WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS.
A passing remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of
supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and
wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in
which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the
philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary
appearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd a
misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the contrary
accusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in its
grossest form, is another of the common charges against utilitarianism:
and, as has been pointedly remarked by an able writer, the same sort of
persons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory "as
impracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and
as too practicably voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word
utility." Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every
writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility,
meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but
pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of
opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always
declared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet the
common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and
periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetually
falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the word
utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they
habitually express by it the rejection, or the neglect, of pleasure in
some of its forms; of beauty, of ornament, or of amusement. Nor is the
term thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, but
occasionally in compliment; as though it implied superiority to
frivolity and the mere pleasures of the moment. And this perverted use
is the only one in which the word is popularly known, and the one from
which the new generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning.
Those who introduced the word, but who had for many years discontinued
it as a distinctive appellation, may well feel themselves called upon to
resume it, if by doing so they can hope to contribute anything towards
rescuing it from this utter degradation.[A]
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the
Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion
as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the
reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the
absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To
give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more
requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas
of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question.
But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on
which this theory of morality is grounded--namely, that pleasure, and
freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all
desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any
other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in
themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention
of pain.
Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some
of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To
suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than
pleasure--no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit--they
designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of
swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period,
contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are
occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its
German, French, and English assailants.
When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not
they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading
light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no
pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition
were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no
longer an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the
same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough
for the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of the
Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because
a beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human being's conceptions of
happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal
appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything
as happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not,
indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in
drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle.
To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian
elements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory
of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect; of the
feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher
value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted,
however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority
of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency,
safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former--that is, in their
circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on
all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they
might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground,
with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of
utility to recognise the fact, that some _kinds_ of pleasure are more
desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while,
in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as
quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on
quantity alone.
If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or
what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a
pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible
answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who
have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any
feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable
pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted
with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even
though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent,
and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which
their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the
preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing
quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.
Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted
with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a
most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their
higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into
any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a
beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a
fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling
and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be
persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied
with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they
possess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the
desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they
would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape
from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however
undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more
to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is
certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type;
but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into
what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what
explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to
pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to
some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we
may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal
to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the
inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement,
both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most
appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings
possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact,
proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part
of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which
conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of
desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a
sacrifice of happiness-that the superior being, in anything like equal
circumstances, is not happier than the inferior-confounds the two very
different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that the
being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of
having them fully satisfied; and a highly-endowed being will always feel
that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted,
is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at
all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed
unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all
the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human
being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a
different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the
question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher pleasures,
occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone them to the
lower. But this is quite compatible with a full appreciation of the
intrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity of
character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it
to be the less valuable; and this no less when the choice is between two
bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental. They pursue
sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that
health is the greater good. It may be further objected, that many who
begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in
years sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that
those who undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower
description of pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe that
before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already
become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in
most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile
influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young
persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position
in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them,
are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose
their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because
they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict
themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer
them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have
access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.
It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally
susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly
preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an
ineffectual attempt to combine both.
From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be
no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two
pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to
the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences,
the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if
they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final.
And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this judgment
respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to
be referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there of
determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two
pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are
familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and
pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide
whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a
particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced?
When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the pleasures
derived from the higher faculties to be preferable _in kind_, apart from
the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature,
disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled
on this subject to the same regard.
I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly
just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive
rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable condition
to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not
the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness
altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character
is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it
makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a
gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by
the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each
individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own,
so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the
benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last,
renders refutation superfluous.
According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the
ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other
things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of
other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and
as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and
quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against
quantity, being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities
of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness
and self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison.
This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human
action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may
accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the
observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to
the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them
only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient
creation.
Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors, who
say that happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose of human
life and action; because, in the first place, it is unattainable: and
they contemptuously ask, What right hast thou to be happy? a question
which Mr. Carlyle clenches by the addition, What right, a short time
ago, hadst thou even _to be_? Next, they say, that men can do _without_
happiness; that all noble human beings have felt this, and could not
have become noble but by learning the lesson of Entsagen, or
renunciation; which lesson, thoroughly learnt and submitted to, they
affirm to be the beginning and necessary condition of all virtue.
The first of these objections would go to the root of the matter were it
well founded; for if no happiness is to be had at all by human beings,
the attainment of it cannot be the end of morality, or of any rational
conduct. Though, even in that case, something might still be said for
the utilitarian theory; since utility includes not solely the pursuit of
happiness, but the prevention or mitigation of unhappiness; and if the
former aim be chimerical, there will be all the greater scope and more
imperative need for the latter, so long at least as mankind think fit to
live, and do not take refuge in the simultaneous act of suicide
recommended under certain conditions by Novalis. When, however, it is
thus positively asserted to be impossible that human life should be
happy, the assertion, if not something like a verbal quibble, is at
least an exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a continuity of highly
pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that this is impossible. A
state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with
some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash
of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this the
philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life were as
fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness which they meant was
not a life of rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up of
few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided
predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the
foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable
of bestowing. A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunate
enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of the name of
happiness. And such an existence is even now the lot of many, during
some considerable portion of their lives. The present wretched
education, and wretched social arrangements, are the only real hindrance
to its being attainable by almost all.
The objectors perhaps may doubt whether human beings, if taught to
consider happiness as the end of life, would be satisfied with such a
moderate share of it. But great numbers of mankind have been satisfied
with much less. The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be
two, either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the
purpose: tranquillity, and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find
that they can be content with very little pleasure: with much
excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of
pain. There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even the
mass of mankind to unite both; since the two are so far from being
incompatible that they are in natural alliance, the prolongation of
either being a preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the other. It
is only those in whom indolence amounts to a vice, that do not desire
excitement after an interval of repose; it is only those in whom the
need of excitement is a disease, that feel the tranquillity which
follows excitement dull and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct
proportion to the excitement which preceded it. When people who are
tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient
enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring
for nobody but themselves. To those who have neither public nor private
affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case
dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must
be terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects of
personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a
fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as
lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth
and health. Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life
unsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation. A cultivated mind--I do
not mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains of
knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable
degree, to exercise its faculties--finds sources of inexhaustible
interest in all that surrounds it; in the objects of nature, the
achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of
history, the ways of mankind past and present, and their prospects in
the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all this,
and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it; but only
when one has had from the beginning no moral or human interest in these
things, and has sought in them only the gratification of curiosity.
Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amount
of mental culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in these
objects of contemplation, should not be the inheritance of every one
born in a civilized country. As little is there an inherent necessity
that any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid of every
feeling or care but those which centre in his own miserable
individuality. Something far superior to this is sufficiently common
even now, to give ample earnest of what the human species may be made.
Genuine private affections, and a sincere interest in the public good,
are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly brought-up
human being. In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much
to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who has
this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of
an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person,
through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the
liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not
fail to find this enviable existence, if he escape the positive evils of
life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering--such as
indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss
of objects of affection. The main stress of the problem lies, therefore,
in the contest with these calamities, from which it is a rare good
fortune entirely to escape; which, as things now are, cannot be
obviated, and often cannot be in any material degree mitigated. Yet no
one whose opinion deserves a moment's consideration can doubt that most
of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable,
and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced
within narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may be
completely extinguished by the wisdom of society, combined with the good
sense and providence of individuals. Even that most intractable of
enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by good
physical and moral education, and proper control of noxious influences;
while the progress of science holds out a promise for the future of
still more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And every advance
in that direction relieves us from some, not only of the chances which
cut short our own lives, but, what concerns us still more, which deprive
us of those in whom our happiness is wrapt up. As for vicissitudes of
fortune, and other disappointments connected with worldly circumstances,
these are principally the effect either of gross imprudence, of
ill-regulated desires, or of bad or imperfect social institutions. All
the grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree,
many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort; and
though their removal is grievously slow--though a long succession of
generations will perish in the breach before the conquest is completed,
and this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were not wanting,
it might easily be made--yet every mind sufficiently intelligent and
generous to bear a part, however small and unconspicuous, in the
endeavour, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, which he
would not for any bribe in the form of selfish indulgence consent to be
without.
And this leads to the true estimation of what is said by the objectors
concerning the possibility, and the obligation, of learning to do
without happiness. Unquestionably it is possible to do without
happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind,
even in those parts of our present world which are least deep in
barbarism; and it often has to be done voluntarily by the hero or the
martyr, for the sake of something which he prizes more than his
individual happiness. But this something, what is it, unless the
happiness of others, or some of the requisites of happiness? It is noble
to be capable of resigning entirely one's own portion of happiness, or
chances of it: but, after all, this self-sacrifice must be for some end;
it is not its own end; and if we are told that its end is not happiness,
but virtue, which is better than happiness, I ask, would the sacrifice
be made if the hero or martyr did not believe that it would earn for
others immunity from similar sacrifices? Would it be made, if he thought
that his renunciation of happiness for himself would produce no fruit
for any of his fellow creatures, but to make their lot like his, and
place them also in the condition of persons who have renounced
happiness? All honour to those who can abnegate for themselves the
personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute
worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who
does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more
deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may
be an inspiriting proof of what men _can_ do, but assuredly not an
example of what they _should_.
Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements
that any one can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute
sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect
state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice
is the highest virtue which can be found in man. I will add, that in
this condition of the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the
conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect of
realizing such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except that
consciousness can raise a person above the chances of life, by making
him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they have not power
to subdue him: which, once felt, frees him from excess of anxiety
concerning the evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the
worst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate in tranquillity the
sources of satisfaction accessible to him, without concerning himself
about the uncertainty of their duration, any more than about their
inevitable end.
Meanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the morality of
self-devotion as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them,
as either to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The utilitarian
morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their
own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that
the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or
tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.
The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the
happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either of
mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by the
collective interests of mankind.
I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have
the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the
utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own
happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and
that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial
as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus
of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To
do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself,
constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of
making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first,
that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as
speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every
individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the
whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a
power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in
the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own
happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own
happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and
positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes: so that not
only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to
himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also
that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every
individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments
connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human
being's sentient existence. If the impugners of the utilitarian morality
represented it to their own minds in this its true character, I know not
what recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possibly
affirm to be wanting to it: what more beautiful or more exalted
developments of human nature any other ethical system can be supposed to
foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian,
such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.
The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with
representing it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among
them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested
character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high for
humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall
always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of
society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of
morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is
the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test
we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive
of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine
hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly
so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them. It is the more
unjust to utilitarianism that this particular misapprehension should be
made a ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists have
gone beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive has nothing
to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the
agent. He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally
right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his
trouble: he who betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a
crime, even if his object be to serve another friend to whom he is under
greater obligations.[B] But to speak only of actions done from the
motive of duty, and in direct obedience to principle: it is a
misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as
implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as
the world, or society at large. The great majority of good actions are
intended, not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals,
of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most
virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular
persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that
in benefiting them he is not violating the rights--that is, the
legitimate and authorized expectations--of any one else. The
multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, the
object of virtue: the occasions on which any person (except one in a
thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other
words, to be a public benefactor, are but exceptional; and on these
occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every
other case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some few
persons, is all he has to attend to. Those alone the influence of whose
actions extends to society in general, need concern themselves
habitually about so large an object. In the case of abstinences
indeed--of things which people forbear to do, from moral considerations,
though the consequences in the particular case might be beneficial--it
would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware
that the action is of a class which, if practised generally, would be
generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to
abstain from it. The amount of regard for the public interest implied in
this recognition, is no greater than is demanded by every system of
morals; for they all enjoin to abstain from whatever is manifestly
pernicious to society.
The same considerations dispose of another reproach against the doctrine
of utility, founded on a still grosser misconception of the purpose of a
standard of morality, and of the very meaning of the words right and
wrong. It is often affirmed that utilitarianism renders men cold and
unsympathizing; that it chills their moral feelings towards
individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hard
consideration of the consequences of actions, not taking into their
moral estimate the qualities from which those actions emanate. If the
assertion means that they do not allow their judgment respecting the
rightness or wrongness of an action to be influenced by their opinion of
the qualities of the person who does it, this is a complaint not against
utilitarianism, but against having any standard of morality at all; for
certainly no known ethical standard decides an action to be good or bad
because it is done by a good or a bad man, still less because done by an
amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man or the contrary. These
considerations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of
persons; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent
with the fact that there are other things which interest us in persons
besides the rightness and wrongness of their actions. The Stoics,
indeed, with the paradoxical misuse of language which was part of their
system, and by which they strove to raise themselves above all concern
about anything but virtue, were fond of saying that he who has that has
everything; that he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king. But
no claim of this description is made for the virtuous man by the
utilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians are quite aware that there are other
desirable possessions and qualities besides virtue, and are perfectly
willing to allow to all of them their full worth. They are also aware
that a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous character,
and that actions which are blameable often proceed from qualities
entitled to praise. When this is apparent in any particular case, it
modifies their estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the agent.
I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of opinion, that in the long run
the best proof of a good character is good actions; and resolutely
refuse to consider any mental disposition as good, of which the
predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct. This makes them
unpopular with many people; but it is an unpopularity which they must
share with every one who regards the distinction between right and wrong
in a serious light; and the reproach is not one which a conscientious
utilitarian need be anxious to repel.
If no more be meant by the objection than that many utilitarians look on
the morality of actions, as measured by the utilitarian standard, with
too exclusive a regard, and do not lay sufficient stress upon the other
beauties of character which go towards making a human being loveable or
admirable, this may be admitted. Utilitarians who have cultivated their
moral feelings, but not their sympathies nor their artistic perceptions,
do fall into this mistake; and so do all other moralists under the same
conditions. What can be said in excuse for other moralists is equally
available for them, namely, that if there is to be any error, it is
better that it should be on that side. As a matter of fact, we may
affirm that among utilitarians as among adherents of other systems,
there is every imaginable degree of rigidity and of laxity in the
application of their standard: some are even puritanically rigorous,
while others are as indulgent as can possibly be desired by sinner or by
sentimentalist. But on the whole, a doctrine which brings prominently
forward the interest that mankind have in the repression and prevention
of conduct which violates the moral law, is likely to be inferior to no
other in turning the sanctions of opinion against such violations. It is
true, the question, What does violate the moral law? is one on which
those who recognise different standards of morality are likely now and
then to differ. But difference of opinion on moral questions was not
first introduced into the world by utilitarianism, while that doctrine
does supply, if not always an easy, at all events a tangible and
intelligible mode of deciding such differences.
* * * * *
It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of the common
misapprehensions of utilitarian ethics, even those which are so obvious
and gross that it might appear impossible for any person of candour and
intelligence to fall into them: since persons, even of considerable
mental endowments, often give themselves so little trouble to understand
the bearings of any opinion against which they entertain a prejudice,
and men are in general so little conscious of this voluntary ignorance
as a defect, that the vulgarest misunderstandings of ethical doctrines
are continually met with in the deliberate writings of persons of the
greatest pretensions both to high principle and to philosophy. We not
uncommonly hear the doctrine of utility inveighed against as a _godless_
doctrine. If it be necessary to say anything at all against so mere an
assumption, we may say that the question depends upon what idea we have
formed of the moral character of the Deity. If it be a true belief that
God desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and that
this was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a
godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other. If it be
meant that utilitarianism does not recognise the revealed will of God as
the supreme law of morals, I answer, that an utilitarian who believes in
the perfect goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily believes that
whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals, must
fulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme degree. But others
besides utilitarians have been of opinion that the Christian revelation
was intended, and is fitted, to inform the hearts and minds of mankind
with a spirit which should enable them to find for themselves what is
right, and incline them to do it when found, rather than to tell them,
except in a very general way, what it is: and that we need a doctrine of
ethics, carefully followed out, to _interpret_ to us the will of God.
Whether this opinion is correct or not, it is superfluous here to
discuss; since whatever aid religion, either natural or revealed, can
afford to ethical investigation, is as open to the utilitarian moralist
as to any other. He can use it as the testimony of God to the usefulness
or hurtfulness of any given course of action, by as good a right as
others can use it for the indication of a transcendental law, having no
connexion with usefulness or with happiness.
Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an immoral doctrine by
giving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the popular
use of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in
the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that
which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself: as
when a minister sacrifices the interest of his country to keep himself
in place. When it means anything better than this, it means that which
is expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose, but
which violates a rule whose observance is expedient in a much higher
degree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead of being the same thing
with the useful, is a branch of the hurtful. Thus, it would often be
expedient, for the purpose of getting over some momentary embarrassment,
or attaining some object immediately useful to ourselves or others, to
tell a lie. But inasmuch as the cultivation in ourselves of a sensitive
feeling on the subject of veracity, is one of the most useful, and the
enfeeblement of that feeling one of the most hurtful, things to which
our conduct can be instrumental; and inasmuch as any, even
unintentional, deviation from truth, does that much towards weakening
the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principal
support of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of which
does more than any one thing that can be named to keep back
civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness on the largest
scale depends; we feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of a
rule of such transcendent expediency, is not expedient, and that he who,
for the sake of a convenience to himself or to some other individual,
does what depends on him to deprive mankind of the good, and inflict
upon them the evil, involved in the greater or less reliance which they
can place in each other's word, acts the part of one of their worst
enemies. Yet that even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possible
exceptions, is acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is when
the withholding of some fact (as of information from a male-factor, or
of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would preserve some one
(especially a person other than oneself) from great and unmerited evil,
and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in order
that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have
the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to
be recognized, and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the
principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing
these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out the
region within which one or the other preponderates.
Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply
to such objections as this--that there is not time, previous to action,
for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the
general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is
impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not
time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read
through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that
there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human
species. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience
the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well
as all the morality of life, is dependent. People talk as if the
commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and
as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the
property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first
time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness. Even
then I do not think that he would find the question very puzzling; but,
at all events, the matter is now done to his hand. It is truly a
whimsical supposition, that if mankind were agreed in considering
utility to be the test of morality, they would remain without any
agreement as to what is useful, and would take no measures for having
their notions on the subject taught to the young, and enforced by law
and opinion. There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard
whatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined
with it, but on any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by this time
have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on
their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules
of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has
succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this,
even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no
means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to
the effects of actions on the general happiness, I admit, or rather,
earnestly maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility, like
the precepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement,
and, in a progressive state of the human mind, their improvement is
perpetually going on. But to consider the rules of morality as
improvable, is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizations
entirely, and endeavour to test each individual action directly by the
first principle, is another. It is a strange notion that the
acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission
of secondary ones. To inform a traveller respecting the place of his
ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of landmarks and
direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end
and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to
that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take
one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking
a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor
listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that
the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors
cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational
creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational
creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the
common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more
difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight
is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do.
Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require
subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing
without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument
against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such
secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till
now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions
from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as
absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.
The remainder of the stock arguments against utilitarianism mostly
consist in laying to its charge the common infirmities of human nature,
and the general difficulties which embarrass conscientious persons in
shaping their course through life. We are told that an utilitarian will
be apt to make his own particular case an exception to moral rules, and,
when under temptation, will see an utility in the breach of a rule,
greater than he will see in its observance. But is utility the only
creed which is able to furnish us with excuses for evil doing, and means
of cheating our own conscience? They are afforded in abundance by all
doctrines which recognise as a fact in morals the existence of
conflicting considerations; which all doctrines do, that have been
believed by sane persons. It is not the fault of any creed, but of the
complicated nature of human affairs, that rules of conduct cannot be so
framed as to require no exceptions, and that hardly any kind of action
can safely be laid down as either always obligatory or always
condemnable. There is no ethical creed which does not temper the
rigidity of its laws, by giving a certain latitude, under the moral
responsibility of the agent, for accommodation to peculiarities of
circumstances; and under every creed, at the opening thus made,
self-deception and dishonest casuistry get in. There exists no moral
system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting
obligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both in
the theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personal
conduct. They are overcome practically with greater or with less success
according to the intellect and virtue of the individual; but it can
hardly be pretended that any one will be the less qualified for dealing
with them, from possessing an ultimate standard to which conflicting
rights and duties can be referred. If utility is the ultimate source of
moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when
their demands are incompatible. Though the application of the standard
may be difficult, it is better than none at all: while in other systems,
the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is no common
umpire entitled to interfere between them; their claims to precedence
one over another rest on little better than sophistry, and unless
determined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged influence of
considerations of utility, afford a free scope for the action of
personal desires and partialities. We must remember that only in these
cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that
first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral
obligation in which some secondary principle is not involved; and if
only one, there can seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in the
mind of any person by whom the principle itself is recognized.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: The author of this essay has reason for believing himself
to be the first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did
not invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's
_Annals of the Parish_. After using it as a designation for several
years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything
resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name
for one single opinion, not a set of opinions--to denote the recognition
of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it--the
term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a
convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution.]
[Footnote B: An opponent, whose intellectual and moral fairness it is a
pleasure to acknowledge (the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davis), has objected to
this passage, saying, "Surely the rightness or wrongness of saving a man
from drowning does depend very much upon the motive with which it is
done. Suppose that a tyrant, when his enemy jumped into the sea to
escape from him, saved him from drowning simply in order that he might
inflict upon him more exquisite tortures, would it tend to clearness to
speak of that rescue as 'a morally right action?' Or suppose again,
according to one of the stock illustrations of ethical inquiries, that a
man betrayed a trust received from a friend, because the discharge of it
would fatally injure that friend himself or some one belonging to him,
would utilitarianism compel one to call the betrayal 'a crime' as much
as if it had been done from the meanest motive?"
I submit, that he who saves another from drowning in order to kill him
by torture afterwards, does not differ only in motive from him who does
the same thing from duty or benevolence; the act itself is different.
The rescue of the man is, in the case supposed, only the necessary first
step of an act far more atrocious than leaving him to drown would have
been. Had Mr. Davis said, "The rightness or wrongness of saving a man
from drowning does depend very much"--not upon the motive, but--"upon
the _intention_" no utilitarian would have differed from him. Mr. Davis,
by an oversight too common not to be quite venial, has in this case
confounded the very different ideas of Motive and Intention. There is no
point which utilitarian thinkers (and Bentham pre-eminently) have taken
more pains to illustrate than this. The morality of the action depends
entirely upon the intention--that is, upon what the agent _wills to do_.
But the motive, that is, the feeling which makes him will so to do, when
it makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality: though it
makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent,
especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual _disposition_--a
bent of character from which useful, or from which hurtful actions are
likely to arise.]