we have not sufficiently compared ourselves
with our ideal, or that our ideal is not sufficiently high: and it is
thought to be indispensable to moral progress that we should have a
high ideal and should continually contemplate it. At the same time,
we obviously need some care in the application of this maxim. For all
admit that self-respect is an important auxiliary to right conduct: and
moralists continually point to the satisfactions of a good conscience
as part of the natural reward which Providence has attached to virtue:
yet it is difficult to separate the glow of self-approbation which
attends the performance of a virtuous action from the complacent
self-consciousness which Humility seems to exclude. Perhaps we may say
that the feeling of self-approbation itself is natural and a legitimate
pleasure, but that if prolonged and fostered it is liable to impede
moral progress: and that what Humility prescribes is such repression
of self-satisfaction as will tend on the whole to promote this end. On
this view the maxim of Humility is clearly a dependent one: the end to
which it is subordinate is progress in Virtue generally. As for such
pride and self-satisfaction as are based not on our own conduct and its
results, but on external and accidental advantages, these are condemned
as involving a false and absurd view as to the nature of real merit.
But we not only take pleasure in our own respect and admiration,
but still more, generally speaking, in the respect and admiration
of others. The desire for this, again, is held to be to some extent
legitimate, and even a valuable aid to morality: but as it is a
dangerously seductive impulse, and frequently acts in opposition to
duty, it is felt to stand in special need of self-control. Humility,
however, does not so much consist in controlling this desire, as in
repressing the claim for its satisfaction which we are naturally
disposed to make upon others. We are inclined to demand from others
‘tokens of respect,’ some external symbol of their recognition of our
elevated place in the scale of human beings; and to complain if our
demands are not granted. Such claims and demands Humility bids us
repress. It is thought to be our duty not to exact, in many cases, even
the expression of reverence which others are strictly bound to pay.
And yet here, again, there is a limit, in the view of Common Sense,
at which this quality of behaviour passes over into a fault: for the
omission of marks of respect[255] is sometimes an insult which impulses
commonly regarded as legitimate and even virtuous (sense of Dignity,
Self-respect, Proper Pride, etc.) prompt us to repel. I do not,
however, think it possible to claim a _consensus_ for any formula for
determining this limit.
FOOTNOTES:
[252] In the case of pain which cannot be avoided we consider that
Fortitude will suppress outcries and lamentations: though in so far
as these relieve the sufferer without annoying others, the duty seems
doubtful.
[253] Cf. _ante_, chap. iv. § 5 of this Book.
[254] The above remarks apply in a less degree to the “moral courage”
by which men face the pains and dangers of social disapproval in
the performance of what they believe to be duty: for the adequate
accomplishment of such acts depends less on qualities not within the
control of the will at any given time.
[255] I do not refer to customary marks of respect for officials,
the omission of which would be a breach of established order; since
the special political reason for requiring these obviously takes the
question beyond the sphere of application of the Virtue of Humility.
CHAPTER XI
REVIEW OF THE MORALITY OF COMMON SENSE
§ 1. We have now concluded such detailed examination of the morality
of Common Sense as, on the plan laid down in chap. i. of this Book,
it seemed desirable to undertake. We have not discussed all the terms
of our common moral vocabulary: but I believe that we have omitted
none that are important either in themselves or relatively to our
present inquiry. For of those that remain we may fairly say, that they
manifestly will not furnish independent maxims: for reflection will
show that the conduct designated by them is either prescribed merely as
a means to the performance of duties already discussed; or is really
identical with the whole or part of some of these, viewed in some
special aspect, or perhaps specialised by the addition of some peculiar
circumstance or condition.
Let us now pause and survey briefly the process in which we have been
engaged, and the results which we have elicited.
We started with admitting the point upon the proof of which moralists
have often concentrated their efforts, the existence of apparently
independent moral intuitions. It seemed undeniable that men judge
some acts to be right and wrong in themselves, without consideration
of their tendency to produce happiness to the agent or to others: and
indeed without taking their consequences into account at all, except in
so far as these are included in the common notion of the act. We saw,
however, that in so far as these judgments are passed in particular
cases, they seem to involve (at least for the more reflective part of
mankind) a reference of the case to some general rule of duty: and
that in the frequent cases of doubt or conflict of judgments as to
the rightness of any action, appeal is commonly made to such rules
or maxims, as the ultimately valid principles of moral cognition.
In order, therefore, to throw the Morality of Common Sense into a
scientific form, it seemed necessary to obtain as exact a statement as
possible of these generally recognised principles. I did not think that
I could dispense myself from this task by any summary general argument,
based on the unscientific character of common morality. There is no
doubt that the moral opinions of ordinary men are in many points loose,
shifting, and mutually contradictory, but it does not follow that we
may not obtain from this fluid mass of opinion, a deposit of clear
and precise principles commanding universal acceptance. The question,
whether we can do this or not, seemed to me one which should not be
decided _a priori_ without a fair trial: and it is partly in order
to prepare materials for this trial that the survey in the preceding
eight chapters has been conducted. I have endeavoured to ascertain
impartially, by mere reflection on our common moral discourse, what are
the general principles or maxims, according to which different kinds of
conduct are judged to be right and reasonable in different departments
of life. I wish it to be particularly observed, that I have in no case
introduced my own views, in so far as I am conscious of their being at
all peculiar to myself: my sole object has been to make explicit the
implied premises of our common moral reasoning. I now wish to subject
the results of this survey to a final examination, in order to decide
whether these general formulæ possess the characteristics by which
self-evident truths are distinguished from mere opinions.
§ 2. There seem to be four conditions, the complete fulfilment of which
would establish a significant proposition, apparently self-evident,
in the highest degree of certainty attainable: and which must be
approximately realised by the premises of our reasoning in any inquiry,
if that reasoning is to lead us cogently to trustworthy conclusions.
I. The terms of the proposition must be clear and precise. The rival
originators of modern Methodology, Descartes and Bacon, vie with each
other in the stress that they lay on this point: and the latter’s
warning against the “notiones male terminatæ” of ordinary thought is
peculiarly needed in ethical discussion. In fact my chief business in
the preceding survey has been to free the common terms of Ethics, as
far as possible, from objection on this score.
II. The self-evidence of the proposition must be ascertained by careful
reflection. It is needful to insist on this, because most persons are
liable to confound intuitions, on the one hand with mere impressions
or impulses, which to careful observation do not present themselves as
claiming to be dictates of Reason; and on the other hand, with mere
opinions, to which the familiarity that comes from frequent hearing
and repetition often gives a false appearance of self-evidence which
attentive reflection disperses. In such cases the Cartesian method of
testing the ultimate premises of our reasonings, by asking ourselves
if we clearly and distinctly apprehend them to be true, may be of real
use; though it does not, as Descartes supposed, afford a complete
protection against error. A rigorous demand for self-evidence in our
premises is a valuable protection against the misleading influence of
our own irrational impulses on our judgments: while at the same time
it not only distinguishes as inadequate the mere external support of
authority and tradition, but also excludes the more subtle and latent
effect of these in fashioning our minds to a facile and unquestioning
admission of common but unwarranted assumptions.
And we may observe that the application of this test is especially
needed in Ethics. For, on the one hand, it cannot be denied that any
strong sentiment, however purely subjective, is apt to transform
itself into the semblance of an intuition; and it requires careful
contemplation to detect the illusion. Whatever we desire we are apt to
pronounce desirable: and we are strongly tempted to approve of whatever
conduct gives us keen pleasure.[256] And on the other hand, among the
rules of conduct to which we customarily conform, there are many which
reflection shows to be really derived from some external authority:
so that even if their obligation be unquestionable, they cannot be
intuitively ascertained. This is of course the case with the Positive
Law of the community to which we belong. There is no doubt that we
ought,--at least generally speaking,--to obey this: but what it is we
cannot of course ascertain by any process of abstract reflection, but
only by consulting Reports and Statutes. Here, however, the sources of
knowledge are so definite and conspicuous, that we are in no danger of
confounding the knowledge gained from studying them with the results
of abstract contemplation. The case is somewhat different with the
traditional and customary rules of behaviour which exist in every
society, supplementing the regulative operation of Law proper: here it
is much more difficult to distinguish the rules which a moral man is
called upon to define for himself, by the application of intuitively
known principles, from those as to which some authority external to the
individual is recognised as the final arbiter.[257]
We may illustrate this by referring to two systems of rules which we
have before[258] compared with Morality; the Law of Honour, and the
Law of Fashion or Etiquette. I noticed that there is an ambiguity in
the common terms ‘honourable’ and ‘dishonourable’; which are no doubt
sometimes used, like ethical terms, as implying an absolute standard.
Still, when we speak of the Code of Honour we seem to mean rules of
which the exact nature is to be finally determined by an appeal to
the general opinion of well-bred persons: we admit that a man is in a
sense ‘dishonoured’ when this opinion condemns him, even though we may
think his conduct unobjectionable or even intrinsically admirable.[259]
Similarly, when we consider from the point of view of reason the
rules of Fashion or Etiquette, some may seem useful and commendable,
some indifferent and arbitrary, some perhaps absurd and burdensome:
but nevertheless we recognise that the final authority on matters of
Etiquette is the custom of polite society; which feels itself under
no obligation of reducing its rules to rational principles. Yet it
must be observed that each individual in any society commonly finds in
himself a knowledge not obviously incomplete of the rules of Honour
and Etiquette, and an impulse to conform to them without requiring any
further reason for doing so. Each often seems to see at a glance what
is honourable and polite just as clearly as he sees what is right: and
it requires some consideration to discover that in the former cases
custom and opinion are generally the final authority from which there
is no appeal. And even in the case of rules regarded as distinctly
moral, we can generally find an element that seems to us as clearly
conventional as the codes just mentioned, when we contemplate the
morality of other men, even in our own age and country. Hence we may
reasonably suspect a similar element in our own moral code: and must
admit the great importance of testing rigorously any rule which we
find that we have a habitual impulse to obey; to see whether it really
expresses or can be referred to a clear intuition of rightness.
III. The propositions accepted as self-evident must be mutually
consistent. Here, again, it is obvious that any collision between two
intuitions is a proof that there is error in one or the other, or in
both. Still, we frequently find ethical writers treating this point
very lightly. They appear to regard a conflict of ultimate rules as
a difficulty that may be ignored or put aside for future solution,
without any slur being thrown on the scientific character of the
conflicting formulæ. Whereas such a collision is absolute proof that
at least one of the formulæ needs qualification: and suggests a doubt
whether the correctly qualified proposition will present itself with
the same self-evidence as the simpler but inadequate one; and whether
we have not mistaken for an ultimate and independent axiom one that is
really derivative and subordinate.
IV. Since it is implied in the very notion of Truth that it is
essentially the same for all minds, the denial by another of a
proposition that I have affirmed has a tendency to impair my confidence
in its validity. And in fact ‘universal’ or ‘general’ consent has often
been held to constitute by itself a sufficient evidence of the truth
of the most important beliefs; and is practically the only evidence
upon which the greater part of mankind can rely. A proposition accepted
as true upon this ground alone has, of course, neither self-evidence
nor demonstrative evidence for the mind that so accepts it; still, the
secure acceptance that we commonly give to the generalisations of the
empirical sciences rests--even in the case of experts--largely on
the belief that other experts have seen for themselves the evidence
for these generalisations, and do not materially disagree as to
its adequacy. And it will be easily seen that the absence of such
disagreement must remain an indispensable negative condition of the
certainty of our beliefs. For if I find any of my judgments, intuitive
or inferential, in direct conflict with a judgment of some other mind,
there must be error somewhere: and if I have no more reason to suspect
error in the other mind than in my own, reflective comparison between
the two judgments necessarily reduces me temporarily to a state of
neutrality. And though the total result in my mind is not exactly
suspense of judgment, but an alternation and conflict between positive
affirmation by one act of thought and the neutrality that is the result
of another, it is obviously something very different from scientific
certitude.
Now if the account given of the Morality of Common Sense in the
preceding chapters be in the main correct, it seems clear that,
generally speaking, its maxims do not fulfil the conditions just
laid down. So long as they are left in the state of somewhat vague
generalities, as we meet them in ordinary discourse, we are disposed to
yield them unquestioning assent, and it may be fairly claimed that the
assent is approximately universal--in the sense that any expression of
dissent is eccentric and paradoxical. But as soon as we attempt to give
them the definiteness which science requires, we find that we cannot
do this without abandoning the universality of acceptance. We find,
in some cases, that alternatives present themselves, between which
it is necessary that we should decide; but between which we cannot
pretend that Common Sense does decide, and which often seem equally
or nearly equally plausible. In other cases the moral notion seems to
resist all efforts to obtain from it a definite rule: in others it is
found to comprehend elements which we have no means of reducing to a
common standard, except by the application of the Utilitarian--or some
similar--method. Even where we seem able to educe from Common Sense
a more or less clear reply to the questions raised in the process of
definition, the principle that results is qualified in so complicated
a way that its self-evidence becomes dubious or vanishes altogether.
And thus in each case what at first seemed like an intuition turns out
to be either the mere expression of a vague impulse, needing regulation
and limitation which it cannot itself supply, but which must be drawn
from some other source: or a current opinion, the reasonableness of
which has still to be shown by a reference to some other principle.
In order that this result may be adequately exhibited, I must ask
the reader to travel with me again through the series of principles
elicited from Common Sense in the previous chapters, and to examine
them from a somewhat different point of view. Before, our primary aim
was to ascertain impartially what the deliverances of Common Sense
actually are: we have now to ask how far these enunciations can claim
to be classed as Intuitive Truths.
The reader should observe that throughout this examination a double
appeal is made; on the one hand to his individual moral consciousness,
and, on the other hand, to the Common Sense of mankind, as expressed
generally by the body of persons on whose moral judgment he is
prepared to rely. I ask him (1) whether he can state a clear, precise,
self-evident first principle, according to which he is prepared to
judge conduct under each head: and (2) if so, whether this principle
is really that commonly applied in practice, by those whom he takes to
represent Common Sense.[260]
§ 3. If we begin by considering the duty of acting wisely, discussed in
chap. iii., we may seem perhaps to have before us an axiom of undoubted
self-evidence. For acting wisely appeared to mean taking the right
means to the best ends; _i.e._ taking the means which Reason indicates
to the ends which Reason prescribes. And it is evident that it must be
right to act reasonably. Equally undeniable is the immediate inference
from, or negative aspect of, this principle; that it is wrong to act
in opposition to rational judgment. This, taken in connexion with
the empirical fact of impulses in our minds conflicting with Reason,
gives--as another self-evident principle--the maxim of Temperance or
Self-control in its widest interpretation; _i.e._ ‘That reason should
never give way to Appetite or Passion.’[261] And these principles have
sometimes been enounced with no little solemnity as answering the
fundamental question of Ethics and supplying the basis or summary of a
doctrine of Practice.
But this statement of principles turns out to be one of those stages,
so provokingly frequent in the course of ethical reflection, which,
as far as practical guidance is concerned, are really brief circuits,
leading us back to the point from which we started. Or rather, to
prevent misapprehension, it should be observed that the maxims just
given may be understood in two senses: in one sense they are certainly
self-evident, but they are also insignificant: in another sense they
include more or less distinctly a direction to an important practical
duty, but as so understood they lose their self-evidence. For if the
rules of Wisdom and Self-control mean (1) that we ought always to do
what we see to be reasonable, and (2) that we are not to yield to any
impulse urging us in an opposite direction; they simply affirm that it
is our duty (1) generally, and (2) under special temptations, to do
what we judge to be our duty;[262] and convey no information as to the
method and principles by which duty is to be determined.
But if these rules are further understood (as they sometimes are
understood) to prescribe the cultivation of a habit of acting
rationally; that is, of referring each act to definitely conceived
principles and ends, instead of allowing it to be determined by
instinctive impulses; then I cannot see that the affirmation of this
as an universal and absolute rule of duty is self-evidently true. For
when Reason is considered not in the present as actually commanding,
but as an End of which a fuller realisation has to be sought in the
future; the point of view from which its sovereignty has to be judged
is entirely changed. The question is no longer whether the dictates of
Reason ought always to be obeyed, but whether the dictation of Reason
is always a Good; whether any degree of predominance of Reason over
mere Impulse must necessarily tend to the perfection of the conscious
self of which both are elements. And it is surely not self-evident
that this predominance cannot be carried too far; and that Reason is
not rather self-limiting, in the knowledge that rational ends are
sometimes better attained by those who do not directly aim at them
as rational. Certainly Common Sense is inclined to hold that in many
matters instinct is a better spring of action than reason: thus it
is commonly said that a healthy appetite is a better guide to diet
than a doctor’s prescription: and, again, that marriage is better
undertaken as a consequence of falling in love than in execution of a
tranquil and deliberate design: and we before observed (chap. iv.) that
there is a certain excellence in services springing from spontaneous
affection which does not attach to similar acts done from pure sense
of duty. And in the same way experience seems to show that many acts
requiring promptitude and vigour are likely to be more energetic and
effective, and that many acts requiring tact and delicacy are likely
to be more graceful and pleasant to others, if they are done not in
conscious obedience to the dictates of Reason but from other motives.
It is not necessary here to decide how far this view is true: it
suffices to say that we do not know intuitively that it is not true
to some extent; we do not know that there may not be--to use Plato’s
analogy--_over-government_ in the individual soul no less than in the
state. The residuum, then, of clear intuition which we have so far
obtained, is the insignificant proposition that it is our duty to do
what we judge to be our duty.
§ 4. Let us pass now to what I have called the duties of the
Affections, the rules that prescribe either love itself in some degree,
or the services that naturally spring from it in those relations where
it is expected and desired. Here, in the first place, the question
how far we are bound to render these services when we do not feel the
affection is answered differently in many cases by different persons,
and no determination of the limit seems self-evident. And similarly
if we ask whether affection itself is a duty; for on the one hand it
is at least only partially within the control of the will, and in so
far as it can be produced by voluntary effort, there is thought to
be something unsatisfactory and unattractive in the result; and on
the other hand, in certain relations it seems to be commonly regarded
as a duty. On those points the doctrine of Common Sense is rather a
rough compromise between conflicting lines of thought than capable of
being deduced from a clear and universally accepted principle. And
if we confine ourselves to the special relations where Common Sense
admits no doubt as to the broad moral obligation of at least rendering
such services as affection naturally prompts, still the recognised
rules of external duty in these relations are, in the first place,
wanting in definiteness and precision: and secondly, they do not, when
rigorously examined, appear to be, or to be referable to, independent
intuitions so far as the _particularity_ of the duties is concerned.
Let us take, for example, the duty of parents to children. We have
no doubt about this duty as a part of the present order of society,
by which the due growth and training of the rising generation is
distributed among the adults. But when we reflect on this arrangement
itself, we cannot see _intuitively_ that it is the best possible. It
may be plausibly maintained that children would be better trained,
physically and mentally, if they were brought up under the supervision
of physicians and philosophers, in large institutions maintained out
of the general taxes. We cannot decide _a priori_ which of these
alternatives is preferable; we have to refer to psychological and
sociological generalisations, obtained by empirical study of human
nature in actual societies. If, however, we consider the duty of
parents by itself, out of connexion with this social order, it is
certainly not self-evident that we owe more to our own children than
to others whose happiness equally depends on our exertions. To get the
question clear, let us suppose that I am thrown with my family upon a
desert island, where I find an abandoned orphan. Is it evident that I
am less bound to provide this child, as far as lies in my power, with
the means of subsistence, than I am to provide for my own children?
According to some, my special duty to the latter would arise from the
fact that I have brought them into being: but, if so, it would seem
that on this principle I have a right to diminish their happiness,
provided I do not turn it into a negative quantity; since, as without
me they would not have existed at all, they can, as my children, have
no claim upon me for more than an existence on the whole above zero in
respect of happiness. We might even deduce a parental right (so far as
this special claim is concerned) to extinguish children painlessly at
any point of their existence, if only their life up to that point has
been on the whole worth having; for how can persons who would have had
no life at all but for me fairly complain that they are not allowed
more than a certain quantity?[263] I do not mean to assert that these
doctrines are even implicitly held by Common Sense: but merely to show
that here, as elsewhere, the pursuit of an irrefragable intuition may
lead us unaware into a nest of paradoxes.
It seems, then, that we cannot, after all, say that the special
duty of parents to children, considered by itself, possesses clear
self-evidence: and it was easy to show (cf. chap. iv.) that as
recognised by Common Sense its limits are indeterminate.
The rule prescribing the duty of children to parents need not detain
us; for to Common Sense it certainly seems doubtful whether this is
not merely a particular case of gratitude; and we certainly have no
clear intuition of what is due to parents who do not deserve gratitude.
Again, the moral relation of husband and wife seems to depend chiefly
upon contract and definite understanding. It is, no doubt, usually
thought that Morality, as well as law prescribes certain conditions
for all connubial contracts: and in our own age and country it is held
that they should be (1) monogamic and (2) permanent. But it seems clear
that neither of these opinions would be maintained to be a primary
intuition. Whether these or any other legal regulations of the union
of the sexes can be deduced from some intuitive principle of Purity,
we will presently consider: but as for such conjugal duties as are not
prescribed by Law, probably no one at the present day would maintain
that there is any such general agreement as to what these are, as would
support the theory that they may be known _a priori_.[264]
If, then, in these domestic relations--where the duties of affection
are commonly recognised as so imperative and important--we can find no
really independent and self-evident principles for determining them,
I need not perhaps spend time in showing that the same is the case in
respect of the less intimate ties (of kindred, neighbourhood, etc.)
that bind us to other human beings. Indeed, this was made sufficiently
manifest in our previous discussion of those other duties.
No doubt there are certain obligations towards human beings generally
which are, speaking broadly, unquestionable: as, for example, the
negative duty of abstaining from causing pain to others against
their will, except by way of deserved punishment (whether this is
to be placed under the head of Justice or Benevolence); and of
making reparation for any pain which we may have caused. Still,
when we consider the extent of these duties and try to define their
limits,--when we ask how far we may legitimately cause pain to other
men (or other sentient beings) in order to obtain happiness for
ourselves or third persons, or even to confer a greater good on the
sufferer himself, if the pain be inflicted against his will,--we do
not seem able to obtain any clear and generally accepted principle
for deciding this point, unless the Utilitarian formula be admitted
as such. Again, as regards Reparation, there is, as we have seen,
a fundamental doubt how far this is due for harm that has been
involuntarily caused.
Similarly, all admit that we have a general duty of rendering services
to our fellow-men and especially to those who are in special need, and
that we are bound to make sacrifices for them, when the benefit that
we thereby confer very decidedly outweighs the loss to ourselves; but
when we ask how far we are bound to give up our own happiness in order
to promote that of our fellows, while it can hardly be said that Common
Sense distinctly accepts the Utilitarian principle, it yet does not
definitely affirm any other.
And even the common principle of Gratitude, though its stringency is
immediately and universally felt, seems yet essentially indeterminate:
owing to the unsolved question whether the requital of a benefit ought
to be proportionate to what it cost the benefactor, or to what it is
worth to the recipient.
§ 5. When we pass to consider that element of Justice which presented
itself as Gratitude universalised, the same difficulty recurs in a more
complicated form. For here, too, we have to ask whether the Requital
of Good Desert ought to be proportioned to the benefit rendered, or to
the effort made to render it. And if we scrutinise closely the common
moral notion of Retributive Justice, it appears, strictly taken, to
imply the metaphysical doctrine of Free Will; since, according to
this conception, the reasonableness of rewarding merit is considered
solely in relation to the past, without regard to the future bad
consequences to be expected from leaving merit without encouragement:
and if every excellence in any one’s actions or productions seems
referable ultimately to causes other than himself, the individual’s
claim to requital, from this point of view, appears to vanish. On the
other hand it is obviously paradoxical in estimating Desert to omit
the moral excellences due to hereditary transmission and education: or
even intellectual excellences, since good intention without foresight
is commonly held to constitute a very imperfect merit. Even if we cut
through this speculative difficulty by leaving the ultimate reward of
real Desert to Divine Justice, we still seem unable to find any clear
principles for framing a scale of merit. And much the same may be said,
_mutatis mutandis_, of the scale of Demerit which Criminal Justice
seems to require.
And even if these difficulties were overcome, we should still be
only at the commencement of the perplexities in which the practical
determination of Justice on self-evident principles is involved. For
the examination of the contents of this notion, which we conducted
in chap. v., furnished us not with a single definite principle, but
with a whole swarm of principles, which are unfortunately liable to
come into conflict with each other; and of which even those that when
singly contemplated have the air of being self-evident truths, do not
certainly carry with them any intuitively ascertainable definition
of their mutual boundaries and relations. Thus, for example, in
constructing an ideally perfect distribution of the means of happiness,
it seems necessary to take into account the notion (as I called it) of
Fitness, which, though often confounded with Desert, seems essentially
distinct from it. For the social ‘distribuend’ includes not merely the
means of obtaining pleasurable passive feelings, but also functions and
instruments, which are important sources of happiness, but which it is
obviously reasonable to give to those who can perform and use them.
And even as regards the material means of comfort and luxury--wealth,
in short--we do not find that the same amount produces the same result
of happiness in every case: and it seems reasonable that the means of
refined and varied pleasure should be allotted to those who have the
corresponding capacities for enjoyment.[265] And yet these may not be
the most deserving, so that this principle may clearly conflict with
that of requiting Desert.
And either principle, as we saw, is liable to come into collision with
the widely-accepted doctrine that the proper ultimate end of Law is
to secure the greatest possible Freedom of action to all members of
the community: and that all that any individual, strictly speaking,
owes to any other is non-interference, except so far as he has further
bound himself by free contract. But further, when we come to examine
this principle in its turn, we find that, in order to be capable
at all of affording a practical basis for social construction, it
needs limitations and qualifications which make it look less like an
independent principle than a “middle axiom” of Utilitarianism; and that
it cannot without a palpable strain be made to cover the most important
rights which Positive Law secures. For example, the justification of
permanent appropriation is surely rather that it supplies the only
adequate motive for labour than that it, strictly speaking, realises
Freedom: nor can the questions that arise in determining the limits
of the right of property--such as whether it includes the right of
bequest--be settled by any deductions from this supposed fundamental
principle. Nor again, can even the enforcement of contracts be fairly
said to be a realisation of Freedom; for a man seems, strictly
speaking, freer when no one of his volitions is allowed to cause
an external control of any other. And if we disregard this as a
paradoxical subtlety, we are met on the opposite side by the perplexity
that if abstract Freedom is consistent with any engagement of future
services, it must on the same grounds be consistent with such as are
perpetual and unqualified, and so even with actual slavery. And this
question becomes especially important when we consider that the duty
of obeying positive laws has by many been reconciled with the abstract
right of Freedom, by supposing a ‘tacit compact’ or understanding
between each individual and the rest of his community. This Compact,
however, seems on examination too clearly fictitious to be put forward
as a basis of moral duty: as is further evident from the indefinitely
various qualifications and reservations with which the ‘understanding’
has by different thinkers been supposed to be ‘understood.’ Hence
many who maintain the ‘Birthright of Freedom’ consider that the only
abstractedly justifiable social order is one in which no laws are
imposed without the _express_ consent of those who are to obey them.
But we found it impossible really to construct society upon this basis:
and such Representative Governments as have actually been established
only appear to realise this idea by means of sweeping limitations
and transparent fictions. It was manifest, too, that the maximum of
what may be called Constitutional Freedom--_i.e._ the most perfect
conformity between the action of a government and the wishes of the
majority of its subjects--need by no means result in the realisation of
the maximum of Civil Freedom in the society so governed.
But even if we could delineate to our satisfaction an ideal social
order, including an ideal form of government, we have still to
reconcile the duty of realising this with the conformity due to the
actual order of society. For we have a strong conviction that positive
laws ought, generally speaking, to be obeyed: and, again, our notion of
Justice seemed to include a general duty of satisfying the expectations
generated by custom and precedent. Yet if the actual order of society
deviates very much from what we think ought to exist, the duty of
conforming to it seems to become obscure and doubtful. And apart from
this we cannot say that Common Sense regards it as an axiom that Laws
ought to be obeyed. Indeed, all are agreed that they ought to be
disobeyed when they command what is wrong: though we do not seem able
to elicit any clear general view as to what remains wrong after it has
been commanded by the sovereign. And, again, the positive laws that
ought to be obeyed as such must be the commands issued by a (morally)
rightful authority: and though these will ordinarily coincide with the
commands legally enforced, we cannot say that this is always the case;
for the courts may be temporarily subservient to a usurper; or, again,
the sovereign hitherto habitually obeyed may be one against whom it
has become right to rebel (since it is generally admitted that this is
sometimes right). We require, then, principles for determining when
usurpation becomes legitimate and when rebellion is justifiable: and we
do not seem able to elicit these from Common Sense--except so far as
it may be fairly said that on this whole subject Common Sense inclines
more to the Utilitarian method than it does in matters of private
morality.
Still less can we state the general duty of satisfying ‘natural
expectations’--_i.e._ such expectations as an average man would form
under given circumstances--in the form of a clear and precise moral
axiom. No doubt a just man will generally satisfy customary claims: but
it can hardly be maintained that the mere existence of a custom renders
it clearly obligatory that any one should conform to it who has not
already promised to do so; especially since bad customs can only be
abolished by individuals venturing to disregard them.
§ 6. We have still to examine (whether as a branch of Justice or
under a separate head) the duty of fulfilling express promises and
distinct understandings. The peculiar confidence which moralists have
generally felt in this principle is strikingly illustrated by those
endeavours to extend its scope which we have just had occasion to
notice: and it certainly seems to surpass in simplicity, certainty,
and definiteness the moral rules that we have hitherto discussed.
Here, then, if anywhere, we seem likely to find one of those ethical
axioms of which we are in search. Now we saw that the notion of a
Promise requires several qualifications not commonly noticed to make
it precise: but this alone is no reason why it may not be fitly
used in framing a maxim, which when enunciated and understood will
properly claim universal acceptance as self-evident. For similarly
the uninstructed majority of mankind could not define a circle as a
figure bounded by a line of which every point is equidistant from the
centre: but nevertheless, when the definition is explained to them,
they will accept it as expressing the perfect type of that notion
of roundness which they have long had in their minds. And the same
potential universality of acceptance may, I think, be fairly claimed
for the propositions that the promise which the Common Sense of mankind
recognises as binding must be understood by promiser and promisee in
the same sense at the time of promising, and that it is relative to
the promisee and capable of being annulled by him, and that it cannot
override determinate[266] prior obligations.
But the case is different with the other qualifications which we had to
discuss. When once the question of introducing these has been raised,
we see that Common Sense is clearly divided as to the answer. If we ask
(_e.g._) how far our promise is binding if it was made in consequence
of false statements, on which, however, it was not understood to be
conditional; or if important circumstances were concealed, or we were
in any way led to believe that the consequences of keeping the promise
would be different from what they turn out to be; or if the promise was
given under compulsion; or if circumstances have materially altered
since it was given, and we find that the results of fulfilling it will
be different from what we foresaw when we promised; or even if it be
only our knowledge of consequences which has altered, and we now see
that fulfilment will entail on us a sacrifice out of proportion to the
benefit received by the promisee; or perhaps see that it will even be
injurious to him though he may not think so;--different conscientious
persons would answer these and other[267] questions (both generally and
in particular cases) in different ways: and though we could perhaps
obtain a decided majority for some of these qualifications and against
others, there would not in any case be a clear _consensus_ either way.
And, moreover, the mere discussion of these points seems to make it
plain that the confidence with which the “unsophisticated conscience”
asserts unreservedly “that promises ought to be kept,” is due to
inadvertence; and that when the qualifications to which we referred are
fairly considered, this confidence inevitably changes into hesitation
and perplexity. It should be added, that some of these qualifications
themselves suggest a reference to the more comprehensive principle
of Utilitarianism, as one to which this particular rule is naturally
subordinate.
Again, reflection upon the place of this duty in a classified system
of moral obligations tends to confirm our distrust of the ordinary
enunciations of Common Sense in respect of it. For, as was seen,
Fidelity to promises is very commonly ranked with Veracity; as though
the mere fact of my having said that I would do a thing were the ground
of my duty to do it. But on reflection we perceive that the obligation
must be regarded as contingent on the reliance that another has placed
on my assertion: that, in fact, the breach of duty is constituted by
the disappointment of expectations voluntarily raised. And when we see
this we become less disposed to maintain the absoluteness of the duty:
it seems now to depend upon the amount of harm done by disappointing
expectations; and we shrink from saying that the promise ought to be
kept, if the keeping it would involve an amount of harm that seems
decidedly to outweigh this.
The case of Veracity we may dismiss somewhat more briefly, as here
it was still more easy to show that the common enunciation of the
unqualified duty of Truth-speaking is made without full consideration,
and cannot approve itself to the reflective mind as an absolute first
principle. For, in the first place, we found no clear agreement as to
the fundamental nature of the obligation; or as to its exact scope,
_i.e._ whether it is our actual affirmation as understood by the
recipient which we are bound to make correspondent to fact (as far as
we can), or whatever inferences we foresee that he is likely to draw
from this, or both. To realise perfect Candour and Sincerity, we must
aim at both: and we no doubt admire the exhibition of these virtues:
but few will maintain that they ought to be exhibited under all
circumstances. And, secondly, it seems to be admitted by Common Sense,
though vaguely and reluctantly, that the principle, however defined,
is not of universal application; at any rate it is not thought to be
clearly wrong that untruths should be told to children, or madmen, or
invalids, or by advocates, or to enemies or robbers, or even to persons
who ask questions which they have no right to ask (if a mere refusal
to answer would practically reveal an important secret). And when
we consider the limitations generally admitted, it seems still more
plain than in the last case, that they are very commonly determined by
utilitarian reasonings, implicit or explicit.
§ 7. If, then, the prescriptions of Justice, Good Faith, and Veracity,
as laid down by Common Sense, appear so little capable of being
converted into first principles of scientific Ethics, it seems scarcely
necessary to inquire whether such axioms can be extracted from the
minor maxims of social behaviour, such as the maxim of Liberality or
the rules restraining the Malevolent Affections: or, again, from such
virtues as Courage and Humility, which we found it difficult to class
as either social or self-regarding. Indeed, it was made plain in chap.
viii. that as regards the proper regulation of resentment, Common Sense
can only be saved from inconsistency or hopeless vagueness by adopting
the ‘interest of society’ as the ultimate standard: and in the same way
we cannot definitely distinguish Courage from Foolhardiness except by
a reference to the probable tendency of the daring act to promote the
wellbeing of the agent or of others, or to some definite rule of duty
prescribed under some other notion.
It is true that among what are commonly called “duties to self”
we find the duty of self-preservation prescribed with apparent
absoluteness,--at least so far as the sacrifice of one’s life is not
imperatively required for the preservation of the lives of others,
or for the attainment of some result conceived to be very important
to society. I think, however, that when confronted with the question
of preserving a life which we can foresee will be both miserable and
burdensome to others--_e.g._ the life of a man stricken with a fatal
disease which precludes the possibility of work of any kind, during the
weeks or months of agony that remain to him,--though Common Sense would
still deny the legitimacy of suicide, even under these conditions, it
would also admit the necessity of finding reasons for the denial. This
admission would imply that the universal wrongness of suicide is at any
rate not self-evident. And the reasons that would be found--so far as
they did not ultimately depend upon premises drawn from Revelational
Theology--would, I think, turn out to be utilitarian, in a broad sense
of the term: it would be urged that if any exceptions to the rule
prohibiting suicide were allowed, dangerous encouragement would be
given to the suicidal impulse in other cases in which suicide would
really be a weak and cowardly dereliction of social duty: it would
also probably be urged that the toleration of suicide would facilitate
secret murders. In short, the independent axiom of which we are in
search seems to disappear on close examination in this case no less
than in others.
So again, reflection seems to show that the duties of Temperance,
Self-control, and other cognate virtues, are only clear and definite
in so far as they are conceived as subordinate either to Prudence (as
is ordinarily the case), or to Benevolence or some definite rule of
social duty, or at least to some end--such as ‘furtherance of moral
progress’[268]--of which the conception involves the notion of duty
supposed to be already determinate. Certainly the authority of Common
Sense cannot be fairly claimed for any restriction even of the bodily
appetites for food and drink, that is not thus subordinated.
In the case, however, of the sexual appetite, a special regulation
seems to be prescribed on some independent principle under the notion
of Purity or Chastity. In chap. ix. of this Book, where we examined
this notion, it appeared that Common Sense is not only not explicit,
but actually averse to explicitness, on this subject. As my aim in the
preceding chapters was to give, above all things, a faithful exposition
of the morality of Common Sense, I allowed my inquiry to be checked
by this (as it seemed) clearly recognisable sentiment. But when it
becomes our primary object to test the intuitive evidence of the moral
principles commonly accepted, it seems necessary to override this
aversion: for we can hardly ascertain whether rational conviction is
attainable as to the acts allowed and forbidden under this notion and
its opposite, without subjecting it to the same close scrutiny that
we have endeavoured to give to the other leading notions of Ethics.
Here the briefest account of such a scrutiny will be sufficient. I am
aware that in giving even this I cannot but cause a certain offence to
minds trained in good moral habits: but I trust I may claim the same
indulgence as is commonly granted to the physiologist, who also has
to direct the student’s attention to objects which a healthy mind is
naturally disinclined to contemplate.
§ 8. What, then, is the conduct which Purity forbids (for the principle
is more easily discussed in its negative aspect)? As the normal and
obvious end of sexual intercourse is the propagation of the species,
some have thought that all indulgence of appetite, except as a means
to this end, should be prohibited. But this doctrine would lead to a
restriction of conjugal intercourse far too severe for Common Sense.
Shall we say, then, that Purity forbids such indulgence except under
the conditions of conjugal union defined by Law? But this answer,
again, further reflection shows to be unsatisfactory. For, first, we
should not, on consideration, call a conjugal union impure, _merely_
because the parties had wilfully omitted to fulfil legal conditions,
and had made a contract which the law declined to enforce. We might
condemn their conduct, but we should not apply to it this notion.
And, secondly, we feel that positive law may be unfavourable to
Purity, and that in fact Purity, like Justice, is something which the
law ought to maintain, but does not always. We have to ask, then,
what kind of sexual relations we are to call essentially impure,
whether countenanced or not by Law and Custom? There appear to be no
distinct principles, having any claim to self-evidence, upon which
the question can be answered so as to command general assent. It
would be difficult even to state such a principle for determining the
degree of consanguinity between husband and wife which constitutes
a union incestuous; although the aversion with which such unions
are commonly regarded is a peculiarly intense moral sentiment; and
the difficulty becomes indefinitely greater when we consider the
_rationale_ of prohibited degrees of affinity. Again, probably few
would stigmatise a legal polygynous connexion as impure, however they
might disapprove of the law and of the state of society in which
such a law was established: but if legal Polygyny is not impure, is
Polyandry, when legal and customary--as is not unfrequently the case
among the lower races of man--to be so characterised? and if not, on
what rational principle can the notion be applied to institutions
and conduct? Again, where divorce by mutual consent, with subsequent
marriage, is legalised, we do not call this an offence against Purity:
and yet if the principle of free change be once admitted, it seems
paradoxical to distinguish purity from impurity merely by less rapidity
of transition;[269] and to condemn as impure even ‘Free Love,’ in so
far as it is earnestly advocated as a means to a completer harmony of
sentiment between men and women, and not to mere sensual license.
Shall we, then, fall back upon the presence of mutual affection (as
distinguished from mere appetite) as constituting the essence of pure
sexual relations? But this, again, while too lax from one point of
view, seems from another too severe for Common Sense: as we do not
condemn marriages without affection as impure, although we disapprove
of them as productive of unhappiness. Such marriages, indeed, are
sometimes stigmatised as “legalised prostitution,” but the phrase is
felt to be extravagant and paradoxical; and it is even doubtful whether
we do disapprove of them under all circumstances; as (_e.g._) in the
case of royal alliances.
Again, how shall we judge of such institutions as those of Plato’s
Commonwealth, establishing community of women and children, but at the
same time regulating sexual indulgence with the strictest reference
to social ends? Our habitual standards seem inapplicable to such novel
circumstances.
The truth seems to be, that reflection on the current sexual morality
discovers to us two distinct grounds for it: first and chiefly, the
maintenance of a certain social order, believed to be most conducive
to the prosperous continuance of the human race: and, secondly,
the protection of habits of feeling in individuals believed to be
generally most important to their perfection or their happiness. We
commonly conceive that both these ends are to be attained by the same
regulations: and in an ideal state of society this would perhaps be
the case: but in actual life there is frequently a partial separation
and incompatibility between them. But further, if the repression of
sexual license is prescribed merely as a means to these ends, it
does not seem that we can affirm as self-evident that it is always
a necessary means in either case: on the contrary, it seems clear
that such an affirmation would be unreliable apart from empirical
confirmation. We cannot reasonably be sure, without induction from
sociological observations, that a certain amount of sexual license
will be incompatible with the maintenance of population in sufficient
numbers and good condition. And if we consider the matter in its
relation to the individual’s perfection, it is certainly clear that he
misses the highest and best development of his emotional nature, if
his sexual relations are of a merely sensual kind: but we can hardly
know _a priori_ that this lower kind of relation interferes with the
development of the higher (nor indeed does experience seem to show that
this is universally the case). And this latter line of argument has a
further difficulty. For the common opinion that we have to justify does
not merely condemn the lower kind of development in comparison with the
higher, but in comparison with none at all. Since we do not positively
blame a man for remaining celibate (though we perhaps despise him
somewhat unless the celibacy is adopted as a means to a noble end):
it is difficult to show why we should condemn--in its bearing on the
individual’s emotional perfection solely--the imperfect development
afforded by merely sensual relations.
§ 9. Much more might be said to exhibit the perplexities in which the
attempt to define the rule of Purity or Chastity involves us. But I do
not desire to extend the discussion beyond what is necessary for the
completion of my argument. It seems to me that the conclusion announced
in § 2 of this chapter has now been sufficiently justified. We have
examined the moral notions that present themselves with a _prima facie_
claim to furnish independent and self-evident rules of morality: and
we have in each case found that from such regulation of conduct as
the Common Sense of mankind really supports, no proposition can be
elicited which, when fairly contemplated, even appears to have the
characteristic of a scientific axiom. It is therefore scarcely needful
to proceed to a systematic examination of the manner in which Common
Sense provides for the co-ordination of these principles. In fact, this
question seems to have been already discussed as far as is profitable:
for the attempt to define each principle singly has inevitably led
us to consider their mutual relations: and it was in the cases where
two moral principles came into collision that we most clearly saw
the vagueness and inconsistency with which the boundaries of each
are determined by Common Sense. For example, the distinction between
perfectly stringent moral obligations, and such laxer duties as may be
modified by a man’s own act, is often taken: and it is one which, as we
saw, is certainly required in formulating the Common-Sense view of the
effect of a promise in creating new obligations: but it is one which we
cannot apply with any practical precision, because of the high degree
of indeterminateness which we find in the common notions of duties to
which the highest degree of stringency is yet commonly attributed.
It only remains to guard my argument from being understood in a more
sweeping sense than it has been intended or is properly able to bear.
Nothing that I have said even tends to show that we have not distinct
moral impulses, claiming authority over all others, and prescribing
or forbidding kinds of conduct as to which there is a rough general
agreement, at least among educated persons of the same age and country.
It is only maintained that the objects of these impulses do not admit
of being scientifically determined by any reflective analysis of common
sense. The notions of Benevolence, Justice, Good Faith, Veracity,
Purity, etc., are not necessarily emptied of significance for us,
because we have found it impossible to define them with precision. The
main part of the conduct prescribed under each notion is sufficiently
clear: and the general rule prescribing it does not necessarily lose
its force because there is in each case a margin of conduct involved in
obscurity and perplexity, or because the rule does not on examination
appear to be absolute and independent. In short, the Morality of Common
Sense may still be perfectly adequate to give practical guidance to
common people in common circumstances: but the attempt to elevate it
into a system of Intuitional Ethics brings its inevitable imperfections
into prominence without helping us to remove them.[270]
FOOTNOTES:
[256] Hence the practical importance of the Formal test of Rightness,
on which Kant insists: cf. _ante_, chap. i. § 3 of this Book.
[257] The final arbiter, that is, on the question what the rule is:
of course the moral obligation to conform to any rule laid down by an
external authority must rest on some principle which the individual’s
reason has to apply.
[258] Cf. Book i. chap. iii. § 2.
[259] Cf. Book i. chap. iii. § 2.
[260] It has been fairly urged that I leave the determinations of
Common Sense very loose and indefinite: and if I were endeavouring
to bring out a more positive result from this examination, I ought
certainly to have discussed further how we are to ascertain the
‘experts’ on whose ‘consensus’ we are to rely, in this or any other
subject. But my scientific conclusions are to so great an extent
negative, that I thought it hardly necessary to enter upon this
discussion. I have been careful not to _exaggerate_ the doubtfulness
and inconsistency of Common Sense: should it turn out to be _more_
doubtful and inconsistent than I have represented it, my argument will
only be strengthened.
[261] In chap. ix. Temperance was regarded as subordinate to, or a
special application of, Prudence or Self-love moralised: because this
seemed to be on the whole the view of Common Sense, which in the
preceding chapters I have been endeavouring to follow as closely as
possible, both in stating the principles educed and in the order of
their exposition.
[262] The admission that these maxims are self-evident must be taken
subject to the distinction before established between “subjective” and
“objective” rightness. It is a necessary condition of my acting rightly
that I should not do what I judge to be wrong: but if my judgment is
mistaken, my action in accordance with it will not be “objectively”
right.
[263] It may be noticed that a view very similar to this has often been
maintained in considering what God is in justice bound to do for human
beings in consequence of the quasi-parental relation in which He stands
to them.
[264] It is not irrelevant to notice the remarkable divergence of
suggestions for the better regulation of marriage, to which reflective
minds seem to be led when they are once set loose from the trammels of
tradition and custom; as exhibited in the speculations of philosophers
in all ages--especially of those (as _e.g._ Plato) to whom we cannot
attribute any sensual or licentious bias.
[265] For example, many seem to hold that wealth is, roughly speaking,
rightly distributed when cultivated persons have abundance and the
uncultivated a bare subsistence, since the former are far more capable
of deriving happiness from wealth than the latter.
[266] I refer later (p. 360) to the difficulty before noticed in
respect of such prior obligations as are not strictly determinate.
[267] I have omitted as less important the special questions connected
with promises to the dead or to the absent, or where a form of words is
prescribed.
[268] It was this conception that seemed to give the true standard of
Humility, considered as a purely internal duty.
[269] It should be observed that I am not asking for an exact
quantitative decision, but whether we can really think that the
decision depends upon considerations of this kind.
[270] It should be observed that the more positive treatment of
Common-sense Morality, in its relation to Utilitarianism, to which we
shall proceed in chap. iii. of the following Book, is intended as an
indispensable supplement of the negative criticism which has just been
completed.
CHAPTER XII
MOTIVES OR SPRINGS OF ACTION CONSIDERED AS SUBJECTS OF MORAL JUDGMENT
§ 1. In the first chapter of this third Book I was careful to
point out that motives, as well as intentions, form part of the
subject-matter of our common moral judgments: and indeed in our notion
of ‘conscientiousness’ the habit of reflecting on motives, and judging
them to be good or bad, is a prominent element. It is necessary,
therefore, in order to complete our examination of the Intuitional
Method, to consider this comparison of motives, and ascertain how far
it can be made systematic, and pursued to conclusions of scientific
value. And this seems a convenient place for treating of this part of
the subject: since it has been maintained by an important school of
English moralists that Desires and Affections rather than Acts are
the proper subjects of the ethical judgment: and it is natural to
fall back upon this view when systematic reflection on the morality
of Common Sense has shown us the difficulty of obtaining a precise
and satisfactory determination of rightness and wrongness in external
conduct.
To avoid confusion, it should be observed that the term ‘motive’ is
commonly used in two ways. It is sometimes applied to those among
the foreseen consequences of any act which the agent desired in
willing: and sometimes to the desire, or conscious impulse itself.
The two meanings are in a manner correspondent, as, where impulses
are different, there must always be some sort of difference in their
respective objects. But for our present purpose it is more convenient
to take the latter meaning: as it is our own impulsive nature that we
have practically to deal with, in the way of controlling, resisting,
indulging the different impulses; and therefore it is the ethical
value of these that we are primarily concerned to estimate: and we
often find that two impulses, which would be placed very far apart
in any psychological list, are directed towards an end materially
identical, though regarded from a different point of view in each case.
As (_e.g._) both appetite and Rational self-love may impel a man to
seek a particular sensual gratification; though in the latter case it
is regarded under the general notion of pleasure, and as forming part
of a sum called Happiness. In this chapter, then, I shall use the term
Motive to denote the desires of particular results, believed to be
attainable as consequences of our voluntary acts, by which desires we
are stimulated to will those acts.[271]
The first point to notice in considering the ethical result of a
comprehensive comparison of motives is, that the issue in any internal
conflict is not usually thought to be between positively good and bad,
but between better and less good, more or less estimable or elevated
motives. The only kind of motive which (if any) we commonly judge
to be _intrinsically_ bad, apart from the circumstances under which
it operates, is malevolent affection; that is, the desire, however
aroused, to inflict pain or harm on some other sentient being. And
reflection shows (as we saw in chap. viii. of this Book) that Common
Sense does not pronounce even this kind of impulse absolutely bad:
since we commonly recognise the existence of ‘legitimate resentment’
and ‘righteous indignation’; and though moralists try to distinguish
between anger directed ‘against the act’ and ‘against the agent,’ and
between the impulse to inflict pain and the desire of the antipathetic
pleasure that the agent will reap from this infliction, it may be
fairly doubted whether it is within the capacity of ordinary human
nature to maintain these distinctions in practice. At any rate there
is no other motive except deliberate malevolence which Common Sense
condemns as absolutely bad. The other motives that are commonly
spoken of in ‘dyslogistic’ terms seem to be most properly called (in
Bentham’s language) ‘Seductive’ rather than bad. That is, they prompt
to forbidden conduct with conspicuous force and frequency: but when we
consider them carefully we find that there are certain limits, however
narrow, within which their operation is legitimate.
The question, then, is how far the intuitive knowledge that our common
judgments seem to imply of the relative goodness of different kinds of
motives is found on reflection to satisfy the conditions laid down in
the preceding chapter. I have before[272] argued that it is incorrect
to regard this comparison of _motives_ as the normal form of our common
moral judgments, nor do I see any ground for holding it to be the
original form. I think that in the normal development of man’s moral
consciousness, both in the individual and in the race, moral judgments
are first passed on outward acts, and that motives do not come to
be definitely considered till later; just as external perception of
physical objects precedes introspection. At the same time, in my view,
it does not therefore follow that the comparison of motives is not the
final and most perfect form of the moral judgment. It might approve
itself as such by the systematic clearness and mutual consistency
of the results to which it led, when pursued by different thinkers
independently: and by its freedom from the puzzles and difficulties to
which other developments of the Intuitional Method seem to be exposed.
It appears, however, on examination that, on the one hand, many (if not
all) of the difficulties which have emerged in the preceding discussion
of the commonly received principles of conduct are reproduced in a
different form when we try to arrange Motives in order of excellence:
and on the other hand, such a construction presents difficulties
peculiar to itself, and the attempt to solve these exhibits greater and
more fundamental differences among Intuitive moralists, as regards Rank
of Motive, than we found to exist as regards Rightness of outward acts.
§ 2. In the first place, it has to be decided whether we are to
include in our list of motives the Moral Sentiments, or impulses
towards particular kinds of virtuous conduct as such, _e.g._ Candour,
Veracity, Fortitude. It seems unwarrantable to exclude them, as
such sentiments are observable as distinct and independent impulses
in most well-trained minds, and we sometimes recognise their
existence in considerable intensity, as when we speak of a man being
‘enthusiastically brave,’ or ‘intensely veracious,’ or as ‘having
a passion for justice.’ At the same time their admission places us
in the following dilemma. Either the objects of these impulses are
represented by the very notions that we have been examining--in which
case, after we have decided that any impulse is better than its rival,
all the perplexities set forth in the previous chapters will recur,
before we can act on our decision; for what avails it to recognise
the superiority of the impulse to do justice, if we do not know
what it is just to do?--or if in any case the object which a moral
sentiment prompts us to realise is conceived more simply, without the
qualifications which a complete reflection on Common Sense forced us
to recognise; then, as the previous investigation shows, we shall
certainly not find agreement as to the relation between this and other
impulses. For example, a dispute, whether the impulse to speak the
truth ought or ought not to be followed, will inevitably arise when
Veracity seems opposed either to the general good, or to the interests
of some particular person; that is, when it conflicts with ‘particular’
or ‘universal’ benevolence. Hutcheson expressly places these latter
impulses in a higher rank than “candour, veracity, fortitude”;
reserving the highest moral approbation for “the most extensive
benevolence” or “calm, stable, universal goodwill to all.”[273] But
this view, which coincides practically with Utilitarianism, would
certainly be disputed by most Intuitional moralists. Again, some of
these moralists (as Kant) regard all actions as bad--or not good--which
are not done from pure regard for duty or choice of Right as Right:
while Hutcheson, who represents the opposite pole of Intuitional
Ethics, equally distinguishes the love of Virtue as a separate impulse;
but treats it as at once co-ordinate in rank and coincident in its
effects with universal Benevolence.
So, again, moralists diverge widely in estimating the ethical value of
Self-love. For Butler seems to regard it as one of two superior and
naturally authoritative impulses, the other being Conscience: nay, in a
passage before quoted, he even concedes that it would be reasonable for
Conscience to yield to it, if the two could possibly conflict. Other
moralists (and Butler elsewhere)[274] appear to place Self-love among
virtuous impulses under the name of Prudence: though among these they
often rank it rather low, and would have it yield in case of conflict,
to nobler virtues. Others, again, exclude it from Virtue altogether:
_e.g._ Kant, in one of his treatises,[275] says that the end of
Self-love, one’s own happiness, cannot be an end for the Moral Reason;
that the force of the reasonable will, in which Virtue consists, is
always exhibited in resistance to natural egoistic impulses.
Dr. Martineau, whose system is framed on the basis that I am now
examining, attempts to avoid some of the difficulties just pointed out
by refusing to admit the existence of any virtuous impulses except
the “preference for the superior of the competing springs of action
in each case” of a conflict of motives. “I cannot admit,” he says,
“either the _loves of Virtues_--of candour, veracity, fortitude--or
the virtues themselves, as so many additional impulses over and above
those from the conflict of which they are formed. I do not confess my
fault _in order to be candid_ ... unless I am a prig, I never think of
candour, as predicable, or going to be predicable, of me at all.”[276]
I am not, however, sure whether Dr. Martineau really means to _deny_
the existence of persons who act from a conscious desire to realise an
ideal of Candour or Fortitude, or whether he merely means to express
_disapproval_ of such persons: in the former sense his statement seems
to me a psychological paradox, in conflict with ordinary experience:
in the latter sense it seems an ethical paradox, affording a striking
example of that diversity of judgments as to the rank of motives, to
which I am now drawing attention.
§ 3. But even if we put out of sight the Moral sentiments and
Self-love, it is still scarcely possible to frame a scale of motives
arranged in order of merit, for which we could claim anything like a
clear consent, even of cultivated and thoughtful persons. On one or
two points, indeed, we seem to be generally agreed; _e.g._ that the
bodily appetites are inferior to the benevolent affections and the
intellectual desires; and perhaps that impulses tending primarily to
the well-being of the individual are lower in rank than those which
we class as extra-regarding or disinterested. But beyond a few vague
statements of this kind, it is very difficult to proceed. For example,
when we compare personal affections with the love of knowledge or
of beauty, or the passion for the ideal in any form, much doubt and
divergence of opinion become manifest. Indeed, we should hardly agree
on the relative rank of the benevolent affections taken by themselves;
for some would prefer the more intense, though narrower, while others
would place the calmer and wider feelings in the highest rank. Or
again, since Love, as we saw,[277] is a complex emotion, and commonly
includes, besides the desire of the good or happiness of the beloved,
a desire for union or intimacy of some kind; some would consider
an affection more elevated in proportion as the former element
predominated, while others would regard the latter as at least equally
essential to the highest kind of affection.
Again, we may notice the love of Fame as an important and widely
operative motive, which would be ranked very differently by different
persons: for some would place the former “spur that the clear
spirit doth raise” among the most elevated impulses after the moral
sentiments; while others think it degrading to depend for one’s
happiness on the breath of popular favour.
Further, the more we contemplate the actual promptings that precede any
volition, the more we seem to find complexity of motive the rule rather
than the exception, at least in the case of educated persons: and from
this composition of impulses there results a fundamental perplexity as
to the principles on which our decision is to be made, even supposing
that we have a clear view of the relative worth of the elementary
impulses. For the compound will generally contain nobler and baser
elements, and we can hardly get rid of the latter; since--as I have
before said--though we may frequently suppress and expel a motive by
firmly resisting it, it does not seem possible to exclude it if we do
the act to which it prompts. Suppose, then, that we are impelled in one
direction by a combination of high and low motives, and in another by
an impulse that ranks between the two in the scale, how shall we decide
which course to follow? Such a case is by no means uncommon: _e.g._ an
injured man may be moved by an impulse of pity to spare his injurer,
while a regard for justice and a desire of revenge combined impel him
to inflict punishment. Or, again, a Jew of liberal views might be
restrained from eating pork by a desire not to shock the feelings of
his friends, and might be moved to eat it by the desire to vindicate
true religious liberty combined with a liking for pork. How are we to
deal with such a case as this? For it will hardly be suggested that we
should estimate the relative proportions of the different motives and
decide accordingly;--qualitative analysis of our motives is to some
extent possible to us, but the quantitative analysis that this would
require is not in our power.
But even apart from this difficulty arising from complexity of
motives, I think it impossible to assign a definite and constant
ethical value to each different kind of motive, without reference to
the particular circumstances under which it has arisen, the extent
of indulgence that it demands, and the consequences to which this
indulgence would lead in any particular case. I may conveniently
illustrate this by reference to the table, drawn up by Dr.
Martineau,[278] of springs of action arranged in order of merit.
LOWEST.
1. Secondary Passions:--Censoriousness, Vindictiveness, Suspiciousness.
2. Secondary Organic Propensions:--Love of Ease and Sensual Pleasure.
3. Primary Organic Propensions:--Appetites.
4. Primary Animal Propension:--Spontaneous Activity (unselective).
5. Love of Gain (reflective derivative from Appetite).
6. Secondary Affections (sentimental indulgence of sympathetic
feelings).
7. Primary Passions:--Antipathy, Fear, Resentment.
8. Causal energy:--Love of Power, or Ambition; Love of Liberty.
9. Secondary Sentiments:--Love of Culture.
10. Primary Sentiments of Wonder and Admiration.
11. Primary Affections, Parental and Social; with (approximately)
Generosity and Gratitude.
12. Primary Affection of Compassion.
13. Primary Sentiment of Reverence.
HIGHEST.
This scale seems to me open to much criticism, both from a
psychological and from an ethical point of view:[279] but, granting
that it corresponds broadly to the judgments that men commonly pass
as to the different elevation of different motives, it seems to me
in the highest degree paradoxical to lay down that each class of
motives is always to be preferred to the class below it, without
regard to circumstances and consequences. So far as it is true that
“the conscience says to every one, ‘Do not eat till you are hungry and
stop when you are hungry no more,’” it is not, I venture to think,
because a “regulative right is clearly vested in primary instinctive
needs, relatively to their secondaries,” but because experience has
shown that to seek the gratification of the palate apart from the
satisfaction of hunger is generally dangerous to physical well-being;
and it is in view of this danger that the conscience operates. If
we condemn “a ship captain,” who, “caught in a fog off a lee shore,
neglects, through indolence and love of ease, to slacken speed and
take cautious soundings and open his steam-whistle,” it is not because
we intuitively discern Fear to be a higher motive than Love of Ease,
but because the consequences disregarded are judged to be indefinitely
more important than the gratification obtained: if we took a case in
which fear was not similarly sustained by prudence, our judgment would
certainly be different.
The view of Common Sense appears rather to be that most natural
impulses have their proper spheres, within which they should be
normally operative, and therefore the question whether in any case a
higher motive should yield to a lower one cannot be answered decisively
in the general way in which Dr. Martineau answers it: the answer must
depend on the particular conditions and circumstances of the conflict.
We recognise it as possible that a motive which we commonly rank as
higher may wrongly intrude into the proper sphere of one which we
rank as lower, just as the lower is liable to encroach on the higher;
only since there is very much less danger of the former intrusion,
it naturally falls into the background in ethical discussions and
exhortations that have a practical aim. The matter is complicated
by the further consideration that as the character of a moral agent
becomes better, the motives that we rank as “higher” tend to be
developed, so that their normal sphere of operation is enlarged at
the expense of the lower. Hence there are two distinct aims in moral
regulation and culture, so far as they relate to motives: (1) to keep
the “lower” motive within the limits within which its operation is
considered to be legitimate and good on the whole, so long as we cannot
substitute for it the equally effective operation of a higher motive;
and at the same time (2) to effect this substitution of “higher” for
“lower” gradually, as far as can be done without danger,--up to a limit
which we cannot definitely fix, but which we certainly conceive, for
the most part, as falling short of complete exclusion of the lower
motive.
I may illustrate by reference to the passion of resentment of which
I before spoke. The view of reflective common sense is, I think,
that the malevolent impulse so designated, as long as it is strictly
limited to resentment against wrong and operates in aid of justice,
has a legitimate sphere of action in the social life of human beings
as actually constituted: that, indeed, its suppression would be
gravely mischievous, unless we could at the same time intensify the
ordinary man’s regard for justice or for social well-being so that
the total strength of motives prompting to the punishment of crime
should not be diminished. It is, no doubt, “to be wished,” as Butler
says, that men would repress wrong from these higher motives rather
than from passionate resentment; but we cannot hope to effect this
change in human beings generally except by a slow and gradual process
of elevation of character: therefore supposing a conflict between
“Compassion,” which is highest but one in Dr. Martineau’s scale, and
“Resentment,” which he places about the middle, it is by no means to be
laid down as a general rule that compassion ought to prevail. We ought
rather--with Butler--to regard resentment as a salutary “balance to the
weakness of pity,” which would be liable to prevent the execution of
justice if resentment were excluded.
Or we might similarly take the impulse which comes lowest (among those
not condemned altogether) in Dr. Martineau’s scale--the “Love of Ease
and Sensual Pleasure.” No doubt this impulse, or group of impulses, is
continually leading men to shirk or scamp their strict duty, or to fall
in some less definite way below their own ideal of conduct; hence the
attitude habitually maintained towards it by preachers and practical
moralists is that of repression. Still, common sense surely recognises
that there are cases in which even this impulse ought to prevail over
impulses ranked above it in Dr. Martineau’s scale; we often find
men prompted--say by “love of gain”--to shorten unduly their hours
of recreation; and in the case of a conflict of motives under such
circumstances we should judge it best that victory should remain on the
side of the “love of ease and pleasure,” and that the encroachment of
“love of gain” should be repelled.
I do not, however, think that in either of these instances the
conflict of motives would remain such as I have just described: I think
that though the struggle might begin as a duel between resentment and
compassion, or between love of ease and love of gain, it would not be
fought out in the lists so drawn; since higher motives would inevitably
be called in as the conflict went on, regard for justice and social
well-being on the side of resentment, regard for health and ultimate
efficiency for work on the side of love of ease; and it would be the
intervention of these higher motives that would decide the struggle, so
far as it was decided rightly and as we should approve. This certainly
is what would happen in my own case, if the supposed conflict were at
all serious and its decision deliberate; and this constitutes my final
reason for holding that such a scale as Dr. Martineau has drawn up, of
motives arranged according to their moral rank, can never have more
than a very subordinate ethical importance. I admit that it may serve
to indicate in a rough and general way the kinds of desires which it
is ordinarily best to encourage and indulge, in comparison with other
kinds which are ordinarily likely to compete and collide with them;
and we might thus settle summarily some of the comparatively trifling
conflicts of motive which the varying and complex play of needs,
habits, interests, and their accompanying emotions, continually stirs
in our daily life. But if a serious question of conduct is raised, I
cannot conceive myself deciding it morally by any comparison of motives
below the highest: it seems to me that the question must inevitably be
carried up for decision into the court of whatever motive we regard as
supremely regulative: so that the comparison ultimately decisive would
be not between the lower motives primarily conflicting, but between the
effects of the different lines of conduct to which these lower motives
respectively prompt, considered in relation to whatever we regard as
the ultimate end or ends of reasonable action. And this, I conceive,
will be the course naturally taken by the moral reflection not only of
utilitarians, but of all who follow Butler in regarding our passions
and propensions as forming naturally a “system or constitution,” in
which the ends of lower impulses are subordinate as means to the ends
of certain governing motives, or are comprehended as parts in these
larger ends.
FOOTNOTES:
[271] In Green’s _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book ii. chaps. i. and ii.
a peculiar view is taken of “motives, of that kind by which it is
the characteristic of moral or human action, to be determined.” Such
motives, it is maintained, must be distinguished from desires in the
sense of “mere solicitations of which a man is conscious”; they are
“constituted by the reaction of the man’s self upon these, and its
identification of itself with one of them.” In fact the “direction of
the self-conscious self to the realisation of an object” which I should
call an act of will, is the phenomenon to which Green would restrict
the term “desire in that sense in which desire is the principle and
notion of an imputable human action.”
The use of terms here suggested appears to me inconvenient, and the
psychological analysis implied in it to a great extent erroneous. I
admit that in certain simple cases of choice, where the alternatives
suggested are each prompted by a single definite desire, there is no
psychological inaccuracy in saying that in willing the act to which he
is stimulated by any such desire the agent “identifies himself with the
desire.” But in more complex cases the phrase appears to me incorrect,
as obliterating important distinctions between the two kinds of
psychical phenomena which are usually and conveniently distinguished as
“desires” and volitions. In the first place, as I have before pointed
out (chap. i. § 2 of this Book), it often happens that certain foreseen
consequences of volition, which as foreseen are undoubtedly _willed_
and--in a sense--_chosen_ by the agents, are not objects of desire
to him at all, but even possibly of aversion--aversion, of course,
overcome by his desire of other consequences of the same act. In the
second place, it is specially important, from an ethical point of view,
to notice that, among the various desires or aversions aroused in us
by the complex foreseen consequences of a contemplated act, there are
often impulses with which we do not identify ourselves, but which we
even try to suppress as far as possible: though as it is not possible
to suppress them completely--especially if we do the act to which they
prompt--we cannot say that they do not operate as motives.
[272] Cf. _ante_, chap. i. § 2 of this Book.
[273] Hutcheson, _System of Moral Philosophy_, Book i. chap. iv. § 10.
[274] See the Dissertation _Of the Nature of Virtue_ appended to the
_Analogy_.
[275] The _Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre_: but it ought
to be observed that the ethical view briefly expounded in the _Kritik
der reinen Vernunft_ appears to have much more affinity with Butler’s.
[276] _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. ii. p. 284, 2nd edition.
[277] Cf. _ante_, chap. iv. § 2 of this Book.
[278] _Types of Ethical Theory_, vol. ii. p. 266. Dr. Martineau
explains that the chief composite springs are inserted in their
approximate place, subject to the variations of which their composition
renders them susceptible.
[279] Thus we might ask why the class of “passions” is so strangely
restricted, why conjugal affection is omitted, whether wonder can
properly be regarded as a definite motive, whether “censoriousness” is
properly ranked with “vindictiveness” as one of the “lowest passions,”
etc.
CHAPTER XIII
PHILOSOPHICAL INTUITIONISM
§ 1. Is there, then, no possibility of attaining, by a more profound
and discriminating examination of our common moral thought, to real
ethical axioms--intuitive propositions of real clearness and certainty?
This question leads us to the examination of that third phase of the
intuitive method, which was called Philosophical Intuitionism.[280] For
we conceive it as the aim of a philosopher, as such, to do somewhat
more than define and formulate the common moral opinions of mankind.
His function is to tell men what they ought to think, rather than
what they do think: he is expected to transcend Common Sense in his
premises, and is allowed a certain divergence from Common Sense in his
conclusions. It is true that the limits of this deviation are firmly,
though indefinitely, fixed: the truth of a philosopher’s premises
will always be tested by the acceptability of his conclusions: if
in any important point he be found in flagrant conflict with common
opinion, his method is likely to be declared invalid. Still, though
he is expected to establish and concatenate at least the main part of
the commonly accepted moral rules, he is not necessarily bound to take
them as the basis on which his own system is constructed. Rather, we
should expect that the history of Moral Philosophy--so far at least
as those whom we may call orthodox thinkers are concerned--would be a
history of attempts to enunciate, in full breadth and clearness, those
primary intuitions of Reason, by the scientific application of which
the common moral thought of mankind may be at once systematised and
corrected.
And this is to some extent the case. But Moral Philosophy, or
philosophy as applied to Morality, has had other tasks to occupy
it, even more profoundly difficult than that of penetrating to the
fundamental principles of Duty. In modern times especially, it has
admitted the necessity of demonstrating the harmony of Duty with
Interest; that is, with the Happiness or Welfare of the agent on
whom the duty in each case is imposed. It has also undertaken to
determine the relation of Right or Good generally to the world
of actual existence: a task which could hardly be satisfactorily
accomplished without an adequate explanation of the existence of Evil.
It has further been distracted by questions which, in my view, are of
psychological rather than ethical importance, as to the ‘innateness’
of our notions of Duty, and the origin of the faculty that furnishes
them. With their attention concentrated on these difficult subjects,
each of which has been mixed up in various ways with the discussion
of fundamental moral intuitions, philosophers have too easily been
led to satisfy themselves with ethical formulæ which implicitly
accept the morality of Common Sense _en bloc_, ignoring its defects;
and merely express a certain view of the relation of this morality
to the individual mind or to the universe of actual existence.
Perhaps also they have been hampered by the fear (not, as we have
seen, unfounded) of losing the support given by ‘general assent’ if
they set before themselves and their readers too rigid a standard
of scientific precision. Still, in spite of all these drawbacks, we
find that philosophers have provided us with a considerable number
of comprehensive moral propositions, put forward as certain and
self-evident, and such as at first sight may seem well adapted to serve
as the first principles of scientific morality.
§ 2. But here a word of caution seems required, which has been somewhat
anticipated in earlier chapters, but on which it is particularly
needful to lay stress at this point of our discussion: against a
certain class of sham-axioms, which are very apt to offer themselves
to the mind that is earnestly seeking for a philosophical synthesis of
practical rules, and to delude the unwary with a tempting aspect of
clear self-evidence. These are principles which appear certain and
self-evident because they are substantially tautological: because,
when examined, they are found to affirm no more than that it is right
to do that which is--in a certain department of life, under certain
circumstances and conditions--right to be done. One important lesson
which the history of moral philosophy teaches is that, in this region,
even powerful intellects are liable to acquiesce in tautologies of this
kind; sometimes expanded into circular reasonings, sometimes hidden
in the recesses of an obscure notion, often lying so near the surface
that, when once they have been exposed, it is hard to understand how
they could ever have presented themselves as important.
Let us turn, for illustration’s sake, to the time-honoured Cardinal
Virtues. If we are told that the dictates of Wisdom and Temperance
may be summed up in clear and certain principles, and that these are
respectively,
(1) It is right to act rationally,
(2) It is right that the Lower parts of our nature should be governed
by the Higher,
we do not at first feel that we are not obtaining valuable information.
But when we find (cf. _ante_, chap. xi. § 3) that “acting rationally”
is merely another phrase for “doing what we see to be right,” and,
again, that the “higher part” of our nature to which the rest are to
submit is explained to be Reason, so that “acting temperately” is
only “acting rationally” under the condition of special non-rational
impulses needing to be resisted, the tautology of our “principles” is
obvious. Similarly when we are asked to accept as the principle of
Justice “that we ought to give every man his own,” the definition seems
plausible--until it appears that we cannot define “his own” except as
equivalent to “that which it is right he should have.”
The definitions quoted may be found in modern writers: but it
seems worthy of remark that throughout the ethical speculation of
Greece,[281] such universal affirmations as are presented to us
concerning Virtue or Good conduct seem almost always to be propositions
which can only be defended from the charge of tautology, if they are
understood as definitions of the problem to be solved, and not as
attempts at its solution. For example, Plato and Aristotle appear to
offer as constructive moralists the scientific knowledge on ethical
matters of which Socrates proclaimed the absence; knowledge, that is,
of the Good and Bad in human life. And they seem to be agreed that such
Good as can be realised in the concrete life of men and communities
is chiefly Virtue,--or (as Aristotle more precisely puts it) the
_exercise_ of Virtue: so that the practical part of ethical science
must consist mainly in the knowledge of Virtue. If, however, we ask
how we are to ascertain the kind of conduct which is properly to be
called Virtuous, it does not seem that Plato can tell us more of each
virtue in turn than that it consists in (1) the knowledge of what is
Good in certain circumstances and relations, and (2) such a harmony of
the different elements of man’s appetitive nature, that their resultant
impulse may be always in accordance with this knowledge. But it is just
this knowledge (or at least its principles and method) that we are
expecting him to give us: and to explain to us instead the different
exigencies under which we need it, in no way satisfies our expectation.
Nor, again, does Aristotle bring us much nearer such knowledge by
telling us that the Good in conduct is to be found somewhere between
different kinds of Bad. This at best only indicates the _whereabouts_
of Virtue: it does not give us a method for finding it.
On the Stoic system,[282] as constructed by Zeno and Chrysippus, it is
perhaps unfair to pronounce decisively, from the accounts given of it
by adversaries like Plutarch, and such semi-intelligent expositors as
Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, and Stobæus. But, as far as we can judge
of it, we must pronounce the exposition of its general principles
a complicated enchainment of circular reasonings, by which the
inquirer is continually deluded with an apparent approach to practical
conclusions, and continually led back to the point from which he set
out.
The most characteristic formula of Stoicism seems to have been that
declaring ‘Life according to Nature’ to be the ultimate end of action.
The spring of the motion that sustained this life was in the vegetable
creation a mere unfelt impulse: in animals it was impulse accompanied
with sensation: in man it was the direction of Reason, which in him
was naturally supreme over all merely blind irrational impulses.
What then does Reason direct? ‘To live according to Nature’ is one
answer: and thus we get the circular exposition of ethical doctrine
in its simplest form. Sometimes, however, we are told that it is
‘Life according to Virtue’: which leads us into the circle already
noticed in the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy; as Virtue, by the
Stoics also, is only defined as knowledge of Good and Bad in different
circumstances and relations. Indeed, this latter circle is given by the
Stoics more neatly and perfectly: for with Plato and Aristotle Virtue
was not the _sole_, but only the _chief_ content of the notion Good,
in its application to human life: but in the view of Stoicism the two
notions are absolutely coincident. The result, then, is that Virtue
is knowledge of what is good and ought to be sought or chosen, and of
what is bad and ought to be shunned or rejected: while at the same time
there is nothing good or properly choice-worthy, nothing bad or truly
formidable, except Virtue and Vice respectively. But if Virtue is thus
declared to be a science that has no object except itself, the notion
is inevitably emptied of all practical content. In order, therefore, to
avoid this result and to reconcile their system with common sense, the
Stoics explained that there were other things in human life which were
in a manner preferable, though not strictly good, including in this
class the primary objects of men’s normal impulses. On what principle
then are we to select these objects when our impulses are conflicting
or ambiguous? If we can get an answer to this question, we shall at
length have come to something practical. But here again the Stoic could
find no other general answer except either that we were to choose what
was Reasonable, or that we were to act in accordance with Nature: each
of which answers obviously brings us back into the original circle at a
different point.[283]
In Butler’s use of the Stoic formula, this circular reasoning seems to
be avoided: but it is so only so long as the intrinsic reasonableness
of right conduct is ignored or suppressed. Butler assumes with his
opponents that it is reasonable to live according to Nature, and argues
that Conscience or the faculty that imposes moral rules is naturally
supreme in man. It is therefore reasonable to obey Conscience. But
are the rules that Conscience lays down merely known to us as the
dictates of arbitrary authority, and not as in themselves reasonable?
This would give a surely dangerous absoluteness of authority to the
possibly unenlightened conscience of any individual: and Butler is
much too cautious to do this: in fact, in more than one passage of the
_Analogy_[284] he expressly adopts the doctrine of Clarke, that the
true rules of morality are essentially reasonable. But if Conscience
is, after all, Reason applied to Practice, then Butler’s argument seems
to bend itself into the old circle: ‘it is reasonable to live according
to Nature, and it is natural to live according to Reason.’
In the next chapter I shall have to call attention to another logical
circle into which we are liable to slide, if we refer to the Good or
Perfection, whether of the agent or of others, in giving an account
of any special virtue; if we allow ourselves, in explaining Good or
Perfection, to use the general notion of virtue (which is commonly
regarded as an important element of either). Meanwhile I have already
given, perhaps, more than sufficient illustration of one of the most
important dangers that beset the students of Ethics. In the laudable
attempt to escape from the doubtfulness, disputableness, and apparent
arbitrariness of current moral opinions, he is liable to take refuge in
principles that are incontrovertible but tautological and insignificant.
§ 3. Can we then, between this Scylla and Charybdis of ethical inquiry,
avoiding on the one hand doctrines that merely bring us back to common
opinion with all its imperfections, and on the other hand doctrines
that lead us round in a circle, find any way of obtaining self-evident
moral principles of real significance? It would be disheartening
to have to regard as altogether illusory the strong instinct of
Common Sense that points to the existence of such principles, and
the deliberate convictions of the long line of moralists who have
enunciated them. At the same time, the more we extend our knowledge
of man and his environment, the more we realise the vast variety of
human natures and circumstances that have existed in different ages
and countries, the less disposed we are to believe that there is any
definite code of absolute rules, applicable to all human beings without
exception. And we shall find, I think, that the truth lies between
these two conclusions. There are certain absolute practical principles,
the truth of which, when they are explicitly stated, is manifest; but
they are of too abstract a nature, and too universal in their scope,
to enable us to ascertain by immediate application of them what we
ought to do in any particular case; particular duties have still to be
determined by some other method.
One such principle was given in chap. i. § 3 of this Book; where I
pointed out that whatever action any of us judges to be right for
himself, he implicitly judges to be right for all similar persons in
similar circumstances. Or, as we may otherwise put it, ‘if a kind of
conduct that is right (or wrong) for me is not right (or wrong) for
some one else, it must be on the ground of some difference between the
two cases, other than the fact that I and he are different persons.’
A corresponding proposition may be stated with equal truth in respect
of what ought to be done _to_--not _by_--different individuals. These
principles have been most widely recognised, not in their most abstract
and universal form, but in their special application to the situation
of two (or more) individuals similarly related to each other: as so
applied, they appear in what is popularly known as the Golden Rule, ‘Do
to others as you would have them do to you.’ This formula is obviously
unprecise in statement; for one might wish for another’s co-operation
in sin, and be willing to reciprocate it. Nor is it even true to say
that we ought to do to others only what we think it right for them to
do to us; for no one will deny that there may be differences in the
circumstances--and even in the natures--of two individuals, _A_ and
_B_, which would make it wrong for _A_ to treat _B_ in the way in which
it is right for _B_ to treat _A_. In short the self-evident principle
strictly stated must take some such negative form as this; ‘it cannot
be right for _A_ to treat _B_ in a manner in which it would be wrong
for _B_ to treat _A_, merely on the ground that they are two different
individuals, and without there being any difference between the natures
or circumstances of the two which can be stated as a reasonable ground
for difference of treatment.’ Such a principle manifestly does not give
complete guidance--indeed its effect, strictly speaking, is merely to
throw a definite _onus probandi_ on the man who applies to another a
treatment of which he would complain if applied to himself; but Common
Sense has amply recognised the practical importance of the maxim: and
its truth, so far as it goes, appears to me self-evident.
A somewhat different application of the same fundamental principle that
individuals in similar conditions should be treated similarly finds
its sphere in the ordinary administration of Law, or (as we say) of
‘Justice.’ Accordingly in § 1 of chap. v. of this Book I drew attention
to ‘impartiality in the application of general rules,’ as an important
element in the common notion of Justice; indeed, there ultimately
appeared to be no other element which could be intuitively known with
perfect clearness and certainty. Here again it must be plain that this
precept of impartiality is insufficient for the complete determination
of just conduct, as it does not help us to decide what kind of rules
should be thus impartially applied; though all admit the importance of
excluding from government, and human conduct generally, all conscious
partiality and ‘respect of persons.’
The principle just discussed, which seems to be more or less clearly
implied in the common notion of ‘fairness’ or ‘equity,’ is obtained
by considering the similarity of the individuals that make up a
Logical Whole or Genus. There are others, no less important, which
emerge in the consideration of the similar parts of a Mathematical or
Quantitative Whole. Such a Whole is presented in the common notion
of the Good--or, as is sometimes said, ‘good on the whole’--of any
individual human being. The proposition ‘that one ought to aim at
one’s own good’ is sometimes given as the maxim of Rational Self-love
or Prudence: but as so stated it does not clearly avoid tautology;
since we may define ‘good’ as ‘what one ought to aim at.’ If, however,
we say ‘one’s good on the whole,’ the addition suggests a principle
which, when explicitly stated, is, at any rate, not tautological. I
have already referred to this principle[285] as that ‘of impartial
concern for all parts of our conscious life’:--we might express it
concisely by saying ‘that Hereafter _as such_ is to be regarded neither
less nor more than Now.’ It is not, of course, meant that the good of
the present may not reasonably be preferred to that of the future on
account of its greater certainty: or again, that a week ten years hence
may not be more important to us than a week now, through an increase in
our means or capacities of happiness. All that the principle affirms
is that the mere difference of priority and posteriority in time is
not a reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of
one moment that to that of another. The form in which it practically
presents itself to most men is ‘that a smaller present good is not to
be preferred to a greater future good’ (allowing for difference of
certainty): since Prudence is generally exercised in restraining a
present desire (the object or satisfaction of which we commonly regard
as _pro tanto_ ‘a good’), on account of the remoter consequences of
gratifying it. The commonest view of the principle would no doubt be
that the present _pleasure_ or _happiness_ is reasonably to be foregone
with the view of obtaining greater pleasure or happiness hereafter: but
the principle need not be restricted to a hedonistic application; it is
equally applicable to any other interpretation of ‘one’s own good,’ in
which good is conceived as a mathematical whole, of which the integrant
parts are realised in different parts or moments of a lifetime.
And therefore it is perhaps better to distinguish it here from the
principle ‘that Pleasure is the sole Ultimate Good,’ which does not
seem to have any logical connexion with it.
So far we have only been considering the ‘Good on the Whole’ of a
single individual: but just as this notion is constructed by comparison
and integration of the different ‘goods’ that succeed one another
in the series of our conscious states, so we have formed the notion
of Universal Good by comparison and integration of the goods of all
individual human--or sentient--existences. And here again, just as in
the former case, by considering the relation of the integrant parts to
the whole and to each other, I obtain the self-evident principle that
the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point
of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other;
unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more
good is likely to be realised in the one case than in the other. And
it is evident to me that as a rational being I am bound to aim at good
generally,--so far as it is attainable by my efforts,--not merely at a
particular part of it.
From these two rational intuitions we may deduce, as a necessary
inference, the maxim of Benevolence in an abstract form: viz. that
each one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual
as much as his own, except in so far as he judges it to be less,
when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by
him. I before observed that the duty of Benevolence as recognised by
common sense seems to fall somewhat short of this. But I think it may
be fairly urged in explanation of this that _practically_ each man,
even with a view to universal Good, ought chiefly to concern himself
with promoting the good of a limited number of human beings, and that
generally in proportion to the closeness of their connexion with him.
I think that a ‘plain man,’ in a modern civilised society, if his
conscience were fairly brought to consider the hypothetical question,
whether it would be morally right for him to seek his own happiness
on any occasion if it involved a certain sacrifice of the greater
happiness of some other human being,--without any counterbalancing gain
to any one else,--would answer unhesitatingly in the negative.
I have tried to show how in the principles of Justice, Prudence,
and Rational Benevolence as commonly recognised there is at least a
self-evident element, immediately cognisable by abstract intuition;
depending in each case on the relation which individuals and their
particular ends bear as parts to their wholes, and to other parts
of these wholes. I regard the apprehension, with more or less
distinctness, of these abstract truths, as the permanent basis of
the common conviction that the fundamental precepts of morality are
essentially reasonable. No doubt these principles are often placed
side by side with other precepts to which custom and general consent
have given a merely illusory air of self-evidence: but the distinction
between the two kinds of maxims appears to me to become manifest
by merely reflecting upon them. I know by direct reflection that
the propositions, ‘I ought to speak the truth,’ ‘I ought to keep my
promises’--however true they may be--are not self-evident to me; they
present themselves as propositions requiring rational justification
of some kind. On the other hand, the propositions, ‘I ought not to
prefer a present lesser good to a future greater good,’ and ‘I ought
not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another,’[286]
do present themselves as self-evident; as much (_e.g._) as the
mathematical axiom that ‘if equals be added to equals the wholes are
equal.’
It is on account of the fundamental and manifest importance, in my
view, of the distinction above drawn between (1) the moral maxims
which reflection shows not to possess ultimate validity, and (2) the
moral maxims which are or involve genuine ethical axioms, that I
refrained at the outset of this investigation from entering at length
into the psychogonical question as to the origin of apparent moral
intuitions. For no psychogonical theory has ever been put forward
professing to discredit the propositions that I regard as really
axiomatic, by showing that the causes which produced them were such
as had a tendency to make them false: while as regards the former
class of maxims, a psychogonical proof that they are untrustworthy
when taken as absolutely and without qualification true is in my view,
superfluous: since direct reflection shows me they have no claim to be
so taken. On the other hand, so far as psychogonical theory represents
moral rules as, speaking broadly and generally, means to the ends of
individual and social good or well-being, it obviously tends to give a
general support to the conclusions to which the preceding discussion
has brought us by a different method: since it leads us to regard
other moral rules as subordinate to the principles of Prudence and
Benevolence.[287]
§ 4. I should, however, rely less confidently on the conclusions set
forth in the preceding section, if they did not appear to me to be
in substantial agreement--in spite of superficial differences--with
the doctrines of those moralists who have been most in earnest in
seeking among commonly received moral rules for genuine intuitions
of the Practical Reason. I have already pointed out[288] that in the
history of English Ethics the earlier intuitional school show, in this
respect, a turn of thought on the whole more philosophical than that
which the reaction against Hume rendered prevalent. Among the writers
of this school there is no one who shows more earnestness in the effort
to penetrate to really self-evident principles than Clarke.[289]
Accordingly, I find that Clarke lays down, in respect of our behaviour
towards our fellow-men, two fundamental “rules of righteousness”:[290]
the first of which he terms Equity, and the second Love or Benevolence.
The Rule of Equity he states thus: “Whatever I judge reasonable or
unreasonable that another should do for me: that by the same judgment
I declare reasonable or unreasonable that I should _in the like case_
do for him”[291]--which is of course, the ‘Golden Rule’ precisely
stated. The obligation to “Universal Love or Benevolence” he exhibits
as follows:--
“If there be a natural and necessary difference between Good and
Evil: and that which is Good is fit and reasonable, and that which
is Evil is unreasonable, to be done: and that which is the Greatest
Good is always the most fit and reasonable to be chosen: then ...
every rational creature ought in its sphere and station, according
to its respective powers and faculties, to do all the Good it can to
its fellow-creatures: to which end, universal Love and Benevolence is
plainly the most certain, direct, and effectual means.”[292]
Here the mere statement that a rational agent is bound to aim at
universal good is open to the charge of tautology, since Clarke defines
‘Good’ as ’that which is fit and reasonable to be done.’ But Clarke
obviously holds that each individual ‘rational creature’ is capable
of receiving good in a greater or less degree, such good being an
integrant part of universal good. This indeed is implied in the common
notion, which he uses, of ‘doing Good to one’s fellow-creatures,’ or,
as he otherwise expresses it, ‘promoting their welfare and happiness.’
And thus his principle is implicitly what was stated above, that the
good or welfare of any one individual must as such be an object of
rational aim to any other reasonable individual no less than his own
similar good or welfare.
(It should be observed, however, that the proposition that Universal
Benevolence is the right means to the attainment of universal good, is
not quite self-evident; since the end may not always be best attained
by directly aiming at it. Thus Rational Benevolence, like Rational
Self-Love, may be self-limiting; may direct its own partial suppression
in favour of other impulses.)
Among later moralists, Kant is especially noted for his rigour in
separating the purely rational element of the moral code: and his
ethical view also appears to me to coincide to a considerable extent,
if not completely, with that set forth in the preceding section.
I have already noticed that his fundamental principle of duty is
the ‘formal’ rule of “acting on a maxim that one can will to be law
universal”; which, duly restricted,[293] is an immediate practical
corollary from the principle that I first noticed in the preceding
section. And we find that when he comes to consider the ends at which
virtuous action is aimed, the only really ultimate end which he lays
down is the object of Rational Benevolence as commonly conceived--the
happiness of other men.[294] He regards it as evident _a priori_ that
each man as a rational agent is bound to aim at the happiness of other
men: indeed, in his view, it can only be stated as a _duty_ for me
to seek my own happiness so far as I consider it as a part of the
happiness of mankind in general. I disagree with the negative side of
this statement, as I hold with Butler that “one’s own happiness is a
manifest obligation” independently of one’s relation to other men; but,
regarded on its positive side, Kant’s conclusion appears to agree to a
great extent with the view of the duty of Rational Benevolence that I
have given:--though I am not altogether able to assent to the arguments
by which Kant arrives at his conclusion.[295]
§ 5. I must now point out--if it has not long been apparent to the
reader--that the self-evident principles laid down in § 3 do not
specially belong to Intuitionism in the restricted sense which, for
clear distinction of methods, I gave to this term at the outset of
our investigation. The axiom of Prudence, as I have given it, is
a self-evident principle, implied in Rational Egoism as commonly
accepted.[296] Again, the axiom of Justice or Equity as above
stated--‘that similar cases ought to be treated similarly’--belongs
in all its applications to Utilitarianism as much as to any system
commonly called Intuitional: while the axiom of Rational Benevolence
is, in my view, required as a rational basis for the Utilitarian system.
Accordingly, I find that I arrive, in my search for really clear
and certain ethical intuitions, at the fundamental principle of
Utilitarianism. I must, however, admit that the thinkers who in
recent times have taught this latter system, have not, for the most
part, expressly tried to exhibit the truth of their first principle
by means of any such procedure as that above given. Still, when I
examine the “proof” of the “principle of Utility” presented by the most
persuasive and probably the most influential among English expositors
of Utilitarianism,--J. S. Mill,--I find the need of some such procedure
to complete the argument very plain and palpable.
Mill begins by explaining[297] that though “questions of ultimate ends
are not amenable” to “proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the
term,” there is a “larger meaning of the word proof” in which they
are amenable to it. “The subject,” he says, is “within the cognisance
of the rational faculty.... Considerations may be presented capable
of determining the intellect to” accept “the Utilitarian formula.”
He subsequently makes clear that by “acceptance of the Utilitarian
formula” he means the acceptance, not of the agent’s own greatest
happiness, but of “the greatest amount of happiness altogether” as the
ultimate “end of human action” and “standard of morality”: to promote
which is, in the Utilitarian view, the supreme “directive rule of human
conduct.” Then when he comes to give the “proof”--in the larger sense
before explained--of this rule or formula, he offers the following
argument. “The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything
is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.... No reason can
be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each
person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own
happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof
which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that
happiness is a good: that each person’s happiness is a good to that
person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate
of persons.”[298] He then goes on to argue that pleasure, and pleasure
alone, is what all men actually do desire.
Now, as we have seen, it is as a “standard of right and wrong,” or
“directive rule of conduct,” that the utilitarian principle is put
forward by Mill: hence, in giving as a statement of this principle
that “the general happiness is _desirable_,” he must be understood to
mean (and his whole treatise shows that he does mean) that it is what
each individual _ought_ to desire, or at least--in the stricter sense
of ‘ought’--to aim at realising in action.[299] But this proposition
is not established by Mill’s reasoning, even if we grant that what
is actually desired may be legitimately inferred to be in this sense
desirable. For an aggregate of actual desires, each directed towards a
different part of the general happiness, does not constitute an actual
desire for the general happiness, existing in any individual; and Mill
would certainly not contend that a desire which does not exist in any
individual can possibly exist in an aggregate of individuals. There
being therefore no actual desire--so far as this reasoning goes--for
the general happiness, the proposition that the general happiness is
desirable cannot be in this way established: so that there is a gap
in the expressed argument, which can, I think, only be filled by some
such proposition as that which I have above tried to exhibit as the
intuition of Rational Benevolence.
Utilitarianism is thus presented as the final form into which
Intuitionism tends to pass, when the demand for really self-evident
first principles is rigorously pressed. In order, however, to make this
transition logically complete, we require to interpret ‘Universal Good’
as ‘Universal Happiness.’ And this interpretation cannot, in my view,
be justified by arguing, as Mill does, from the psychological fact that
Happiness is the sole object of men’s actual desires, to the ethical
conclusion that it alone is desirable or good; because in Book i.
chap. iv. of this treatise I have attempted to show that Happiness or
Pleasure is not the only object that each for himself actually desires.
The identification of Ultimate Good with Happiness is properly to be
reached, I think, by a more indirect mode of reasoning; which I will
endeavour to explain in the next Chapter.
NOTE.--The great influence at present exercised by Kant’s teaching
makes it worth while to state briefly the arguments by which he
attempts to establish the duty of promoting the happiness of others,
and the reasons why I am unable to regard these arguments as cogent.
In some passages he attempts to exhibit this duty as an immediate
deduction from his fundamental formula--“act from a maxim that thou
canst will to be universal law”--when considered in combination with
the desire for the kind services of others which (as he assumes) the
exigencies of life must arouse in every man. The maxim, he says,
“that each should be left to take care of himself without either aid
or interference,” is one that we might indeed _conceive_ existing
as a universal law: but it would be impossible for us to _will_
it to be such. “A will that resolved this would be inconsistent
with itself, for many cases may arise in which the individual thus
willing needs the benevolence and sympathy of others” (_Grundlegung_,
p. 50 [Rosenkrantz]). Similarly elsewhere (_Metaph. Anfangsgr. d.
Tugendlehre_, Einleit. § 8 and § 30) he explains at more length that
the Self-love which necessarily exists in every one involves the
desire of being loved by others and receiving aid from them in case of
need. We thus necessarily constitute ourselves an end for others, and
claim that they shall contribute to our happiness: and so, according
to Kant’s fundamental principle, we must recognise the duty of making
_their_ happiness _our_ end.
Now I cannot regard this reasoning as strictly cogent. In the first
place, that every man in need wishes for the aid of others is an
empirical proposition which Kant cannot know _a priori_. We can
certainly conceive a man in whom the spirit of independence and the
distaste for incurring obligations would be so strong that he would
choose to endure any privations rather than receive aid from others.
But even granting that every one, in the actual moment of distress,
must necessarily wish for the assistance of others; still a strong
man, after balancing the chances of life, may easily think that he and
such as he have more to gain, on the whole, by the general adoption
of the egoistic maxim; benevolence being likely to bring them more
trouble than profit.
In other passages, however, Kant reaches the same conclusion by an
apparently different line of argument. He lays down that, as all
action of rational beings is done for some end, there must be some
absolute end, corresponding to the absolute rule before given, that
imposes on our maxims the form of universal law. This absolute end,
prescribed by Reason necessarily and _a priori_ for all rational
beings as such, can be nothing but Reason itself, or the Universe of
Rationals; for what the rule inculcates is, in fact, that we should
act as rational units in a universe of rational beings (and therefore
on principles conceived and embraced as universally applicable). Or
again, we may reach the same result negatively. For all particular
ends at which men aim are constituted such by the existence of
impulses directed towards some particular objects. Now we cannot
tell _a priori_ that any one of these special impulses forms part of
the constitution of all men: and therefore we cannot state it as an
absolute dictate of Reason that we should aim at any such special
object. If, then, we thus exclude all particular empirical ends, there
remains only the principle that “all Rational beings as such are ends
to each”: or, as Kant sometimes puts it, that “humanity exists as an
end in itself.”
Now, says Kant, so long as I confine myself to mere non-interference
with others, I do not positively make Humanity my end; my aims remain
selfish, though restricted by this condition of non-interference with
others. My action, therefore, is not truly virtuous; for Virtue is
exhibited and consists in the effort to realise the end of Reason
in opposition to mere selfish impulses. Therefore “the ends of the
subject, which is itself an end, must of necessity be my ends, if the
representation of Humanity as an end in itself is to have its full
weight with me” (_Grundlegung_, p. 59), and my action is to be truly
rational and virtuous.
Here, again, I cannot accept the form of Kant’s argument. The
conception of “humanity as an end in itself” is perplexing: because by
an End we commonly mean something to be realised, whereas “humanity”
is, as Kant says, “a self-subsistent end”: moreover, there seems to be
a sort of paralogism in the deduction of the principle of Benevolence
by means of this conception. For the humanity which Kant maintains to
be an end in itself is Man (or the aggregate of men) _in so far as
rational_. But the subjective ends of other men, which Benevolence
directs us to take as our own ends, would seem, according to Kant’s
own view, to depend upon and correspond to their _non-rational_
impulses--their empirical desires and aversions. It is hard to see
why, if man _as a rational being_ is an absolute end to other rational
beings, they must therefore adopt his subjective aims as determined by
his non-rational impulses.
FOOTNOTES:
[280] Cf. _ante_, Book i. chap. viii. § 4.
[281] I am fully sensible of the peculiar interest and value of the
ethical thought of ancient Greece. Indeed through a large part of the
present work the influence of Plato and Aristotle on my treatment of
this subject has been greater than that of any modern writer. But
I am here only considering the value of the general principles for
determining what ought to be done, which the ancient systems profess to
supply.
[282] The following remarks apply less to _later_ Stoicism--especially
the Roman Stoicism which we know at first hand in the writings of
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius; in which the relation of the individual man
to Humanity generally is more prominent than it is in the earlier form
of the system.
[283] It should be observed that in determining the particulars of
external duty the Stoics to some extent used the notion ‘nature’
in a different way: they tried to derive guidance from the complex
adaptation of means to ends exhibited in the organic world. But since
in their view the whole course of the Universe was both perfect and
completely predetermined, it was impossible for them to obtain from
any observation of actual existence a clear and consistent principle
for preferring and rejecting alternatives of conduct: and in fact
their most characteristic practical precepts show a curious conflict
between the tendency to accept what was customary as ‘natural,’ and the
tendency to reject what seemed arbitrary as unreasonable.
[284] Cf. _Analogy_, Part ii. chap. i. and chap. viii.
[285] Cf. _ante_, note to p. 124.
[286] To avoid misapprehension I should state that in these
propositions the consideration of the different degrees of _certainty_
of Present and Future Good, Own and Others’ Good respectively, is
supposed to have been fully taken into account _before_ the future or
alien Good is judged to be greater.
[287] It may, however, be thought that in exhibiting this aspect of the
morality of Common Sense, psychogonical theory leads us to define in a
particular way the general notion of ‘good’ or ‘well-being,’ regarded
as a result which morality has a demonstrable natural tendency to
produce. This point will be considered subsequently (chap. xiv. § 1 of
this Book: and Book iv. chap. iv.).
[288] Cf. _ante_, Book i. chap. viii. Note, pp. 103, 104.
[289] In drawing attention to Clarke’s system, I ought perhaps to
remark that his anxiety to exhibit the parallelism between ethical and
mathematical truth (on which Locke before him had insisted) renders
his general terminology inappropriate, and occasionally leads him into
downright extravagances. _E.g._ it is patently absurd to say that “a
man who wilfully acts contrary to Justice wills things to be what
they are not and cannot be”: nor are “Relations and Proportions” or
“fitnesses and unfitnesses of things” very suitable designations for
the matter of moral intuition. But for the present purpose there is no
reason to dwell on these defects.
[290] Clarke’s statement of the “Rule of Righteousness with respect to
ourselves” I pass over, because it is, as he states it, a derivative
and subordinate rule. It is that we should preserve our being, be
temperate, industrious, etc., _with a view to the performance of Duty_:
which of course supposes Duty (_i.e._ the ultimate and absolute rules
of Duty) already determined. I may observe that the reasonableness of
Prudence or Self-love is only recognised by Clarke indirectly; in a
passage which I quoted before (p. 120).
[291] _Boyle Lectures_ (1705), etc., pp. 86, 87.
[292] _l.c._ p. 92.
[293] I think that Kant, in applying this axiom, does not take due
account of certain restrictive considerations. Cf. chap. vii. § 3 of
this Book, and also Book iv. chap. v. § 3.
[294] Kant no doubt gives the agent’s own Perfection as another
absolute end; but when we come to examine his notion of perfection, we
find that it is not really determinate without the statement of other
ends of reason, for the accomplishment of which we are to perfect
ourselves. See _Met. Anfangsgr. d. Tugendlehre_, I. Theil, § v. “The
perfection that belongs to men generally ... can be nothing else than
the cultivation of one’s power, and also of one’s will, to satisfy the
requirements of duty in general.”
[295] See note at the end of the chapter.
[296] On the relation of Rational Egoism to Rational Benevolence--which
I regard as the profoundest problem of Ethics--my final view is given
in the last chapter of this treatise.
[297] _Utilitarianism_, chap. i. pp. 6, 7, and chap. ii. pp. 16, 17.
[298] _l.c._ chap. iv. pp. 52, 53.
[299] It has been suggested that I have overlooked a confusion in
Mill’s mind between two possible meanings of the term ‘desirable,’ (1)
what can be desired and (2) what ought to be desired. I intended to
show by the two first sentences of this paragraph that I was aware of
this confusion, but thought it unnecessary for my present purpose to
discuss it.
CHAPTER XIV
ULTIMATE GOOD
§ 1. At the outset of this treatise[300] I noticed that there are
two forms in which the object of ethical inquiry is considered; it
is sometimes regarded as a Rule or Rules of Conduct, ‘the Right,’
sometimes as an end or ends, ‘the Good.’ I pointed out that in the
moral consciousness of modern Europe the two notions are _prima facie_
distinct; since while it is commonly thought that the obligation
to obey moral rules is absolute, it is not commonly held that the
whole Good of man lies in such obedience; this view, we may say,
is--vaguely and respectfully but unmistakably--repudiated as a Stoical
paradox. The ultimate Good or Wellbeing of man is rather regarded as
an ulterior result, the connexion of which with his Right Conduct
is indeed commonly held to be certain, but is frequently conceived
as supernatural, and so beyond the range of independent ethical
speculation. But now, if the conclusions of the preceding chapters are
to be trusted, it would seem that the practical determination of Right
Conduct depends on the determination of Ultimate Good. For we have
seen (_a_) that most of the commonly received maxims of Duty--even of
those which at first sight appear absolute and independent--are found
when closely examined to contain an implicit subordination to the more
general principles of Prudence and Benevolence: and (_b_) that no
principles except these, and the formal principle of Justice or Equity
can be admitted as at once intuitively clear and certain; while, again,
these principles themselves, so far as they are self-evident, may be
stated as precepts to seek (1) one’s own good on the whole, repressing
all seductive impulses prompting to undue preference of particular
goods, and (2) others’ good no less than one’s own, repressing any
undue preference for one individual over another. Thus we are brought
round again to the old question with which ethical speculation in
Europe began, ‘What is the Ultimate Good for man?’--though not in the
egoistic form in which the old question was raised. When, however, we
examine the controversies to which this question originally led, we
see that the investigation which has brought us round to it has tended
definitely to exclude one of the answers which early moral reflection
was disposed to give to it. For to say that ‘General Good’ consists
solely in general Virtue,--if we mean by Virtue conformity to such
prescriptions and prohibitions as make up the main part of the morality
of Common Sense--would obviously involve us in a logical circle; since
we have seen that the exact determination of these prescriptions and
prohibitions must depend on the definition of this General Good.
Nor, I conceive, can this argument be evaded by adopting the view of
what I have called ‘Æsthetic Intuitionism’ and regarding Virtues as
excellences of conduct clearly discernible by trained insight, although
their nature does not admit of being stated in definite formulæ. For
our notions of special virtues do not really become more independent
by becoming more indefinite: they still contain, though perhaps more
latently, the same reference to ‘Good’ or ‘Wellbeing’ as an ultimate
standard. This appears clearly when we consider any virtue in relation
to the cognate vice--or at least _non-virtue_--into which it tends to
pass over when pushed to an extreme, or exhibited under inappropriate
conditions. For example, Common Sense may seem to regard Liberality,
Frugality, Courage, Placability, as intrinsically desirable: but
when we consider their relation respectively to Profusion, Meanness,
Foolhardiness, Weakness, we find that Common Sense draws the line
in each case not by immediate intuition, but by reference either to
some definite maxim of duty, or to the general notion of ‘Good’ or
Wellbeing: and similarly when we ask at what point Candour, Generosity,
Humility cease to be virtues by becoming ‘excessive.’ Other qualities
commonly admired, such as Energy, Zeal, Self-control, Thoughtfulness,
are obviously regarded as virtues only when they are directed to
good ends. In short, the only so-called Virtues which can be thought
to be essentially and always such, and incapable of excess, are such
qualities as Wisdom, Universal Benevolence, and (in a sense) Justice;
of which the notions manifestly involve this notion of Good, supposed
already determinate. Wisdom is insight into Good and the means to
Good; Benevolence is exhibited in the purposive actions called “doing
Good”: Justice (when regarded as essentially and always a Virtue) lies
in distributing Good (or evil) impartially according to right rules.
If then we are asked what is this Good which it is excellent to know,
to bestow on others, to distribute impartially, it would be obviously
absurd to reply that it is just this knowledge, these beneficent
purposes, this impartial distribution.
Nor, again, can I perceive that this difficulty is in any way met by
regarding Virtue as a quality of “character” rather than of “conduct,”
and expressing the moral law in the form, “Be this,” instead of the
form “Do this.”[301] From a practical point of view, indeed, I fully
recognise the importance of urging that men should aim at an ideal
of character, and consider action in its effects on character. But I
cannot infer from this that character and its elements--faculties,
habits, or dispositions of any kind--are the constituents of Ultimate
Good. It seems to me that the opposite is implied in the very
conception of a faculty or disposition; it can only be defined as a
tendency to act or feel in a certain way under certain conditions; and
such a tendency appears to me clearly not valuable in itself but for
the acts and feelings in which it takes effect, or for the ulterior
consequences of these,--which consequences, again, cannot be regarded
as Ultimate Good, so long as they are merely conceived as modifications
of faculties, dispositions, etc. When, therefore, I say that effects
on character are important, it is a summary way of saying that by the
laws of our mental constitution the present act or feeling is a cause
tending to modify importantly our acts and feelings in the indefinite
future: the comparatively permanent result supposed to be produced
in the mind or soul, being a tendency that will show itself in an
indefinite number of particular acts and feelings, may easily be more
important, in relation to the ultimate end, than a single act or the
transient feeling of a single moment: but its comparative permanence
appears to me no ground for regarding it as itself a constituent of
ultimate good.
§ 2. So far, however, I have been speaking only of particular virtues,
as exhibited in conduct judged to be objectively right: and it may be
argued that this is too external a view of the Virtue that claims to
constitute Ultimate Good. It may be said that the difficulty that I
have been urging vanishes if we penetrate beyond the particular virtues
to the root and essence of virtue in general,--the determination of
the will to do whatever is judged to be right and to aim at realising
whatever is judged to be best--; since this subjective rightness or
goodness of will, being independent of knowledge of what is objectively
right or good, is independent of that presupposition of Good as already
known and determined, which we have seen to be implied in the common
conceptions of virtue as manifested in outward acts. I admit that if
subjective rightness or goodness of Will is affirmed to be the Ultimate
Good, the affirmation does not exactly involve the logical difficulty
that I have been urging. None the less is it fundamentally opposed to
Common Sense; since the very notion of subjective rightness or goodness
of will implies an objective standard, which it directs us to seek, but
does not profess to supply. It would be a palpable and violent paradox
to set before the right-seeking mind no end except this right-seeking
itself, and to affirm this to be the sole Ultimate Good, denying
that any effects of right volition can be in themselves good, except
the subjective rightness of future volitions, whether of self or of
others. It is true that no rule can be recognised, by any reasonable
individual, as more authoritative than the rule of doing what he judges
to be right; for, in deliberating with a view to my own immediate
action, I cannot distinguish between doing what is objectively right,
and realising my own subjective conception of rightness. But we are
continually forced to make the distinction as regards the actions
of others and to judge that conduct may be objectively wrong though
subjectively right: and we continually judge conduct to be objectively
wrong because it tends to cause pain and loss of happiness to
others,--apart from any effect on the subjective rightness of their
volitions. It is as so judging that we commonly recognise the mischief
and danger of fanaticism:--meaning by a fanatic a man who resolutely
and unswervingly carries out his own conception of rightness, when it
is a plainly mistaken conception.
The same result may be reached even without supposing so palpable a
divorce between subjective and objective rightness of volition as
is implied in the notion of fanaticism. As I have already pointed
out,[302] though the ‘dictates of Reason’ are always to be obeyed, it
does not follow that ‘the dictation of Reason’--the predominance of
consciously moral over non-moral motives--is to be promoted without
limits; and indeed Common Sense appears to hold that some things
are likely to be better done, if they are done from other motives
than conscious obedience to practical Reason or Conscience. It thus
becomes a practical question how far the dictation of Reason, the
predominance of moral choice and moral effort in human life, is a
result to be aimed at: and the admission of this question implies that
conscious rightness of volition is not the sole ultimate good. On the
whole, then, we may conclude that neither (1) subjective rightness or
goodness of volition, as distinct from objective, nor (2) virtuous
character, except as manifested or realised in virtuous conduct, can be
regarded as constituting Ultimate Good: while, again, we are precluded
from identifying Ultimate Good with virtuous conduct, because our
conceptions of virtuous conduct, under the different heads or aspects
denoted by the names of the particular virtues, have been found to
presuppose the prior determination of the notion of Good--that Good
which virtuous conduct is conceived as producing or promoting or
rightly distributing.
And what has been said of Virtue, seems to me still more manifestly
true of the other talents, gifts, and graces which make up the common
notion of human excellence or Perfection. However immediately the
excellent quality of such gifts and skills may be recognised and
admired, reflection shows that they are only valuable on account of
the good or desirable conscious life in which they are or will be
actualised, or which will be somehow promoted by their exercise.
§ 3. Shall we then say that Ultimate Good is Good or Desirable
conscious or sentient Life--of which Virtuous action is one element,
but not the sole constituent? This seems in harmony with Common Sense;
and the fact that particular virtues and talents and gifts are largely
valued as means to ulterior good does not necessarily prevent us from
regarding their exercise as also an element of Ultimate Good: just as
the fact that physical action, nutrition, and repose, duly proportioned
and combined, are means to the maintenance of our animal life, does
not prevent us from regarding them as indispensable elements of such
life. Still it seems difficult to conceive any kind of activity or
process as both means and end, from precisely the same point of view
and in respect of precisely the same quality: and in both the cases
above mentioned it is, I think, easy to distinguish the aspect in
which the activities or processes in question are to be regarded as
means from that in which they are to be regarded as in themselves
good or desirable. Let us examine this first in the case of the
physical processes. It is in their purely physical aspect, as complex
processes of corporeal change, that they are means to the maintenance
of life: but so long as we confine our attention to their corporeal
aspect,--regarding them merely as complex movements of certain
particles of organised matter--it seems impossible to attribute to
these movements, considered in themselves, either goodness or badness.
I cannot conceive it to be an ultimate end of rational action to secure
that these complex movements should be of one kind rather than another,
or that they should be continued for a longer rather than a shorter
period. In short, if a certain quality of human Life is that which is
ultimately desirable, it must belong to human Life regarded on its
psychical side, or, briefly, Consciousness.
But again: it is not all life regarded on its psychical side which we
can judge to be ultimately desirable: since psychical life as known to
us includes pain as well as pleasure, and so far as it is painful it
is not desirable. I cannot therefore accept a view of the wellbeing or
welfare of human beings--as of other living things--which is suggested
by current zoological conceptions and apparently maintained with more
or less definiteness by influential writers; according to which, when
we attribute goodness or badness to the manner of existence of any
living organism, we should be understood to attribute to it a tendency
either (1) to self-preservation, or (2) to the preservation of the
community or race to which it belongs--so that what “Wellbeing” adds
to mere “Being” is just promise of future being. It appears to me that
this doctrine needs only to be distinctly contemplated in order to be
rejected. If all life were as little desirable as some portions of
it have been, in my own experience and in that (I believe) of all or
most men, I should judge all tendency to the preservation of it to be
unmitigatedly bad. Actually, no doubt, as we generally hold that human
life, even as now lived, has on the average, a balance of happiness,
we regard what is preservative of life as generally good, and what is
destructive of life as bad: and I quite admit that a most fundamentally
important part of the function of morality consists in maintaining such
habits and sentiments as are necessary to the continued existence,
in full numbers, of a society of human beings under their actual
conditions of life. But this is not because the mere existence of human
organisms, even if prolonged to eternity, appears to me in any way
desirable; it is only assumed to be so because it is supposed to be
accompanied by Consciousness on the whole desirable; it is therefore
this Desirable Consciousness which we must regard as ultimate Good.
In the same way, so far as we judge virtuous activity to be a part of
Ultimate Good, it is, I conceive, because the consciousness attending
it is judged to be in itself desirable for the virtuous agent; though
at the same time this consideration does not adequately represent the
importance of Virtue to human wellbeing, since we have to consider
its value as a means as well as its value as an end. We may make the
distinction clearer by considering whether Virtuous life would remain
on the whole good for the virtuous agent, if we suppose it combined
with extreme pain. The affirmative answer to this question was strongly
supported in Greek philosophical discussion: but it is a paradox from
which a modern thinker would recoil: he would hardly venture to assert
that the portion of life spent by a martyr in tortures was in itself
desirable,--though it might be his duty to suffer the pain with a view
to the good of others, and even his interest to suffer it with a view
to his own ultimate happiness.
§ 4. If then Ultimate Good can only be conceived as Desirable
Consciousness--including the Consciousness of Virtue as a part but only
as a part--are we to identify this notion with Happiness or Pleasure,
and say with the Utilitarians that General Good is general happiness?
Many would at this point of the discussion regard this conclusion as
inevitable: to say that all other things called good are only means to
the end of making conscious life better or more desirable, seems to
them the same as saying that they are means to the end of happiness.
But very important distinctions remain to be considered. According to
the view taken in a previous chapter,[303] in affirming Ultimate Good
to be Happiness or Pleasure, we imply (1) that nothing is desirable
except desirable feelings, and (2) that the desirability of each
feeling is only directly cognisable by the sentient individual at the
time of feeling it, and that therefore this particular judgment of the
sentient individual must be taken as final[304] on the question how far
each element of feeling has the quality of Ultimate Good. Now no one, I
conceive, would estimate in any other way the desirability of feeling
considered merely as feeling: but it may be urged that our conscious
experience includes besides Feelings, Cognitions and Volitions, and
that the desirability of these must be taken into account, and is not
to be estimated by the standard above stated. I think, however, that
when we reflect on a cognition as a transient fact of an individual’s
psychical experience,--distinguishing it on the one hand from the
feeling that normally accompanies it, and on the other hand from that
relation of the knowing mind to the object known which is implied
in the term “true” or “valid cognition”[305]--it is seen to be an
element of consciousness quite neutral in respect of desirability:
and the same may be said of Volitions, when we abstract from their
concomitant feelings, and their relation to an objective norm or ideal,
as well as from all their consequences. It is no doubt true that in
ordinary thought certain states of consciousness--such as Cognition
of Truth, Contemplation of Beauty, Volition to realise Freedom or
Virtue--are sometimes judged to be preferable on other grounds than
their pleasantness: but the general explanation of this seems to be
(as was suggested in Book ii. chap. ii. § 2) that what in such cases
we really prefer is not the present consciousness itself, but either
effects on future consciousness more or less distinctly foreseen, or
else something in the objective relations of the conscious being, not
strictly included in his present consciousness.
The second of these alternatives may perhaps be made clearer by some
illustrations. A man may prefer the mental state of apprehending truth
to the state of half-reliance on generally accredited fictions,[306]
while recognising that the former state may be more painful than
the latter, and independently of any effect which he expects either
state to have upon his subsequent consciousness. Here, on my view,
the real object of preference is not the consciousness of knowing
truth, considered merely as consciousness,--the element of pleasure
or satisfaction in this being more than outweighed by the concomitant
pain,--but the relation between the mind and something else, which, as
the very notion of ‘truth’ implies, is whatever it is independently of
our cognition of it, and which I therefore call objective. This may
become more clear if we imagine ourselves learning afterwards that
what we took for truth is not really such: for in this case we should
certainly feel that our preference had been mistaken; whereas if our
choice had really been between two elements of transient consciousness,
its reasonableness could not be affected by any subsequent discovery.
Similarly, a man may prefer freedom and penury to a life of luxurious
servitude, not because the pleasant consciousness of being free
outweighs in prospect all the comforts and securities that the
other life would afford, but because he has a predominant aversion
to that relation between his will and the will of another which we
call slavery: or, again, a philosopher may choose what he conceives
as ‘inner freedom’--the consistent self-determination of the
will--rather than the gratifications of appetite; though recognising
that the latter are more desirable, considered merely as transient
feelings. In either case, he will be led to regard his preference
as mistaken, if he be afterwards persuaded that his conception of
Freedom or self-determination was illusory; that we are all slaves of
circumstances, destiny, etc.
So again, the preference of conformity to Virtue, or contemplation
of Beauty, to a state of consciousness recognised as more pleasant
seems to depend on a belief that one’s conception of Virtue or Beauty
corresponds to an ideal to some extent objective and valid for all
minds. Apart from any consideration of future consequences, we should
generally agree that a man who sacrificed happiness to an erroneous
conception of Virtue or Beauty made a mistaken choice.
Still, it may be said that this is merely a question of definition:
that we may take ‘conscious life’ in a wide sense, so as to include
the objective relations of the conscious being implied in our notions
of Virtue, Truth, Beauty, Freedom; and that from this point of view
we may regard cognition of Truth, contemplation of Beauty, Free or
Virtuous action, as in some measure preferable alternatives to Pleasure
or Happiness--even though we admit that Happiness must be included
as a part of Ultimate Good. In this case the principle of Rational
Benevolence, which was stated in the last chapter as an indubitable
intuition of the practical Reason, would not direct us to the pursuit
of universal happiness alone, but of these “ideal goods” as well, as
ends ultimately desirable for mankind generally.
§ 5. I think, however, that this view ought not to commend itself to
the sober judgment of reflective persons. In order to show this, I
must ask the reader to use the same twofold procedure that I before
requested him to employ in considering the absolute and independent
validity of common moral precepts. I appeal firstly to his intuitive
judgment after due consideration of the question when fairly placed
before it: and secondly to a comprehensive comparison of the ordinary
judgments of mankind. As regards the first argument, to me at least
it seems clear after reflection that these objective relations of
the conscious subject, when distinguished from the consciousness
accompanying and resulting from them, are not ultimately and
intrinsically desirable; any more than material or other objects
are, when considered apart from any relation to conscious existence.
Admitting that we have actual experience of such preferences as have
just been described, of which the ultimate object is something that
is not merely consciousness: it still seems to me that when (to use
Butler’s phrase) we “sit down in a cool hour,” we can only justify to
ourselves the importance that we attach to any of these objects by
considering its conduciveness, in one way or another, to the happiness
of sentient beings.
The second argument, that refers to the common sense of mankind,
obviously cannot be made completely cogent; since, as above stated,
several cultivated persons do habitually judge that knowledge, art,
etc.--not to speak of Virtue--are ends independently of the pleasure
derived from them. But we may urge not only that all these elements
of “ideal good” are productive of pleasure in various ways; but also
that they seem to obtain the commendation of Common Sense, roughly
speaking, in proportion to the degree of this productiveness. This
seems obviously true of Beauty; and will hardly be denied in respect
of any kind of social ideal: it is paradoxical to maintain that any
degree of Freedom, or any form of social order, would still be commonly
regarded as desirable even if we were certain that it had no tendency
to promote the general happiness. The case of Knowledge is rather more
complex; but certainly Common Sense is most impressed with the value
of knowledge, when its ‘fruitfulness’ has been demonstrated. It is,
however, aware that experience has frequently shown how knowledge, long
fruitless, may become unexpectedly fruitful, and how light may be shed
on one part of the field of knowledge from another apparently remote:
and even if any particular branch of scientific pursuit could be shown
to be devoid of even this indirect utility, it would still deserve some
respect on utilitarian grounds; both as furnishing to the inquirer
the refined and innocent pleasures of curiosity, and because the
intellectual disposition which it exhibits and sustains is likely on
the whole to produce fruitful knowledge. Still in cases approximating
to this last, Common Sense is somewhat disposed to complain of the
misdirection of valuable effort; so that the meed of honour commonly
paid to Science seems to be graduated, though perhaps unconsciously,
by a tolerably exact utilitarian scale. Certainly the moment the
legitimacy of any branch of scientific inquiry is seriously disputed,
as in the recent case of vivisection, the controversy on both sides is
generally conducted on an avowedly utilitarian basis.
The case of Virtue requires special consideration: since the
encouragement in each other of virtuous impulses and dispositions is a
main aim of men’s ordinary moral discourse; so that even to raise the
question whether this encouragement can go too far has a paradoxical
air. Still, our experience includes rare and exceptional cases in which
the concentration of effort on the cultivation of virtue has seemed to
have effects adverse to general happiness, through being intensified
to the point of moral fanaticism, and so involving a neglect of other
conditions of happiness. If, then, we admit as actual or possible
such ‘infelicific’ effects of the cultivation of Virtue, I think we
shall also generally admit that, in the case supposed, conduciveness
to general happiness should be the criterion for deciding how far the
cultivation of Virtue should be carried.
At the same time it must be allowed that we find in Common Sense an
aversion to admit Happiness (when explained to mean a sum of pleasures)
to be the sole ultimate end and standard of right conduct. But this, I
think, can be fully accounted for by the following considerations.
I. The term Pleasure is not commonly used so as to include clearly
_all_ kinds of consciousness which we desire to retain or reproduce:
in ordinary usage it suggests too prominently the coarser and commoner
kinds of such feelings; and it is difficult even for those who are
trying to use it scientifically to free their minds altogether from the
associations of ordinary usage, and to mean by Pleasure only Desirable
Consciousness or Feeling of whatever kind. Again, our knowledge of
human life continually suggests to us instances of pleasures which will
inevitably involve as concomitant or consequent either a greater amount
of pain or a loss of more important pleasures: and we naturally shrink
from including even hypothetically in our conception of ultimate good
these--in Bentham’s phrase--“impure” pleasures; especially since we
have, in many cases, moral or æsthetic instincts warning us against
such pleasures.
II. We have seen[307] that many important pleasures can only be felt on
condition of our experiencing desires for other things than pleasure.
Thus the very acceptance of Pleasure as the ultimate end of conduct
involves the practical rule that it is not always to be made the
conscious end. Hence, even if we are considering merely the good of
one human being taken alone, excluding from our view all effects of
his conduct on others, still the reluctance of Common Sense to regard
pleasure as the sole thing ultimately desirable may be justified by
the consideration that human beings tend to be less happy if they are
exclusively occupied with the desire of personal happiness. _E.g._ (as
was before shown) we shall miss the valuable pleasures which attend the
exercise of the benevolent affections if we do not experience genuinely
disinterested impulses to procure happiness for others (which are, in
fact, implied in the notion of ‘benevolent affections’).
III. But again, I hold, as was expounded in the preceding chapter,
that disinterested benevolence is not only thus generally in harmony
with rational Self-love, but also in another sense and independently
rational: that is, Reason shows me that if my happiness is desirable
and a good, the equal happiness of any other person must be equally
desirable. Now, when Happiness is spoken of as the sole ultimate good
of man, the idea most commonly suggested is that each individual is to
seek his own happiness at the expense (if necessary) or, at any rate,
to the neglect of that of others: and this offends both our sympathetic
and our rational regard for others’ happiness. It is, in fact, rather
the end of Egoistic than of Universalistic Hedonism, to which Common
Sense feels an aversion. And certainly one’s individual happiness is,
in many respects, an unsatisfactory mark for one’s supreme aim, apart
from any direct collision into which the exclusive pursuit of it may
bring us with rational or sympathetic Benevolence. It does not possess
the characteristics which, as Aristotle says, we “divine” to belong
to Ultimate Good: being (so far, at least, as it can be empirically
foreseen) so narrow and limited, of such necessarily brief duration,
and so shifting and insecure while it lasts. But Universal Happiness,
desirable consciousness or feeling for the innumerable multitude of
sentient beings, present and to come, seems an End that satisfies
our imagination by its vastness, and sustains our resolution by its
comparative security.
It may, however, be said that if we require the individual to sacrifice
his own happiness to the greater happiness of others on the ground
that it is reasonable to do so, we really assign to the individual a
different ultimate end from that which we lay down as the ultimate
Good of the universe of sentient beings: since we direct him to take,
as ultimate, Happiness for the Universe, but Conformity to Reason
for himself. I admit the substantial truth of this statement, though
I should avoid the language as tending to obscure the distinction
before explained between “obeying the dictates” and “promoting the
dictation” of reason. But granting the alleged difference, I do not
see that it constitutes an argument against the view here maintained,
since the individual is essentially and fundamentally different from
the larger whole--the universe of sentient beings--of which he is
conscious of being a part; just because he has a known relation to
similar parts of the same whole, while the whole itself has no such
relation. I accordingly see no inconsistency in holding that while
it _would_ be reasonable for the aggregate of sentient beings, if it
could act collectively, to aim at its own happiness only as an ultimate
end--and would be reasonable for any individual to do the same, if he
were the only sentient being in the universe--it may yet be _actually_
reasonable for an individual to sacrifice his own Good or happiness for
the greater happiness of others.[308]
At the same time I admit that, in the earlier age of ethical thought
which Greek philosophy represents, men sometimes judged an act to be
‘good’ _for the agent_, even while recognising that its consequences
would be on the whole painful to him,--as (_e.g._) a heroic exchange
of a life full of happiness for a painful death at the call of duty.
I attribute this partly to a confusion of thought between what it
is reasonable for an individual to desire, when he considers his
own existence alone, and what he must recognise as reasonably to be
desired, when he takes the point of view of a larger whole: partly,
again, to a faith deeply rooted in the moral consciousness of mankind,
that there cannot be really and ultimately any conflict between the
two kinds of reasonableness.[309] But when ‘Reasonable Self-love’ has
been clearly distinguished from Conscience, as it is by Butler and
his followers, we find it is naturally understood to mean desire for
one’s own Happiness: so that in fact the interpretation of ‘one’s own
good,’ which was almost peculiar in ancient thought to the Cyrenaic
and Epicurean heresies, is adopted by some of the most orthodox of
modern moralists. Indeed it often does not seem to have occurred to
these latter that this notion can have any other interpretation.[310]
If, then, when any one hypothetically concentrates his attention on
himself, Good is naturally and almost inevitably conceived to be
Pleasure, we may reasonably conclude that the Good of any number of
similar beings, whatever their mutual relations may be, cannot be
essentially different in quality.
IV. But lastly, from the universal point of view no less than from
that of the individual, it seems true that Happiness is likely to be
better attained if the extent to which we set ourselves consciously to
aim at it be carefully restricted. And this not only because action is
likely to be more effective if our effort is temporarily concentrated
on the realisation of more limited ends--though this is no doubt an
important reason:--but also because the fullest development of happy
life for each individual seems to require that he should have other
external objects of interest besides the happiness of other conscious
beings. And thus we may conclude that the pursuit of the ideal objects
before mentioned, Virtue, Truth, Freedom, Beauty, etc., _for their
own sakes_, is indirectly and secondarily, though not primarily and
absolutely, rational; on account not only of the happiness that will
result from their attainment, but also of that which springs from their
disinterested pursuit. While yet if we ask for a final criterion of
the comparative value of the different objects of men’s enthusiastic
pursuit, and of the limits within which each may legitimately engross
the attention of mankind, we shall none the less conceive it to depend
upon the degree in which they respectively conduce to Happiness.
If, however, this view be rejected, it remains to consider whether we
can frame any other coherent account of Ultimate Good. If we are not
to systematise human activities by taking Universal Happiness as their
common end, on what other principles are we to systematise them? It
should be observed that these principles must not only enable us to
compare among themselves the values of the different non-hedonistic
ends which we have been considering, but must also provide a common
standard for comparing these values with that of Happiness; unless we
are prepared to adopt the paradoxical position of rejecting happiness
as absolutely valueless. For we have a practical need of determining
not only whether we should pursue Truth rather than Beauty, or
Freedom or some ideal constitution of society rather than either, or
perhaps desert all of these for the life of worship and religious
contemplation; but also how far we should follow any of these lines of
endeavour, when we foresee among its consequences the pains of human
or other sentient beings, or even the loss of pleasures that might
otherwise have been enjoyed by them.[311]
I have failed to find--and am unable to construct--any systematic
answer to this question that appears to me deserving of serious
consideration: and hence I am finally led to the conclusion (which
at the close of the last chapter seemed to be premature) that the
Intuitional method rigorously applied yields as its final result the
doctrine of pure Universalistic Hedonism,[312]--which it is convenient
to denote by the single word, Utilitarianism.
FOOTNOTES:
[300] See Book i. chap. i. § 2.
[301] Cf. Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, chap. iv. § 16.
[302] Chap. xi. § 3; see also chap. xii. § 3.
[303] Book ii. chap. ii.
[304] Final, that is, so far as the quality of the present feeling
is concerned. I have pointed out that so far as any estimate of the
desirability or pleasantness of a feeling involves comparison with
feelings only represented in idea, it is liable to be erroneous through
imperfections in the representation.
[305] The term “cognition” without qualification more often implies
what is signified by “true” or “valid”: but for the present purpose it
is necessary to eliminate this implication.
[306] Cf. Lecky, _History of European Morals_, pp. 52 _seqq._
[307] Book i. chap. iv.; cf. Book ii. chap. iii.
[308] I ought at the same time to say that I hold it no less reasonable
for an individual to take his own happiness as his ultimate end. This
“Dualism of the Practical Reason” will be further discussed in the
concluding chapter of the treatise.
[309] We may illustrate this double explanation by a reference to some
of Plato’s Dialogues, such as the _Gorgias_, where the ethical argument
has a singularly mixed effect on the mind. Partly, it seems to us more
or less dexterous sophistry, playing on a confusion of thought latent
in the common notion of good: partly a noble and stirring expression of
a profound moral faith.
[310] Cf. Stewart, _Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers_, Book
ii. chap. i.
[311] The controversy on vivisection, to which I referred just now,
affords a good illustration of the need that I am pointing out. I
do not observe that any one in this controversy has ventured on the
paradox that the pain of sentient beings is not _per se_ to be avoided.
[312] I have before noticed (Book ii. chap. iii. p. 134) the
metaphysical objection taken by certain writers to the view that
Happiness is Ultimate Good; on the ground that Happiness (= sum
of pleasures) can only be realised in successive parts, whereas a
“Chief Good” must be “something of which some being can be conceived
in possession”--something, that is, which he can have all at once.
On considering this objection it seemed to me that, in so far as
it is even plausible, its plausibility depends on the exact form
of the notion ‘a Chief Good’ (or ‘Summum Bonum’), which is perhaps
inappropriate as applied to Happiness. I have therefore in this chapter
used the notion of ‘Ultimate Good’: as I can see no shadow of reason
for affirming that that which is Good or Desirable _per se_, and not
as a means to some further end, must _necessarily_ be capable of being
possessed all at once. I can understand that a man may aspire after a
Good of this latter kind: but so long as Time is a necessary form of
human existence, it can hardly be surprising that human good should be
subject to the condition of being realised in successive parts.
BOOK IV
UTILITARIANISM
CHAPTER I
THE MEANING OF UTILITARIANISM
§ 1. The term Utilitarianism is, at the present day, in common use,
and is supposed to designate a doctrine or method with which we are
all familiar. But on closer examination, it appears to be applied to
several distinct theories, having no necessary connexion with one
another, and not even referring to the same subject-matter. It will
be well, therefore, to define, as carefully as possible, the doctrine
that is to be denoted by the term in the present Book: at the same time
distinguishing this from other doctrines to which usage would allow
the name to be applied, and indicating, so far as seems necessary, its
relation to these.
By Utilitarianism is here meant the ethical theory, that the conduct
which, under any given circumstances, is objectively right, is that
which will produce the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that
is, taking into account all whose happiness is affected by the conduct.
It would tend to clearness if we might call this principle, and the
method based upon it, by some such name as “Universalistic Hedonism”:
and I have therefore sometimes ventured to use this term, in spite of
its cumbrousness.
The first doctrine from which it seems necessary to distinguish this,
is the Egoistic Hedonism expounded and discussed in Book ii. of this
treatise. The difference, however, between the propositions (1) that
each ought to seek his own happiness, and (2) that each ought to seek
the happiness of all, is so obvious and glaring, that instead of
dwelling upon it we seem rather called upon to explain how the two
ever came to be confounded, or in any way included under one notion.
This question and the general relation between the two doctrines were
briefly discussed in a former chapter.[313] Among other points it was
there noticed that the confusion between these two ethical theories was
partly assisted by the confusion with both of the psychological theory
that in voluntary actions every agent does, universally or normally,
seek his own individual happiness or pleasure. Now there seems to be no
_necessary_ connexion between this latter proposition and any ethical
theory: but in so far as there is a natural tendency to pass from
psychological to ethical Hedonism, the transition must be--at least
primarily--to the Egoistic phase of the latter. For clearly, from the
fact that every one actually does seek his own happiness we cannot
conclude, as an immediate and obvious inference, that he ought to seek
the happiness of other people.[314]
Nor, again, is Utilitarianism, as an ethical doctrine, necessarily
connected with the psychological theory that the moral sentiments are
derived, by “association of ideas” or otherwise, from experiences of
the non-moral pleasures and pains resulting to the agent or to others
from different kinds of conduct. An Intuitionist might accept this
theory, so far as it is capable of scientific proof, and still hold
that these moral sentiments, being found in our present consciousness
as independent impulses, ought to possess the authority that they
seem to claim over the more primary desires and aversions from which
they have sprung: and an Egoist on the other hand might fully admit
the altruistic element of the derivation, and still hold that these
and all other impulses (including even Universal Benevolence) are
properly under the rule of Rational Self-love: and that it is really
only reasonable to gratify them in so far as we may expect to find our
private happiness in such gratification. In short, what is often called
the “utilitarian” theory of the origin of the moral sentiments cannot
by itself provide a proof of the ethical doctrine to which I in this
treatise restrict the term Utilitarianism. I shall, however, hereafter
try to show that this psychological theory has an important though
subordinate place in the establishment of Ethical Utilitarianism.[315]
Finally, the doctrine that Universal Happiness is the ultimate
_standard_ must not be understood to imply that Universal Benevolence
is the only right or always best _motive_ of action. For, as we have
before observed, it is not necessary that the end which gives the
criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously
aim: and if experience shows that the general happiness will be more
satisfactorily attained if men frequently act from other motives than
pure universal philanthropy, it is obvious that these other motives are
reasonably to be preferred on Utilitarian principles.
§ 2. Let us now examine the principle itself somewhat closer. I
have already attempted (Book ii. chap. i.) to render the notion of
Greatest Happiness as clear and definite as possible; and the results
there obtained are of course as applicable to the discussion of
Universalistic as to that of Egoistic Hedonism. We shall understand,
then, that by Greatest Happiness is meant the greatest possible surplus
of pleasure over pain, the pain being conceived as balanced against an
equal amount of pleasure, so that the two contrasted amounts annihilate
each other for purposes of ethical calculation. And of course, here
as before, the assumption is involved that all pleasures included in
our calculation are capable of being compared quantitatively with one
another and with all pains; that every such feeling has a certain
intensive quantity, positive or negative (or, perhaps, zero), in
respect of its desirableness, and that this quantity may be to some
extent known: so that each may be at least roughly weighed in ideal
scales against any other. This assumption is involved in the very
notion of Maximum Happiness; as the attempt to make ‘as great as
possible’ a sum of elements not quantitatively commensurable would be a
mathematical absurdity. Therefore whatever weight is to be attached to
the objections brought against this assumption (which was discussed in
chap. iii. of Book ii.) must of course tell against the present method.
We have next to consider who the “all” are, whose happiness is to be
taken into account. Are we to extend our concern to all the beings
capable of pleasure and pain whose feelings are affected by our
conduct? or are we to confine our view to human happiness? The former
view is the one adopted by Bentham and Mill, and (I believe) by the
Utilitarian school generally: and is obviously most in accordance with
the universality that is characteristic of their principle. It is the
Good _Universal_, interpreted and defined as ‘happiness’ or ‘pleasure,’
at which a Utilitarian considers it his duty to aim: and it seems
arbitrary and unreasonable to exclude from the end, as so conceived,
any pleasure of any sentient being.
It may be said that by giving this extension to the notion, we
considerably increase the scientific difficulties of the hedonistic
comparison, which have already been pointed out (Book ii. chap. iii.):
for if it be difficult to compare the pleasures and pains of other men
accurately with our own, a comparison of either with the pleasures and
pains of brutes is obviously still more obscure. Still, the difficulty
is at least not greater for Utilitarians than it is for any other
moralists who recoil from the paradox of disregarding altogether the
pleasures and pains of brutes. But even if we limit our attention to
human beings, the extent of the subjects of happiness is not yet quite
determinate. In the first place, it may be asked, How far we are to
consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with
those of existing human beings? It seems, however, clear that the
time at which a man exists cannot affect the value of his happiness
from a universal point of view; and that the interests of posterity
must concern a Utilitarian as much as those of his contemporaries,
except in so far as the effect of his actions on posterity--and
even the existence of human beings to be affected--must necessarily
be more uncertain. But a further question arises when we consider
that we can to some extent influence the number of future human (or
sentient) beings. We have to ask how, on Utilitarian principles, this
influence is to be exercised. Here I shall assume that, for human
beings generally, life on the average yields a positive balance of
pleasure over pain. This has been denied by thoughtful persons: but
the denial seems to me clearly opposed to the common experience
of mankind, as expressed in their commonly accepted principles of
action. The great majority of men, in the great majority of conditions
under which human life is lived, certainly act as if death were one
of the worst of evils, for themselves and for those whom they love:
and the administration of criminal justice proceeds on a similar
assumption.[316]
Assuming, then, that the average happiness of human beings is a
positive quantity, it seems clear that, supposing the average happiness
enjoyed remains undiminished, Utilitarianism directs us to make the
number enjoying it as great as possible. But if we foresee as possible
that an increase in numbers will be accompanied by a decrease in
average happiness or _vice versa_, a point arises which has not only
never been formally noticed, but which seems to have been substantially
overlooked by many Utilitarians. For if we take Utilitarianism to
prescribe, as the ultimate end of action, happiness on the whole, and
not any individual’s happiness, unless considered as an element of the
whole, it would follow that, if the additional population enjoy on the
whole positive happiness, we ought to weigh the amount of happiness
gained by the extra number against the amount lost by the remainder.
So that, strictly conceived, the point up to which, on Utilitarian
principles, population ought to be encouraged to increase, is not that
at which average happiness is the greatest possible,--as appears to be
often assumed by political economists of the school of Malthus--but
that at which the product formed by multiplying the number of persons
living into the amount of average happiness reaches its maximum.
It may be well here to make a remark which has a wide application in
Utilitarian discussion. The conclusion just given wears a certain air
of absurdity to the view of Common Sense; because its show of exactness
is grotesquely incongruous with our consciousness of the inevitable
inexactness of all such calculations in actual practice. But, that
our practical Utilitarian reasonings must necessarily be rough, is
no reason for not making them as accurate as the case admits; and we
shall be more likely to succeed in this if we keep before our mind
as distinctly as possible the strict type of the calculation that
we should have to make, if all the relevant considerations could be
estimated with mathematical precision.
There is one more point that remains to be noticed. It is evident that
there may be many different ways of distributing the same quantum
of happiness among the same number of persons; in order, therefore,
that the Utilitarian criterion of right conduct may be as complete as
possible, we ought to know which of these ways is to be preferred.
This question is often ignored in expositions of Utilitarianism. It
has perhaps seemed somewhat idle, as suggesting a purely abstract and
theoretical perplexity, that could have no practical exemplification;
and no doubt, if all the consequences of actions were capable of
being estimated and summed up with mathematical precision, we should
probably never find the excess of pleasure over pain exactly equal
in the case of two competing alternatives of conduct. But the very
indefiniteness of all hedonistic calculations, which was sufficiently
shown in Book ii., renders it by no means unlikely that there may be no
_cognisable_ difference between the quantities of happiness involved
in two sets of consequences respectively; the more rough our estimates
necessarily are, the less likely we shall be to come to any clear
decision between two apparently balanced alternatives. In all such
cases, therefore, it becomes practically important to ask whether any
mode of distributing a given quantum of happiness is better than any
other. Now the Utilitarian formula seems to supply no answer to this
question: at least we have to supplement the principle of seeking the
greatest happiness on the whole by some principle of Just or Right
distribution of this happiness. The principle which most Utilitarians
have either tacitly or expressly adopted is that of pure equality--as
given in Bentham’s formula, “everybody to count for one, and nobody for
more than one.” And this principle seems the only one which does not
need a special justification; for, as we saw, it must be reasonable to
treat any one man in the same way as any other, if there be no reason
apparent for treating him differently.[317]
FOOTNOTES:
[313] Book i. chap. vi. It may be worth while to notice, that in Mill’s
well-known treatise on Utilitarianism this confusion, though expressly
deprecated, is to some extent encouraged by the author’s treatment of
the subject.
[314] I have already criticised (Book iii. chap. xiii.) the mode in
which Mill attempts to exhibit this inference.
[315] Cf. _post_, chap. iv.
[316] Those who held the opposite opinion appear generally to assume
that the appetites and desires which are the mainspring of ordinary
human action are in themselves painful: a view entirely contrary
to my own experience, and, I believe, to the common experience of
mankind. See chap. iv. § 2 of Book i. So far as their argument is not
a development of this psychological error, any plausibility it has
seems to me to be obtained by dwelling onesidedly on the annoyances
and disappointments undoubtedly incident to normal human life, and on
the exceptional sufferings of small minorities of the human race, or
perhaps of most men during small portions of their lives.
The reader who wishes to see the paradoxical results of pessimistic
utilitarianism seriously worked out by a thoughtful and suggestive
writer, may refer to Professor Macmillan’s book on the _Promotion
of General Happiness_ (Swan Sonnenschein and Co. 1890). The author
considers that “the philosophical world is pretty equally divided
between optimists and pessimists,” and his own judgment on the question
at issue between the two schools appears to be held in suspense.
[317] It should be observed that the question here is as to the
distribution of _Happiness_, not the _means of happiness_. If more
happiness on the whole is produced by giving the same means of
happiness to B rather than to A, it is an obvious and incontrovertible
deduction from the Utilitarian principle that it ought to be given to
B, whatever inequality in the distribution of the _means_ of happiness
this may involve.
CHAPTER II
THE PROOF OF UTILITARIANISM
In Book ii., where we discussed the method of Egoistic Hedonism, we did
not take occasion to examine any proof of its first principle: and in
the case of Universalistic Hedonism also, what primarily concerns us is
not how its principle is to be proved to those who do not accept it,
but what consequences are logically involved in its acceptance. At the
same time it is important to observe that the principle of aiming at
universal happiness is more generally felt to require some proof, or
at least (as Mill puts it) some “considerations determining the mind
to accept it,” than the principle of aiming at one’s own happiness.
From the point of view, indeed, of abstract philosophy, I do not see
why the Egoistic principle should pass unchallenged any more than the
Universalistic. I do not see why the axiom of Prudence should not be
questioned, when it conflicts with present inclination, on a ground
similar to that on which Egoists refuse to admit the axiom of Rational
Benevolence. If the Utilitarian has to answer the question, ‘Why should
I sacrifice my own happiness for the greater happiness of another?’ it
must surely be admissible to ask the Egoist, ‘Why should I sacrifice a
present pleasure for a greater one in the future? Why should I concern
myself about my own future feelings any more than about the feelings
of other persons?’ It undoubtedly seems to Common Sense paradoxical to
ask for a reason why one should seek one’s own happiness on the whole;
but I do not see how the demand can be repudiated as absurd by those
who adopt the views of the extreme empirical school of psychologists,
although those views are commonly supposed to have a close affinity
with Egoistic Hedonism. Grant that the Ego is merely a system of
coherent phenomena, that the permanent identical ‘I’ is not a fact
but a fiction, as Hume and his followers maintain; why, then, should
one part of the series of feelings into which the Ego is resolved be
concerned with another part of the same series, any more than with any
other series?
However, I will not press this question now; since I admit that
Common Sense does not think it worth while to supply the individual
with reasons for seeking his own interest.[318] Reasons for doing his
duty--according to the commonly accepted standard of duty--are not held
to be equally superfluous: indeed we find that utilitarian reasons
are continually given for one or other of the commonly received rules
of morality. Still the fact that certain rules are commonly received
as binding, though it does not establish their self-evidence, renders
it generally unnecessary to prove their authority to the Common Sense
that receives them: while for the same reason a Utilitarian who claims
to supersede them by a higher principle is naturally challenged, by
Intuitionists no less than by Egoists, to demonstrate the legitimacy
of his claim. To this challenge some Utilitarians would reply by
saying that it is impossible to “prove” a first principle; and this
is of course true, if by proof we mean a process which exhibits the
principle in question as an inference from premises upon which it
remains dependent for its certainty; for these premises, and not the
inference drawn from them, would then be the real first principles.
Nay, if Utilitarianism is to be _proved_ to a man who already holds
some other moral principles,--whether he be an Intuitional moralist,
who regards as final the principles of Truth, Justice, Obedience to
authority, Purity, etc., or an Egoist who regards his own interest as
the ultimately reasonable end of his conduct,--it would seem that the
process must be one which establishes a conclusion actually _superior_
in validity to the premises from which it starts. For the Utilitarian
prescriptions of duty are _prima facie_ in conflict, at certain points
and under certain circumstances, both with rules which the Intuitionist
regards as self-evident, and with the dictates of Rational Egoism; so
that Utilitarianism, if accepted at all, must be accepted as overruling
Intuitionism and Egoism. At the same time, if the other principles
are not throughout taken as valid, the so-called proof does not seem
to be addressed to the Intuitionist or Egoist at all. How shall we
deal with this dilemma? How is such a process--clearly different from
ordinary proof--possible or conceivable? Yet there certainly seems to
be a general demand for it. Perhaps we may say that what is needed is
a line of argument which on the one hand allows the validity, to a
certain extent, of the maxims already accepted, and on the other hand
shows them to be not absolutely valid, but needing to be controlled and
completed by some more comprehensive principle.
Such a line of argument, addressed to Egoism, was given in chap. xiii.
of the foregoing book. It should be observed that the applicability
of this argument depends on the manner in which the Egoistic first
principle is formulated. If the Egoist strictly confines himself
to stating his conviction that he ought to take his own happiness
or pleasure as his ultimate end, there seems no opening for any
line of reasoning to lead him to Universalistic Hedonism as a first
principle;[319] it cannot be proved that the difference between his
own happiness and another’s happiness is not _for him_ all-important.
In this case all that the Utilitarian can do is to effect as far as
possible a reconciliation between the two principles, by expounding to
the Egoist the _sanctions_ of rules deduced from the Universalistic
principle,--_i.e._ by pointing out the pleasures and pains that may
be expected to accrue to the Egoist himself from the observation and
violation respectively of such rules. It is obvious that such an
exposition has no tendency to make him accept the greatest happiness of
the greatest number as his ultimate end; but only as a means to the end
of his own happiness. It is therefore totally different from a _proof_
(as above explained) of Universalistic Hedonism. When, however, the
Egoist puts forward, implicitly or explicitly, the proposition that his
happiness or pleasure is Good, not only _for him_ but from the point
of view of the Universe,--as (_e.g._) by saying that ‘nature designed
him to seek his own happiness,’--it then becomes relevant to point out
to him that _his_ happiness cannot be a more important part of Good,
taken universally, than the equal happiness of any other person. And
thus, starting with his own principle, he may be brought to accept
Universal happiness or pleasure as that which is absolutely and without
qualification Good or Desirable: as an end, therefore, to which the
action of a reasonable agent as such ought to be directed.
This, it will be remembered, is the reasoning[320] that I used in chap.
xiii. of the preceding book in exhibiting the principle of Rational
Benevolence as one of the few Intuitions which stand the test of
rigorous criticism. It should be observed, however, that as addressed
to the Intuitionist, this reasoning only shows the Utilitarian first
principle to be _one_ moral axiom: it does not prove that it is
_sole_ or _supreme_. The premises with which the Intuitionist starts
commonly include other formulæ held as independent and self-evident.
Utilitarianism has therefore to exhibit itself in the twofold relation
above described, at once negative and positive, to these formulæ.
The Utilitarian must, in the first place, endeavour to show to the
Intuitionist that the principles of Truth, Justice,[2] etc. have only a
dependent and subordinate validity: arguing either that the principle
is really only affirmed by Common Sense as a general rule admitting
of exceptions and qualifications, as in the case of Truth, and that
we require some further principle for systematising these exceptions
and qualifications; or that the fundamental notion is vague and needs
further determination, as in the case of Justice;[321] and further,
that the different rules are liable to conflict with each other, and
that we require some higher principle to decide the issue thus raised;
and again, that the rules are differently formulated by different
persons, and that these differences admit of no Intuitional solution,
while they show the vagueness and ambiguity of the common moral
notions to which the Intuitionist appeals.
This part of the argument I have perhaps sufficiently developed in the
preceding book. It remains to supplement this line of reasoning by
developing the positive relation that exists between Utilitarianism
and the Morality of Common Sense: by showing how Utilitarianism
sustains the general validity of the current moral judgments, and
thus supplements the defects which reflection finds in the intuitive
recognition of their stringency; and at the same time affords a
principle of synthesis, and a method for binding the unconnected and
occasionally conflicting principles of common moral reasoning into
a complete and harmonious system. If systematic reflection upon the
morality of Common Sense thus exhibits the Utilitarian principle
as that to which Common Sense naturally appeals for that further
development of its system which this same reflection shows to be
necessary, the proof of Utilitarianism seems as complete as it can
be made. And since, further--apart from the question of proof--it is
important in considering the method of Utilitarianism to determine
exactly its relation to the commonly received rules of morality, it
will be proper to examine this relation at some length in the following
chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[318] The relation of Egoistic to Universalistic Hedonism is further
examined in the concluding chapter.
[319] It is to be observed that he may be led to it in other ways than
that of argument: _i.e._ by appeals to his sympathies, or to his moral
or quasi-moral sentiments.
[320] I ought to remind the reader that the argument in chap. xiii.
only leads to the first principle of Utilitarianism, if it be admitted
that Happiness is the only thing ultimately and intrinsically Good or
Desirable. I afterwards in chap. xiv. endeavoured to bring Common Sense
to this admission.
[321] That is, so far as we mean by Justice anything more than the
simple negation of arbitrary inequality.
CHAPTER III
RELATION OF UTILITARIANISM TO THE MORALITY OF COMMON SENSE
§ 1. It has been before observed (Book i. chap. vi.) that the two
sides of the double relation in which Utilitarianism stands to the
Morality of Common Sense have been respectively prominent at two
different periods in the history of English ethical thought. Since
Bentham we have been chiefly familiar with the negative or aggressive
aspect of the Utilitarian doctrine. But when Cumberland, replying to
Hobbes, put forward the general tendency of the received moral rules
to promote the “common Good[322] of all Rationals” his aim was simply
Conservative: it never occurs to him to consider whether these rules as
commonly formulated are in any way imperfect, and whether there are any
discrepancies between such common moral opinions and the conclusions
of Rational Benevolence. So in Shaftesbury’s system the “Moral” or
“Reflex Sense” is supposed to be always pleased with that “balance”
of the affections which tends to the good or happiness of the whole,
and displeased with the opposite. In Hume’s treatise this coincidence
is drawn out more in detail, and with a more definite assertion that
the perception of utility[323] (or the reverse) is in each case the
source of the moral likings (or aversions) which are excited in us
by different qualities of human character and conduct. And we may
observe that the most penetrating among Hume’s contemporary critics,
Adam Smith, admits unreservedly the objective coincidence of Rightness
or Approvedness and Utility: though he maintains, in opposition to
Hume, that “it is not the view of this utility or hurtfulness, which
is either the first or the principal source of our approbation or
disapprobation.” After stating Hume’s theory that “no qualities of
the mind are approved of as virtuous, but such as are useful or
agreeable either to the person himself or to others, and no qualities
are disapproved of as vicious but such as have a contrary tendency”;
he remarks that “Nature seems indeed to have so happily adjusted our
sentiments of approbation and disapprobation to the conveniency both of
the individual and of the society, that after the strictest examination
it will be found, I believe, that this is universally the case.”
And no one can read Hume’s _Inquiry into the First Principles of
Morals_ without being convinced of this at least, that if a list were
drawn up of the qualities of character and conduct that are directly or
indirectly productive of pleasure to ourselves or to others, it would
include all that are commonly known as virtues. Whatever be the origin
of our notion of moral goodness or excellence, there is no doubt that
“Utility” is a general characteristic of the dispositions to which we
apply it: and that, so far, the Morality of Common Sense may be truly
represented as at least unconsciously Utilitarian. But it may still be
objected, that this coincidence is merely general and qualitative, and
that it breaks down when we attempt to draw it out in detail, with the
quantitative precision which Bentham introduced into the discussion.
And no doubt there is a great difference between the assertion that
virtue is always productive of happiness, and the assertion that the
right action is under all circumstances that which will produce the
greatest possible happiness on the whole. But it must be borne in mind
that Utilitarianism is not concerned to prove the absolute coincidence
in results of the Intuitional and Utilitarian methods. Indeed, if it
could succeed in proving as much as this, its success would be almost
fatal to its practical claims; as the adoption of the Utilitarian
principle would then become a matter of complete indifference.
Utilitarians are rather called upon to show a natural transition from
the Morality of Common Sense to Utilitarianism, somewhat like the
transition in special branches of practice from trained instinct and
empirical rules to the technical method that embodies and applies the
conclusions of science: so that Utilitarianism may be presented as the
scientifically complete and systematically reflective form of that
regulation of conduct, which through the whole course of human history
has always tended substantially in the same direction. For this purpose
it is not necessary to prove that existing moral rules are _more_
conducive to the general happiness than any others: but only to point
out in each case some manifest felicific tendency which they possess.
Hume’s dissertation, however, incidentally exhibits much more than a
simple and general harmony between the moral sentiments with which we
commonly regard actions and their foreseen pleasurable and painful
consequences. And, in fact, the Utilitarian argument cannot be fairly
judged unless we take fully into account the cumulative force which
it derives from the complex character of the coincidence between
Utilitarianism and Common Sense.
It may be shown, I think, that the Utilitarian estimate of consequences
not only supports broadly the current moral rules, but also sustains
their generally received limitations and qualifications: that,
again, it explains anomalies in the Morality of Common Sense,
which from any other point of view must seem unsatisfactory to the
reflective intellect; and moreover, where the current formula is not
sufficiently precise for the guidance of conduct, while at the same
time difficulties and perplexities arise in the attempt to give it
additional precision, the Utilitarian method solves these difficulties
and perplexities in general accordance with the vague instincts of
Common Sense, and is naturally appealed to for such solution in
ordinary moral discussions. It may be shown further, that it not only
supports the generally received view of the relative importance of
different duties, but is also naturally called in as arbiter, where
rules commonly regarded as co-ordinate come into conflict: that, again,
when the same rule is interpreted somewhat differently by different
persons, each naturally supports his view by urging its Utility,
however strongly he may maintain the rule to be self-evident and
known _a priori_: that where we meet with marked diversity of moral
opinion on any point, in the same age and country, we commonly find
manifest and impressive utilitarian reasons on both sides: and that
finally the remarkable discrepancies found in comparing the moral
codes of different ages and countries are for the most part strikingly
correlated to differences in the effects of actions on happiness, or in
men’s foresight of, or concern for, such effects. Most of these points
are noticed by Hume, though in a somewhat casual and fragmentary way:
and many of them have been incidentally illustrated in the course of
the examination of Common Sense Morality, with which we were occupied
in the preceding Book. But considering the importance of the present
question, it may be well to exhibit in systematic detail the cumulative
argument which has just been summed up, even at the risk of repeating
to some extent the results previously given.
§ 2. We may begin by replying to an objection which is frequently
urged against Utilitarianism. How, it is asked, if the true ground
of the moral goodness or badness of actions lies in their utility or
the reverse, can we explain the broad distinction drawn by Common
Sense between the moral and other parts of our nature? Why is the
excellence of Virtue so strongly felt to be different in kind, not
merely from the excellence of a machine, or a fertile field, but also
from the physical beauties and aptitudes, the intellectual gifts and
talents of human beings. I should answer that--as was argued in an
earlier chapter (Book iii. chap. ii.)--qualities that are, in the
strictest sense of the term, Virtuous, are always such as we conceive
capable of being immediately realised by voluntary effort, at least
to some extent; so that the prominent obstacle to virtuous action is
absence of adequate motive. Hence we expect that the judgments of
moral goodness or badness, passed either by the agent himself or by
others, will--by the fresh motive which they supply on the side of
virtue--have an immediate practical effect in causing actions to be at
least externally virtuous: and the habitual consciousness of this will
account for almost any degree of difference between moral sentiments
and the pleasure and pain that we derive from the contemplation of
either extra-human or non-voluntary utilities and inutilities. To this,
however, it is replied, that among the tendencies to strictly voluntary
actions there are many not commonly regarded as virtuous, which are
yet not only useful but on the whole _more_ useful than many virtues.
“The selfish instinct that leads men to accumulate confers ultimately
more advantage on the world than the generous instinct that leads men
to give.... It is scarcely doubtful that a modest, diffident, and
retiring nature, distrustful of its own abilities, and shrinking with
humility from conflict, produces on the whole less benefit to the world
than the self-assertion of an audacious and arrogant nature, which is
impelled to every struggle, and develops every capacity. Gratitude has
no doubt done much to soften and sweeten the intercourse of life, but
the corresponding feeling of revenge was for centuries the one bulwark
against social anarchy, and is even now one of the chief restraints to
crime. On the great theatre of public life, especially in periods of
great convulsions where passions are fiercely roused, it is neither
the man of delicate scrupulosity and sincere impartiality, nor yet
the single-minded religious enthusiast, incapable of dissimulation or
procrastination, who confers most benefit on the world. It is much
rather the astute statesman, earnest about his ends, but unscrupulous
about his means, equally free from the trammels of conscience and
from the blindness of zeal, who governs because he partly yields to
the passions and the prejudices of his time. But ... it has scarcely
yet been contended that the delicate conscience which in these cases
impairs utility constitutes vice.”[324]
These objections are forcibly urged; but they appear to me not very
difficult to answer, it being always borne in mind that the present
argument does not aim at proving an exact coincidence between
Utilitarian inferences and the intuitions of Common Sense, but
rather seeks to represent the latter as inchoately and imperfectly
Utilitarian.
In the first place, we must carefully distinguish between the
recognition of goodness in dispositions, and the recognition of
rightness in conduct. An act that a Utilitarian must condemn as likely
to do more harm than good may yet show a disposition or tendency that
will on the whole produce more good than harm. This is eminently the
case with scrupulously conscientious acts. However true it may be
that unenlightened conscientiousness has impelled men to fanatical
cruelty, mistaken asceticism, and other infelicific conduct, I suppose
no Intuitionist would maintain that carefulness in conforming to
accepted moral rules has not, on the whole, a tendency to promote
happiness. It may be observed, however, that when we perceive the
effects of a disposition generally felicific to be in any particular
case adverse to happiness, we often apply to it, as so operating, some
term of condemnation: thus we speak, in the case above noticed, of
‘over-scrupulousness’ or ‘fanaticism.’ But in so far as we perceive
that the same disposition would generally produce good results,
it is not inconsistent still to regard it, abstracting from the
particular case, as a good element of character. Secondly, although,
in the view of a Utilitarian, only the useful is praiseworthy, he
is not bound to maintain that it is necessarily worthy of praise in
proportion as it is useful. From a Utilitarian point of view, as has
been before said, we must mean by calling a quality ‘deserving of
praise,’ that it is expedient to praise it, with a view to its future
production: accordingly, in distributing our praise of human qualities,
on utilitarian principles, we have to consider primarily not the
usefulness of the quality, but the usefulness of the praise: and it
is obviously not expedient to encourage by praise qualities which are
likely to be found in excess rather than in defect. Hence (_e.g._)
however necessary self-love or resentment may be to society, it is
quite in harmony with Utilitarianism that they should not be recognised
as virtues by Common Sense, in so far as it is reasonably thought that
they will always be found operating with at least sufficient intensity.
We find, however, that when self-love comes into conflict with impulses
seen to be on the whole pernicious, it is praised as Prudence: and
that when a man seems clearly deficient in resentment, he is censured
for tameness: though as malevolent impulses are much more obviously
productive of pain than pleasure, it is not unnatural that their
occasional utility should be somewhat overlooked. The case of Humility
and Diffidence may be treated in a somewhat similar way. As we saw[325]
it is only inadvertently that Common Sense praises the tendency to
underrate one’s own powers: on reflection it is generally admitted
that it cannot be good to be in error on this or any other point. But
the desires of Superiority and Esteem are so strong in most men, that
arrogance and self-assertion are both much commoner than the opposite
defects, and at the same time are faults peculiarly disagreeable to
others: so that humility gives us an agreeable surprise, and hence
Common Sense is easily led to overlook the more latent and remote bad
consequences of undue self-distrust.
We may observe further that the perplexity which we seemed to find in
the Morality of Common Sense, as to the relation of moral excellence
to moral effort, is satisfactorily explained and removed when we
adopt a Utilitarian point of view: for on the one hand it is easy to
see how certain acts--such as kind services--are likely to be more
felicific when performed without effort, and from other motives than
regard for duty: while on the other hand a person who in doing similar
acts achieves a triumph of duty over strong seductive inclinations,
exhibits thereby a character which we recognise as felicific in a
more general way, as tending to a general performance of duty in all
departments. So again, there is a simple and obvious utilitarian
solution of another difficulty which I noticed, as to the choice
between Subjective and Objective rightness in the exceptional case in
which alone the two can be presented as alternatives,--_i.e._ when we
are considering whether we shall influence another to act contrary to
his conviction as to what is right. A utilitarian would decide the
question by weighing the felicific consequences of the particular right
act against the infelicific results to be apprehended hereafter from
the moral deterioration of the person whose conscientious convictions
were overborne by other motives: unless the former effects were very
important he would reasonably regard the danger to character as the
greater: but if the other’s mistaken sense of duty threatened to cause
a grave disaster, he would not hesitate to overbear it by any motives
which it was in his power to apply. And in practice I think that the
Common Sense of mankind would come to similar conclusions by more vague
and semi-conscious reasoning of the same kind.
In order, however, to form a precise estimate of the extent to which
Utilitarianism agrees or disagrees with Common Sense, it seems best
to examine the more definite judgments of right and wrong in conduct,
under the particular heads represented by our common notions of
virtues and duties. I may begin by pointing out once more that so far
as any adequately precise definitions of these notions are found to
involve, implicitly or explicitly, the notion of ‘good’ or of ‘right’
supposed already determinate, they can afford no ground for opposing
a Utilitarian interpretation of these fundamental conceptions. For
example, we saw this to be the case with the chief of the intellectual
excellences discussed in Book iii. chap. iii. Wisdom, as commonly
conceived, is not exactly the faculty of choosing the right means to
the end of universal happiness; rather, as we saw, its notion involves
an uncritical synthesis of the different ends and principles that are
distinguished and separately examined in the present treatise. But if
its import is not distinctly Utilitarian, it is certainly not anything
else as distinct from Utilitarian: if we can only define it as the
faculty or habit of choosing the right or best means to the right or
best end, for that very reason our definition leaves it quite open to
us to give the notions ‘good’ and ‘right’ a Utilitarian import.
§ 3. Let us then examine first the group of virtues and duties discussed
in Book iii. chap. iv., under the head of Benevolence. As regards the
general conception of the duty, there is, I think, no divergence that
we need consider between the Intuitional and Utilitarian systems.
For though Benevolence would perhaps be more commonly defined as a
disposition to promote the Good of one’s fellow-creatures, rather than
their Happiness (as definitely understood by Utilitarians); still, as
the chief element in the common notion of good (besides happiness)
is moral good or Virtue,[326] if we can show that the other virtues
are--speaking broadly--all qualities conducive to the happiness of the
agent himself or of others, it is evident that Benevolence, whether it
prompts us to promote the virtue of others or their happiness, will
aim directly or indirectly at the Utilitarian end.[327]
Nor, further, does the comprehensive range which Utilitarians give to
Benevolence, in stating as their ultimate end the greatest happiness
of all sentient beings, seem to be really opposed to Common Sense;
for in so far as certain Intuitional moralists restrict the scope of
the direct duty of Benevolence to human beings, and regard our duties
to brute animals as merely indirect and derived “from the duty of
Self-culture,” they rather than their Utilitarian opponents appear
paradoxical. And if, in laying down that each agent is to consider all
other happiness as equally important with his own, Utilitarianism seems
to go beyond the standard of duty commonly prescribed under the head
of Benevolence, it yet can scarcely be said to conflict with Common
Sense on this point. For the practical application of this theoretical
impartiality of Utilitarianism is limited by several important
considerations. In the first place, generally speaking, each man is
better able to provide for his own happiness than for that of other
persons, from his more intimate knowledge of his own desires and needs,
and his greater opportunities of gratifying them. And besides, it is
under the stimulus of self-interest that the active energies of most
men are most easily and thoroughly drawn out: and if this were removed,
general happiness would be diminished by a serious loss of those means
of happiness which are obtained by labour; and also, to some extent,
by the diminution of the labour itself. For these reasons it would not
under actual circumstances promote the universal happiness if each man
were to concern himself with the happiness of others as much as with
his own. While if I consider the duty abstractly and ideally, even
Common Sense morality seems to bid me “love my neighbour as myself.”
It might indeed be plausibly objected, on the other hand, that under
the notions of Generosity, Self-sacrifice, etc., Common Sense praises
(though it does not prescribe as obligatory) a suppression of egoism
beyond what Utilitarianism approves: for we perhaps admire as virtuous
a man who gives up his own happiness for another’s sake, even when the
happiness that he confers is clearly less than that which he resigns,
so that there is a diminution of happiness on the whole. But (1) it
seems very doubtful whether we do altogether approve such conduct when
the disproportion between the sacrifice and the benefit is obvious
and striking: and (2) a spectator is often unable to judge whether
happiness is lost on the whole, as (_a_) he cannot tell how far he who
makes the sacrifice is compensated by sympathetic and moral pleasure,
and (_b_) the remoter felicific consequences flowing from the moral
effects of such a sacrifice on the agent and on others have to be taken
into account: while (3) even if there be a loss in the particular
case, still our admiration of self-sacrifice will admit of a certain
Utilitarian justification, because such conduct shows a disposition far
above the average in its general tendency to promote happiness, and it
is perhaps this disposition that we admire rather than the particular
act.
It has been said,[328] however, that the special claims and duties
belonging to special relations, by which each man is connected with
a few out of the whole number of human beings, are expressly ignored
by the rigid impartiality of the Utilitarian formula: and hence that,
though Utilitarianism and Common Sense may agree in the proposition
that all right action is conducive to the happiness of some one or
other, and so far beneficent, still they are irreconcileably divergent
on the radical question of the _distribution_ of beneficence.
Here, however, it seems that even fair-minded opponents have scarcely
understood the Utilitarian position. They have attacked Bentham’s
well-known formula, “every man to count for one, nobody for more than
one,” on the ground that the general happiness will be best attained by
inequality in the distribution of each one’s services. But so far as it
is clear that it will be best attained in this way, Utilitarianism will
necessarily prescribe this way of aiming at it; and Bentham’s dictum
must be understood merely as making the conception of the ultimate end
precise--laying down that one person’s happiness is to be counted for
as much as another’s (supposed equal in degree) as an element of the
general happiness--not as directly prescribing the rules of conduct
by which this end will be best attained. And the reasons why it is,
generally speaking, conducive to the general happiness that each
individual should distribute his beneficence in the channels marked out
by commonly recognised ties and claims, are tolerably obvious.
For first, in the chief relations discussed in chap. iv. of Book
iii.--the domestic, and those constituted by consanguinity,
friendship, previous kindnesses, and special needs,--the services
which Common Sense prescribes as duties are commonly prompted by
natural affection, while at the same time they tend to develop and
sustain such affection. Now the subsistence of benevolent affections
among human beings is itself an important means to the Utilitarian
end, because (as Shaftesbury and his followers forcibly urged) the
most intense and highly valued of our pleasures are derived from such
affections; for both the emotion itself is highly pleasurable, and it
imparts this quality to the activities which it prompts and sustains,
and the happiness thus produced is continually enhanced by the
sympathetic echo of the pleasures conferred on others. And again, where
genuine affection subsists, the practical objections to spontaneous
beneficence, which were before noticed, are much diminished in force.
For such affection tends to be reciprocated, and the kindnesses
which are its outcome and expression commonly win a requital of
affection: and in so far as this is the case, they have less tendency
to weaken the springs of activity in the person benefited; and may
even strengthen them by exciting other sources of energy than the
egoistic--personal affection, and gratitude, and the desire to deserve
love, and the desire to imitate beneficence. And hence it has been
often observed that the injurious effects of almsgiving are at least
much diminished if the alms are bestowed with unaffected sympathy
and kindliness, and in such a way as to elicit a genuine response of
gratitude. And further, the beneficence that springs from affection is
less likely to be frustrated from defect of knowledge: for not only are
we powerfully stimulated to study the real conditions of the happiness
of those whom we love, but also such study is rendered more effective
from the sympathy which naturally accompanies affection.
On these grounds the Utilitarian will evidently approve of the
cultivation of affection and the performance of affectionate services.
It may be said, however, that what we ought to approve is not so much
affection for special individuals, but rather a feeling more universal
in its scope--charity, philanthropy, or (as it has been called) the
‘Enthusiasm of Humanity.’ And certainly all special affections tend
occasionally to come into conflict with the principle of promoting the
general happiness: and Utilitarianism must therefore prescribe such a
culture of the feelings as will, so far as possible, counteract this
tendency. But it seems that most persons are only capable of strong
affections towards a few human beings in certain close relations,
especially the domestic: and that if these were suppressed, what they
would feel towards their fellow-creatures generally would be, as
Aristotle says, “but a watery kindness” and a very feeble counterpoise
to self-love: so that such specialised affections as the present
organisation of society normally produces afford the best means of
developing in most persons a more extended benevolence, to the degree
to which they are capable of feeling it. Besides, each person is for
the most part, from limitation either of power or knowledge, not in a
position to do much good to more than a very small number of persons;
it therefore seems, on this ground alone, desirable that his chief
benevolent impulses should be correspondingly limited.
And this leads us to consider, secondly, the reasons why, affection
apart, it is conducive to the general happiness that special claims
to services should be commonly recognised as attaching to special
relations; so as to modify that impartiality in the distribution
of beneficence which Utilitarianism _prima facie_ inculcates. For
clearness’ sake it seems best to take this argument separately,
though it cannot easily be divided from the former one, because the
services in question are often such as cannot so well be rendered
without affection. In such cases, as we saw,[329] Common Sense
regards the affection itself as a duty, in so far as it is capable
of being cultivated: but still prescribes the performance of the
services even if the affection be unhappily absent. Indeed we may
properly consider the services to which we are commonly prompted by
the domestic affections, and also those to which we are moved by
gratitude and pity, as an integral part of the system of mutual aid
by which the normal life and happiness of society is maintained,
under existing circumstances; being an indispensable supplement to
the still more essential services which are definitely prescribed by
Law, or rendered on commercial terms as a part of an express bargain.
As political economists have explained, the means of happiness are
immensely increased by that complex system of co-operation which has
been gradually organised among civilised men: and while it is thought
that under such a system it will be generally best on the whole to let
each individual exchange such services as he is disposed to render for
such return as he can obtain for them by free contract, still there
are many large exceptions to this general principle. Of these the most
important is constituted by the case of children. It is necessary for
the well-being of mankind that in each generation children should
be produced in adequate numbers, neither too many nor too few; and
that, as they cannot be left to provide for themselves, they should
be adequately nourished and protected during the period of infancy;
and further, that they should be carefully trained in good habits,
intellectual, moral, and physical: and it is commonly believed that the
best or even the only known means of attaining these ends in even a
tolerable degree is afforded by the existing institution of the Family,
resting as it does on a basis of legal and moral rules combined. For
Law fixes a minimum of mutual services and draws the broad outlines of
behaviour for the different members of the family, imposing[330] on the
parents lifelong union and complete mutual fidelity and the duty of
providing for their children the necessaries of life up to a certain
age; in return for which it gives them the control of their children
for the same period, and sometimes lays on the latter the burden of
supporting their parents when aged and destitute: so that Morality, in
inculcating a completer harmony of interests and an ampler interchange
of kindnesses, is merely filling in the outlines drawn by Law. We
found, however, in attempting to formulate the different domestic
duties as recognised by Common Sense, that there seemed to be in most
cases a large vague margin with respect to which general agreement
could not be affirmed, and which, in fact, forms an arena for continual
disputes. But we have now to observe that it is just this margin
which reveals most clearly the latent Utilitarianism of common moral
opinion: for when the question is once raised as to the precise mutual
duties (_e.g._) of husbands and wives, or of parents and children, each
disputant commonly supports his view by a forecast of the effects on
human happiness to be expected from the general establishment of any
proposed rule; this seems to be the standard to which the matter is, by
common consent, referred.
Similarly the claim to services that arises out of special need (which
natural sympathy moves us to recognise) may obviously be rested on an
utilitarian basis: indeed the proper fulfilment of this duty seems so
important to the well-being of society, that it has in modern civilised
communities generally been brought to some extent within the sphere of
Governmental action. We noticed that the main utilitarian reason why it
is not right for every rich man to distribute his superfluous wealth
among the poor, is that the happiness of all is on the whole most
promoted by maintaining in adults generally (except married women),
the expectation that each will be thrown on his own resources for the
supply of his own wants. But if I am made aware that, owing to a sudden
calamity that could not have been foreseen, another’s resources are
manifestly inadequate to protect him from pain or serious discomfort,
the case is altered; my theoretical obligation to consider his
happiness as much as my own becomes at once practical; and I am bound
to make as much effort to relieve him as will not entail a greater
loss of happiness to myself or others. If, however, the calamity is
one which might have been foreseen and averted by proper care, my duty
becomes more doubtful: for then by relieving him I seem to be in danger
of encouraging improvidence in others. In such a case a Utilitarian
has to weigh this indirect evil against the direct good of removing
pain and distress: and it is now more and more generally recognised
that the question of providing for the destitute has to be treated as
a utilitarian problem of which these are the elements,--whether we are
considering the minimum that should be secured to them by law, or the
proper supplementary action of private charity.
Poverty, however, is not the only case in which it is conducive to
the general happiness that one man should render unbought services to
another. In any condition or calling a man may find himself unable
to ward off some evil, or to realise some legitimate or worthy end,
without assistance of such kind as he cannot purchase on the ordinary
commercial terms;--assistance which, on the one hand, will have no bad
effect on the receiver, from the exceptional nature of the emergency,
while at the same time it may not be burdensome to the giver. Here,
again, some jurists have thought that where the service to be rendered
is great, and the burden of rendering it very slight, it might properly
be made matter of legal obligation: so that (_e.g._) if I could save
a man from drowning by merely holding out a hand, I should be legally
punishable if I omitted the act. But, however this may be, the moral
rule condemning the refusal of aid in such emergencies is obviously
conducive to the general happiness.
Further, besides these--so to say--_accidentally_ unbought services,
there are some for which there is normally no market-price; such as
counsel and assistance in the intimate perplexities of life, which one
is only willing to receive from genuine friends. It much promotes the
general happiness that such services should be generally rendered. On
this ground, as well as through the emotional pleasures which directly
spring from it, we perceive Friendship to be an important means to the
Utilitarian end. At the same time we feel that the charm of Friendship
is lost if the flow of emotion is not spontaneous and unforced. The
combination of these two views seems to be exactly represented by the
sympathy that is not quite admiration with which Common Sense regards
all close and strong affections; and the regret that is not quite
disapproval with which it contemplates their decay.
In all cases where it is conducive to the general happiness that
unbought services should be rendered, Gratitude (if we mean by this
a settled disposition to repay the benefit in whatever way one can
on a fitting opportunity) is enjoined by Utilitarianism no less than
by Common Sense; for experience would lead us to expect that no
kind of onerous services will be adequately rendered unless there
is a general disposition to requite them. In fact we may say that a
general understanding that all services which it is expedient that _A_
should render to _B_ will be in some way repaid by _B_, is a natural
supplement of the more definite contracts by which the main part of
the great social interchange of services is arranged. Indeed the
one kind of requital merges in the other, and no sharp line can be
drawn between the two: we cannot always say distinctly whether the
requital of a benefit is a pure act of gratitude or the fulfilment of
a tacit understanding.[331] There is, however, a certain difficulty in
this view of gratitude as analogous to the fulfilment of a bargain.
For it may be said that of the services peculiar to friendship
disinterestedness is an indispensable characteristic; and that in all
cases benefits conferred without expectation of reward have a peculiar
excellence, and are indeed peculiarly adapted to arouse gratitude;
but if they are conferred in expectation of such gratitude, they lose
this excellence; and yet, again, it would be very difficult to treat
as a friend one from whom gratitude was not expected. This seems,
at first sight, an inextricable entanglement: but here, as in other
cases, an apparent ethical contradiction is found to reduce itself to a
psychological complexity. For most of our actions are done from several
different motives, either coexisting or succeeding one another in rapid
alternation: thus a man may have a perfectly disinterested desire
to benefit another, and one which might possibly prevail over all
conflicting motives if all hope of requital were cut off, and yet it
may be well that this generous impulse should be sustained by a vague
trust that requital will not be withheld. And in fact the apparent
puzzle really affords another illustration of the latent Utilitarianism
of Common Sense. For, on the one hand, Utilitarianism prescribes that
we should render services whenever it is conducive to the general
happiness to do so, which may often be the case without taking into
account the gain to oneself which would result from their requital: and
on the other hand, since we may infer from the actual selfishness of
average men that such services would not be adequately rendered without
expectation of requital, it is also conducive to the general happiness
that men should recognise a moral obligation to repay them.
We have discussed only the most conspicuous of the duties of affection:
but it is probably obvious that similar reasonings would apply in the
case of the others.
In all such cases there are three distinct lines of argument which
tend to show that the commonly received view of special claims and
duties arising out of special relations, though _prima facie_ opposed
to the impartial universality of the Utilitarian principle, is really
maintained by a well-considered application of that principle.
First, morality is here in a manner protecting the normal channels
and courses of natural benevolent affections; and the development of
such affections is of the highest importance to human happiness, both
as a direct source of pleasure, and as an indispensable preparation
for a more enlarged “altruism.” And again, the mere fact that such
affections are normal, causes an expectation of the services that are
their natural expression; and the disappointment of such expectations
is inevitably painful. While finally, apart from these considerations,
we can show in each case strong utilitarian reasons why, generally
speaking, services should be rendered to the persons commonly
recognised as having such claims rather than to others.
We have to observe, in conclusion, that the difficulties which we found
in the way of determining by the Intuitional method the limits and the
relative importance of these duties are reduced in the Utilitarian
system, to difficulties of hedonistic comparison.[332] For each of the
preceding arguments has shown us different kinds of pleasures gained
and pains averted by the fulfilment of the claims in question. There
are, first, those which the service claimed would directly promote or
avert: secondly, there is the pain and secondary harm of disappointed
expectation, if the service be not rendered: thirdly, we have to reckon
the various pleasures connected with the exercise of natural benevolent
affections, especially when reciprocated, including the indirect
effects on the agent’s character of maintaining such affections. All
these different pleasures and pains combine differently, and with
almost infinite variation as circumstances vary, into utilitarian
reasons for each of the claims in question; none of these reasons being
absolute and conclusive, but each having its own weight, while liable
to be outweighed by others.
§ 4. I pass to consider another group of duties, often contrasted with
those of Benevolence, under the comprehensive notion of Justice.
“That Justice is useful to society,” says Hume, “it would be a
superfluous undertaking to prove”: what he endeavours to show at some
length is “that public utility is the _sole_ origin of Justice”: and
the same question of origin has occupied the chief attention of J.
S. Mill.[333] Here, however, we are not so much concerned with the
growth of the sentiment of Justice from experiences of utility, as
with the Utilitarian basis of the mature notion; while at the same
time if the analysis previously given be correct, the Justice that
is commonly demanded and inculcated is something more complex than
these writers have recognised. What Hume (_e.g._) means by Justice is
rather what I should call Order, understood in its widest sense: the
observance of the actual system of rules, whether strictly legal or
customary, which bind together the different members of any society
into an organic whole, checking malevolent or otherwise injurious
impulses, distributing the different objects of men’s clashing desires,
and exacting such positive services, customary or contractual, as are
commonly recognised as matters of debt. And though there have rarely
been wanting plausible empirical arguments for the revolutionary
paradox quoted by Plato, that “laws are imposed in the interest of
rulers,” it remains true that the general conduciveness to social
happiness of the habit of Order or Law-observance, is, as Hume says,
too obvious to need proof; indeed it is of such paramount importance
to a community, that even where particular laws are clearly injurious
it is usually expedient to observe them, apart from any penalty which
their breach might entail on the individual. We saw, however, that
Common Sense sometimes bids us refuse obedience to bad laws, because
“we ought to obey God rather than men” (though there seems to be no
clear intuition as to the kind or degree of badness that justifies
resistance); and further allows us, in special emergencies, to violate
rules generally good, for “necessity has no law,” and “salus populi
suprema lex.”
These and similar common opinions seem at least to suggest that
the limits of the duty of Law-observance are to be determined by
utilitarian considerations. While, again, the Utilitarian view gets
rid of the difficulties in which the attempt to define intuitively the
truly legitimate source of legislative authority involved us;[334]
at the same time that it justifies to some extent each of the
different views current as to the intrinsic legitimacy of governments.
For, on the one hand, it finds the moral basis of any established
political order primarily in its effects rather than its causes; so
that, generally speaking, obedience will seem due to any _de facto_
government that is not governing very badly. On the other hand, in
so far as laws originating in a particular way are likely to be (1)
better, or (2) more readily observed, it is a Utilitarian duty to aim
at introducing this mode of origination: and thus in a certain stage
of social development it may be right that (_e.g._) a ‘representative
system’ should be popularly demanded, or possibly (in extreme cases)
even introduced by force: while, again, there is expediency in
maintaining an ancient mode of legislation, because men readily obey
such: and loyalty to a dispossessed government may be on the whole
expedient, even at the cost of some temporary suffering and disorder,
in order that ambitious men may not find usurpation too easy. Here,
as elsewhere, Utilitarianism at once supports the different reasons
commonly put forward as absolute, and also brings them theoretically to
a common measure, so that in any particular case we have a principle of
decision between conflicting political arguments.
As was before said, this Law-observance, in so far at least as it
affects the interests of other individuals, is what we frequently
mean by Justice. It seems, however,[335] that the notion of Justice,
exhaustively analysed, includes several distinct elements combined in
a somewhat complex manner: we have to inquire, therefore, what latent
utilities are represented by each of these elements.
Now, first, a constant part of the notion, which appears in it even
when the Just is not distinguished from the Legal, is impartiality or
the negation of arbitrary inequality. This impartiality, as we saw[336]
(whether exhibited in the establishment or in the administration of
laws), is merely a special application of the wider maxim that it
cannot be right to treat two persons differently if their cases are
similar in all material circumstances. And Utilitarianism, as we saw,
admits this maxim no less than other systems of Ethics. At the same
time, this negative criterion is clearly inadequate for the complete
determination of what is just in laws, or in conduct generally; when we
have admitted this, it still remains to ask, “What are the inequalities
in laws, and in the distribution of pleasures and pains outside the
sphere of law, which are not arbitrary and unreasonable? and to what
general principles can they be reduced?”
Here in the first place we may explain, on utilitarian principles,
why apparently arbitrary inequality in a certain part of the conduct
of individuals[337] is not regarded as injustice or even--in some
cases--as in any way censurable. For freedom of action is an important
source of happiness to the agents, and a socially useful stimulus
to their energies: hence it is obviously expedient that a man’s
free choice in the distribution of wealth or kind services should
not be restrained by the fear of legal penalties, or even of social
disapprobation, beyond what the interests of others clearly require;
and therefore, when distinctly recognised claims are satisfied, it
is _pro tanto_ expedient that the mere preferences of an individual
should be treated by others as legitimate grounds for inequality in
the distribution of his property or services. Nay, as we have before
seen, it is within certain limits expedient that each individual should
practically regard his own unreasoned impulses as reasonable grounds of
action: as in the rendering of services prompted by such affections as
are normally and properly spontaneous and unforced.
Passing to consider the general principles upon which ‘just claims’ as
commonly recognised appear to be based, we notice that the grounds of a
number of such claims may be brought under the general head of ‘normal
expectations’; but that the stringency of such obligations varies
much in degree, according as the expectations are based upon definite
engagements, or on some vague mutual understanding, or are merely such
as an average man would form from past experience of the conduct of
other men. In these latter cases Common Sense appeared to be somewhat
perplexed as to the validity of the claims. But for the Utilitarian
the difficulty has ceased to exist. He will hold any disappointment
of expectations to be _pro tanto_ an evil, but a greater evil in
proportion to the previous security of the expectant individual, from
the greater shock thus given to his reliance on the conduct of his
fellow-men generally: and many times greater in proportion as the
expectation is generally recognised as normal and reasonable, as in
this case the shock extends to all who are in any way cognisant of his
disappointment. The importance to mankind of being able to rely on
each other’s actions is so great, that in ordinary cases of absolutely
definite engagements there is scarcely any advantage that can
counterbalance the harm done by violating them. Still, we found[338]
that several exceptions and qualifications to the rule of Good Faith
were more or less distinctly recognised by Common Sense: and most of
these have a utilitarian basis, which it does not need much penetration
to discern. To begin, we may notice that the superficial view of the
obligation of a promise which makes it depend on the assertion of the
promiser, and not, as Utilitarians hold, on the expectations produced
in the promisee, cannot fairly be attributed to Common Sense: which
certainly condemns a breach of promise much more strongly when others
have acted in reliance on it, than when its observance did not directly
concern others, so that its breach involves for them only the indirect
evil of a bad precedent,--as when a man breaks a pledge of total
abstinence. We see, again, how the utilitarian reasons for keeping a
promise are diminished by a material change of circumstances,[339] for
in that case the expectations disappointed by breaking it are at least
not those which the promise originally created. It is obvious, too,
that it is a disadvantage to the community that men should be able
to rely on the performance of promises procured by fraud or unlawful
force, so far as encouragement is thereby given to the use of fraud or
force for this end.[340] We saw, again,[341] that when the performance
would be injurious to the promisee, Common Sense is disposed to admit
that its obligation is superseded; and is at least doubtful whether the
promise should be kept, even when it is only the promiser who would
be injured, if the harm be extreme;--both which qualifications are in
harmony with Utilitarianism. And similarly for the other qualifications
and exceptions: they all turn out to be as clearly utilitarian, as the
general utility of keeping one’s word is plain and manifest.
But further, the expediency of satisfying normal expectations, even
when they are not based upon a definite contract, is undeniable; it
will clearly conduce to the tranquillity of social existence, and
to the settled and well-adjusted activity on which social happiness
greatly depends, that such expectations should be as little as possible
baulked. And here Utilitarianism relieves us of the difficulties which
beset the common view of just conduct as something absolutely precise
and definite. For in this vaguer region we cannot draw a sharp line
between valid and invalid claims; ‘injustice’ shades gradually off into
mere ‘hardship.’ Hence the Utilitarian view that the disappointment of
natural expectations is an evil, but an evil which must sometimes be
incurred for the sake of a greater good, is that to which Common Sense
is practically forced, though it is difficult to reconcile it with the
theoretical absoluteness of Justice in the Intuitional view of Morality.
The gain of recognising the relativity of this obligation will be still
more felt, when we consider what I distinguished as Ideal Justice, and
examine the general conceptions of this which we find expressed or
latent in current criticisms of the existing order of Society.
We have seen that there are two competing views of an ideally just
social order--or perhaps we may say two extreme types between which
the looser notions of ordinary men seem to fluctuate--which I called
respectively Individualistic and Socialistic. According to the former
view an ideal system of Law ought to aim at Freedom, or perfect mutual
non-interference of all the members of the community, as an absolute
end. Now the general utilitarian reasons for leaving each rational
adult free to seek happiness in his own way are obvious and striking:
for, generally speaking, each is best qualified to provide for his own
interests, since even when he does not know best what they are and how
to attain them, he is at any rate most keenly concerned for them: and
again, the consciousness of freedom and concomitant responsibility
increases the average effective activity of men: and besides, the
discomfort of constraint is directly an evil and _pro tanto_ to be
avoided. Still, we saw[342] that the attempt to construct a consistent
code of laws, taking Maximum Freedom (instead of Happiness) as an
absolute end, must lead to startling paradoxes and insoluble puzzles:
and in fact the practical interpretation of the notion ‘Freedom,’ and
the limits within which its realisation has been actually sought, have
always--even in the freest societies--been more or less consciously
determined by considerations of expediency. So that we may fairly say
that in so far as Common Sense has adopted the Individualistic ideal
in politics, it has always been as subordinate to and limited by the
Utilitarian first principle.[343]
It seems, however, that what we commonly demand or long for, under the
name of Ideal Justice, is not so much the realisation of Freedom, as
the distribution of good and evil according to Desert: indeed it is as
a means to this latter end that Freedom is often advocated; for it is
said that if we protect men completely from mutual interference, each
will reap the good and bad consequences of his own conduct, and so be
happy or unhappy in proportion to his deserts. In particular, it has
been widely held that if a free exchange of wealth and services is
allowed, each individual will obtain from society, in money or other
advantages, what his services are really worth. We saw, however, that
the price which an individual obtains under a system of perfect free
trade, for wealth or services exchanged by him, may for several reasons
be not proportioned to the social utility of what he exchanges: and
reflective Common Sense seems to admit this disproportion as to some
extent legitimate, under the influence of utilitarian considerations
correcting the unreflective utterances of moral sentiments.
To take a particular case: if a moral man were asked how far it is
right to take advantage in bargaining of another’s ignorance, probably
his first impulse would be to condemn such a procedure altogether.
But reflection, I think, would show him that such a censure would
be too sweeping: that it would be contrary to Common Sense to “blame
_A_ for having, in negotiating with a stranger _B_, taken advantage
of _B_’s ignorance of facts known to himself, provided that _A_’s
superior knowledge had been obtained by a legitimate use of diligence
and foresight, which _B_ might have used with equal success.... What
prevents us from censuring in this and similar cases is, I conceive,
a more or less conscious apprehension of the indefinite loss to the
wealth of the community that is likely to result from any effective
social restrictions on the free pursuit and exercise” of economic
knowledge. And for somewhat similar reasons of general expediency, if
the question be raised whether it is fair for a class of persons to
gain by the unfavourable economic situation of any class with which
they deal, Common Sense at least hesitates to censure such gains--at
any rate when such unfavourable situation is due “to the gradual action
of general causes, for the existence of which the persons who gain are
not specially responsible.”[344]
The general principle of ‘requiting good desert,’ so far as Common
Sense really accepts it as practically applicable to the relations of
men in society, is broadly in harmony with Utilitarianism; since we
obviously encourage the production of general happiness by rewarding
men for felicific conduct; only the Utilitarian scale of rewards will
not be determined entirely by the magnitude of the services performed,
but partly also by the difficulty of inducing men to perform them.
But this latter element seems to be always taken into account (though
perhaps unconsciously) by Common Sense: for, as we have been led to
notice,[345] we do not commonly recognise merit in right actions,
if they are such as men are naturally inclined to perform rather
too much than too little. Again, in cases where the Intuitional
principle that ill-desert lies in wrong intention conflicts with the
Utilitarian view of punishment as purely preventive, we find that in
the actual administration of criminal justice, Common Sense is forced,
however reluctantly, into practical agreement with Utilitarianism.
Thus after a civil war it demands the execution of the most purely
patriotic rebels; and after a railway accident it clamours for the
severe punishment of unintentional neglects, which, except for their
consequences, would have been regarded as very venial.
If, however, in any distribution of pleasures and privileges, or of
pains and burdens, considerations of desert do not properly come in
(_i.e._ if the good or evil to be distributed have no relation to any
conduct on the part of the persons who are to receive either)--or
if it is practically impossible to take such considerations into
account--then Common Sense seems to fall back on simple equality as
the principle of just apportionment.[346] And we have seen that the
Utilitarian, in the case supposed, will reasonably accept Equality
as the only mode of distribution that is not arbitrary; and it may
be observed that this mode of apportioning the means of happiness is
likely to produce more happiness on the whole, not only because men
have a disinterested aversion to unreason, but still more because they
have an aversion to any kind of inferiority to others (which is much
intensified when the inferiority seems unreasonable). This latter
feeling is so strong that it often prevails in spite of obvious claims
of desert; and it may even be sometimes expedient that it should so
prevail.
For, finally, it must be observed that Utilitarianism furnishes us
with a common standard to which the different elements included in
the notion of Justice may be reduced. Such a standard is imperatively
required: as these different elements are continually liable to
conflict with each other. The issue, for example, in practical
politics between Conservatives and Reformers often represents such a
conflict: the question is, whether we ought to do a certain violence to
expectations arising naturally out of the existing social order, with
the view of bringing about a distribution of the means of happiness
more in accordance with ideal justice. Here, if my analysis of the
common notion of Justice be sound, the attempt to extract from it a
clear decision of such an issue must necessarily fail: as the conflict
is, so to say, permanently latent in the very core of Common Sense. But
the Utilitarian will merely use this notion of Justice as a guide to
different kinds of utilities; and in so far as these are incompatible,
he will balance one set of advantages against the other, and decide
according to the preponderance.
§ 5. The duty of Truth-speaking is sometimes taken as a striking
instance of a moral rule not resting on a Utilitarian basis. But a
careful study of the qualifications with which the common opinion of
mankind actually inculcates this duty seems to lead us to an opposite
result: for not only is the general utility of truth-speaking so
manifest as to need no proof, but wherever this utility seems to be
absent, or outweighed by particular bad consequences, we find that
Common Sense at least hesitates to enforce the rule. For example, if
a man be pursuing criminal ends, it is _prima facie_ injurious to the
community that he should be aided in his pursuit by being able to rely
on the assertions of others. Here, then, deception is _prima facie_
legitimate as a protection against crime: though when we consider
the bad effects on habit, and through example, of even a single act
of unveracity, the case is seen to be, on Utilitarian principles,
doubtful: and this is just the view of Common Sense. Again, though it
is generally a man’s interest to know the truth, there are exceptional
cases in which it is injurious to him--as when an invalid hears bad
news--and here, too, Common Sense is disposed to suspend the rule.
Again, we found it difficult to define exactly wherein Veracity
consists; for we may either require truth in the spoken words, or in
the inferences which the speaker foresees will be drawn from them,
or in both. Perfect Candour, no doubt, would require it in both:
but in the various circumstances where this seems inexpedient, we
often find Common Sense at least half-willing to dispense with one
or other part of the double obligation. Thus we found a respectable
school of thinkers maintaining that a religious truth may properly be
communicated by means of a historical fiction: and, on the other hand,
the unsuitability of perfect frankness to our existing social relations
is recognised in the common rules of politeness, which impose on us
not unfrequently the necessity of suppressing truths and suggesting
falsehoods. I would not say that in any of these cases Common Sense
pronounces quite decidedly in favour of unveracity: but then neither
is Utilitarianism decided, as the utility of maintaining a general
habit of truth-speaking is so great, that it is not easy to prove it to
be clearly outweighed by even strong special reasons for violating the
rule.
Yet it may be worth while to point out how the different views as to
the legitimacy of Malevolent impulses, out of which we found it hard
to frame a consistent doctrine for Common Sense, exactly correspond
to different forecasts of the consequences of gratifying such
impulses. _Prima facie_, the desire to injure any one in particular
is inconsistent with a deliberate purpose of benefiting as much as
possible people in general; accordingly, we find that what I may
call Superficial Common Sense passes a sweeping condemnation on
such desires. But a study of the actual facts of society shows that
resentment plays an important part in that repression of injuries which
is necessary to social wellbeing; accordingly, the reflective moralist
shrinks from excluding it altogether. It is evident, however, that
personal ill-will is a very dangerous means to the general happiness:
for its direct end is the exact opposite of happiness; and though
the realisation of this end may in certain cases be the least of two
evils, still the impulse if encouraged is likely to prompt to the
infliction of pain beyond the limits of just punishment, and to have an
injurious reaction on the character of the angry person. Accordingly,
the moralist is disposed to prescribe that indignation be directed
always against acts, and not against persons; and if indignation so
restricted would be efficient in repressing injuries, this would seem
to be the state of mind most conducive to the general happiness. But it
is doubtful whether average human nature is capable of maintaining this
distinction, and whether, if it could be maintained, the more refined
aversion would by itself be sufficiently efficacious: accordingly,
Common Sense hesitates to condemn personal ill-will against
wrong-doers--even if it includes a desire of malevolent satisfaction.
Finally, it is easy to show that Temperance, Self-control, and what
are called the Self-regarding virtues generally, are ‘useful’ to the
individual who possesses them: and if it is not quite clear, in the
view of Common Sense, to what end that regulation and government of
appetites and passions, which moralists have so much inculcated and
admired, is to be directed; at least there seems no obstacle in the
way of our defining this end as Happiness. And even in the ascetic
extreme of Self-control, which has sometimes led to the repudiation
of sensual pleasures as radically bad, we may trace an unconscious
Utilitarianism. For the ascetic condemnation has always been chiefly
directed against those pleasures, in respect of which men are
especially liable to commit excesses dangerous to health; and free
indulgence in which, even when it keeps clear of injury to health,
is thought to interfere with the development of other faculties and
susceptibilities which are important sources of happiness.
§ 6. An apparent exception to this statement may seem to be constituted
in the case of the sexual appetite, by the regulation prescribed under
the notion of Purity or Chastity. And there is no doubt that under
this head we find condemned, with special vehemence and severity, acts
of which the immediate effect is pleasure not obviously outweighed by
subsequent pain. But a closer examination of this exception transforms
it into an important contribution to the present argument: as it
shows a specially complex and delicate correspondence between moral
sentiments and social utilities.
In the first place, the peculiar intensity and delicacy of the moral
sentiments that govern the relations of the sexes are thoroughly
justified by the vast importance to society of the end to which they
are obviously a means,--the maintenance, namely, of the permanent
unions which are held to be necessary for the proper rearing and
training of children. Hence the first and fundamental rule in this
department is that which directly secures conjugal fidelity: and the
utilitarian grounds for protecting marriage indirectly, by condemning
all extra-nuptial intercourse of the sexes, are obvious: for to remove
the moral censure that rests on such intercourse would seriously
diminish men’s motives for incurring the restraints and burdens which
marriage entails; and the youth of both sexes would form habits of
feeling and conduct tending to unfit them for marriage; and, if such
intercourse were fertile, it would be attended with that imperfect care
of the succeeding generation, which it seems the object of permanent
unions to prevent; while if it were sterile, the future of the human
race would, as far as we can see, be still more profoundly imperilled.
But, further, it is only on Utilitarian principles that we can account
for the anomalous difference which the morality of Common Sense has
always made between the two sexes as regards the simple offence of
unchastity. For the offence is commonly more deliberate in the man,
who has the additional guilt of soliciting and persuading the woman;
in the latter, again, it is far more often prompted by some motive
that we rank higher than mere lust: so that, according to the ordinary
canons of intuitional morality, it ought to be more severely condemned
in the man. The actual inversion of this result can only be justified
by taking into account the greater interest that society has in
maintaining a high standard of female chastity. For the degradation
of this standard must strike at the root of family life, by impairing
men’s security in the exercise of their parental affections: but there
is no corresponding consequence of male unchastity, which may therefore
prevail to a considerable extent without imperilling the very existence
of the family, though it impairs its wellbeing.
At the same time, the condemnation of unchastity in men by the common
moral sense of Christian countries at the present day, is sufficiently
clear and explicit: though we recognise the existence of a laxer
code--the morality, as it is called, of ‘the world’--which treats
it as indifferent, or very venial. But the very difference between
the two codes gives a kind of support to the present argument; as
it corresponds to easily explained differences of insight into the
consequences of maintaining certain moral sanctions. For partly,
it is thought by ‘men of the world’ that men cannot practically be
restrained from sexual indulgence, at least at the period of life when
the passions are strongest: and hence that it is expedient to tolerate
such kind and degree of illicit sexual intercourse as is not directly
dangerous to the wellbeing of families. Partly, again, it is maintained
by some, in bolder antagonism to Common Sense, that the existence of
a certain limited amount of such intercourse (with a special class of
women, carefully separated, as at present, from the rest of society)
is scarcely a real evil, and may even be a positive gain in respect
of general happiness; for continence is perhaps somewhat dangerous
to health, and in any case involves a loss of pleasure considerable
in intensity; while at the same time the maintenance of as numerous
a population as is desirable in an old society does not require
that more than a certain proportion of the women in each generation
should become mothers of families; and if some of the surplus make it
their profession to enter into casual and temporary sexual relations
with men, there is no necessity that their lives should compare
disadvantageously in respect of happiness with those of other women in
the less favoured classes of society.
This view has perhaps a superficial plausibility: but it ignores the
essential fact that it is only by the present severe enforcement
against unchaste women of the penalties of social contempt and
exclusion, resting on moral disapprobation, that the class of
courtesans is kept sufficiently separate from the rest of female
society to prevent the contagion of unchastity from spreading; and
that the illicit intercourse of the sexes is restrained within such
limits as not to interfere materially with the due development of the
race. This consideration is sufficient to decide a Utilitarian to
support generally the established rule against this kind of conduct,
and therefore to condemn violations of the rule as on the whole
infelicific, even though they may perhaps appear to have this quality
only in consequence of the moral censure attached to them.[347]
Further, the ‘man of the world’ ignores the vast importance to the
human race of maintaining that higher type of sexual relations which
is not, generally speaking, possible, except where a high value is set
upon chastity in both sexes. From this point of view the Virtue of
Purity may be regarded as providing a necessary shelter under which
that intense and elevated affection between the sexes, which is most
conducive both to the happiness of the individual and to the wellbeing
of the family, may grow and flourish.
And in this way we are able to explain what must have perplexed
many reflective minds in contemplating the common-sense regulation
of conduct under the head of Purity: viz. that on the one hand the
sentiment that supports these rules is very intense, so that the
subjective difference between right and wrong in this department is
marked with peculiar strength: while on the other hand it is found
impossible to give a clear definition of the conduct condemned under
this notion. For the impulse to be restrained is so powerful and so
sensitive to stimulants of all kinds, that, in order that the sentiment
of purity may adequately perform its protective function, it is
required to be very keen and vivid; and the aversion to impurity must
extend far beyond the acts that primarily need to be prohibited, and
include in its scope everything (in dress, language, social customs,
etc.) which may tend to excite lascivious ideas. At the same time it
is not necessary that the line between right and wrong in such matters
should be drawn with theoretical precision: it is sufficient for
practical purposes if the main central portion of the region of duty be
strongly illuminated, while the margin is left somewhat obscure. And,
in fact, the detailed regulations which it is important to society to
maintain depend so much upon habit and association of ideas, that they
must vary to a great extent from age to age and from country to country.
§ 7. The preceding survey has supplied us with several illustrations of
the manner in which Utilitarianism is normally introduced as a method
for deciding between different conflicting claims, in cases where
common sense leaves their relative importance obscure,--as (_e.g._)
between the different duties of the affections, and the different
principles which analysis shows to be involved in our common conception
of Justice--: and we have also noticed how, when a dispute is raised
as to the precise scope and definition of any current moral rule, the
effects of different acceptations of the rule on general happiness
or social wellbeing are commonly regarded as the ultimate grounds
on which the dispute is to be decided. In fact these two arguments
practically run into one; for it is generally a conflict between maxims
that impresses men with the need of giving each a precise definition.
It may be urged that the consequences to which reference is commonly
made in such cases are rather effects on ‘social wellbeing’ than on
‘general happiness’ as understood by Utilitarians; and that the two
notions ought not to be identified. I grant this: but in the last
chapter of the preceding Book I have tried to show that Common Sense
is unconsciously utilitarian in its practical determination of those
very elements in the notion of Ultimate Good or Wellbeing which at
first sight least admit of a hedonistic interpretation. We may now
observe that this hypothesis of ‘Unconscious Utilitarianism’ explains
the different relative importance attached to particular virtues by
different classes of human beings, and the different emphasis with
which the same virtue is inculcated on these different classes by
mankind generally. For such differences ordinarily correspond to
variations--real or apparent--in the Utilitarian importance of the
virtues under different circumstances. Thus we have noticed the greater
stress laid on chastity in women than in men: courage, on the other
hand, is more valued in the latter, as they are more called upon to
cope energetically with sudden and severe dangers. And for similar
reasons a soldier is expected to show a higher degree of courage than
(_e.g._) a priest. Again, though we esteem candour and scrupulous
sincerity in most persons, we scarcely look for them in a diplomatist
who has to conceal secrets, nor do we expect that a tradesman in
describing his goods should frankly point out their defects to his
customers.
Finally, when we compare the different moral codes of different ages
and countries, we see that the discrepancies among them correspond, at
least to a great extent, to differences either in the actual effects
of actions on happiness, or in the extent to which such effects are
generally foreseen--or regarded as important--by the men among whom
the codes are maintained. Several instances of this have already been
noticed: and the general fact, which has been much dwelt upon by
Utilitarian writers, is also admitted and even emphasised by their
opponents. Thus Dugald Stewart[348] lays stress on the extent to which
the moral judgments of mankind have been modified by “the diversity in
their physical circumstances,” the “unequal degrees of civilisation
which they have attained,” and “their unequal measures of knowledge
or of capacity.” He points out, for instance, that theft is regarded
as a very venial offence in the South Sea Islanders, because little
or no labour is there required to support life; that the lending of
money for interest is commonly reprehended in societies where commerce
is imperfectly developed, because the ‘usurer’ in such communities is
commonly in the odious position of wringing a gain out of the hard
necessities of his fellows; and that where the legal arrangements for
punishing crime are imperfect, private murder is either justified or
regarded very leniently. Many other examples might be added to these
if it were needful. But I conceive that few persons who have studied
the subject will deny that there is a certain degree of correlation
between the variations in the moral code from age to age, and the
variations in the real or perceived effects on general happiness of
actions prescribed or forbidden by the code. And in proportion as the
apprehension of consequences becomes more comprehensive and exact,
we may trace not only change in the moral code handed down from age
to age, but progress in the direction of a closer approximation to
a perfectly enlightened Utilitarianism. Only we must distinctly
notice another important factor in the progress, which Stewart has
not mentioned: the extension, namely, of the capacity for sympathy
in an average member of the community. The imperfection of earlier
moral codes is at least as much due to defectiveness of sympathy as
of intelligence; often, no doubt, the ruder man did not perceive the
effects of his conduct on others; but often, again, he perceived them
more or less, but felt little or no concern about them. Thus it happens
that changes in the conscience of a community often correspond to
changes in the extent and degree of the sensitiveness of an average
member of it to the feelings of others. Of this the moral development
historically worked out under the influence of Christianity affords
familiar illustrations.[349]
I am not maintaining that this correlation between the development of
current morality and the changes in the consequences of conduct as
sympathetically forecast, is perfect and exact. On the contrary,--as I
shall have occasion to point out in the next chapter--the history of
morality shows us many evidences of what, from the Utilitarian point
of view, appear to be partial aberrations of the moral sense. But
even in these instances we can often discover a germ of unconscious
Utilitarianism; the aberration is often only an exaggeration of an
obviously useful sentiment, or the extension of it by mistaken analogy
to cases to which it does not properly apply, or perhaps the survival
of a sentiment which once was useful but has now ceased to be so.
Further, it must be observed that I have carefully abstained from
asserting that the perception of the rightness of any kind of
conduct has always--or even ordinarily--been derived by conscious
inference from a perception of consequent advantages. This hypothesis
is naturally suggested by such a survey as the preceding; but the
evidence of history hardly seems to me to support it: since, as we
retrace the development of ethical thought, the Utilitarian basis of
current morality, which I have endeavoured to exhibit in the present
chapter, seems to be rather less than more distinctly apprehended by
the common moral consciousness. Thus (_e.g._) Aristotle sees that
the sphere of the Virtue of Courage (ἀνδρεία), as recognised
by the Common Sense of Greece, is restricted to dangers in war: and
we can now explain this limitation by a reference to the utilitarian
importance of this kind of courage, at a period of history when the
individual’s happiness was bound up more completely than it now is with
the welfare of his state, while the very existence of the latter was
more frequently imperilled by hostile invasions: but this explanation
lies quite beyond the range of Aristotle’s own reflection. The origin
of our moral notions and sentiments lies hid in those obscure regions
of hypothetical history where conjecture has free scope: but we do
not find that, as our retrospect approaches the borders of this
realm, the conscious connexion in men’s minds between accepted moral
rules and foreseen effects on general happiness becomes more clearly
traceable. The admiration felt by early man for beauties or excellences
of character seems to have been as direct and unreflective as his
admiration of any other beauty: and the stringency of law and custom in
primitive times presents itself as sanctioned by the evils which divine
displeasure will supernaturally inflict on their violators, rather than
by even a rude and vague forecast of the natural bad consequences of
non-observance. It is therefore not as the mode of regulating conduct
with which mankind began, but rather as that to which we can now see
that human development has been always tending, as the adult and not
the germinal form of Morality, that Utilitarianism may most reasonably
claim the acceptance of Common Sense.
* * * * *
[350]If we consider the relation of Ethics to Politics from a
Utilitarian point of view, the question, what rules of conduct for the
governed should be fixed by legislators and applied by judges, will be
determined by the same kind of forecast of consequences as will be used
in settling all questions of private morality: we shall endeavour to
estimate and balance against each other the effects of such rules on
the general happiness. In so far, however, as we divide the Utilitarian
theory of private conduct from that of legislation, and ask which is
prior, the answer would seem to be different in respect of different
parts of the legal code.
1. To a great extent the rules laid down in a utilitarian code of law
will be such as any man sincerely desirous of promoting the general
happiness would generally endeavour to observe, even if they were not
legally binding. Of this kind is the rule of not inflicting any bodily
harm or gratuitous annoyance on any one, except in self-defence or
as retribution for wrong; the rule of not interfering with another’s
pursuit of the means of happiness, or with his enjoyment of wealth
acquired by his own labour or the free consent of others; the rule
of fulfilling all engagements freely entered into with any one,--at
any rate unless the fulfilment were harmful to others, or much more
harmful to oneself than beneficial to him, or unless there were good
grounds for supposing that the other party would not perform his share
of a bilateral contract--; and the rule of supporting one’s children
while helpless, and one’s parents if decrepit, and of educating one’s
children suitably to their future life. As regards such rules as these,
Utilitarian Ethics seems independent of Politics, and naturally prior
to it; we first consider what conduct is right for private individuals,
and then to how much of this they can advantageously be compelled by
legal penalties.
2. There are other rules again which it is clearly for the general
happiness to observe, if only their observance is enforced on others;
_e.g._ abstinence from personal retaliation of injuries, and a more
general and unhesitating fulfilment of contracts than would perhaps be
expedient if they were not legally enforced.
3. But again, in the complete determination of the mutual claims
of members of society to services and forbearances, there are many
points on which the utilitarian theory of right private conduct apart
from law would lead to a considerable variety of conclusions, from
the great difference in the force of the relevant considerations
under different circumstances; while at the same time uniformity is
either indispensable, to prevent disputes and disappointments, or at
least highly desirable, in order to maintain effectively such rules
of conduct as are _generally_--though not _universally_--expedient.
Under this head would come the exacter definition of the limits of
appropriation,--_e.g._ as regards property in literary compositions and
technical inventions,--and a large part of the law of inheritance, and
of the law regulating the family relations. In such cases, in so far as
they are capable of being theoretically determined, Utilitarian Ethics
seems to blend with Utilitarian Politics in a rather complicated way;
since we cannot determine the right conduct for a private individual in
any particular case, without first considering what rule (if any) it
would be on the whole expedient to maintain, in the society of which
he is a member, by legal penalties, as well as by the weaker and less
definite sanctions of moral opinion. This problem, moreover, in any
concrete case is necessarily further complicated by the consideration
of the delicate mutual relations of Positive Law and Positive
Morality--as we may call the actual moral opinions generally held in a
given society at a given time. For on the one hand it is dangerous in
legislation to advance beyond Positive Morality, by prohibiting actions
(or inactions) that are generally approved or tolerated; on the other
hand, up to the point at which this danger becomes serious, legislation
is a most effective instrument for modifying or intensifying public
opinion, in the direction in which it is desirable that it should
progress. Leaving this difficult question of social dynamics, we may
say that normally in a well-organised society the most important and
indispensable rules of social behaviour will be legally enforced and
the less important left to be maintained by Positive Morality. Law will
constitute, as it were, the skeleton of social order, clothed upon by
the flesh and blood of Morality.
FOOTNOTES:
[322] It ought to be observed that Cumberland does not adopt a
hedonistic interpretation of Good. Still, I have followed Hallam in
regarding him as the founder of English Utilitarianism: since it seems
to have been by a gradual and half-unconscious process that ‘Good’ came
to have the definitely hedonistic meaning which it has implicitly in
Shaftesbury’s system, and explicitly in that of Hume.
[323] I should point out that Hume uses “utility” in a narrower sense
than that which Bentham gave it, and one more in accordance with the
usage of ordinary language. He distinguishes the “useful” from the
“immediately agreeable”: so that while recognising “utility” as the
main ground of our moral approbation of the more important virtues,
he holds that there are other elements of personal merit which we
approve because they are “immediately agreeable,” either to the person
possessed of them or to others. It appears, however, more convenient
to use the word in the wider sense in which it has been current since
Bentham.
[324] Lecky, _Hist. of Eur. Mor._ chap. i, pp. 37, 40 _seqq_. (13th
impression).
[325] Book iii. chap. x.
[326] Book iii. chap. iv. § 1.
[327] It will be seen that I do not here assume in their full breadth
the conclusions of chap. xiv. of the preceding Book.
[328] Cf. J. Grote, _An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy_,
chap. v.
[329] Book iii. chap. iv. § 1.
[330] Strictly speaking, of course, the Law of modern states does not
enforce this, but only refuses to recognise connubial contracts of any
other kind: but the social effect is substantially the same.
[331] Sometimes such unbargained requital is even legally obligatory:
as when children are bound to repay the care spent on them by
supporting their parents in decrepitude.
[332] Further discussion of the method of dealing with these
difficulties, in their utilitarian form, will be found in the two
following chapters.
[333] _Utilitarianism_, chap. v.
[334] Cf. Book iii. chap. vi. §§ 2, 3.
[335] Cf. Book iii. chap. v.
[336] Book iii. chap. xiii. § 3.
[337] Cf. _ante_, p. 268 note.
[338] Book iii. chap. vi.
[339] Cf. _ante_, Book iii. chap. vi. § 8.
[340] In the case of force, however, there is the counterbalancing
consideration that the unlawful aggressor may be led to inflict worse
injury on his victim, if he is unable to rely on the latter’s promise.
[341] Cf. Book iii. chap. vi. § 8.
[342] Book iii. chap. v. § 4.
[343] In another work (_Principles of Political Economy_, Book iii.
chap. ii.) I have tried to show that complete _laisser faire_, in the
organisation of industry, tends in various ways to fall short of the
most economic production of wealth.
[344] The quotations are from my _Principles of Political Economy_,
Book iii. chap. ix.; where these questions are discussed at somewhat
greater length.
[345] Cf. _ante_, § 2, and Book iii. chap. ii. § 1.
[346] I have before observed that it is quite in harmony with
Utilitarian principles to recognise a sphere of private conduct within
which each individual may distribute his wealth and kind services as
unequally as he chooses, without incurring censure as unjust.
[347] It is obvious that so long as the social sanction is enforced,
the lives of the women against whom society thus issues its ban
must tend to be unhappy from disorder and shame, and the source of
unhappiness to others; and also that the breach by men of a recognised
and necessary moral rule must tend to have injurious effects on their
moral habits generally.
[348] _Active and Moral Powers_, Book ii. chap. iii.
[349] Among definite changes in the current morality of the Græco-Roman
civilised world, which are to be attributed mainly if not entirely to
the extension and intensification of sympathy due to Christianity,
the following may be especially noted: (1) the severe condemnation
and final suppression of the practice of exposing infants; (2)
effective abhorrence of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats; (3)
immediate moral mitigation of slavery, and a strong encouragement of
emancipation; (4) great extension of the eleemosynary provision made
for the sick and poor.
[350] This passage, which in the second and subsequent editions
occurred in chap. ii. of Book i., was omitted by Professor Sidgwick
from that chapter in the sixth edition, with the intention of
incorporating it in Book iv., which he did not live to revise.
CHAPTER IV
THE METHOD OF UTILITARIANISM
§ 1. If the view maintained in the preceding chapter as to the general
Utilitarian basis of the Morality of Common Sense may be regarded as
sufficiently established, we are now in a position to consider more
closely to what method of determining right conduct the acceptance
of Utilitarianism will practically lead. The most obvious method, of
course, is that of Empirical Hedonism, discussed in Book ii. chap.
iii.; according to which we have in each case to compare all the
pleasures and pains that can be foreseen as probable results of the
different alternatives of conduct presented to us, and to adopt the
alternative which seems likely to lead to the greatest happiness on the
whole.
In Book ii., however, it appeared that even the more restricted
application of this method, which we there had to consider, was
involved in much perplexity and uncertainty. Even when an individual is
only occupied in forecasting his own pleasures, it seems difficult or
impossible for him to avoid errors of considerable magnitude; whether
in accurately comparing the pleasantness of his own past feelings, as
represented in memory, or in appropriating the experience of others,
or in arguing from the past to the future. And these difficulties
are obviously much increased when we have to take into account all
the effects of our actions on all the sentient beings who may be
affected by them. At the same time, in Book ii. we could not find any
satisfactory substitute for this method of empirical comparison. It
did not appear reasonable to take refuge in the uncriticised beliefs
of men in general as to the sources of happiness: indeed, it seemed
impossible to extract any adequately clear and definite _consensus_
of opinion from the confused and varying utterances of Common Sense on
this subject. Nor again could it be shown that the individual would be
more likely to attain the greatest happiness open to him by practically
confining his efforts to the realisation of any scientifically
ascertainable physical or psychical conditions of happiness: nor did
it seem possible to infer on empirical grounds that the desired result
would be secured by conformity to the accepted principles of morality.
But when we consider these latter in relation, not to the happiness of
the individual, but to that of human (or sentient) beings generally,
it is clear from the preceding chapter that the question of harmony
between Hedonism and Intuitionism presents _prima facie_ an entirely
different aspect. Indeed from the considerations that we have just
surveyed it is but a short and easy step to the conclusion that in the
Morality of Common Sense we have ready to hand a body of Utilitarian
doctrine; that the “rules of morality for the multitude” are to be
regarded as “positive beliefs of mankind as to the effects of actions
on their happiness,”[351] so that the apparent first principles of
Common Sense may be accepted as the “middle axioms” of Utilitarian
method; direct reference being only made to utilitarian considerations,
in order to settle points upon which the verdict of Common Sense is
found to be obscure and conflicting. On this view the traditional
controversy between the advocates of Virtue and the advocates of
Happiness would seem to be at length harmoniously settled.
And the arguments for this view which have been already put forward
certainly receive support from the hypothesis, now widely accepted,
that the moral sentiments are ultimately derived, by a complex and
gradual process, from experiences of pleasure and pain. The hypothesis,
in a summary form, would seem to be this; (1) in the experience of
each member of the human community the pain or alarm caused to him by
actions of himself and of others tends by association to excite in
him a dislike of such actions, and a similar though feebler effect is
produced by his perception of pain or danger caused to others with
whom he is connected by blood, or by community of interest, or any
special tie of sympathy: (2) experience also tends more indirectly
to produce in him sentiments restraining him from actions painful or
alarming to others, through his dread of their resentment and its
consequences,--especially dread of his chief’s anger, and, where
religious influence has become strong, of the anger of supernatural
beings: (3) with these latter feelings blends a sympathetic aversion
to the pain of other men generally, which--at first comparatively
feeble--tends to grow in force as morality develops. In the same way
experiences of pleasure and gratitude, and desire of the goodwill of
others and its consequences, tend to produce liking for actions that
are perceived to cause pleasure to self or to others. The similar
aversions and likings that are thus produced in the majority of the
members of any society, through the general similarity of their natures
and conditions, tend to become more similar through communication
and imitation,--the desire of each to retain the goodwill of others
operating to repress individual divergencies. Thus common likings for
conduct that affects pleasurably the community generally or some part
of it, and common dislikes for conduct causing pain and alarm, come
to be gradually developed; they are transmitted from generation to
generation, partly perhaps by physical inheritance, but chiefly by
tradition from parents to children, and imitation of adults by the
young; in this way their origin becomes obscured, and they finally
appear as what are called the moral sentiments. This theory does not,
in my view, account adequately for the actual results of the faculty
of moral judgment and reasoning, so far as I can examine them by
reflection on my own moral consciousness: for this, as I have before
said, does not yield any apparent intuitions that stand the test of
rigorous examination except such as, from their abstract and general
character, have no cognisable relation to particular experiences of
any kind.[352] But that the theory gives a partially true explanation
of the historical origin of particular moral sentiments and habits and
commonly accepted rules, I see no reason to doubt; and thus regarded
it seems to supplement the arguments of the preceding chapter that
tend to exhibit the morality of common sense as unconsciously or
‘instinctively’ utilitarian.
But it is one thing to hold that the current morality expresses,
partly consciously but to a larger extent unconsciously, the results
of human experience as to the effects of actions: it is quite another
thing to accept this morality _en bloc_, so far as it is clear and
definite, as the best guidance we can get to the attainment of maximum
general happiness. However attractive this simple reconciliation
of Intuitional and Utilitarian methods may be, it is not, I think,
really warranted by the evidence. In the first place, I hold that in a
complete view of the development of the moral sense a more prominent
place should be given to the effect of sympathy with the impulses that
prompt to actions, as well as with the feelings that result from them.
It may be observed that Adam Smith[353] assigns to this operation
of sympathy,--the echo (as it were) of each agent’s passion in the
breast of unconcerned spectators,--the first place in determining our
approval and disapproval of actions[354]; sympathy with the effect of
conduct on others he treats as a merely secondary factor, correcting
and qualifying the former. Without going so far as this, I think that
there are certainly many cases where the resulting moral consciousness
would seem to indicate a balance or compromise between the two kinds of
sympathy; and the compromise may easily be many degrees removed from
the rule which Utilitarianism would prescribe. For though the passions
and other active impulses are doubtless themselves influenced, no
less than the moral sentiments, by experiences of pleasure and pain;
still this influence is not sufficient to make them at all trustworthy
guides to general, any more than to individual, happiness--as some
of our moral sentiments themselves emphatically announce. But even
if we consider our common moral sentiments as entirely due--directly
or indirectly--to the accumulated and transmitted experiences of
primary and sympathetic pains and pleasures; it is obvious that the
degree of accuracy with which sentiments thus produced will guide us
to the promotion of general happiness must largely depend upon the
degree of accuracy with which the whole sum of pleasurable and painful
consequences, resulting from any course of action, has been represented
in the consciousness of an average member of the community. And it is
seen at a glance that this representation has always been liable to
errors of great magnitude, from causes that were partly noticed in the
previous chapter, when we were considering the progress of morality. We
have to allow, first, for limitation of sympathy; since in every age
and country the sympathy of an average man with other sentient beings,
and even his egoistic regard for their likings and aversions, has been
much more limited than the influence of his actions on the feelings of
others. We must allow further for limitation of intelligence: for in
all ages ordinary men have had a very inadequate knowledge of natural
sequences; so that such indirect consequences of conduct as have been
felt have been frequently traced to wrong causes, and been met by wrong
moral remedies, owing to imperfect apprehension of the relation of
means to ends. Again, where the habit of obedience to authority and
respect for rank has become strong, we must allow for the possibly
perverting influence of a desire to win the favour or avert the anger
of superiors. And similarly we must allow again for the influences of
false religions; and also for the possibility that the sensibilities of
religious teachers have influenced the code of duty accepted by their
followers, in points where these sensibilities were not normal and
representative, but exceptional and idiosyncratic.[355]
On the other hand, we must suppose that these deflecting influences
have been more or less limited and counteracted by the struggle for
existence in past ages among different human races and communities;
since, so far as any moral habit or sentiment was unfavourable to the
preservation of the social organism, it would be a disadvantage in
the struggle for existence, and would therefore tend to perish with
the community that adhered to it. But we have no reason to suppose
that this force would be adequate to keep positive morality always
in conformity with a Utilitarian ideal. For (1) imperfect morality
would be only one disadvantage among many, and not, I conceive, the
most important, unless the imperfection were extreme,--especially
in the earlier stages of social and moral development, in which the
struggle for existence was most operative: and (2) a morality perfectly
preservative of a human community might still be imperfectly felicific,
and so require considerable improvement from a Utilitarian point of
view.[356] Further, analogy would lead us to expect that however
completely adapted the moral instincts of a community may be at some
particular time to its conditions of existence, any rapid change of
circumstances would tend to derange the adaptation, from survival of
instincts formerly useful, which through this change become useless or
pernicious. And indeed, apart from any apparent changes in external
circumstances, it might result from the operation of some law of human
development, that the most completely organised experience of human
happiness in the past would guide us but imperfectly to the right
means of making it a maximum in the future. For example, a slight
decrease in the average strength of some common impulse might render
the traditional rules and sentiments, that regulate this impulse,
infelicific on the whole. And if, when we turn from these abstract
considerations to history, and examine the actual morality of other
ages and countries, we undoubtedly find that, considered as an
instrument for producing general happiness, it continually seems to
exhibit palpable imperfections,--there is surely a strong presumption
that there are similar imperfections to be discovered in our own moral
code, though habit and familiarity prevent them from being obvious.
Finally, we must not overlook the fact that the divergences which we
find when we compare the moralities of different ages and countries,
exist to some extent side by side in the morality of any one society at
any given time. It has already been observed that whenever divergent
opinions are entertained by a minority so large, that we cannot fairly
regard the dogma of the majority as the plain utterance of Common
Sense, an appeal is necessarily made to some higher principle, and
very commonly to Utilitarianism. But a smaller minority than this,
particularly if composed of persons of enlightenment and special
acquaintance with the effects of the conduct judged, may reasonably
inspire us with distrust of Common Sense: just as in the more technical
parts of practice we prefer the judgment of a few trained experts
to the instincts of the vulgar. Yet again, a contemplation of these
divergent codes and their relation to the different circumstances in
which men live, suggests that Common-Sense morality is really only
adapted for ordinary men in ordinary circumstances--although it may
still be expedient that these ordinary persons should regard it as
absolutely and universally prescribed, since any other view of it may
dangerously weaken its hold over their minds. So far as this is the
case we must use the Utilitarian method to ascertain how far persons
in special circumstances require a morality more specially adapted to
them than Common Sense is willing to concede: and also how far men of
peculiar physical or mental constitution ought to be exempted from
ordinary rules, as has sometimes been claimed for men of genius, or
men of intensely emotional nature, or men gifted with more than usual
prudence and self-control.
Further, it is important to notice, that besides the large amount
of divergence that exists between the moral instincts of different
classes and individuals, there is often a palpable discrepancy
between the moral instincts of any class or individual, and such
Utilitarian reasonings as their untrained intellects are in the
habit of conducting. There are many things in conduct which many
people think right but not expedient, or at least which they would
not think expedient if they had not first judged them to be right;
in so far as they reason from experience only, their conclusions as
to what conduces to the general happiness are opposed to their moral
intuitions. It may be said that this results generally from a hasty and
superficial consideration of expediency; and that the discrepancy would
disappear after a deeper and completer examination of the consequences
of actions. And I do not deny that this would often turn out to be the
case: but as we cannot tell _a priori_ how far it would be so, this
only constitutes a further argument for a comprehensive and systematic
application of a purely Utilitarian method.
We must conclude, then, that we cannot take the moral rules of Common
Sense as expressing the _consensus_ of competent judges, up to the
present time, as to the kind of conduct which is likely to produce
the greatest amount of happiness on the whole. It would rather seem
that it is the unavoidable duty of a systematic Utilitarianism to make
a thorough revision of these rules, in order to ascertain how far
the causes previously enumerated (and perhaps others) have actually
operated to produce a divergence between Common Sense and a perfectly
Utilitarian code of morality.
§ 2. But in thus stating the problem we are assuming that the latter
term of this comparison can be satisfactorily defined and sufficiently
developed; that we can frame with adequate precision a system of rules,
constituting the true moral code for human beings as deduced from
Utilitarian principles. And this seems to have been commonly assumed
by the school whose method we are now examining. But when we set
ourselves in earnest to the construction of such a system, we find it
beset with serious difficulties. For, passing over the uncertainties
involved in hedonistic comparison generally, let us suppose that
the _quantum_ of happiness that will result from the establishment
of any plan of behaviour among human beings can be ascertained with
sufficient exactness for practical purposes--even when the plan is as
yet constructed in imagination alone. It still has to be asked, What
is the nature of the human being for whom we are to construct this
hypothetical scheme of conduct? For humanity is not something that
exhibits the same properties always and everywhere: whether we consider
the intellect of man or his feelings, or his physical condition and
circumstances, we find them so different in different ages and
countries, that it seems _prima facie_ absurd to lay down a set of
ideal Utilitarian rules for mankind generally. It may be said that
these differences after all relate chiefly to details; and that there
is in any case sufficient uniformity in the nature and circumstances of
human life always and everywhere to render possible an outline scheme
of ideal behaviour for mankind at large. But it must be answered, that
it is with details that we are now principally concerned; for the
previous discussion has sufficiently shown that the conduct approved by
Common Sense has a _general_ resemblance to that which Utilitarianism
would prescribe; but we wish to ascertain more exactly how far the
resemblance extends, and with what delicacy and precision the current
moral rules are adapted to the actual needs and conditions of human
life.
Suppose, then, that we contract the scope of investigation, and only
endeavour to ascertain the rules appropriate to men as we know them,
in our own age and country. We are immediately met with a dilemma:
the men whom we know are beings who accept more or less definitely a
certain moral code: if we take them as they are in this respect, we can
hardly at the same time conceive them as beings for whom a code is yet
to be constructed _de novo_: if, on the other hand, we take an actual
man--let us say, an average Englishman--and abstract his morality,
what remains is an entity so purely hypothetical, that it is not clear
what practical purpose can be served by constructing a system of moral
rules for the community of such beings. Could we indeed assume that
the scientific deduction of such a system would ensure its general
acceptance; could we reasonably expect to convert all mankind at once
to Utilitarian principles, or even all educated and reflective mankind,
so that all preachers and teachers should take universal happiness as
the goal of their efforts as unquestioningly as physicians take the
health of the individual body; and could we be sure that men’s moral
habits and sentiments would adjust themselves at once and without
any waste of force to these changed rules:--then perhaps in framing
the Utilitarian code we might fairly leave existing morality out of
account. But I cannot think that we are warranted in making these
suppositions; I think we have to take the moral habits, impulses, and
tastes of men as a material given us to work upon no less than the rest
of their nature, and as something which, as it only partly results
from reasoning in the past, so can only be partially modified by any
reasoning which we can now apply to it. It seems therefore clear that
the solution of the hypothetical Utilitarian problem of constructing an
ideal morality for men conceived to be in other respects as experience
shows them to be, but with their actual morality abstracted, will not
give us the result which we practically require.
It will perhaps be said, “No doubt such an ideal Utilitarian morality
can only be gradually, and perhaps after all imperfectly, introduced;
but still it will be useful to work it out as a pattern to which
we may approximate.” But, in the first place, it may not be really
possible to approximate to it: since any particular existing moral
rule, though not the ideally best even for such beings as existing
men under the existing circumstances, may yet be the best that they
can be got to obey: so that it would be futile to propose any other,
or even harmful, as it might tend to impair old moral habits without
effectively replacing them by new ones. And secondly, the endeavour
gradually to approximate to a morality constructed on the supposition
that the non-moral part of existing human nature remains unchanged, may
lead us wrong: because the state of men’s knowledge and intellectual
faculties, and the range of their sympathies, and the direction and
strength of their prevailing impulses, and their relations to the
external world and to each other, are continually being altered,
and such alteration is to some extent under our control and may be
felicific in a high degree: and any material modifications in important
elements and conditions of human life may require corresponding
changes in established moral rules and sentiments, in order that the
greatest possible happiness may be attained by the human being whose
life is thus modified. In short, the construction of a Utilitarian
code, regarded as an ideal towards which we are to progress, is met by
a second dilemma:--The nature of man and the conditions of his life
cannot usefully be assumed to be constant, unless we are confining our
attention to the present or proximate future; while again, if we are
considering them in the present or proximate future, we must take into
account men’s actual moral habits and sentiments, as a part of their
nature not materially more modifiable than the rest.
Nor, again, can I agree with Mr. Spencer[357] in thinking that it is
possible to solve the problems of practical ethics by constructing
the final perfect form of society, towards which the process of human
history is tending; and determining the rules of mutual behaviour which
ought to be, and will be, observed by the members of this perfect
society. For, firstly, granting that we can conceive as possible a
human community which is from a utilitarian point of view perfect; and
granting also Mr. Spencer’s definition of this perfection--viz. that
the voluntary actions of all the members cause “pleasure unalloyed
by pain anywhere” to all who are affected by them[358]--; it still
seems to me quite impossible to forecast the natures and relations
of the persons composing such a community, with sufficient clearness
and certainty to enable us to define even in outline their moral
code. And secondly, even if it were otherwise, even if we could
construct scientifically Mr. Spencer’s ideal morality, I do not think
such a construction would be of much avail in solving the practical
problems of actual humanity. For a society in which--to take one point
only--there is no such thing as punishment, is necessarily a society
with its essential structure so unlike our own, that it would be idle
to attempt any close imitation of its rules of behaviour. It might
possibly be best for us to conform approximately to some of these
rules; but this we could only know by examining each particular rule
in detail; we could have no general grounds for concluding that it
would be best for us to conform to them as far as possible. For even
supposing that this ideal society is ultimately to be realised, it
must at any rate be separated from us by a considerable interval of
evolution; hence it is not unlikely that the best way of progressing
towards it will be some other than the apparently directest way, and
that we shall reach it more easily if we begin by moving away from it.
Whether this is so or not, and to what extent, can only be known by
carefully examining the effects of conduct on actual human beings, and
inferring its probable effects on the human beings whom we may expect
to exist in the proximate future.
§ 3. Other thinkers of the evolutionist school suggest that the
difficulties of Utilitarian method might be avoided, in a way more
simple than Mr. Spencer’s, by adopting, as the _practically_ ultimate
end and criterion of morality, “health” or “efficiency” of the social
organism, instead of happiness. This view is maintained, for instance,
in Mr. Leslie Stephen’s _Science of Ethics_;[359] and deserves careful
examination. As I understand Mr. Stephen, he means by “health” that
state of the social organism which tends to its preservation under the
conditions of its existence, as they are known or capable of being
predicted; and he means the same by “efficiency”;--since the work for
which, in his view, the social organism has to be “efficient” is simply
the work of living, the function of “going on.” I say this because
“efficiency” might be understood to imply some ‘task of humanity’
which the social organism has to execute, beyond the task of merely
living; and similarly “health” might be taken to mean a state tending
to the preservation not of existence merely, but of _desirable_
existence--desirability being interpreted in some non-hedonistic
manner: and in this case an examination of either term would lead us
again over the ground traversed in the discussion on Ultimate Good (in
chap. xiv. of the preceding Book).[360] But I do not understand that
any such implications were in Mr. Stephen’s mind; and they certainly
would not be in harmony with the general drift of his argument. The
question, therefore, is whether, if General Happiness be admitted to
be the really ultimate end in a system of morality, it is nevertheless
reasonable to take Preservation of the social organism as the
practically ultimate “scientific criterion” of moral rules.
My reasons for answering this question in the negative are two-fold.
In the first place I know no adequate grounds for supposing that if we
aim exclusively at the preservation of the social organism we shall
secure the maximum attainable happiness of its individual members:
indeed, so far as I know, of two social states which equally tend
to be preserved one may be indefinitely happier than the other. As
has been before observed[361] a large part of the pleasures which
cultivated persons value most highly--æsthetic pleasures--are derived
from acts and processes that have no material tendency to preserve
the individual’s life:[362] and the statement remains true if we
substitute the social organism for the individual. And I may add that
much refined morality is concerned with the prevention of pains which
have no demonstrable tendency to the destruction of the individual
or of society. Hence, while I quite admit that the maintenance of
preservative habits and sentiments is the most indispensable function
of utilitarian morality--and perhaps almost its sole function in
the earlier stages of moral development, when to live at all was
a difficult task for human communities--I do not therefore think
it reasonable that we should be content with the mere securing of
existence for humanity generally, and should confine our efforts to
promoting the increase of this security, instead of seeking to make the
secured existence more desirable.
But, secondly, I do not see on what grounds Mr. Stephen holds that the
criterion of ‘tendency to the preservation of the social organism’
is necessarily capable of being applied with greater precision than
that of ‘tendency to general happiness,’ even so far as the two
ends are coincident: and that the former “satisfies the conditions
of a scientific criterion.” I should admit that this would probably
be the case, if the Sociology that we know were a science actually
constructed, and not merely the sketch of a possible future science:
but Mr. Stephen has himself told us that sociology at present “consists
of nothing more than a collection of unverified guesses and vague
generalisations, disguised under a more or less pretentious apparatus
of quasi-scientific terminology.” This language is stronger than I
should have ventured to use; but I agree generally with the view that
it expresses; and it appears to me difficult for a writer who holds
this view to maintain that the conception of “social health,” regarded
as a criterion and standard of right conduct, is in any important
degree more “scientific” than the conception of “general happiness.”
Holding this estimate of the present condition of Sociology, I consider
that, from the utilitarian point of view, there are equally decisive
reasons against the adoption of any such notion as “development” of
the social organism--instead of mere preservation--as the practically
ultimate end and criterion of morality. On the one hand, if by
“development” is meant an increase in “efficiency” or preservative
qualities, this notion is only an optimistic specialisation of that
just discussed (involving the--I fear--unwarranted assumption that the
social organism tends to become continually more efficient); so that
no fresh arguments need be urged against it. If, however, something
different is meant by development--as (_e.g._) a disciple of Mr.
Spencer might mean an increase in “definite coherent heterogeneity,”
whether or not such increase was preservative--then I know no
scientific grounds for concluding that we shall best promote general
happiness by concentrating our efforts on the attainment of this
increase. I do not affirm it to be impossible that every increase in
the definite coherent heterogeneity of a society of human beings may
be accompanied or followed by an increase in the aggregate happiness
of the members of the society: but I do not perceive that Mr. Spencer,
or any one else, has even attempted to furnish the kind of proof which
this proposition requires.[363]
To sum up: I hold that the utilitarian, in the existing state of our
knowledge, cannot possibly construct a morality _de novo_ either for
man as he is (abstracting his morality), or for man as he ought to
be and will be. He must start, speaking broadly, with the existing
social order, and the existing morality as a part of that order: and in
deciding the question whether any divergence from this code is to be
recommended, must consider chiefly the immediate consequences of such
divergence, upon a society in which such a code is conceived generally
to subsist. No doubt a thoughtful and well-instructed Utilitarian
may see dimly a certain way ahead, and his attitude towards existing
morality may be to some extent modified by what he sees. He may discern
in the future certain evils impending, which can only be effectually
warded off by the adoption of new and more stringent views of duty in
certain departments: while, on the other hand, he may see a prospect
of social changes which will render a relaxation of other parts of the
moral code expedient or inevitable. But if he keeps within the limits
that separate scientific prevision from fanciful Utopian conjecture,
the form of society to which his practical conclusions relate will be
one varying but little from the actual, with its actually established
code of moral rules and customary judgments concerning virtue and vice.
FOOTNOTES:
[351] Cf. J. S. Mill, _Utilitarianism_, chap. ii. Mill, however, only
affirms that the “rules of morality for the multitude” are to be
accepted by the philosopher provisionally, until he has got something
better.
[352] I refer to the abstract principles of Prudence, Justice, and
Rational Benevolence as defined in chap. xiii. of the preceding Book.
[353] _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, Book i.
[354] This operation of sympathy is strikingly illustrated in the penal
codes of primitive communities, both by the mildness of the punishments
inflicted for homicide, and by the startling differences between the
penalties allotted to the same crime according as the criminal was
taken in the act or not. “It is curious to observe,” says Sir H. Maine
(_Ancient Law_, chap. x.), “how completely the men of primitive times
were persuaded that the impulses of the injured person were the proper
measure of the vengeance he was entitled to exact, and how literally
they imitated the probable rise and fall of his passions in fixing the
scale of punishment.” And even in more civilised societies there is a
very common feeling of uncertainty as to the propriety of inflicting
punishment for crimes committed long ago, which seems traceable to the
same source.
[355] No doubt this influence is confined within strict limits:
no authority can permanently impose on men regulations flagrantly
infelicific: and the most practically originative of religious teachers
have produced their effect chiefly by giving new force and vividness to
sentiments already existing (and recognised as properly authoritive) in
the society upon which they acted. Still, it might have made a great
difference to the human race if (_e.g._) Mohammed had been fond of
wine, and indifferent to women.
[356] On this point I shall have occasion to speak further in the next
section.
[357] I refer especially to the views put forward by Mr. Spencer in the
concluding chapters of his _Data of Ethics_.
[358] This definition, however, does not seem to me admissible, from
a utilitarian point of view: since a society in this sense perfect
might not realise the maximum of possible happiness; it might still be
capable of a material increase of happiness through pleasures involving
a slight alloy of pain, such as Mr. Spencer’s view of perfection would
exclude.
[359] See especially chap. ix. Pars. 12-15.
[360] It is obvious that if ‘desirability,’ in the above definition,
were interpreted hedonistically, the term “health” would merely give us
a new name for the general problem of utilitarian morality; not a new
suggestion for its solution. I ought to say that the notions of “social
welfare” or “wellbeing” are elsewhere used by Mr. Stephen, in the place
of those here quoted, but I do not think that he means by them any more
than what I understand him to mean by “health” or “efficiency”--_i.e._
that state of the social organism which tends to its preservation under
the conditions of its existence.
[361] Book ii. chap. vi. § 3.
[362] I do not mean to assert that ‘play’ in some form is not necessary
for physical health: but there is a long step from the encouragement of
play, so far as salutary, to the promotion of social culture.
[363] It may be observed that the increased heterogeneity which the
development of modern industry has brought with it, in the form of a
specialisation of industrial functions which tends to render the lives
of individual workers narrow and monotonous, has usually been regarded
by philanthropists as seriously infelicific; and as needing to be
counteracted by a general diffusion of the intellectual culture now
enjoyed by the few--which, if realised, would tend _pro tanto_ to make
the lives of different classes in the community _less_ heterogeneous.
CHAPTER V
THE METHOD OF UTILITARIANISM--_Continued_
§ 1. If, then, we are to regard the morality of Common Sense as a
machinery of rules, habits, and sentiments, roughly and generally but
not precisely or completely adapted to the production of the greatest
possible happiness for sentient beings generally; and if, on the other
hand, we have to accept it as the actually established machinery for
attaining this end, which we cannot replace at once by any other, but
can only gradually modify; it remains to consider the practical effects
of the complex and balanced relation in which a scientific Utilitarian
thus seems to stand to the Positive Morality of his age and country.
Generally speaking, he will clearly conform to it, and endeavour
to promote its development in others. For, though the imperfection
that we find in all the actual conditions of human existence--we may
even say in the universe at large as judged from a human point of
view--is ultimately found even in Morality itself, in so far as this
is contemplated as Positive; still, practically, we are much less
concerned with correcting and improving than we are with realising and
enforcing it. The Utilitarian must repudiate altogether that temper
of rebellion against the established morality, as something purely
external and conventional, into which the reflective mind is always
apt to fall when it is first convinced that the established rules
are not intrinsically reasonable. He must, of course, also repudiate
as superstitious that awe of it as an absolute or Divine Code which
Intuitional moralists inculcate.[364] Still, he will naturally
contemplate it with reverence and wonder, as a marvellous product of
nature, the result of long centuries of growth, showing in many parts
the same fine adaptation of means to complex exigencies as the most
elaborate structures of physical organisms exhibit: he will handle
it with respectful delicacy as a mechanism, constructed of the fluid
element of opinions and dispositions, by the indispensable aid of which
the actual _quantum_ of human happiness is continually being produced;
a mechanism which no ‘politicians or philosophers’ could create, yet
without which the harder and coarser machinery of Positive Law could
not be permanently maintained, and the life of man would become--as
Hobbes forcibly expresses it--“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short.”
Still, as this actual moral order is admittedly imperfect, it will
be the Utilitarian’s duty to aid in improving it; just as the most
orderly, law-abiding member of a modern civilised society includes
the reform of laws in his conception of political duty. We have
therefore to consider by what method he will ascertain the particular
modifications of positive morality which it would be practically
expedient to attempt to introduce, at any given time and place. Here
our investigation seems, after all, to leave Empirical Hedonism as
the only method ordinarily applicable for the ultimate decision of
such problems--at least until the science of Sociology shall have been
really constructed. I do not mean that the rudiments of Sociological
knowledge which we now possess are of no practical value: for certainly
changes in morality might be suggested--and have actually been proposed
by persons seriously concerned to benefit their fellow-creatures--which
even our present imperfect knowledge would lead us to regard as
dangerous to the very existence of the social organism. But such
changes for the most part involve changes in positive law as well:
since most of the rules of which the observance is fundamentally
important for the preservation of an organised community are either
directly or indirectly maintained by legal sanctions: and it would
be going too far beyond the line which, in my view, separates ethics
from politics, to discuss changes of this kind in the present book.
The rules with which we have primarily to deal, in considering the
utilitarian method of determining private duty, are rules supported by
merely moral sanctions; and the question of maintaining or modifying
such rules concerns, for the most part, the well-being rather than the
very existence of human society. The consideration of this question,
therefore, from a utilitarian point of view, resolves itself into a
comparison between the total amounts of pleasure and pain that may
be expected to result respectively from maintaining any given rule
as at present established, and from endeavouring to introduce that
which is proposed in its stead. That this comparison must generally
be of a rough and uncertain kind, we have already seen; and it is
highly important to bear this in mind; but yet we seem unable to
find any substitute for it. It is not meant, of course, that each
individual is left to his own unassisted judgment in dealing with
such questions: there is a mass of traditional experience, which each
individual imbibes orally or from books, as to the effects of conduct
upon happiness; but the great formulæ in which this experience is
transmitted are, for the most part, so indefinite, the proper range
of their application so uncertain, and the observation and induction
on which they are founded so uncritical, that they stand in continual
need of further empirical verification; especially as regards their
applicability to any particular case.
It is perhaps not surprising that some thinkers[365] of the Utilitarian
school should consider that the task of hedonistic calculation which
is thus set before the utilitarian moralist is too extensive: and
should propose to simplify it by marking off a “large sphere of
individual option and self-guidance,” to which “ethical dictation”
does not apply. I should quite admit that it is clearly expedient to
draw a dividing line of this kind: but it appears to me that there
is no simple general method of drawing it; that it can only be drawn
by careful utilitarian calculation applied with varying results to
the various relations and circumstances of human life. To attempt the
required division by means of any such general formula as that ‘the
individual is not responsible to society for that part of his conduct
which concerns himself alone and others only with their free and
undeceived consent’[366] seems to me practically futile: since, owing
to the complex enlacements of interest and sympathy that connect the
members of a civilised community, almost any material loss of happiness
by any one individual is likely to affect some others without their
consent to some not inconsiderable extent. And I do not see how it is
from a utilitarian point of view justifiable to say broadly with J.
S. Mill that such secondary injury to others, if merely “constructive
or presumptive,” is to be disregarded in view of the advantages of
allowing free development to individuality; for if the injury feared is
great, and the presumption that it will occur is shown by experience
to be strong, the definite risk of evil from the withdrawal of the
moral sanction must, I conceive, outweigh the indefinite possibility
of loss through the repression of individuality in one particular
direction.[367] But further: even supposing that we could mark off
the “sphere of individual option and self-guidance” by some simple
and sweeping formula, still within this sphere the individual, if he
wishes to guide himself reasonably on utilitarian principles, must take
some account of all important effects of his actions on the happiness
of others; and if he does this methodically, he must, I conceive,
use the empirical method which we have examined in Book ii. And--to
prevent any undue alarm at this prospect--we may observe that every
sensible man is commonly supposed to determine at least a large part
of his conduct by what is substantially this method; it is assumed
that, within the limits which morality lays down, he will try to get
as much happiness as he can for himself and for other human beings,
according to the relations in which they stand to him, by combining in
some way his own experience with that of other men as to the felicific
and infelicific effects of actions. And it is actually in this way that
each man usually deliberates (_e.g._) what profession to choose for
himself, or what mode of education for his children, whether to aim
at marriage or remain single, whether to settle in town or country,
in England or abroad, etc. No doubt there are, as we saw,[368] other
ends besides Happiness, such as Knowledge, Beauty, etc., commonly
recognised as unquestionably desirable, and therefore largely pursued
without consideration of ulterior consequences: but when the pursuit of
any of these ends involves an apparent sacrifice of happiness in other
ways, the practical question whether under these circumstances such
pursuit ought to be maintained or abandoned seems always decided by an
application, however rough, of the method of pure empirical Hedonism.
And in saying that this must be the method of the Utilitarian moralist,
I only mean that no other can normally be applied in reducing to a
common measure the diverse elements of the problems with which he
has to deal. Of course, in determining the nature and importance
of each of these diverse considerations, the utilitarian art of
morality will lay various sciences under contribution. Thus, for
example, it will learn from Political Economy what effects a general
censure of usurers, or the ordinary commendation of liberality in
almsgiving, is likely to have on the wealth of the community; it will
learn from the physiologist the probable consequences to health of a
general abstinence from alcoholic liquors or any other restraint on
appetite proposed in the name of Temperance; it will learn from the
experts in any science how far knowledge is likely to be promoted by
investigations offensive to any prevalent moral or religious sentiment.
But how far the increase of wealth or of knowledge, or even the
improvement of health, should under any circumstances be subordinated
to other considerations, I know no scientific method of determining
other than that of empirical Hedonism. Nor, as I have said, does it
seem to me that any other method has ever been applied or sought by the
common sense of mankind, for regulating the pursuit of what our older
moralists called ‘Natural Good,’--_i.e._ of all that is intrinsically
desirable _except_ Virtue or Morality, within the limits fixed by the
latter; the Utilitarian here only performs somewhat more consistently
and systematically than ordinary men the reasoning processes which
are commonly admitted to be appropriate to the questions that this
pursuit raises. His distinctive characteristic, as a Utilitarian, is
that he has to apply the same method to the criticism and correction of
the limiting morality itself. The particulars of this criticism will
obviously vary almost indefinitely with the variations in human nature
and circumstances: I here only propose to discuss the general points of
view which a Utilitarian critic must take, in order that no important
class of relevant considerations may be omitted.
§ 2. Let us first recall the distinction previously noticed[369]
between duty as commonly conceived,--that to which a man is bound
or obliged--, and praiseworthy or excellent conduct; since, in
considering the relation of Utilitarianism to the moral judgments
of Common Sense, it will be convenient to begin with the former
element of current morality, as the more important and indispensable;
_i.e._ with the _ensemble_ of rules imposed by common opinion in any
society, which form a kind of unwritten legislation, supplementary
to Law proper, and enforced by the penalties of social disfavour and
contempt. This legislation, as it does not emanate from a definite
body of persons acting in a corporate capacity, cannot be altered
by any formal deliberations and resolutions of the persons on whose
_consensus_ it rests; any change in it must therefore result from
the private action of individuals, whether determined by Utilitarian
considerations or otherwise. As we shall presently see, the practical
Utilitarian problem is liable to be complicated by the conflict and
divergence which is found to some extent in all societies between the
moral opinions of different sections of the community: but it will
be convenient to confine our attention in the first instance to the
case of rules of duty clearly supported by ‘common consent.’ Let us
suppose then that after considering the consequences of any such rule,
a Utilitarian comes to the conclusion that a different rule would be
more conducive to the general happiness, if similarly established in
a society remaining in other respects the same as at present--or in
one slightly different (in so far as our forecast of social changes
can be made sufficiently clear to furnish any basis for practice). And
first we will suppose that this new rule differs from the old one not
only positively but negatively; that it does not merely go beyond and
include it, but actually conflicts with it. Before he can decide that
it is right for him (_i.e._ conducive to the general happiness) to
support the new rule against the old, by example and precept, he ought
to estimate the force of certain disadvantages necessarily attendant
upon such innovations, which may conveniently be arranged under the
following heads.
In the first place, as his own happiness and that of others connected
with him form a part of the universal end at which he aims, he must
consider the importance to himself and them of the penalties of social
disapprobation which he will incur: taking into account, besides
the immediate pain of this disapprobation, its indirect effect in
diminishing his power of serving society and promoting the general
happiness in other ways. The prospect of such pain and loss is, of
course, not decisive against the innovation; since it must to some
extent be regarded as the regular price that has to be paid for the
advantage of this kind of reform in current morality. But here, as in
many Utilitarian calculations, everything depends on the quantity of
the effects produced; which in the case supposed may vary very much,
from slight distrust and disfavour to severe condemnation and social
exclusion. It often seems that by attempting change prematurely an
innovator may incur the severest form of the moral penalty, whereas if
he had waited a few years he would have been let off with the mildest.
For the hold which a moral rule has over the general mind commonly
begins to decay from the time that it is seen to be opposed to the
calculations of expediency: and it may be better for the community as
well as for the individual that it should not be openly attacked, until
this process of decay has reached a certain point.
It is, however, of more importance to point out certain general reasons
for doubting whether an apparent improvement will really have a
beneficial effect on others. It is possible that the new rule, though
it would be more felicific than the old one, if it could get itself
equally established, may be not so likely to be adopted, or if adopted,
not so likely to be obeyed, by the mass of the community in which it is
proposed to innovate. It may be too subtle and refined, or too complex
and elaborate: it may require a greater intellectual development, or
a higher degree of self-control, than is to be found in an average
member of the community, or an exceptional quality or balance of
feelings. Nor can it be said in reply, that by the hypothesis the
innovator’s example must be good to whatever extent it operates, since
_pro tanto_ it tends to substitute a better rule for a worse. For
experience seems to show that an example of this kind is more likely
to be potent negatively than positively; that here, as elsewhere in
human affairs, it is easier to pull down than to build up; easier to
weaken or destroy the restraining force that a moral rule, habitually
and generally obeyed, has over men’s minds, than to substitute for it a
new restraining habit, not similarly sustained by tradition and custom.
Hence the effect of an example intrinsically good may be on the whole
bad, because its destructive operation proves to be more vigorous than
its constructive. And again, such destructive effect must be considered
not only in respect of the particular rule violated, but of all other
rules. For just as the breaking of any positive law has an inevitable
tendency to encourage lawlessness generally, so the violation of any
generally recognised moral rule seems to give a certain aid to the
forces that are always tending towards moral anarchy in any society.
Nor must we neglect the reaction which any breach with customary
morality will have on the agent’s own mind. For the regulative habits
and sentiments which each man has received by inheritance or training
constitute an important force impelling his will, in the main, to
conduct such as his reason would dictate; a natural auxiliary, as it
were, to Reason in its conflict with seductive passions and appetites;
and it may be practically dangerous to impair the strength of these
auxiliaries. On the other hand, it would seem that the habit of acting
rationally is the best of all habits, and that it ought to be the aim
of a reasonable being to bring all his impulses and sentiments into
more and more perfect harmony with Reason. And indeed when a man has
earnestly accepted any moral principle, those of his pre-existing
regulative habits and sentiments that are not in harmony with this
principle tend naturally to decay and disappear; and it would perhaps
be scarcely worth while to take them into account, except for the
support that they derive from the sympathy of others.
But this last is a consideration of great importance. For the moral
impulses of each individual commonly draw a large part of their
effective force from the sympathy of other human beings. I do
not merely mean that the pleasures and pains which each derives
sympathetically from the moral likings and aversions of others are
important as motives to felicific conduct no less than as elements of
the individual’s happiness: I mean further that the direct sympathetic
echo in each man of the judgments and sentiments of others concerning
conduct sustains his own similar judgments and sentiments. Through this
twofold operation of sympathy it becomes practically much easier for
most men to conform to a moral rule established in the society to which
they belong than to one made by themselves. And any act by which a man
weakens the effect on himself of this general moral sympathy tends _pro
tanto_ to make the performance of duty more difficult for him. On the
other hand, we have to take into account--besides the intrinsic gain
of the particular change--the general advantage of offering to mankind
a striking example of consistent Utilitarianism; since, in this case
as in others, a man gives a stronger proof of genuine conviction by
conduct in opposition to public opinion than he can by conformity.
In order, however, that this effect may be produced, it is almost
necessary that the non-conformity should not promote the innovator’s
personal convenience; for in that case it will almost certainly be
attributed to egoistic motives, however plausible the Utilitarian
deduction of its rightness may seem.
The exact force of these various considerations will differ
indefinitely in different cases; and it does not seem profitable to
attempt any general estimate of them: but on the whole, it would
seem that the general arguments which we have noticed constitute
an important rational check upon such Utilitarian innovations on
Common-Sense morality as are of the negative or destructive kind.
If now we consider such innovations as are merely positive and
supplementary, and consist in adding a new rule to those already
established by Common Sense; it will appear that there is really no
collision of methods, so far as the Utilitarian’s own observance of
the new rule is concerned. For, as every such rule is, _ex hypothesi_,
believed by him to be conducive to the common good, he is merely giving
a special and stricter interpretation to the general duty of Universal
Benevolence, where Common Sense leaves it loose and indeterminate.
Hence the restraining considerations above enumerated do not apply
to this case. And whatever it is right for him to do himself, it is
obviously right for him to approve and recommend to other persons in
similar circumstances. But it is a different question whether he ought
to seek to impose his new rule on others, by express condemnation of
all who are not prepared to adopt it; as this involves not only the
immediate evil of the annoyance given to others, but also the further
danger of weakening the general good effect of his moral example,
through the reaction provoked by this aggressive attitude. On this
point his decision will largely depend on the prospect, as far as
he can estimate it, that his innovation will meet with support and
sympathy from others.
It should be observed, however, that a great part of the reform in
popular morality, which a consistent Utilitarian will try to introduce,
will probably lie not so much in establishing new rules (whether
conflicting with the old or merely supplementary) as in enforcing
old ones. For there is always a considerable part of morality in the
condition of receiving formal respect and acceptance, while yet it is
not really sustained by any effective force of public opinion: and the
difference between the moralities of any two societies is often more
strikingly exhibited in the different emphasis attached to various
portions of the moral code in each, than in disagreement as to the
rules which the code should include. In the case we are considering,
it is chiefly conduct which shows a want of comprehensive sympathy or
of public spirit, to which the Utilitarian will desire to attach a
severer condemnation than is at present directed against it. There is
much conduct of this sort, of which the immediate effect is to give
obvious pleasure to individuals, while the far greater amount of harm
that it more remotely and indirectly causes is but dimly recognised by
Common Sense. Such conduct, therefore, even when it is allowed to be
wrong, is very mildly treated by common opinion; especially when it is
prompted by some impulse not self-regarding. Still, in all such cases,
we do not require the promulgation of any new moral doctrine, but
merely a bracing and sharpening of the moral sentiments of society, to
bring them into harmony with the greater comprehensiveness of view and
the more impartial concern for human happiness which characterise the
Utilitarian system.
§ 3. We have hitherto supposed that the innovator is endeavouring
to introduce a new rule of conduct, not for himself only, but for
others also, as more conducive to the general happiness than the
rule recognised by Common Sense. It may perhaps be thought that this
is not the issue most commonly raised between Utilitarianism and
Common Sense: but rather whether exceptions should be allowed to
rules which both sides accept as generally valid. For no one doubts
that it is, _generally speaking_, conducive to the common happiness
that men should be veracious, faithful to promises, obedient to
law, disposed to satisfy the normal expectations of others, having
their malevolent impulses and their sensual appetites under strict
control: but it is thought that an exclusive regard to pleasurable and
painful consequences would frequently admit exceptions to rules which
Common Sense imposes as absolute. It should, however, be observed
that the admission of an exception on general grounds is merely the
establishment of a more complex and delicate rule, instead of one that
is broader and simpler; for if it is conducive to the general good
that such an exception be admitted in one case, it will be equally
so in all similar cases. Suppose (_e.g._) that a Utilitarian thinks
it on general grounds right to answer falsely a question as to the
manner in which he has voted at a political election where the voting
is by secret ballot. His reasons will probably be that the Utilitarian
prohibition of falsehood is based on (1) the harm done by misleading
particular individuals, and (2) the tendency of false statements to
diminish the mutual confidence that men ought to have in each other’s
assertions: and that in this exceptional case it is (1) expedient that
the questioner should be misled; while (2), in so far as the falsehood
tends to produce a general distrust of all assertions as to the manner
in which a man has voted, it only furthers the end for which voting
has been made secret. It is evident, that if these reasons are valid
for any person, they are valid for all persons; in fact, that they
establish the expediency of a new general rule in respect of truth
and falsehood, more complicated than the old one; a rule which the
Utilitarian, as such, should desire to be universally obeyed.
There are, of course, some kinds of moral innovation which, from
the nature of the case, are not likely to occur frequently; as
where Utilitarian reasoning leads a man to take part in a political
revolution, or to support a public measure in opposition to what Common
Sense regards as Justice or Good Faith. Still, in such cases a rational
Utilitarian will usually proceed on general principles, which he would
desire all persons in similar circumstances to carry into effect.
We have, however, to consider another kind of exceptions, differing
fundamentally from this, which Utilitarianism seems to admit; where
the agent does not think it expedient that the rule on which he
himself acts should be universally adopted, and yet maintains that his
individual act is right, as producing a greater balance of pleasure
over pain than any other conduct open to him would produce.
Now we cannot fairly argue that, because a large aggregate of acts
would cause more harm than good, therefore any single act of the kind
will produce this effect. It may even be a straining of language to
say that it has a _tendency_ to produce it: no one (_e.g._) would
say that because an army walking over a bridge would break it down,
therefore the crossing of a single traveller has a tendency to
destroy it. And just as a prudent physician in giving rules of diet
recommends an occasional deviation from them, as more conducive to the
health of the body than absolute regularity; so there may be rules
of social behaviour of which the general observance is necessary
to the well-being of the community, while yet a certain amount of
non-observance is rather advantageous than otherwise.
Here, however, we seem brought into conflict with Kant’s fundamental
principle, that a right action must be one of which the agent
could “will the maxim to be law universal.”[370] But, as was
before[371] noticed in the particular case of veracity, we must
admit an application of this principle, which importantly modifies
its practical force: we must admit the case where the belief that
the action in question will not be widely imitated is an essential
qualification of the maxim which the Kantian principle is applied
to test. For this principle,--at least so far as I have accepted it
as self-evident--means no more than that an act, if right for any
individual, must be right on general grounds, and therefore for some
_class_ of persons; it therefore cannot prevent us from defining this
class by the above-mentioned characteristic of believing that the act
will remain an exceptional one. Of course if this belief turns out
to be erroneous, serious harm may possibly result; but this is no
more than may be said of many other Utilitarian deductions. Nor is
it difficult to find instances of conduct which Common Sense holds
to be legitimate solely on the ground that we have no fear of its
being too widely imitated. Take, for example, the case of Celibacy.
A universal refusal to propagate the human species would be the
greatest of conceivable crimes from a Utilitarian point of view;--that
is, according to the commonly accepted belief in the superiority of
human happiness to that of other animals;--and hence the principle in
question, applied without the qualification above given, would make
it a crime in any one to choose celibacy as the state most conducive
to his own happiness. But Common Sense (in the present age at least)
regards such preference as within the limits of right conduct; because
there is no fear that population will not be sufficiently kept up, as
in fact the tendency to propagate is thought to exist rather in excess
than otherwise.
In this case it is a non-moral impulse on the average strength of
which we think we may reckon: but there does not appear to be any
formal or universal reason why the same procedure should not be applied
by Utilitarians to an actually existing moral sentiment. The result
would be a discrepancy of a peculiar kind between Utilitarianism and
Common-Sense morality; as the very firmness with which the latter
is established would be the Utilitarian ground for relieving the
individual of its obligations. We are supposed to see that general
happiness will be enhanced (just as the excellence of a metrical
composition is) by a slight admixture of irregularity along with
a general observance of received rules; and hence to justify the
irregular conduct of a few individuals, on the ground that the supply
of regular conduct from other members of the community may reasonably
be expected to be adequate.
It does not seem to me that this reasoning can be shown to be
necessarily unsound, as applied to human society as at present
constituted: but the cases in which it could really be thought to be
applicable, by any one sincerely desirous of promoting the general
happiness, must certainly be rare. For it should be observed that
it makes a fundamental difference whether the sentiment in mankind
generally, on which we rely to sustain sufficiently a general rule
while admitting exceptions thereto, is moral or non-moral; because a
moral sentiment is inseparable from the conviction that the conduct to
which it prompts is objectively right--_i.e._ right whether or not it
is thought or felt to be so--for oneself and all similar persons in
similar circumstances; it cannot therefore coexist with approval of the
contrary conduct in any one case, unless this case is distinguished by
some material difference other than the mere non-existence in the agent
of the ordinary moral sentiment against his conduct. Thus, assuming
that general unveracity and general celibacy would both be evils of
the worst kind, we may still all regard it as legitimate for men in
general to remain celibate if they like, on account of the strength of
the natural sentiments prompting to marriage, because the existence
of these sentiments in ordinary human beings is not affected by the
universal recognition of the legitimacy of celibacy: but we cannot
similarly all regard it as legitimate for men to tell lies if they
like, however strong the actually existing sentiment against lying
may be, because as soon as this legitimacy is generally recognised
the sentiment must be expected to decay and vanish. If therefore we
were all enlightened Utilitarians, it would be impossible for any one
to justify himself in making false statements while admitting it to
be inexpedient for persons similarly conditioned to make them; as he
would have no ground for believing that persons similarly conditioned
would act differently from himself. The case, no doubt, is different in
society as actually constituted; it is conceivable that the practically
effective morality in such a society, resting on a basis independent
of utilitarian or any other reasonings, may not be materially affected
by the particular act or expressed opinion of a particular individual:
but the circumstances are, I conceive, very rare, in which a really
conscientious person could feel so sure of this as to conclude that
by approving a particular violation of a rule, of which the _general_
(though not _universal_) observance is plainly expedient, he will not
probably do harm on the whole. Especially as all the objections to
innovation, noticed in the previous section, apply with increased
force if the innovator does not even claim to be introducing a new and
better general rule.
It appears to me, therefore, that the cases in which practical doubts
are likely to arise, as to whether exceptions should be permitted from
ordinary rules on Utilitarian principles, will mostly be those which I
discussed in the first paragraph of this section: where the exceptions
are not claimed for a few individuals, on the mere ground of their
probable fewness, but either for persons generally under exceptional
circumstances, or for a class of persons defined by exceptional
qualities of intellect, temperament, or character. In such cases the
Utilitarian may have no doubt that in a community consisting generally
of enlightened Utilitarians, these grounds for exceptional ethical
treatment would be regarded as valid; still he may, as I have said,
doubt whether the more refined and complicated rule which recognises
such exceptions is adapted for the community in which he is actually
living; and whether the attempt to introduce it is not likely to do
more harm by weakening current morality than good by improving its
quality. Supposing such a doubt to arise, either in a case of this
kind, or in one of the rare cases discussed in the preceding paragraph,
it becomes necessary that the Utilitarian should consider carefully the
extent to which his advice or example are likely to influence persons
to whom they would be dangerous: and it is evident that the result
of this consideration may depend largely on the degree of publicity
which he gives to either advice or example. Thus, on Utilitarian
principles, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under
certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly;
it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would
be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it
can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in
the face of the world; and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably
expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice or
example. These conclusions are all of a paradoxical character:[372]
there is no doubt that the moral consciousness of a plain man broadly
repudiates the general notion of an esoteric morality, differing from
that popularly taught; and it would be commonly agreed that an action
which would be bad if done openly is not rendered good by secrecy. We
may observe, however, that there are strong utilitarian reasons for
maintaining generally this latter common opinion; for it is obviously
advantageous, generally speaking, that acts which it is expedient to
repress by social disapprobation should become known, as otherwise the
disapprobation cannot operate; so that it seems inexpedient to support
by any moral encouragement the natural disposition of men in general
to conceal their wrong doings; besides that the concealment would in
most cases have importantly injurious effects on the agent’s habits of
veracity. Thus the Utilitarian conclusion, carefully stated, would seem
to be this; that the opinion that secrecy may render an action right
which would not otherwise be so should itself be kept comparatively
secret; and similarly it seems expedient that the doctrine that
esoteric morality is expedient should itself be kept esoteric. Or if
this concealment be difficult to maintain, it may be desirable that
Common Sense should repudiate the doctrines which it is expedient to
confine to an enlightened few. And thus a Utilitarian may reasonably
desire, on Utilitarian principles, that some of his conclusions should
be rejected by mankind generally; or even that the vulgar should
keep aloof from his system as a whole, in so far as the inevitable
indefiniteness and complexity of its calculations render it likely to
lead to bad results in their hands.
Of course, as I have said, in an ideal community of enlightened
Utilitarians this swarm of perplexities and paradoxes would vanish;
as in such a society no one can have any ground for believing that
other persons will act on moral principles different from those
which he adopts. And any enlightened Utilitarian must of course
desire this consummation; as all conflict of moral opinion must _pro
tanto_ be regarded as an evil, as tending to impair the force of
morality generally in its resistance to seductive impulses. Still
such conflict may be a necessary evil in the actual condition of
civilised communities, in which there are so many different degrees of
intellectual and moral development.
We have thus been led to the discussion of the question which we
reserved in the last section; viz. how Utilitarianism should deal
with the fact of divergent moral opinions held simultaneously by
different members of the same society. For it has become plain that
though two different kinds of conduct cannot both be right under the
same circumstances, two contradictory opinions as to the rightness of
conduct may possibly both be expedient; it may conduce most to the
general happiness that _A_ should do a certain act, and at the same
time that _B_, _C_, _D_ should blame it. The Utilitarian of course
cannot really join in the disapproval, but he may think it expedient
to leave it unshaken; and at the same time may think it right, if
placed in the supposed circumstances, to do the act that is generally
disapproved. And so generally it may be best on the whole that there
should be conflicting codes of morality in a given society at a
certain stage of its development. And, as I have already hinted, the
same general reasoning, from the probable origin of the moral sense
and its flexible adjustment to the varying conditions of human life,
which furnished a presumption that Common-Sense morality is roughly
coincident with the Utilitarian code proper for men as now constituted,
may be applied in favour of these divergent codes also: it may be said
that these, too, form part of the complex adjustment of man to his
circumstances, and that they are needed to supplement and qualify the
morality of Common Sense.
However paradoxical this doctrine may appear, we can find cases where
it seems to be implicitly accepted by Common Sense; or at least
where it is required to make Common Sense consistent with itself.
Let us consider, for example, the common moral judgments concerning
rebellions. It is commonly thought, on the one hand, that these abrupt
breaches of order are sometimes morally necessary; and, on the other
hand, that they ought always to be vigorously resisted, and in case
of failure punished by extreme penalties inflicted at least on the
ring-leaders; for otherwise they would be attempted under circumstances
where there was no sufficient justification for them: but it seems
evident that, in the actual condition of men’s moral sentiments, this
vigorous repression requires the support of a strong body of opinion
condemning the rebels as wrong, and not merely as mistaken in their
calculations of the chances of success. For similar reasons it may
possibly be expedient on the whole that certain special relaxations
of certain moral rules should continue to exist in certain professions
and sections of society, while at the same time they continue to be
disapproved by the rest of the society. The evils, however, which must
spring from this permanent conflict of opinion are so grave, that an
enlightened Utilitarian will probably in most cases attempt to remove
it; by either openly maintaining the need of a relaxation of the
ordinary moral rule under the special circumstances in question; or,
on the other hand, endeavouring to get the ordinary rule recognised
and enforced by all conscientious persons in that section of society
where its breach has become habitual. And of these two courses it seems
likely that he will in most cases adopt the latter; since such rules
are most commonly found on examination to have been relaxed rather for
the convenience of individuals, than in the interest of the community
at large.
§ 4. Finally, let us consider the general relation of Utilitarianism to
that part of common morality which extends beyond the range of strict
duty; that is, to the Ideal of character and conduct which in any
community at any given time is commonly admired and praised as the sum
of Excellences or Perfections. To begin, it must be allowed that this
distinction between Excellence and Strict Duty does not seem properly
admissible in Utilitarianism--except so far as some excellences are
only partially and indirectly within the control of the will, and we
require to distinguish the realisation of these in conduct from the
performance of Duty proper, which is always something that _can_ be
done at any moment. For a Utilitarian must hold that it is always wrong
for a man knowingly to do anything other than what he believes to be
most conducive to Universal Happiness. Still, it seems practically
expedient,--and therefore indirectly reasonable on Utilitarian
principles,--to retain, in judging even the strictly voluntary conduct
of others, the distinction between a part that is praiseworthy and
admirable and a part that is merely right: because it is natural to us
to compare any individual’s character or conduct, not with our highest
ideal--Utilitarian or otherwise--but with a certain average standard
and to admire what rises above the standard; and it seems ultimately
conducive to the general happiness that such natural sentiments of
admiration should be encouraged and developed. For human nature seems
to require the double stimulus of praise and blame from others, in
order to the best performance of duty that it can at present attain:
so that the ‘social sanction’ would be less effective if it became
purely penal. Indeed, since the pains of remorse and disapprobation
are in themselves to be avoided, it is plain that the Utilitarian
construction of a Jural morality is essentially self-limiting; that is,
it prescribes its own avoidance of any department of conduct in which
the addition that can be made to happiness through the enforcement of
rules sustained by social penalties appears doubtful or inconsiderable.
In such departments, however, the æsthetic phase of morality may still
reasonably find a place; we may properly admire and praise where it
would be inexpedient to judge and condemn. We may conclude, then,
that it is reasonable for a Utilitarian to praise any conduct more
felicific in its tendency than what an average man would do under the
given circumstances:--being aware of course that the limit down to
which praise worthiness extends must be relative to the particular
state of moral progress reached by mankind generally in his age and
country; and that it is desirable to make continual efforts to elevate
this standard. Similarly, the Utilitarian will praise the Dispositions
or permanent qualities of character of which felicific conduct is
conceived to be the result, and the Motives that are conceived to
prompt to it when it would be a clear gain to the general happiness
that these should become more frequent: and, as we have seen,[373] he
may without inconsistency admire the Disposition or Motive if it is
of a kind which it is generally desirable to encourage, even while he
disapproves of the conduct to which it has led in any particular case.
Passing now to compare the contents of the Utilitarian Ideal of
character with the virtues and other excellences recognised by Common
Sense, we may observe, first, that general coincidence between the
two on which Hume and others have insisted. No quality has ever been
praised as excellent by mankind generally which cannot be shown to have
some marked felicific effect, and to be within proper limits obviously
conducive to the general happiness. Still, it does not follow that
such qualities are always fostered and encouraged by society in the
proportion which a Utilitarian would desire: in fact, it is a common
observation to make, in contemplating the morality of societies other
than our own, that some useful qualities are unduly neglected, while
others are over-prized and even admired when they exist in such excess
as to become, on the whole, infelicific. The consistent Utilitarian
may therefore find it necessary to rectify the prevalent moral ideal
in important particulars. And here it scarcely seems that he will find
any such Utilitarian restrictions on innovation, as appeared to exist
in the case of commonly received rules of duty. For the Common-Sense
notions of the different excellences of conduct (considered as
extending beyond the range of strict duty) are generally so vague as to
offer at least no definite resistance to a Utilitarian interpretation
of their scope: by teaching and acting upon such an interpretation a
man is in no danger of being brought into infelicific discord with
Common Sense: especially since the ideal of moral excellence seems
to vary within the limits of the same community to a much greater
extent than the code of strict duty. For example, a man who in an age
when excessive asceticism is praised, sets an example of enjoying
harmless bodily pleasures, or who in circles where useless daring is
admired, prefers to exhibit and commend caution and discretion, at the
worst misses some praise that he might otherwise have earned, and is
thought a little dull or unaspiring: he does not come into any patent
conflict with common opinion. Perhaps we may say generally that an
enlightened Utilitarian is likely to lay less stress on the cultivation
of those negative virtues, tendencies to restrict and refrain, which
are prominent in the Common-Sense ideal of character; and to set more
value in comparison on those qualities of mind which are the direct
source of positive pleasure to the agent or to others--some of which
Common Sense scarcely recognises as excellences: still, he will not
carry this innovation to such a pitch as to incur general condemnation.
For no enlightened Utilitarian can ignore the fundamental importance
of the restrictive and repressive virtues, or think that they are
sufficiently developed in ordinary men at the present time, so that
they may properly be excluded from moral admiration; though he may hold
that they have been too prominent, to the neglect of other valuable
qualities, in the common conception of moral Perfection. Nay, we may
even venture to say that, under most circumstances, a man who earnestly
and successfully endeavours to realise the Utilitarian Ideal, however
he may deviate from the commonly-received type of a perfect character,
is likely to win sufficient recognition and praise from Common Sense.
For, whether it be true or not that the whole of morality has sprung
from the root of sympathy, it is certain that self-love and sympathy
combined are sufficiently strong in average men to dispose them to
grateful admiration of any exceptional efforts to promote the common
good, even though these efforts may take a somewhat novel form. To any
exhibition of more extended sympathy or more fervent public spirit
than is ordinarily shown, and any attempt to develop these equalities
in others, Common Sense is rarely unresponsive; provided, of course,
that these impulses are accompanied with adequate knowledge of actual
circumstances and insight into the relation of means to ends, and that
they do not run counter to any recognised rules of duty.[374] And
it seems to be principally in this direction that the recent spread
of Utilitarianism has positively modified the ideal of our society,
and is likely to modify it further in the future. Hence the stress
which Utilitarians are apt to lay on social and political activity
of all kinds, and the tendency which Utilitarian ethics have always
shown to pass over into politics. For one who values conduct in
proportion to its felicific consequences, will naturally set a higher
estimate on effective beneficence in public affairs than on the purest
manifestation of virtue in the details of private life: while on the
other hand an Intuitionist (though no doubt vaguely recognising that a
man ought to do all the good he can in public affairs) still commonly
holds that virtue may be as fully and as admirably exhibited on a small
as on a large scale. A sincere Utilitarian, therefore, is likely to be
an eager politician: but on what principles his political action ought
to be determined, it scarcely lies within the scope of this treatise to
investigate.
FOOTNOTES:
[364] I do not mean that this sentiment is in my view incompatible
with Utilitarianism; I mean that it must not attach itself to any
subordinate rules of conduct, but only to the supreme principle of
acting with impartial concern for all elements of general happiness.
[365] For example, Mr. Bain in _Mind_ (Jan. 1883, pp. 48, 49).
[366] This sentence is not an exact quotation, but a summary of
the doctrine set forth by J. S. Mill in his treatise _On Liberty_
(Introduction).
[367] See Mill _On Liberty_, chap. iv. It may be observed that Mill’s
doctrine is certainly opposed to common sense: since (_e.g._) it would
exclude from censure almost all forms of sexual immorality committed by
unmarried and independent adults.
[368] Cf. Book iii. chap. xiv.
[369] Cf. especially Book iii. chap. ii.
[370] Cf. Book iii. chap. i. and chap. xiii.
[371] Book iii. chap. vii. § 3.
[372] In particular cases, however, they seem to be admitted by Common
Sense to a certain extent. For example, it would be commonly thought
wrong to express in public speeches disturbing religious or political
opinions which may be legitimately published in books.
[373] Cf. chap. iii. § 2 of this Book.
[374] We have seen that a Utilitarian may sometimes have to override
these rules; but then the case falls under the head discussed in the
previous section.
CONCLUDING CHAPTER
THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE THREE METHODS
§ 1. In the greater part of the treatise of which the final chapter
has now been reached, we have been employed in examining three methods
of determining right conduct, which are for the most part found more
or less vaguely combined in the practical reasonings of ordinary men,
but which it has been my aim to develop as separately as possible.
A complete synthesis of these different methods is not attempted in
the present work: at the same time it would hardly be satisfactory to
conclude the analysis of them without some discussion of their mutual
relations. Indeed we have already found it expedient to do this to a
considerable extent, in the course of our examination of the separate
methods. Thus, in the present and preceding Books we have directly
or indirectly gone through a pretty full examination of the mutual
relations of the Intuitional and Utilitarian methods. We have found
that the common antithesis between Intuitionists and Utilitarians must
be entirely discarded: since such abstract moral principles as we can
admit to be really self-evident are not only not incompatible with
a Utilitarian system, but even seem required to furnish a rational
basis for such a system. Thus we have seen that the essence of Justice
or Equity (in so far as it is clear and certain), is that different
individuals are not to be treated differently, except on grounds of
universal application; and that such grounds, again, are supplied by
the principle of Universal Benevolence, that sets before each man the
happiness of all others as an object of pursuit no less worthy than
his own; while other time-honoured virtues seem to be fitly explained
as special manifestations of impartial benevolence under various
circumstances of human life, or else as habits and dispositions
indispensable to the maintenance of prudent or beneficent behaviour
under the seductive force of various non-rational impulses. And
although there are other rules which our common moral sense when first
interrogated seems to enunciate as absolutely binding; it has appeared
that careful and systematic reflection on this very Common Sense, as
expressed in the habitual moral judgments of ordinary men, results in
exhibiting the real subordination of these rules to the fundamental
principles above given. Then, further, this method of systematising
particular virtues and duties receives very strong support from a
comparative study of the history of morality; as the variations in the
moral codes of different societies at different stages correspond, in a
great measure, to differences in the actual or believed tendencies of
certain kinds of conduct to promote the general happiness of different
portions of the human race: while, again, the most probable conjectures
as to the pre-historic condition and original derivation of the moral
faculty seem to be entirely in harmony with this view. No doubt, even
if this synthesis of methods be completely accepted, there will remain
some discrepancy in details between our particular moral sentiments
and unreasoned judgments on the one hand, and the apparent results of
special utilitarian calculations on the other; and we may often have
some practical difficulty in balancing the latter against the more
general utilitarian reasons for obeying the former: but there seems
to be no longer any theoretical perplexity as to the principles for
determining social duty.
It remains for us to consider the relation of the two species of
Hedonism which we have distinguished as Universalistic and Egoistic.
In chap. ii. of this Book we have discussed the rational process
(called by a stretch of language ‘proof’) by which one who holds it
reasonable to aim at his own greatest happiness may be determined to
take Universal Happiness instead, as his ultimate standard of right
conduct. We have seen, however, that the application of this process
requires that the Egoist should affirm, implicitly or explicitly, that
his own greatest happiness is not merely the rational ultimate end for
himself, but a part of Universal Good: and he may avoid the proof of
Utilitarianism by declining to affirm this. It would be contrary to
Common Sense to deny that the distinction between any one individual
and any other is real and fundamental, and that consequently “I” am
concerned with the quality of my existence as an individual in a sense,
fundamentally important, in which I am not concerned with the quality
of the existence of other individuals: and this being so, I do not
see how it can be proved that this distinction is not to be taken as
fundamental in determining the ultimate end of rational action for an
individual. And it may be observed that most Utilitarians, however
anxious they have been to convince men of the reasonableness of aiming
at happiness generally, have not commonly sought to attain this result
by any logical transition from the Egoistic to the Universalistic
principle. They have relied almost entirely on the Sanctions of
Utilitarian rules; that is, on the pleasures gained or pains avoided
by the individual conforming to them. Indeed, if an Egoist remains
impervious to what we have called Proof, the only way of rationally
inducing him to aim at the happiness of all, is to show him that his
own greatest happiness can be best attained by so doing. And further,
even if a man admits the self-evidence of the principle of Rational
Benevolence, he may still hold that his own happiness is an end which
it is irrational for him to sacrifice to any other; and that therefore
a harmony between the maxim of Prudence and the maxim of Rational
Benevolence must be somehow demonstrated, if morality is to be made
completely rational. This latter view, indeed (as I have before said),
appears to me, on the whole, the view of Common Sense: and it is that
which I myself hold. It thus becomes needful to examine how far and in
what way the required demonstration can be effected.
§ 2. Now, in so far as Utilitarian morality coincides with that
of Common Sense--as we have seen that it does in the main--this
investigation has been partly performed in chap. v. of Book ii. It
there appeared that while in any tolerable state of society the
performance of duties towards others and the exercise of social virtues
seem _generally_ likely to coincide with the attainment of the greatest
possible happiness in the long run for the virtuous agent, still the
_universality_ and _completeness_ of this coincidence are at least
incapable of empirical proof: and that, indeed, the more carefully
we analyse and estimate the different sanctions--Legal, Social, and
Conscientious--considered as operating under the actual conditions of
human life, the more difficult it seems to believe that they can be
always adequate to produce this coincidence. The natural effect of this
argument upon a convinced Utilitarian is merely to make him anxious to
alter the actual conditions of human life: and it would certainly be a
most valuable contribution to the actual happiness of mankind, if we
could so improve the adjustment of the machine of Law in any society,
and so stimulate and direct the common awards of praise and blame, and
so develop and train the moral sense of the members of the community,
as to render it clearly prudent for every individual to promote as much
as possible the general good. However, we are not now considering what
a consistent Utilitarian will try to effect for the future, but what
a consistent Egoist is to do in the present. And it must be admitted
that, as things are, whatever difference exists between Utilitarian
morality and that of Common Sense is of such a kind as to render the
coincidence with Egoism still more improbable in the case of the
former. For we have seen that Utilitarianism is more rigid than Common
Sense in exacting the sacrifice of the agent’s private interests where
they are incompatible with the greatest happiness of the greatest
number: and of course in so far as the Utilitarian’s principles bring
him into conflict with any of the commonly accepted rules of morality,
the whole force of the Social Sanction operates to deter him from what
he conceives to be his duty.
§ 3. There are, however, writers of the Utilitarian school[375] who
seem to maintain or imply, that by due contemplation of the paramount
importance of Sympathy as an element of human happiness we shall be led
to see the coincidence of the good of each with the good of all. In
opposing this view, I am as far as possible from any wish to depreciate
the value of sympathy as a source of happiness even to human beings as
at present constituted. Indeed I am of opinion that its pleasures and
pains really constitute a great part of that internal reward of social
virtue, and punishment of social misconduct, which in Book ii. chap.
v. I roughly set down as due to the moral sentiments. For, in fact,
though I can to some extent distinguish sympathetic from strictly moral
feelings in introspective analysis of my own consciousness, I cannot
say precisely in what proportion these two elements are combined. For
instance: I seem able to distinguish the “sense of the ignobility
of Egoism” of which I have before spoken--which, in my view, is the
normal emotional concomitant or expression of the moral intuition
that the Good of the whole is reasonably to be preferred to the Good
of a part--from the jar of sympathetic discomfort which attends the
conscious choice of my own pleasure at the expense of pain or loss to
others; but I find it impossible to determine what force the former
sentiment would have if actually separated from the latter, and I am
inclined to think that the two kinds of feeling are very variously
combined in different individuals. Perhaps, indeed, we may trace a
general law of variation in the relative proportion of these two
elements as exhibited in the development of the moral consciousness
both in the race and in individuals; for it seems that at a certain
stage of this development the mind is more susceptible to emotions
connected with abstract moral ideas and rules presented as absolute;
while after emerging from this stage and before entering it the
feelings that belong to personal relations are stronger.[376] Certainly
in a Utilitarian’s mind sympathy tends to become a prominent element
of all instinctive moral feelings that refer to social conduct; as in
his view the rational basis of the moral impulse must ultimately lie
in some pleasure won or pain saved for himself or for others; so that
he never has to sacrifice himself to an Impersonal Law, but always
for some being or beings with whom he has at least some degree of
fellow-feeling.
But besides admitting the actual importance of sympathetic pleasures
to the majority of mankind, I should go further and maintain that,
on empirical grounds alone, enlightened self-interest would direct
most men to foster and develop their sympathetic susceptibilities to
a greater extent than is now commonly attained. The effectiveness
of Butler’s famous argument against the vulgar antithesis between
Self-love and Benevolence is undeniable: and it seems scarcely
extravagant to say that, amid all the profuse waste of the means of
happiness which men commit, there is no imprudence more flagrant than
that of Selfishness in the ordinary sense of the term,--that excessive
concentration of attention on the individual’s own happiness which
renders it impossible for him to feel any strong interest in the
pleasures and pains of others. The perpetual prominence of self that
hence results tends to deprive all enjoyments of their keenness and
zest, and produce rapid satiety and _ennui_: the selfish man misses
the sense of elevation and enlargement given by wide interests; he
misses the more secure and serene satisfaction that attends continually
on activities directed towards ends more stable in prospect than an
individual’s happiness can be; he misses the peculiar rich sweetness,
depending upon a sort of complex reverberation of sympathy, which is
always found in services rendered to those whom we love and who are
grateful. He is made to feel in a thousand various ways, according to
the degree of refinement which his nature has attained, the discord
between the rhythms of his own life and of that larger life of which
his own is but an insignificant fraction.
But allowing[377] all this, it yet seems to me as certain as any
conclusion arrived at by hedonistic comparison can be, that the
utmost development of sympathy, intensive and extensive, which is now
possible to any but a very few exceptional persons, would not cause a
perfect coincidence between Utilitarian duty and self-interest. Here
it seems to me that what was said in Book ii. chap. v. § 4, to show
the insufficiency of the Conscientious Sanction, applies equally,
_mutatis mutandis_, to Sympathy. Suppose a man finds that a regard for
the general good--Utilitarian Duty--demands from him a sacrifice, or
extreme risk, of life. There are perhaps one or two human beings so
dear to him that the remainder of a life saved by sacrificing their
happiness to his own would be worthless to him from an egoistic point
of view. But it is doubtful whether many men, “sitting down in a cool
hour” to make the estimate, would affirm even this: and of course that
particular portion of the general happiness, for which one is called
upon to sacrifice one’s own, may easily be the happiness of persons
not especially dear to one. But again, from this normal limitation of
our keenest and strongest sympathy to a very small circle of human
beings, it results that the very development of sympathy may operate
to increase the weight thrown into the scale against Utilitarian duty.
There are very few persons, however strongly and widely sympathetic,
who are so constituted as to feel for the pleasures and pains of
mankind generally a degree of sympathy at all commensurate with their
concern for wife or children, or lover, or intimate friend: and if
any training of the affections is at present possible which would
materially alter this proportion in the general distribution of our
sympathy, it scarcely seems that such a training is to be recommended
as on the whole felicific.[378] And thus when Utilitarian Duty calls on
us to sacrifice not only our own pleasures but the happiness of those
we love to the general good, the very sanction on which Utilitarianism
most relies must act powerfully in opposition to its precepts.
But even apart from these exceptional cases--which are yet sufficient
to decide the abstract question--it seems that the course of conduct
by which a man would most fully reap the rewards of sympathy (so far
as they are empirically ascertainable) will often be very different
from that to which a sincere desire to promote the general happiness
would direct him. For the relief of distress and calamity is an
important part of Utilitarian duty: but as the state of the person
relieved is on the whole painful, it would appear that sympathy under
these circumstances must be a source of pain rather than pleasure, in
proportion to its intensity. It is probably true, as a general rule,
that in the relief of distress other elements of the complex pleasure
of benevolence decidedly outweigh this sympathetic pain:--for the
effusion of pity is itself pleasurable, and we commonly feel more
keenly that amelioration of the sufferer’s state which is due to our
exertions than we do his pain otherwise caused, and there is further
the pleasure that we derive from his gratitude, and the pleasure that
is the normal reflex of activity directed under a strong impulse
towards a permanently valued end. Still, when the distress is bitter
and continued, and such as we can only partially mitigate by all our
efforts, the philanthropist’s sympathetic discomfort must necessarily
be considerable; and the work of combating misery, though not devoid
of elevated happiness, will be much less happy on the whole than many
other forms of activity; while yet it may be to just this work that
Duty seems to summon us. Or again, a man may find that he can best
promote the general happiness by working in comparative solitude for
ends that he never hopes to see realised, or by working chiefly among
and for persons for whom he cannot feel much affection, or by doing
what must alienate or grieve those whom he loves best, or must make it
necessary for him to dispense with the most intimate of human ties. In
short, there seem to be numberless ways in which the dictates of that
Rational Benevolence, which as a Utilitarian he is bound absolutely
to obey, may conflict with that indulgence of kind affections which
Shaftesbury and his followers so persuasively exhibit as its own reward.
§ 4. It seems, then, that we must conclude, from the arguments given
in Book ii. chap. v., supplemented by the discussion in the preceding
section, that the inseparable connexion between Utilitarian Duty and
the greatest happiness of the individual who conforms to it cannot be
satisfactorily demonstrated on empirical grounds. Hence another section
of the Utilitarian school has preferred to throw the weight of Duty on
the Religious Sanction: and this procedure has been partly adopted
by some of those who have chiefly dwelt on sympathy as a motive. From
this point of view the Utilitarian Code is conceived as the Law of God,
who is to be regarded as having commanded men to promote the general
happiness, and as having announced an intention of rewarding those who
obey His commands and punishing the disobedient. It is clear that if we
feel convinced that an Omnipotent Being has, in whatever way, signified
such commands and announcements, a rational egoist can want no further
inducement to frame his life on Utilitarian principles. It only remains
to consider how this conviction is attained. This is commonly thought
to be either by supernatural Revelation, or by the natural exercise of
Reason, or in both ways. As regards the former it is to be observed
that--with a few exceptions--the moralists who hold that God has
disclosed His law either to special individuals in past ages who have
left a written record of what was revealed to them, or to a permanent
succession of persons appointed in a particular manner, or to religious
persons generally in some supernatural way, do not consider that it is
the Utilitarian Code that has thus been revealed, but rather the rules
of Common-Sense morality with some special modifications and additions.
Still, as Mill has urged, in so far as Utilitarianism is more rigorous
than Common Sense in exacting the sacrifice of the individual’s
happiness to that of mankind generally, it is strictly in accordance
with the most characteristic teaching of Christianity. It seems,
however, unnecessary to discuss the precise relation of different
Revelational Codes to Utilitarianism, as it would be going beyond our
province to investigate the grounds on which a Divine origin has been
attributed to them.
In so far, however, as a knowledge of God’s law is believed to be
attainable by the Reason, Ethics and Theology seem to be so closely
connected that we cannot sharply separate their provinces. For, as we
saw,[379] it has been widely maintained, that the relation of moral
rules to a Divine Lawgiver is implicitly cognised in the act of thought
by which we discern these rules to be binding. And no doubt the terms
(such as ‘moral obligation’), which we commonly use in speaking of
these rules, are naturally suggestive of Legal Sanctions and so of
a Sovereign by whom these are announced and enforced. Indeed many
thinkers since Locke have refused to admit any other meaning in the
terms Right, Duty, etc., except that of a rule imposed by a lawgiver.
This view, however, seems opposed to Common Sense; as may be, perhaps,
most easily shown[380] by pointing out that the Divine Lawgiver is
Himself conceived as a Moral Agent; _i.e._ as prescribing what is
right, and designing what is good. It is clear that in this conception
at least the notions ‘right’ and ‘good’ are used absolutely, without
any reference to a superior lawgiver; and that they are here used in a
sense not essentially different from that which they ordinarily bear
seems to be affirmed by the _consensus_ of religious persons. Still,
though Common Sense does not regard moral rules as being _merely_
the mandates of an Omnipotent Being who will reward and punish men
according as they obey or violate them; it certainly holds that this
is a true though partial view of them, and perhaps that it may be
intuitively apprehended. If then reflection leads us to conclude that
the particular moral principles of Common Sense are to be systematised
as subordinate to that pre-eminently certain and irrefragable intuition
which stands as the first principle of Utilitarianism; then, of course,
it will be the Utilitarian Code to which we shall believe the Divine
Sanctions to be attached.
Or, again, we may argue thus. If--as all theologians agree--we are to
conceive God as acting for some end, we must conceive that end to be
Universal Good, and, if Utilitarians are right, Universal Happiness:
and we cannot suppose that in a world morally governed it can be
prudent for any man to act in conscious opposition to what we believe
to be the Divine Design. Hence if in any case after calculating the
consequences of two alternatives of conduct we choose that which seems
likely to be less conducive to Happiness generally, we shall be acting
in a manner for which we cannot but expect to suffer.
To this it has been objected, that observation of the actual world
shows us that the happiness of sentient beings is so imperfectly
attained in it, and with so large an intermixture of pain and misery,
that we cannot really conceive Universal Happiness to be God’s end,
unless we admit that He is not Omnipotent. And no doubt the assertion
that God is omnipotent will require to be understood with some
limitation; but perhaps with no greater limitation than has always been
implicitly admitted by thoughtful theologians. For these seem always to
have allowed that some things are impossible to God: as, for example,
to change the past. And perhaps if our knowledge of the Universe were
complete, we might discern the _quantum_ of happiness ultimately
attained in it to be as great as could be attained without the
accomplishment of what we should then see to be just as inconceivable
and absurd as changing the past. This, however, is a view which it
belongs rather to the theologian to develop. I should rather urge that
there does not seem to be any other of the ordinary interpretations
of Good according to which it would appear to be more completely
realised in the actual universe. For the wonderful perfections of work
that we admire in the physical world are yet everywhere mingled with
imperfection, and subject to destruction and decay: and similarly in
the world of human conduct Virtue is at least as much balanced by Vice
as Happiness is by misery.[381] So that, if the ethical reasoning that
led us to interpret Ultimate Good as Happiness is sound, there seems no
argument from Natural Theology to set against it.
§ 5. If, then, we may assume the existence of such a Being, as God,
by the _consensus_ of theologians, is conceived to be, it seems that
Utilitarians may legitimately infer the existence of Divine sanctions
to the code of social duty as constructed on a Utilitarian basis; and
such sanctions would, of course, suffice to make it always every one’s
interest to promote universal happiness to the best of his knowledge.
It is, however, desirable, before we conclude, to examine carefully
the validity of this assumption, in so far as it is supported on
ethical grounds alone. For by the result of such an examination will
be determined, as we now see, the very important question whether
ethical science can be constructed on an independent basis; or whether
it is forced to borrow a fundamental and indispensable premiss from
Theology or some similar source.[382] In order fairly to perform this
examination, let us reflect upon the clearest and most certain of
our moral intuitions. I find that I undoubtedly seem to perceive, as
clearly and certainly as I see any axiom in Arithmetic or Geometry,
that it is ‘right’ and ‘reasonable’ for me to treat others as I should
think that I myself ought to be treated under similar conditions,
and to do what I believe to be ultimately conducive to universal
Good or Happiness. But I cannot find inseparably connected with this
conviction, and similarly attainable by mere reflective intuition,
any cognition that there actually is a Supreme Being who will
adequately[383] reward me for obeying these rules of duty, or punish
me for violating them.[384] Or,--omitting the strictly theological
element of the proposition,--I may say that I do not find in my moral
consciousness any intuition, claiming to be clear and certain, that
the performance of duty will be adequately rewarded and its violation
punished. I feel indeed a desire, apparently inseparable from the moral
sentiments, that this result may be realised not only in my own case
but universally; but the mere existence of the desire would not go
far to establish the probability of its fulfilment, considering the
large proportion of human desires that experience shows to be doomed
to disappointment. I also judge that in a certain sense this result
_ought_ to be realised: in this judgment, however, ‘ought’ is not used
in a strictly ethical meaning; it only expresses the vital need that
our Practical Reason feels of proving or postulating this connexion of
Virtue and self-interest, if it is to be made consistent with itself.
For the negation of the connexion must force us to admit an ultimate
and fundamental contradiction in our apparent intuitions of what is
Reasonable in conduct; and from this admission it would seem to follow
that the apparently intuitive operation of the Practical Reason,
manifested in these contradictory judgments, is after all illusory.
I do not mean that if we gave up the hope of attaining a practical
solution of this fundamental contradiction, through any legitimately
obtained conclusion or postulate as to the moral order of the world,
it would become reasonable for us to abandon morality altogether:
but it would seem necessary to abandon the idea of rationalising it
completely. We should doubtless still, not only from self-interest, but
also through sympathy and sentiments protective of social wellbeing,
imparted by education and sustained by communication with other men,
feel a desire for the general observance of rules conducive to general
happiness; and practical reason would still impel us decisively to
the performance of duty in the more ordinary cases in which what
is recognised as duty is in harmony with self-interest properly
understood. But in the rarer cases of a recognised conflict between
self-interest and duty, practical reason, being divided against itself,
would cease to be a motive on either side; the conflict would have to
be decided by the comparative preponderance of one or other of two
groups of non-rational impulses.
If then the reconciliation of duty and self-interest is to be
regarded as a hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental
contradiction in one chief department of our thought, it remains
to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for
accepting this hypothesis. This, however, is a profoundly difficult
and controverted question, the discussion of which belongs rather
to a treatise on General Philosophy than to a work on the Methods
of Ethics: as it could not be satisfactorily answered, without a
general examination of the criteria of true and false beliefs. Those
who hold that the edifice of physical science is really constructed
of conclusions logically inferred from self-evident premises, may
reasonably demand that any practical judgments claiming philosophic
certainty should be based on an equally firm foundation. If on the
other hand we find that in our supposed knowledge of the world of
nature propositions are commonly taken to be universally true, which
yet seem to rest on no other grounds than that we have a strong
disposition to accept them, and that they are indispensable to the
systematic coherence of our beliefs,--it will be more difficult to
reject a similarly supported assumption in ethics, without opening the
door to universal scepticism.
FOOTNOTES:
[375] See J. S. Mill’s treatise on Utilitarianism (chap. iii. passim):
where, however, the argument is not easy to follow, from a confusion
between three different objects of inquiry: (1) the actual effect of
sympathy in inducing conformity to the rules of Utilitarian ethics, (2)
the effect in this direction which it is likely to have in the future,
(3) the value of sympathetic pleasures and pains as estimated by an
enlightened Egoist. The first and third of these questions Mill did not
clearly separate, owing to his psychological doctrine that each one’s
own pleasure is the sole object of his desires. But if my refutation of
this doctrine (Book i. chap. iv. § 3) is valid, we have to distinguish
two ways in which sympathy operates: it generates sympathetic pleasures
and pains, which have to be taken into account in the calculations of
Egoistic Hedonism; but it also may cause impulses to altruistic action,
of which the force is quite out of proportion to the sympathetic
pleasure (or relief from pain) which such action seems likely to
secure to the agent. So that even if the average man ever should reach
such a pitch of sympathetic development, as never to feel prompted to
sacrifice the general good to his own, still this will not prove that
it is egoistically reasonable for him to behave in this way.
[376] I do not mean to imply that the process of change is merely
circular. In the earlier period sympathy is narrower, simpler, and
more presentative; in the later it is more extensive, complex, and
representative.
[377] I do not, however, think that we are justified in stating as
_universally_ true what has been admitted in the preceding paragraph.
Some few thoroughly selfish persons appear at least to be happier
than most of the unselfish; and there are other exceptional natures
whose chief happiness seems to be derived from activity, disinterested
indeed, but directed towards other ends than human happiness.
[378] See chap. iii. § 3 of this Book, pp. 432-33.
[379] See Book iii. chap. i. § 2: also Book iii. chap. ii. § 1.
[380] Cf. Book i. chap. iii. § 2.
[381] It may perhaps be said that this comparison has no force for
Libertarians, who consider the essence of Virtue to lie in free choice.
But to say that _any_ free choice is virtuous would be a paradox from
which most Libertarians--admitting that Evil may be freely chosen no
less than Good--would recoil. It must therefore be Free choice of good
that is conceived to realise the divine end: and if so, the arguments
for the utilitarian interpretation of Good--thus freely chosen--would
still be applicable _mutatis mutandis_: and if so, the arguments for
regarding rules of utilitarian duty as divinely sanctioned would be
similarly applicable.
[382] It is not necessary, if we are simply considering Ethics as a
possible independent science, to throw the fundamental premiss of
which we are now examining the validity into a Theistic form. Nor does
it seem always to have taken that form in the support which Positive
Religion has given to Morality. In the Buddhist creed this notion of
the rewards inseparably attaching to right conduct seems to have been
developed in a far more elaborate and systematic manner than it has in
any phase of Christianity. But, as conceived by enlightened Buddhists,
these rewards are not distributed by the volition of a Supreme Person,
but by the natural operation of an impersonal Law.
[383] It may be well to remind the reader that by ‘adequate’ is here
meant ‘sufficient to make it the agent’s interest to promote universal
good’; not necessarily ‘proportional to Desert.’
[384] I cannot fall back on the resource of thinking myself under a
moral necessity to regard all my duties _as if they_ were commandments
of God, although not entitled to hold speculatively that any such
Supreme Being really exists. I am so far from feeling bound to
believe for purposes of practice what I see no ground for holding as
a speculative truth, that I cannot even conceive the state of mind
which these words seem to describe, except as a momentary half-wilful
irrationality, committed in a violent access of philosophic despair.
APPENDIX
THE KANTIAN CONCEPTION OF FREE WILL
[_Reprinted, with some omissions, from_ MIND, 1888, _Vol. XIII., No.
51_.]
My aim is to show that, in different parts of Kant’s exposition of his
doctrine, two essentially different conceptions are expressed by the
same word freedom; while yet Kant does not appear to be conscious of
any variation in the meaning of the term.
[In the one sense, Freedom = Rationality, so that a man is free in
proportion as he acts in accordance with Reason.] I do not in the
least object to this use of the term Freedom, on account of its
deviation from ordinary usage. On the contrary, I think it has much
support in men’s natural expression of ordinary moral experience in
discourse. In the conflict that is continually going on in all of us,
between non-rational impulses and what we recognise as dictates of
practical reason, we are in the habit of identifying ourselves with
the latter rather than with the former: as Whewell says, “we speak of
Desire, Love, Anger, as mastering us, and of ourselves as controlling
them”--we continually call men “slaves” of appetite or passion, whereas
no one was ever called a slave of reason. If, therefore, the term
Freedom had not already been appropriated by moralists to another
meaning--if it were merely a question of taking it from ordinary
discourse and stamping it with greater precision for purposes of
ethical discussion--I should make no objection to the statement that
“a man is a free agent in proportion as he acts rationally.” But, what
English defenders of man’s free agency have generally been concerned
to maintain, is that “man has a freedom of _choice_ between good and
evil,” which is realised or manifested when he deliberately chooses
evil just as much as when he deliberately chooses good; and it is
clear that if we say that a man is a free agent in proportion as he
acts rationally, we cannot also say, in the same sense of the term,
that it is by his free choice that he acts irrationally when he does
so act. The notions of Freedom must be admitted to be fundamentally
different in the two statements: and though usage might fairly allow
the word Freedom to represent either notion, if only one or other of
the above-mentioned propositions were affirmed, to use it to represent
both, in affirming both propositions, is obviously inconvenient; and it
implies a confusion of thought so to use it, without pointing out the
difference of meaning.
If this be admitted, the next thing is to show that Kant does use the
term in this double way. In arguing this, it will be convenient to have
names for what we admit to be two distinct ideas. Accordingly, the kind
of freedom which I first mentioned--which a man is said to manifest
more in proportion as he acts more under the guidance of reason--shall
be referred to as ‘Good’ or ‘Rational Freedom,’ and the freedom that is
manifested in choosing between good and evil shall be called ‘Neutral’
or ‘Moral Freedom.’[385]
But before I proceed to the different passages of Kant’s exposition in
which ‘Good Freedom’ and ‘Neutral Freedom’ respectively occur, it seems
desirable to distinguish this latter from a wider notion with which
it may possibly be confounded, and which it would be clearly wrong to
attribute to Kant. I mean the “power of acting without a motive,” which
Reid and other writers, on what used to be called the Libertarian side,
have thought it necessary to claim. “If a man could not act without
a motive,” says Reid, “he could have no power”--that is, in Reid’s
meaning, no free agency--“at all.” This conception of Freedom--which
I may conveniently distinguish as ‘Capricious Freedom’--is, as I
said, certainly not Kantian: not only does he expressly repudiate it,
but nowhere--so far as I know--does he unconsciously introduce it.
Indeed it is incompatible with any and every part of his explanation
of human volition: the originality and interest of his defence of
Neutral Freedom--the power of choice between good and evil--lies in its
complete avoidance of Capricious Freedom or the power of acting without
a motive _in any particular volition_.
[This] distinction helps me to understand how [it is that] many
intelligent readers have failed to see in Kant’s exposition the two
Freedoms--Good or Rational Freedom and Neutral or Moral Freedom--which
I find in Kant. They have their view fixed on the difference between
Rational or Moral Freedom, which Kant maintains, and the Freedom
of Caprice, which he undoubtedly repudiates: and are thus led to
overlook with him the distinction between the Freedom that we realise
or manifest in proportion as we do right, and the Freedom that is
realised or manifested equally in choosing either right or wrong.
When we have once put completely out of view the Freedom of Caprice,
the power of acting without a motive, or against the strongest
motive when the competition is among merely natural or non-rational
desires or aversions,--when we have agreed to exclude this, and to
concentrate attention on the difference between Good Freedom and
Neutral Freedom--I venture to think that no one can avoid seeing each
member of this latter antithesis in Kant. It will be easily understood
that, as he does not himself distinguish the two conceptions, it is
naturally impossible for the most careful reader always to tell which
is to be understood; but there are many passages where his argument
unmistakably requires the one, and many other passages where it
unmistakably requires the other. Speaking broadly, I may say that,
wherever Kant has to connect the notion of Freedom with that of Moral
Responsibility or moral imputation, he, like all other moralists who
have maintained Free Will in this connexion, means (chiefly, but not
solely) Neutral Freedom--Freedom exhibited in choosing wrong as much
as in choosing right. Indeed, in such passages it is with the Freedom
of the wrong-chooser that he is primarily concerned: since it is the
wrong-chooser that he especially wishes to prevent from shifting his
responsibility on to causes beyond his control. On the other hand, when
what he has to prove is the possibility of disinterested obedience to
Law as such, without the intervention of sensible impulses, when he
seeks to exhibit the independence of Reason in influencing choice,
then in many though not all his statements he explicitly identifies
Freedom with this independence of Reason, and thus clearly implies the
proposition that a man is free in proportion as he acts rationally.
As an example of the first kind, I will take the passage towards
the close of chap. iii. of the “Analytic of Practical Reason,”[386]
where he treats, in its bearing on Moral Responsibility, his
peculiar metaphysical doctrine of a double kind of causation in
human actions. According to Kant, every such action, regarded as a
phenomenon determined in time, must be thought as a necessary result
of determining causes in antecedent time--otherwise its existence
would be inconceivable--but it may be also regarded in relation to the
agent considered as a thing-in-himself, as the “noümenon” of which the
action is a phenomenon: and the conception of Freedom may be applied
to the agent so considered in relation to his phenomena. For since his
existence as a noümenon is not subject to time-conditions, nothing in
this noümenal existence comes under the principle of determination
by antecedent causes: hence, as Kant says, “in this his existence
nothing is antecedent to the determination of his will, but every
action ... even the whole series of his existence as a sensible being,
is in the consciousness of his supersensible existence nothing but
the result of his causality as a noümenon.” This is the well-known
metaphysical solution of the difficulty of reconciling Free Will with
the Universality of physical causation: I am not now concerned to
criticise it,--my point is that if we accept this view of Freedom at
all, it must obviously be Neutral Freedom: it must express the relation
of a noümenon that manifests itself as a scoundrel to a series of
bad volitions, in which the moral law is violated, no less than the
relation of a noümenon that manifests itself as a saint to good or
rational volitions, in which the moral law or categorical imperative
is obeyed. And, as I before said, Kant in this passage--being
especially concerned to explain the possibility of moral imputation,
and justify the judicial sentences of conscience--especially takes as
his illustrations noümena that exhibit bad phenomena. The question he
expressly raises is “How a man who commits a theft” can “be called
quite free” at the moment of committing it? and answers that it is
in virtue of his “transcendental freedom” that “the rational being
can justly say of _every unlawful action_ that he performs that he
could very well have left it undone,” although as phenomenon it is
determined by antecedents, and so necessary; “for it, with all the
past which determines it, belongs to the one single phenomenon of
his character which he makes for himself, in consequence of which he
imputes to himself” the bad actions that result necessarily from his
bad character taken in conjunction with other causes. Hence, however he
may account for his error from bad habits which he has allowed to grow
on him, whatever art he may use to paint to himself an unlawful act he
remembers as something in which he was carried away by the stream of
physical necessity, this cannot protect him from self-reproach:--not
even if he have shown depravity so early that he may reasonably be
thought to have been born in a morally hopeless condition--he will
still be rightly judged, and will judge himself “just as responsible
as any other man”: since in relation to his noümenal self his life as
a whole, from first to last, is to be regarded as a single phenomenon
resulting from an absolutely free choice.
I need not labour this point further; it is evident that the
necessities of Kant’s metaphysical explanation of moral responsibility
make him express with peculiar emphasis and fulness the notion of what
I have called Neutral Freedom, a kind of causality manifested in bad
and irrational volitions no less than in the good and rational.
On the other hand, it is no less easy to find passages in which the
term Freedom seems to me most distinctly to stand for Good or Rational
Freedom. Indeed, such passages are, I think, more frequent than those
in which the other meaning is plainly required. Thus he tells us that
“a free will must find its principle of determination in the [moral]
‘Law,’”[387] and that “freedom, whose causality can be determined only
by the law, consists just in this, that it restricts all inclinations
by the condition of obedience to pure law.”[388] Whereas, in the
argument previously examined, his whole effort was to prove that
the noümenon or supersensible being, of which each volition is a
phenomenon, exercises “free causality” in unlawful acts, he tells us
elsewhere, in the same treatise, that the “supersensible nature” of
rational beings, who have also a “sensible nature,” is their “existence
according to laws which are independent of every empirical condition,
and therefore belong to the autonomy of pure [practical] reason.”[389]
Similarly, in an earlier work, he explains that “since the conception
of causality involves that of laws ... though freedom is not a property
of the will depending on physical laws, yet it is not for that reason
lawless; on the contrary, it must be a causality according to immutable
laws, but of a peculiar kind; otherwise, a free will would be a chimæra
(_Unding_).”[390] And this immutable law of the “free” or “autonomous”
will is, as he goes on to say, the fundamental principle of morality,
“so that a free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the
same.”
I have quoted this last phrase, not because it clearly exhibits the
notion of Rational Freedom,--on the contrary, it rather shows how
easily this notion may be confounded with the other. A will subject to
its own moral laws _may_ mean a will that, so far as free, conforms
to these laws; but it also _may_ be conceived as capable of freely
disobeying these laws--exercising Neutral Freedom. But when Freedom
is said to be a “causality according to immutable laws” the ambiguity
is dispelled; for this evidently cannot mean merely a faculty of
laying down laws which may or may not be obeyed; it must mean that
the will, _quâ_ free, acts in accordance with these laws;--the human
being, doubtless, often acts contrary to them; but then, according to
this view, its choice in such actions is determined not “freely” but
“mechanically,” by “physical” and “empirical” springs of action.
If any further argument is necessary to show that Kantian “Freedom”
must sometimes be understood as Rational or Good Freedom, I may quote
one or two of the numerous passages in which Kant, either expressly or
by implication, identifies Will and Reason; for this identification
obviously excludes the possibility of Will’s choosing between Reason
and non-rational impulses. Thus in the _Grundlegung zur Metaphysik
der Sitten_,[391] he tells us that “as Reason is required to deduce
actions from laws, Will is nothing but pure practical reason”; and,
similarly, in the _Kritik der praktischen Vernunft_, he speaks of the
“objective reality of a pure Will or, _which is the same thing_, a pure
practical reason.”[392] Accordingly, whereas in some passages[393] the
“autonomy” which he identifies with “Freedom” is spoken of as “autonomy
of _will_,” in others we are told that the “moral law expresses
nothing else than autonomy of the pure practical _reason_: that is,
Freedom.”[394]
I think that I have now established the verbal ambiguity that I
undertook to bring home to Kant’s account of Free Will; I have shown
that in his exposition this fundamental term oscillates between
incompatible meanings. But it may, perhaps, be thought that the defect
thus pointed out can be cured by a merely verbal correction: that the
substance of Kant’s ethical doctrine may still be maintained, and may
still be connected with his metaphysical doctrine. It may still be held
that Reason dictates that we should at all times act from a maxim that
we can will to be a universal law, and that we should do this from pure
regard for reason and reason’s law, admitting that it is a law which we
are free to disobey; and it may still be held that the reality of this
moral freedom is to be reconciled with the universality of physical
causation by conceiving it as a relation between the agent’s noümenal
self--independent of time-conditions--and his character as manifested
in time; the only correction required being to avoid identifying
Freedom and Goodness or Rationality as attributes of agents or actions.
I should quite admit that the most important parts both of Kant’s
doctrine of morality, and of his doctrine of Freedom may be saved:--or
I should perhaps rather say that the latter may be left to conduct an
unequal struggle with the modern notions of heredity and evolution:
at any rate I admit that it is not fundamentally affected by my
present argument. But I think that a good deal more will have to go
from a corrected edition of Kantism than merely the “word” Freedom
in certain passages, if the confusion introduced by the ambiguity of
this word is to be eliminated in the manner that I have suggested. I
think that the whole topic of the “heteronomy” of the will, when it
yields to empirical or sensible impulses, will have to be abandoned or
profoundly modified. And I am afraid that most readers of Kant will
feel the loss to be serious; since nothing in Kant’s ethical writing
is more fascinating than the idea--which he expresses repeatedly in
various forms--that a man realises the aim of his true self when he
obeys the moral law, whereas, when he wrongly allows his action to
be determined by empirical or sensible stimuli, he becomes subject
to physical causation, to laws of a brute outer world. But if we
dismiss the identification of Freedom and Rationality, and accept
definitely and singly Kant’s other notion of Freedom as expressing the
relation of the human thing-in-itself to its phenomenon, I am afraid
that this spirit-stirring appeal to the sentiment of Liberty must be
dismissed as idle rhetoric. For the life of the saint must be as much
subject--in any particular portion of it--to the necessary laws of
physical causation as the life of the scoundrel: and the scoundrel must
exhibit and express his characteristic self-hood in his transcendental
choice of a bad life, as much as the saint does in his transcendental
choice of a good one. If, on the other hand, to avoid this result,
we take the other horn of the dilemma, and identify inner freedom
with rationality, than a more serious excision will be required. For,
along with ‘Neutral’ or ‘Moral’ Freedom, the whole Kantian view of the
relation of the noümenon to the empirical character will have to be
dropped, and with it must go the whole Kantian method of maintaining
moral responsibility and moral imputation: in fact, all that has made
Kant’s doctrine interesting and impressive to English advocates of Free
Will (in the ordinary sense), even when they have not been convinced of
its soundness.
FOOTNOTES:
[385] The terms ‘rational’ and ‘moral’ seem to me most appropriate
when I wish to suggest the affinity between the two notions: the terms
‘good’ and ‘neutral’ seem preferable when I wish to lay stress on the
difference.
[386] _Werke_, v. pp. 100-104 (Hartenstein).
[387] _Werke_, v. p. 30.
[388] _Ibid._ p. 83.
[389] _Ibid._ p. 46.
[390] _Werke_, iv. p. 294.
[391] _Werke_, iv. p. 260 (Hartenstein).
[392] _Werke_, v. p. 58. See an acute discussion of Kant’s perplexing
use of the term “Will” in Prof. Schurman’s _Kantian Ethics_, which has
anticipated me in the above quotations.
[393] _E.g._ _Werke_, iv. p. 296.
[394] _E.g._ _Werke_, v. p. 35.
INDEX
‘Absolute’ and ‘Relative’ Ethics, 18 note 2, 177 note 1
‘Act,’ meaning of, 200 note 3, 201, 202
Action, ultimate end of, 3, 4, etc.;
motive to, may be non-rational, 5;
instinctive, 24, 61;
deliberate, 24, 61;
deliberate and impulsive, 61
Acuteness, 236
Æsthetic Intuitionism, 228, 392;
implicit reference to Ultimate Good in, 392, 393
Æsthetic sensibility, theories of, 189
Affections, Duties of the, 345-349
Affections, social and domestic, 138, 153, 156, 157, 433, 434
‘Altruism,’ 439
ἀνδρεία, 456
‘Apathy’ as ideal of happiness, 125
Aristotle, 59 note 1, 92, 92 note 2, 98-99, 99 note 1, 121-122,
180, 180 note 1, 181 note 1, 215, 224, 231 note 1, 264 note 2,
281, 375 note 1, 376, 403, 456
Art, Definition of, 4
‘Art of conduct,’ 4
Austin, 300 note 1
Aversion, 42, 43, 46, 145
Axioms, 215, 338-343, 379-389 _passim_;
must (_a_) have the terms clear and precise, 338, 339;
(_b_) be really self-evident, 339-341;
(_c_) not conflict with any other accepted proposition, 341;
(_d_) be supported by consensus of experts, 341, 342
Axiom--of Justice or Equity, and Rational Benevolence, 387;
of Prudence, the logical basis of Egoism, 386;
of Rational Benevolence, the logical basis of Utilitarianism,
387, 388;
-s of Impartiality, 379-383, 496, 497
Bacon, 338
Bain, 43 note 2, Note 54-56, Note 87-88, 125, 126, 127, 477 note 1;
(_The Emotions and the Will_) 54, 55 Note, 126 note 1;
(_Mental and Moral Science_) 127 notes 1-3, 177 note 1
Bastiat, 278 note 1
Beauty, 114
Benevolence, 238-263 _passim_, 391, 393;
comprehensiveness and supremacy of, 238, 238 note 2;
common maxim of, 238-239;
axiom of, 382, 385, 387, 496;
prescribes promotion of others’ Happiness rather than Perfection,
240, 241;
principles of its distribution, 241, 242, 261, 262, 263;
and Justice, spheres of, 242, 243, 268;
virtue of, 244, 253;
duty of, 252, 253, 253 note 1, 258;
Kant’s view of the duty of, 239, 240;
intellectual _versus_ emotional excellence of, 244 note 1;
conflicting claims to, 246;
duties of, classified, 248;
rational, cf. _Rational Benevolence_;
Intuitional and Utilitarian notions of, reconciled, 430-431
Benevolent--emotion, 239;
disposition, 239
Bentham, 10, 41, 41 note 1, 84, 85, 86, Note 87-88, 92, 94, 119,
124 note 1, 143, 164, 203, 292, 364, 414, 417, 423 note 2, 424;
(_Memoirs_) 10 notes 2 and 3,
(_Deontology, Works_, Bowring’s edition) 87, 88 Note,
(_Principles of Morals and Legislation_) 26 note 1,
(_Constitutional Code_) 41 note 2
Bequest, change of view respecting, 246, 247
Berkeley, Bishop, 120
Blackstone, _Introduction_, 302 note 1
Bouillier, 180 note 2
Butler, 7, 39, 44, 44 note 2, 81, 86, 93, 94, 119, 133 note 2, 136,
172, 200, 222, 366, 366 note 3, 371, 372, 378, 386, 401, 405,
501;
(_Analogy_) 378;
(_Dissertation Of the Nature of Virtue_) 86 note 2, 176 note 1,
327 note 1;
(_Sermons on Human Nature_) 7 note 1, 86 note 2, 93 note 2,
120 note 1, 200 note 2, 323 note 1
Candour, 355
Cardinal Virtues, 375
Carelessness, Culpability of, 60, 292
Casuistry, 99
Categorical Imperative, 7, 8, 15, 35, 36, 37, 209, 209 note 1
Caution, 236, 236 note 1, 237
Celibacy, 487, 488
Charity (Philanthropy), 222, 239, 430, 431, 434
Chastity and Purity, 223, 329-331, 329 note 2
‘Chief Good’ (Summum Bonum), 134, 407 note 1
Chivalry, 326
Chrysippus, 376
Cicero, 376;
_De Finibus_, 125 note 1
Clarke, 86, 104, 120, 120 note 2, 384, 384 notes 3 and 4, 385;
_Boyle Lectures_, 120 note 2, 385 notes 1 and 2
Classification of Duties, 312-315
‘Cognition,’ use of, 34 note 2
“Common good of all Rationals,” Cumberland’s ultimate end, 104, 423
Common Morality, 215-216; (cf. _Morality of Common Sense_)
Common Sense aversion to admit Happiness as sole ultimate Good,
explanation of, 402-406
Compassion, 262, 371
Conditional prescriptions (Hypothetical Imperatives), 6, 7
Conjugal relation, the duties relating to it, 254, 255, 256,
255 notes 1 and 2, 347, 348, 348 note 1
Conscience, popular view of, 99;
jural view of, 100-101
Conscience (Moral Faculty) and Benevolence, Butler’s view of the
relation between, 86, 86 note 2;
and Self-love, Butler’s view of relation between, 119, 120, 200,
200 note 2, 327 note 1, 366
Conscious Utilitarianism rather the adult than the germinal form
of morality, 455-457
Consciousness not normally without pleasure or pain, 125
Consequences of actions, ulterior, 96, 97;
may be judged desirable without reference to pleasure or pain, 97
Contract, claims arising from, 269;
and Freedom, 276, 276 note 1
Courage, 332-334;
defined, 332;
Greek view of, 456;
and Fortitude, are subordinate duties, 332, 333;
Moral, 333 note 3;
Virtue of, 313, 333, 334;
and Foolhardiness, distinguished by Utilitarian considerations,
334, 355
Courtesy, 253
Cudworth, 103 Note
Culture, 157, etc.
Cumberland, 86, 86 note 1, 104;
and Utilitarianism, 423, 423 note 1
Custom, alterations in, 247
Decision, 236, 237
Deductive Hedonism, 176-195
Descartes, 338, 339
Desert--Good, how determined, 284-290;
Ill, how determined, 291-292;
requital of, as principle of Ideal Justice, 280, 281, 283, 294, 349;
and Freedom, 280, 287;
and Right of Property, 280, 280 note 1;
and Determinism, 284, 285;
Utilitarian interpretation of, 284 note 1;
and Free Will, 71, 72, 284, 291
‘Desirable,’ confusion in Mill’s use of, 388 note 2
Desirable consciousness is either happiness or certain objective
relations of the conscious mind, 398-400
Desire, 43, 45-47;
non-rational, 23-24;
irrational, 23, 24;
and Pleasure, relation between, 39-56 _passim_
Determinism and Free Will, 57 _seq._;
Aristotelian, 59 note 1;
and Materialism, 62;
arguments for, 62-65;
argument against, 65, 66
Determinist meaning of ‘desert,’ etc., 71, 72, 284 note 1
Development as ethical aim, 90 _seq._, 192 _seq._, 473
‘Dictates,’ how used, 96 note 1
δικαιοσύνη, two meanings of, 264 note 2
‘Disinterested action,’ 57
Distribution, Principle of Equality a _prima facie_ reasonable
Principle of, 417
Divine penalties, 31
‘Doing good,’ ambiguity of, 239, 240
Dualism of the Practical (or Moral) Reason, 200, 205, 206,
366, 404, 404 note 1;
need of harmonising, 507-509
Dumont, 180 note 2
‘Duties to God’ and ‘duty to man,’ 218
Duties, division of, into Self-regarding and Social, 163, 312, 313
‘Duties to oneself,’ 7
‘Duty’--meaning and use of, 78, 217, 218, 220 note 3, 239, 504-505;
and ‘right conduct’ distinguished, 217
Duty relativity of, 218, 219;
and Happiness of agent, 36, 162-175 _passim_, 495 _seq._;
implies conflict of impulses, 81;
of self-preservation, 356;
of promoting others’ happiness, Kant’s arguments for, 389-390;
most of the received maxims of, involve reference to Ultimate
Good, 391, 392
‘Egoism,’ 11, 80 note 1, 89 _seq._;
ordinary use, and ambiguity of, 89;
indefiniteness of, 95;
and Greek ethical controversy, 91-92
Egoism, cf. _Egoistic Hedonism_
Egoism--meaning of, 120-121;
and Self-love, 36, 89-95 _passim_;
Principle and Method of, 119-122;
precepts of, not clear and precise, 199-200;
rationality of, 119-120, 199, 200 note 1;
sense of ignobility of, 199-200, 200 note 1 (cf. 402 _seq._), 501;
= Pure (or Quantitative) Egoistic Hedonism, 95;
and Utilitarianism, relation between, 497 _seq._;
and Utilitarian sanctions, 499-503
‘Egoist,’ meaning of, 121
Egoistic End--and Positive Religion, 121;
and Natural Religion, 121
Egoistic Hedonism designated as Egoism or as Epicureanism, 11, 84, 95
Egoistic Hedonism, 42, 119-121;
End of, 93;
Pure or Quantitative, defined, 95;
Fundamental Principle of, 93, 120, 121;
Empirical-reflective Method of, 121, 122, 131 _seq._;
and Conscience, 161 note 1;
Fundamental Paradox of, 48, 130, 136, 137, 173-174, 194
Empirical Hedonism, 123-150;
fundamental assumption of, 123, 131, 146;
objections to, 460;
Method of, takes advantage of traditional experience and of
special knowledge, 477, 479
Empirical Quantitative Hedonism, 146
Empiricism, 104
‘End,’ ethical use of the term, 134
End, Interdependence of Method and, 8, 83, 84;
adoption of any, as paramount, a phenomenon distinct from Desire, 39
Ends accepted as rational by Common Sense, 8, 9
Energy, 237
Epicureanism, 11, 84
Epicurus, 158
‘Equal return,’ ambiguity of, 261 (cf. 288 _seq._)
‘Equality of Happiness,’ as Social End, 284 note 2
Ethical--judgment, 23-38, 77;
Principles and Methods, 77-88 _passim_;
Method, three principal species of, 83 _seq._;
controversy, ancient and modern, 105, 106, 392;
Hedonism, fundamental proposition of, 129;
and Psychological Hedonism, 40-42, 412, 412 note 1;
and Physical Science, structure of, compared, 509
Ethics--boundaries of, 1;
Study or Science? 1, 2;
forms of the problem of, 2, 3, 391;
and man’s ‘True Good,’ 3;
definition of, 4, 15;
Absolute and Relative, 18 note 2, 177 note 1;
and geometry, analogy between, 18-19;
and astronomy, analogy between, 19;
concerned with Duty under present conditions, 19;
aim of, 40, 77;
and Rational or Natural Theology, 504-506;
mutual relations of the three Methods of, 496-509
Ethics and Politics (cf. _Law_), 15-22 _passim_, 266, 457;
distinguished from Positive sciences, 1, 2;
Utilitarian, 457 (cf. 274, 298);
in an ideal society, 18 _seq._
εὐδαιμονία (= Well-being = the Good attainable in
human life), 91, 92;
misunderstanding of Aristotle’s use of, 92 note 2
Excellence (cf. _Perfection_)
‘Excellence’ and ‘Perfection,’ 10 note 3
Excellence beyond strict duty, Utilitarian attitude towards, 492, 493
_Explanation_ essentially different from _Justification_, 2
Fame, 9, 155, 157, 159, 368, (Posthumous) 156 note 1
Feeling--preferableness of, other than pleasantness, dependent on
objective relations of the feeling mind, 127, 128, 399;
_quâ_ feeling, can only be judged by the person who feels, 128,
129, 398
Fidelity (cf. _Good Faith_), 258, 259
Firmness, 235, 236
Fitness and Desert, 350
‘Formal’ and ‘Material’ Rightness, 206-207, 206 note 1
Fortitude defined, 332
Free choice as virtuous, 504 note 1
Freedom--sentiment of, 39;
as absolute end of ideal law, 274 _seq._, 293, 297, 350-351;
sphere of, must be limited, 275;
ambiguity of, 275, 276, 293;
and Contract, 276, 276 note 1;
and Property, 276, 277;
Civil and Constitutional, 298, 351
Free Will--controversy, 57-76 _passim_, 59, 61-62, 65 note 1, 74, 75;
conception of, applied (_a_) in judging the conduct of others,
63 note 1, 66, 67, (_b_) in forecasting our own future, 64;
partial illusoriness of the belief in, 64, 65;
and Happiness, 68;
and Perfection (or Excellence), 68, 68 note 2;
and Moral government of the world, 69, 69 note 2, 70;
and Determinism, practical unimportance of issue between, 67,
68, 72-76, 285;
and Justice, 71, 72, 284, 291;
and Desert (or Merit), 68 note 2, 285, 291;
and Duty, 78;
(or Freedom of Will)--two senses of, 57-59;
and Moral responsibility, 58;
conception of, involved in ordinary meaning of ‘responsibility,’
‘desert,’ etc., 71;
metaphysical--ethical import of, as regards (_a_) choice between
rational and irrational alternatives, 67, 68, 70-71, (_b_) view
of what is rational, 68, 69, (_c_) forecasts of future action,
69, 70, 70 note 1
Friendship and its duties, 257-259, 257 note 1, 437
‘General Good,’ 392
Generosity, 219, 326
Gentleness, 253, 321
God’s Will--conformity to, 79;
as ultimate reason for action, 79, 80
‘Golden Rule,’ the, unpreciseness of, 379-380
‘Good,’ 105-115 _passim_;
indefiniteness of, 91-92;
use and force of the term, 86 note 1, 105, 107 _seq._, 112, 113;
and not ‘Right’ the fundamental notion in Greek ethics, 105;
has not the same connotation as ‘pleasant,’ 107, 108, 109, 110;
implies reference to an universally valid standard, 108-109, 114;
adjective, and ‘Good’ substantive, 109;
notion of, distinct from ‘Pleasure’ and ‘the Pleasant,’ and = ‘what
ought to be desired,’ 109 _seq._
Good, The, 3, 92, 106;
(human) or Well-being, its relation to Happiness and to Duty, 3;
(human) is either (_a_) Happiness or (_b_) Perfection or Excellence
of human existence, 114, 115;
the absolute and unconditional, in Kant’s view, 222;
in English ethical thought, 423 note 1
Good conduct, 106, 107, 112-113;
standard of, needed, 113;
Greek conception of, 107 note 1, 404-405, 405 note 1
Good Faith, 224, 303-311 _passim_, 352-354, 355;
stringency of the duty of, 304-305;
obligation of, affected by (_a_) fraud or force, 305-306,
306 note 1, (_b_) material change of circumstances, 306-308,
(_c_) misapprehension, 309, (_d_) use of a prescribed formula,
309, 310
Good Taste, 108
Good humour, 321
Goodness, implies relation to consciousness or feeling, 113-114,
113 note 2;
(Moral) and Beauty, 107-108, 107 note 1, 228
Government--by Consent of Subjects, 297, 351;
Aristocratic and Democratic Principles of, 299;
established, difficulty of identifying, 300, 301
Governmental Authority, conflicting claims to, 296, 297, 299-301;
ideal, 297-299
Grant Allen, 187;
_Physiological Æsthetics_, 187 note 1
Gratitude, 259-261, 437-438;
universalised, furnishes the principle ‘that desert ought to be
requited,’ 279, 279 note 1, 280;
Kant on, 223, 223 note 1
‘Greatest Happinesss,’ meaning of, 121, 413;
Utilitarian notion of, its extent, 414;
total and average, distinguished, 415, 416
‘Greatest Pleasure,’ explanation of, 44 note 3
Greek ethical thought, the problem of, 106;
tautological maxims of, 375-376
Green, T. H., 132 _seq._, 134 note 3, 135 note 3;
(_Introduction to Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature_) 132 note 2,
133 note 3;
(_Prolegomena to Ethics_) 93 note 1, 133 note 1, 134 notes 1 and 2,
135 notes 1 and 2, 363 note 1
Grote, J., _An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy_, 432 note 1
Gurney, E., 123, 184; (_Tertium Quid_) 123 note 1;
(_Power of Sound_) 184 note 1
Hallam, 423 note 1
Hamilton, 139, 180-182;
(_Lectures on Metaphysics_) 180 note 3
Happiness--as End, 7, 8, 78;
and Duty, connexion between, 162-175 _passim_;
and Duty, are they coincident? 162, 163, 165, 176;
and Duty, Plato’s view of relation between, 171-172;
and Virtue, 174-175, 459;
and Virtue, connexion of, in Aristotle’s view, 121-122;
determination and measurement of, an inevitable problem for
Ethics, 176;
production of, 176-177;
relation of, to mental concentration and dissipation, 193;
and Self-development, 192-193;
rejection of, as end, leaves us unable to frame a coherent account
of Ultimate Good, 406;
an objection to, as Ultimate Good, considered, 407 note 1;
principle of distribution of, required, 416, 417;
universal, as divine end, 503-505;
Christian view of, 120, 138;
Sources of, 151 _seq._
‘Happiness,’ 41 note 1, 92, 92 note 2, 93 note 1;
ambiguity of, 92;
precise meaning of, 120
Harm, 292, 293
Harmony as cause of Pleasure, 189
Health, 153, 154, 159
‘Hedonism,’ meaning of, 93
Hedonism (Ethical), the two Methods of, are Universalistic and
Egoistic, 11;
connexion between the two Methods of, 84, 497 _seq._;
objections to, stated and considered:--(_a_) that the calculation
required by the Empirical-reflective method is too complex for
practice, 131, 132;
(_b_) that “pleasure as feeling cannot be conceived,” 132, 133;
(_c_) that “a sum of pleasures is intrinsically unmeaning,”
133, 134;
(_d_) that transient pleasures are unsatisfying, 135;
(_e_) that the pursuit of pleasure tends to defeat its own end,
136 _seq._;
(_f_) that the habit of introspective comparison of pleasures
is unfavourable to pleasure, 138-140;
(_g_) that any quantitative comparison of pleasures is vague and
uncertain, 140-150;
Deductive, 176-195 _passim_;
deductive, Spencer’s view of, 177 note 1;
Method of, must be empirical, 195;
Empirical, method of, 460;
and Intuitionism, 461;
and Pessimism, 131 Note
Hedonistic Zero (or neutral feeling), 124, 125
Helvetius, 88
Highest Good, the (cf. _The Good_ and _Ultimate Good_), 106
Hobbes, 44 note 1, 56, 86, 89, 103, 109, 300 note 1, 423, 476;
(_Leviathan_) 89 note 1
Holmes, O. W., jun., _The Common Law_, 281 note 1
Honour, Code of, 30, 31, 168, 340
Hume, 23, 86, 104, 220, 384, 419, 423, 424, 423 notes 1 and 2,
426, 440, 441, 493;
(_Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals_) 44 note 2,
220 note 2, 424
Humility, 334-336 _passim_, 355, 356 note 1, 429
Hunger, 45, 46
Hutcheson, 44 note 2, 50, 86, 86 note 2, 104, 366;
(_System of Moral Philosophy_) 366 note 1
Hypothetical Imperatives imply an ulterior end, 6, 7, 37
Ideal and Actual, relation between, 79;
connected (_a_) in the conception of “God’s Will,” 79,
(_b_) in the notion of “Nature,” 80-83
Ideal--Government, no consensus as to what kind is legitimate,
299 _seq._;
and Traditional Authority, 296;
Society, ethics of, how far useful, 22-24, 465
“Idols of the Cave” and “Idols of the Tribe,” 152
Impulse to do acts _quâ_ recognised as right (= Moral Motive), 77
Impulses, extra-regarding and self-regarding may conflict, 51, 52, 136
Indifference (Neutrality) of feeling, cf. _Hedonistic Zero_
Individualistic--Ideal, 286-287;
and Socialistic Ideals, 293, 294, 444-445
Inequality, Reasonable, 268 _seq._
Ingenuity, 236
Intention, 60 note 1, 202, 202 note 1
Interest, meaning of, 7, 120;
ethical character of, in Butler’s view, 176 note 1
‘Internal acts,’ 204
Instinctive impulses regarded as inherited experience, 193, 194
Intrinsic value, how determined, 288, 289
Intuition of rightness of acts, excludes consideration of (_a_)
ulterior consequences, 96, 97, (_b_) “induction from experience”
of pleasures, 97, 98 (cf. 102 note 1)
Intuitional--Method, cf. _Intuitionism_;
moralists, English, may be broadly classified as Dogmatic and
Philosophical, 103, 104
‘Intuitional’--sense in which used, 96, 97, 98;
wider and narrower senses of, 97, 102 note 1, 201
Intuitionism, 3, 8, 17, 20, 96-104 _passim_, 199-216 _passim_;
differences of its method due to two causes, 103;
its method issues in Universalistic Hedonism (Utilitarianism),
406-407;
chronological development of the method of, in England, 103-104;
and Utilitarianism, 85-86, 388-389, 423-457 _passim_, 496-497;
Philosophical, 102-104, 373-389 _passim_;
Perceptional, 98-100, 102;
Dogmatic, 100-101 (cf. _Intuitionism_, _Intuitive Morality_,
_Positive Morality_, _Morality of Common Sense_);
Dogmatic, fundamental assumption of, 101, 200, 201;
three phases of, 102, 103;
a variety of, constituted by substituting for ‘right’ the notion
‘good,’ 105-107;
Æsthetic, 228, 392;
Jural or Rational, 228-229
‘Intuitive’ or ‘_a priori_’ Morality generally used to mean Dogmatic
Intuitionism or Morality of Common Sense, 101-102
Irrational choice--sometimes conscious and deliberate, 36, 37-38,
41-42, 58, 59, 110;
Socratic and Aristotelian view compared with modern view of,
59 note 1
Jural method of Ethics, 100-101
Just claims--arising from contract, 269;
arising from natural and normal expectations, 269, 270, 270 note 1
‘Justice,’ ‘justify,’ etc., uses of, 264 note 2, 270, 286, 442
Justice, 20, 99, 264-294 _passim_, 349-352, 355, 440-448 _passim_;
or Equity, essence of, 496;
specially difficult to define, 264;
intuitional view of the definition of, 264;
involves notion of distribution, 265, 266, 268, 271;
and Law, connexion between, 265, 266, 267 note 1;
distinct from Order (or Law-observance), 265;
and Equality, 266, 267, 267 note 1, 268, 268 note 1, 279,
285 note 1;
and taxation, 266, 266 note 1;
Conservative and Ideal, 272-273, 273 note 1, 274, 293, 294;
Ideal, 273, 274, 293, 294, 444, 445;
Ideal, and Natural Eights, 274, 275;
Ideal, and Freedom, 278, 279;
Corrective, 281;
Reparative, 281, 282, 281 note 1, 282 note 1, 293;
Reparative and Retributive, distinguished, 282-283, 282 note 2;
and Free Will, 71, 72, 284, 285;
and ‘Equity’ or ‘Fairness,’ 285, 286;
Hume’s treatment of, 440
Kant, 6, 7, 11 note 1, 36, 58, 58 note 1, 209, 210, 210 note 1,
222, 223, 239, 240, 315, 327 note 1, 366, 385, 386, 386 note 1,
389-390 Note, 486, Appendix 510;
(_Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten_) 209 note 1, 389-390 Note;
(_Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre_) 223 note 1,
327 note 1, 366 note 3, 386 note 2, 389 Note;
(_Kritik der reinen Vernunft_) 366 note 3
Kant’s Fundamental Moral Rule or Categorical Imperative as criterion
of rightness, 209-210, 209 note 1, 210 note 1, 339 note 1, 386,
389 Note, 486
Knowledge--as an End, 114, 399, 401;
and Feeling (= Cognition and Pleasure or Pain), relation between,
139, 140;
and Feeling, Hamilton’s view of the relation between, 139
_Laisser faire_ and economic production, 445 note 2
Law, 295-303; and Morality, relation between, 29, 457;
and Positive Morality, 164;
Austin’s definition of, 300 note 1
Laws--just, characteristics of, 266, 267, 271-272;
that ought to be obeyed, are laid down by rightful authority, 296
Law-observance (or Order), 295-303 _passim_, 352, 440, 441;
and Good Faith, 295, 303;
in regard to _mala prohibita_, 302 note 1
Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 50 note 1, 399 note 1, 427 note 1
Legal obligation and punishment, 29
Liberality, 324-326, 325 note 1, 355
Libertarian position, 58, 64-65, 66
Liberty, Sentiment of, 58
Locke, (_Essay_) 205, 280 note 1, 503;
ethical view of, 205, 206
Love, 50, 244, 245, 367, 368;
common sense estimate of, 245, 258, 258 note 1
Loyalty, 223, 244, 254
Mackenzie, J. S., 47, 48
Maine, Sir H., (_Ancient Law_) 461 note 2
Malevolence--character of, as motive, 364;
sometimes sweepingly condemned, 321, 324;
sometimes partially approved on Utilitarian grounds, 322, 323, 324
Malevolent affections natural and normal, 320, 321
Marcus Aurelius, 376 note 1
‘Market value,’ 286 _seq._
Marriage, Plato’s ideal of, 358-359 (cf. 348 note 1)
Martineau, 366, 367, 369, 370, 371, 372;
(_Types of Ethical Theory_) 367 note 1, 369 note 1
Maxims--of Virtue, dependence or independence of, 313;
of Justice, Prudence and Benevolence, self-evident element in,
380-382
‘Maximum Happiness’ as criterion of conduct, 134
Meanness, notion of, examined, 325, 326
Meekness, 321
Mercy, 321
Merit, 68 note 2, 284 _seq._;
(cf. _Desert_)
Method of Ethics, definition of, 1;
only one rational, 6, 12;
more than one natural, 6
_Methods of Ethics, The_, purpose of, 11-14, 78
Mildness, 321
Mill, J. S., 44, 85, 87, 94, 121, 177 note 1, 412 notes 1 and 2,
414, 418, 440, 478, 504;
(_Utilitarianism_) 93 note 1, 461 note 1, 499 note 1;
(_On Liberty_) 478 notes 1 and 2
_Mind_, 87 Note, 477 note 1
Modern ethical thought quasi-jural in character, 106
Moral Faculty--a function of Reason, 23-38 _passim_;
why subject of ethical discussion, 4, 5;
Utilitarian theory of origin of, 461, 462, 497
Moral Judgment, 23-38;
object of, 60, 61, 201-202, 202 note 1, 222, 362, 364;
(or Practical) Reason, 33-34, 34 notes 1, 2, 3; 39, 40, 100 _seq._;
Sense, 34;
Reasoning, the most natural type of, 6, 12 _seq._, 102-103, 493-494;
Sentiment, 26-28, 77;
Sentiments, (_a_) difficulties of admitting or rejecting them as
motives, 365-367, (_b_) theory of their derivation from
experiences of pleasure and pain, 461, 462;
and Quasi-moral Sentiments, 28, 173, 174;
Motive, 77, 204 _seq._, 223;
Motive, varying forms of:--(_a_) Reverence for Authority,
(_b_) Religious Sentiment, (_c_) Self-respect,
(_d_) sentiment of Freedom, (_e_) Admiration or Aspiration,
39-40;
instincts and crude Utilitarian reasonings--discrepancy between,
466, 467;
Intuitions, 211-216 _passim_;
Intuitions, existence of, 211, 212, 337;
Intuitions, connexion between (_a_) Existence and Origin of,
211, 212, (_b_) Origin and Validity of, 34 note 1, 212-213,
212 note 2, 214;
Intuitions, Particular and General, 99-102, 214-216;
Rules, imperative and indicative forms of, 101 note 1;
Rules and Axioms, importance of, 229;
Axioms, abstract but significant, 379-384, 505;
Axioms, Kant’s view of, 385-386, 386 notes 1 and 2;
Maxims, 337-361 _passim_;
Maxims which _are_, and which are _not_, directly self-evident,
distinction between, 383;
Responsibility, 59-60;
Obligation, 217;
and non-moral excellence distinguished, 426, 427
‘Moral’ (in narrower sense) and ‘Prudential’ distinguished, 25-26
Moral Courage, 333 note 3
Moral Philosophy, some problems of modern, 374
Morality--‘inductive’ and ‘intuitive,’ double ambiguity of antithesis
between, 97-99;
_a priori_ and _a posteriori_ (or inductive and intuitive), 97;
and growth of Sympathy, 455-456, 455 note 1
Morality of Common Sense (Intuitionism), 85, 102, 229, 263 Note,
337-361 _passim_;
and Positive Morality, 215;
and Egoism, 498-499 (cf. _Happiness and Duty_);
development of, not perfectly Utilitarian, 455-456;
axiomatic character of its maxims questioned, 338, 342, 343;
furnishes valuable practical rules but not ultimate axioms,
360, 361;
and Utilitarianism, 361 note 1, 423-457 _passim_, 461, 498, 499;
first principles of, as “middle axioms” of Utilitarianism, 461;
Mill’s view of, 461 note 1;
not to be accepted by Utilitarianism without modification,
461 _seq._, 467
Motive meaning of, 202, 362, 363;
and Intention, 202, 203, 203 note 1;
-s, different views of Right, 204-207;
and Desire, Green’s view of, 363 note 1;
and Disposition, Utilitarian estimate of, 493, 494
Motives to action, 23;
as subjects of moral judgment, 362-372;
as affecting morality of actions, 60-61, 224;
regarded as _better_ and _worse_ rather than _good_ and
_bad_, 363-364;
‘seductive,’ 364;
(“Springs of action”) Dr. Martineau’s table of (369)
ethically estimated, 371, 372;
‘higher’ not always to be preferred to ‘lower,’ 369, 370, 371;
moral regulation of, 370
Natural, The--Interpretation of, 80 _seq._;
gives no definite practical criterion of right conduct, 82
Natural--Selection, effect of, on impulses, 194;
and normal claims, indefiniteness of, 270, 271, 272, 272 note 1;
expectations, ambiguity of, 272, 273, 352;
Rights--difficulty of determining, 298;
Good, 477
Nature--Life according to, 79 _seq._, 377, 378;
conformity to, 80;
Stoic use of, 377, 378 note 1;
Butler’s use of, 378
Neighbourhood and Nationality, duties of, 250, 251, 252
Neutral excitements, 186 note 1 (cf. _Hedonistic Zero_)
‘Objective’ and ‘subjective,’ ethical application of, 207, 207 note 1,
208 notes 1 and 2, 208, 209, 210, 344 note 2, 394, 395, 429, 430
Objective Hedonism, meaning of, 151;
and Common Sense, 151-161;
advantages of, 151;
defects of, 151 _seq._, 458, 459
Objective relations of conscious mind, how far desirable, 400, 401
Objectivity of Moral Judgment, 27, 33
Order, cf. _Law-observance_
Origin of Moral Intuitions, ethical importance of, 383, 384,
384 note 1
‘Ought,’ 23-38 _passim_;
relative and unconditional uses of, 6, 7, 39;
implies reasonableness, 25;
and ‘right’ imply the same notion, 1 note 1, 23, 25;
does not refer to matters of fact, 25;
implies objectivity, 27, 33;
does not merely signify (_a_) appropriateness of means to ends,
26, (_b_) an emotion of the person judging, 26-28, nor
(_c_) bound under penalties, 29 _seq._;
an elementary and irresolvable notion, 32-33;
narrower and wider sense of, 33, 34, 34 note 4;
carries with it an impulse to action, 34;
implies possible conflict with reason (thus distinguishable from
‘right’), 34, 35, 217;
determinist sense of, 78;
loose meaning of, 508
Owen, Robert, 291
Pain--definition of, 42-43 note 1, 180, 191;
the negative quantity of pleasure, 124, 125;
physical concomitant of, 183 _seq._;
Aristotle’s and Hamilton’s theory of, 180 _seq._, 180 note 1,
181 note 1;
Mr. Stout’s theory of, 182, 188, etc.;
Mr. Spencer’s theory of, 183 _seq._;
Grant Allen’s view of, 187;
biological theory of, 190 _seq._
Paley, 86, 121
Parents and children, duties of, 243, 243 note 1, 248-250,
248 note 1, 346, 347
Patriotism, 223, 244, 245;
duties of, 251, 252, 252 note 1
‘Perception,’ ethical use of, by Dugald Stewart, 103 Note
Perfection or Excellence as End, 10, 11, 10 notes 3 and 4,
20 note 1, 78, 114, 115;
and Intuitionism, 11, 83, 84, 97;
Kant’s treatment of, 386 note 2
Perfectionists, view of, 97
Philosophical Intuitionism, its relation to Common Sense Morality, 373
φρόνησις, 231 note 1
Pity or Compassion, 262
Placability, 321
Plato, (_Republic_) 21, 171, 172;
140, 145, 148, 171, 172, 281, 345, 348 note 1, 358, 375 note 1, 376;
(_Gorgias_) 405 note 1; 441
Pleasure--definitions of, 42, 43, 43 note 1, 125, 127 _seq._,
131, 190;
ambiguities of, 43, 44, 93 _seq._;
forecast of, must take account of moral or quasi-moral pleasures,
40, 173;
the less sometimes chosen in preference to the greater, 41, 42,
42 note 1, 136;
of Virtue, its ‘disinterestedness’ not abnormal, 50, 51;
as aim of unconscious action, 52, 53;
as ‘original’ aim of action, 53, 54;
application of the term, 93;
has only quantitative differences, 94, 95, 121;
maximum, deductive methods of determining, 121, 122;
rational as opposed to impulsive pursuit of, 124 note 1;
‘quality’ of, 94, 95, 121, 128-129, 128 note 1;
as Feeling, conceivableness of, 132, 133;
permanent sources of, 135, 136, 153;
how estimated, 141 _seq._ (cf. 127, 128, 398);
from others’ pain, various modes of, 321 note 1;
and Appetite, identified by Hobbes, 44 note 1;
and Desire, controversy as to relation between, 39-56;
Aristotle’s and Hamilton’s theory of, 180 _seq._, 180 note 1,
181 note 1;
Mr. Stout’s theory of, 182, 188, etc.;
Mr. Spencer’s theory of, 183 _seq._;
Grant Allen’s view of, 187;
biological theory of, 190 _seq._;
and Desire, (_a_) Mill’s view of, 43-44, (_b_) Butler’s view of,
44, (_c_) Bain’s view of, 54-56;
effect of desire on estimate of, 144, 145;
and Preservation, 190, etc.;
(Hobbes’ view of) 89;
and Perfection or Reality, (Self-development), Spinoza’s view
of, 90;
and ‘quantity of life,’ 192;
‘pure’ 143;
of pursuit, 46 _seq._, 47 note 1, 55-56;
of attainment, 47;
of business, 49;
intellectual and æsthetic, 107-108, 153, 157, 472;
benevolent and sympathetic, 49, 50;
of virtue, 153, 170, 171, 174, 175;
-s, of the animal life, 154, 157, 159;
of wealth and greatness, Adam Smith’s view of, 155 note 1--(cf.
_Health_, _Wealth_, etc.);
Stoic view of, 129;
Green’s view of, 132 _seq._;
Plato’s view of its illusoriness, 140;
Spencer and Grant Allen’s ‘Intermittence’ theory of, 187
Pleasures and Pains, Moral, 170 _seq._, 171 note 1;
of Sympathy, 49, 50, 499-502, 499 note 1;
scale of, involves assumption of a Hedonistic zero, 124, 125;
commensurability of, 123-125, 124 note 1, 128 note 1, 131,
132, 140-150;
difficulties of a clear, definite and consistent evaluation of,
140-150;
incommensurable intensity of, doubtful, 123, 124;
intensity of, commensurable with duration, 124;
Bentham’s four dimensions of, 124 note 1;
volitional efficacy of, 125-127;
their relation to normal activities, 185, etc.;
Aristotle’s and Hamilton’s theory of, 180 _seq._;
Stout’s theory of, 182;
Wundt’s theory of, 184;
Spencer’s biological theory of, 190 _seq._
Plutarch, 376
Politeness (Good Breeding, Fashion, Etiquette), 253;
Code of, 30, 340, 341
Political order, Rousseau’s view of an ideally just, 298
Politics--and Ethics, 15-22;
definition of, 1 note 1, 15 (cf. Law)
Positive Morality--and Morality of Common Sense, 215;
relation of, to preservation and to happiness, 464, 465;
alteration of, 164, 480
Power, 156, 157, 159
Practical efficacy and speculative truth, relation between, 507 note 1
Practical Empirical Hedonism, an assumption of, 131
Practical (or Moral) Judgment, 23 seq.
Practical (or Moral) Reason, 23-38 _passim_;
its relation to Interest and to non-rational and irrational
desires, 36;
and Nature, 81;
a postulate of, 6, 12;
Dualism of, 404 note 1, 366, 200, 205-206, 499, 507-509 (cf.
_Happiness and Duty_)
Praise, common sense award of, explained by utility, 428, 429
Priestley, 88 Note
Promise, 303-311 _passim_;
conditions and meaning of, 304;
conditions of bindingness of a, 311
Proof of a first principle, how possible, 419, 420
Proof--of Egoism may be demanded, 418, 419;
of ordinary moral rules is often required and given, 419
Proof of Utilitarianism, 418-422 _passim_;
clear demand of common sense for, 418, 419;
addressed to Egoism, 420, 421, 497-498;
addressed to Intuitionism, twofold character of, 421, 422
“Proof” of Utilitarian principle, Mill’s, 387, 388
Property and Right of Bequest, 277
Prudence (or Forethought), 7, 36, 96, 391;
common sense view of, 327, 328;
Kant’s and Butler’s views of, 327 note 1;
self-evident maxim of impartiality educible from the rule of, 381;
and Benevolence, subordination of other virtues to, 496-497
‘Prudential’ and ‘Moral,’ 25-26
Psychological Hedonism, 40 _seq._;
of Bentham, 85;
ethical import of, 41, 205
Public Opinion, Code of, 30
Public and private virtue, Utilitarian and Intuitionist estimates
of, 495
Punishment, 281, 290 _seq._, 290 note 1, 291 note 1;
preventive and retributory views of, 71-72
Purity, 223, 329-331, 329 note 2, 357-359
Quantitative Hedonism, 129
Quasi-moral Sentiment, 27-28, 173-174
Quasi-moral Sentiments and Rational Self-love, 173-174
Rank of Motives, difficulties of estimating, 365-367, 369;
conflicting estimates of, by moralists, 366;
difficulty due to complexity of motive, 368
Rational action, not to be identified with (_a_) disinterested or
(_b_) free action, 57;
Spinoza’s view of the principle of, 89-90
Rational Benevolence, 96;
may be self-limiting, 385;
Kant’s treatment of, 385-386 Note, 389-390
Rational Self-love (Rational Egoism, Prudence)--and Conscience,
172, 200, 200 note 2, 366;
and Rational Benevolence, 386 note 4, 498 _seq._
Reason--and Ultimate Ends, 9, 77, 77 note 1;
relation of, to Will and Desire, 23 _seq._;
reference of moral judgments to, signifies merely their
_objectivity_, 33;
conflict with, implied in the terms _dictate_, _precept_,
_imperative_, _ought_, _duty_, _moral obligation_, 34, 35;
dictate or precept of, is a rule which may be deviated from, 41;
dictates or imperatives of, 34, 36, 77;
and the Divine Will, 79, 80;
dictate of, implied by _right_, _rightness_, and their equivalents,
105;
and instinct, 193-195;
may be self-limiting, 345;
_dictates_ and _dictation_ of, 345, 395, 404
Reason for doing what is seen to be right, why men demand a, 5-6
Reasonableness of Self-love, Butler’s view of, 119, 120;
Clarke’s view of, 120;
Christian view of, 120;
common sense view of, 120
Rebellion, when justifiable?, 299, 300, 301, 352
Reciprocity, principle of, 167, 168
Religious deception, 316, 316 note 2
Renan quoted, 108 note 1
Reputation, 155
Resentment, instinctive and deliberate, 322, 323;
deliberate, Butler’s view of, 323 note 1, 371;
universalised the principle of retributive (criminal) justice, 281;
evaluation of, 449
Resolutions, 37;
general, may be contradicted by particular volitions, 37-38
Respect, tokens of, 336, 336 note 1
Reverence for Authority, 39
‘Right’--notion involved in, is unique, 25;
and ‘good,’ 3, 4;
and ‘ought,’ distinction between, 34, 35;
conduct and ‘good’ conduct, 106, 113
Right Conflict and Ultimate Good, 3
Rights, 274, etc.
Rightful authority, how known?, 296;
what are its limits?, 301, 302
Rousseau, 298;
his political ideal, difficulty of realising, 298, 299
‘Rule of Equity,’ Clarke’s, 384-385
‘Rule of Love or Benevolence,’ Clarke’s, 385
‘Rules of Righteousness,’ Clarke’s, 384, 384 note 4, 385
Rules prescribing actions as _good_ or _right_ open to Utilitarian
interpretation, 430
Sagacity, 236
Sanctions, 164-175 _passim_, 498, 499, 500 _seq._, 502, 505, 507-508;
conflict of, 164, 165;
legal, and happiness, 165, 166, 165 note 1;
social, and happiness, 166, 167;
social, and extra-legal duty, 167, 168;
internal, and happiness, 170, 170 note 1, 171, 171 note 1, 172,
173, 501-502
Scottish School of Ethical Thought, 104
Self-control, 235-237, 331, 344, 345, 356
Self-development (Self-realisation), indefiniteness of the notion,
90, 91;
as ethical aim, 192, 193;
understood as = _yielding to instinctive impulses_, 193-194
Self-evidence, difficulty of discerning real, 339, 340, 341
Self-interest, 25, 26
Self-love, ordinary use and ambiguity of, 89;
and certain elevated impulses, 137-138;
Butler’s view of, 93;
and benevolence and affection, 138, 403, 502
Self-preservation, 89
Self-realisation, 80, 90, 95
Self-regarding virtues, 327-331
Self-sacrifice, 109 note 1, 138, 431, 432
Self-satisfaction, Green’s view of, 133, 135, 135 note 3
Selfishness, 499
Services, comparative worth of, how determined, 286, 287;
reward of, how determined, 290
Shaftesbury, 86, 86 notes 1 and 2, 138, 423, 423 note 1, 433, 501
Sidgwick, _Principles of Political Economy_, 267 note, 445 note 2,
446 note 1
Sincerity, 355
Smith, Adam, 424, 461, (_Wealth of Nations, Theory of Moral
Sentiments_) 155 note 1
Social Contract, 17, 297-298, 303, 351
Social rank and status, 153, 155
Socialistic ideal, 289, 293-294
Sociology--scope and subject of, 2;
present condition of, 472, 473
Socrates, 59 note 1, 98-99, 215, 231 note 1, 299
Socratic Induction, 98-99
Socratic principle of “Government by experts,” 299
σοφία, σοφός, 231, 231 note 1
Sources of Happiness, 135, 136, 153 _seq._;
judgments of common sense respecting them, only roughly
trustworthy, 158-160;
common sense estimates of (_a_) at best are only true for
ordinary persons, (_b_) are vitiated by mal-observation,
(_c_) confuse between objects of natural desire and sources of
experienced pleasure, 151, 152, (_d_) mix moral and æsthetic
preferences with hedonistic, 153, (_e_) are found to be full
of inconsistencies, 153-158
Sovereign power, Hobbist and Austinian views of, 300 note 1
Special moral codes, 30, 31, 168, 169, 340, 341
Special need, duties arising out of, 261, 262
Spencer, H., 125-126, 177 note 1, 183 _seq._, 194 note 1, 470,
471, 470 notes 1 and 2, 473;
(_Social Statics_), 18 note 2, 194 note 1;
(_Data of Ethics_), 18 note 2, 177 note 1, 194 note 1, 470 note 1
“Sphere of individual option” determined by Utilitarian calculation,
477-479
Spinoza, 90
Stephen, Leslie, 319 Note, 471, 471 note 2, 472, 473;
(_Science of Ethics_), 42 note 1, 471
Stewart, Dugald, 454, 455;
(_Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers_), 92 note 2, 454 note 1
Stoic system, its place in the development of ethical thought, 106;
ethics, circular reasonings of, 376, 377
Stoicism, later compared with earlier, 376 note 1
Stoics, 92, 105, 129
Stout, G. F., 180 note 2, 182, 186;
(_Analytic Psychology_), 182 note 1
Subjective, cf. _Objective_
_Suggestio falsi_, 317
Suicide prohibited by Common Sense, 327, 331, 356
Sully, _Pessimism_, 136 note 1, 186 note 1
_Suppressio veri_, 317
Sympathy--and Moral Sensibility, relation between, 170 note 1,
500-501;
with impulses prompting to action, 463, 463 note 2;
limitations and perversions of, 464;
twofold operation of, on moral impulses, 483;
confusion in Mill’s view of, 499 note 1;
and happiness of agent, 170 note 1, 499 note 1, 499-503
Systematic Morality, explanation of indifference or hostility
to, 99-100
Tautological propositions offered as ethical axioms, 374 _seq._
Temperance, 224, 328, 329, 344 note 1, 356
Torquemada, 226 note 1
‘True Good,’ 3 (cf. _Good_, _Ultimate Good_)
Truth, Cartesian Criterion of, 339
Ultimate End, for the individual and for the whole, 404, 497-498
Ultimate Good, My, 109 _seq._, 109 note 1, 497-498
Ultimate Good, The (the Good), 3, 106 _seq._, 391-407 _passim_
Ultimate reasonableness, different views of, implicit in ordinary
thought, 6
Ultimate reasons for conduct, 78, 79;
differences in, correspond to different aspects of human
existence, 78 (cf. 79)
‘Ultra-intuitional,’ 100
‘Unconscious Utilitarianism’ of Common Sense Morality, 453 _seq._,
489, etc.
Universal Happiness as standard and motive, 413
Universalistic and Egoistic Hedonism, connexion between (_a_) in
Bentham’s view, 87 Note;
(_b_) in Paley’s view, 121
Unveracity, common, 316 _seq._, 486
Utilitarian--formula of distribution not really at variance with
Common Sense, 432, 433;
justification of special affections, 433, 434;
ideal code, difficulties of constructing such, for present human
beings, 467-470;
rectification of Common Sense Morality must proceed by empirical
method, 476-480;
innovation, negative and destructive, probable effects of
(_a_) on the agent, 481, 482-483, (_b_) on others, 482, 483;
innovation, positive and supplementary, as affecting the agent
and others, 483, 484;
innovation in relation to degree of publicity and generality of
acceptance, 489-490, 489 note 1;
reform, consists largely in enforcing old rules, 484;
exceptions to current morality (_a_) may generally be stated as
fresh rules, 485, 489, (_b_) special and rare cases of, 486-487;
Duty and Religious Sanction, 503-506;
Sanction, 500 _seq._
Utilitarianism, 8, 11, 119;
(= Universalistic or Benthamite Hedonism), 84, 119, 411;
Proof of, 418-422;
Principle of, 87, (Mill’s view of) 387, 388;
Method of, 460-495;
meaning of, 411-417 _passim_;
to be distinguished from (_a_) Egoistic Hedonism, 411, 412,
(_b_) any psychogonical theory of the Moral Sentiments, 412-413;
_motive_ and _standard_ of, to be discriminated, 413;
contradictory objections to, 87;
and Intuitionism, relation between, 85-86, 386 _seq._, 496-497;
and Intuitionism, history of relation between, in English
ethical thought, 86, 423, 424;
and Egoism, relation between, 497, 498;
and Egoism, harmony of, (_a_) not empirically demonstrable, 503,
(_b_) required by Reason, 506;
and Common Sense Morality, 8, 423-457 _passim_, 468, 469, 475,
476, 480 _seq._, 498, 499;
justifies the unequal distribution which Common Sense approves,
432 _seq._;
more rigid than Common Sense, 499, 504;
function of, as arbiter to Common Sense, 454, 455;
reasonable attitude of, to Common Sense Morality, 473-474, 475-476;
aims at remedying imperfections of Common Sense Morality, 476;
and Axiom of Benevolence, 387, 388, 496-497, 498;
and Conjugal and Parental Duties, 435, 436;
and Duties of Special Need, 436, 437;
and Gratitude, 437, 438;
and benevolent Duties, 435 _seq._;
and Law-observance, 440, 441;
and Impartiality, 441, 442, 447, 447 note 1;
and Normal Expectations, 442-443;
and Good Faith, 443, 444, 443 note 3;
and Freedom, 444, 445;
and distribution according to Desert, 445-447;
and Justice, 440 _seq._, 447;
and Veracity, 448, 449, 483;
and Malevolence, 449;
and Self-regarding virtues, 450;
and Purity, 449-450;
and Sympathy, 500 _seq._;
and Christianity, 504
‘Utility,’ Hume’s and Bentham’s uses of, 423 note 2
Veracity, 97, 224, 313, 314-319 _passim_, 355, 448, 449;
and Good Faith, 303, 304, 313, 314
Virtue (Moral Perfection or Excellence), 10, 14, 78, 106,
219, 219 note 1, 220, 220 note 3, 221, 222, 226, 227;
or Right Action, its relation to the Good, 106;
and Happiness, 119, 120, 174-175, 461;
Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts of, 376;
involves reference to an Ultimate Good which is not Virtue,
393, 394, 395;
and Duty, 217-230 _passim_;
and emotion, 222-223, 226;
voluntariness of, 220, 227;
and motive, 223-224;
and habit, 227;
and moral effort, relation between, 224, 225, 429;
intellectual conditions of, 225;
is Knowledge, Socratic doctrine that, 227 note 1;
felicific character of, 424, 425
Virtues, intellectual, 231-237 _passim_;
self-regarding, 327-331 _passim_
Virtuous conduct, commonly regarded as disinterested, 77, 78
Virtuous motives, admitted by some moralists, 365, 366;
Dr. Martineau’s rejection of, 367
Vivisection controversy, 402, 406 note 1
Volition, analysis of, 61, 62;
Determinist view of, 62 note 1;
conception of, how far inevitably Libertarian, 67, 71;
causes muscular contractions, 73;
affects thought and feeling, 73, 74;
acting through resolutions alters men’s tendencies to action,
74, 75, 75 note 1;
its emotional antecedents of secondary ethical importance, 77
Voluntary action, definition of, 59
Voluntary choice and irresistible impulse, 67 note 3
Wayland, _Elements of Moral Science_, 256 note 2
Wealth, 153, 154, 155
Well-being (the Good attainable in human life), 92, 92 note 1;
Stoic view of, 92;
Aristotle’s view of, 92, 92 note 2;
not = mere promise of future being, 396, 397
Whewell, 58, 86;
(_Elements of Morality_), 58 note 2, 317 note 1, 329 note 1
Will--Subjective Rightness of, and Ultimate Good, 394, 395;
divorced from Objective Rightness is fanaticism, 395
Wisdom, 230, 231-236 _passim_, 344, 345, 393, 430;
meaning and use of term, 231;
Greek view of, 231;
common sense definition of, 233;
refers to ends as well as means, 231-233;
in selection of ends and means, how far voluntary, 233-235;
in adoption of selected ends, 235;
comprehensiveness of, 238;
and Temperance and Justice, tautological maxims of, 375;
and Caution and Decision, do not furnish independent rules, 237 Note
Wundt, 184 note 3
Zeal or Moral Ardour, 237, 392
Zeno, 376
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note
Many references in the index are to the original numbers of the notes,
which do not correspond to the renumbering used in this e-text.
The following apparent errors have been corrected:
p. ix "more that" changed to "more than"
p. xii "chap iv." changed to "chap. iv."
p. xix "chap iv." changed to "chap. iv."
p. xxviii "201" changed to "201-207"
p. xxxv "legal code" changed to "legal code."
p. 44 "his own," changed to "his own."
p. 55 "adapted by" changed to "adopted by"
p. 272 (note) "§ 2" changed to "§ 2."
p. 318 (note) "chap i." changed to "chap. i."
p. 415 (note) "appear" changed to "appears"
p. 492 "let as" changed to "let us"
p. 518 "285:" changed to "285;"
p. 519 "cf. Law" changed to "cf. _Law_"
p. 519 "cf. Perfection" changed to "cf. _Perfection_"
p. 520 "180-182," changed to "180-182;"
p. 521 "Hedonistic Zero" changed to "_Hedonistic Zero_"
p. 522 "Note; 486" changed to "Note, 486"
p. 523 "203 note 1," changed to "203 note 1;"
p. 524 "84, 97:" changed to "84, 97;"
p. 526 "Good, Ultimate Good" changed to "_Good_, "Ultimate Good"
The following possible errors have been left as printed:
p. 177 evaluing
p. 524 405 note 1; 441
The following are used inconsistently in the text:
Common-sense and Common-Sense
counterbalancing and counter-balancing
fairminded and fair-minded
goodwill and good-will
highminded and high-minded
lawgiver and law-giver
note and Note
truthspeaking, truth-speaking, Truthspeaking and Truth-speaking
twofold and two-fold
_vice versâ_ and _vice versa_
wellbeing, well-being, Wellbeing and Well-being
widespread and wide-spread
wrongdoing and wrong-doing
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Methods of Ethics" ***
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