The utilitarian morality does recognize in human beings the power of
sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only
refuses to admit that sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice that does
not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it
considers as wasted.
As regards "conscience": the Utilitarian, when he attempts an analysis,
realizes that "in that complex phenomenon as it actually exists, the
simple fact is in general all encrusted over with collateral
associations derived from sympathy, from love, and still more from fear;
from all forms of religious feeling; from recollections of childhood and
of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others,
and occasionally even self-abasement."[29]
For the priest "ethics cannot be built securely upon anything less than
religious sanctions, and it is for the sake of conscience that ethics
have a practical value."[30]
Can an honest and unbiased thinker doubt that the first is the truer
statement?
Let us now return to a further statement of the position of
Utilitarianism as dealt with by J. S. Mill. From Professor Sidgwick and
those Utilitarians who attempt to claim for the atheistic moralist a
conscience of mathematical accuracy we are unlikely to derive much
assistance.
"According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, 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."[31]
This, according to Utilitarians, is also the standard of morality.
In conformance with this principle of moral obligation, we choose the
greater before the lesser good. Between General Morality and the
obligation of Duty, with which he associates justice, Mill draws what
appears to be a somewhat unnecessarily hard line of distinction,
insomuch as the difference may be seen to consist more of degree than of
kind. Other ethical writers make the same distinction when they divide
moral duties into the two classes of perfect and imperfect obligation,
"the latter being those in which, though the act is obligatory, the
particular occasions of performing it are left to our choice, as in the
case of charity or beneficence."
If, in assessing the "amount" of good, we take into consideration,
besides the categories of quantity and quality, a third category of
"proximity," it would, I think, prove a useful qualification by enabling
the Utilitarian Good to embrace all moral obligation, including legal
Duty, which is considered by Mill apart from general morality. By
"proximity" it is intended to imply that the nearer good is more binding
than the further good, which may in some measure counteract the value of
"quantity and quality" where these are involved, and when a decision
between conflicting moral obligations has to be made.
Though this additional category of Good may not altogether abolish the
distinction which Mill makes between general morality and justice or
duty which may be obligatory by law, it appears to amplify and extend
the scope of the principle of Utility.
"Duty," in the words of J. S. Mill, "is a thing which may be exacted
from a person as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it might be
exacted from him we do not call it his duty."
From this it might be assumed that there could never be any doubt about
what is a person's duty, since when any one owes another or the
community a debt, he is clearly conscious of it, even to the amount. In
the case of right conduct which implies Duty, this, however, is not
always so clearly recognized, especially when Duty implies Allegiance or
Responsibility.
In this connexion we may say that the good we do for our own country is
a nearer good than the good we do for an alien country, therefore if
doing the good involves a choice we should choose our own country; for
the debt we owe to our own country is greater than the debt we owe to
humanity at large. Equally the good we owe to our own family is nearer
than, and therefore comes before, the good we owe to society. To this
most people will accede, and, in fact, the realization of this is at the
base of all sense of Responsibility; thus every man, in whatsoever
capacity he is acting, whether as statesman, county councillor, soldier
or head of a family, should put the considerations of the body he
represents or belongs to before all others; and finally he owes it to
himself--or God[32]--to be true to himself, even before he can be true
to another, in the sense that keeping faith with a friend will not
excuse a man acting dishonestly or untruthfully towards himself. And
this for the reason that Truth is independent of Utilitarian valuation,
since Truth alone is an _a priori_ and self-evident "good"; by its very
meaning it is a statement of "what is," temporally as well as
ultimately; as such it must be a statement of indisputable fact, not
opinion or faith which rests on assertion. Since more things are capable
of being proved untrue than ultimately true, it follows that as a
criterion of conduct its value is chiefly negative. It can thus be shown
that lying, deception, breach of contract are wrong _per se_, for truth
is the basic principle upon which all others depend, and the necessary
postulate of the idea of God, whilst the value of our positive acts must
for the most part depend upon some such standard as the Greatest
Happiness or Utility principle.
As an illustration of the "nearer is the greater good" principle may be
cited the line taken up by Disraeli when the controversy over the opium
trade between India and China first came to the fore. Disraeli firmly
refused to ruin our export trade in opium for any quixotic
considerations involving the moral effect upon the Chinaman, whilst it
in no way implied a breach of faith with him.
Less clear is the question of precedence when two primary obligations
are conflicting; primary obligations are here intended to mean those
obligatory duties which may rightly be exacted from a person by reason
of his indebtedness to the corporate body to which he belongs, or which
he represents, and which is entitled to a preference in the good he
does.
For instance, it may sometimes be said that a man's duty to his country
as a soldier conflicts with his duty to his family as its sole support;
both are primary obligations; as long, then, as allegiance to one does
not involve a betrayal of the other, which could only be if their
interests were fundamentally opposed and directed against each other,
both obligations must be equally acknowledged, and a _via media_
discovered to satisfy the claims of both to an equal extent.
Should, however, this confliction of interests be so direct and
antagonistic as necessarily to involve an overt repudiation of the
claims of one or the other, as in the hypothetical case of a soldier
being ordered to execute the members of his own family, his conduct,
supposing him to be actuated by a desire to act solely in conformance
with ethical considerations, would be determined by his judgment as to
which course would promote the greater good or Utility, having regard to
the categories: quantity, quality and proximity; the "nearer" in this
case undoubtedly being his family, though this fact alone would not
necessarily outweigh the other values of quantity and quality. In
certain Eastern countries it would possibly appeal to a man's sense of
appropriateness to be the agent by which the crime or dishonour of his
relative would be expiated.
A man is often heard to claim that his moral duty towards himself, in
other words "his conscience," absolves him from the fulfilment of
another primary duty or obligation. As I have attempted to show, the
only real or _a priori_ duty which a man can prove he owes to himself,
and therefore has a right to place before any other clear duty derived
from the fact of his membership of any community or corporate body, is
his obligation not to violate Truth, which is a statement of reality,
_not of opinion_. Thus no other duty can rightly oblige a man to perjure
himself.
If this maxim is accepted, it will be seen that a deadlock of this sort
between a man's duty to his country as a citizen and his duty to himself
or his "conscience," could rarely occur in a civilized or rational
community. Against this a man might argue that he had solemnly vowed not
to shed human blood, either as a soldier or otherwise, and that he is
right to resist any attempt to conscript him for the army, since he
would thereby be required to perjure himself. The answer is simple, for
the man clearly violated his duty to his country in the first place by
vowing he would deprive his country of his services should they be
required, a right which no country has ever forsworn and which is
considered the natural return due for free citizenship and state
protection; these conditions are presumed to be accepted with the
benefits of citizenship and protection of person and property; his first
violation of duty towards his country will therefore not absolve him of
a second.
Neither can it be shown according to this principle that a man is
entitled to take an oath of this nature, regardless of potential
conflicting obligations, on the score that such an oath is merely in
conformance with the postulates of Truth, since the question of the
Rightness or Wrongness of shedding blood under all circumstances is not
susceptible of ultimate proof, but must remain finally on the authority
of an _ipse dixit_, or of Utility.
Thus far we have examined to some extent the purely ethical basis on
which the idea of priority of duty, as evinced by conscience or reason,
rests: the sanction of conscience which rests on religious authority is
dealt with elsewhere.
To further illustrate the "nearer good" principle with which we have
been dealing, it may be profitable to refer to a passage from an account
of the life of General Robert E. Lee, Commander-in-Chief of the
Confederate troops during the American Civil War, a devoutly religious
man, and a lifelong member of the Protestant Episcopal Church.[33]
"Colonel Lee was in command of the department of Texas in 1860, but was
recalled to Washington early in 1861, when the 'irrepressible conflict'
between the free and the slave states seemed imminent. When Lee reached
the capital in March 1861, seven states had passed ordinances of
secession from the Union, and had formed the Southern Confederacy.
Virginia seceded from the Union on April 17, and Colonel Lee, believing
that his supreme political allegiance was due to his state rather than
to the Union, felt compelled to send his resignation to General Scott,
which he did on April 20. The bitter struggle between his personal
preferences and his high sense of duty is shown in the words of his wife
written to a friend at the time: 'My husband has wept tears of blood
over this terrible war; but he must as a man and a Virginian share the
destiny of his state, which has solemnly pronounced for independence.'"
Lee's action in choosing the "nearer" duty to his own state in
preference to the duty he owed to the Union as a soldier and a citizen,
even against his personal preferences and, as far as one can discern
them, his religious opinions, affords a striking example of the
principle I have been attempting to illustrate.
Whether his decision was arrived at spontaneously and impulsively, or as
the result of deliberation, is immaterial as affecting the "rightness"
of his action. Equally immaterial is the possibility that he might have
arrived at an opposite conclusion whilst still employing the same
principles, by judging that the categories of "quantity" and "quality"
outweighed that of "proximity." Whenever clear duties are mutually
annihilating, which fortunately is very rarely the case, the problem
will always have to be solved, if it is solved with scrupulous honesty,
by a careful balance of values, whilst the result at best cannot be
infallible.
What stands out, however, in this case, is the triumph of clearly
recognized duty founded on "nearer" indebtedness, and so of
responsibility, over lesser indebtedness, even though the latter was
reinforced by personal predilection and religious sentiment.