Transcriber's Note:
A catalog of publications was included at the end of the text.
Where words occur in Greek script, (~transliterations~) have been
added.
* * * * *
Shaw Fellowship Lectures, 1884
ON THE
ETHICS OF NATURALISM
BY
W. R. SORLEY, M.A.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; AND EXAMINER IN
PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXXXV
_All Rights reserved_
PREFATORY NOTE.
The Deed of Foundation of the Shaw Fellowship provides that "it
shall be in the power of the Senatus Academicus of the University of
Edinburgh to require the holder of the Shaw Philosophical Fellowship,
during the fourth or fifth year of his tenure of it, to deliver in
the University of Edinburgh a course of Lectures, not exceeding four,
on any of the subjects for the encouragement of the study of which
the Fellowship has been founded." The following pages consist of four
lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh, in accordance with
this provision, in the month of January 1884.
Since their delivery, the argument of the lectures has been revised,
and in some places enlarged. I have also thought it better to modify
their original form by dividing the discussion into chapters.
W. R. S.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS.
PAGE
1. Connection of ethics with theoretical philosophy, 1
(_a_) Dependence of ethical on theoretical points of view, 1
(_b_) Ethics necessary to complete philosophy, 3
2. The inquiry into the ethical end, 5
(_a_) Fundamental, 5
(_b_) Implies a new point of view, 7
(_c_) Distinct from other ethical questions, 9
(α) From the inquiry into the methods of ethics, 10
(β) From moral psychology and sociology, 13
3. Scope of the present inquiry, 14
PART I.
THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY.
CHAPTER II.
EGOISM.
Definition of Naturalism, 20
Psychological hedonism, 21
1. Its theory of action ambiguous, 22
Referring to--
(_a_) Actual consequences of action, 23
(_b_) Or its expected consequences, 23
(_c_) Or its present characteristics, 24
2. Ethical inferences from this theory, 25
3. Transition from psychological to ethical hedonism, 31
4. Possible objections considered, 37
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM.
1. Difference of the standpoints of individual and State, 41
2. Connection between egoism and utilitarianism according to Bentham, 45
(_a_) Utilitarianism not a political duty, 46
(_b_) Nor a moral duty, 47
(_c_) Nor insisted on as a religious duty, 49
(_d_) Nor sufficiently motived in private ethics, 50
3. Exhaustive character of Bentham's treatment from his point of
view, 51
(_a_) The religious sanction (Paley), 53
(_b_) Limits of the political sanction, 54
(_c_) Uncertainty of the social sanction, 55
(_d_) And of the internal sanction so far as a result of the
social, 56
4. Mill's logical defence of utilitarianism, 57
(_a_) Distinction of kinds of pleasure, 58
(_b_) Ambiguities in his proof, 60
5. Actual transition to utilitarianism, 62
(_a_) Recognition of sympathy, 64
(_b_) The idea of equality, 69
6. The two sides of utilitarian theory without logical connection, 73
7. Summary of the ethical consequences of psychological hedonism, 75
CHAPTER IV.
MORAL SENTIMENT.
1. A uniform psychological theory not supplied by the opponents of
ethical hedonism, 78
2. The non-hedonistic theory of action, 84
3. Ethics made to depend on the moral sense, 89
(_a_) As harmony of impulses, 90
(_b_) As a separate sensitive faculty, 92
(_c_) As an internal law, 100
4. The ethics of moral sentiment a mediating theory, 105
PART II.
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.
CHAPTER V.
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY.
1. General characteristics of the theory of evolution, 107
An assertion of the unity of life, 109
Primarily historical, but capable of ethical application, 110
2. The development of morality, 116
(_a_) Historical psychology, 116
Its difficulties, 117
Its result, 123
(_b_) Development of society, 124
CHAPTER VI.
EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES.
Bearing of the theory of evolution, 126
1. On theories depending on moral sentiment or intuition, 127
(_a_) Ethical value of moral sentiments affected by their
origin, 130
(_b_) Organic character of moral sentiments, 132
Resultant attitude of evolutionism to intuitionism, 133
2. On egoism: relation of egoism to altruism, 134
(_a_) Social nature of the individual, 135
(_b_) Limits to conciliation of egoism and altruism, 141
(α) Continued existence of competition, 142
(β) Different and conflicting degrees of altruism, 143
(γ) Altruism of interest and altruism of motive, 143
(δ) Weakness of altruistic feelings, 146
(_c_) Tendency of evolution opposed to egoism, 148
Evolution not the basis of psychological hedonism, 148
Nor of ethical hedonism, 150
3. On utilitarianism, 152
Modification of the utilitarian method, 153
And of its principle, 155
Evolutionist objections to utilitarianism, 155
(_a_) As prescribing an unprogressive ideal, 156
(_b_) As a theory of consequences, 160
(_c_) As related solely to sensibility, 161
CHAPTER VII.
HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM.
1. Alliance of evolutionism and hedonism, 164
(_a_) From interpreting greatest happiness by the laws of
life, 164
(_b_) From interpreting life by pleasure, 165
2. Evolutionist argument for concomitance of life and pleasure, 167
3. Objections to this argument, 168
(_a_) That life cannot bring more pleasure than pain, 169
(α) From the negative nature of pleasure, 171
(β) From the facts of human life, 172
(_b_) That the evolution of life does not uniformly tend to
pleasure, 172
(α) Incompleteness of the evolutionist argument, 173
(β) The pessimist doctrine that life tends to misery, 175
(_aa_) The hypothesis of the unconscious, 176
(_bb_) The nature of volition, 177
(_cc_) The facts of human progress, 179
Individual progress, 179
Social progress, 181
4. The psychological analysis of pleasure and pain in relation
to evolutionist ethics, 186
(_a_) The subjective nature of pleasure and pain, 187
(_b_) The conditions of pleasure and pain, 190
(_c_) Application of the theory of evolution, 197
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EVOLUTIONIST END.
Necessity of inquiring into the ethical end suggested by the theory
of evolution, 201
1. Adaptation to environment, 203
(_a_) As the end for present conduct, 207
Opposed to progress, 207
Does not fully represent evolution, 209
(_b_) As describing the ultimate condition of life, 210
Resultant absolute code, 211
(α) Abstract principles of social relation, 212
(β) Personal end only defined as adaptation, 213
(γ) Cannot be shown to lead to happiness, 213
(_c_) Insufficiency of adaptation as evolutionist end, 217
2. End suggested by the tendency to variation, 221
(_a_) Prescribes self-development rather than self-preservation, 222
(_b_) Standard for measuring development found in complexity
of act and motive, 227
(α) Antinomy between social and individual ends, 231
(β) Psychological defects, 232
3. Development or increase of life as the end, 236
(_a_) Subjective standard: most persistent impulses, 242
Cannot define life without an objective standard, 244
(_b_) Objective standard: defined in two ways, 247
(α) Conformity to the type, 248
Which can be reduced to--
(β) Abundance and variety of vital power, 251
That is, to the subjective standard, 253
Summary as to the evolutionist end, 256
(_a_) Difficulty of reconciling individual and social ends, 256
(_b_) Hedonistic interpretation of evolution not possible, 257
(_c_) No independent ethical ideal, 259
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS.
1. Principles involved in theory of evolution, 263
2. Unsuccessful application of these principles to ethics, 264
(_a_) The principles being treated empirically, 265
(_b_) No logical transition having been effected from efficient
to final cause, 267
3. Difference between causality and teleology, 269
4. Reference to self-consciousness implied in evolution, 277
(_a_) Attempt to trace the genesis of self-consciousness, 278
(_b_) Attempt to trace morality from reflex action, 283
5. The unity of self-consciousness, 284
(_a_) As making possible the transition from knowledge to
morality, 284
(_b_) As determining the character of the ethical end, 286
(_c_) As showing that the realisation of the end must be
progressive, 291
THE ETHICS OF NATURALISM.
CHAPTER I.
ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS.
[Sidenote: 1. Connection of ethics with theoretical philosophy.]
[Sidenote: (_a_) Dependence of ethical on theoretical points of view]
[Sidenote: (_a_) teleological,]
[Sidenote: (_b_) jural,]
[Sidenote: (_c_) empirical:]
It is a common remark that a writer's ethical doctrine is throughout
conditioned by his attitude to the problems of theoretical
philosophy. The main lines of dispute in questions of ethics may
be regarded as prolongations of the controversies which arise in
metaphysics and psychology. The Realism or Idealism which marks a
speculative system reappears in its ethics, whilst differences in the
psychological analysis of mental states, or concerning the relation
of pleasure to desire, are grounds of distinction between schools
of moralists. And not only are the special controversies of ethics
decided in different ways, but the scope of the whole science is
differently conceived, as the speculative standpoint changes. Thus,
not for one school only, but for a whole period in the history
of reflection, ethics was regarded as an inquiry into the highest
human good. Opposed schools agreed in looking from this point of
view, however much they might differ from one another in defining
the nature of that highest good. At other times, according to the
prevailing view, to investigate and systematise the rules of conduct
has exhausted the scope of ethics--controversies being carried on as
to the nature of those rules, and their source in external authority
or in the internal revelation of conscience. Again, ethical inquiry
has been apparently identified with the analysis and history of
the moral affections and sentiments; while a purely external point
of view seems to be sometimes adopted, and ethics held to be an
investigation of the historical results of action, and of the forms,
customary and institutional, in which those results find permanent
expression.
[Sidenote: to be connected by philosophy.]
These different ways of looking at the whole subject proceed from
points of view whose effects are not confined to ethics, but may be
followed out in other lines of investigation. They correspond to
ideas which dominate different types of thought and form different
philosophical standpoints. The first starts from a teleological
conception of human nature, as an organism consciously striving
towards its end. The second assimilates ethics to a system of
legal enactments, and is connected with the jural conceptions of
theology and law. The two last are concerned to show that the
subject-matter of ethics are facts which have to be treated by the
ordinary inductive and historical methods. These different points
of view, however, are to be regarded as complementary rather than
as conflicting, although their complete synthesis must be worked
out in the region of general philosophy, and not on purely ethical
ground. Philosophy has thus to deal with the notions which determine
the scope and character of ethical thought; and in this way it
must necessarily pass from the purely speculative to the practical
point of view. If it is the business of philosophy to bring into
rational order the material supplied by experience, cosmical and
anthropological, it cannot be without bearing on the function of man
as a source of action in the world. The question, What are the ends
man is naturally fitted to attain? or--if we prefer so to express
it--What are the ends he ought to pursue? is not merely as natural
as the question, What can a man know of the world and of himself?
But the two questions are inseparably connected. To know man is to
know him not only as a thinking but also as an active being; while to
solve the problem of the ends of man implies knowledge both of his
nature and of the sphere of his activity.
[Sidenote: (_b_) Ethics necessary to complete philosophy.]
Much distrust is often expressed of metaphysics. But it is not denied
that the philosophy--whether metaphysical or not--in which our
most comprehensive view of the world finds its reasoned expression,
cannot neglect that aspect of things in which man is related to his
surroundings as a source of action. Recent ethical literature is
itself a proof of this fact. In its speculative developments, both
realistic and idealistic, the philosophy of the present day has made
the endeavour to connect its conceptions of the world of thought and
nature with the ends contemplated as to be realised in the realm of
action. Whatever difficulties may be involved in the transition from
the "is" to the "ought to be," it is yet implied that the transition
requires to be made, not merely in order that human activity may be
shown to be rational, but that reason itself may be justified by
leaving nothing outside its sphere.
We must make no attempt, therefore, to draw a line of absolute
separation between the first two of the three questions in which,
as Kant says,[1] all the interests of our reason centre. The "What
ought I to do?" of ethics is for ever falling back on the "What can I
know?" of metaphysics. The question of practice must accordingly be
treated throughout in connection with the question of knowledge. If
we use Kant's distinction between speculative and practical reason,
we must always bear in mind that it is the same reason which is in
one reference speculative, in another practical.[2] We are not at
liberty to assume with Butler[3] that "morality ... must be somewhat
plain and easy to be understood: it must appeal to what we call
common-sense." Nor may we presuppose, as Hutcheson did,[4] that it is
a subject "about which a little reflection will discover the truth."
The question must be looked upon not so much as one of immediate
practical as of scientific interest, and reason is to be regarded as
the only court of appeal.
[Sidenote: 2. The inquiry into the ethical end]
[Sidenote: (_a_) fundamental,]
The form just quoted, in which Kant states the problem, is not
altogether free from ambiguity. "What ought I to do?" may be taken
to signify, What means should I adopt for the attainment of some end
presupposed, perhaps unconsciously, as the end to be sought? But
it is evident, not only that this is not what Kant himself meant
by the question, but that, as thus put, it necessarily implies a
further and deeper question. Not the discovery of the means, but the
determination of the end itself--the end which cannot be interpreted
as a mere means to some further end--is the fundamental question of
ethics. It is only by misconception that this can be thought to be
a trivial question. To say, as a recent scientific writer does,[5]
"that happiness in one disguise or another is the end of human life
is common ground for all the schools," is either to ignore what the
schools have taught,[6] or else to use the word "happiness" merely
as another name for the highest good. But, even were it still the
case, as it was in the time of Aristotle, that nearly all men were
agreed as to the name of the highest good, and that the common
people and the cultured alike called it happiness, the difference as
to what they meant by the term would still remain. To say that the
ethical end is happiness is, to use Locke's terminology, a "trifling
proposition"; for in so doing we merely give it a name[7]--and one
which the controversies of philosophy have surrounded with confusion.
That the end is happiness in any definite sense, for example, as the
greatest balance of pleasure over pain, _may_ be perfectly true, but
stands very much in need of proof. That happiness is the highest
ethical end can be assumed as true only when "happiness" is nothing
more than an abbreviated expression for "the highest ethical end."
[Sidenote: (_b_) implies a new point of view,]
A difficulty of a more radical kind meets us, at the very outset
of our inquiry, in the distinctively ethical notion expressed by
the word "ought." Various attempts have been made to surmount or
circumvent this difficulty; and some of these will come under
consideration in the sequel. The very notion of conscious activity
contains the idea of bringing about something which does not yet
exist. It involves a purpose or end. The notion "ought," it is true,
means more than this: it implies an obligation to pursue a definite
end or conform to definite rules, regarded generally as coming from
an authoritative source. In this clear and full sense, "oughtness"
or duty is a comparatively recent notion, foreign to the classical
period of Greek ethics. The force and definiteness belonging to the
modern conception of it are due to the juridical aspect which the
Stoic philosophy, Roman law, and Christian theology combined to
impress upon morality. But even the notion of purpose or end implies
a "preference" of the end sought: the state to be realised is looked
upon as "better" or "more to be desired" than the existing state.
We may ask for the reason of this superior desirableness; but the
answer must soon fall back upon the assertion of something held to be
desirable in itself. The question which we are always asking, and
cannot help asking, "Why is such and such an end to be pursued by
me?" or "Why ought I to follow such and such a course of conduct?"
must soon lead to the assertion of an ultimate end.
[Sidenote: the transition to which requires investigation;]
This end, therefore, must not be sought for some ulterior end, nor
desired as a means to satisfy any other desire. But it is still
necessary to inquire into the way in which the end, held to be
ultimate in a practical regard, stands related to the constitution
of man and his environment. And the question to which I would draw
attention, as the fundamental problem of ethics, is, What is that
which men have variously called happiness, the highest good, the
ethical end? or, more precisely, How can a transition be made from
the notions of theoretical philosophy to the determination of that
ethical end? No assumption is made, at starting, as to the nature
of this end, or the manner of arriving at it. It may be a transient
state of feeling, or a permanent type of character; or it may by its
very nature defy exact definition,--the idea itself being perfected
as its realisation is progressively approached. In any case it
requires to be brought into connection with the ultimate conceptions
of thought and existence.
This question of the ethical end _or_ highest good is thus
fundamental in ethical science, and upon it all other questions in
ethics finally depend. But it is easy to see that it does not cover
the whole field, and that the other points of view already referred
to have a legitimate application. Ethics has not only to determine
the end, but to apply it to practice, and so to decide as to what
is right or wrong in particular actions, and virtuous or vicious in
character. And, in addition to the two questions thus implied--the
question as to the ethical end, and that as to the application of it
to practical affairs--there is another department of inquiry which
has had a place assigned to it in most ethical systems, and which has
a right to be regarded as belonging to ethics. We may investigate
the place, in the individual and the community respectively, both of
the sentiments and ideas and of the social institutions and customs
through which morality is manifested; and this inquiry covers the
twofold ground of what may be called moral psychology and moral
sociology.
[Sidenote: (_c_) distinct from other ethical questions:]
Of these three questions, the first forms the subject of inquiry
in the following pages. It seems to me that a great part of the
obscurity which surrounds ethical argument is due to confounding
these different questions. It is true that no one of them is
without bearing on the others; but it is none the less necessary,
in discussing any one of them, to keep its distinctness from those
others well in view. In inquiring into the foundation on which the
ethical end is based, I do not intend to develop a code of rules for
practical conduct or a theory of human virtue; nor shall I attempt
to trace the origin and nature of moral sentiments and ideas, or of
the social institutions and customs connected with morality. If these
subjects have to be introduced at all, it will be only in so far as
they may be thought to decide, or tend to decide, the question more
immediately in view.
[Sidenote: (α) from inquiry into the methods of ethics.]
[Sidenote: Limitation of this inquiry]
[Sidenote: (_aa_) from necessity of investigating all logical
alternatives,]
Thus it forms no part of the present inquiry to follow out the
application to conduct of different ethical ends, or to exhibit the
different practical systems to which different ends naturally lead.
It might seem indeed, at first sight, as if the development of their
practical consequences might solve the question as to the nature of
the ends themselves. If we assume certain possible and _primâ facie_
reasonable ethical ends, and then see what codes of morality they
will yield, surely (it may be thought) that one which affords the
most consistent and harmonious code for the guidance of life will be
the end to be sought in preference to all others. But in order that
the criticism of what Professor Sidgwick has called the methods of
ethics may be able to answer the question as to the end or principle
of ethics, certain conditions must first be complied with. In the
first place, it is necessary that the ends or principles whose
applications to conduct are to be examined must not be uncritically
accepted from the fluctuating morality of common-sense nor from the
commonplaces of the schools, but must be shown to be "alternatives
between which the human mind" is "necessarily forced to choose when
it attempts to frame a complete synthesis of practical maxims, and to
act in a perfectly rational manner."[8]
[Sidenote: (_bb_) from more than one self-consistent code being
possible,]
But although this requisite is complied with, it will still
remain possible, in the second place, that two or more of the
assumed principles may yield systems of practical rules perfectly
self-consistent, and yet inconsistent with one another.[9] It
would be very hard indeed to show that both the theory of Egoistic
Hedonism, and what is generally called Utilitarianism, do not
succeed in doing so: and thus the examination of methods is not of
itself sufficient to settle the question of the end of conduct. And
since--to quote Mr Sidgwick[10]--it is "a fundamental postulate of
ethics that either these methods must be reconciled and harmonised,
or all but one of them rejected," it follows that the criticism of
methods leads naturally up to an independent criticism of principles,
unless indeed it can be shown that one method only yields a
consistent code of practical rules.
[Sidenote: (_cc_) from its assumption that the true end must give
perfectly consistent rules.]
Even in this case, however, if it led to the adoption of the end
in question, it must be borne in mind that the postulate would be
implied that the true ethical end must be able to yield a consistent
and harmonious system of rules for practical life. Without altogether
denying this postulate, it yet seems to me that it stands in need
of qualification. For in different circumstances, and at different
stages of individual and social development, the application of the
same ethical end may naturally produce different and conflicting
courses of conduct. We must not start with any such assumption as
that the rationality of the end consists in some sort of mathematical
equality which ignores alike the different environment with which one
age and another surround different generations, and the different
functions which one individual and another have to perform in the
social whole. We must leave open the possibility that what is right
now may be wrong in another age; we must remember that everybody may
not count for one, and that some people may count for more than one;
we must admit that we may have sometimes to do to others what we
would not that others should do to us. The only consistency we have
a right to demand must leave room for such a variety of different
conditions as to be, by itself, a very insecure guide.
From the difficulty of complying with the above conditions, it
seems practically impossible for the criticism of ethical methods to
decide the question of the ethical end. Even if the application to
conduct of every important end has been taken account of, we are met
with the difficulty that two or more mutually antagonistic though
self-consistent practical codes may probably have been developed,
while we are not even justified in assuming that inability to yield
a system which will fit the complex circumstances of life in a
perfectly harmonious manner is sufficient ground for rejecting an end
shown in some other way to be reasonable.
[Sidenote: (β) distinct from moral psychology and sociology.]
The last department of ethics referred to--that which has to do with
the origin and nature of moral sentiments and social customs--has a
bearing on the question of the end of conduct in some respects more
important than the investigation of ethical methods. For, whereas the
latter expressly assumes certain ends as _primâ facie_ reasonable,
the former inquiry, on the contrary, is now frequently understood
to be able, without presupposing any ethical relations whatever,
to trace the way in which, from primitive feelings and customs,
morality itself has been evolved. The psychological side of ethical
inquiry has always had an important place with English moralists.
At times, indeed, the question of the "moral faculty" has excited
so much interest as to divert attention from the nature of morality
itself. Moral truth has been supposed to be something known and
indisputable, the only question being how we came to know it. But the
psychology of ethics, reinforced by the knowledge sociology gives of
the development of morality, rises now to larger issues. It attempts
to show the genesis of the moral from the non-moral, to account thus
for the origin of ethical ideas, and even to determine what kinds of
ends are to be striven after. In this way, a theory of the origin
and growth of moral sentiments and institutions is made to render
important help to more than one of the theories which will fall to be
considered in the sequel.
[Sidenote: 3. Present inquiry limited]
[Sidenote: to theories depending on the human constitution,]
The present Essay has to inquire into the way in which we may
determine what the end of human conduct is,--into the basis of
ethics, therefore. But I do not propose to offer an exhaustive
investigation of all the theories which have been or may be started
in solution of the problem. On the contrary, I will begin by
excluding from the inquiry all theories which seek the basis of
ethics in something outside the constitution of man as a feeling
and reasoning agent:[11] not because I contend that all such
theories are _primâ facie_ unreasonable, but because it is at any
rate the more obvious course to seek to determine the function of an
organism by studying its inner constitution, than by having regard
to something which is external to it, and does not act upon and
modify it as a necessary part of its environment. It is only when
this method has been tried and has failed that we should seek outside
us for some guide as to the part we ought to play in the universe.
For this reason I shall not take into consideration the views of the
basis of ethics which find it in positive law either divine or human,
except in so far as they are shown to follow from the nature of man.
It is not necessary for me to deny that the source of all moral
obligation may be the will of God, or the commands of the sovereign,
or the opinion of society, and that the highest moral ideal may be
obedience to such a rule. But theories of this kind make ethics
merely an application of positive theology, or of legislation, or of
social sentiment, and seem only to have an appropriate place when we
have failed to find an independent basis for action.
The question which remains to be put may be expressed in these terms:
Can we find in human nature (taken either alone or in connection with
its environment) any indications of the end of human conduct, or, in
other words, of the principle on which human beings "ought" to act?
and if so, in what direction do these indications point, and what is
their significance? The answer to this question will thus necessarily
depend on the view we take of the constitution of man and his
relation to his environment. And I purpose to bring this discussion
within the necessary limits by considering the ethical consequences
of one only of the two views into which philosophical opinion is
divided.
[Sidenote: and here to ethics of Naturalism,]
[Sidenote: as distinguished from Rational ethics.]
[Sidenote: Naturalism either individualistic]
[Sidenote: or historical.]
Now the fundamental principle of division in philosophical opinion
lies in the place assigned to reason in human nature.[12] According
to one theory, man is essentially a sensitive subject, though able
to reason about his sensations--that is, to associate, compound, and
compare them. He is supposed to be built up of sense-presentations
associated with feelings of pleasure and pain. Recipient of external
impressions which persist in idea and are accompanied by pleasure or
pain on his part, and thus followed by other ideas and impressions,
man's mental constitution is explained without attributing to reason
any spontaneous or productive function.[13] The other view differs
from this in attributing spontaneity to reason--making it, in one way
or another, the source of forms of thought, principles, or ideas. The
former may be called the Naturalistic, the latter the Rationalistic
view of man: from that follows a Naturalistic or Natural ethics, from
this a Rationalistic or Rational ethics. Into both these theories, in
a theoretical as well as in an ethical aspect, the historical turn
of thought which has characterised recent inquiry has introduced a
profound modification. On the basis of Naturalism, we may either look
upon man as an individual distinct from other individuals, as was
done by Epicurus and Hobbes and the materialists of the eighteenth
century, or we may consider the race as itself an organism, apart
from which the individual is unintelligible, and look upon human
nature as having become what it now is through a long process of
interaction between organism and environment, in which social as well
as psychical and physical facts have influenced the result. This is
the view to the elaboration of which Comte and Darwin and Spencer
have in different ways contributed.[14] What makes the historical
method of importance philosophically, is not the mere fact that it
traces a sequence of events in time, but the fact that, by doing
so, it is able to look upon each link in the chain of events as
necessarily connected with every other, and thus to regard as a
system--or, rather, as an organism--what previous empirical theories
had left without any principle of unity.
[Sidenote: Rationalism either individualistic]
[Sidenote: or universalistic.]
A similar movement of thought has introduced a like modification
into the Rationalistic theory. According to older doctrines, the
individual reason is mysteriously charged with certain _à priori_
principles which are to us laws of knowledge and of action; whereas
the form of Rationalism which is now in the ascendant resembles the
theory of natural evolution in this, that as the latter finds the
race more real than the individual, and the individual to exist only
in the race, so the former looks upon the individual reason as but a
finite manifestation of the universal reason, and attempts to show
the principles or constitutive elements of this universal reason
or consciousness in their logical or necessary connection--leaving
open to empirical investigation the way in which they have gradually
disclosed themselves in the individual human subject, and in the
expression of the collective life of the race. Thus, as Natural
Ethics is divided into an individualistic and an historical view,
a similar distinction might be made in Rational Ethics, though in
this case it would be more difficult to follow out the distinction
in detail; and many ethical systems cannot be said to have kept
consistently either to one side of it or to the other.
In the following discussion I shall investigate the ethical theory
which is founded on the basis of Naturalism--working out and
criticising in somewhat greater detail that form of the theory which,
from the agreement it lays claim to with the results of modern
science, plays so important a part in contemporary philosophical
thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Werke, ed. Hartenstein (1867), iii. 532.
[2] Cf. Kant, Werke, iv. 237.
[3] Sermons, v., towards the end.
[4] Essay on the Passions and Affections, p. iv.
[5] W. H. Rolph, Biologische Probleme, zugleich als Versuch zur
Entwicklung einer rationellen Ethik, 2d ed., p. 21.
[6] Not to mention Kant, the consistent opponent of every
eudæmonistic principle, or the doctrines of a political idealist such
as Mazzini (see Life and Writings (1867), iv. 223), reference may be
made to a writer like W. K. Clifford, who looks from the scientific
point of view, and yet holds that "happiness is not to be desired for
its own sake."--Lectures and Essays (1879), ii. 121, 173.
[7] "Auch dieser Begriff [Glückseligkeit] ist an sich ein bloss
formaler, der jede beliebige materiale Bestimmung zulässt."--Zeller,
Ueber Begriff und Begründung der sittlichen Gesetze (1883), p. 23.
[8] Methods of Ethics, book i. chap. i. § 5, 3d ed., p. 11.
[9] "The rule, 'Let every one care for me,' is quite as simple, and,
in a logical point of view, defines conduct as consistently and
reasonably as the rule, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'"--Leslie
Stephen, Science of Ethics (1882), p. 73.
[10] Methods of Ethics, I. i. 3, p. 6.
[11] The difference between Aristotle and Kant in ethics is sometimes
expressed (see Trendelenburg, Hist. Beiträge zur Phil., iii. 171
ff.) as if it consisted in the fact that the former investigated
human nature in order to find its τέλος (~telos~), whereas the latter
sought the standard of action in a transcendental ground. There is
reason for this distinction in Kant's manner of statement. But both
may be regarded as investigating human nature. Their difference
rather consists in the different position and function assigned to
reason in man. It is because Kant is for the moment looking upon
reason as something distinct from human nature that he says that
"the ground of obligation is to be sought, not in the nature of man
or in the circumstances in the world in which he is placed, but _à
priori_ simply in the notions of pure reason" (Werke, iv. 237). His
"metaphysical" view of ethics, however, follows from the rational
constitution of the human subject and his experience, and does not
depend on any source that really "transcends" the reason of man.
[12] Opinion is also divided according to the place assigned to
reason in the world,--this principle of division corresponding almost
exactly with the former.
[13] Thus it is the object of Helvétius's first _discours_ "De
l'esprit" to prove that physical sensibility and memory are the only
productive causes of our ideas.
[14] Comte, by connecting ethics with biology; Darwin and Spencer, by
the doctrine of evolution.
PART I.
THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY.
CHAPTER II.
EGOISM.
[Sidenote: Definition of Naturalism.]
It is difficult to give an exact definition or even description of
what I have called the "natural" view of man. Perhaps it may be
best defined, negatively, as the view which denies to reason any
spontaneous or creative function in the human constitution. For this
definition, if it still leaves the positive description wanting,
will at least make the classification into "natural" and "rational"
exhaustive and mutually exclusive. At the same time it is to be
noted that, on the theory of Naturalism, reason is not supposed to
be excluded from all share in determining questions of conduct or
the choice of ends. It would, indeed, be impossible to have even
the pretence of an ethical theory without a certain use of reason.
But its function, in this case, is limited to the merely formal one
of bringing different presentations (or objects) and feelings into
connection, and comparing the different states of mind thus formed
with one another, not with a reason-given standard.
[Sidenote: Psychological hedonism.]
Since the function of reason is thus restricted, and its competency
to supply an end for, or principle of, action is denied, we must
seek this end either in the feelings of pleasure and pain which
accompany both sensory and motor presentations,--perceptions, that
is to say, and actions,--or in the more complex, or apparently
more complex, emotions of the mind. And the latter may either be
themselves reducible to feelings of pleasure or pain accompanying
presentations directly pleasurable or painful, and thence transferred
by association to other presentations, or they may be regarded as
somehow motives to action which may be or ought to be followed on
their own account. The Individualistic Theory, therefore, is not
necessarily hedonistic. It admits of a twofold view of the "natural"
man: one which looks upon him as in essence a pleasure-seeking,
pain-avoiding animal; another which regards him as having a variety
of impulses, some of which are not directed to his own pleasure or
avoidance of pain.
[Sidenote: 1. Its theory of action]
[Sidenote: ambiguous,]
[Sidenote: referring to]
The former view--psychological hedonism, as it is called--claims
to be an exhaustive analysis of the motives of human conduct,
perfectly general indeed, but yet valid for every case of action.
It denies the possibility of a man acting from any other principle
than desire of pleasure or aversion from pain. The theory is, that
it is a psychological law that action is motived by pleasure and
pain, and that nothing else has motive-power over it. If, then, one
pleasure (or avoidance of pain) is chosen in preference to another,
it must be either by chance,--an alternative which has no ethical
significance--no significance, that is, for the guidance of voluntary
conduct,--or because the one course promises, or seems to promise,
the attainment of a greater balance of pleasure than the other, or
is actually at the time more pleasant than that other. Thus the
view that pleasure is the _only_ motive of human action is really
identical, for ethical purposes, with the theory loosely expressed
in the law that action follows the _greatest_ pleasure.[15] I say
"loosely expressed"; for the law as thus stated really admits of
three quite different interpretations, not always distinguished with
the precision which such subjects require.
[Sidenote: (_a_) actual consequences of action,]
[Sidenote: or (_b_) its expected consequences,]
[Sidenote: or (_c_) its present characteristics.]
(_a_) In the first place, the law might mean that action always
follows the course which, as a matter of fact, will in the long-run
bring the greatest balance of pleasure to the agent. It is evident
that there is no ground in psychology for maintaining this view. Yet
it is a fair interpretation of the "law" of psychological hedonism,
as commonly stated; and it is at least an admissible supposition
that this meaning of the phrase has not been without effect upon
the uses to which the law has been put by some of its upholders.
The second interpretation of the law--namely (_b_), that action is
always in the direction which seems to the agent most likely to
bring him the greatest balance of pleasure, whether it actually
brings it or not--is the sense in which it appears to have been most
commonly taken when expressed with any degree of accuracy. It is in
this sense that--in language which ascribes greater consistency to
men's conduct than it usually displays--"interest" is asserted by
the author of the 'Système de la nature' to be "the sole motive of
human action."[16] The same view is adopted by Bentham;[17] and both
James Mill and John Stuart Mill identify desire with pleasure, or an
"idea" of pleasure, in terms which are sufficiently sweeping, if not
very carefully weighed;[18] while the will is said to follow desire,
or only to pass out of its power when coming under the sway of
habit.[19] Still another meaning may, however, be given to the "law"
of psychological hedonism, according to which the doubtful reference
to the manifold pleasures and pains, contemplated as resulting from
an action, is got rid of, and (_c_) the agent is asserted always to
choose that action or forbearance which is actually most pleasant,
or least painful, to him at the time--taking account, of course,
of imaginative pleasures and pains, as well as of those which are
immediately connected with the senses. It is in this interpretation
of its law that psychological hedonism seems to be most capable of
defence, and in this sense it has been more than once stated and
defended.[20]
[Sidenote: 2. Ethical inferences from this theory,]
The ethics of the form of Naturalism which is now under examination
must be inferred from the "law" that human action follows the
greatest pleasure, in one or other of the above meanings which that
law admits of. The law is the datum or premiss from which we are
to advance to an ethical conclusion. The "right" is to be evolved
from the pleasurable; and the pleasurable, consequently, cannot be
made to depend upon the right. It is certainly true of the conduct
of most men, "that our prospect of pleasure resulting from any
course of conduct may largely depend on our conception of it as
right or otherwise."[21] But this presupposes that there is a right
independent of one's own pleasure, and therefore does not apply to
an ethics based on the simple theory of human nature put forward by
psychological hedonism.
[Sidenote: (_a_) in its first meaning,]
[Sidenote: (_b_)in its second meaning:]
[Sidenote: private ethics and legislation,]
[Sidenote: (_c_) in its third meaning.]
It is scarcely necessary to discuss the first alternative (_a_),
as no psychologist would seriously maintain it. A society composed
of men constituted in the way it supposes men to be constituted,
would be a collection of rational egoists, omniscient in all that
concerned the results of action, and each adopting unerringly at
every moment the course of conduct which would increase his own
pleasure the most. The conduct of any member of such a society
could only be modified when--and would always be modified when--the
modified conduct actually brought pleasurable results to the agent:
never so as to make him prefer the public good to his own. The
second alternative (_b_) admits of such modification taking place
only when it seems to the individual that this modified action will
produce a greater balance of pleasure or smaller balance of pain
than any other course of action. Under this theory an individual
might indeed prefer the public good or another man's good to his
own, but only through his being deceived as to the actual results of
his course of action. Ethics as determining an end for conduct is
put out of court; though the statesman or the educator may modify
the actions of others by providing appropriate motives. If the "two
sovereign masters, pain and pleasure," "determine what we shall do,"
it is hardly necessary for them also "to point out what we ought to
do."[22] The end is already given in the nature of action, though an
enlightened understanding will teach men how the greatest balance of
pleasure may be obtained. We can only get at a rule prescribing an
end by changing our point of view from the individual to the state.
It is best for the state that each individual should aim at the
common happiness; but, when we talk of this as a moral duty for the
individual, all we can mean is that the state will punish a breach
of it. In the words of Helvétius,[23] "pain and pleasure are the
bonds by which we can always unite personal interest to the interest
of the nation.... The sciences of morals and legislation can be
only deductions from this simple principle." According to Bentham's
psychology, a man is necessitated by his mental and physical nature
to pursue at every moment, not the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, but what seems to him his own greatest happiness. And what
the legislator has to do is, by judiciously imposed rewards and
punishments, especially the latter, to make it for the greatest
happiness of each to pursue the greatest happiness of all.[24] As
distinguished from this "art of legislation," "private ethics"
consists only of prudential rules prescribing the best means to an
end predetermined by nature as the only possible end of human action:
it "teaches how each man may dispose himself to pursue the course
most conducive to his own happiness."[25] The consequences to the
theory of action of the third alternative (_c_) are similar: it only
states the law with more appearance of psychological accuracy. If
a man always follows that course of action which will give him at
the time the greatest (real and imaginative) satisfaction, it is
impossible for us to infer from his nature an ethical law prescribing
some other end, without admitting a fundamental contradiction in
human nature; while to say that he ought to seek the end he always
does and cannot help seeking, is unnecessary and even unmeaning.
Modification of character may of course be still brought about,
since the kinds of action in which an individual takes pleasure
may be varied almost indefinitely. But the motive made use of in
this educative process must be personal pleasure; and the end the
legislator has in view in his work must be the same,[26] though it
is often quietly assumed that for him personal pleasure has become
identified with the wider interests of the community.
[Sidenote: Result of this ambiguity,]
[Sidenote: ethical hedonism.]
The different significations of which it admits show that the
psychological law that action follows the greatest pleasure is by no
means so clear as it may at first sight appear. Probably it is the
very ambiguity of the law that has made it appear to provide a basis
for an ethical system. When it is said that greatest pleasure is the
moral end of action, this "greatest pleasure" is looked upon as the
greatest possible balance of pleasurable over painful states for the
probable duration of life: on the egoistic theory, of the life of the
individual; on the utilitarian theory, of the aggregate lives of all
men or even of all sentient beings. But when it is said that greatest
pleasure is, as a matter of fact, always the motive of action, it is
obvious that "greatest pleasure" has changed its signification. For
if the same meaning were kept to, not only would the psychological
law as thus stated be openly at variance with facts, but its validity
would render the moral precept unnecessary. It is even unmeaning to
say that a man "ought" to do that which he always does and cannot
help doing.[27] On the other hand, if the double meaning of the
phrase had been clearly stated, we should at once have seen the
hiatus in the proof of egoistic hedonism--the gap between the present
(or apparent) pleasure for which one does act, and the greatest
pleasure of a lifetime for which one ought to act--as well as the
additional difficulty of passing from egoism to utilitarianism. If
greatest apparent pleasure--or greatest present pleasure--is by an
inexorable law of human nature always sought, how can it be shown
that we ought to sacrifice the apparent to the real--the present
pleasure that is small to the greater future pleasure? If the
individual necessarily pursues his own pleasure, how can we show that
he ought to subordinate it to the pleasures of the "greatest number"?
[Sidenote: 3. Transition from psychological to ethical hedonism.
Right action will imply]
[Sidenote: (_a_) correct estimate of consequences of action,]
[Sidenote: (_b_) and corresponding strength of feeling.]
It is a matter of fact, however, that the psychologists who maintain
that action follows the greatest pleasure--meaning by that, greatest
apparent or greatest present pleasure--have in their ethics made the
transition to an enlightened Egoism, or even to Utilitarianism. The
nature of the transition thus requires to be more clearly pointed
out. If the former interpretation of the law of psychological
hedonism could be accepted, and a man's motive for action were always
what seemed to him likely to bring him the greatest pleasure on the
whole, ethics--what Bentham calls private ethics--could be reduced
(as Bentham finally reduces it) to certain maxims of prudence. To
be fully acquainted with the sources of pleasure and pain, and to
estimate them correctly, would imply possession of the highest
(egoistic) morality. If men could be made to think rightly as to what
their greatest pleasure consisted in, then right action on their
part--that is to say, the pursuit of their greatest pleasure--would
(according to Bentham's psychology) follow as a matter of course.
Right conduct, however, is not so purely an affair of the intellect
as this would make it. Indeed, Bentham's psychological assumption
requires only to be plainly stated for its inconsistency with
the facts of human action to become apparent. The "video meliora
proboque, deteriora sequor" expresses too common an experience to be
so easily explained away. The impulses by which action is governed
are not always in accordance with what the intellect decides to
be best on a survey of the whole life and its varied chances. In
judging the consequences of action, a future good is compared with a
present, regardless of the mere difference of time by which they are
separated. But the springs which move the will are often at variance
with the decisions of the understanding; and many men are unable to
resist the strength of the impulse to act for the pleasure of the
moment, though they foresee that a greater future satisfaction would
follow from present self-denial.
It would seem, then, that the facts of experience are sufficient to
show that a man's conduct does not always follow the course which
he thinks likely to bring him the greatest pleasure on the whole.
But the view that a man always acts for what is most pleasant--or
least painful--at the time cannot be dismissed so easily. It is not
enough simply to point to the facts of human action in order to show
that this hypothesis is inconsistent with them. If we instanced the
self-restraint in which so many pass their lives from day to day, it
might perhaps be answered that there is a persistent idea of duty, or
love of reputation, or fear of social stigma, the repression of which
would be more painful than the restraint it puts upon other impulses.
Even the martyr who deliberately parts with life itself for the
sake of an ideal, may be said to choose death as the least painful
course open to him at the time. It should be borne in mind, however,
that Professor Bain, the most thorough psychologist of Bentham's
school, refuses to admit this line of defence for psychological
hedonism, and holds that, in actions such as those referred to,
men are really carried out of the circle of their self-regarding
desires.[28] But my present purpose is not to discuss the merits
of any such psychological theory, but rather to investigate its
ethical consequences. And for this purpose the question requires to
be put, how a passage is effected from psychological hedonism to an
egoistic--and even to a utilitarian--theory of ethics.
[Sidenote: The postulate that action can be rationalised]
[Sidenote: involves these conditions,]
If a man always acts for his greatest present pleasure, real and
imaginary, it seems a far step to say that he "ought" to act--or in
any way to expect that he will act--at each moment for the greatest
sum of pleasure attainable in the probable duration of his life.
But on reflection, this may turn out to follow if we postulate that
conduct can be rationalised. What is meant by this egoistic "ought"
may be said to be simply that to the eye of reason the pleasure of
any one moment cannot be regarded as more valuable than the equal
pleasure of any other moment, if it is equally certain; and that
therefore to act as if it were is to act unreasonably. Man fails in
acting up to reason in this sense, because his action is not motived
by reason, but directly by pleasure and pain; and not by a mere
estimate of pleasure and pain, but by pleasure and pain themselves.
The psychological hedonist must maintain that the estimates of future
pleasure and pain only become motives by being not merely recognised
(intellectually) but felt (emotionally)--that is, by themselves
becoming pleasurable or painful. If the Egoist calls any action
irrational, it cannot be because the motive which produced it was not
the greatest pleasure in consciousness at the time. It can only be on
the ground that the greatest pleasure in consciousness at the time
is likely to lead to a sacrifice of greater pleasure in the future;
and this must be due either to intellectual misapprehension or to
the imagined fruition of future pleasure not being strong enough to
outweigh the pleasure which comes from a present stimulus, and to the
imagined fruition of the more distant being weaker than that of the
less distant pleasure. It is owing to a defect of the imagination
on a man's part that even with complete information he does not act
"up to his lights"--irrational action being partly a consequence of
insufficient acquaintance with the normal results of conduct, partly
due to defective imagination. Were a man's imagination of future
pleasure and pain as strong as his experience of present pleasure and
pain, and did he correctly appreciate the results of his conduct,
then his action would, of psychological necessity, harmonise with the
precepts of egoistic hedonism.
[Sidenote: the latter of which]
[Sidenote: is inconsistent with the nature of voluntary action.]
Egoistic hedonism may therefore, in a certain sense, be said to be a
"reasonable" end of conduct on the theory of psychological hedonism;
it is the end which will be made his own by that ideally perfect man
whose intellect can clearly see the issues of conduct, and whose
imagination of the future causes of sensibility is so vivid that the
pleasure or pain got from anticipating them is as great as if they
were present, or only less lively in proportion as there is a risk of
their not being realised. Conversely it would seem that only that man
can act "reasonably" in whom imagination of pleasure (or of pain) is
already of equal strength with the actual experience of it. But, if
the "pleasures of the imagination" are as strong as those of sense or
of reality, the latter obviously become superfluous; and it follows
that the ideally perfect man is left without any motive to aim at the
real thing, since he can obtain as much pleasure by imagining it. The
cultured hedonist must, it would seem, be able to--
"Hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus,
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast."
So far as feeling or motive to action goes, no difference must exist
for him between reality and imagination. And thus, although we may
admit that, on this psychological basis, conduct when rationalised
agrees with that prescribed by egoistic hedonism, yet it can only be
rationalised by a development of the strength of the imagination,
which would make the feeling which it brings with it as strong as
that which accompanies a real object, and hence take away the motive
for the pursuit of the latter. The discrepancy between representation
and presentation which is necessary for the state of desire,[29]
is no longer present. Hedonism vindicates its rationality only on
conditions which imply the futility of action altogether. It is not
merely that the attainment of the hedonistic end in practical conduct
implies a strength of imagination of which no one is capable, but
the conditions of acting both rationally and hedonistically, are
conditions which would paralyse all activity.
[Sidenote: 4. Possible objections to preceding argument:]
The foregoing argument may perhaps be objected to on two grounds. On
the one hand, it may be said that it ignores the vast complexity of
human motive, and treats action as if it were a simple and abstract
thing. On the other hand, we may be reminded of the fact that, while
all men act for pleasure, the moral quality of their conduct does not
depend on this fact, but on the _kind_ of things in which they take
pleasure.
[Sidenote: (_a_) complexity of motive; but it is psychological
hedonism which ignores this.]
So far as the first objection is concerned, it seems to me that
the fault belongs to the psychological theory of human action, the
ethical consequences of which are under investigation. It is this
theory which asserts that, however interwoven the threads of impulse,
aversion, and habit may be, their most complex relations can be
reduced to the formula, "greatest pleasure, or least pain, prevails."
It is not necessary, indeed, that every action should be the
conscious pursuit of a pleasurable object already before the mind in
idea. But the theory, if consistently carried out, implies that the
action which follows in the line of a previously formed habit, does
so because the discomfort or pain of breaking through the habit would
be sufficient to counter-balance any satisfaction that might result.
The objection, therefore, of excessive simplicity or "abstractness,"
is one which cannot have greater force than when urged against the
theory of psychological hedonism.
[Sidenote: (_b_) difference in kind of pleasurable objects;]
[Sidenote: but this involves a reference to something else than
pleasure,]
[Sidenote: which psychological hedonism does not admit of.]
Further--and this is the second objection--the above analysis may
be considered by some not to have taken sufficient account of the
difference in the objects in which a human being can take pleasure,
and of the fact that the moral quality of men differs, not according
as they act for pleasure or not, but according to the kind of actions
and sufferances in which they find pleasure. There can be no doubt
of the importance of this distinction for questions of practical
morals. The man in whom "selfishness takes the shape of benevolence,"
as it did in Bentham, is infinitely better than the man in whom it
retains the form of selfishness. But the consideration is important
just because it goes on the implied assumption that the hedonistic
is not the chief aspect of conduct, and that there is a difference
between courses of action more fundamental than the pleasurable or
painful feeling attendant on them. If the principles on which the
objection is founded were consistently adhered to and followed out,
they would make not pleasure, but something else--that, namely,
by which pleasures differ from one another in kind--the ethical
standard. But if, in ultimate analysis, it is the pleasure felt or
expected that moves to action, it would seem that there is no way
in which the conclusion of the preceding argument can be avoided.
If pleasure is the motive, it must be _quâ_ pleasure--that is to
say, either the greatest apparent pleasure, or the greatest present
pleasure, is the motive. If difference of quality be admitted, we
are introducing a determining factor other than pleasure. Certain
kinds of pleasure may be better than others for the race or for the
state. But these differences must be reducible to terms of individual
pleasure admitting of purely quantitative comparisons, before they
become motives to action.[30] From the point of view of the whole,
we may say that one action leads to a greater sum of pleasure than
another. But, in judging the action of individuals, all that we can
say of it is, that to one man one class of actions gives pleasure,
to another another: each man is equally following the course of
action which either (_a_) will bring, or (_b_) seems to him likely
to bring, the greatest pleasure, or (_c_) is actually most pleasant
at the time. From the nature of the individual we can evolve no end
beyond egoistic hedonism. And even this end can only be made his
at each occurrence of action (assuming the first alternative (_a_)
to be incorrect) by enlightening his intellect so that (_b_) will
correspond with the actual greatest pleasure, or by also enlivening
his imagination of future pleasures and pains so that (_c_) will
correspond with it; and this, as has been shown, could only be
effected under conditions which are inconsistent with the principles
of human action.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Meaning by "greatest pleasure," greatest balance of pleasure
over pain, and thus inclusive of the meaning "least pain." It is the
expression in terms of feeling of the statement sometimes preferred,
that "action follows the line of least resistance"--a statement to
which no exception can be taken, nor any importance allowed, till it
be translated into definite psychological language.
[16] "Ainsi lorsque nous disons que _l'intérêt est l'unique mobile
des actions humaines_, nous voulons indiquer par là que chaque
homme travaille à sa manière à son propre bonheur, qu'il place dans
quelqu'objet soit visible, soit caché, soit réel, soit imaginaire, et
que tout le système de sa conduite tend à l'obtenir."--Système de la
nature (1781), i. 268.
[17] "On the occasion of every act he exercises, every human being is
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."--Constitutional Code,
book i. § 2; Works, ix. 5. The continued existence of the species is,
Bentham thinks, a conclusive proof of this proposition.
[18] Thus, according to James Mill, "the terms 'idea of pleasure'
and 'desire' are but two names; the thing named, the state of
consciousness is one and the same. The word Desire is commonly used
to mark the idea of a pleasurable sensation when the future is
associated with it."--Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind,
J. S. Mill's edit., ii. 192; cf. Fragment on Mackintosh (1835), p.
389 f. To the same effect J. S. Mill says: "Desiring a thing and
finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful,
are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same
phenomenon; in strictness of language, two different modes of naming
the same psychological fact."--Utilitarianism, 7th ed., p. 58.
[19] "Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of
its parent only to come under that of habit."--Utilitarianism, p. 60.
[20] Thus Jonathan Edwards says: "When I say that the Will is as the
greatest apparent good, or (as I have explained it) that volition has
always for its object the thing which appears most agreeable, it must
be carefully observed, to avoid confusion and needless objection,
that I speak of the _direct_ and immediate object of the act of
volition, and not some object to which the act of will has only an
indirect and remote respect."--On the Freedom of the Will, part i. §
2; Works, i. 133. The matter is put still more clearly by the late
Alfred Barratt: "Action does not always follow knowledge. Of course
not: but the doctrine [Hedonism] does not require that it should; for
it says, not that we follow what _is_ our greatest possible pleasure,
or what we know or 'think' to be so, but what at the moment of action
is most desired."--Mind, vol. ii. 173; cf. Physical Ethics, p. 52 ff.
So Mr Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 47: "It is more accurate to say
that my conduct is determined by the pleasantest judgment, than to
say that it is determined by my judgment of what is pleasantest." The
negative side of the same view was expressed by Locke in his doctrine
that action is moved by the most pressing uneasiness (Essay, II. xxi.
29, 31), and distinguished by him from the former view (b), that the
"greater visible good" is the motive (II. xxi. 35, 44).
[21] Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 3d ed., p. 40.
[22] Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. i., Works,
i. 1. With this statement may be compared the assertion of Helvétius:
"Il semble que, dans l'univers moral comme dans l'univers physique,
Dieu n'est mis qu'un seul principe dans tous ce qui a été.... Il
semble qu'il ait dit pareillement à l'homme: ... Je te mets sous la
garde du plaisir et de la douleur: l'un et l'autre veilleront à tes
pensées, à tes actions; engendreront tes passions, exciteront tes
aversions, tes amitiés, tes tendresses, tes fureurs; allumeront tes
désirs, tes craintes, tes espérances, te dévoileront des vérités; te
plongeront dans des erreurs; et après t'avoir fait enfanter mille
systèmes absurdes et différens de morale et de législation, te
decouvriront un jour les principes simples, au développement desquels
est attaché l'ordre et le bonheur du monde moral."--De l'esprit, III.
ix, Œuvres (ed. of 1818), i. 293.
[23] De l'homme, concl. gén., Œuvres, ii. 608.
[24] Cf. Système de la nature, i. 120: "La politique devrait être
l'art de régler les passions des hommes et de les diriger vers le
bien de la société."
[25] Bentham, _op. cit._, chap. xix. (xvii. in the reprint of 1879),
§ 20; Works, i. 148.
[26] Cf. Bentham, Works, ix. 5.
[27] Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, I. iv. 1, 3d ed., p. 41; cf. Green,
Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 9: "To a being who is simply a result of
natural forces, an injunction to conform to their laws is unmeaning."
[28] Cf. The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed., p. 293 ff.
[29] Cf. Sully, Outlines of Psychology, p. 577.
[30] Cf. J. Grote, 'Utilitarian Philosophy,' p. 20, note: "One kind
of pleasure may be, systematically, to be preferred to another, but
it must be because the pleasures classified under it generally exceed
those under the other in intensity, or some other of the elements of
value."
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM.
[Sidenote: 1. Different standpoints of individual and state]
It still remains possible, of course, to fix an ethical end in some
other way than by studying individual human nature. We may, for
instance, looking from the point of view of the community, fix its
greatest happiness, instead of his own, as the individual's end. But
the difficulty then arises of persuading the individual--or, indeed,
making it possible for him--to regard this impersonal goal as the
end of his conduct. For this purpose, Bentham seemed to look to the
exercise of administrative control which, by a system of rewards
and punishments, will make the greatest happiness of the individual
coincide so far as possible with that of the community.[31] J. S.
Mill, on the other hand, with his eyes turned to the subjective
springs of action, saw in the gradual growth of sympathetic pleasures
and pains the means by which an individual's desires would cease to
conflict with those of his neighbours.
It is in some such way that the transition is made from Egoism to
Utilitarianism. The transition is made: Bentham and his school are
an evidence of the fact. But it is not therefore logical. It is,
indeed, important to notice that we only pass from the one theory to
the other by changing our original individualistic point of view.
Having already fixed an end for conduct regardless of the difference
between the individual at the time of acting and at subsequent times,
we proceed to take the much longer step of ignoring the difference
between the agent and other individuals. The question is no longer,
What is good or desirable for the person who is acting? but, What is
best on the whole for all those whom his action may affect--that is
to say, for the community?
[Sidenote: cannot be logically connected]
[Sidenote: through analogy of state to individual.]
[Sidenote: Difference between one's own pleasure and the pleasure of
others]
But while it is comparatively easy to see how this transition
is effected as a matter of fact, it is difficult to establish
any logical connection between its different stages, or to offer
any considerations fitted to convince the individual that it is
reasonable for him to seek the happiness of the community rather than
his own. Only that conduct, it may seem, can be reasonable which
directs and perfects the natural striving of each organism towards
its own pleasure. We may, of course, let our point of view shift from
the individual to the social "organism." And in this case, if the
"natural" end of each human being is his own greatest pleasure, the
end of the community, or organised body of pleasure-seekers, will
naturally be concluded to be the greatest aggregate pleasure of its
members. Thus, if we can hypostatise the community, and treat it as
an individual with magnified but human wants and satisfactions, then,
for this leviathan, the ethical end will correspond to what is called
Utilitarianism or Universalistic Hedonism. But, when we remember
that the community is made up of units distinct from one another
in feeling and action, the difficulty arises of establishing it as
the natural end, or as a reasonable end, for each of these units to
strive after the greatest pleasure of all. For it is evident that the
pursuit of the greatest aggregate pleasure may often interfere with
the attainment by the individual of his own greatest pleasure. On the
other hand, the self-seeking action of the individual may no doubt
lead to a loss of pleasure on the whole; but then it is not his own
pleasure that is lost, only other people's. To the outsider--as to
the community--it may seem irrational that a small increase in the
pleasure of one unit should be allowed at the expense of a loss of
greater pleasure on the part of other units. But it seems irrational
only because the outsider naturally puts himself in the place of
the community; and neither takes account of the fact that to the
individual agent there is a fundamental difference between his own
pleasure and any one else's pleasure: for him the former is, and the
latter is not, pleasure at all.[32]
[Sidenote: overlooked in arguing from egoism to utilitarianism.]
This fundamental difference seems to be overlooked when the attempt
is made to argue logically from egoistic psychology (or even from
egoistic ethics) to utilitarianism. Indeed, the hiatus in logical
proof is often only concealed by a confusion of standpoints; and
J. S. Mill, while emphasising the distinction between modern
Utilitarianism and the older Epicureanism, has even allowed his
official "proof" of utilitarianism--such proof, that is, as he
thinks the principle of Utility to be susceptible of--to rest on the
ambiguity between individual and social happiness.
[Sidenote: 2. Connection between egoism and utilitarianism according
to Bentham:]
[Sidenote: (_a_) Utilitarianism not a political duty,]
This ambiguity does not seem to have been consistently avoided
even by Bentham. For the most part, indeed, nothing can exceed
the clearness with which he recognises the twofold and possibly
conflicting interests involved in almost every action. There is the
interest of the agent, and the interest of others whom his action
may affect. And he also holds that, in the case of divergence of
interests, the individual will act for his own. "The happiness of the
individuals," he says,[33] "of whom a community is composed,--that
is, their pleasures, and their security,--is the end, and the sole
end, which the legislator ought to have in view--the sole standard
in conformity to which each individual ought, as far as depends upon
the legislator, to be _made_ to fashion his conduct. But whether it
be this or anything else that is to be _done_, there is nothing by
which a man can ultimately be _made_ to do it, but either pain or
pleasure"--that is, of course, his own pain or pleasure. Here, then,
ethical Utilitarianism and psychological Egoism are both plainly
involved. A man, it is said, can only pursue general happiness by its
being identical with his own happiness. And as it is evident, and
admitted, that these two happinesses often diverge in the courses
of action naturally leading to them, a man can only be beneficent,
rather than selfish, through some artificial arrangement which makes
beneficence to be for his interest:[34] in plain language (since
rewards are only of exceptional applicability), through his being
punished for not being beneficent.[35] But, as Bentham clearly shows,
many cases of action cannot be safely touched by the legislator's
art. Such cases "unmeet for punishment" include not only the actions
which are beneficial or neutral in their results, but also actions
hurtful to the community, though they may elude such vigilance as the
state can contrive, or their restraint by punishment inflicted by the
state may constitute a greater evil than the offence.[36] _Probity_
may be exacted by the "persons stated and _certain_" who happen to be
political superiors: except in rare instances, positive _beneficence_
can not. Utilitarian conduct, therefore, is not a "political duty,"
because it is not fully enforced by definite punishment. The "art
of legislation" is indeed said to teach "how a multitude of men,
composing a community, may be disposed to pursue that course which
upon the whole is the most conducive to the happiness of the whole
community, by means of motives to be applied by the legislator."[37]
But the means here indicated are such as cannot fully compass the
attainment of the end. For the motives applied by the legislator
either cannot reach a large part of the extra-regarding conduct of
individuals, or could only reach it by entailing greater evils than
those they would be used to prevent.
[Sidenote: (_b_) nor a moral duty,]
[Sidenote: (_c_) nor insisted on as a religious duty,]
But if utilitarian conduct is not a political duty, it may seem
evident that it is at least a moral duty. Now a moral duty is said
by Bentham[38] to be "created by a kind of motive which, from the
_un_certainty of the _persons_ to apply it, and of the _species_ and
_degree_ in which it will be applied, has hardly yet got the name of
punishment: by various mortifications resulting from the ill-will of
persons _un_certain and variable,--the community in general; that is,
such individuals of that community as he whose duty is in question
shall happen to be connected with." In plain language, then, moral
duty simply means the ill-will of a man's neighbours which follows
his conduct in so far as that conduct affects them disagreeably.
Such ill-will on the part of a man's neighbours may result from
success or from failure on his part, from a breach of etiquette, from
refusal to sacrifice to the caprice of those neighbours the wider
good of the society whom his conduct affects (but to whom it may
be unknown), from deception or from telling the truth. In a word,
the duty--that is, the punishment--is entirely uncertain: not only
as regards the persons applying it, its nature and its amount, but
also as regards the kind of actions to which it applies. They will
be actions unpleasant to the people who inflict the punishment, but
not necessarily hurtful to the common weal: since the immediate
effects of an action are easily recognised, while its wider and
more lasting consequences are neither so apparent nor appeal so
surely to the interest of those who are cognisant of the action
and immediately affected by it. Moral duty, therefore, as Bentham
defines it, depending on, or rather identical with, the ill-will
of one's neighbours, is indefinite and limited in its nature, and
can command or sanction no such definite and wide-reaching rule for
conduct as that a man should always act for the greatest happiness of
the greatest number of people whom his action may affect. Utilitarian
conduct, therefore, is neither a political duty nor a moral duty;
nor does Bentham follow Paley in insisting upon it as a religious
duty "created by punishment; by punishment expected at the hands
of a person _certain_--the Supreme Being." And "if he persists in
asserting it to be a duty--but without meaning it to be understood
that it is on any one of these three accounts that he looks upon it
as such--all he then asserts is his own internal _sentiment_; all he
means then is that he feels himself _pleased_ or _displeased_ at the
thoughts of the point of conduct in question, but without being able
to tell _why_. In this case he should e'en say so; and not seek to
give an undue influence to his own single suffrage, by delivering it
in terms that purport to declare the voice either of God, or of the
law, or of the people."[39]
[Sidenote: (_d_) nor sufficiently motived in private ethics,]
[Sidenote: which can be reduced to prudence.]
This plain piece of advice which Bentham gives to Blackstone is
not often neglected by himself. The motive, he once said, of his
own exceptional devotion to the interests of the community was
that it pleased him. "I am a selfish man," he wrote, "as selfish
as any man can be. But in me, somehow or other, so it happens,
selfishness has taken the shape of benevolence."[40] But when the
matter is thus brought back from the regions of political, moral,
and religious duty, to the individual ground of "private ethics,"
we have still to refer to Bentham's own discussion of the question,
"What motives (independent of such as legislation and religion may
chance to furnish) can one man have to consult the happiness of
another?"[41] Bentham at once replies--and indeed the answer on his
principles is obvious enough--that there is no motive which always
continues _adequate_. But yet there are, he says, "no occasions
in which a man has not some motives for consulting the happiness
of other men." Such are "the purely-social motive of sympathy or
benevolence," and "the semi-social motives of love of amity and love
of reputation." A man is directly moved to promote the happiness of
others through the sympathetic feelings which make the happiness of
others in some degree pleasurable to himself; and he is indirectly
moved to promote their happiness through his desire of their
friendship and good opinion. So far, therefore, it is quite true that
"private ethics"--or what Bentham regards as such--"concerns every
member--that is, the happiness and the actions of every member of
any community that can be proposed."[42] It certainly concerns their
happiness, but only in so far as this is a means to the happiness
of the agent. So that when Bentham says that "there is no case in
which a private man ought not to direct his own conduct to the
production of his own happiness and of that of his fellow-creatures,"
he should rather say that a man will[43] only direct his conduct to
the happiness of his fellow-creatures in so far as such action leads
to his own happiness. Private ethics, therefore, has to do with the
happiness of others only so far as this reacts on the happiness
of self; or, as Bentham ultimately defines it, in terms to which
no exception can be taken: "Private ethics teaches how each man
may dispose himself to pursue the course most conducive to his own
happiness by means of such motives as offer of themselves."[44]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 3. Bentham's treatment exhaustive from his point of view.]
Under Bentham's hands "private ethics" is thus reduced to prudence,
at the same time that the author has failed to show why the general
happiness is to be aimed at by the individual as a religious or
political or moral duty. Nor is this failure due to any lack of skill
in following out the consequences which his premisses involved. The
arguments used against him have thus an equally valid application to
all who adopt the same general line of thought. For Bentham appears
to have seen as clearly as any of his disciples the difficulty of
bringing the egoistic basis of his theory of human nature into
harmony with the universal reference required by his ethics. And the
criticism already offered of the way in which Bentham attempts to
bring about this connection may be shown not to be restricted to his
special way of putting the case.
It is necessary to remember that throughout this chapter we are
looking from the individual's point of view, and inquiring how far it
is possible to work from it in the direction of utilitarianism. Now
it is admitted that, in pursuing his own happiness, he is sometimes
led, and may be led on the whole, to neglect the general happiness.
A sufficient reason for following the latter--or an obligation to do
it--can therefore only come either from the supreme power or from
one's fellow-men, and from the latter either as organised in the
State, and expressing themselves by its constituted authorities,
or else by the vaguer method of social praise and blame. Bentham's
classification of the possible sources or kinds of duty into
religious, political, and moral [or social], is therefore a natural
consequence of the individualistic system.
[Sidenote: (_a_) The religious sanction,]
[Sidenote: relied on by Paley,]
[Sidenote: inverts the relation between ethics and theology.]
The first of these possible sources of duty is indeed only mentioned
by Bentham, and then passed by. And yet it might seem that the
religious sanction is a more efficient motive-power than the social,
while it applies to regions of conduct which legal enactment cannot
reach. Without question, the operation of such a motive is capable of
bringing egoistic conduct into harmony with utilitarianism, or with
any other principle of action to which the sanction may be attached.
"Private happiness is our motive, and the will of God our rule,"
says Paley;[45] and in this case such conduct will be obligatory as
the rule may arbitrarily determine; while, whatever it may be, there
will be a strong enough motive to follow it. The whole fabric of a
moral philosophy such as Paley's, therefore, rests on two theological
propositions--that God has ordained the general happiness as the
rule of human conduct, and that He will punish in another life those
who disregard that rule. The basis of morality is laid in a divine
command enforced by a divine threat. Perhaps it will be generally
agreed that Bentham acted wisely in not laying stress on this
application of the "religious sanction." Even those least inclined
to theological agnosticism would reject any such rough-and-ready
solution of the problem which deals with the relation of morality
to the divine nature. Paley's method of treatment, they would say,
inverts the relation in which theism stands to morality. The divine
will cannot be thus arbitrarily connected with the moral law. It can
be conceived to approve and sanction such an object as the happiness
of mankind only when God is first of all regarded as a moral
being, and the happiness of mankind as an object of moral action.
If any relation of consequence can be asserted between them, the
general happiness is to be regarded as a moral duty first, and only
afterwards as a religious duty.
[Sidenote: (_b_) Limits of the political sanction.]
When he comes to the political sanction, Bentham's treatment wants
nothing in respect of fulness, and even those who do not agree
with his estimate of the infelicific character of many existing
institutions and enactments will admit that even the best-intentioned
legislator cannot make utilitarian conduct a political duty. We must
bear in mind here, also, the effect which individual desires and
opinions have not only on social judgments, but also on statute-law.
In arguing on the relation of the individual to the State, we are
too ready to forget that the State is represented by a legislator
or body of legislators, and that we can never assume that in their
cases private interest has already become identified with the
larger interests of the community.[46] For were this the case, the
accusation of class-legislation or private interest would not be
heard so often as it is.
[Sidenote: (_c_) Uncertainty of the social sanction,]
A modern disciple of Bentham would thus be compelled, just as
Bentham himself was, to make utilitarianism neither a political nor
religious but a "moral" duty, enforced by and founded on the shifting
and uncertain punishments or sanctions of society--what Professor
Bain describes as "the unofficial expressions of disapprobation
and the exclusion from social good offices."[47] But as a logical
proof of utilitarianism, this means is, if possible, weaker than the
preceding; for social opinion, though of somewhat wider applicability
than legal enactment, has probably been, for the most part, in even
less exact correspondence than it with the general happiness. The
social sanction is strict on indifferent points of etiquette, does
not consult the general interests of mankind on points of honour, and
is lenient towards acts that the utilitarian moralist condemns.[48]
[Sidenote: (_d_) and of the internal sanction so far as a result of
the social.]
Professor Bain, however, advances from the external disapprobation to
an internal sanction--looking upon conscience as one of the powers
which inflicts punishment, and lies at the source of the feeling of
obligation. But if conscience is only "an ideal resemblance of public
authority, growing up in the same individual mind, and working to the
same end," it can, as little as its archetype, point to the maxim
of utilitarianism. According to Professor Bain, it is through this
sentiment--at first a mere imitation of external authority--that the
individual becomes a law to himself, on recognising the utilities
that led to the imposition of the law.[49] But on this theory, in so
far as conscience continues to point to the conduct impressed upon it
by its external pattern, it fails to correspond with the utilitarian
maxim. If, on the other hand, it is modified by the comprehensive
and unselfish view of the effects of conduct which utilitarianism
demands, it must be at the expense of correcting its original
edicts, and so far discrediting its authoritative claims.
[Sidenote: Value of the social sanction]
[Sidenote: apart from logical proof of utilitarianism.]
The "social sanction" would be of much greater service if used to
show how a solidarity is brought about between the interests and
feelings of the individual and those of his neighbours, from which
the utilitarian maxim may be arrived at by a generalisation of his
principle of conduct as modified by the social impulse. But this
would not constitute a logical justification of utilitarianism: it
would show how the principle has been arrived at, but without giving
a sufficient reason to the individual for adopting it. And this is
really the tendency of much recent discussion--of Professor Bain's
theory of conscience as a reflex of the external order, of George
Grote's analysis of the moral sentiment, and of Mill's doctrine of
the progressive identification of the individual's feelings with
those of his neighbours through the gradual increase of sympathetic
pleasures and pains: for it was to this source that Mill looked for
the practical solution of the antinomy between his psychological and
ethical theories, though he himself tried to pass from one position
to the other by means of the "highway in the air" constructed by his
own logic.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 4. Mill's logical defence of utilitarianism:]
Mill's attempt to pass by a logical method from psychological
hedonism to utilitarianism is an instructive commentary on the
difficulties which beset the transition. His work may be described
as a vindication of the utilitarian morality, first, from the charge
of sensualism; and secondly, from that of selfishness. And it is
largely owing to his polemic that utilitarianism is no longer looked
upon as either a sensual or a selfish theory. It is not sensual,
unless, indeed, the pleasures of most men are of a sensual kind. So
far from being selfish, it is almost stoical in the subordination of
individual desires it enjoins. But Mill wished to do more than clear
the character of utilitarian ethics. He wished to show a logical
reason for utilitarians pursuing elevated pleasures rather than base
ones, and to demonstrate the connection of his moral imperative with
the principles which the school he belonged to laid down for human
motives. In both these respects his failure is conspicuous.
[Sidenote: (_a_) distinction of kinds of pleasure,]
[Sidenote: determined by authority,]
[Sidenote: either can be reduced to difference of quantity, or leads
to non-hedonistic standard;]
In the former endeavour, he went against Bentham by attempting to
draw a distinction in kind amongst pleasures--a distinction not
reducible to quantitative measurement. A higher degree of quality in
the pleasure sought was to outweigh any difference in its amount or
quantity. With this modification, utilitarianism is made to require
a subordination of the lower or sensuous nature to the higher or
intellectual nature. Pleasure, indeed, is still the end; but the
"higher" pleasure takes precedence over the "lower," irrespective
of the amount of pleasant feeling that results. Pleasure is still
the standard, but not the ultimate standard; for a further appeal
has to be made to the criterion that distinguishes one pleasure from
another, not as merely greater or less, but as higher or lower. As is
well known, Mill did not look either to the action or to the feeling
itself for this criterion. To have done so would have implied an
acknowledgment that pleasure was no longer regarded as the ultimate
standard. He found the criterion of superiority simply in the
opinion people of experience have about the relative desirability
of various sorts of pleasure. But such a criterion only pushes the
final question of the standard one step farther back. Those people
of experience to whom Mill refers--who have tried both kinds of
pleasure, and prefer one of them[50]--can they give no reason for, no
account of, their preference? If so, to trust them is to appeal to
blind authority, and to relinquish anything like a science of ethics.
But, if Mill's authorities can reflect on their feelings, as well as
feel, they can only tell us one or other of two things. Either the
so-called "higher" pleasure is actually, as pleasure, so preferable
to that called "lower," that the smallest amount of the one would be
more pleasurable than the largest amount of the other; or else the
higher is called higher, and is to be preferred to the lower--even
although the latter may be greater as pleasure--because of a quality
belonging to it over and above its character as pleasant feeling.
The former verdict would be in the first place paradoxical, and, in
the second place, would give up Mill's case, by reducing quality to
a quantitative standard. Besides, it would be no valid ground of
preference for men in general; since the pleasure of various actions
and states differs according to the susceptibility of the subject.
According to the latter verdict, the characteristic upon which the
distinction of quality depends, and not pleasure itself, becomes the
ethical standard.
[Sidenote: (_b_) ambiguities in his proof of utilitarianism.]
In respect of his main contention, that utilitarianism is a theory of
beneficence, and not of prudence or of selfishness, Mill emphasised
even more strongly than Bentham has done the distinction between the
egoism which seeks its own things, and the utilitarianism according
to which everybody counts for one, and nobody for more than one.
But when he attempted to connect this doctrine logically with the
psychological postulates of his school, he committed a double error.
In the first place, he confused the purely psychological question
of the motives that influence human conduct with the ethical
question of the end to which conduct ought to be directed; and, in
the second place, he disregarded the difference of end there may
be for society as a collective whole, and for each member of the
society individually. "There is in reality," he says,[51] "nothing
desired except happiness;" and this psychological theory is too
hastily identified with the ethical principle that happiness alone
is desirable, or what ought to be desired and pursued. Moreover,
"no reason," he says, "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." And this admission, which
seems as good as saying that no reason at all can be given why the
individual should desire the general happiness, is only held to be
a sufficient reason for it, through assuming that what is good for
all as an aggregate is good for each member of the aggregate: "That
each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general
happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons."[52]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Imperfect coherence of ethical and theoretical philosophy.]
It may appear strange to offer the preceding as the logical basis
of an ethical principle which has had so wide and, on the whole,
beneficial an influence as utilitarianism. The explanation is to
be found in the want of full coherence which often exists, and
is nowhere commoner than in English ethics, between an author's
practical view of life and the foundation of psychology or
metaphysics with which it is connected. It would certainly be wrong
to imagine that Bentham's self-denying labours rested on a confusion
of standpoints, or that Mill's moral enthusiasm had no other support
than a logical quibble. To both of them, and to many others,
utilitarianism was an ethical creed influencing their lives, which
was scarcely connected with the attempt to justify it logically. Such
reasons in its favour as they adduced were rather after-thoughts for
the defence of their creed than the foundations on which it was built.
[Sidenote: 5. Actual transition to utilitarianism.]
The formula of utilitarianism cannot be expressed as the conclusion
of a syllogism or of an inductive inference. It seems rather to
have been arrived at by the production--or the recognition--of a
sympathetic or "altruistic" sentiment, which was made to yield a
general principle for the guidance of conduct This process involves
two steps, which are consecutive and complementary, although the
positions they connect are not necessarily related. The first step is
to overcome the selfish principle of action in the individual; the
second to generalise it and obtain a principle for the non-selfish
action that results. Mill seems to be the only recent writer who,
in making this transition, adheres strictly to the psychological
hedonism distinctive of his school. He looks to the influence of
education in increasing the feeling of unity between one man and his
neighbours, till individual action becomes merged in altruistic or
social action. "The social state," he says, "is at once so natural,
so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual
circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never
conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body."[53] This
is perfectly true, but does not imply a sublation of selfishness. A
man "never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body;"
but it does not follow from this that he will subordinate his own
interests to the interests of the other members when the two clash.
In cases of conflict the individual often tends to sacrifice the
good of his neighbours to his own good; and he may do so although he
fully recognises the social consequences of action, just because he
still remains at the ethical standpoint which treats private good
as superior to public. It is true, as Mill contends, that, "in an
improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on
the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of
unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would make him
never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in
the benefits of which they are not included."[54] But this is not
sufficient to connect the two antagonistic poles of Mill's system.
It starts with assuming the notion of an "improving state" of the
human mind, as determined according to an ethical standard not yet
arrived at; and it gives no valid account of the means by which
the improvement is to be brought about. It is prophetic of a time
when the motives of human nature will have been so modified that
the antagonism between self and others will be no longer felt; but
it offers no practical solution of the antinomy suited to present
circumstances.
[Sidenote: (_a_) recognition of Sympathy]
[Sidenote: as disinterested, by Bain,]
The basis of the ethical sentiment by which the desires and actions
of a man are to be brought into harmony with those of his fellows
is investigated in a more thorough manner by Professor Bain and by
George Grote. But both of these writers stand on a somewhat different
platform from the strict psychological hedonism which Mill never
relinquished. Thus Grote enumerates as "elementary tendencies of
the mind," which ethical sentiment presupposes, and out of which it
is compounded, self-regarding tendencies, sympathetic tendencies,
benevolent affections, malevolent affections, and (though in a
smaller degree) love and hatred of those who cause pleasure and
pain to others;[55] and this without interpreting sympathy, in the
way that Mill does, as having for its end the pleasures which come
with the gratification of the sympathetic impulse, or the removal of
the pain caused by its restraint. As Professor Bain argues, this
position of Mill's "is tenable only on the ground that the _omission_
of a disinterested act that we are inclined to, would give us so much
_pain_ that it is on the whole for our comfort that we should make
the requisite sacrifice. There is plausibility in this supposition."
But "the doctrine breaks down when we try it upon extreme cases....
All that people usually suffer from stifling a generous impulse
is too slight and transient to be placed against any important
sacrifice."[56] In recognising sympathy as a "purely disinterested"
impulse,[57] Mr Bain breaks loose at an important point from the
psychology of Bentham. He is indeed only kept from a complete break
with it by the position he ascribes to sympathy as outside of the
ordinary sphere of voluntary action. Above all things, it would seem
to be necessary that nothing should conflict with "our character as
rational beings, which is to desire everything exactly according to
its pleasure-value."[58] But sympathy obviously "clashes with the
regular outgoings of the will in favour of our pleasures;" so that it
ought to be placed outside voluntary action, and regarded simply as
"a remarkable and crowning instance of the Fixed Idea."[59]
[Sidenote: without being applied to determine the ethical end,]
It is owing to its exclusion, as a fixed idea, from the sphere of
voluntary conduct, that sympathetic appropriation of the feelings
of others has little or no place assigned it by Professor Bain,
when he goes on[60] to describe the way in which the moral opinions
of men have actually originated. They have, he holds, a twofold
source--the one arising from the necessity for public security, the
other being of sentimental origin. The former makes society ordain
those acts and services required for its own preservation. The
latter leads to the confusion of this necessary element of morality
with the sentimental likes and dislikes which may be characteristic
of different people. These are "mixed up in one code with the
imperative duties that hold society together;" and it is only when
"we disentangle this complication, and refer each class of duties to
their proper origin," that we can "obtain a clear insight into the
foundations of morality."[61] Morality, therefore, is that which is
imposed by society for its own preservation and security, and which
is sanctioned by the punishments of society either in its "public
judicial acts," or "by the unofficial expressions of disapprobation
and the exclusion from social good offices."[62] Of this external
law the moral sense or conscience is merely a subjective mirror
or copy. The duty of unselfishness is not connected with the
disinterested impulse of sympathy, but is traced to the external
order of society, which has found it necessary to restrain the
self-seeking action of individuals--a restraint which has come to be
transferred to the consciences of the members of the society.
Mr Bain's theory falls back in this way upon external authority, just
as Bentham's did; and, for the same reasons, they are neither of
them able to prescribe the utilitarian principle of conduct. But, in
his assertion of the disinterested nature of sympathy, Mr Bain has
introduced--though he has not himself utilised--a fruitful principle,
by means of which a basis of moral sentiment may be found by means of
which it is possible to escape from ethical as well as psychological
egoism.
[Sidenote: and by Grote.]
This element of sympathy is most fully recognised in the instructive
analysis of ethical sentiment by the late George Grote. At the same
time, Grote does not, like Adam Smith, for instance, attempt to
evolve the material characteristics of approbation and disapprobation
from this source. The mere putting of one's self in the place of a
spectator--or in that of the patient--instead of that of the agent,
is only a formal change, which will modify our judgments or feelings
without accounting for their actual content. But a uniform formal
element in all ethical sentiment is, according to Grote, a man's
"constant habit of viewing and judging of circumstances around
him," both from the point of view of the agent and from that of the
patient.[63] This twofold position is occupied by every individual.
He is an agent, and in that position his own interests and feelings
are separate from, and often at variance with, those of others. But
he is also a patient in respect of the actions of others, and in
that position his interests and his feelings are commonly in unison
with those of the majority. Hence a man is led constantly to adopt
ideally the point of view which is not actually his own at the time,
so that "the idea of the judgment which others will form becomes
constantly and indissolubly associated with the idea of action in
the mind of every agent." In every community, certain actions are
visited with the admiration, esteem, and protection of the society;
certain other actions with the opposite feelings and results: so that
there arises "an association in my mind of a certain line of conduct
on the part both of myself and of any other individual agent, with
a certain sentiment resulting from such conduct, and excited by it,
in the minds of the general public around us. It is a sentiment of
_regulated social reciprocity_ as between the agent and the society
amongst which he lives." And this sentiment, when enforced by a
sanction, constitutes the complete form of ethical sentiment.
As a complete explanation of the moral sentiments and judgments of
men, this theory does not seem to be above criticism. It requires
not only an association between every personal action and the
feelings--sympathetically imagined by the agent--with which the
action will be regarded by others, but it also implies that this
association has become so inseparable that the feeling appears as
an individual or personal one, distinguished by the subject from
other sentiments which he has on consciously imagining himself in
the position of others. But it is referred to here as illustrating
what we find in Mill, and, in a different way, in Professor Bain,
that the first real step towards the utilitarian standard is to make
the individual pass somehow or other to a standpoint outside his own
nature. In Mill this is done mainly by the assertion of the social
nature of man, in Grote by showing how a moral sentiment may be
arrived at by the combined action of sympathy and association.
[Sidenote: (_b_) The idea of Equality]
[Sidenote: necessary to regulate sympathy;]
The further influence required in the transition to utilitarianism
is the idea of equality. The best expression of utilitarian doctrine
followed soon after the assertion of the equal rights of men which
signalised the politics of the end of last century in the French and
American revolutions. Bentham was permeated by the spirit of this
movement, however far he might be from accepting its abstractions
about natural rights. In his hands, too, utilitarianism was a
political rather than an ethical doctrine. "Everybody to count
for one and nobody for more than one" follows naturally from the
phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Without
this assertion of the necessity of an equal distribution, there is
no safeguard against sympathy being restricted and partial in its
operation. Indeed the feeling of sympathy in itself is naturally
strongest towards those with whom one is in most frequent relation,
or connected by numerous associative ties; and if left to itself,
it might therefore be expected to give rise to the extended
selfishness of class or family interest, only relieved by a spasmodic
humanitarianism. This tendency is corrected by the dogma of human
equality, which had been formulated as a juridical maxim in the Roman
_Jus Gentium_, but afterwards passed into a political creed, and
found vent in the literature of the eighteenth century and in the
public events which marked its close.
[Sidenote: influence of the idea on Bentham.]
The change which this notion of human equality--passed through has
been traced by Sir Henry Maine. "Where the Roman jurisconsult had
written 'æquales sunt,' meaning exactly what he said, the modern
civilian wrote 'all men are equal' in the sense of 'all men ought to
be equal.' The peculiar Roman idea that natural law coexisted with
civil law and gradually absorbed it, had evidently been lost sight
of, or had become unintelligible, and the words that had at most
conveyed a theory concerning the origin, composition, and development
of human institutions, were beginning to express the sense of a great
standing wrong suffered by mankind."[64] Now Bentham, however far
he may have been from trusting to the system of 'natural law,'[65]
was certainly not beyond the influence of the idea of human equality
which it carried in its train; and, from his own point of view, he
laboured to defend it. In assimilating this idea, utilitarianism has
preserved one of the best results of the old "law of nature," without
the ambiguity with which it had formerly been used,[66] if in a sense
which admits of a somewhat narrow and abstract interpretation.
It is true that this does not give exactly the result which is
usually described as utilitarianism. I have spoken of the notion of
equality as the regulator of sympathy--a canon in accordance with
which the sympathetic impulse is to be guided. Sympathy impels us
to relieve the pains and increase the pleasures of our fellow-men.
The principle of equality dictates that this sympathetic activity is
to be directed to the happiness of all men equally. Every one whom
our conduct may be made to affect is to count as a unit, and a unit
only. The distribution is not to be according to kinship of blood
or social ties, though it is so much more in our power to promote
the happiness of those closely connected with us, that it may fairly
occupy a larger share of our thought and energy than the happiness
of other people does. Utilitarianism carries the application of the
principle of equality still farther, by looking upon self as a unit
whose happiness is to be regarded as of exactly equal value with that
of any one else. With every individual reduced to the same ethical
worth, happiness is declared to be the end of moral action, and
equality of distribution the rule for deciding between the claims of
competing individuals.
[Sidenote: 6. The two sides of utilitarian theory not logically
connected.]
It seems to me, therefore, that utilitarianism is a theory compounded
out of two quite different elements. On the one side the basis of the
theory has been laid by Bentham and Mill in a naturalistic psychology
which looks upon pleasure as the only object of desire. To this
there is superadded the idea of equality, which is the distinctively
ethical element in the theory. But it is only by confusion that
the idea of equality--which Bentham expresses by the proposition
that the happiness of one man is to count for no more than the
happiness of another--can be supposed to be derived from the same
theory of human nature as that which identifies pleasure and desire.
Utilitarianism only becomes a practicable end for individual conduct
when psychological hedonism has been given up. It is futile to say
that one ought to pursue the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, unless it is possible for the individual to act for something
else than his own pleasure--that is, for an end which is for him
not pleasure at all. In a word, utilitarianism, while maintaining
that the only thing worth desiring is pleasure, must at the same
time admit that pleasure is not the only object that can be or is
desired: otherwise, it can never advance from the egoistic to the
universalistic form.
This view receives confirmation from the way in which utilitarianism
is held by the most eminent of living moralists. In the 'Methods
of Ethics,' the tradition of Bentham is expressly united with the
doctrines of Butler and Clarke. Professor Sidgwick agrees with
Bentham, and the long line of moralists from Epicurus downwards,
in maintaining the doctrine of ethical hedonism, that pleasure is
the only thing ultimately desirable; but, with Butler, he rejects
the psychological hedonism, according to which pleasure is the only
object of desire. So far from these two positions being inconsistent,
it is only through the second that the first can be held in its
universalistic form. The problem is, however, how to unite them. In
Professor Sidgwick's theory, they are connected by the application
of the ethical maxims of benevolence and equity, which an exhaustive
examination of ethical intuitions has left standing as axioms of
the practical reason. Though utilitarianism, therefore, is still
adhered to, it is on an expressly Rational ground, not on the basis
of Naturalism.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 7. Summary of ethical consequences of psychological
hedonism:]
In this and the previous chapter, I have looked at human nature from
the point of view of psychological hedonism, and have endeavoured to
show what ethical principles that theory leads to, or is consistent
with. The theory does not deny that there is a great diversity
of capacities and interests in man. But it holds that, so far as
concerns conduct, they admit of being brought under one general
law--that every action is subject to the rule of the "two sovereign
masters, pleasure and pain." It is evident, therefore, that if ethics
is to be connected at all with psychology--if what ought to be
done is in any degree what can be done--the end of conduct must be
hedonistic. The psychological fact cannot indeed be without more ado
turned into a moral imperative. Yet this much may be admitted, that
if this interpretation of action leaves room for ethics at all, the
end prescribed can be nothing else than pleasure, or the avoidance of
pain.
[Sidenote: (_a_) no logical connection with utilitarianism;]
The question, therefore, was how to determine the pleasure which
is to be sought? And I have tried to show, in the chapter just
concluded, that utilitarianism does not admit of being logically
arrived at from this point of view. It may indeed, under certain
circumstances,[67] be the guide of political or social enactments;
but these can only be made to bear upon the conduct of individuals
by the sanctions which the State or Society has at its command. The
individual can have as his maxim of conduct an end which corresponds
with utilitarianism in two events only: when he is so constituted
as to find his pleasure in the greatest aggregate pleasure of
mankind, or when the political and social sanctions are so complete
and searching as to make his individual interest and the collective
interest coincide. The former event is unfortunately too rare to be
taken into account in establishing a theory; the latter would imply
an interference with individual liberty so impracticable that it
is not contemplated even in the most comprehensive of socialistic
schemes.
[Sidenote: (_b_) admits of rational egoism]
[Sidenote: only under impossible conditions.]
Hedonism in psychology, therefore, means egoism in ethics. But
even this theory, as the previous chapter has shown, has its own
difficulties to meet. The antagonism of individual and universal has
not yet been got rid of. The difficulty is no longer caused by the
conflict between one man and his neighbours: it is the difference
between the feeling and action of a moment, and the sum of feelings
and actions which makes up a lifetime. It is true that, if we
admit that pleasure is the only thing worth pursuing, and that by
"pleasure" a man means "his own pleasure," there is so far no reason
for preferring the pleasure of one moment to that of another, except
as more certain or of greater amount or degree;[68] but this is to
start with ascribing a value to pleasure, and not with the simple
fact that pleasure is desired. If psychological hedonism is our
starting-point--and we give to the theory the interpretation that
has the greatest verisimilitude--it is the greatest present pleasure
that rules. And, although the man of reflection will no doubt attempt
to estimate the future pleasure at its true value in comparison
with the pleasure actually present, this can never have full effect
upon his will. It has been shown, indeed, that the realisation of
egoistic hedonism is not merely unattainable from the point of view
of psychological hedonism, but that it would involve conditions
inconsistent with the nature of desire.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Professor Bain distinguishes with greater clearness than his
predecessors, first, legal duty, or that the contravention of which
is punished by the ministers of the state; secondly, moral duty,
enforced by the unofficial punishment of social disapprobation; and
thirdly, the conduct which society leaves to individual choice,
without censuring either its commission or omission. Moral duty is
further distinguished by him from the meritorious, or conduct which
society encourages by approval, without censuring its omission.
[32] Mr Gurney's attempt (Mind, vii. 349 ff.) to rationalise the
utilitarian "ought" depends upon the assumption that the individual
feels a desire (not only for his own, but) for other people's
pleasure (p. 352). From the point of view of the psychological
hedonist, however, this desire is only secondary and derivative,
depending upon the fact that it increases the pleasure of the
subject. "Your pleasure," the psychological hedonist would say,
"is desired by me _quâ_ my pleasure." If, on the other hand, it is
admitted that the individual has other ends than his own pleasure,
there seems no ground in psychological fact for limiting these ends
to something aimed at because pleasurable to others. From this point
of view the first step in the establishment of an ethical theory
would be an attempt to find a principle of unity in the various ends
actually aimed at by individuals, and recognised by them as "good."
This is made by Professor Sidgwick, who, while allowing that "it is
possible to hold that the objective relations of conscious minds
which we call cognition of Truth, contemplation of Beauty, Freedom of
action, &c., are good, independently of the pleasures that we derive
from them," maintains that "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 conscious
(or sentient) beings" (Methods of Ethics, iii. xiv. 3, 3d ed., p.
398). But Mr Sidgwick's Utilitarianism depends on a Rational view of
human nature which is beyond the scope of the present discussion. See
below, p. 74.
[33] Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. iii. § 1; Works, i.
14.
[34] As Paley put it, with characteristic plainness of statement, "We
can be obliged to nothing, but what we ourselves are to gain or lose
something by."--Moral and Political Philosophy, book ii. chap. ii.
[35] Cf. Bain, Emotions, p. 264: "I consider that the proper
meaning or import of these terms [Morality, Duty, Obligation, or
Right] refers to the class of actions enforced by the sanction of
_punishment_."
[36] Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. xix.
(xvii.), § 9 ff; Works, i. 144 ff.
[37] Ibid., § 20, p. 148.
[38] Fragment on Government, chap. v.; Works, i. 293. Cf. Principles
of Morals and Legislation, ch. iii. § 5, p. 14, where the Moral
Sanction is said to proceed from "such _chance_ persons in the
community as the person in question may happen in the course of his
life to have concerns with."
[39] Bentham, Fragment on Government, _loc. cit._
[40] Works, xi. 95; cf. J. Grote, Utilitarian Philosophy, p. 137.
[41] Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. xix. (xvii.), § 7 ff.
[42] _Loc. cit._, § 8, p. 144.
[43] "Ought" is inappropriate here according to Bentham's principles,
since there is no question of punishment inflicted by a political or
social or religious superior.
[44] _Loc. cit._, § 20, p. 148.
[45] Moral and Political Philosophy, book ii. chap. iii.
[46] This is clearly recognised by Bentham: "The _actual_ end [as
distinguished from the right and proper end] of government is,"
he says, "in every political community, the greatest happiness of
those, whether one or many, by whom the powers of government are
exercised."--Constitutional Code, book i., Introd., § 2; Works, ix. 5.
[47] The Emotions and the Will, p. 264.
[48] Cf. Bain, The Emotions and the Will, p. 287. Professor Bain says
(Emotions, p. 276 n.), "we ought to have a written code of public
morality, or of the duties imposed by society, over and above what
parliament imposes, and this should not be a loosely written moral
treatise, but a strict enumeration of what society requires under
pain of punishment by excommunication or otherwise,--the genuine
offences that are not passed over." This would certainly be very
desirable, were it not from the nature of the case impracticable.
Popular judgment as to a man's conduct,--what society imposes,--is
one of the things most difficult to predict: it is under the
influence of most heterogeneous causes, personal, industrial,
religious, political, &c. I do not think, for instance, that any one
could safely undertake to describe exactly the kind of actions which
will infallibly call forth the censure of British public opinion, or
that of the smaller and intersecting groups into which society is
divided.
[49] Emotions, p. 288.
[50] I have spoken, for simplicity's sake, as if there were two kinds
of pleasure easily distinguishable. But the question is really much
more complicated.
[51] Utilitarianism, p. 57.
[52] Ibid., p. 53.
[53] Utilitarianism, p. 46. But no statement of the sociality of man
could be more explicit or satisfactory than that of Butler, Sermons,
i.
[54] Utilitarianism, p. 48.
[55] Fragments on Ethical Subjects (1876), p. 6.
[56] The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed., p. 295.
[57] Ibid., p. 111; cf. Mind, viii. 55: "The important exceptions to
the law of Pleasure and Pain are (1) Fixed Ideas, (2) Habits, and (3)
Disinterested action for others."
[58] Emotions, p. 438.
[59] Emotions, p. 121.
[60] Ibid., p. 271 ff.
[61] Ibid., p. 273.
[62] Ibid., p. 264.
[63] Fragments on Ethical Subjects, p. 8 f.
[64] Ancient Law, 8th ed., p. 93.
[65] Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. ii. § 14 n.
[66] The ambiguity of the phrase is explained in an interesting
way in Sir H. Maine's account of the change from its juridical to
a political or ethical meaning. In some writers it seems to have a
third and still different signification. We must thus distinguish
(1) the juridical meaning, originating in the Roman "law common to
all nations," which had arisen through the "constant _levelling_ or
removal of irregularities which went on wherever the prætorian system
was applied to the cases of foreign litigants," modified subsequently
by the Greek conception of ἰσότης (~isotês~). (2) The political
meaning, that all men ought to be equal, arose from the preceding.
But its notion of "ought" seems often to depend on an idea of the
constitution of nature according to which all men are actually born
equal--not only in rights, soon to be obscured by human convention,
but also in power or faculty, afterwards unequally developed by
education. Hence (3) the natural meaning. The doctrines of evolution
and heredity have made this view seem as strange to us now as it
would have done to the Romans from whom it was illegitimately
derived. Yet at one time it seems to have been assumed, almost
without question, that there is but little difference in the natural
endowments of different men. This assumption lay at the basis of
Hobbes's political theory--Leviathan, I. xiii. p. 60,--was stated
in a more guarded form by Locke--On Education, § 1; Works, ed. of
1824, i. 6,--and adopted almost without qualification by Helvétius,
who, carrying out Locke's metaphor of the soul as, at birth, a
"tabula rasa," afterwards written over with the pen of experience,
says: "Quintilien, Locke, et moi, disons: L'inégalité des esprits
est l'effet d'une cause connue, et cette cause est la différence de
l'éducation"--the causes of the existing inequality being afterwards
stated as twofold: first, the difference of environment, which may be
called chance; and secondly, the difference of strength in the desire
for instruction.--De l'homme, II. i., III. i., IV. xxii.; Œuvres, ii.
71, 91, 280. (Quintilian's statement, however, is even more guarded
than Locke's. Cf. Opera, ed. Spalding, i. 47.)
[67] That is, when (1) the legislature accurately expresses
the average feeling of all the members of the State; or (2)
the legislators happen to be fully intelligent people in whom
"selfishness" has taken the shape of benevolence.
[68] Although, as is well known, propinquity was held by Bentham to
be an independent ground of distinction and preference.--Principles
of Morals and Legislation, chap. iv, sect. 2.
CHAPTER IV.
MORAL SENTIMENT.
[Sidenote: 1. A uniform theory such as psychological hedonism]
Psychological hedonism possesses the merit of offering a simple and
uniform theory of mental action. It may admit conflicting accounts of
the kinds of action and sufferance which actually give men pleasure
and pain,--a point on which, for example, Hobbes and J. S. Mill
differ widely. But it has one general formula for the relation of
feeling to action, which has been precise and clear enough to attract
many psychologists. The ethical consequences of the theory have,
indeed, turned out--if the argument of the preceding chapters is
valid--to be neither so obvious nor so satisfactory as its adherents
have commonly supposed. But it must nevertheless be admitted that, if
psychology shows pleasure to be, as a matter of fact, the constant
end of action, it will be useless--even if it is not impossible--for
ethics to prescribe any other end.
[Sidenote: not supplied by the opponents of ethical hedonism,]
The opponents of ethical hedonism have thus uniformly insisted that
the theory which makes pleasure the end and motive of all conscious
activity is imperfect; and this psychological question has been the
battle-field of many of the controversies, at any rate, of English
ethics. Psychological hedonism has not, however, been confronted by
the English moralists with an opposed theory of equal simplicity,
nor can the controversy be said to have led to a thorough analysis
of action. The psychological investigation has, in most cases,
been carried no farther than the ethical interests at stake seemed
to require; and the predominance of these interests has perhaps
prevented the inquiry from being carried out with complete freedom
from preconception on either side.
A uniform theory under which our various particular desires might
be brought may, indeed, be said to have been suggested by Butler.
He meets the hedonistic proposition that all desire is for personal
pleasure, by the doctrine that no particular desire has pleasure as
its end, since all pleasure presupposes a previous desire in the
satisfaction of which it consists.[69] This theory, which may have
been derived from Plato,[70] and was afterwards used by Schopenhauer
to prove the negative nature of pleasure and consequent worthlessness
of life, is, however, a generalisation which cannot be made to
include the whole facts to be taken account of.[71] Many pleasures
occur independently of any precedent desire. And what Butler had
to show--and was really concerned to show--was that desire was not
exclusively directed to objects thus independently found to be
pleasurable: the contradictory, that is to say, and not the contrary,
of psychological hedonism.
[Sidenote: in maintaining the reality of non-hedonistic activity.]
For this purpose Butler pointed to the whole class of affections
which, although they may also tend to private interest, have an
immediate reference to the good of others; and, in addition to
these, he contended for an original principle of benevolence towards
others in human nature, as well as of self-love or care for one's
own interests and happiness. This latter, he held, so far from being
the sole principle of action, implied the existence of a number of
particular passions and affections, directed immediately to external
objects--the satisfaction of these desires giving pleasure, though
pleasure was not the end they aimed at. Voluntary action is thus not
brought under any common rubric; for, at the same time that the calm
principle of self-love is directed to the agent's greatest pleasure,
the object of hunger, for example, is said to be not pleasure but
food, that of benevolence not personal pleasure but the good of
others.
[Sidenote: Non-hedonistic action generalised by Herbart,]
[Sidenote: from the tendency of ideas to self-realisation.]
The attempt to give unity to the non-hedonistic view of desire has
come from a different quarter. Uninfluenced by the exigencies of
ethical controversy, which formed the entire motive of Butler's
investigation, Herbart and his school have worked out a theory of
desire, which has many points of comparison with that of Butler.
However much they may differ from the English moralist--of whose
existence they are mostly ignorant--they are at one with him in
rejecting the maxim of psychological hedonism, _nihil appetimus nisi
sub specie boni_; and their differences from him are largely due
to their having gone further in their analysis of the facts, and
endeavoured to bring them under a general principle.
Butler's view of the object of desire is distinguished from the
Herbartian chiefly in two respects. In the first place, he identifies
that object with the external or real thing, whereas Herbart is
careful to point out that it is a presentation or idea. In the
second place, while Butler is content to postulate an original
tendency of our nature towards certain objects, Herbart attempts
to get behind this tendency, and explain the phenomena of striving
from the interaction of presentations. Over and above the ordinary
hypothesis of natural realism, Butler's theory implies a sort of
pre-established harmony between our active tendencies and things
outside the mind, in virtue of which some of these things do, and
some do not, attract our desires. Herbart, on the other hand,
attempts nothing less than a complete genetic account of mental
phenomena, explaining the facts of presentation, desire, and feeling
through "the persistence of presentation in consciousness and their
rise into clearer consciousness."[72] The phenomena of desire and
feeling are both accounted for by this mechanism of impelling and
inhibiting forces.[73]
[Sidenote: This tendency recognised in the doctrine of fixed ideas]
It would be beyond the scope of this Essay to examine the above view
of the active side of mental phenomena. For present purposes it is
enough to draw attention to the fact that the common deduction of
the phenomena of desire and will from the feelings of pleasure and
pain is not the only "scientific" theory of human action, and that
it is rejected on its merits by writers who have no hankering after
what the psychological hedonist would call the mystical element of
free-will. It is of interest to note, too, that Professor Bain,
in whose works the traditions of psychological hedonism find
their most careful expression, has modified the doctrine so as
to allow of desire of pleasure and avoidance of pain explaining
less than had been formerly required of them. Outside the circle
of hedonistically-determined motives, he recognises the influence
of the presentation or idea as a self-realising element in the
individual consciousness, apart from its pleasurable or painful
characteristics.[74] Those "fixed ideas," as Mr Bain calls them,
tend both to persist in the mind, and to project themselves into
action, independently of pleasure and pain--or at least with a force
which is out of proportion to the pleasure they bring. As has been
already seen, it is by means of this doctrine that he explains "the
great fact of our nature denominated sympathy, fellow-feeling, pity,
compassion, disinterestedness."[75] To the same category belongs
"much of the ambition and the aspirations of human beings.... A
certain notion--say of power, wealth, grandeur--has fixed itself in
our mind and keeps a persistent hold there." It is asserted, indeed,
that the action of such fixed ideas "perverts the regular operation
of the will which would lead us to renounce whatever is hopeless or
not worth the cost." And, certainly, their admission among mental
phenomena seems to imply the superposition of a new theory of action
upon the old theory of psychological hedonism. There is no disguising
the importance of the modification thus introduced. The name "fixed
idea" is misleading if it be taken to imply that persistency and
tendency to action are properties belonging to a certain class of
ideas only. Mr Bain's doctrine is founded on the hypothesis of the
identity of the nervous centres which function in representation
and in sensation, and is therefore valid of all representations
or ideas. The characteristics of persistency, and of tendency to
action, are therefore normal characteristics of presentations,
though they may belong in an unusual degree to some ideas from
the relation these hold to the dominant cluster of ideas in the
individual consciousness. And if we thus attribute to all ideas
without exception the tendency to self-realisation, and recognise--as
we must--the relation of mutual assistance or inhibition which ideas
bear to one another in virtue of their being "presented" to the same
subject, we have granted the material out of which, in Herbart's
skilful "Mechanik des Geistes," the phenomena of feeling and desire
are woven.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 2. The non-hedonistic theory of action.]
The view of individual human nature, which holds that all its desires
are not directed to personal pleasure, thus claims consideration.
With its less restricted theory of action, this doctrine may
seem to offer a larger means of determining the appropriate end
of human conduct. In particular, the suggestion naturally occurs
that the ethical end will, on this theory, be something else than
pleasure.[76] But there is, nevertheless, no contradiction in
holding--as Mr Sidgwick does--that although other objects than
pleasure are actually desired, there is nothing else which can be
held to be ultimately desirable, or the tendency to which can be said
to have moral worth.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of unifying the various impulses it implies,]
The ethical barrenness of psychological hedonism has been seen to
result from its narrow and inflexible view of human nature. But
theories such as those now to be considered have, in an ethical
regard, to overcome a difficulty of another kind in the variety of
impulses which they admit upon the stage. The "objects" to which
these impulses or desires relate have as yet received no further
characterisation than that they are objects of desire. And the
difficulty of finding a principle by which some order of precedence
or value amongst them may be determined is just, in other words, the
difficulty of obtaining a moral standard.
[Sidenote: so as to determine a standard for action.]
The question does not ordinarily arise in the above form, because
the moral standard is commonly taken for granted, and the various
impulses, affections, and dispositions are made to derive their
ethical rank from their relation to that standard. But this method is
obviously inappropriate when the standard is still to be ascertained,
its determination being the object of inquiry. And it may seem that
the constitution of man contains in itself a means of distinguishing
the moral value of its various elements, or of the actions to which
they lead, and thus furnishing a moral standard or end for conduct.
This purpose seems to have been to some extent, though not quite
clearly, kept in view by the writers who, in last century, contended
against the selfish theory which had been so crudely enunciated by
Hobbes. They attempted to show that selfishness was not the only, nor
even the most prominent, principle of action; and, from the system of
diverse principles which they found implanted in human nature, they
endeavoured to work out a theory of conduct.
[Sidenote: This attempted by the English moralists,]
[Sidenote: but along with a utilitarian criterion,]
[Sidenote: and with egoistic arguments.]
Especially amongst the later English moralists--Adam Smith, for
instance--the question of the end or standard came almost to drop
out of sight in the midst of the controversy regarding the nature
of the "moral sense" or "moral faculty"--the way, that is, in which
we become aware of the difference between right and wrong. But in
Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson--the writers who formulated this
doctrine of the moral sense--the attempt is made to connect a theory
of the criterion of morality with the source of our knowledge of it.
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson both looked upon social welfare or the
general happiness as the end of moral conduct, and the criterion in
accordance with which moral character is ascribed to actions; at the
same time that their main contention was for the immediateness of the
"sense" by which we perceive these moral qualities. And they sought
to establish the connection of the two doctrines by means of the
benevolent feelings--which they held to be original and independent
of private interest--and their immediate approval by the reflex or
moral sense of the individual man. Similar ideas appear in Butler, at
the same time that he tended to make conscience or the moral sense
the standard of morality, as well as the source of our knowledge of
it. They, as well as he, however, found it necessary to come back
from the social or political to the individual point of view. Even
if their conception of "the good" was not evolved from the nature
of the individual man, their philosophical standpoint required them
to leave broader ground, and show it to be the individual's natural
goal. And in doing this, their constant tendency is to revert to
egoistic arguments--demonstrating the complete harmony of virtue and
interest, or attempting to prove to the individual that his own
happiness consists in the exercise of the social affections. Thus
Shaftesbury tries to show, by an empirical collection of results,
that to have the "natural" (or social) affections too weak, or the
private affections too strong, is a source of misery,[77] as well as
the chief source of vice; and that, largely owing to the pleasure of
virtuous action, it is "to the private interest and good of every
one to work to the general good."[78] Hutcheson, again, devotes a
large portion of his most mature work to allay the suspicion "that in
following the impulse of our kind affections and the moral faculty
we are counteracting our interests, and abandoning what may be of
more consequence to our happiness than either this self-approbation
or the applauses of others;"[79] while Butler, referring to virtuous
conduct, says, in a well-known passage, that "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."[80] Opposed as the whole school were to
the selfish theory of human action, they never spoke of any sacrifice
of private happiness as a thing to be looked for, or in any way taken
into account, in conduct which is the result of calm deliberation.
It is difficult, therefore, to avoid the judgment passed upon them
by Schleiermacher, that "the English school of Shaftesbury, with all
their talk about virtue, are really given up to pleasure."[81]
[Sidenote: 3. Ethics may be made to depend on the moral sense.]
At the same time, their writings constantly suggest a theory of
morals which is neither obliged to adopt off-hand a utilitarian
criterion of virtue, nor forced to fall back upon the egoistic
sanctions of personal pleasure and pain. Their psychological theory
points to an ethical doctrine in which pleasure is neither the sole
end of action, nor its sole motive. They do not, indeed, make quite
clear the transition from the psychological to the ethical point
of view; and critics are still fond of confronting Butler with the
objection he anticipated--Why ought I to obey my conscience? The
apparent _petitio principii_ of Butler's answer, Because it is the
law of your nature, is due to the way in which the teleological
standpoint is introduced. The purpose of which (according to Butler)
man is the vehicle or realising organism is spoken of as a law
externally imposed, and deriving its authority, not from its own
nature, but from the nature of its origin.
[Sidenote: Different views of the nature of the moral sense.]
There would seem to be one way only to surmount the difficulty
arising from the variety of impulses of which the nature of man is
made up, and that is by consistently following out the teleological
point of view. But what, the question is, is the final or
comprehensive end to which human nature points amidst this diversity
of objects of striving? The doctrine of the "moral sense" attempts
to answer the question. Now this moral sense may either be regarded
as not itself a separate faculty, but simply an expression for the
harmony of human tendencies; or it may be looked upon as a separate
and superior capacity, which, again, may either be interpreted in
terms of sense, or of the understanding--the former interpretation
leading to its identification with pleasure, the latter to its being
conceived as law.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: (_a_) The harmony of impulses. Shaftesbury's theory.]
These different methods were attempted by the English moralists--the
first, however, to a less extent than the others. But it inspired
much of Shaftesbury's work, though it cannot be said to have been
consistently developed by him. The conflict of impulses in man
was too obvious a fact not to be apparent even in Shaftesbury's
roseate view of life. He recognised, indeed, not only private
or self-affections, promoting the good of the individual, and
"natural" or social affections, which led to the public good, but
also "unnatural affections," which tended to no good whatever.[82]
The reference to consequences is thus made prominent at once.
The last class of affections is condemned outright because of
its infelicific results; while an attempt is made to prove from
experience that the courses of conduct to which the two former lead
coincide. Shaftesbury contended for a real organic union between the
individual and society; but, when he came to establish its nature,
he made it consist in an asserted harmony of interests, while the
obligation to virtue was allowed to rest on its conduciveness to
personal pleasure. He sometimes spoke of virtue as identical with the
harmonious development of the affections of the individual man;[83]
but he expressly defined it as consisting in the individual "having
all his inclinations and affections ... agreeing with the good of
his kind or of that system in which he is included, and of which he
constitutes a part."[84] And the two views can only be connected by
proving that the harmonious development of an individual's affections
will lead to the good of the species: the proof of this depending
on a one-sided summation of consequences. Shaftesbury does, indeed,
throw out the idea that both the self-affections and the "natural" or
social affections become self-destructive when carried out so as to
interfere with one another. But this, again, has only the previous
calculus of the results of conduct to support it. He cannot show
that the contradiction in the conception of a completely solitary
being belongs also to the conception of a judiciously selfish
being. The latter being loses the pleasures of virtuous action;
but perhaps he may gain greater pleasures in their room. He does
not develop his whole nature; but if that nature contains totally
infelicific passions, the development of the whole nature is not to
be recommended.
Thus Shaftesbury is unable to reach a conception of man's nature
as a harmony of impulses just on account of the external point of
view which makes him treat it as an aggregate, though he contends
that it is an organism. His ingenious and subtle account of the
relations between the individual and society does not really go to
the root of the matter, because, after all, it remains a calculus
of the results of action, not an analysis of its nature. And his
view of the affections constituting the individual system leaves
them wanting in the unity of organic connection. An effort is made,
however, to supply this defect by means of the reflex affections
called the "moral sense," to which he ascribes an oversight over the
other affections and their resultant actions. In what way, then, must
we regard the nature of this faculty and the important functions
assigned to it?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: (_b_) A separate faculty. Hutcheson.]
[Sidenote: Two questions regarding it:]
It was left to Shaftesbury's disciple, Francis Hutcheson, to
elaborate with thoroughness this conception of the moral sense as
a separate faculty. Hutcheson did not make any important addition
to the ideas of Shaftesbury and Butler. But he worked them out
more systematically; and in his last work, the 'System of Moral
Philosophy,' the protest against the egoism of Hobbes has found
expression in a complete theory of human nature, in which the
"moral sense" is supreme, and the ends of conduct independent of
self-interest. Hutcheson, too, keeps more closely than either of his
immediate predecessors to the way of looking at human nature which
is spoken of in this volume as "naturalistic." He rejects even more
decidedly than Shaftesbury--much more so than Butler--any creative
function of reason in determining the constitution and direction of
the moral sense.[85] The questions thus arise--(_a_) What is the
moral sense when not regarded as a rational determination of the
ends of conduct? and (_b_) To what determination of ends or other
distinction between right and wrong in action does it lead? On both
these points there is a difference between his early 'Inquiry into
the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue' (1725), and the more
mature 'System,' published in 1755, eight years after his death.
[Sidenote: (α) Nature of this faculty: not reason;]
[Sidenote: at first defined as feeling of pleasure or pain,]
Hutcheson is in earnest with the rejection of reason as a creative
force. The moral sense is not, he says, a source of new ideas.
Its objects are received in the ordinary ways by which, through
"sensation and reflection," we come by our knowledge.[86] But just
as we have a sense of beauty in the forms of sensible objects, so
there is a moral sense given us from which, in the contemplation
of our actions, we derive "still nobler pleasures" than those of
physical sensation. This moral sense is "a determination of our minds
to receive amiable or disagreeable ideas of actions."[87] So far,
therefore, it seems to be simply a pleasure in the contemplation of
certain actions which, we say, have "an immediate goodness." "By
a superior sense," says Hutcheson, "which I call a moral one, we
perceive pleasure in the contemplation of such actions in others,
and are determined to love the agent (and much more do we perceive
pleasure in being conscious of having done such actions ourselves)
without any view of further natural advantage from them."[88] The
significance of this position is easily seen. It is not only meant
to give a criterion of moral action; it is also a short cut to the
conclusion that virtue is for our private interest. The disquieting
suspicion that morality may involve a sacrifice of individual
happiness "must be entirely removed, if we have a moral sense and
public affections, whose gratifications are constituted by nature
our most intense and durable pleasures."[89] The elaborate analysis
of conduct and enumeration of the pleasures which various affections
and actions bring in their train, which Hutcheson gave in his latest
work, were thus unnecessary as long as the position was maintained
that the moral sense is emphatically a pleasure or pain, and that the
pleasures it gives are the most intense and durable we have.
There was only an apparent contradiction in this theory which
placed the test of morality in a pleasure consequent upon moral
action, and yet held that such actions were not performed from
interested motives. In the spirit of Butler's psychology, Hutcheson
contends[90] that virtue is pleasant only because we have a natural
and immediate tendency towards virtuous action; our true motive is
"some determination of our nature to study the good of others;" and
this, although not always immediately pleasant in itself, is yet
succeeded by the calm satisfaction of the moral sense. The real
weakness of Hutcheson's position is the fatal one that he cannot show
that it corresponds with facts; that the pleasures incidental to the
moral sense outweigh all others. Indeed, he defends his opinion in
their favour only, in a way which reminds one of Mill's method in the
'Utilitarianism,' by making every juror stand aside unless he has
pledged himself to morality.[91] It is open to any one, however, to
hold that the pleasures of benevolent action and the "relish" of the
moral sense are not of sufficient hedonistic value to make up for
the restraints they put upon conduct and the enjoyments they oblige
one to forego. Even if this position be not correct, it is merely a
mistake in estimating doubtful quantities. The man who chooses the
smaller pleasure will be the loser by his mistake; but we cannot say
that the selfish man is to blame for not being benevolent, because
the pleasures of benevolence and the moral sense are greatest, any
more than we could blame the benevolent man for not being selfish,
if selfishness should turn out on the whole to leave a greater
hedonistic balance at the individual's credit.
[Sidenote: afterwards spoken of as a judgment,]
[Sidenote: but this judgment allowed to depend on feeling.]
A more objective determination of the moral sense is afterwards given
by Hutcheson. Without professedly changing ground, he ceases to speak
of it as a mere feeling of pleasure, and calls it a judgment of
approbation or disapprobation. "It is," he says,[92] "a natural and
immediate determination to approve certain affections and actions
consequent upon them; or a natural sense of immediate excellence
in them, not referred to any other quality perceivable by our
other senses or by reasoning." Nor is this judgment of approbation
consequent upon the feeling of pleasure the affection or action
produces in us. The action is not "judged good because it gains to
the agent the pleasure of self-approbation, but it gains to him this
pleasure because it was antecedently good, or had that quality which,
by the constitution of this sense, we must approve."[93] But, in
attempting to make clear the nature of this judgment, Hutcheson seems
to return, though not in so many words, to his earlier position.
To seek a basis for the judgment in reason would have been to make
the "moral sense" what Kant afterwards made it, simply practical
reason. This, however, would have been a "metaphysic of ethics"
inconsistent with Hutcheson's whole position. He had always opposed
the narrowly intellectual view of morality in Clarke and Wollaston,
and he had no conception of the function of reason which would admit
of an interpretation of the judgment of approbation by an appeal
to a rational determination, depending upon an idea conceived as
inherent in the human constitution, and to be realised in action.
The judgment, therefore, is referred to a "taste or relish"[94]
for certain affections and actions, and this he takes no pains to
distinguish from pleasure.
The analogy he seeks to draw between the moral sense and our other
powers does not really favour a distinction of it from pleasure. "To
each of our powers," he says, "we seem to have a corresponding taste
or sense, recommending the proper use of it to the agent, and making
him relish or value the like exercise of it by another. This we see
as to the powers of voice, of imitation, designing, or machinery,
motion, reasoning; there is a sense discerning or recommending the
proper exercise of them."[95] That is to say, besides the sense of
hearing, which has to do with sounds, there must needs be another
sense which has to do with our way of hearing sounds; besides the
sense of sight, which has to do with form and colour, there must
needs be another sense which has to do with our way of perceiving
form and colour; and so with every other activity, especially those
which proceed from our "highest powers." A doctrine such as this sets
no limits to the manufacture of additional senses. The whole view of
human nature upon which it proceeds is one of meaningless complexity,
which serves the one good purpose only of showing how much ethics has
suffered from a defective psychology.
The mental objects or presentations which are distinguished from
one another by the difference of their characteristic qualities,
and which we therefore call colours, or sounds, or movements, are
accompanied by varying degrees of pleasurable or painful feeling;
and it is possible to hold that the moral sense is a name for such
feelings following in the train of those complexes of presentations
to which we give the name of actions, or of those other recurring
complexes we call affections. This, practically, was the position
with which Hutcheson started in the 'Inquiry.' Benevolence pleased us
and selfishness pained us; just as the taste of sugar was pleasant,
and that of wormwood disagreeable. Perhaps Hutcheson departed from
this theory, because he saw that if conduct was made a matter of
taste, there would be no sufficient reason for condemning selfishness
any more than an unusual taste. He therefore relinquished, or seems
to have relinquished, the view of the moral sense as a feeling of
pleasure or pain; and under the influence, no doubt, of Butler,
spoke of it as a judgment of approbation or disapprobation. But he
fell back on his original theory by making this judgment depend on
"a taste or relish," which only lends itself to interpretation as a
peculiar feeling of pleasure.
[Sidenote: (β) The objects of the moral sense: first said to be
actions;]
[Sidenote: afterwards to be affections;]
The reflex nature of the moral sense is brought out more distinctly
in the 'System' than in the 'Inquiry.' In his earlier work, Hutcheson
had spoken of it as directly related to _actions_. But it was more
consistent with his maturer thought to regard it as having to do
with mental powers or "affections" in the first instance, and with
actions only indirectly or mediately. "The object of this sense,"
he says,[96] "is not any external motion or action, but the inward
affections or dispositions;" and this is made by him to account for
the discrepancy which the deliverances of the moral sense show in
regard to actions. It "seems ever to approve and condemn uniformly
the same immediate objects, the same affections and dispositions;
though we reason very differently about the actions which evidence
certain dispositions or their contraries." This distinction is
applied with unlimited confidence in its efficacy. By means of it
he would explain the most fundamental differences in the moral code
of men and nations. Thus people unacquainted with the industrial
improvements which give the character of permanence to property,
may "see no harm in depriving men of their artificial acquisitions
and stores beyond their present use,"--that is to say, "no evil may
appear in theft."[97]
But it is more important in another respect; for it enables the
author to avoid the difficulty of finding any principle according
to which the moral sense may be related to the empirical content of
action. As long as the moral sense was simply spoken of as a feeling
of pleasure, it could be conveniently regarded as the consequent
of external actions. But if it is an internal sense distinct from
pleasure, it is easier to relate it to what he calls our internal
powers or affections than to action. The moral sense, then, is to
be the regulator of all our powers; and by means of it Hutcheson
attempts to reduce human nature to a scale of morality.
[Sidenote: but its grounds of preference]
[Sidenote: mainly depend not on the nature of the affection, but on
its objects.]
It is to be noted that, in the classification he offers,[98]
what are commonly called the virtues of candour, veracity, &c.,
are not accounted virtues at all, but only immediately connected
with virtuous affections: these are identified with the "kind" or
benevolent affections, directed to the happiness of sentient beings.
Within the latter there are two grounds of preference: the deliberate
affections are preferred to the passionate; those which are more
extensive in the range of their objects to the less extensive.
With regard to the former ground of preference, the "moral sense"
of the community has perhaps undergone some modification since
Hutcheson's time, and looks upon enthusiasm with less suspicion than
it formerly did. The other ground of preference ascribed to the
moral sense refers not so much to the affection itself--which is
the direct or immediate object of the moral sense--as to the way in
which the affection is applied, the number of the objects to which
it is directed. The affection of benevolence is the same in nature
whether its object be wide or restricted; though difference in this
respect profoundly influences the actions to which it leads. The
object approved or most approved by the moral sense is therefore,
according to Hutcheson, utilitarian conduct, or rather, as he would
say, the calm disposition leading thereto.[99] In this way he obtains
a principle for determining the morality of actions; but only through
the arbitrary assertion that this principle is immediately approved
by the moral sense. The connection of the moral sense with an object
such as universal benevolence could only be made out by showing
a rational, or at any rate an organic union between individual
sentiment and social wellbeing; and Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury,
has no conception of attempting this in any other way than the
traditional one of exhibiting the personal advantages of benevolent
conduct, and the disadvantages that accompany selfishness.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: (_c_) Third view of the moral sense.]
[Sidenote: Butler.]
[Sidenote: Conscience an authoritative law,]
Both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson were often led astray by a tendency
to interpret facts as they wished them to be, rather than as they
were. Their view of the consequences of action was coloured by their
optimism. Butler, too, in spite of the difference in his general
attitude to the value of human life, was not altogether free from
a similar error. He thinks that Shaftesbury "has shown beyond all
contradiction that virtue is naturally the interest of happiness,
and vice the misery of such a creature as man."[100] But, in view of
particular exceptions, or of any one not being convinced of "this
happy tendency of virtue," he thinks it necessary to emphasise the
"natural authority of the principle of reflection." Conscience is,
he holds, a part of our inward nature; but it differs from the other
parts of our nature inasmuch as it is not related immediately to an
external object, but to the actions dealing with such objects, and
to the dispositions leading to those actions. It is a principle of
"reflex approbation or disapprobation," which is said to have equal
respect to both public and private good. This tendency, however,
would seem to be ascertained empirically. The deliverances of
conscience are immediate judgments as to the morality of actions and
affections (for Butler speaks of it as referring to both equally);
and its reference to the ends which those actions or the exercise of
these affections may ultimately tend to would, therefore, seem to be
indirect.[101] Butler was careful, moreover, not to speak of it as
an æsthetic or sensitive faculty, but as a judgment. It is not a
feeling of pleasure, but the revelation of law.
[Sidenote: and the criterion of morality.]
The approval of conscience is thus made the criterion of morality.
But a difficulty arises as to the way in which we are to regard the
authority which conscience is said to carry along with it. Butler's
utterances here commonly imply a teleological reference to an end
implanted in human nature, and to be discovered by observing that
nature--the realisation of the end being obligatory, because it is
shown to be the purpose which the author of nature had in view in
making man as he is.[102] The authority of conscience thus seems to
be derived from the divine purpose which it displays. It carries
within itself a claim to obedience; but the justification of this
claim depends on a theological basis. And hence the question of
the nature and origin of conscience is at once raised, in order to
determine the legitimacy of its claim to be, rather than any other
part of our constitution, a divinely-implanted guide.
[Sidenote: Teleological and jural views not reconciled, nor fully
developed.]
But more than one current of thought runs through Butler's ethical
treatise. The theological reference is sometimes so used as to
make the obligation to morality, and even the nature of morality,
depend on the will of God: though hardly according to Paley's crude
method of seeking in the external revelation of the divine command
a means of uniting the divergent interests of the individual and
of society. In general, Butler's ruling idea is the idea of the
system or unity of human nature, for which he was largely indebted
to Shaftesbury's revival of the Platonic conception. Conscience is
regarded by him as the expression of this unity. But its nature is
never more deeply probed. Its deliverances are justified now by
its supernatural mission, and now by the more prosaic fact that it
leads to our individual interest[103]--at any rate, "if we take in
the future"--while it could not be recommended as a guide if it
did not.[104] On one side, therefore, Butler tends to a form of
theological utilitarianism, such as was common in his own day, and
was afterwards formulated by Paley.[105] On the other hand, his
ethics more naturally allies itself with a different theory, in which
the moral law is conceived as having its source in practical reason,
and the naturalistic basis of ethics is definitely abandoned.
[Sidenote: 4. The ethics of moral sentiment a mediating theory;]
[Sidenote: explanation of its facts attempted by theory of evolution.]
On the whole, it would appear that the psychological ethics worked
out by Shaftesbury and his school occupies an insecure position
between the view discussed in the two preceding chapters and that
which ascribes to reason a function in the formation of objects of
desire. Shaftesbury and his followers tried to strike out a middle
course between the theory that ends of action may be determined by
reason, and that which looks upon all desires as being desires for
objects as pleasurable. They made the attempt to found a system of
ethics on human nature, and they held that that nature could not be
accounted for by the simple psychological analysis of the Epicurean
school as then represented by Hobbes. On the other hand, they did
not see their way to adopt the "rational" ethics only known to them
in the abstract form it had received at the hands of Clarke and
Wollaston. But their own theory of human nature requires a principle
of harmony and co-ordination among the various impulses which they
were unable to give a satisfactory account of. It may seem, however,
that the idea of the development of man with which we are now
familiar, may enable us to overcome the difficulties which formerly
appeared insurmountable--showing the unity of human nature, and the
tendency of its activity. The general course of evolution, to which
all life has been subject, is thought to have brought about a harmony
between individual and social feelings, as well as between individual
and social interests, and thus to have removed the obstacles in
the way of founding morality on the basis of Naturalism. It is,
therefore, of importance to examine with care the ethical bearings of
the theory of evolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] "The very idea of an interested pursuit necessarily presupposes
particular passions or appetites; since the very idea of interest or
happiness consists in this, that an appetite or affection enjoys its
object."--Sermons, Pref.; cf. Serm. xi.
[70] Phil., 31 ff.; cf. Gorg., 495 f.; Rep., ix. 585.
[71] Cf. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, I. iv. 2, 3d ed., p. 44.
[72] Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, § 104, Werke, vi. 74;
cf. Waitz, Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft, § 40, p.
418: "It is not difficult to recognise the basis of desire in the
presentations brought forward by reproduction, and, at the same time,
held back by an inhibition."
[73] With Herbart's doctrine may be compared Mr H. Spencer's view
of the genesis of feeling and voluntary action, Principles of
Psychology, 2d ed., part iv. chaps. viii. and ix.
[74] Cf. note to James Mill's Analysis, ii. 383 f.
[75] The Senses and the Intellect, 3d ed., p. 344; cf. Mental and
Moral Science, pp. 90, 91.
[76] "If there be any principles or affections in the mind of man
distinct from self-love, that the things those principles tend
towards, or the objects of those affections are, each of them in
themselves eligible to be pursued upon its own account, and to be
rested in as an end, is implied in the very idea of such principle or
affection."--Butler, Sermons, Pref.
[77] Inquiry concerning Virtue, II. i. 3.
[78] Ibid., II. ii., conclusion.
[79] System of Moral Philosophy, i. 99.
[80] Sermons, xi.
[81] Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803), p. 54.
[82] Inquiry, II. i. 3.
[83] Inquiry, II. i. 3; II. ii. 2.
[84] Ibid., II. i. 1.
[85] "What is Reason but that sagacity we have in prosecuting any
end? The ultimate end proposed by the common moralists is the
happiness of the agent himself, and this certainly he is determined
to pursue from instinct. Now may not another instinct towards the
public, or the good of others, be as proper a principle of virtue as
the instinct toward private happiness?"--Hutcheson, Inquiry, p. 115.
[86] Cf. System, i. 97; Inquiry, p. 124.
[87] Inquiry, p. 124.
[88] Ibid., p. 106.
[89] Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections,
with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728), p. xix.
[90] Cf. Inquiry, p. 140 ff.
[91] Introduction to Moral Philosophy, translated from the Latin, 2d
ed., 1753, p. 43; cf. Essay on the Passions and Affections, &c., p.
128.
[92] System, i. 58.
[93] System, i. 53.
[94] Ibid., i. 59.
[95] System, i. 59.
[96] System, i. 97.
[97] System, i. 93.
[98] System, i. 68 ff. With this may be compared the elaborate
classification of motives, according to their moral quality, in Dr
Martineau's 'Types of Ethical Theory,' ii. 176 ff.
[99] System, i. 50.
[100] Sermons, Pref.
[101] Although it is not "at all doubtful in the general, what course
of action this faculty or practical discerning power within us,
approves.... It is ... justice, veracity, and regard to the common
good."--Dissertation on Virtue.
[102] Sermons, ii. iii.
[103] Sermons, iii. v.
[104] Ibid., xi.
[105] Cf. Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, i. 192.
PART II.
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.