For a long time these three sets of restraints, which their

correlative sanctions, though becoming separate in consciousness,

remain co-extensive, and do so because they mostly refer to one

end--success in war. The duty of blood-revenge is insisted on even

while yet nothing to be called social organization exists. As the

chief gains predominance, the killing of enemies becomes a political

duty; and as the anger of the dead chief comes to be dreaded, the

killing of enemies becomes a religious duty. Loyalty to the ruler while

he lives and after he dies is increasingly shown by holding life at

his disposal for purposes of war. The earliest enacted punishments

are those for insubordination and for breaches of observances which

express subordination--all of them militant in origin. While the divine

injunctions, originally traditions of the dead king's will, mainly

refer to the destruction of peoples with whom he was at enmity, and

divine anger or approval are conceived as determined by the degrees in

which subjection to him is shown, directly by worship and indirectly by

fulfilling these injunctions. The Fijian, who is said on entering the

other world to commend himself by narrating his successes in battle,

and who, when alive, is described as sometimes greatly distressed if he

thinks he has not killed enemies enough to please his gods, shows us

the resulting ideas and feelings, and reminds us of kindred ideas and

feelings betrayed by ancient races.

To all which add that the control of social opinion, besides being

directly exercised, as in the earliest stage, by praise of the brave

and blame of the cowardly, comes to be indirectly exercised with a

kindred general effect by applause of loyalty to the ruler and piety

to the god. So that the three differentiated forms of control which

grow up along with militant organization and action, while enforcing

kindred restraints and incentives, also enforce one another; and their

separate and joint disciplines have the common character that they

involve the sacrifice of immediate special benefits to obtain more

distant and general benefits.

At the same time there have been developing under the same three

sanctions, restraints and incentives of another order, similarly

characterized by subordination of the proximate to the remote. Joint

aggressions upon men outside the society cannot prosper if there

are many aggressions of man on man within the society. War implies

co-operation; and co-operation is prevented by antagonisms among those

who are to co-operate. We saw that in the primitive ungoverned group,

the main check on immediate satisfaction of his desires by each man,

is the fear of other men's vengeance if they are injured by taking the

satisfaction; and through early stages of social development this dread

of retaliation continues to be the chief motive to such forbearance

as exists. But though long after political authority has become

established the taking of personal satisfaction for injuries persists,

the growth of political authority gradually checks it. The fact that

success in war is endangered if his followers fight among themselves,

forces itself on the attention of the ruler. He has a strong motive

for restraining quarrels, and therefore for preventing the aggressions

which cause quarrels; and as his power becomes greater he forbids the

aggressions and inflicts punishments for disobedience. Presently,

political restraints of this class, like those of the preceding class,

are enforced by religious restraints. The sagacious chief, succeeding

in war partly because he thus enforces order among his followers,

leaves behind him a tradition of the commands he habitually gave. Dread

of his ghost tends to produce regard for these commands; and they

eventually acquire sacredness. With further social evolution come, in

like manner, further interdicts, checking aggressions of less serious

kinds; until eventually there grows up a body of civil laws. And then,

in the way shown, arise beliefs concerning the divine disapproval

of these minor, as well as of the major, civil offences: ending,

occasionally, in a set of religious injunctions harmonizing with,

and enforcing, the political injunctions; while simultaneously there

develops, as before, a social sanction for these rules of internal

conduct, strengthening the political and religious sanctions.

But now observe that while these three controls, political, religious,

and social, severally lead men to subordinate proximate satisfactions

to remote satisfactions; and while they are in this respect like

the moral control, which habitually requires the subjection of

simple presentative feelings to complex representative feelings and

postponement of present to future; yet they do not constitute the moral

control, but are only preparatory to it--are controls within which the

moral control evolves. The command of the political ruler is at first

obeyed, not because of its perceived rectitude, but simply because

it is his command, which there will be a penalty for disobeying. The

check is not a mental representation of the evil consequences which

the forbidden act will, in the nature of things, cause: but it is a

mental representation of the factitious evil consequences. Down to our

own time we trace in legal phrases, the original doctrine that the

aggression of one citizen on another is wrong, and will be punished,

not so much because of the injury done him, as because of the implied

disregard of the king's will. Similarly, the sinfulness of breaking

a divine injunction was universally at one time, and is still by

many, held to consist in the disobedience to God, rather than in the

deliberate entailing of injury; and even now it is a common belief

that acts are right only if performed in conscious fulfillment of the

divine will: nay, are even wrong if otherwise performed. The like

holds, too, with that further control exercised by public opinion. On

listening to the remarks made respecting conformity to social rules, it

is noticeable that breach of them is condemned not so much because of

any essential impropriety as because the world's authority is ignored.

How imperfectly the truly moral control is even now differentiated

from these controls within which it has been evolving, we see in the

fact that the systems of morality criticized at the outset, severally

identify moral control with one or other of them. For moralists of

one class derive moral rules from the commands of a supreme political

power. Those of another class recognize no other origin for them than

the revealed divine will. And though men who take social prescription

for their guide do not formulate their doctrine, yet the belief,

frequently betrayed, that conduct which society permits is not

blameworthy, implies that there are those who think right and wrong can

be made such by public opinion.

Before taking a further step we must put together the results of this

analysis. The essential truths to be carried with us, respecting these

three forms of external control to which the social unit is subject,

are these: First, that they have evolved with the evolution of society,

as means to social self-preservation, necessary under the conditions;

and that, by implication, they are in the main congruous with one

another. Second, that the correlative internal restraints generated

in the social unit are representations of remote results which are

incidental rather than necessary--a legal penalty, a supernatural

punishment, a social reprobation. Third, that these results, simpler

and more directly wrought by personal agencies, can be more vividly

conceived than can the results which, in the course of things, actions

naturally entail; and the conceptions of them are, therefore, more

potent over undeveloped minds. Fourth, that as with the restraints thus

generated is always joined the thought of external coercion, there

arises the notion of obligation; which so becomes habitually associated

with the surrender of immediate special benefits for the sake of

distant and general benefits. Fifth, that the moral control corresponds

in large measure with the three controls thus originating, in respect

of its injunctions; and corresponds, too, in the general nature of the

mental processes producing conformity to those injunctions; but differs

in their special nature.

§ 45. For now we are prepared to see that the restraints, properly

distinguished as moral, are unlike these restraints out of which

they evolve, and with which they are long confounded, in this--they

refer not to the extrinsic effects of actions but to their intrinsic

effects. The truly moral deterrent from murder is not constituted by

a representation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation

of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation of the

horror and hatred excited in fellow men; but by a representation

of the necessary natural results, the infliction of death-agony on

the victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness,

the entailed sufferings to his belongings. Neither the thought of

imprisonment, nor of divine anger, nor of social disgrace, is that

which constitutes the moral check on theft; but the thought of injury

to the person robbed, joined with a vague consciousness of the general

evils caused by disregard of proprietary rights. Those who reprobate

the adulterer on moral grounds have their minds filled, not with ideas

of an action for damages, or of future punishment following the breach

of a commandment, or of loss of reputation; but they are occupied with

ideas of unhappiness entailed on the aggrieved wife or husband, the

damaged lives of children, and the diffused mischiefs which go along

with disregard of the marriage tie. Conversely, the man who is moved

by a moral feeling to help another in difficulty, does not picture to

himself any reward here or hereafter; but pictures only the better

condition he is trying to bring about. One who is morally prompted to

fight against a social evil has neither material benefit nor popular

applause before his mind, but only the mischiefs he seeks to remove and

the increased well-being which will follow their removal. Throughout,

then, the moral motive differs from the motives it is associated

with in this, that instead of being constituted by representations

of incidental, collateral, non-necessary consequences of acts, it is

constituted by representations of consequences which the acts naturally

produce. These representations are not all distinct, though some of

such are usually present; but they form an assemblage of indistinct

representations accumulated by experience of the results of like acts

in the life of the individual, superposed on a still more indistinct

but voluminous consciousness due to the inherited effects of such

experiences in progenitors, forming a feeling that is at once massive

and vague.

And now we see why the moral feelings and correlative restraints have

arisen later than the feelings and restraints that originate from

political, religious, and social authorities, and have so slowly, and

even yet so incompletely, disentangled themselves. For only by these

lower feelings and restraints could be maintained the conditions under

which the higher feelings and restraints evolve. It is thus alike with

the self-regarding feelings and with the other-regarding feelings. The

pains which improvidence will bring, and the pleasures to be gained by

storing up things for future use, and by laboring to get such things,

can be habitually contrasted in thought, only as fast as settled social

arrangements make accumulation possible; and that there may arise such

settled arrangements, fear of the seen ruler, of the unseen ruler, and

of public opinion, must come into play. Only after political, religious

and social restraints have produced a stable community can there be

sufficient experience of the pains, positive and negative, sensational

and emotional, which crimes of aggression cause, as to generate

that moral aversion to them constituted by consciousness of their

intrinsically evil results. And more manifest still is it that such a

moral sentiment as that of abstract equity, which is offended not only

by material injuries done to men, but also by political arrangements

that place them at a disadvantage, can evolve only after the social

stage reached gives familiar experience, both of the pains flowing

directly from injustices, and also of those flowing indirectly from the

class privileges which make injustices easy.

That the feelings called moral have the nature and origin alleged is

further shown by the fact that we associate the name with them in

proportion to the degree in which they have these characters--firstly,

of being re-representative; secondly, of being concerned with indirect

rather than with direct effects, and generally with remote rather

than immediate; and thirdly, of referring to effects that are mostly

general rather than special. Thus, though we condemn one man for

extravagance and approve the economy shown by another man, we do not

class their acts as respectively vicious and virtuous. These words are

too strong; the present and future results here differ too little in

concreteness and ideality to make the words fully applicable. Suppose,

however, that the extravagance necessarily brings distress on wife

and children--brings pains diffused over the lives of others as well

as of self, and the viciousness of the extravagance becomes clear.

Suppose, further, that prompted by the wish to relieve his family from

the misery he has brought on them, the spendthrift forges a bill or

commits some other fraud. Though, estimated apart, we characterize

his overruling emotion as moral, and make allowance for him in

consideration of it, yet his action, taken as a whole, we condemn as

immoral: we regard as of superior authority the feelings which respond

to men's proprietary claims--feelings which are re-representative in

a higher degree and refer to more remote diffused consequences. The

difference, habitually recognized, between the relative elevations of

justice and generosity, well illustrates this truth. The motive causing

a generous act has reference to effects of a more concrete, special,

and proximate kind than has the motive to do justice, which, beyond

the proximate effects, usually themselves less concrete than those

that generosity contemplates, includes a consciousness of the distant,

involved, diffused effects of maintaining equitable relations. And

justice we hold to be higher generosity.

Comprehension of this long argument will be aided by here quoting a

further passage from the before-named letter to Mr. Mill, following the

passage already quoted from it.

"To make any position fully understood, it seems needful to add that,

corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral

Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race,

certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral

intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of Utility,

gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite

independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I

believe the intuition of space, possessed by any living individual,

to have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all

antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly developed

nervous organizations--just as I believe that this intuition,

requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal

experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently

quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences

of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations

of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous

modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation,

have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition--certain

emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no

apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold

that just as the space intuition responds to the exact demonstrations

of Geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified

by them; so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of

Moral Science, and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and

verified by them."

To this, in passing, I will add only that the evolution-hypothesis

thus enables us to reconcile opposed moral theories, as it enables us

to reconcile opposed theories of knowledge. For as the doctrine of

innate forms of intellectual intuition falls into harmony with the

experiential doctrine, when we recognize the production of intellectual

faculties by inheritance of effects wrought by experience; so the

doctrine of innate powers of moral perception becomes congruous

with the utilitarian doctrine, when it is seen that preferences and

aversions are rendered organic by inheritance of the effects of

pleasurable and painful experiences in progenitors.

§ 46. One further question has to be answered--How does there arise

the feeling of moral obligation in general? Whence comes the sentiment

of duty, considered as distinct from the several sentiments which

prompt temperance, providence, kindness, justice, truthfulness, etc.?

The answer is that it is an abstract sentiment generated in a manner

analogous to that in which abstract ideas are generated.

The idea of each color had originally entire concreteness given to it

by an object possessing the color; as some of the unmodified names,

such as orange and violet, show us. The dissociation of each color

from the object specially associated with it in thought at the outset,

went on as fast as the color came to be associated in thought with

objects unlike the first, and unlike one another. The idea of orange

was conceived in the abstract more fully in proportion as the various

orange-colored objects remembered, cancelled one another's diverse

attributes, and left outstanding their common attribute.

So is it if we ascend a stage and note how there arises the abstract

idea of color apart from particular colors. Were all things red the

conception of color in the abstract could not exist. Imagine that

every object was either red or green, and it is manifest that the

mental habit would be to think of one or other of these two colors in

connection with anything named. But multiply the colors so that thought

rambles undecidedly among the ideas of them that occur along with any

object named, and there results the notion of indeterminate color--the

common property which objects possess of affecting us by light from

their surfaces, as well as by their forms. For evidently the notion of

this common property is that which remains constant while imagination

is picturing every possible variety of color. It is the uniform trait

in all colored things; that is--color in the abstract.

Words referring to quantity furnish cases of more marked dissociation

of abstract from concrete. Grouping various things as small in

comparison either with those of their kind or with those of other

kinds, and similarly grouping some objects as comparatively great, we

get the opposite abstract notions of smallness and greatness. Applied

as these are to innumerable very diverse things--not objects only, but

forces, times, numbers, values--they have become so little connected

with concretes, that their abstract meanings are very vague.

Further, we must note that an abstract idea thus formed often acquires

an illusive independence; as we may perceive in the case of motion,

which, dissociated in thought from all particular bodies and velocities

and directions, is sometimes referred to as though it could be

conceived apart from something moving.

Now all this holds of the subjective as well as of the objective; and

among other states of consciousness, holds of the emotions as known

by introspection. By the grouping of those re-representative feelings

above described, which, differing among themselves in other respects,

have a component in common, and by the consequent mutual cancelling

of their diverse components, this common component is made relatively

appreciable, and becomes an abstract feeling. Thus is produced the

sentiment of moral obligation or duty. Let us observe its genesis.

We have seen that during the progress of animate existence, the later

evolved, more compound and more representative feelings, serving to

adjust the conduct to more distant and general needs, have all along

had an authority as guides superior to that of the earlier and simpler

feelings--excluding cases in which these last are intense. This

superior authority, unrecognizable by lower types of creatures which

cannot generalize, and little recognizable by primitive men who have

but feeble powers of generalization, has become distinctly recognized

as civilization and accompanying mental development have gone on.

Accumulated experiences have produced the consciousness that guidance

by feelings which refer to remote and general results is usually more

conducive to welfare than guidance by feelings to be immediately

gratified. For what is the common character of the feelings that

prompt honesty, truthfulness, diligence, providence, etc., which men

habitually find to be better prompters than the appetites and simple

impulses? They are all complex, re-representative feelings, occupied

with the future rather than the present. The idea of authoritativeness

has, therefore, come to be connected with feelings having these traits:

the implication being that the lower and simpler feelings are without

authority. And this idea of authoritativeness is one element in the

abstract consciousness of duty.

But there is another element--the element of coerciveness. This

originates from experience of those several forms of restraint that

have, as above described, established themselves in the course of

civilization--the political, religious, and social. To the effects

of punishments inflicted by law and public opinion on conduct of

certain kinds, Dr. Bain ascribes the feeling of moral obligation. And

I agree with him to the extent of thinking that by them is generated

the sense of compulsion which the consciousness of duty includes,

and which the word obligation indicates. The existence of an earlier

and deeper element, generated as above described, is, however, I

think, implied by the fact that certain of the higher self-regarding

feelings, instigating prudence and economy, have a moral authority in

opposition to the simpler self-regarding feelings: showing that apart

from any thought of factitious penalties on improvidence, the feeling

constituted by representation of the natural penalties has acquired an

acknowledged superiority. But accepting in the main the view that fears

of the political and social penalties (to which, I think, the religious

must be added) have generated that sense of coerciveness which goes

along with the thought of postponing present to future and personal

desires to the claims of others, it here chiefly concerns us to note

that this sense of coerciveness becomes indirectly connected with the

feelings distinguished as moral. For since the political, religious and

social restraining motives, are mainly formed of represented future

results; and since the moral restraining motive is mainly formed of

represented future results; it happens that the representations,

having much in common, and being often aroused at the same time, the

fear joined with three sets of them becomes, by association, joined

with the fourth. Thinking of the extrinsic effects of a forbidden act,

excites a dread which continues present while the intrinsic effects

of the act are thought of; and being thus linked with these intrinsic

effects causes a vague sense of moral compulsion. Emerging as the moral

motive does but slowly from amidst the political, religious and social

motives it long participates in that consciousness of subordination

to some external agency which is joined with them; and only as

it becomes distinct and predominant does it lose this associated

consciousness--only then does the feeling of obligation fade.

This remark implies the tacit conclusion, which will be to most very

startling, that the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory,

and will diminish as fast as moralization increases. Startling

though it is, this conclusion may be satisfactorily defended. Even

now progress toward the implied ultimate state is traceable. The

observation is not infrequent that persistence in performing a duty

ends in making it a pleasure; and this amounts to the admission that

while at first the motive contains an element of coercion, at last

this element of coercion dies out, and the act is performed without

any consciousness of being obliged to perform it. The contrast between

the youth on whom diligence is enjoined, and the man of business so

absorbed in affairs that he cannot be induced to relax, shows us

how the doing of work, originally under the consciousness that it

_ought_ to be done, may eventually cease to have any such accompanying

consciousness. Sometimes, indeed, the relation comes to be reversed;

and the man of business persists in work from pure love of it when told

that he ought not. Nor is it thus with self-regarding feelings only.

That the maintaining and protecting of wife by husband often result

solely from feelings directly gratified by these actions, without any

thought of _must_; and that the fostering of children by parents is in

many cases made an absorbing occupation without any coercive feeling

of _ought_; are obvious truths which show us that even now, with some

of the fundamental other-regarding duties, the sense of obligation has

retreated into the background of the mind. And it is in some degree so

with other-regarding duties of a higher kind. Conscientiousness has in

many outgrown that stage in which the sense of a compelling power is

joined with rectitude of action. The truly honest man, here and there

to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social

compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him, but he is

without thought of self-compulsion. He does the right thing with a

simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it; and is, indeed, impatient

if anything prevents him from having the satisfaction of doing it.

Evidently, then, with complete adaptation to the social state, that

element in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word

obligation, will disappear. The higher actions required for the

harmonious carrying on of life will be as much matters of course as are

those lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their proper

times and places and proportions, the moral sentiments will guide men

just as spontaneously and adequately as now do the sensations. And

though, joined with their regulating influence when this is called

for, will exist latent ideas of the evils which nonconformity would

bring; these will occupy the mind no more than do ideas of the evils of

starvation at the time when a healthy appetite is being satisfied by a

meal.

§ 47. This elaborate exposition, which the extreme complexity of the

subject has necessitated, may have its leading ideas restated thus:

Symbolizing by _a_ and _b_, related phenomena in the environment, which

in some way concern the welfare of the organism; and symbolizing by

_c_ and _d_, the impressions, simple or compound, which the organism

receives from the one, and the motions, single or combined, by which

its acts are adapted to meet the other; we saw that psychology in

general is concerned with the connection between the relation _a

b_ and the relation _c d_. Further, we saw that by implication

the psychological aspect of Ethics, is that aspect under which

the adjustment of _c d_ to _a b_, appears, not as an intellectual

co-ordination simply, but as a co-ordination in which pleasures and

pains are alike factors and results.

It was shown that throughout Evolution, motive and act become

more complex, as the adaptation of inner related actions to outer

related actions extends in range and variety. Whence followed the

corollary that the later evolved feelings, more representative and

re-representative in their constitution, and referring to remoter and

wider needs, have, on the average, an authority as guides greater than

have the earlier and simpler feelings.

After thus observing that even an inferior creature is ruled by a

hierarchy of feelings so constituted that general welfare depends on

a certain subordination of lower to higher, we saw that in man, as

he passes into the social state, there arises the need for sundry

additional subordinations of lower to higher: co-operation being

made possible only by them. To the restraints constituted by mental

representations of the intrinsic effects of actions, which, in their

simpler forms, have been evolving from the beginning, are added the

restraints caused by mental representations of extrinsic effects, in

the shape of political, religious, and social penalties.

With the evolution of society, made possible by institutions

maintaining order, and associating in men's minds the sense of

obligation with prescribed acts and with desistances from forbidden

acts, there arose opportunities for seeing the bad consequences

naturally flowing from the conduct interdicted and the good

consequences from the conduct required. Hence eventually grew up

moral aversions and approvals: experience of the intrinsic effects

necessarily here coming later than experience of the extrinsic effects,

and therefore producing its results later.

The thoughts and feelings constituting these moral aversions and

approvals, being all along closely connected with the thoughts and

feelings constituting fears of political, religious, and social

penalties, necessarily came to participate in the accompanying sense

of obligation. The coercive element in the consciousness of duties at

large, evolved by converse with external agencies which enforce duties,

diffused itself by association through that consciousness of duty,

properly called moral, which is occupied with intrinsic results instead

of extrinsic results.

But this self-compulsion, which at a relatively high stage becomes more

and more a substitute for compulsion from without, must itself, at a

still higher stage, practically disappear. If some action to which

the special motive is insufficient, is performed in obedience to the

feeling of moral obligation, the fact proves that the special faculty

concerned is not yet equal to its function--has not acquired such

strength that the required activity has become its normal activity,

yielding its due amount of pleasure. With complete evolution then, the

sense of obligation, not ordinarily present in consciousness, will be

awakened only on those extraordinary occasions that prompt breach of

the laws otherwise spontaneously conformed to.

And this brings us to the psychological aspect of that conclusion

which, in the last chapter, was reached under its biological aspect.

The pleasures and pains which the moral sentiments originate will,

like bodily pleasures and pains, become incentives and deterrents so

adjusted in their strengths to the needs that the moral conduct will be

the natural conduct.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW.

§ 48. Not for the human race only, but for every race, there are laws

of right living. Given its environment and its structure, and there

is for each kind of creature a set of actions adapted in their kinds,

amounts, and combinations, to secure the highest conservation its

nature permits. The animal, like the man, has needs for food, warmth,

activity, rest, and so forth, which must be fulfilled in certain

relative degrees to make its life whole. Maintenance of its race

implies satisfaction of special desires, sexual and philoprogenitive,

in due proportions. Hence there is a supposable formula for the

activities of each species, which, could it be drawn out, would

constitute a system of morality for that species. But such a system of

morality would have little or no reference to the welfare of others

than self and offspring. Indifferent to individuals of its own kind, as

an inferior creature is, and habitually hostile to individuals of other

kinds, the formula for its life could take no cognizance of the lives

of those with which it came in contact; or rather, such formula would

imply that maintenance of its life was at variance with maintenance of

their lives.

But on ascending from beings of lower kinds to the highest kind

of being, man; or, more strictly, on ascending from man in his

pre-social stage to man in his social stage, the formula has to

include an additional factor. Though not peculiar to human life

under its developed form, the presence of this factor is still, in

the highest degree, characteristic of it. Though there are inferior

species displaying considerable degrees of sociality, and, though, the

formulas for their complete lives would have to take account of the

relations arising from union, yet our own species is, on the whole, to

be distinguished as having a formula for complete life which specially

recognizes the relations of each individual to others, in presence of

whom, and in co-operation with whom, he has to live.

This additional factor in the problem of complete living is, indeed, so

important that the necessitated modifications of conduct have come to

form a chief part of the code of conduct. Because the inherited desires

which directly refer to the maintenance of individual life are fairly

adjusted to the requirements, there has been no need to insist on

that conformity to them which furthers self-conversation. Conversely,

because these desires prompt activities that often conflict with the

activities of others; and because the sentiments responding to other's

claims are relatively weak, moral codes emphasize those restraints on

conduct which the presence of fellow men entails.

From the sociological point of view, then, Ethics becomes nothing else

than a definite account of the forms of conduct that are fitted to the

associated state, in such wise that the lives of each and all may be

the greatest possible, alike in length and breadth.

§ 49. But here we are met by a fact which forbids us thus to put in

the foreground the welfares of citizens, individually considered, and

requires us to put in the foreground the welfare of the society as a

whole. The life of the social organism must, as an end, rank above the

lives of its units. These two ends are not harmonious at the outset;

and, though the tendency is toward harmonization of them, they are

still partially conflicting.

As fast as the social state establishes itself, the preservation of

the society becomes a means of preserving its units. Living together

arose because, on the average, it proved more advantageous to each

than living apart; and this implies that maintenance of combination

is maintenance of the conditions to more satisfactory living than the

combined persons would otherwise have. Hence, social self-preservation

becomes a proximate aim taking precedence of the ultimate aim,

individual self-preservation.

This subordination of personal to social welfare is, however,

contingent: it depends on the presence of antagonistic societies. So

long as the existence of a community is endangered by the actions

of communities around, it must remain true that the interests of

individuals must be sacrificed to the interests of the community,

as far as is needful for the community's salvation. But if this is

manifest, it is, by implication, manifest, that when social antagonisms

cease, this need for sacrifice of private claims to public claims

ceases also; or rather, there cease to be any public claims at variance

with private claims. All along, furtherance of individual lives has

been the ultimate end; and, if this ultimate end has been postponed to

the proximate end of preserving the community's life, it has been so

only because this proximate end was instrumental to the ultimate end.

When the aggregate is no longer in danger, the final object of pursuit,

the welfare of the units, no longer needing to be postponed, becomes

the immediate object of pursuit.

Consequently, unlike sets of conclusions respecting human conduct

emerge, according as we are concerned with a state of habitual or

occasional war, or are concerned with a state of permanent and general

peace. Let us glance at these alternative states and the alternative

implications.

§ 50. At present the individual man has to carry on his life with due

regard to the lives of others belonging to the same society; while

he is sometimes called on to be regardless of the lives of those

belonging to other societies. The same mental constitution, having to

fulfill both these requirements, is necessarily incongruous; and the

correlative conduct, adjusted first to the one need and then to the

other, cannot be brought within any consistent ethical system.

Hate and destroy your fellow-man is now the command; and then the

command is, love and aid your fellow-man. Use every means to deceive,

says the one code of conduct; while the other code says, be truthful in

word and deed. Seize what property you can and burn all you cannot take

away, are injunctions which the religion of enmity countenances; while

by the religion of amity, theft and arson are condemned as crimes.

And as conduct has to be made up of parts thus at variance with one

another, the theory of conduct remains confused.

There co-exists a kindred irreconcilability between the sentiments

answering to the forms of co-operation required for militancy and

industrialism respectively. While social antagonisms are habitual,

and while, for efficient action against other societies, there needs

great subordination to men who command, the virtue of loyalty and

the duty of implicit obedience have to be insisted on; disregard of

the ruler's will is punished with death. But when war ceases to be

chronic, and growing industrialism habituates men to maintaining their

own claims while respecting the claims of others, loyalty becomes

less profound, the authority of the ruler is questioned or denied in

respect of various private actions and beliefs. State dictation is in

many directions successfully defied, and the political independence of

the citizen comes to be regarded as a claim which it is virtuous to

maintain and vicious to yield up. Necessarily during the transition,

these opposite sentiments are incongruously mingled.

So is it, too, with domestic institutions under the two _régimes_.

While the first is dominant, ownership of a slave is honorable, and in

the slave submission is praiseworthy; but as the last grows dominant,

slave-owning becomes a crime and servile obedience excites contempt.

Nor is it otherwise in the family. The subjection of women to men,

complete while war is habitual but qualified as fast as peaceful

occupations replace it, comes eventually to be thought wrong, and

equality before the law is asserted. At the same time the opinion

concerning paternal power changes. The once unquestioned right of the

father to take his children's lives is denied, and the duty of absolute

submission to him, long insisted on, is changed into the duty of

obedience within reasonable limits.

Were the ratio between the life of antagonism with alien societies,

and the life of peaceful co-operation within each society, a constant

ratio, some permanent compromise between the conflicting rules of

conduct appropriate to the two lives might be reached. But since

this ratio is a variable one, the compromise can never be more than

temporary. Ever the tendency is toward congruity between beliefs and

requirements. Either the social arrangements are gradually changed

until they come into harmony with prevailing ideas and sentiments; or,

if surrounding conditions prevent change in the social arrangements,

the necessitated habits of life modify the prevailing ideas and

sentiments to the requisite extent. Hence, for each kind and degree

of social evolution determined by external conflict and internal

friendship, there is an appropriate compromise between the moral code

of enmity and the moral code of amity: not, indeed, a definable,

consistent compromise, but a compromise fairly well understood.

This compromise, vague, ambiguous, illogical, though it may be, is

nevertheless for the time being authoritative. For if, as above shown,

the welfare of the society must take precedence of the welfares of its

component individuals, during those stages in which the individuals

have to preserve themselves by preserving their society, then such

temporary compromise between the two codes of conduct as duly regards

external defense, while favoring internal co-operation to the greatest

extent practicable, subserves the maintenance of life in the highest

degree; and thus gains the ultimate sanction. So that the perplexed

and inconsistent moralities of which each society and each age shows

us a more or less different one, are severally justified as being

approximately the best under the circumstances.

But such moralities are, by their definitions, shown to belong to

incomplete conduct; not to conduct that is fully evolved. We saw that

the adjustments of acts to ends which, while constituting the external

manifestations of life, conduce to the continuance of life, have been

rising to a certain ideal form now approached by the civilized man.

But this form is not reached so long as there continue aggressions of

one society upon another. Whether the hinderances to complete living

result from the trespasses of fellow-citizens, or from the trespasses

of aliens, matters not; if they occur there does not yet exist the

state defined. The limit to the evolution of conduct is arrived at

by members of each society only when, being arrived at by members

of other societies also, the causes of international antagonism end

simultaneously with the causes of antagonism between individuals.

And now having from the sociological point of view recognized the need

for, and authority of, these changing systems of ethics, proper to

changing ratios between warlike activities and peaceful activities, we

have, from the same point of view, to consider the system of ethics

proper to the state in which peaceful activities are undisturbed.

§ 51. If, excluding all thought of danger or hinderances from causes

external to a society, we set ourselves to specify those conditions

under which the life of each person, and therefore of the aggregate,

may be the greatest possible, we come upon certain simple ones which,

as here stated, assume the form of truisms.

For, as we have seen, the definition of that highest life accompanying

completely evolved conduct, itself excludes all acts of aggression--not

only murder, assault, robbery, and the major offences generally,

but minor offences, such as libel, injury to property and so forth.

While directly deducting from individual life, these indirectly

cause perturbations of social life. Trespasses against others rouse

antagonisms in them; and if these are numerous the group loses

coherence. Hence, whether the integrity of the group itself is

considered as the end, or whether the end considered is the benefit

ultimately secured to its units by maintaining its integrity, or

whether the immediate benefit of its units taken separately is

considered the end, the implication is the same: such acts are at

variance with achievement of the end. That these inferences are

self-evident and trite (as indeed the first inferences drawn from the

data of every science that reaches the deductive stage naturally are)

must not make us pass lightly over the all-important fact that, from

the sociological point of view, the leading moral laws are seen to

follow as corollaries from the definition of complete life carried on

under social conditions.

Respect for these primary moral laws is not enough, however. Associated

men pursuing their several lives without injuring one another but

without helping one another, reap no advantages from association

beyond those of companionship. If, while there is no co-operation for

defensive purposes (which is here excluded by the hypothesis) there is

also no co-operation for satisfying wants, the social state loses its

_raison d'être_--almost, if not entirely. There are, indeed, people

who live in a condition little removed from this: as the Esquimaux.

But though these, exhibiting none of the co-operation necessitated by

war, which is unknown to them, lead lives such that each family is

substantially independent of others, occasional co-operation occurs.

And, indeed, that families should live in company without ever yielding

mutual aid, is scarcely conceivable.

Nevertheless, whether actually existing or only approached, we must

here recognize as hypothetically possible a state in which these

primary moral laws are conformed to; for the purpose of observing,

in their uncomplicated forms, what are the negative conditions to

harmonious social life. Whether the members of a social group do or

do not co-operate, certain limitations to their individual activities

are necessitated by their association; and, after recognizing these as

arising in the absence of co-operation, we shall be the better prepared

to understand how conformity to them is effected when co-operation

begins.

§ 52. For whether men live together in quite independent ways,

careful only to avoid aggressing; or whether, advancing from passive

association to active association, they co-operate, their conduct must

be such that the achievement of ends by each shall at least not be

hindered. And it becomes obvious that when they co-operate there must

not only be no resulting hinderance but there must be facilitation;

since, in the absence of facilitation, there can be no motive to

co-operate. What shape, then, must the mutual restraints take when

co-operation begins? or rather--What, in addition to the primary

mutual restraints already specified, are those secondary mutual

restraints required to make co-operation possible?

One who, living in an isolated way, expends effort in pursuit of an

end, gets compensation for the effort by securing the end, and so

achieves satisfaction. If he expends the effort without achieving

the end there results dissatisfaction. The satisfaction and the

dissatisfaction are measures of success and failure in life-sustaining

acts; since that which is achieved by effort is something which

directly or indirectly furthers life, and so pays for the cost of the

effort; while if the effort fails there is nothing to pay for the cost

of it, and so much life is wasted. What must result from this when

men's efforts are joined? The reply will be made clearer if we take the

successive forms of co-operation in the order of ascending complexity.

We may distinguish as homogeneous co-operation (1) that in which like

efforts are joined for like ends that are simultaneously enjoyed. As

co-operation that is not completely homogeneous we may distinguish

(2) that in which like efforts are joined for like ends that are not

simultaneously enjoyed. A co-operation of which the heterogeneity is

more distinct is (3) that in which unlike efforts are joined for like

ends. And lastly comes the decidedly heterogeneous co-operation (4)

that in which unlike efforts are joined for unlike ends.

The simplest and earliest of these in which men's powers, similar

in kind and degree, are united in pursuit of a benefit which, when

obtained, they all participate in, is most familiarly exemplified in

the catching of game by primitive men: this simplest and earliest

form of industrial co-operation being also that which is least

differentiated from militant co-operation; for the co-operators are

the same, and the processes, both destructive of life, are carried on

in analogous ways. The condition under which such co-operation may be

successfully carried on is that the co-operators shall share alike

in the produce. Each thus being enabled to repay himself in food for

the expended effort, and being further enabled to achieve other such

desired ends as maintenance of family, obtains satisfaction: there is

no aggression of one on another, and the co-operation is harmonious.

Of course the divided produce can be but roughly proportioned to the

several efforts joined in obtaining it, but there is actually among

savages, as we see that for harmonious co-operation there must be, a

recognition of the principle that efforts when combined shall severally

bring equivalent benefits, as they would do if they were separate.

Moreover, beyond the taking equal shares in return for labors that are

approximately equal, there is generally an attempt at proportioning

benefit to achievement, by assigning something extra, in the shape of

the best part or the trophy, to the actual slayer of the game. And

obviously, if there is a wide departure from this system of sharing

benefits when there has been a sharing of efforts, the co-operation

will cease. Individual hunters will prefer to do the best they can for

themselves separately.

Passing from this simplest case of co-operation to a case not quite so

simple--a case in which the homogeneity is incomplete--let us ask how a

member of the group may be led without dissatisfaction to expend effort

in achieving a benefit which, when achieved, is enjoyed exclusively

by another? Clearly he may do this on condition that the other shall

afterward expend a like effort, the beneficial result of which shall be

similarly rendered up by him in return. This exchange of equivalents

of effort is the form which social co-operation takes while yet there

is little or no division of labor, save that between the sexes. For

example, the Bodo and Dhimals "mutually assist each other for the

nonce, as well in constructing their houses as in clearing their plots

for cultivation." And this principle--I will help you if you will help

me--common in simple communities where the occupations are alike in

kind, and occasionally acted upon in more advanced communities, is one

under which the relation between effort and benefit, no longer directly

maintained, is maintained indirectly. For whereas when men's activities

are carried on separately, or are joined in the way exemplified above,

effort is immediately paid for by benefit, in this form of co-operation

the benefit achieved by effort is exchanged for a like benefit to

be afterward received when asked for. And in this case as in the

preceding case, co-operation can be maintained only by fulfillment of

the tacit agreements. For if they are habitually not fulfilled, there

will commonly be refusal to give aid when asked; and each man will

be left to do the best he can by himself. All those advantages to be

gained by union of efforts in doing things that are beyond the powers

of the single individual, will be unachievable. At the outset, then,

fulfillment of contracts that are implied if not expressed, becomes a

condition to social co-operation, and therefore to social development.

From these simple forms of co-operation in which the labors men

carry on are of like kinds, let us turn to the more complex forms in

which they carry on labors of unlike kinds. Where men mutually aid in

building huts or felling trees, the number of days' work now given by

one to another is readily balanced by an equal number of days' work

afterward given by the other to him. And no estimation of the relative

values of the labors being required, a definite understanding is little

needed. But when division of labor arises--when there come transactions

between one who makes weapons and another who dresses skins for

clothing, or between a grower of roots and a catcher of fish--neither

the relative amounts nor the relative qualities of their labors admit

of easy measure; and with the multiplication of businesses, implying

numerous kinds of skill and power, there ceases to be anything like

manifest equivalence between either the bodily and mental efforts set

against one another, or between their products. Hence the arrangement

cannot now be taken for granted, as while the things exchanged are like

in kind: it has to be stated. If A allows B to appropriate a product

of his special skill, on condition that he is allowed to appropriate a

different product of B's special skill, it results that as equivalence

of the two products cannot be determined by direct comparison of their

quantities and qualities, there must be a distinct understanding as to

how much of the one may be taken in consideration of so much of the

other.

Only under voluntary agreement, then, no longer tacit and vague,

but overt and definite, can co-operation be harmoniously carried on

when division of labor becomes established. And as in the simplest

co-operation, where like efforts are joined to secure a common

good, the dissatisfaction caused in those who, having expended their

labors do not get their shares of the good, prompts them to cease

co-operating; as in the more advanced co-operation, achieved by

exchanging equal labors of like kind expended at different times,

aversion to co-operate is generated if the expected equivalent of labor

is not rendered; so in this developed co-operation, the failure of

either to surrender to the other that which was avowedly recognized

as of like value with the labor or product given, tends to prevent

co-operation by exciting discontent with its results. And evidently,

while antagonisms thus caused impede the lives of the units, the life

of the aggregate is endangered by diminished cohesion.

§ 53. Beyond these comparatively direct mischiefs, special and general,

there have to be noted indirect mischiefs. As already implied by the

reasoning in the last paragraph, not only social integration but also

social differentiation, is hindered by breach of contract.

In Part II of the _Principles of Sociology_, it was shown that the

fundamental principles of organization are the same for an individual

organism and for a social organism; because both consist of mutually

dependent parts. In the one case as in the other, the assumption

of unlike activities by the component members, is possible only on

condition that they severally benefit in due degrees by one another's

activities. That we may the better see what are the implications in

respect of social structures, let us first note the implications in

respect of individual structures.

The welfare of a living body implies an approximate equilibrium

between waste and repair. If the activities involve an expenditure not

made good by nutrition, dwindling follows. If the tissues are enabled

to take up from the blood enriched by food, fit substances enough to

replace those used up in efforts made, the weight may be maintained.

And if the gain exceeds the loss, growth results.

That which is true of the whole in its relations to the external

world, is no less true of the parts in their relations to one another.

Each organ, like the entire organism, is wasted by performing its

function, and has to restore itself from the materials brought to it.

If the quantity of materials furnished by the joint agency of the

other organs is deficient, the particular organ dwindles. If they are

sufficient, it can maintain its integrity. If they are in excess, it

is enabled to increase. To say that this arrangement constitutes the

physiological contract, is to use a metaphor which, though not true in

aspect is true in essence. For the relations of structures are actually

such that, by the help of a central regulative system, each organ is

supplied with blood in proportion to the work it does. As was pointed

out (_Principles of Sociology_, § 254) well-developed animals are so

constituted that each muscle or viscus, when called into action, sends

to the vaso-motor centers through certain nerve-fibers, an impulse

caused by its action; whereupon, through other nerve-fibers, there

comes an impulse causing dilatation of its blood-vessels. That is to

say, all other parts of the organism, when they jointly require it to

labor, forthwith begin to pay it in blood. During the ordinary state

of physiological equilibrium, the loss and the gain balance, and the

organ does not sensibly change. If the amount of its function is

increased within such moderate limits that the local blood-vessels can

bring adequately-increased supplies, the organ grows: beyond replacing

its losses by its gains, it makes a profit on its extra transactions;

so being enabled by extra structures to meet extra demands. But if the

demands made on it become so great that the supply of materials cannot

keep pace with the expenditure, either because the local blood-vessels

are not large enough, or for any other reason, then the organ begins

to decrease from excess of waste over repair: there sets in what

is known as atrophy. Now, since each of the organs has thus to be

paid in nutriment for its services by the rest, it follows that the

due balancing of their respective claims and payments is requisite,

directly for the welfare of each organ, and indirectly for the welfare

of the organism. For in a whole formed of mutually dependent parts,

anything which prevents due performance of its duty by one part reacts

injuriously on all the parts.

With change of terms these statements and inferences hold of a society.

That social division of labor which parallels in so many other

respects the physiological division of labor, parallels it in this

respect also. As was shown at large in the _Principles of Sociology_,

Part II, each order of functionaries and each group of producers,

severally performing some action or making some article not for direct

satisfaction of their own needs but for satisfaction of the needs of

fellow-citizens in general, otherwise occupied, can continue to do this

only so long as the expenditures of effort and returns of profit are

approximately equivalent. Social organs, like individual organs, remain

stationary if there come to them normal proportions of the commodities

produced by the society as a whole. If because the demands made on an

industry or profession are unusually great, those engaged in it make

excessive profits, more citizens flock to it and the social structure

constituted by its members grows; while decrease of the demands and

therefore of the profits, either leads its members to choose other

careers or stops the accessions needful to replace those who die, and

the structure dwindles. Thus is maintained that proportion among the

powers of the component parts which is most conducive to the welfare of

the whole.

And now mark that the primary condition to achievement of this result

is fulfillment of contract. If from the members of any part payment

is frequently withheld, or falls short of the promised amount, then,

through ruin of some and abandonment of the occupation by others, the

part diminishes; and if it was before not more than competent to its

duty, it now becomes incompetent, and the society suffers. Or if social

needs throw on some part great increase of function, and the members

of it are enabled to get for their services unusually high prices;

fulfillment of the agreements to give them these high prices, is the

only way of drawing to the part such additional number of members as

will make it equal to the augmented demands. For citizens will not come

to it if they find the high prices agreed upon are not paid.

Briefly, then, the universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning

of benefits received to services rendered. Without this there can

be no physiological division of labor; without this there can be

no sociological division of labor. And since division of labor,

physiological or sociological, profits the whole and each part; it

results that on maintenance of the arrangements necessary to it, depend

both special and general welfare. In a society such arrangements are

maintained only if bargains, overt or tacit, are carried out. So that

beyond the primary requirement to harmonious co-existence in a society,

that its units shall not directly aggress on one another; there comes

this secondary requirement, that they shall not indirectly aggress by

breaking agreements.

§ 54. But now we have to recognize the fact that complete fulfillment

of these conditions, original and derived, is not enough. Social

co-operation may be such that no one is impeded in the obtainment of

the normal return for effort, but contrariwise is aided by equitable

exchange of services; and yet much may remain to be achieved. There

is a theoretically possible form of society, purely industrial in its

activities, which, though approaching nearer to the moral ideal in its

code of conduct than any society not purely industrial, does not fully

reach it.

For while industrialism requires the life of each citizen to be such

that it may be carried on without direct or indirect aggressions on

other citizens, it does not require his life to be such that it shall

directly further the lives of other citizens. It is not a necessary

implication of industrialism, as thus far defined, that each, beyond

the benefits given and received by exchange of services, shall give and

receive other benefits. A society is conceivable formed of men leading

perfectly inoffensive lives, scrupulously fulfilling their contracts,

and efficiently rearing their offspring, who yet, yielding to one

another no advantages beyond those agreed upon, fall short of that

highest degree of life which the gratuitous rendering of services makes

possible. Daily experiences prove that every one would suffer many

evils and lose many goods did none give him unpaid assistance. The life

of each would be more or less damaged had he to meet all contingencies

single-handed. Further, if no one did for his fellows anything more

than was required by strict performance of contract, private interests

would suffer from the absence of attention to public interests. The

limit of evolution of conduct is consequently not reached, until,

beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are

spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others.

It may be shown that the form of nature which thus to justice adds

beneficence, is one which adaption to the social state produces. The

social man has not reached that harmonization of constitution with

conditions forming the limit of evolution, so long as there remains

space for the growth of faculties which, by their exercise, bring

positive benefit to others and satisfaction to self. If the presence

of fellow-men, while putting certain limits to each man's sphere of

activity, opens certain other spheres of activity in which feelings,

while achieving their gratifications, do not diminish, but add to

the gratifications of others, then such spheres will inevitably be

occupied. Recognition of this truth does not, however, call on us to

qualify greatly that conception of the industrial state above set

forth, since sympathy is the root of both justice and beneficence.

§ 55. Thus the sociological view of Ethics supplements the physical,

the biological, and the psychological views, by disclosing those

conditions under which only associated activities can be so carried on,

that the complete living of each consists with, and conduces to, the

complete living of all.

At first the welfare of social groups, habitually in antagonism with

other such groups, takes precedence of individual welfare; and the

rules of conduct which are authoritative for the time being, involve

incompleteness of individual life that the general life may be

maintained. At the same time the rules have to enforce the claims of

individual life as far as may be, since on the welfare of the units the

welfare of the aggregate largely depends.

In proportion as societies endanger one another less, the need for

subordinating individual lives to the general life, decreases; and

with approach to a peaceful state, the general life, having from the

beginning had furtherance of individual lives as its ultimate purpose,

comes to have this as its proximate purpose.

During the transitional stages there are necessitated successive

compromises between the moral code which asserts the claims of the

society _versus_ those of the individual, and the moral code which

asserts the claims of the individual _versus_ those of the society.

And evidently each such compromise, though for the time being

authoritative, admits of no consistent or definite expression.

But gradually as war declines--gradually as the compulsory co-operation

needful in dealing with external enemies becomes unnecessary, and

leaves behind the voluntary co-operation which effectually achieves

internal sustentation, there grows increasingly clear the code of

conduct which voluntary co-operation implies. And this final permanent

code alone admits of being definitely formulated, and so constituting

ethics as a science in contrast with empirical ethics.

The leading traits of a code, under which complete living through

voluntary co-operation is secured, may be simply stated. The

fundamental requirement is that the life-sustaining actions of each

shall severally bring him the amounts and kinds of advantage naturally

achieved by them, and this implies firstly that he shall suffer no

direct aggressions on his person or property, and, secondly, that he

shall suffer no indirect aggressions by breach of contract. Observance

of these negative conditions to voluntary co-operation having

facilitated life to the greatest extent by exchange of services under

agreement, life is to be further facilitated by exchange of services

beyond agreement: the highest life being reached only when, besides

helping to complete one another's lives by specified reciprocities of

aid, men otherwise help to complete one another's lives.

CHAPTER IX.

CRITICISMS AND EXPLANATIONS.

§ 56. Comparisons of the foregoing chapters, with one another, suggest

sundry questions which must be answered partially, if not completely,

before anything can be done toward reducing ethical principles from

abstract forms to concrete forms.

We have seen that to admit the desirableness of conscious existence is

to admit that conduct should be such as will produce a consciousness

which is desirable--a consciousness which is as much pleasurable and

as little painful as may be. We have also seen that this necessary

implication corresponds with the _à priori_ inference, that the

evolution of life has been made possible only by the establishment

of connections between pleasures and beneficial actions, and between

pains and detrimental actions. But the general conclusion reached

in both of these ways, though it covers the area within which our

special conclusions must fall, does not help us to reach those special

conclusions.

Were pleasures all of one kind, differing only in degree; were pains

all of one kind, differing only in degree; and could pleasures be

measured against pains with definite results, the problems of conduct

would be greatly simplified. Were the pleasures and pains serving as

incentives and deterrents, simultaneously present to consciousness

with like vividness, or were they all immediately impending, or

were they all equi-distant in time; the problems would be further

simplified. And they would be still further simplified if the pleasures

and pains were exclusively those of the actor. But both the desirable

and the undesirable feelings are of various kinds, making quantitative

comparisons difficult; some are present and some are future, increasing

the difficulty of quantitative comparison; some are entailed on self

and some are entailed on others; again increasing the difficulty. So

that the guidance yielded by the primary principle reached is of little

service unless supplemented by the guidance of secondary principles.

Already, in recognizing the needful subordination of presentative

feelings to representative feelings, and the implied postponement of

present to future throughout a wide range of cases, some approach

toward a secondary principle of guidance has been made. Already, too,

in recognizing the limitations which men's associated state puts to

their actions, with the implied need for restraining feelings of some

kinds by feelings of other kinds, we have come in sight of another

secondary principle of guidance. Still, there remains much to be

decided respecting the relative claims of these guiding principles,

general and special.

Some elucidation of the questions involved will be obtained by here

discussing certain views and arguments set forth by past and present

moralists.

§ 57. Using the name hedonism for that ethical theory which makes

happiness the end of action, and distinguishing hedonism into the two

kinds, egoistic and universalistic, according as the happiness sought

is that of the actor himself, or is that of all, Mr. Sidgwick alleges

its implied belief to be that pleasures and pains are commensurable. In

his criticism on (empirical) egoistic hedonism he says:

"The fundamental assumption of Hedonism, clearly stated, is that all

feelings considered merely as feelings can be arranged in a certain

scale of desirability, so that the desirability or pleasantness of

each bears a definite ratio to that of all the others."--_Methods of

Ethics_, 2d ed., p. 115.

And asserting this to be its assumption he proceeds to point out

difficulties in the way of the hedonistic calculation; apparently

for the purpose of implying that these difficulties tell against the

hedonistic theory.

Now, though it may be shown that by naming the intensity, the duration,

the certainty, and the proximity, of a pleasure or a pain, as traits

entering into the estimation of its relative value, Bentham has

committed himself to the specified assumption; and, though, it is,

perhaps, reasonably taken for granted that hedonism, as represented

by him, is identical with hedonism at large; yet it seems to me that

the hedonist, empirical or other, is not necessarily committed to this

assumption. That the greatest surplus of pleasures over pains ought to

be the end of action is a belief which he may still consistently hold

after admitting that the valuations of pleasures and pains are commonly

vague and often erroneous. He may say that though indefinite things do

not admit of definite measurements, yet approximately true estimates

of their relative values may be made when they differ considerably,

and he may further say, that even when their relative values are not

determinable, it remains true that the most valuable should be chosen.

Let us listen to him.

"A debtor who cannot pay me offers to compound for his debt by making

over one of sundry things he possesses--a diamond ornament, a silver

vase, a picture, a carriage. Other questions being set aside I assert

it to be my pecuniary interest to choose the most valuable of these,

but I cannot say which is the most valuable. Does the proposition that

it is my pecuniary interest to choose the most valuable, therefore,

become doubtful? Must I not choose as well as I can, and if I choose

wrongly must I give up my ground of choice? Must I infer that in

matters of business I may not act on the principle that, other things

equal, the more profitable transaction is to be preferred, because, in

many cases, I cannot say which is the more profitable, and have often

chosen the less profitable? Because I believe that of many dangerous

courses I ought to take the least dangerous, do I make 'the fundamental

assumption' that courses can be arranged according to a scale of

dangerousness, and must I abandon my belief if I cannot so arrange

them? If I am not by consistency bound to do this, then I am no more by

consistency bound to give up the principle that the greatest surplus

of pleasures over pains should be the end of action, because the

'commensurability of pleasures and pains' cannot be asserted."

At the close of his chapters on empirical hedonism, Mr. Sidgwick

himself says he does "not think that the common experience of mankind,

impartially examined, really sustains the view that Egoistic Hedonism

is necessarily suicidal;" adding, however, that the "uncertainty of

hedonistic calculation cannot be denied to have great weight." But here

the fundamental assumption of hedonism, that happiness is the end of

action, is still supposed to involve the assumption that "feelings can

be arranged in a certain scale of desirability." This we have seen it

does not: its fundamental assumption is in no degree invalidated by

proof that such arrangement of them is impracticable.

To Mr. Sidgwick's argument there is the further objection, no less

serious, that to whatever degree it tells against egoistic hedonism,

it tells in a greater degree against universalistic hedonism, or

utilitarianism. He admits that it tells as much; saying "whatever

weight is to be attached to the objections brought against this

assumption [the commensurability of pleasures and pains] must of

course tell against the present method." Not only does it tell, but it

tells in a double way. I do not mean merely that, as he points out,

the assumption becomes greatly complicated if we take all sentient

beings into account, and if we include posterity along with existing

individuals. I mean that, taking as the end to be achieved the greatest

happiness of the existing individuals forming a single community,

the set of difficulties standing in the way of egoistic hedonism,

is compounded with another set of difficulties no less great, when

we pass from it to universalistic hedonism. For if the dictates of

universalistic hedonism are to be fulfilled, it must be under the

guidance of individual judgments, or of corporate judgments, or of

both. Now any one of such judgments issuing from a single mind, or from

any aggregate of minds, necessarily embodies conclusions respecting

the happiness of other persons; few of them known, and the great mass

never seen. All these persons have natures differing in countless ways

and degrees from the natures of those who form the judgments; and the

happiness of which they are severally capable differ from one another,

and differ from the happinesses of those who form the judgments.

Consequently, if against the method of egoistic hedonism there is

the objection that a man's own pleasures and pains, unlike in their

kinds, intensities, and times of occurrence, are incommensurable; then

against the method of universalistic hedonism it may be urged that to

the incommensurability of each judge's own pleasures and pains (which

he must use as standards) has now to be added the much more decided

incommensurability of the pleasures and pains which he conceives to be

experienced by innumerable other persons, all differently constituted

from himself and from one another.

Nay more--there is a triple set of difficulties in the way of

universalistic hedonism. To the double indeterminateness of the end

has to be added the indeterminateness of the means. If hedonism,

egoistic or universalistic, is to pass from dead theory into living

practice, acts of one or other kind must be decided on to achieve

proposed objects; and in estimating the two methods we have to consider

how far the fitness of the acts respectively required can be judged.

If, in pursuing his own ends, the individual is liable to be led by

erroneous opinions to adjust his acts wrongly, much more liable is he

to be led by erroneous opinions to adjust wrongly more complex acts to

the more complex ends constituted by other men's welfares. It is so if

he operates singly to benefit a few others; and it is still more so

if he co-operates with many to benefit all. Making general happiness

the immediate object of pursuit, implies numerous and complicated

instrumentalities officered by thousands of unseen and unlike persons,

and working on millions of other persons unseen and unlike. Even the

few factors in this immense aggregate of appliances and processes which

are known, are very imperfectly known, and the great mass of them are

unknown. So that even supposing valuation of pleasures and pains for

the community at large is more practicable than, or even as practicable

as, valuation of his own pleasures and pains by the individual; yet

the ruling of conduct with a view to the one end is far more difficult

than the ruling of it with a view to the other. Hence, if the method of

egoistic hedonism is unsatisfactory, far more unsatisfactory for the

same and kindred reasons, is the method of universalistic hedonism, or

utilitarianism.

And here we come in sight of the conclusion which it has been the

purpose of the foregoing criticism to bring into view. The objection

made to the hedonistic method contains a truth, but includes with it an

untruth. For while the proposition that happiness, whether individual

or general, is the end of action, is not invalidated by proof that it

cannot under either form be estimated by measurement of its components;

yet it may be admitted that guidance in the pursuit of happiness by a

mere balancing of pleasures and pains, is, if partially practicable

throughout a certain range of conduct, futile throughout a much wider

range. It is quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate

aim of action, and at the same time to deny that it can be reached

by making it the immediate aim. I go with Mr. Sidgwick as far as the

conclusion that "we must at least admit the desirability of confirming

or correcting the results of such comparisons [of pleasures and pains]

by any other method upon which we may find reason to rely;" and then I

go further, and say that throughout a large part of conduct guidance

by such comparisons is to be entirely set aside and replaced by other

guidance.

§ 58. The antithesis here insisted upon between the hedonistic end

considered in the abstract, and the method which current hedonism,

whether egoistic or universalistic, associates with that end; and the

joining acceptance of the one with rejection of the other; commits us

to an overt discussion of the two cardinal elements of ethical theory.

I may conveniently initiate this discussion by criticizing another of

Mr. Sidgwick's criticisms on the method of hedonism.

Though we can give no account of those simple pleasures which the

senses yield, because they are undecomposable, yet we distinctly know

their characters as states of consciousness. Conversely, the complex

pleasures formed by compounding and re-compounding the ideas of simple

pleasures, though theoretically resolvable into their components, are

not easy to resolve; and in proportion as they are heterogeneous in

composition, the difficulty of framing intelligible conceptions of

them increases. This is especially the case with the pleasures which

accompany our sports. Treating of these, along with the pleasures of

pursuit in general, for the purpose of showing that "in order to get

them one must forget them," Mr. Sidgwick remarks:

"A man who maintains throughout an epicurean mood, fixing his aim

on his own pleasure, does not catch the full spirit of the chase;

his eagerness never gets just the sharpness of edge which imparts to

the pleasure its highest zest and flavor. Here comes into view what

we may call the fundamental paradox of Hedonism, that the impulse

toward pleasure, if too predominant, defeats its own aim. This effect

is not visible, or at any rate is scarcely visible, in the case of

passive sensual pleasures. But of our active enjoyments generally,

whether the activities on which they attend are classed as 'bodily'

or as 'intellectual' (as well as of many emotional pleasures), it

may certainly be said that we cannot attain them, at least in their

best form, so long as we concentrate our aim on them."--_Methods of

Ethics_, 2d ed., p. 41.

Now I think we shall not regard this truth as paradoxical after we

have duly analyzed the pleasure of pursuit. The chief components

of this pleasure are: First, a renewed consciousness of personal

efficiency (made vivid by actual success and partially excited by

impending success) which consciousness of personal efficiency,

connected in experience with achieved ends of every kind, arouses

a vague but massive consciousness of resulting gratifications; and

second, a representation of the applause which recognition of this

efficiency by others has before brought, and will again bring. Games

of skill show us this clearly. Considered as an end in itself, the

good cannon which a billiard player makes yields no pleasure. Whence

then does the pleasure of making it arise? Partly from the fresh proof

of capability which the player gives to himself, and partly from the

imagined admiration of those who witness the proof of his capability:

the last being the chief, since he soon tires of making cannons

in the absence of witnesses. When from games which, yielding the

pleasures of success, yield no pleasure derived from the end considered

intrinsically, we pass to sports in which the end has intrinsic value

as a source of pleasure, we see substantially the same thing. Though

the bird which the sportsman brings down is useful as food, yet his

satisfaction arises mainly from having made a good shot, and from

having added to the bag which will presently bring praise of his skill.

The gratification of self-esteem he immediately experiences; and the

gratification of receiving applause he experiences, if not immediately

and in full degree, yet by representation; for the ideal pleasure is

nothing else than a faint revival of the real pleasure. These two

kinds of agreeable excitement present in the sportsman during the

chase constitute the mass of the desires stimulating him to continue

it; for all desires are nascent forms of the feelings to be obtained

by the efforts they prompt. And though while seeking more birds these

representative feelings are not so vividly excited as by success just

achieved, yet they are excited by imaginations of further successes;

and so make enjoyable the activities constituting the pursuit.

Recognizing, then, the truth that the pleasures of pursuit are much

more those derived from the efficient use of means than those derived

from the end itself, we see that "the fundamental paradox of hedonism"

disappears.

These remarks concerning end and means, and the pleasure accompanying

use of the means as added to the pleasure derived from the end, I

have made for the purpose of drawing attention to a fact of profound

significance. During evolution there has been a superposing of new and

more complex sets of means upon older and simpler sets of means, and a

superposing of the pleasures accompanying the uses of these successive

sets of means, with the result that each of these pleasures has itself

eventually become an end. We begin with a simple animal which, without

ancillary appliances, swallows such food as accident brings in its

way; and so, as we may assume, stills some kind of craving. Here we

have the primary end of nutrition with its accompanying satisfaction,

in their simple forms. We pass to higher types having jaws for seizing

and biting--jaws which thus, by their actions, facilitate achievement

of the primary end. On observing animals furnished with these organs,

we get evidence that the use of them becomes in itself pleasurable

irrespective of the end: instance a squirrel which, apart from food

to be so obtained, delights in nibbling everything it gets hold of.

Turning from jaws to limbs we see that these, serving some creatures

for pursuit and others for escape, similarly yield gratification by

their exercise; as in lambs which skip and horses which prance. How the

combined use of limbs and jaws, originally subserving the satisfaction

of appetite, grows to be in itself pleasurable, is daily illustrated in

the playing of dogs. For that throwing down and worrying which, when

prey is caught, precedes eating, is, in their mimic fights, carried

by each as far as he dares. Coming to means still more remote from

the end, namely, those by which creatures chased are caught, we are

again shown by dogs that when no creature is caught there is still a

gratification in the act of catching. The eagerness with which a dog

runs after stones, or dances and barks in anticipation of jumping

into the water after a stick, proves that apart from the satisfaction

of appetite, and apart even from the satisfaction of killing prey,

there is a satisfaction in the successful pursuit of a moving object.

Throughout, then, we see that the pleasure attendant on the use of

means to achieve an end, itself becomes an end.

Now if we contemplate these as phenomena of conduct in general, some

facts worthy of note may be discerned--facts which, if we appreciate

their significance, will aid us in developing our ethical conceptions.

One of them is that among the successive sets of means, the later are

the more remote from the primary end; are, as co-ordinating earlier and

simpler means, the more complex; and are accompanied by feelings which

are more representative.

Another fact is that each set of means, with its accompanying

satisfactions, eventually becomes in its turn dependent on one

originating later than itself. Before the gullet swallows, the

jaws must lay hold; before the jaws tear out and bring within the

grasp of the gullet a piece fit for swallowing, there must be that

co-operation of limbs and senses required for killing the prey;

before this co-operation can take place, there needs the much longer

co-operation constituting the chase; and even before this there must

be persisted activities of limbs, eyes, and nose in seeking prey.

The pleasure attending each set of acts, while making possible the

pleasure attending the set of acts which follows, is joined with a

representation of this subsequent set of acts and its pleasure, and

of the others which succeed in order; so that along with the feelings

accompanying the search for prey, are partially aroused the feelings

accompanying the actual chase, the actual destruction, the actual

devouring, and the eventual satisfaction of appetite.

A third fact is that the use of each set of means in due order,

constitutes an obligation. Maintenance of its life being regarded as an

end of its conduct, the creature is obliged to use in succession the

means of finding prey, the means of catching prey, the means of killing

prey, the means of devouring prey.

Lastly, it follows that though the assuaging of hunger, directly

associated with sustentation, remains to the last the ultimate end; yet

the successful use of each set of means in its turn is the proximate

end--the end which takes temporary precedence in authoritativeness.

§ 59. The relations between means and ends thus traced throughout the

earlier stages of evolving conduct, are traceable throughout later

stages: and hold true of human conduct, up even to its highest forms.

As fast as, for the better maintenance of life, the simpler sets of

means and the pleasures accompanying the uses of them, come to be

supplemented by the more complex sets of means and their pleasures,

these begin to take precedence in time and in imperativeness. To use

effectually each more complex set of means becomes the proximate end,

and the accompanying feeling becomes the immediate gratification

sought; though there may be, and habitually is, an associated

consciousness of the remoter ends and remoter gratifications to be

obtained. An example will make clear the parallelism.

Absorbed in his business the trader, if asked what is his main end,

will say--making money. He readily grants that achievement of this

end is desired by him in furtherance of ends beyond it. He knows that

in directly seeking money he is indirectly seeking food, clothes,

house-room, and the comforts of life for self and family. But while

admitting that money is but a means to these ends, he urges that the

money-getting actions precede in order of time and obligation, the

various actions and concomitant pleasures subserved by them; and he

testifies to the fact that making money has become itself an end, and

success in it a source of satisfaction, apart from these more distant

ends.

Again, on observing more closely the trader's proceedings, we find

that though to the end of living comfortably he gets money, and though

to the end of getting money he buys and sells at a profit, which so

becomes a means more immediately pursued, yet he is chiefly occupied

with means still more remote from ultimate ends, and in relation

to which even the selling at a profit becomes an end. For leaving

to subordinates the actual measuring out of goods and receiving of

proceeds, he busies himself mainly with his general affairs--inquiries

concerning markets, judgments of future prices, calculations,

negotiations, correspondence: the anxiety from hour to hour being to

do well each one of these things indirectly conducive to the making of

profits. And these ends precede in time and obligation the effecting of

profitable sales, just as the effecting of profitable sales precedes

the end of money-making, and just as the end of money-making precedes

the end of satisfactory living.

His bookkeeping best exemplifies the principle at large. Entries to the

debtor or creditor sides are being made all through the day; the items

are classified and arranged in such way that at a moment's notice

the state of each account may be ascertained; and then, from time to

time, the books are balanced, and it is required that the result shall

come right to a penny: satisfaction following proved correctness and

annoyance being caused by error. If you ask why all this elaborate

process, so remote from the actual getting of money, and still more

remote from the enjoyments of life, the answer is that keeping accounts

correctly is fulfilling a condition to the end of money-making, and

becomes in itself a proximate end--a duty to be discharged, that there

may be discharged the duty of getting an income, that there may be

discharged the duty of maintaining self, wife and children.

Approaching as we here do to moral obligation, are we not shown its

relations to conduct at large? Is it not clear that observance of

moral principles is fulfillment of certain general conditions to

the successful carrying on of special activities? That the trader

may prosper, he must not only keep his books correctly, but must

pay those he employs according to agreement, and must meet his

engagements with creditors. May we not say, then, that conformity

to the second and third of these requirements is, like conformity

to the first, an indirect means to effectual use of the more direct

means of achieving welfare? May we not say, too, that as the use of

each more indirect means in due order becomes itself an end, and a

source of gratification; so, eventually, becomes the use of this

most indirect means? And may we not infer that though conformity to

moral requirements precedes in imperativeness conformity to other

requirements; yet that this imperativeness arises from the fact that

fulfillment of the other requirements, by self or others, or both, is

thus furthered?

§ 60. This question brings us round to another side of the issue before

raised. When alleging that empirical utilitarianism is but introductory

to rational utilitarianism, I pointed out that the last does not

take welfare for its immediate object of pursuit, but takes for its

immediate object of pursuit conformity to certain principles which,

in the nature of things, casually determine welfare. And now we see

that this amounts to recognition of that law, traceable throughout the

evolution of conduct in general, that each later and higher order of

means takes precedence in time and authoritativeness of each earlier

and lower order of means. The contrast between the ethical methods thus

distinguished, made tolerably clear by the above illustrations, will be

made still clearer by contemplating the two as put in opposition by the

leading exponent of empirical utilitarianism. Treating of legislative

aims, Bentham writes:

"But justice, what is it that we are to understand by justice: and

why not happiness but justice? What happiness is, every man knows,

because, what pleasure is, every man knows, and what pain is, every

man knows. But what justice is--this is what on every occasion is the

subject-matter of dispute. Be the meaning of the word justice what

it will, what regard is it entitled to otherwise than as a means of

happiness."[C]

Let us first consider the assertion here made respecting the relative

intelligibilities of these two ends, and let us afterward consider what

is implied by the choice of happiness instead of justice.

Bentham's positive assertion that, "what happiness is every man

knows, because, what pleasure is, every man knows," is met by

counter-assertions equally positive. "Who can tell," asks Plato, "what

pleasure really is, or know it in its essence, except the philosopher,

who alone is conversant with realities."[D] Aristotle, too, after

commenting on the different opinions held by the vulgar, by the

political, by the contemplative, says of happiness that, "to some it

seems to be virtue, to others prudence, and to others a kind of wisdom:

to some again, these, or some one of these, with pleasure, or at least,

not without pleasure; others again include external prosperity."[E]

And Aristotle, like Plato, comes to the remarkable conclusion that

the pleasures of the intellect, reached by the contemplative life,

constitute the highest happiness![F]

How disagreements concerning the nature of happiness and the relative

values of pleasures, thus exhibited in ancient times, continue down

to modern times, is shown in Mr. Sidgwick's discussion of egoistic

hedonism, above commented upon. Further, as was pointed out before, the

indefiniteness attending the estimations of pleasures and pains, which

stands in the way of egoistic hedonism as ordinarily conceived, is

immensely increased on passing to universalistic hedonism as ordinarily

conceived; since its theory implies that the imagined pleasures and

pains of others are to be estimated by the help of these pleasures and

pains of self already so difficult to estimate. And that any one after

observing the various pursuits into which some eagerly enter, but which

others shun, and after listening to the different opinions concerning

the likeableness of this or that occupation or amusement, expressed

at every table, should assert that the nature of happiness can be

fully agreed upon, so as to render it a fit end for direct legislative

action, is surprising.

The accompanying proposition that justice is unintelligible as an end

is no less surprising. Though primitive men have no words for either

happiness or justice, yet even among them an approach to the conception

of justice is traceable. The law of retaliation, requiring that a death

inflicted by one tribe on another, shall be balanced by the death

either of the murderer or some member of his tribe, shows us in a vague

shape that notion of equalness of treatment which forms an essential

element in it.

When we come to early races who have given their thoughts and feelings

literary form we find this conception of justice, as involving

equalness of action, becoming distinct. Among the Jews, David expressed

in words this association of ideas when, praying to God to "hear the

right," he said, "Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let

thine eyes behold the things that are equal;" as also, among early

Christians, did Paul when to the Colossians he wrote, "Masters, give

unto your servants that which is just and equal." Commenting on the

different meanings of justice, Aristotle concludes that "the just will,

therefore, be the lawful and the equal, and the unjust the unlawful

and the unequal. But since the unjust man is also one who takes more

than his share," etc. And that justice was similarly conceived by

the Romans they proved by including under it such meanings as exact,

proportionate, impartial, severally implying fairness of division, and

still better by identification of it with equity, which is a derivative

of _æquus_: the word _æquus_ itself having for one of its meanings

just or impartial.

This coincidence of view among ancient peoples respecting the nature

of justice, has extended to modern peoples; who by a general agreement

in certain cardinal principles which their systems of law embody,

forbidding direct aggressions, which are forms of unequal actions, and

forbidding indirect aggressions by breaches of contract, which are

other forms of unequal actions, one and all show us the identification

of justice with equalness. Bentham, then, is wrong when he says--"But

what justice is--this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter

of dispute." He is more wrong, indeed, than has thus far appeared. For,

in the first place, he misrepresents utterly by ignoring the fact in

ninety-nine out of every hundred daily transactions between men, no

dispute about justice arises; but the business done is recognized on

both sides as justly done. And in the second place if, with respect to

the hundredth transaction there is a dispute, the subject matter of it

is not "what justice is," for it is admitted to be equity or equalness;

but the subject matter of dispute always is what, under these

particular circumstances, constitutes equalness?--a widely different

question.

It is not then self-evident, as Bentham alleges, that happiness is an

intelligible end while justice is not; but contrariwise examination

makes evident the greater intelligibility of justice as an end. And

analysis shows why it is more intelligible. For justice, or equity,

or equalness, is concerned exclusively with _quantity_ under _stated

conditions_; whereas happiness is concerned with both _quantity_ and

_quality_ under _conditions not stated_. When, as in case of theft,

a benefit is taken while no equivalent benefit is yielded--when, as

in case of adulterated goods bought or base coin paid, that which

is agreed to be given in exchange as of equal value is not given,

but something of less value--when, as in case of broken contract,

the obligation on one side has been discharged while there has

been no discharge, or incomplete discharge, of the obligation on

the other; we see that, _the circumstances being specified_, the

injustice complained of refers to the relative amounts of actions,

or products, or benefits, the natures of which are recognized only

so far as is needful for saying whether _as much_ has been given, or

done, or allowed, by each concerned, as was implied by tacit or overt

understanding to be _an equivalent_. But when the end proposed is

happiness, _the circumstances remaining unspecified_, the problem is

that of estimating both quantities and qualities, unhelped by any such

definite measures as acts of exchange imply, or as contracts imply, or

as are implied by the differences between the doings of one aggressing

and one aggressed upon. The mere fact that Bentham himself includes as

elements in the estimation of each pleasure or pain, its intensity,

duration, certainty, and proximity, suffices to show how difficult is

this problem. And when it is remembered that all pleasures and pains,

not felt in particular cases only but in the aggregate of cases, and

severally regarded under these four aspects, have to be compared

with one another and their relative values determined, simply by

introspection; it will be manifest both that the problem is complicated

by the addition of indefinite judgments of qualities to indefinite

measures of quantities, and that it is further complicated by the

multitudinousness of these vague estimations to be gone through and

summed up.

But now passing over this assertion of Bentham that happiness is a

more intelligible end than justice, which we find to be the reverse of

truth, let us note the several implications of the doctrine that the

supreme legislative body ought to make the greatest happiness of the

greatest number its immediate aim.

It implies, in the first place, that happiness may be compassed by

methods framed directly for the purpose, without any previous inquiry

respecting the conditions that must be fulfilled; and this pre-supposes

a belief that there are no such conditions. For if there are any

conditions without fulfillment of which happiness cannot be compassed,

then the first step must be to ascertain these conditions with a view

to fulfilling them; and to admit this is to admit that not happiness

itself must be the immediate end, but fulfillment of the conditions to

its attainment must be the immediate end. The alternatives are simple:

Either the achievement of happiness is not conditional, in which case

one mode of action is as good as another, or it is conditional, in

which case the required mode of action must be the direct aim and not

the happiness to be achieved by it.

Assuming it conceded, as it will be, that there exist conditions

which must be fulfilled before happiness can be attained, let us next

ask what is implied by proposing modes of so controlling conduct as

to further happiness, without previously inquiring whether any such

modes are already known? The implication is that human intelligence

throughout the past, operating on experiences, has failed to discover

any such modes; whereas present human intelligence may be expected

forthwith to discover them. Unless this be asserted, it must be

admitted that certain conditions to the achievement of happiness have

already been partially, if not wholly, ascertained; and if so, our

first business should be to look for them. Having found them, our

rational course is to bring existing intelligence to bear on these

products of past intelligence, with the expectation that it will

verify the substance of them while possibly correcting the form. But

to suppose that no regulative principles for the conduct of associated

human beings have thus far been established, and that they are now to

be established _de novo_, is to suppose that man as he is differs from

man as he was in an incredible degree.

Beyond ignoring the probability, or rather the certainty, that past

experience generalized by past intelligence, must by this time have

disclosed partially, if not wholly, some of the essential conditions

to the achievement of happiness, Bentham's proposition ignores the

formulated knowledge of them actually existing. For whence come the

conception of justice and the answering sentiment. He will scarcely

say that they are meaningless, although his proposition implies as

much; and if he admits that they have meanings, he must choose between

two alternatives either of which is fatal to his hypothesis. Are they

supernaturally caused modes of thinking and feeling, tending to make

men fulfill the conditions to happiness? If so their authority is

peremptory. Are they modes of thinking and feeling naturally caused

in men by experience of these conditions? If so, their authority is

no less peremptory. Not only, then, does Bentham fail to infer that

certain principles of guidance must by this time have been ascertained,

but he refuses to recognize these principles as actually reached and

present to him.

And then after all, he tacitly admits that which he overtly denies, by

saying that--"Be the meaning of the word justice what it will, what

regard is it entitled to otherwise than as a means of happiness?" For

if justice is a means having happiness as its end, then justice must

take precedence of happiness, as every other means takes precedence

of every other end. Bentham's own elaborate polity is a means having

happiness as its end, as justice is, by his own admission, a means

having happiness as an end. If, then, we may properly skip justice,

and go directly to the end happiness, we may properly skip Bentham's

polity, and go directly to the end happiness. In short, we are led

to the remarkable conclusion that in all cases we must contemplate

exclusively the end and must disregard the means.

§ 61. This relation of ends to means, underlying all ethical

speculation will be further elucidated if we join with some of the

above conclusions, certain conclusions drawn in the last chapter. We

shall see that while greatest happiness may vary widely in societies

which, though ideally constituted, are subject to unlike physical

circumstances, certain fundamental conditions to the achievement of

this greatest happiness, are common to all such societies.

Given a people inhabiting a tract which makes nomadic habits necessary,

and the happiness of each individual will be greatest when his nature

is so molded to the requirements of his life, that all his faculties

find their due activities in daily driving and tending cattle, milking,

migrating and so forth. The members of a community otherwise similar,

which is permanently settled, will severally achieve their greatest

happiness when their natures have become such that a fixed habitat, and

the occupations necessitated by it, supply the spheres in which each

instinct and emotion is exercised and brings the concomitant pleasure.

The citizens of a large nation, industrially organized, have reached

their possible ideal of happiness, when the producing, distributing,

and other activities, are such in their kinds and amounts, that each

citizen finds in them a place for all his energies and aptitudes, while

he obtains the means of satisfying all his desires. Once more we may

recognize as not only possible but probable, the eventual existence

of a community, also industrial, the members of which, having natures

similarly responding to these requirements, are also characterized by

dominant æsthetic faculties, and achieve complete happiness only when a

large part of life is filled with æsthetic activities. Evidently these

different types of men, with their different standards of happiness,

each finding the possibility of that happiness in his own society,

would not find it if transferred to any of the other societies.

Evidently, though, they might have in common such kinds of happiness

as accompany the satisfaction of vital needs, they would not have in

common sundry other kinds of happiness.

But now mark that while, to achieve greatest happiness in each of

such societies, the special conditions to be fulfilled must differ

from those to be fulfilled in the other societies, certain general

conditions must be fulfilled in all the societies. Harmonious

co-operation, by which alone in any of them the greatest happiness

can be attained, is, as we saw, made possible only by respect for

one another's claims: there must be neither those direct aggressions

which we class as crimes against person and property, nor must there

be those indirect aggressions constituted by breaches of contracts. So

that maintenance of equitable relations between men is the condition

to attainment of greatest happiness in all societies, however much the

greatest happiness attainable in each may differ in nature, or amount,

or both.

And here a physical analogy may fitly be used to give the greatest

definiteness to this cardinal truth. A mass of matter, of whatever

kind, maintains its state of internal equilibrium, so long as its

component particles severally stand toward their neighbors in

equi-distant positions. Accepting the conclusions of modern physicists,

which imply that each molecule moves rhythmically, then a balanced

state implies that each performs its movements within a space bounded

by the like spaces required for the movements of those around. If

the molecules have been so aggregated that the oscillations of some

are more restrained than the oscillations of others, there is a

proportionate instability. If the number of them thus unduly restrained

is considerable, the instability is such that the cohesion in some part

is liable to fail, and a crack results. If the excesses of restraint

are great and multitudinous, a trifling disturbance causes the mass to

break up into small fragments. To which add that the recognized remedy

for this unstable state is an exposure to such physical condition

(ordinarily high temperature) as enables the molecules so to change

their relative positions that their mutual restraints become equal on

all sides. And now observe that this holds whatever be the natures of

the molecules. They may be simple; they may be compound; they may be

composed of this or that matter in this or that way. In other words,

the special activities of each molecule, constituted by the relative

movements of its units, may be various in their kinds and degrees; and

yet, be they what they may, it remains true that to preserve internal

equilibrium throughout the mass of molecules, the mutual limitations of

their activities must be everywhere alike.

And this is the above-described prerequisite to social equilibrium,

whatever the special natures of the associated persons. Assuming that

within each society such persons are of the same type, needing for

the fulfillment of their several lives kindred activities, and though

these activities may be of one kind in one society and of another kind

in another, so admitting of indefinite variation, this condition to

social equilibrium does not admit of variation. It must be fulfilled

before complete life, that is greatest happiness, can be attained in

any society; be the particular quality of that life, or that happiness,

what it may.[G]

§ 62. After thus observing how means and ends in conduct stand to one

another, and how there emerge certain conclusions respecting their

relative claims, we may see a way to reconcile sundry conflicting

ethical theories. These severally embody portions of the truth; and

simply require combining in proper order to embody the whole truth.

The theological theory contains a part. If for the divine will,

supposed to be supernaturally revealed, we substitute the naturally

revealed end toward which the Power manifested throughout Evolution

works; then, since Evolution has been, and is still, working toward the

highest life, it follows that conforming to those principles by which

the highest life is achieved, is furthering that end. The doctrine that

perfection or excellence of nature should be the object of pursuit, is

in one sense true; for it tacitly recognizes that ideal form of being

which the highest life implies, and to which Evolution tends. There is

a truth, also, in the doctrine that virtue mast be the aim; for this

is another form of the doctrine that the aim must be to fulfill the

conditions to achievement of the highest life. That the intuitions of

a moral faculty should guide or conduct, is a proposition in which

a truth is contained; for these intuitions are the slowly organized

results of experiences received by the race while living in presence

of these conditions. And that happiness is the supreme end is beyond

question true; for this is the concomitant of that highest life which

every theory of moral guidance has distinctly or vaguely in view.

So understanding their relative positions, those ethical systems which

make virtue, right, obligation, the cardinal aims, are seen to be

complementary to those ethical systems which make welfare, pleasure,

happiness, the cardinal aims. Though the moral sentiments generated

in civilized men by daily contact with social conditions and gradual

adaptation to them, are indispensable as incentives and deterrents; and

though the intuitions corresponding to these sentiments have, in virtue

of their origin, a general authority to be reverently recognized;

yet the sympathies and antipathies hence originating, together

with the intellectual expressions of them, are, in their primitive

forms, necessarily vague. To make guidance by them adequate to all

requirements, their dictates have to be interpreted and made definite

by science; to which end there must be analysis of those conditions to

complete living which they respond to, and from converse with which

they have arisen. And such analysis necessitates the recognition of

happiness for each and all, as the end to be achieved by fulfillment of

these conditions.

Hence, recognizing in due degrees all the various ethical theories,

conduct in its highest form will take as guides innate perceptions of

right duly enlightened and made precise by an analytic intelligence,

while conscious that these guides are proximately supreme solely

because they lead to the ultimate supreme end, happiness special and

general.

CHAPTER X.

THE RELATIVITY OF PAINS AND PLEASURES.

§ 63. A truth of cardinal importance as a datum of Ethics, which was

incidentally referred to in the last chapter, must here be set forth at

full length. I mean the truth that not only men of different races, but

also different men of the same race, and even the same men at different

periods of life, have different standards of happiness. Though there is

some recognition of this by moralists, the recognition is inadequate,

and the far-reaching conclusions to be drawn when the relativity of

happiness is fully recognized, are scarcely suspected.