THE GOOD LIFE
There have been at different times and among different people many
varying conceptions of the good life. To some extent the differences
were amenable to argument; this was when men differed as to the
means to achieve a given end. Some think that prison is a good way
of preventing crime; others hold that education would be better. A
difference of this sort can be decided by sufficient evidence. But some
differences cannot be tested in this way. Tolstoy condemned all war;
others have held the life of a soldier doing battle for the right to
be very noble. Here there was probably involved a real difference as
to ends. Those who praise the soldier usually consider the punishment
of sinners a good thing in itself; Tolstoy did not think so. On such
a matter, no argument is possible. I cannot, therefore, prove that my
view of the good life is right; I can only state my view, and hope that
as many as possible will agree. My view is this:
_The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge._
Knowledge and love are both indefinitely extensible; therefore, however
good a life may be, a better life can be imagined. Neither love without
knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life. In the
Middle Ages, when pestilence appeared in a country, holy men advised
the population to assemble in churches and pray for deliverance; the
result was that the infection spread with extraordinary rapidity among
the crowded masses of supplicants. This was an example of love without
knowledge. The late War afforded an example of knowledge without love.
In each case, the result was death on a large scale.
Although both love and knowledge are necessary, love is in a sense more
fundamental, since it will lead intelligent people to seek knowledge,
in order to find out how to benefit those whom they love. But if people
are not intelligent, they will be content to believe what they have
been told, and may do harm in spite of the most genuine benevolence.
Medicine affords, perhaps, the best example of what I mean. An able
physician is more useful to a patient than the most devoted friend,
and progress in medical knowledge does more for the health of the
community than ill-informed philanthropy. Nevertheless, an element of
benevolence is essential even here, if any but the rich are to profit
by scientific discoveries.
Love is a word which covers a variety of feelings; I have used it
purposely, as I wish to include them all. Love as an emotion――which
is what I am speaking about, for love “on principle” does not seem to
me genuine――moves between two poles: on the one side, pure delight in
contemplation; on the other, pure benevolence. Where inanimate objects
are concerned, delight alone enters in: we cannot feel benevolence
towards a landscape or a sonata. This type of enjoyment is presumably
the source of art. It is stronger, as a rule, in very young children
than in adults, who are apt to view objects in a utilitarian spirit. It
plays a large part in our feelings towards human beings, some of whom
have charm and some the reverse, when considered simply as objects of
aesthetic contemplation.
The opposite pole of love is pure benevolence. Men have sacrificed
their lives to helping lepers in such a case, the love they felt cannot
have had any element of aesthetic delight. Parental affection, as a
rule, is accompanied by pleasure in the child’s appearance, but remains
strong when this element is wholly absent. It would seem odd to call a
mother’s interest in a sick child “benevolence,” because we are in the
habit of using this word to describe a pale emotion nine parts humbug.
But it is difficult to find any other word to describe the desire for
another person’s welfare. It is a fact that a desire of this sort
may reach any degree of strength in the case of parental feeling. In
other cases it is far less intense; indeed it would seem likely that
all altruistic emotion is a sort of overflow of parental feeling,
or sometimes a sublimation of it. For want of a better word, I shall
call this emotion “benevolence.” But I want to make it clear that I am
speaking of an emotion, not a principle, and that I do not include in
it any feeling of superiority such as is sometimes associated with the
word. The word “sympathy” expresses part of what I mean, but leaves out
the element of activity that I wish to include.
Love at its fullest is an indissoluble combination of the two elements,
delight and well-wishing. The pleasure of a parent in a beautiful and
successful child combines both elements; so does sex-love at its best.
But in sex-love benevolence will only exist where there is secure
possession, since otherwise jealousy will destroy it, while perhaps
actually increasing the delight in contemplation. Delight without
well-wishing may be cruel; well-wishing without delight easily tends
to become cold and a little superior. A person who wishes to be loved
wishes to be the object of a love containing both elements, except in
cases of extreme weakness, such as infancy and severe illness. In these
cases benevolence may be all that is desired. Conversely, in cases of
extreme strength admiration is more desired than benevolence: this is
the state of mind of potentates and famous beauties. We only desire
other people’s good wishes in proportion as we feel ourselves in need
of help or in danger of harm from them. At least, that would seem to
be the biological logic of the situation, but it is not quite true
to life. We desire affection in order to escape from the feeling of
loneliness, in order to be, as we say, “understood.” This is a matter
of sympathy, not merely of benevolence; the person whose affection is
satisfactory to us must not merely wish us well, but must know in what
our happiness consists. But this belongs to the other element of the
good life, namely knowledge.
In a perfect world, every sentient being would be to every other the
object of the fullest love, compounded of delight, benevolence, and
understanding inextricably blended. It does not follow that, in this
actual world, we ought to attempt to have such feelings towards all the
sentient beings whom we encounter. There are many in whom we cannot
feel delight, because they are disgusting; if we were to do violence
to our nature by trying to see beauties in them, we should merely
blunt our susceptibilities to what we naturally find beautiful. Not
to mention human beings, there are fleas and bugs and lice. We should
have to be as hard pressed as the Ancient Mariner before we could feel
delight in contemplating these creatures. Some saints, it is true, have
called them “pearls of God,” but what these men delighted in was the
opportunity of displaying their own sanctity.
Benevolence is easier to extend widely, but even benevolence has its
limits. If a man wished to marry a lady, we should not think the better
of him for withdrawing if he found that some one else also wished to
marry her: we should regard this as a fair field for competition. Yet
his feelings towards a rival cannot be _wholly_ benevolent. I think
that in all descriptions of the good life here on earth we must assume
a certain basis of animal vitality and animal instinct; without this,
life becomes tame and uninteresting. Civilization should be something
added to this, not substituted for it; the ascetic saint and the
detached sage fail in this respect to be complete human beings. A small
number of them may enrich a community; but a world composed of them
would die of boredom.
These considerations lead to a certain emphasis on the element of
delight as an ingredient in the best love. Delight, in this actual
world, is unavoidably selective, and prevents us from having the same
feelings towards all mankind. When conflicts arise between delight and
benevolence, they must, as a rule, be decided by a compromise, not by
a complete surrender of either. Instinct has its rights, and if we
do violence to it beyond a point it takes vengeance in subtle ways.
Therefore in aiming at a good life the limits of human possibility
must be borne in mind. Here again, however, we are brought back to the
necessity of knowledge.
When I speak of knowledge as an ingredient of the good life, I am
not thinking of ethical knowledge, but of scientific knowledge and
knowledge of particular facts. I do not think there is, strictly
speaking, such a thing as ethical knowledge. If we desire to achieve
some end, knowledge may show us the means, and this knowledge may
loosely pass as ethical. But I do not believe that we can decide
what sort of conduct is right or wrong except by reference to its
probable consequences. Given an end to be achieved, it is a question
for science to discover how to achieve it. All moral rules must be
tested by examining whether they tend to realize ends that we desire.
I say ends that we desire, not ends that we _ought_ to desire. What
we “ought” to desire is merely what someone else wishes us to desire.
Usually it is what the authorities wish us to desire――parents,
schoolmasters, policemen, and judges. If you say to me “you ought to do
so-and-so,” the motive power of your remark lies in my desire for your
approval――together, possibly, with rewards or punishments attached to
your approval or disapproval. Since all behaviour springs from desire,
it is clear that ethical notions can have no importance except as they
influenced desire. They do this through the desire for approval and the
fear of disapproval. These are powerful social forces, and we shall
naturally endeavour to win them to our side if we wish to realize any
social purpose. When I say that the morality of conduct is to be judged
by its probable consequences, I mean that I desire to see approval
given to behaviour likely to realize social purposes which we desire,
and disapproval to opposite behaviour. At present this is not done;
there are certain traditional rules according to which approval and
disapproval are meted out quite regardless of consequences. But this is
a topic with which we shall deal in the next chapter.
The superfluity of theoretical ethics is obvious in simple cases.
Suppose, for instance, that your child is ill. Love makes you wish
to cure it, and science tells you how to do so. There is not an
intermediate stage of ethical theory, where it is demonstrated that
your child had better be cured. Your act springs directly from desire
for an end, together with knowledge of means. This is equally true of
all acts, whether good or bad. The ends differ, and the knowledge is
more adequate in some cases than in others. But there is no conceivable
way of making people do things they do not wish to do. What is possible
is to alter their desires by a system of rewards and penalties, among
which social approval and disapproval are not the least potent. The
question for the legislative moralist is, therefore: How shall this
system of rewards and punishments be arranged so as to secure the
maximum of what is desired by the legislative authority? If I say that
the legislative authority has bad desires, I mean merely that its
desires conflict with those of some section of the community to which I
belong. Outside human desires there is no moral standard.
Thus, what distinguishes ethics from science is not any special kind
of knowledge, but merely desire. The knowledge required in ethics is
exactly like the knowledge elsewhere; what is peculiar is that certain
ends are desired, and that right conduct is what conduces to them. Of
course, if the definition of right conduct is to make a wide appeal,
the ends must be such as large sections of mankind desire. If I defined
right conduct as that which increases my own income, readers would
disagree. The whole effectiveness of any ethical argument lies in its
scientific part, i. e. in the proof that one kind of conduct, rather
than some other, is a means to an end which is widely desired. I
distinguish, however, between ethical argument and ethical education.
The latter consists in strengthening certain desires and weakening
others. This is quite a different process, which will be separately
discussed at a later stage.
We can now explain more exactly the purport of the definition of the
good life with which this chapter began. When I said that the good
life consists of love guided by knowledge, the desire which prompted
me was the desire to live such a life as far as possible, and to see
others living it; and the logical content of the statement is that, in
a community where men live in this way, more desires will be satisfied
than in one where there is less love or less knowledge. I do not mean
that such a life is “virtuous” or that its opposite is “sinful,”
for these are conceptions which seem to me to have no scientific
justification.