The author of "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," attempts, after
the manner of priests, to demolish the Utilitarian principle of morality
by stating that the Utilitarian must, to be logical, justify any means
if the end is desirable. As though the Utilitarian and not the Theist
was for ever trying to show that the intrinsic character or value of an
action depended upon the motive (which must be distinguished from the
_intention_; a man who saved another from drowning in order to put him
to death afterwards would be influenced by an intention to murder, but
the motives were: first, desire to rescue, and, for the subsequent
action, desire to kill). Mr. Richardson writes: "The Good and the Right
possess their authority to the Utilitarian because they tend to the
greatest possible happiness of the greatest number of sentient beings."
Now suppose a case which I do not think actually happened, but which may
easily be conceived as happening. Suppose that Cecil Rhodes deliberately
caused the South African War, as many people believed at the time. This
would be characterized (and was, in fact, characterized) as an immoral
act of unscrupulous aggression. But he might defend his action thus:
"Granted that so many thousands of soldiers and citizens will be slain,
and the land cleared of its inhabitants. In a few years the land so
cleared will produce increased harvests of gold and grain. More food
will mean an increase of human productiveness and an increase of
population; thriving townships and farmsteads will support a people more
numerous and richer in the comforts which make life desirable than could
have existed without my action. Therefore on the Utilitarian hypothesis
my action was right and good, and deserved, not reprobation, but
approval."
Not only is this position not admitted by Utilitarians, but John Stuart
Mill long ago pointed out that such a hypothesis "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.... 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."[25]
This is sufficient refutation of such objections to Utilitarianism as
the one brought forward by Richardson, and clearly founded on a
misconception.
Mill, in what is still the best defence of this system, continues:
"Utilitarians ... are ... 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."[26]
"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."[27]