Opening…

I. INTRODUCTION

PAGES

1. Ethics is a department of the Theory or Study of Practice. 1-2

2. It is the study of what ought to be, so far as this depends upon the voluntary action of individuals. 2-4

3. In deciding what they ought to do, men naturally proceed on different principles, and by different methods. 4-6

4. There are two prima facie rational Ends, Excellence or Perfection and Happiness: of which the latter at least may be sought for oneself or universally. It is also commonly thought that certain Rules are prescribed without reference to ulterior consequences. The Methods corresponding to these different principles reduce themselves in the main to three, Egoism, Intuitionism, Utilitarianism. 6-11

5. These methods we are to examine separately, abstracting them from ordinary thought, where we find them in confused combination, and developing them as precisely and consistently as possible. 11-14

II. ETHICS AND POLITICS

1. In considering the relation between Ethics and Politics, we have to distinguish between Positive Law and Ideal Law. 15-18

2. But at any rate the primary object of Ethics is not to determine what ought to be done in an ideal society: it therefore does not necessarily require as a preliminary the theoretical construction of such a society. 18-22

III. ETHICAL JUDGMENTS

1. By ‘Reasonable’ conduct--whether morally or prudentially reasonable--we mean that of which we judge that it ‘ought’ to be done. Such a judgment cannot be legitimately interpreted as a judgment concerning facts, nor as referring exclusively to the means to ulterior ends: in particular, the term ‘ought,’ as used in moral judgments, does not merely signify that the person judging feels a specific emotion: 23-28

2. nor does it merely signify that the conduct in question is prescribed under penalties: 28-31

3. The notion expressed by “ought,” in its strictest ethical use is too elementary to admit of formal definition, or of resolution into simpler notions; it is assumed to be objectively valid; and judgments in which it is used when they relate to the future conduct of the person judging, are accompanied by a special kind of impulse to action. 31-35

4. This ‘dictate of reason’ is also exemplified by merely prudential judgments; and by merely hypothetical imperatives. 35-38

IV. PLEASURE AND DESIRE

1. The psychological doctrine, that the object of Desire is always Pleasure, is liable to collide with the view of Ethical judgments just given: and in any case deserves careful examination. 39-42

2. If by “pleasure” is meant “agreeable feeling,” this doctrine is opposed to experience: for throughout the whole scale of our desires, from the highest to the lowest, we can distinguish impulses directed towards other ends than our own feelings from the desire of pleasure: 42-51

3. as is further shown by the occasional conflict between the two kinds of impulse. 51-52

4. Nor can the doctrine derive any real support from consideration either of the ‘unconscious’ or the ‘original’ aim of human action. 52-54

Note 54-56

V. FREE WILL

1. The Kantian identification of ‘Free’ and ‘Rational’ action is misleading from the ambiguity of the term ‘freedom.’ 57-59

2. When, by definition and analysis of voluntary action, the issue in the Free Will Controversy has been made clear, it appears that the cumulative argument for Determinism is almost overwhelming: 59-65

3. still it is impossible to me in acting not to regard myself as free to do what I judge to be reasonable. However the solution of the metaphysical question of Free Will is not important--Theology apart--for systematic Ethics generally: 65-70

4. it seems however to have a special relation to the notion of Justice: 71-72

5. The practical unimportance of the question of Free Will becomes more clear if we scrutinize closely the range of volitional effects.72-76

VI. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS

1. The Methods indicated in chap. i. have a prima facie claim to proceed on reasonable principles: other principles seem, in so far as they can be made precise, to reduce themselves to these: 77-80

2. especially the principle of “living according to Nature.” 80-83

3. In short, all varieties of Method may conveniently be classed under three heads: Intuitionism and the two kinds of Hedonism, Egoistic and Universalistic. The common confusion between the two latter is easily explained, but must be carefully guarded against. 83-87

Note 87-88

VII. EGOISM AND SELF-LOVE

1. To get a clear idea of what is commonly known as Egoism, we must distinguish and exclude several possible meanings of the term: 89-93

2. and define its end as the greatest attainable surplus of pleasure over pain for the agent,--pleasures being valued in proportion to their pleasantness. 93-95

VIII. INTUITIONISM

1. I apply the term Intuitional--in the narrower of two legitimate senses--to distinguish a method in which the rightness of some kinds of action is assumed to be known without consideration of ulterior consequences. 96-98

2. The common antithesis between Intuitive and Inductive is inexact, since this method does not necessarily proceed from the universal to the particular. We may distinguish Perceptional Intuitionism, according to which it is always the rightness of some particular action that is held to be immediately known: 98-100

3. Dogmatic Intuitionism, in which the general rules of Common Sense are accepted as axiomatic: 100-101

4. Philosophical Intuitionism, which attempts to find a deeper explanation for these current rules. 101-103

Note 103-104

IX. GOOD

1. Another important variety of Intuitionism is constituted by substituting for “right” the wider notion “good.” 105-106

2. The common judgment that a thing is “good” does not on reflection appear to be equivalent to a judgment that it is directly or indirectly pleasant. 106-109

3. “Good” = “desirable” or “reasonably desired”: as applied to conduct, the term does not convey so definite a dictate as “right,” and it is not confined to the strictly voluntary. 109-113

4. There are many other things commonly judged to be good: but reflection shows that nothing is ultimately good except some mode of human existence. 113-115

I. THE PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF EGOISM

1. The Principle of Egoistic Hedonism is the widely accepted proposition that the rational end of conduct for each individual is the Maximum of his own Happiness or Pleasure. 119-121

2. There are several methods of seeking this end: but we may take as primary that which proceeds by Empirical-reflective comparison of pleasures. 121-122

II. EMPIRICAL HEDONISM

1. In this method it is assumed that all pleasures sought and pains shunned are commensurable; and can be arranged in a certain scale of preferableness: 123-125

2. pleasure being defined as “feeling apprehended as desirable by the sentient individual at the time of feeling it.” 125-130

Note 130

III. EMPIRICAL HEDONISM (continued)

1. To get a clearer view of this method, let us consider objections tending to show its inherent impracticability: as, first, that “pleasure as feeling cannot be conceived,” and that a “sum of pleasures is intrinsically unmeaning”: 131-134

2. that transient pleasures cannot satisfy; and that the predominance of self-love tends to defeat its own end: 134-138

3. that the habit of introspectively comparing pleasures is unfavourable to pleasure: 138-140

4. that any quantitative comparison of pleasures and pains is vague and uncertain, even in the case of our own past experiences: 140-144

5. that it also tends to be different at different times: especially through variations in the present state of the person performing the comparison: 144-146

6. that, in fact, the supposed definite commensurability of pleasures is an unverifiable assumption: 146-147

7. that there is a similar liability to error in appropriating the experience of others; and in inferring future pleasures from past. 147-150

IV. OBJECTIVE HEDONISM AND COMMON SENSE

1. It may seem that the judgments of Common Sense respecting the Sources of Happiness offer a refuge from the uncertainties of Empirical Hedonism: but there are several fundamental defects in this refuge; 151-153

2. and these judgments when closely examined are found to be perplexingly inconsistent. 153-158

3. Still we may derive from them a certain amount of practical guidance. 158-161

V. HAPPINESS AND DUTY

1. It has been thought possible to prove on empirical grounds that one’s greatest happiness is always attained by the performance of duty. 162-163

2. But no such complete coincidence seems to result from a consideration either of the Legal Sanctions of Duty: 163-166

3. or of the Social Sanctions: 166-170

4. or of the Internal Sanctions: even if we consider not merely isolated acts of duty, but a virtuous life as a whole. 170-175

VI. DEDUCTIVE HEDONISM

1. Hedonistic Method must ultimately rest on facts of empirical observation: but it might become largely deductive, through scientific knowledge of the causes of pleasure and pain: 176-180

2. but we have no practically available general theory of these causes, either psychophysical, 180-190

3. or biological. 190-192

4. Nor can the principle of ‘increasing life,’ or that of ‘aiming at self-development,’ or that of ‘giving free play to impulse,’ be so defined as to afford us any practical guidance to the end of Egoism, without falling back on the empirical comparison of pleasures and pains. 192-195

I. INTUITIONISM

1. The fundamental assumption of Intuitionism is that we have the power of seeing clearly what actions are in themselves right and reasonable. 199-201

2. Though many actions are commonly judged to be made better or worse through the presence of certain motives, our common judgments of right and wrong relate, strictly speaking, to intentions. One motive, indeed, the desire to do what is right as such, has been thought an essential condition to right conduct: but the Intuitional method should be treated as not involving this assumption. 201-207

3. It is certainly an essential condition that we should not believe the act to be wrong; and this implies that we should not believe it to be wrong for any similar person in similar circumstances: but this implication, though it may supply a valuable practical rule, cannot furnish a complete criterion of right conduct. 207-210

4. The existence of apparent cognitions of right conduct, intuitively obtained, as distinct from their validity, will scarcely be questioned; and to establish their validity it is not needful to prove their ‘originality.’ 210-214

5. Both particular and universal intuitions are found in our common moral thought: but it is for the latter that ultimate validity is ordinarily claimed by intuitional moralists. We must try, by reflecting on Common Sense, how far we can state these Moral Axioms with clearness and precision. 214-216

II. VIRTUE AND DUTY

1. Duties are Right acts, for the adequate performance of which a moral motive is at least occasionally necessary. Virtuous conduct includes the performance of duties as well as praiseworthy acts that are thought to go beyond strict duty, and that may even be beyond the power of some to perform. 217-221

2. Virtues as commonly recognised, are manifested primarily in volitions to produce particular right effects--which must at least be thought by the agent to be not wrong--: but for the completeness of some virtues the presence of certain emotions seems necessary. 221-228

3. It may be said that Moral Excellence, like Beauty, eludes definition: but if Ethical Science is to be constituted, we must obtain definite Moral Axioms. 228-230

III. THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES

1. The common conception of Wisdom assumes a harmony of the ends of different ethical methods: all of which--and not one rather than another--the wise man is commonly thought to aim at and attain as far as circumstances admit. 231-233

2. The Will is to some extent involved in forming wise decisions: but more clearly in acting on them--whatever we may call the Virtue thus manifested. 233-236

3. Of minor intellectual excellences, some are not strictly Virtues: others are, such as Caution and Decision, being in part voluntary. 236-237

Note 237

IV. BENEVOLENCE

1. The Maxim of Benevolence bids us to some extent cultivate affections, and confer happiness 238-241

2. on sentient, chiefly human, beings; especially in certain circumstances and relations, in which affections--which are hardly virtues--prompt to kind services. Rules for the distribution of Kindness are needed, 241-246

3. as claims may conflict; but clearly binding rules cannot be obtained from Common Sense in a definite form; 246-247

4. nor clear principles from which rules may be deduced; as is seen when we examine the duties to Kinsmen, as commonly conceived: 247-250

5. and the wider duties of Neighbourhood, Citizenship, Universal Benevolence; and the duties of cultivating Reverence and Loyalty: 250-254

6. and those springing from the Conjugal relation: 254-256

7. and those of Friendship: 256-259

8. and those of Gratitude: and those to which we are prompted by Pity. 259-263

Note 263

V. JUSTICE

1. Justice is especially difficult to define. The Just cannot be identified with the Legal, as laws may be unjust. Again, the Justice of laws does not consist merely in the absence of arbitrary inequality in framing or administering them. 264-268

2. One element of Justice seems to consist in the fulfilment of (1) contracts and definite understandings, and (2) expectations arising naturally out of the established order of Society; but the duty of fulfilling these latter is somewhat indefinite: 268-271

3. and this social order may itself, from another point of view, be condemned as unjust; that is, as tried by the standard of Ideal Justice. What then is this Standard? We seem to find various degrees and forms of it. 271-274

4. One view of Ideal Law states Freedom as its absolute End: but the attempt to construct a system of law on this principle involves us in insuperable difficulties. 274-278

5. Nor does the realisation of Freedom satisfy our common conception of Ideal Justice. The principle of this is rather ‘that Desert should be requited.’ 278-283

6. But the application of this principle is again very perplexing: whether we try to determine Good Desert (or the worth of services), 283-290

7. or Ill Desert, in order to realise Criminal Justice. There remains too the difficulty of reconciling Conservative and Ideal Justice. 290-294

VI. LAWS AND PROMISES

1. The duty of obeying Laws, though it may to a great extent be included under Justice, still requires a separate treatment. We can, however, obtain no consensus for any precise definition of it. 295-297

2. For we are neither agreed as to what kind of government is ideally legitimate, 297-299

3. nor as to the criterion of a traditionally legitimate government, 299-301

4. nor as to the proper limits of governmental authority. 301-303

5. The duty of fulfilling a promise in the sense in which it was understood by both promiser and promisee is thought to be peculiarly stringent and certain 303-304

6. (it being admitted that its obligation is relative to the promisee, and may be annulled by him, and that it cannot override strict prior obligations). 304-305

7. But Common Sense seems to doubt how far a promise is binding when it has been obtained by force or fraud: 305-306

8. or when circumstances have materially altered since it was made--especially if it be a promise to the dead or absent, from which no release can be obtained, or if the performance of the promise will be harmful to the promisee, or inflict a disproportionate sacrifice on the promiser. 306-308

9. Other doubts arise when a promise has been misapprehended: and in the peculiar case where a prescribed form of words has been used. 308-311

VII. CLASSIFICATION OF DUTIES. TRUTH

1. I have not adopted the classification of duties into Social and Self-regarding: as it seems inappropriate to the Intuitional method, of which the characteristic is, that it lays down certain absolute and independent rules: such as the rule of Truth. 312-315

2. But Common Sense after all scarcely seems to prescribe truth-speaking under all circumstances: nor to decide clearly whether the beliefs which we are bound to make true are those directly produced by our words or the immediate inferences from these. 315-317

3. It is said that the general allowance of Unveracity would be suicidal, as no one would believe the falsehood. But this argument, though forcible, is not decisive; for (1) this result may be in special circumstances desirable, or (2) we may have reason to expect that it will not occur. 317-319

Note 319

VIII. OTHER SOCIAL DUTIES AND VIRTUES

1. Common opinion sometimes condemns sweepingly malevolent feelings and volitions: but Reflective Common Sense seems to admit some as legitimate, determining the limits of this admission on utilitarian grounds. 320-324

2. Other maxims of social duty seem clearly subordinate to those already discussed: as is illustrated by an examination of Liberality and other cognate notions. 324-326

IX. SELF-REGARDING VIRTUES

1. The general duty of seeking one’s own happiness is commonly recognised under the notion of Prudence. 327-328

2. This as specially applied to the control of bodily appetites is called Temperance: but under this notion a more rigid restraint is sometimes thought to be prescribed: though as to the principle of this there seems no agreement. 328-329

3. Nor is it easy to give a clear definition of the maxim of Purity--but in fact common sense seems averse to attempt this. We must note, however, that suicide is commonly judged to be absolutely wrong. 329-331

X. COURAGE, HUMILITY, ETC

1. The Duty of Courage is subordinate to those already discussed: and in drawing the line between the Excellence of Courage and the Fault of Foolhardiness we seem forced to have recourse to considerations of expediency. 332-334

2. Similarly the maxim of Humility seems either clearly subordinate or not clearly determinate. 334-336

XI. REVIEW OF THE MORALITY OF COMMON SENSE

1. We have now to examine the moral maxims that have been defined, to ascertain whether they possess the characteristics of scientific intuitions. 337-338

2. We require of an Axiom that it should be (1) stated in clear and precise terms, (2) really self-evident, (3) not conflicting with any other truth, (4) supported by an adequate ‘consensus of experts.’ These characteristics are not found in the moral maxims of Common Sense. 338-343

3. The maxims of Wisdom and Self-control are only self-evident in so far as they are tautological: 343-345

4. nor can we state any clear, absolute, universally-admitted axioms for determining the duties of the Affections: 345-349

5. and as for the group of principles that were extracted from the common notion of Justice, we cannot define each singly in a satisfactory manner, still less reconcile them: 349-352

6. and even the Duty of Good Faith, when we consider the numerous qualifications of it more or less doubtfully admitted by Common Sense, seems more like a subordinate rule than an independent First Principle. Still more is this the case with Veracity: 352-355

7. similarly with other virtues: even the prohibition of Suicide, so far as rational, seems to rest ultimately on utilitarian grounds. 355-357

8. Even Purity when we force ourselves to examine it rigorously yields no clear independent principle. 357-359

9. The common moral maxims are adequate for practical guidance, but do not admit of being elevated into scientific axioms. 359-361

XII. MOTIVES OR SPRINGS OF ACTION AS SUBJECTS OF MORAL JUDGMENT

1. It has been held by several moralists that the “Universal Conscience” judges primarily not of Rightness of acts, but of Rank of Motives. 362-365

2. If, however, we include the Moral Sentiments among these motives, this latter view involves all the difficulties and perplexities of the former, yet it is paradoxical to omit these sentiments. 365-367

3. But even if we leave these out, we still find very little agreement as to Rank of Motives: and there is a special difficulty arising from complexity of motive. Nor does Common Sense seem to hold that a “higher” motive--below the highest--is always to be preferred to a “lower.” 367-372

XIII. PHILOSOPHICAL INTUITIONISM

1. The Philosopher, as such, attempts to penetrate beneath the surface of Common Sense to some deeper principles: 373-374

2. but has too often presented to the world, as the result of his investigation, tautological propositions and vicious circles. 374-379

3. Still there are certain abstract moral principles of real importance, intuitively known; though they are not sufficient by themselves to give complete practical guidance. Thus we can exhibit a self-evident element in the commonly recognised principles of Prudence, Justice, and Benevolence. 379-384

4. This is confirmed by a reference to Clarke’s and Kant’s systems: 384-386

5. and also to Utilitarianism: which needs for its basis a self-evident principle of Rational Benevolence; as is shown by a criticism of Mill’s “proof.” 386-389

Note 389-390

XIV. ULTIMATE GOOD

1. The notion of Virtue, as commonly conceived, cannot without a logical circle be identified with the notion of Ultimate Good: 391-394

2. nor is it in accordance with Common Sense to regard Subjective Rightness of Will, or other elements of Perfection, as constituting Ultimate Good. 394-395

3. What is ultimately good or desirable must be Desirable Consciousness. 395-397

4. i.e. either simply Happiness, or certain objective relations of the Conscious Mind. 398-400

5. When these alternatives are fairly presented, Common Sense seems disposed to choose the former: especially as we can now explain its instinctive disinclination to admit Pleasure as ultimate end: while the other alternative leaves us without a criterion for determining the comparative value of different elements of ‘Good.’ 400-407

I. THE MEANING OF UTILITARIANISM

1. The ethical theory called Utilitarianism, or Universalistic Hedonism, is to be carefully distinguished from Egoistic Hedonism: and also from any psychological theory as to the nature and origin of the Moral Sentiments. 411-413

2. The notion of ‘Greatest Happiness’ has been determined in Book ii. chap. i.: but the extent and manner of its application require to be further defined. Are we to include all Sentient Beings? and is it Total or Average Happiness that we seek to make a maximum? We also require a supplementary Principle for Distribution of Happiness: the principle of Equality is prima facie reasonable. 413-417

II. THE PROOF OF UTILITARIANISM

Common Sense demands a Proof of the first Principle of this method, more clearly than in the case of Egoism and Intuitionism. Such a proof, addressed to the Egoistic Hedonist, was in fact given in Book iii. chap. xiii. § 3: it exhibited the essence of the Utilitarian Principle as a clear and certain moral Intuition. But it is also important to examine its relation to other received maxims. 418-422

Chapter III

THE RELATION OF UTILITARIANISM TO THE MORALITY OF COMMON SENSE

1. Taking as our basis Hume’s exhibition of the Virtues as Felicific qualities of character, we can trace a complex coincidence between Utilitarianism and Common Sense. It is not needful--nor does it even help the argument--to show this coincidence to be perfect and exact. 423-426

2. We may observe, first, that Dispositions may often be admired (as generally felicific) when the special acts that have resulted from them are infelicific. Again, the maxims of many virtues are found to contain an explicit or implicit reference to Duty conceived as already determinate. Passing over these to examine the more definite among common notions of Duty: 426-430

3. we observe, first, how the rules that prescribe the distribution of kindness in accordance with normal promptings of Family Affections, Friendship, Gratitude, and Pity have a firm Utilitarian basis: and how Utilitarianism is naturally referred to for an explanation of the difficulties that arise in attempting to define these rules. 430-439

4. A similar result is reached by an examination, singly and together, of the different elements into which we have analysed the common notion of Justice: 439-448

5. and in the case of other virtues. 448-450

6. Purity has been thought an exception: but a careful examination of common opinions as to the regulation of sexual relations exhibits a peculiarly complex and delicate correspondence between moral sentiments and social utilities. 450-453

7. The hypothesis that the Moral Sense is ‘unconsciously Utilitarian’ also accounts for the actual differences in different codes of Duty and estimates of Virtue, either in the same age and country, or when we compare different ages and countries. It is not maintained that perception of rightness has always been consciously derived from perception of utility: a view which the evidence of history fails to support. 453-457

On the Utilitarian view, the relation between Ethics and Politics is different for different parts of the legal code. 457-459

IV. THE METHOD OF UTILITARIANISM

1. Ought a Utilitarian, then, to accept the Morality of Common Sense provisionally as a body of Utilitarian doctrine? Not quite; for even accepting the theory that the Moral Sense is derived from Sympathy, we can discern several causes that must have operated to produce a divergence between Common Sense and a perfectly Utilitarian code of morality. 460-467

2. At the same time it seems idle to try to construct such a code in any other way than by taking Positive Morality as our basis. 467-471

3. If General Happiness be the ultimate end, it is not reasonable to adopt “social health” or “efficiency” as the practically ultimate criterion of morality. 471-474

V. THE METHOD OF UTILITARIANISM (continued)

1. It is, then, a Utilitarian’s duty at once to support generally, and to rectify in detail, the morality of Common Sense: and the method of pure empirical Hedonism seems to be the only one that he can at present use in the reasonings that finally determine the nature and extent of this rectification. 475-480

2. His innovations may be either negative and destructive, or positive and supplementary. There are certain important general reasons against an innovation of the former kind, which may, in any given case, easily outweigh the special arguments in its favour. 480-484

3. Generally, a Utilitarian in recommending, by example or precept, a deviation from an established rule of conduct, desires his innovation to be generally imitated. But in some cases he may neither expect nor desire such imitation; though cases of this kind are rare and difficult to determine. 485-492

4. There are no similar difficulties in the way of modifying the Ideal of Moral Excellence--as distinguished from the dictates of Moral Duty--in order to render it more perfectly felicific. 492-495

CONCLUDING CHAPTER

THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE THREE METHODS

1. It is not difficult to combine the Intuitional and Utilitarian methods into one; but can we reconcile Egoistic and Universalistic Hedonism? 496-498

2. In so far as the latter coincides with Common Sense, we have seen in Book ii. chap. v. that no complete reconciliation is possible, on the basis of experience. 498-499

3. Nor does a fuller consideration of Sympathy, as a specially Utilitarian sanction, lead us to modify this conclusion; in spite of the importance that is undoubtedly to be attached to sympathetic pleasures. 499-503

4. The Religious Sanction, if we can show that it is actually attached to the Utilitarian Code, is of course adequate: 503-506

5. but its existence cannot be demonstrated by ethical arguments alone. Still, without this or some similar assumption, a fundamental contradiction in Ethics cannot be avoided. 506-509

APPENDIX ON KANT’S CONCEPTION OF FREE WILL 511

INDEX 517

I. INTRODUCTION

§ 1. The boundaries of the study called Ethics are variously and often vaguely conceived: but they will perhaps be sufficiently defined, at the outset, for the purposes of the present treatise, if a ‘Method of Ethics’ is explained to mean any rational procedure by which we determine what individual human beings ‘ought’--or what it is ‘right’ for them--to do, or to seek to realise by voluntary action.[9] By using the word “individual” I provisionally distinguish the study of Ethics from that of Politics,[10] which seeks to determine the proper constitution and the right public conduct of governed societies: both Ethics and Politics being, in my view, distinguished from positive sciences by having as their special and primary object to determine what ought to be, and not to ascertain what merely is, has been, or will be.

The student of Ethics seeks to attain systematic and precise general knowledge of what ought to be, and in this sense his aims and methods may properly be termed ‘scientific’: but I have preferred to call Ethics a study rather than a science, because it is widely thought that a Science must necessarily have some department of actual existence for its subject-matter. And in fact the term ‘Ethical Science’ might, without violation of usage, denote either the department of Psychology that deals with voluntary action and its springs, and with moral sentiments and judgments, as actual phenomena of individual human minds; or the department of Sociology dealing with similar phenomena, as manifested by normal members of the organised groups of human beings which we call societies. We observe, however, that most persons do not pursue either of these studies merely from curiosity, in order to ascertain what actually exists, has existed, or will exist in time. They commonly wish not only to understand human action, but also to regulate it; in this view they apply the ideas ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ to the conduct or institutions which they describe; and thus pass, as I should say, from the point of view of Psychology or Sociology to that of Ethics or Politics. My definition of Ethics is designed to mark clearly the fundamental importance of this transition. It is true that the mutual implication of the two kinds of study--the positive and the practical--is, on any theory, very close and complete. On any theory, our view of what ought to be must be largely derived, in details, from our apprehension of what is; the means of realising our ideal can only be thoroughly learnt by a careful study of actual phenomena; and to any individual asking himself ‘What ought I to do or aim at?’ it is important to examine the answers which his fellow-men have actually given to similar questions. Still it seems clear that an attempt to ascertain the general laws or uniformities by which the varieties of human conduct, and of men’s sentiments and judgments respecting conduct, may be explained, is essentially different from an attempt to determine which among these varieties of conduct is right and which of these divergent judgments valid. It is, then, the systematic consideration of these latter questions which constitutes, in my view, the special and distinct aim of Ethics and Politics.

§ 2. In the language of the preceding section I could not avoid taking account of two different forms in which the fundamental problem of Ethics is stated; the difference between which leads, as we shall presently see, to rather important consequences. Ethics is sometimes considered as an investigation of the true Moral laws or rational precepts of Conduct; sometimes as an inquiry into the nature of the Ultimate End of reasonable human action--the Good or ‘True Good’ of man--and the method of attaining it. Both these views are familiar, and will have to be carefully considered: but the former seems most prominent in modern ethical thought, and most easily applicable to modern ethical systems generally. For the Good investigated in Ethics is limited to Good in some degree attainable by human effort; accordingly knowledge of the end is sought in order to ascertain what actions are the right means to its attainment. Thus however prominent the notion of an Ultimate Good--other than voluntary action of any kind--may be in an ethical system, and whatever interpretation may be given to this notion, we must still arrive finally, if it is to be practically useful, at some determination of precepts or directive rules of conduct.

On the other hand, the conception of Ethics as essentially an investigation of the ‘Ultimate Good’ of Man and the means of attaining it is not universally applicable, without straining, to the view of Morality which we may conveniently distinguish as the Intuitional view; according to which conduct is held to be right when conformed to certain precepts or principles of Duty, intuitively known to be unconditionally binding. In this view the conception of Ultimate Good is not necessarily of fundamental importance in the determination of Right conduct except on the assumption that Right conduct itself--or the character realised in and developed through Right conduct--is the sole Ultimate Good for man. But this assumption is not implied in the Intuitional view of Ethics: nor would it, I conceive, accord with the moral common sense of modern Christian communities. For we commonly think that the complete notion of human Good or Well-being must include the attainment of Happiness as well as the performance of Duty; even if we hold with Butler that “the happiness of the world is the concern of Him who is the Lord and the Proprietor of it,” and that, accordingly, it is not right for men to make their performance of Duty conditional on their knowledge of its conduciveness to their Happiness. For those who hold this, what men ought to take as the practically ultimate end of their action and standard of Right conduct, may in some cases have no logical connexion with the conception of Ultimate Good for man: so that, in such cases, however indispensable this latter conception may be to the completeness of an ethical system, it would still not be important for the methodical determination of Right conduct.

It is on account of the prevalence of the Intuitional view just mentioned, and the prominent place which it consequently occupies in my discussion, that in defining Ethics I have avoided the term ‘Art of Conduct’ which some would regard as its more appropriate designation. For the term ‘Art’--when applied to the contents of a treatise--seems to signify systematic express knowledge (as distinguished from the implicit knowledge or organised habit which we call skill) of the right means to a given end. Now if we assume that the rightness of action depends on its conduciveness to some ulterior end, then no doubt--when this end has been clearly ascertained--the process of determining the right rules of conduct for human beings in different relations and circumstances would naturally come under the notion of Art. But on the view that the practically ultimate end of moral action is often the Rightness of the action itself--or the Virtue realised in and confirmed by such action--and that this is known intuitively in each case or class of cases, we can hardly regard the term ‘Art’ as properly applicable to the systematisation of such knowledge. Hence, as I do not wish to start with any assumption incompatible with this latter view, I prefer to consider Ethics as the science or study of what is right or what ought to be, so far as this depends upon the voluntary action of individuals.[11]

§ 3. If, however, this view of the scope of Ethics is accepted, the question arises why it is commonly taken to consist, to a great extent, of psychological discussion as to the ‘nature of the moral faculty’; especially as I have myself thought it right to include some discussion of this kind in the present treatise. For it does not at first appear why this should belong to Ethics, any more than discussions about the mathematical faculty or the faculty of sense-perception belong to mathematics and physics respectively. Why do we not simply start with certain premises, stating what ought to be done or sought, without considering the faculty by which we apprehend their truth?

One answer is that the moralist has a practical aim: we desire knowledge of right conduct in order to act on it. Now we cannot help believing what we see to be true, but we can help doing what we see to be right or wise, and in fact often do what we know to be wrong or unwise: thus we are forced to notice the existence in us of irrational springs of action, conflicting with our knowledge and preventing its practical realisation: and the very imperfectness of the connexion between our practical judgment and our will impels us to seek for more precise knowledge as to the nature of that connexion.

But this is not all. Men never ask, ‘Why should I believe what I see to be true?’ but they frequently ask, ‘Why should I do what I see to be right?’ It is easy to reply that the question is futile, since it could only be answered by a reference to some other recognised principle of right conduct, and the question might just as well be asked as regards that again, and so on. But still we do ask the question widely and continually, and therefore this demonstration of its futility is not completely satisfactory; we require besides some explanation of its persistency.

One explanation that may be offered is that, since we are moved to action not by moral judgment alone, but also by desires and inclinations that operate independently of moral judgment, the answer which we really want to the question ‘Why should I do it?’ is one which does not merely prove a certain action to be right, but also stirs in us a predominant inclination to do the action.

That this explanation is true for some minds in some moods I would not deny. Still I think that when a man seriously asks ‘why he should do’ anything, he commonly assumes in himself a determination to pursue whatever conduct may be shown by argument to be reasonable, even though it be very different from that to which his non-rational inclinations may prompt. And we are generally agreed that reasonable conduct in any case has to be determined on principles, in applying which the agent’s inclination--as it exists apart from such determination--is only one element among several that have to be considered, and commonly not the most important element. But when we ask what these principles are, the diversity of answers which we find manifestly declared in the systems and fundamental formulæ of professed moralists seems to be really present in the common practical reasoning of men generally; with this difference, that whereas the philosopher seeks unity of principle, and consistency of method at the risk of paradox, the unphilosophic man is apt to hold different principles at once, and to apply different methods in more or less confused combination. If this be so, we can offer another explanation of the persistent unsatisfied demand for an ultimate reason, above noticed. For if there are different views of the ultimate reasonableness of conduct, implicit in the thought of ordinary men, though not brought into clear relation to each other,--it is easy to see that any single answer to the question ‘why’ will not be completely satisfactory, as it will be given only from one of these points of view, and will always leave room to ask the question from some other.

I am myself convinced that this is the main explanation of the phenomenon: and it is on this conviction that the plan of the present treatise is based. We cannot, of course, regard as valid reasonings that lead to conflicting conclusions; and I therefore assume as a fundamental postulate of Ethics, that so far as two methods conflict, one or other of them must be modified or rejected. But I think it fundamentally important to recognise, at the outset of Ethical inquiry, that there is a diversity of methods applied in ordinary practical thought.

§ 4. What then are these different methods? what are the different practical principles which the common sense of mankind is prima facie prepared to accept as ultimate? Some care is needed in answering this question: because we frequently prescribe that this or that ‘ought’ to be done or aimed at without any express reference to an ulterior end, while yet such an end is tacitly presupposed. It is obvious that such prescriptions are merely, what Kant calls them, Hypothetical Imperatives; they are not addressed to any one who has not first accepted the end.

For instance: a teacher of any art assumes that his pupil wants to produce the product of the art, or to produce it excellent in quality: he tells him that he ought to hold the awl, the hammer, the brush differently. A physician assumes that his patient wants health: he tells him that he ought to rise early, to live plainly, to take hard exercise. If the patient deliberately prefers ease and good living to health, the physician’s precepts fall to the ground: they are no longer addressed to him. So, again, a man of the world assumes that his hearers wish to get on in society, when he lays down rules of dress, manner, conversation, habits of life. A similar view may be plausibly taken of many rules prescribing what are sometimes called “duties to oneself”: it may be said that they are given on the assumption that a man regards his own Happiness as an ultimate end: that if any one should be so exceptional as to disregard it, he does not come within their scope: in short, that the ‘ought’ in such formulæ is still implicitly relative to an optional end.

It does not, however, seem to me that this account of the matter is exhaustive. We do not all look with simple indifference on a man who declines to take the right means to attain his own happiness, on no other ground than that he does not care about happiness. Most men would regard such a refusal as irrational, with a certain disapprobation; they would thus implicitly assent to Butler’s statement[12] that “interest, one’s own happiness, is a manifest obligation.” In other words, they would think that a man ought to care for his own happiness. The word ‘ought’ thus used is no longer relative: happiness now appears as an ultimate end, the pursuit of which--at least within the limits imposed by other duties--appears to be prescribed by reason ‘categorically,’ as Kant would say, i.e. without any tacit assumption of a still ulterior end. And it has been widely held by even orthodox moralists that all morality rests ultimately on the basis of “reasonable self-love”;[13] i.e. that its rules are ultimately binding on any individual only so far as it is his interest on the whole to observe them.

Still, common moral opinion certainly regards the duty or virtue of Prudence as only a part--and not the most important part--of duty or virtue in general. Common moral opinion recognises and inculcates other fundamental rules--e.g. those of Justice, Good Faith, Veracity--which, in its ordinary judgments on particular cases, it is inclined to treat as binding without qualification and without regard to ulterior consequences. And, in the ordinary form of the Intuitional view of Ethics, the “categorical” prescription of such rules is maintained explicitly and definitely, as a result of philosophical reflection: and the realisation of Virtue in act--at least in the case of the virtues just mentioned--is held to consist in strict and unswerving conformity to such rules.

On the other hand it is contended by many Utilitarians that all the rules of conduct which men prescribe to one another as moral rules are really--though in part unconsciously--prescribed as means to the general happiness of mankind, or of the whole aggregate of sentient beings; and it is still more widely held by Utilitarian thinkers that such rules, however they may originate, are only valid so far as their observance is conducive to the general happiness. This contention I shall hereafter examine with due care. Here I wish only to point out that, if the duty of aiming at the general happiness is thus taken to include all other duties, as subordinate applications of it, we seem to be again led to the notion of Happiness as an ultimate end categorically prescribed,--only it is now General Happiness and not the private happiness of any individual. And this is the view that I myself take of the Utilitarian principle.

At the same time, it is not necessary, in the methodical investigation of right conduct, considered relatively to the end either of private or of general happiness, to assume that the end itself is determined or prescribed by reason: we only require to assume, in reasoning to cogent practical conclusions, that it is adopted as ultimate and paramount. For if a man accepts any end as ultimate and paramount, he accepts implicitly as his “method of ethics” whatever process of reasoning enables him to determine the actions most conducive to this end.[14] Since, however, to every difference in the end accepted at least some difference in method will generally correspond: if all the ends which men are found practically to adopt as ultimate (subordinating everything else to the attainment of them under the influence of ‘ruling passions’), were taken as principles for which the student of Ethics is called upon to construct rational methods, his task would be very complex and extensive. But if we confine ourselves to such ends as the common sense of mankind appears to accept as rational ultimate ends, the task is reduced, I think, within manageable limits; since this criterion will exclude at least many of the objects which men practically seem to regard as paramount. Thus many men sacrifice health, fortune, happiness, to Fame; but no one, so far as I know, has deliberately maintained that Fame is an object which it is reasonable for men to seek for its own sake. It only commends itself to reflective minds either (1) as a source of Happiness to the person who gains it, or (2) a sign of his Excellence, moral or intellectual, or (3) because it attests the achievement by him of some important benefit to society, and at the same time stimulates him and others to further achievement in the future: and the conception of “benefit” would, when examined in its turn, lead us again to Happiness or Excellence of human nature,--since a man is commonly thought to benefit others either by making them happier or by making them wiser and more virtuous.

Whether there are any ends besides these two, which can be reasonably regarded as ultimate, it will hereafter[15] be part of our business to investigate: but we may perhaps say that prima facie the only two ends which have a strongly and widely supported claim to be regarded as rational ultimate ends are the two just mentioned, Happiness and Perfection or Excellence of human nature--meaning here by ‘Excellence’ not primarily superiority to others, but a partial realisation of, or approximation to, an ideal type of human Perfection. And we must observe that the adoption of the former of these ends leads us to two prima facie distinct methods, according as it is sought to be realised universally, or by each individual for himself alone. For though doubtless a man may often best promote his own happiness by labouring and abstaining for the sake of others, it seems to be implied in our common notion of self-sacrifice that actions most conducive to the general happiness do not--in this world at least--always tend also to the greatest happiness of the agent.[16] And among those who hold that “happiness is our being’s end and aim” we seem to find a fundamental difference of opinion as to whose happiness it is that it is ultimately reasonable to aim at. For to some it seems that “the constantly proper end of action on the part of any individual at the moment of action is his real greatest happiness from that moment to the end of his life”;[17] whereas others hold that the view of reason is essentially universal, and that it cannot be reasonable to take as an ultimate and paramount end the happiness of any one individual rather than that of any other--at any rate if equally deserving and susceptible of it--so that general happiness must be the “true standard of right and wrong, in the field of morals” no less than of politics.[18] It is, of course, possible to adopt an end intermediate between the two, and to aim at the happiness of some limited portion of mankind, such as one’s family or nation or race: but any such limitation seems arbitrary, and probably few would maintain it to be reasonable per se, except as the most practicable way of aiming at the general happiness, or of indirectly securing one’s own.

The case seems to be otherwise with Excellence or Perfection.[19] At first sight, indeed, the same alternatives present themselves:[20] it seems that the Excellence aimed at may be taken either individually or universally; and circumstances are conceivable in which a man is not unlikely to think that he could best promote the Excellence of others by sacrificing his own. But no moralist who takes Excellence as an ultimate end has ever approved of such sacrifice, at least so far as Moral Excellence is concerned; no one has ever directed an individual to promote the virtue of others except in so far as this promotion is compatible with, or rather involved in, the complete realisation of Virtue in himself.[21] So far, then, there seems to be no need of separating the method of determining right conduct which takes the Excellence or Perfection of the individual as the ultimate aim from that which aims at the Excellence or Perfection of the human community. And since Virtue is commonly conceived as the most valuable element of human Excellence--and an element essentially preferable to any other element that can come into competition with it as an alternative for rational choice--any method which takes Perfection or Excellence of human nature as ultimate End will prima facie coincide to a great extent with that based on what I called the Intuitional view: and I have accordingly decided to treat it as a special form of this latter.[22] The two methods which take happiness as an ultimate end it will be convenient to distinguish as Egoistic and Universalistic Hedonism: and as it is the latter of these, as taught by Bentham and his successors, that is more generally understood under the term ‘Utilitarianism,’ I shall always restrict that word to this signification. For Egoistic Hedonism it is somewhat hard to find a single perfectly appropriate term. I shall often call this simply Egoism: but it may sometimes be convenient to call it Epicureanism: for though this name more properly denotes a particular historical system, it has come to be commonly used in the wider sense in which I wish to employ it.

§ 5. The last sentence suggests one more explanation, which, for clearness’ sake, it seems desirable to make: an explanation, however, rather of the plan and purpose of the present treatise than of the nature and boundaries of the subject of Ethics as generally understood.

There are several recognised ways of treating this subject, none of which I have thought it desirable to adopt. We may start with existing systems, and either study them historically, tracing the changes in thought through the centuries, or compare and classify them according to relations of resemblance, or criticise their internal coherence. Or we may seek to add to the number of these systems: and claim after so many unsuccessful efforts to have at last attained the one true theory of the subject, by which all others may be tested. The present book contains neither the exposition of a system nor a natural or critical history of systems. I have attempted to define and unfold not one Method of Ethics, but several: at the same time these are not here studied historically, as methods that have actually been used or proposed for the regulation of practice; but rather as alternatives between which--so far as they cannot be reconciled--the human mind seems to me necessarily forced to choose, when it attempts to frame a complete synthesis of practical maxims and to act in a perfectly consistent manner. Thus, they might perhaps be called natural methods rationalised; because men commonly seem to guide themselves by a mixture of different methods, more or less disguised under ambiguities of language. The impulses or principles from which the different methods take their rise, the different claims of different ends to be rational, are admitted, to some extent, by all minds: and as along with these claims is felt the need of harmonising them--since it is, as was said, a postulate of the Practical Reason, that two conflicting rules of action cannot both be reasonable--the result is ordinarily either a confused blending, or a forced and premature reconciliation, of different principles and methods. Nor have the systems framed by professed moralists been free from similar defects. The writers have usually proceeded to synthesis without adequate analysis; the practical demand for the former being more urgently felt than the theoretical need of the latter. For here as in other points the development of the theory of Ethics would seem to be somewhat impeded by the preponderance of practical considerations; and perhaps a more complete detachment of the theoretical study of right conduct from its practical application is to be desired for the sake even of the latter itself: since a treatment which is a compound between the scientific and the hortatory is apt to miss both the results that it would combine; the mixture is bewildering to the brain and not stimulating to the heart. So again, I am inclined to think that here, as in other sciences, it would be an advantage to draw as distinct a line as possible between the known and the unknown; as the clear indication of an unsolved problem is at any rate a step to its solution. In ethical treatises, however, there has been a continual tendency to ignore and keep out of sight the difficulties of the subject; either unconsciously, from a latent conviction that the questions which the writer cannot answer satisfactorily must be questions which ought not to be asked; or consciously, that he may not shake the sway of morality over the minds of his readers. This last well-meant precaution frequently defeats itself: the difficulties thus concealed in exposition are liable to reappear in controversy: and then they appear not carefully limited, but magnified for polemical purposes. Thus we get on the one hand vague and hazy reconciliation, on the other loose and random exaggeration of discrepancies; and neither process is effective to dispel the original vagueness and ambiguity which lurks in the fundamental notions of our common practical reasonings. To eliminate or reduce this indefiniteness and confusion is the sole immediate end that I have proposed to myself in the present work. In order better to execute this task, I have refrained from expressly attempting any such complete and final solution of the chief ethical difficulties and controversies as would convert this exposition of various methods into the development of a harmonious system. At the same time I hope to afford aid towards the construction of such a system; because it seems easier to judge of the mutual relations and conflicting claims of different modes of thought, after an impartial and rigorous investigation of the conclusions to which they logically lead. It is not uncommon to find in reflecting on practical principles, that--however unhesitatingly they seem to command our assent at first sight, and however familiar and apparently clear the notions of which they are composed--nevertheless when we have carefully examined the consequences of adopting them they wear a changed and somewhat dubious aspect. The truth seems to be that most of the practical principles that have been seriously put forward are more or less satisfactory to the common sense of mankind, so long as they have the field to themselves. They all find a response in our nature: their fundamental assumptions are all such as we are disposed to accept, and such as we find to govern to a certain extent our habitual conduct. When I am asked, “Do you not consider it ultimately reasonable to seek pleasure and avoid pain for yourself?” “Have you not a moral sense?” “Do you not intuitively pronounce some actions to be right and others wrong?” “Do you not acknowledge the general happiness to be a paramount end?” I answer ‘yes’ to all these questions. My difficulty begins when I have to choose between the different principles or inferences drawn from them. We admit the necessity, when they conflict, of making this choice, and that it is irrational to let sometimes one principle prevail and sometimes another; but the necessity is a painful one. We cannot but hope that all methods may ultimately coincide: and at any rate, before making our election we may reasonably wish to have the completest possible knowledge of each.

My object, then, in the present work, is to expound as clearly and as fully as my limits will allow the different methods of Ethics that I find implicit in our common moral reasoning; to point out their mutual relations; and where they seem to conflict, to define the issue as much as possible. In the course of this endeavour I am led to discuss the considerations which should, in my opinion, be decisive in determining the adoption of ethical first principles: but it is not my primary aim to establish such principles; nor, again, is it my primary aim to supply a set of practical directions for conduct. I have wished to keep the reader’s attention throughout directed to the processes rather than the results of ethical thought: and have therefore never stated as my own any positive practical conclusions unless by way of illustration: and have never ventured to decide dogmatically any controverted points, except where the controversy seemed to arise from want of precision or clearness in the definition of principles, or want of consistency in reasoning.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The exact relation of the terms ‘right’ and ‘what ought to be’ is discussed in chap. iii. of this Book. I here assume that they may be used as convertible, for most purposes.Return to passage

[10] I use ‘Politics’ in what I take to be its most ordinary signification, to denote the science or study of Right or Good Legislation and Government. There is a wider possible sense of the term, according to which it would include the greater part of Ethics: i.e. if understood to be the Theory of Right Social Relations. See chap. ii. § 2.Return to passage

[11] The relation of the notion of ‘Good’ to that of ‘Right’ or ‘what ought to be’ will be further considered in a subsequent chapter of this Book (ix.)Return to passage

[12] See the Preface to Butler’s Sermons on Human Nature.Return to passage

[13] The phrase is Butler’s.Return to passage

[14] See the last paragraph of chap. iii. of this Book.Return to passage

[15] See chap. ix. of this Book, and Book iii. chap. xiv.Return to passage

[16] For a full discussion of this question, see Book ii. chap. v. and the concluding chapter of the work.Return to passage

[17] Bentham, Memoirs (vol. x. of Bowring’s edition), p. 560.Return to passage

[18] Bentham again, Memoirs, p. 79. See note at the end of Book i. chap. vi. The Utilitarians since Bentham have sometimes adopted one, sometimes the other, of these two principles as paramount.Return to passage

[19] I use the terms ‘Excellence’ and ‘Perfection’ to denote the same ultimate end regarded in somewhat different aspects: meaning by either an ideal complex of mental qualities, of which we admire and approve the manifestation in human life: but using ‘Perfection’ to denote the ideal as such, while ‘Excellence’ denotes such partial realisation of or approximation to the ideal as we actually find in human experience.Return to passage

[20] It may be said that even more divergent views of the reasonable end are possible here than in the case of happiness: for we are not necessarily limited (as in that case) to the consideration of sentient beings: inanimate things also seem to have a perfection and excellence of their own and to be capable of being made better or worse in their kind; and this perfection, or one species of it, appears to be the end of the Fine Arts. But reflection I think shows that neither beauty nor any other quality of inanimate objects can be regarded as good or desirable in itself, out of relation to the perfection or happiness of sentient beings. Cf. post, chap. ix. of this Book.Return to passage

[21] Kant roundly denies that it can be my duty to take the Perfection of others for my end: but his argument is not, I think, valid. Cf. post, Book iii. chap. iv. § 1.Return to passage

[22] See Book iii. chap. xiv., where I explain my reasons for only giving a subordinate place to the conception of Perfection as Ultimate End.Return to passage

II. THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO POLITICS

§ 1. In the last chapter I have spoken of Ethics and Politics as being both Practical Studies, including in the scope of their investigation somewhat that lies outside the sphere of positive sciences--viz. the determination of ends to be sought, or rules to be unconditionally obeyed. Before proceeding further, it would seem desirable to determine in outline the mutual relations of these cognate studies, regarded from the point of view of Ethics.

As I have defined them, Ethics aims at determining what ought to be done by individuals, while Politics aims at determining what the government of a state or political society ought to do and how it ought to be constituted,--including under the latter head all questions as to the control over government that should be exercised by the governed.

At first sight it may seem that Politics, so conceived, must be a branch of Ethics. For all the actions of government are actions of individuals, alone or in combination, and so are all the actions of those who, obeying, influencing, or perhaps occasionally resisting government, maintain and from time to time modify the constitution of their state: and it would seem that if properly performed such actions must be determined on ethical principles or be capable of justification by such principles. But this argument is not decisive; for by similar reasoning Ethics would have to comprehend all arts, liberal and industrial. E.g. it is a main part of the moral duty of a sea-captain and his subordinates to navigate their ship properly; but we do not take Ethics to include a study of the rules of navigation. It may be replied that every man is not a sailor, but--at least in a country under popular government--every citizen has important political duties, which he ought to perform according to knowledge, so far as possible; but, similarly, it is an important part of every adult’s moral duty to take care of his health, and it is proverbial that “every man at forty is a fool or his own physician”; yet we do not consider Ethics to include the art of medicine.

The specially important connexion between Ethics and Politics arises in a different way. It is the business of government, by laying down and enforcing laws, to regulate the outward conduct of the governed, not in one department only, but in all their social relations, so far as such conduct is a proper subject for coercive rules. And not only ought this regulation to be in harmony with morality--for obviously people ought not to be compelled to do what they ought not to do--but further, to an important extent the Law of a man’s state will properly determine the details of his moral duty, even beyond the sphere of legal enforcement. Thus we commonly regard it as an individual’s moral duty, under the head of Justice, to “give every man his own,” even when--through some accident--the other party has not the power of legally enforcing his right; but still, in considering what is the other’s “own,” we assume him generally to be guided by the law of his state; if that were changed, his moral duty would change with it. Similarly, the mutual moral duties of husbands and wives, and of children and parents, will vary in detail with the variations in their legal relations.

But when we look closer at the relation thus constituted between Ethics and Politics, we see that a distinction has to be taken between actual or Positive Law and Ideal Law or Law as it ought to be. It is for the latter that Political Theory lays down principles; but it is Positive, not Ideal, Law that primarily determines right conduct for an individual here and now, in the manner just exemplified. No doubt if Positive and Ideal Law appear to me to diverge very widely--if (e.g.) I am convinced by political theory that a fundamental change in the law of property is desirable--this conviction is likely to influence my view of my moral duty under the existing law; but the extent of this influence is vague and uncertain. Suppose I am a slave-owner in a society in which slavery is established, and become convinced that private property in human beings should be abolished by law: it does not therefore follow that I shall regard it as my moral duty to set free my slaves at once. I may think immediate general abolition of slavery not only hopeless, but even inexpedient for the slaves themselves, who require a gradual education for freedom: so that it is better for the present to aim at legal changes that would cut off the worst evils of slavery, and meanwhile to set an example of humane and considerate treatment of bondsmen. Similar reasonings might be applied to the abolition of private property in the instruments of production, or in appointments to offices, civil or ecclesiastical. Speaking generally, the extent to which political ideals ought to influence moral duty would seem to depend partly on the apparent remoteness or nearness of the prospect of realising the ideal, partly on its imperativeness, or the expediency of immediate realisation: and the force attached to both these considerations is likely to vary with the political method adopted; so that it belongs to Politics rather than Ethics to determine them more precisely.

To sum up: we have to distinguish clearly between two questions: (1) how far the determination of right conduct for an individual here and now ought to be influenced by Positive Laws, and other commands of Government as actually established; and (2) how far it ought to be influenced by Political Theory, as to the functions and structure of Government as it ought to be. As regards the former, it clearly belongs to Ethics to determine the grounds and limits of obedience to Government; and also the general conception of political duty, so far as it goes beyond mere obedience--with due recognition of the large variations due to the varying political conditions of different states. (A “good citizen” in the United States will reasonably form a conception of his actual political duty widely divergent from that reasonably formed by a good citizen in Russia.[23]) And this will be the primary business of Ethics so far as it deals with the political side of life. The discussion of political ideals will only come within its purview in a more indefinite and indirect way, so far as such ideals cannot but have some influence on the determination of political duty under existing conditions.

§ 2. I have stated the Relation of Ethics to Politics--regarded from an ethical point of view--that seems to me to accord with the definition of the former subject adopted in the preceding chapter. Some thinkers, however, take a view of Ethical Theory which involves a relation to Political Theory quite different from that just set forth; regarding Theoretical or “Absolute” Ethics as properly an investigation not of what ought to be done here and now, but of what ought to be the rules of behaviour in a society of ideally perfect human beings. Thus the subject-matter of our study would be doubly ideal: as it would not only prescribe what ought to be done as distinct from what is, but what ought to be done in a society that itself is not, but only ought to be. In this view the conclusions of Theoretical or “Absolute” Ethics would have as indirect and uncertain a relation to the practical problems of actual life as those of Theoretical Politics:--or even more so, as in sober political theory it is commonly only the government and not the governed society that is conceived in an ideal condition. Still the two studies are not unlikely to blend in one theory of ideal social relations;--unless the ideal society is conceived as having no need of government, so that Politics, in the ordinary sense,[24] vanishes altogether.

Those who take this view[25] adduce the analogy of Geometry to show that Ethics ought to deal with ideally perfect human relations, just as Geometry treats of ideally straight lines and perfect circles. But the irregular lines which we meet with in experience have spatial relations which Geometry does not ignore altogether; it can and does ascertain them with a sufficient degree of accuracy for practical purposes: though of course they are more complex than those of perfectly straight lines. So in Astronomy, it would be more convenient for purposes of study if the stars moved in circles, as was once believed: but the fact that they move not in circles but in ellipses, and even in imperfect and perturbed ellipses, does not take them out of the sphere of scientific investigation: by patience and industry we have learnt how to reduce to principles and calculate even these more complicated motions. It may be useful for purposes of instruction to assume that the planets move in perfect ellipses: but what we want, as astronomers, to know is the actual motion of the stars, and its causes: and similarly as moralists we naturally inquire what ought to be done in the actual world in which we live. In neither case can we hope to represent in our general reasonings the full complexity of the actual considerations: but we endeavour to approximate to it as closely as possible. It is only so that we really grapple with the question to which mankind generally require an answer: ‘What is a man’s duty in his present condition?’ For it is too paradoxical to say that the whole duty of man is summed up in the effort to attain an ideal state of social relations; and unless we say this, we must determine our duties to existing men in view of existing circumstances: and this is what the student of Ethics seeks to do in a systematic manner.

The inquiry into the morality of an ideal society can therefore be at best but a preliminary investigation, after which the step from the ideal to the actual, in accordance with reason, remains to be taken. We have to ask, then, how far such a preliminary construction seems desirable. And in answering this we must distinguish the different methods of Ethics. For it is generally held by Intuitionists that true morality prescribes absolutely what is in itself right, under all social conditions; at least as far as determinate duties are concerned: as (e.g.) that truth should always be spoken and promises kept, and ‘Justice be done, though the sky should fall.’ And so far as this is held it would seem that there can be no fundamental distinction drawn, in the determination of duty, between the actual state of society and an ideal state: at any rate the general definition of (e.g.) Justice will be the same for both, no less than its absolute stringency. Still even an extreme Intuitionist would admit that the details of Justice and other duties will vary with social institutions: and it is a plausible suggestion, that if we can clearly contemplate as a pattern the “absolute” Justice of an ideal community, we shall be better able to attain the merely “relative” Justice that is alone possible under existing conditions. How far this is so, we shall be in a better position to judge when we have examined the definition of Justice from an Intuitional point of view.

The question takes a simpler form in the case of the method which proposes as an ultimate end, and supreme standard, Universal Happiness.[26] Here we have merely to ask how far a systematic consideration of the social relations of an ideally happy group of human beings is likely to afford guidance in our efforts to promote human happiness here and now. I shall not at present deny that this task might usefully be included in an exhaustive study of this method. But it can easily be shown that it is involved in serious difficulties.

For as in ordinary deliberation we have to consider what is best under certain conditions of human life, internal or external, so we must do this in contemplating the ideal society. We require to contemplate not so much the end supposed to be attained--which is simply the most pleasant consciousness conceivable, lasting as long and as uninterruptedly as possible--but rather some method of realising it, pursued by human beings; and these, again, must be conceived as existing under conditions not too remote from our own, so that we can at least endeavour to imitate them. And for this we must know how far our present circumstances are modifiable; a very difficult question, as the constructions which have actually been made of such ideal societies show. For example, the Republic of Plato seems in many respects sufficiently divergent from the reality, and yet he contemplates war as a permanent unalterable fact, to be provided for in the ideal state, and indeed such provision seems the predominant aim of his construction; whereas the soberest modern Utopia would certainly include the suppression of war. Indeed the ideal will often seem to diverge in diametrically opposite directions from the actual, according to the line of imagined change which we happen to adopt, in our visionary flight from present evils. For example, permanent marriage-unions now cause some unhappiness, because conjugal affection is not always permanent; but they are thought to be necessary, partly to protect men and women from vagaries of passion pernicious to themselves, but chiefly in order to the better rearing of children. Now it may seem to some that in an ideal state of society we could trust more to parental affections, and require less to control the natural play of emotion between the sexes, and that ‘Free Love’ is therefore the ideal; while others would maintain that permanence in conjugal affection is natural and normal, and that any exceptions to this rule must be supposed to disappear as we approximate to the ideal. Again, the happiness enjoyed in our actual society seems much diminished by the unequal distribution of the means of happiness, and the division of mankind into rich and poor. But we can conceive this evil removed in two quite different ways: either by an increased disposition on the part of the rich to redistribute their share, or by such social arrangements as would enable the poor to secure more for themselves. In the one case the ideal involves a great extension and systematisation of the arbitrary and casual almsgiving that now goes on: in the other case, its extinction.

In short, it seems that when we abandon the firm ground of actual society we have an illimitable cloudland surrounding us on all sides, in which we may construct any variety of pattern states; but no definite ideal to which the actual undeniably approximates, as the straight lines and circles of the actual physical world approximate to those of scientific geometry.

It may be said, however, that we can reduce this variety by studying the past history of mankind, as this will enable us to predict to some extent their future manner of existence. But even so it does not appear that we shall gain much definite guidance for our present conduct. For let us make the most favourable suppositions that we can, and such as soar even above the confidence of the most dogmatic of scientific historians. Let us assume that the process of human history is a progress of mankind towards ever greater happiness. Let us assume further that we can not only fix certain limits within which the future social condition of mankind must lie, but even determine in detail the mutual relations of the different elements of the future community, so as to view in clear outline the rules of behaviour, by observing which they will attain the maximum of happiness. It still remains quite doubtful how far it would be desirable for us to imitate these rules in the circumstances in which we now live. For this foreknown social order is ex hypothesi only presented as a more advanced stage in our social progress, and not as a type or pattern which we ought to make a struggle to realise approximately at an earlier stage. How far it should be taken as such a pattern, is a question which would still have to be determined, and in the consideration of it the effects of our actions on the existing generation would after all be the most important element.[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[23] It may be doubted whether the latter ought properly to be termed a “good citizen,” and not rather a “faithful subject of the Czar of Russia.” But this doubt only illustrates the divergence to which I am drawing attention.Return to passage

[24] Sometimes, as before observed, Politics appears to be used in a wider sense, to denote the theory of ideal social relations, whether conceived to be established through governmental coercion or otherwise.Return to passage

[25] In writing this section I had primarily in view the doctrine set forth in Mr. Spencer’s Social Statics. As Mr. Spencer has restated his view and replied to my arguments in his Data of Ethics, it is necessary for me to point out that the first paragraph of this section is not directed against such a view of ‘Absolute’ and ‘Relative’ Ethics as is given in the later treatise--which seems to me to differ materially from the doctrine of Social Statics. In Social Statics it is maintained not merely--as in the Data of Ethics--that Absolute Ethics which “formulates normal conduct in an ideal society” ought to “take precedence of Relative Ethics”; but that Absolute Ethics is the only kind of Ethics with which a philosophical moralist can possibly concern himself. To quote Mr. Spencer’s words:--“Any proposed system of morals which recognises existing defects, and countenances acts made needful by them, stands self-condemned.... Moral law ... requires as its postulate that human beings be perfect. The philosophical moralist treats solely of the straight man ... shows in what relationship he stands to other straight men ... a problem in which a crooked man forms one of the elements, is insoluble by him.” Social Statics (chap. i.). Still more definitely is Relative Ethics excluded in the following passage of the concluding chapter of the same treatise (the italics are mine):--“It will very likely be urged that, whereas the perfect moral code is confessedly beyond the fulfilment of imperfect men, some other code is needful for our present guidance ... to say that the imperfect man requires a moral code which recognises his imperfection and allows for it, seems at first sight reasonable. But it is not really so ... a system of morals which shall recognise man’s present imperfections and allow for them cannot be devised; and would be useless if it could be devised.”Return to passage

[26] I omit, for the present, the consideration of the method which takes Perfection as an ultimate end: since, as has been before observed, it is hardly possible to discuss this satisfactorily, in relation to the present question, until it has been somewhat more clearly distinguished from the ordinary Intuitional Method.Return to passage

[27] Some further consideration of this question will be found in a subsequent chapter. Cf. Book iv. chap. iv. § 2.Return to passage

III. ETHICAL JUDGMENTS

§ 1. In the first chapter I spoke of actions that we judge to be right and what ought to be done as being “reasonable,” or “rational,” and similarly of ultimate ends as “prescribed by Reason”: and I contrasted the motive to action supplied by the recognition of such reasonableness with “non-rational” desires and inclinations. This manner of speaking is employed by writers of different schools, and seems in accordance with the common view and language on the subject. For we commonly think that wrong conduct is essentially irrational, and can be shown to be so by argument; and though we do not conceive that it is by reason alone that men are influenced to act rightly, we still hold that appeals to the reason are an essential part of all moral persuasion, and that part which concerns the moralist or moral philosopher as distinct from the preacher or moral rhetorician. On the other hand it is widely maintained that, as Hume says, “Reason, meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never of itself be any motive to the Will”; and that the motive to action is in all cases some Non-rational Desire, including under this term the impulses to action given by present pleasure and pain. It seems desirable to examine with some care the grounds of this contention before we proceed any further.

Let us begin by defining the issue raised as clearly as possible. Every one, I suppose, has had experience of what is meant by the conflict of non-rational or irrational desires with reason: most of us (e.g.) occasionally feel bodily appetite prompting us to indulgences which we judge to be imprudent, and anger prompting us to acts which we disapprove as unjust or unkind. It is when this conflict occurs that the desires are said to be irrational, as impelling us to volitions opposed to our deliberate judgments; sometimes we yield to such seductive impulses, and sometimes not; and it is perhaps when we do not yield that the impulsive force of such irrational desires is most definitely felt, as we have to exert in resisting them a voluntary effort somewhat analogous to that involved in any muscular exertion. Often, again,--since we are not always thinking either of our duty or of our interest,--desires of this kind take effect in voluntary actions without our having judged such actions to be either right or wrong, either prudent or imprudent; as (e.g.) when an ordinary healthy man eats his dinner. In such cases it seems most appropriate to call the desires “non-rational” rather than “irrational.” Neither term is intended to imply that the desires spoken of--or at least the more important of them--are not normally accompanied by intellectual processes. It is true that some impulses to action seem to take effect, as we say “blindly” or “instinctively,” without any definite consciousness either of the end at which the action is aimed, or of the means by which the end is to be attained: but this, I conceive, is only the case with impulses that do not occupy consciousness for an appreciable time, and ordinarily do not require any but very familiar and habitual actions for the attainment of their proximate ends. In all other cases--that is, in the case of the actions with which we are chiefly concerned in ethical discussion--the result aimed at, and some part at least of the means by which it is to be realised, are more or less distinctly represented in consciousness, previous to the volition that initiates the movements tending to its realisation. Hence the resultant forces of what I call “non-rational” desires, and the volitions to which they prompt, are continually modified by intellectual processes in two distinct ways; first by new perceptions or representations of means conducive to the desired ends, and secondly by new presentations or representations of facts actually existing or in prospect--especially more or less probable consequences of contemplated actions--which rouse new impulses of desire and aversion.

The question, then, is whether the account just given of the influence of the intellect on desire and volition is not exhaustive; and whether the experience which is commonly described as a “conflict of desire with reason” is not more properly conceived as merely a conflict among desires and aversions; the sole function of reason being to bring before the mind ideas of actual or possible facts, which modify in the manner above described the resultant force of our various impulses.

I hold that this is not the case; that the ordinary moral or prudential judgments which, in the case of all or most minds, have some--though often an inadequate--influence on volition, cannot legitimately be interpreted as judgments respecting the present or future existence of human feelings or any facts of the sensible world; the fundamental notion represented by the word “ought” or “right,”[28] which such judgments contain expressly or by implication, being essentially different from all notions representing facts of physical or psychical experience. The question is one on which appeal must ultimately be made to the reflection of individuals on their practical judgments and reasonings: and in making this appeal it seems most convenient to begin by showing the inadequacy of all attempts to explain the practical judgments or propositions in which this fundamental notion is introduced, without recognising its unique character as above negatively defined. There is an element of truth in such explanations, in so far as they bring into view feelings which undoubtedly accompany moral or prudential judgments, and which ordinarily have more or less effect in determining the will to actions judged to be right; but so far as they profess to be interpretations of what such judgments mean, they appear to me to fail altogether.

In considering this question it is important to take separately the two species of judgments which I have distinguished as “moral” and “prudential.” Both kinds might, indeed, be termed “moral” in a wider sense; and, as we saw, it is a strongly supported opinion that all valid moral rules have ultimately a prudential basis. But in ordinary thought we clearly distinguish cognitions or judgments of duty from cognitions or judgments as to what “is right” or “ought to be done” in view of the agent’s private interest or happiness: and the depth of the distinction will not, I think, be diminished by the closer examination of these judgments on which we are now to enter.

This very distinction, however, suggests an interpretation of the notion of rightness which denies its peculiar significance in moral judgments. It is urged that “rightness” is properly an attribute of means, not of ends: so that the attribution of it merely implies that the act judged right is the fittest or only fit means to the realisation of some end understood if not expressly stated: and similarly that the affirmation that anything ‘ought to be done’ is always made with at least tacit reference to some ulterior end. And I grant that this is a legitimate interpretation, in respect of a part of the use of either term in ordinary discourse. But it seems clear (1) that certain kinds of actions--under the names of Justice, Veracity, Good Faith, etc.--are commonly held to be right unconditionally, without regard to ulterior results: and (2) that we similarly regard as “right” the adoption of certain ends--such as the common good of society, or general happiness. In either of these cases the interpretation above suggested seems clearly inadmissible.[29]

We have therefore to find a meaning for “right” or “what ought to be” other than the notion of fitness to some ulterior end. Here we are met by the suggestion that the judgments or propositions which we commonly call moral--in the narrower sense--really affirm no more than the existence of a specific emotion in the mind of the person who utters them; that when I say ‘Truth ought to be spoken’ or ‘Truthspeaking is right,’ I mean no more than that the idea of truthspeaking excites in my mind a feeling of approbation or satisfaction. And probably some degree of such emotion, commonly distinguished as ‘moral sentiment,’ ordinarily accompanies moral judgments on real cases. But it is absurd to say that a mere statement of my approbation of truth-speaking is properly given in the proposition ‘Truth ought to be spoken’; otherwise the fact of another man’s disapprobation might equally be expressed by saying ‘Truth ought not to be spoken’; and thus we should have two coexistent facts stated in two mutually contradictory propositions. This is so obvious, that we must suppose that those who hold the view which I am combating do not really intend to deny it: but rather to maintain that this subjective fact of my approbation is all that there is any ground for stating, or perhaps that it is all that any reasonable person is prepared on reflection to affirm. And no doubt there is a large class of statements, in form objective, which yet we are not commonly prepared to maintain as more than subjective if their validity is questioned. If I say that ‘the air is sweet,’ or ‘the food disagreeable,’ it would not be exactly true to say that I mean no more than that I like the one or dislike the other: but if my statement is challenged, I shall probably content myself with affirming the existence of such feelings in my own mind. But there appears to me to be a fundamental difference between this case and that of moral feelings. The peculiar emotion of moral approbation is, in my experience, inseparably bound up with the conviction, implicit or explicit, that the conduct approved is ‘really’ right--i.e. that it cannot, without error, be disapproved by any other mind. If I give up this conviction because others do not share it, or for any other reason, I may no doubt still retain a sentiment prompting to the conduct in question, or--what is perhaps more common--a sentiment of repugnance to the opposite conduct: but this sentiment will no longer have the special quality of ‘moral sentiment’ strictly so called. This difference between the two is often overlooked in ethical discussion: but any experience of a change in moral opinion produced by argument may afford an illustration of it. Suppose (e.g.) that any one habitually influenced by the sentiment of Veracity is convinced that under certain peculiar circumstances in which he finds himself, speaking truth is not right but wrong. He will probably still feel a repugnance against violating the rule of truthspeaking: but it will be a feeling quite different in kind and degree from that which prompted him to veracity as a department of virtuous action. We might perhaps call the one a ‘moral’ and the other a ‘quasi-moral’ sentiment.

The argument just given holds equally against the view that approbation or disapprobation is not the mere liking or aversion of an individual for certain kinds of conduct, but this complicated by a sympathetic representation of similar likings or aversions felt by other human beings. No doubt such sympathy is a normal concomitant of moral emotion, and when the former is absent there is much greater difficulty in maintaining the latter: this, however, is partly because our moral beliefs commonly agree with those of other members of our society, and on this agreement depends to an important extent our confidence in the truth of these beliefs.[30] But if, as in the case just supposed, we are really led by argument to a new moral belief, opposed not only to our own habitual sentiment but also to that of the society in which we live, we have a crucial experiment proving the existence in us of moral sentiments as I have defined them, colliding with the represented sympathies of our fellow-men no less than with our own mere likings and aversions. And even if we imagine the sympathies opposed to our convictions extended until they include those of the whole human race, against whom we imagine ourselves to stand as Athanasius contra mundum; still, so long as our conviction of duty is firm, the emotion which we call moral stands out in imagination quite distinct from the complex sympathy opposed to it, however much we extend, complicate and intensify the latter.

§ 2. So far, then, from being prepared to admit that the proposition ‘X ought to be done’ merely expresses the existence of a certain sentiment in myself or others, I find it strictly impossible so to regard my own moral judgments without eliminating from the concomitant sentiment the peculiar quality signified by the term ‘moral.’ There is, however, another interpretation of ‘ought,’ in which the likings and aversions that men in general feel for certain kinds of conduct are considered not as sympathetically represented in the emotion of the person judging, and thus constituting the moral element in it, but as causes of pain to the person of whom ‘ought’ or ‘duty’ is predicated. On this view, when we say that a man ‘ought’ to do anything, or that it is his ‘duty’ to do it, we mean that he is bound under penalties to do it; the particular penalty considered being the pain that will accrue to him directly or indirectly from the dislike of his fellow-creatures.

I think that this interpretation expresses a part of the meaning with which the words ‘ought’ and ‘duty’ are used in ordinary thought and discourse. For we commonly use the term ‘moral obligation’ as equivalent to ‘duty’ and expressing what is implied in the verb ‘ought,’ thus suggesting an analogy between this notion and that of legal obligation; and in the case of positive law we cannot refuse to recognise the connexion of ‘obligation’ and ‘punishment’: a law cannot be properly said to be actually established in a society if it is habitually violated with impunity. But a more careful reflection on the relation of Law to Morality, as ordinarily conceived, seems to show that this interpretation of ‘ought’--though it cannot be excluded--must be distinguished from the special ethical use of the term. For the ideal distinction taken in common thought between legal and merely moral rules seems to lie in just this connexion of the former but not the latter with punishment: we think that there are some things which a man ought to be compelled to do, or forbear, and others which he ought to do or forbear without compulsion, and that the former alone fall properly within the sphere of law. No doubt we also think that in many cases where the compulsion of law is undesirable, the fear of moral censure and its consequences supplies a normally useful constraint on the will of any individual. But it is evident that what we mean when we say that a man is “morally though not legally bound” to do a thing is not merely that he “will be punished by public opinion if he does not”; for we often join these two statements, clearly distinguishing their import: and further (since public opinion is known to be eminently fallible) there are many things which we judge men ‘ought’ to do, while perfectly aware that they will incur no serious social penalties for omitting them. In such cases, indeed, it would be commonly said that social disapprobation ‘ought’ to follow on immoral conduct; and in this very assertion it is clear that the term ‘ought’ cannot mean that social penalties are to be feared by those who do not disapprove. Again, all or most men in whom the moral consciousness is strongly developed find themselves from time to time in conflict with the commonly received morality of the society to which they belong: and thus--as was before said--have a crucial experience proving that duty does not mean to them what other men will disapprove of them for not doing.

At the same time I admit, as indeed I have already suggested in § 3 of chap. i., that we not unfrequently pass judgments resembling moral judgments in form, and not distinguished from them in ordinary thought, in cases where the obligation affirmed is found, on reflection, to depend on the existence of current opinions and sentiments as such. The members of modern civilised societies are under the sway of a code of Public Opinion, enforced by social penalties, which no reflective person obeying it identifies with the moral code, or regards as unconditionally binding: indeed the code is manifestly fluctuating and variable, different at the same time in different classes, professions, social circles, of the same political community. Such a code always supports to a considerable extent the commonly received code of morality: and most reflective persons think it generally reasonable to conform to the dictates of public opinion--to the code of Honour, we may say, in graver matters, or the rules of Politeness or Good Breeding in lighter matters--wherever these dictates do not positively conflict with morality; such conformity being maintained either on grounds of private interest, or because it is thought conducive to general happiness or wellbeing to keep as much as possible in harmony with one’s fellow-men. Hence in the ordinary thought of unreflective persons the duties imposed by social opinion are often undistinguished from moral duties: and indeed this indistinctness is almost inherent in the common meaning of many terms. For instance, if we say that a man has been ‘dishonoured’ by a cowardly act, it is not quite clear whether we mean that he has incurred contempt, or that he has deserved it, or both: as becomes evident when we take a case in which the Code of Honour comes into conflict with Morality. If (e.g.) a man were to incur social ostracism anywhere for refusing a duel on religious grounds, some would say that he was ‘dishonoured,’ though he had acted rightly, others that there could be no real dishonour in a virtuous act. A similar ambiguity seems to lurk in the common notion of ‘improper’ or ‘incorrect’ behaviour. Still in all such cases the ambiguity becomes evident on reflection: and when discovered, merely serves to illustrate further the distinction between the notion of ‘right conduct,’ ‘duty,’ what we ‘ought’ or are under ‘moral obligation’ to do--when these terms are used in a strictly ethical sense--and conduct that is merely conformed to the standard of current opinion.

There is, however, another way of interpreting ‘ought’ as connoting penalties, which is somewhat less easy to meet by a crucial psychological experiment. The moral imperative may be taken to be a law of God, to the breach of which Divine penalties are annexed; and these, no doubt, in a Christian society, are commonly conceived to be adequate and universally applicable. Still, it can hardly be said that this belief is shared by all the persons whose conduct is influenced by independent moral convictions, occasionally unsupported either by the law or the public opinion of their community. And even in the case of many of those who believe fully in the moral government of the world, the judgment “I ought to do this” cannot be identified with the judgment “God will punish me if I do not”; since the conviction that the former proposition is true is distinctly recognised as an important part of the grounds for believing the latter. Again, when Christians speak--as they commonly do--of the ‘justice’ (or other moral attributes) of God, as exhibited in punishing sinners and rewarding the righteous, they obviously imply not merely that God will thus punish and reward, but that it is ‘right’[31] for Him to do so: which, of course, cannot be taken to mean that He is ‘bound under penalties.’

§ 3. It seems then that the notion of ‘ought’ or ‘moral obligation’ as used in our common moral judgments, does not merely import (1) that there exists in the mind of the person judging a specific emotion (whether complicated or not by sympathetic representation of similar emotions in other minds); nor (2) that certain rules of conduct are supported by penalties which will follow on their violation (whether such penalties result from the general liking or aversion felt for the conduct prescribed or forbidden, or from some other source). What then, it may be asked, does it import? What definition can we give of ‘ought,’ ‘right,’ and other terms expressing the same fundamental notion? To this I should answer that the notion which these terms have in common is too elementary to admit of any formal definition. In so saying, I do not mean to imply that it belongs to the “original constitution of the mind”; i.e. that its presence in consciousness is not the result of a process of development. I do not doubt that the whole fabric of human thought--including the conceptions that present themselves as most simple and elementary--has been developed, through a gradual process of psychical change, out of some lower life in which thought, properly speaking, had no place. But it is not therefore to be inferred, as regards this or any other notion, that it has not really the simplicity which it appears to have when we now reflect upon it. It is sometimes assumed that if we can show how thoughts have grown up--if we can point to the psychical antecedents of which they are the natural consequents--we may conclude that the thoughts in question are really compounds containing their antecedents as latent elements. But I know no justification for this transference of the conceptions of chemistry to psychology;[32] I know no reason for considering psychical antecedents as really constitutive of their psychical consequents, in spite of the apparent dissimilarity between the two. In default of such reasons, a psychologist must accept as elementary what introspection carefully performed declares to be so; and, using this criterion, I find that the notion we have been examining, as it now exists in our thought, cannot be resolved into any more simple notions: it can only be made clearer by determining as precisely as possible its relation to other notions with which it is connected in ordinary thought, especially to those with which it is liable to be confounded.

In performing this process it is important to note and distinguish two different implications with which the word “ought” is used; in the narrowest ethical sense what we judge ‘ought to be’ done, is always thought capable of being brought about by the volition of any individual to whom the judgment applies. I cannot conceive that I ‘ought’ to do anything which at the same time I judge that I cannot do. In a wider sense, however,--which cannot conveniently be discarded--I sometimes judge that I ‘ought’ to know what a wiser man would know, or feel as a better man would feel, in my place, though I may know that I could not directly produce in myself such knowledge or feeling by any effort of will. In this case the word merely implies an ideal or pattern which I ‘ought’--in the stricter sense--to seek to imitate as far as possible. And this wider sense seems to be that in which the word is normally used in the precepts of Art generally, and in political judgments: when I judge that the laws and constitution of my country ‘ought to be’ other than they are, I do not of course imply that my own or any other individual’s single volition can directly bring about the change.[33] In either case, however, I imply that what ought to be is a possible object of knowledge: i.e. that what I judge ought to be must, unless I am in error, be similarly judged by all rational beings who judge truly of the matter.

In referring such judgments to the ‘Reason,’ I do not mean here to prejudge the question whether valid moral judgments are normally attained by a process of reasoning from universal principles or axioms, or by direct intuition of the particular duties of individuals. It is not uncommonly held that the moral faculty deals primarily with individual cases as they arise, applying directly to each case the general notion of duty, and deciding intuitively what ought to be done by this person in these particular circumstances. And I admit that on this view the apprehension of moral truth is more analogous to Sense-perception than to Rational Intuition (as commonly understood):[34] and hence the term Moral Sense might seem more appropriate. But the term Sense suggests a capacity for feelings which may vary from A to B without either being in error, rather than a faculty of cognition:[35] and it appears to me fundamentally important to avoid this suggestion. I have therefore thought it better to use the term Reason with the explanation above given, to denote the faculty of moral cognition:[36] adding, as a further justification of this use, that even when a moral judgment relates primarily to some particular action we commonly regard it as applicable to any other action belonging to a certain definable class: so that the moral truth apprehended is implicitly conceived to be intrinsically universal, though particular in our first apprehension of it.

Further, when I speak of the cognition or judgment that ‘X ought to be done’--in the stricter ethical sense of the term ought[37]--as a ‘dictate’ or ‘precept’ of reason to the persons to whom it relates, I imply that in rational beings as such this cognition gives an impulse or motive to action: though in human beings, of course, this is only one motive among others which are liable to conflict with it, and is not always--perhaps not usually--a predominant motive. In fact, this possible conflict of motives seems to be connoted by the term ‘dictate’ or ‘imperative,’ which describes the relation of Reason to mere inclinations or non-rational impulses by comparing it to the relation between the will of a superior and the wills of his subordinates. This conflict seems also to be implied in the terms ‘ought,’ ‘duty,’ ‘moral obligation,’ as used in ordinary moral discourse: and hence these terms cannot be applied to the actions of rational beings to whom we cannot attribute impulses conflicting with reason. We may, however, say of such beings that their actions are ‘reasonable,’ or (in an absolute sense) ‘right.’

§ 4. I am aware that some persons will be disposed to answer all the preceding argument by a simple denial that they can find in their consciousness any such unconditional or categorical imperative as I have been trying to exhibit. If this is really the final result of self-examination in any case, there is no more to be said. I, at least, do not know how to impart the notion of moral obligation to any one who is entirely devoid of it. I think, however, that many of those who give this denial only mean to deny that they have any consciousness of moral obligation to actions without reference to their consequences; and would not really deny that they recognise some universal end or ends--whether it be the general happiness, or well-being otherwise understood--as that at which it is ultimately reasonable to aim, subordinating to its attainment the gratification of any personal desires that may conflict with this aim. But in this view, as I have before said, the unconditional imperative plainly comes in as regards the end, which is--explicitly or implicitly--recognised as an end at which all men ‘ought’ to aim; and it can hardly be denied that the recognition of an end as ultimately reasonable involves the recognition of an obligation to do such acts as most conduce to the end. The obligation is not indeed “unconditional,” but it does not depend on the existence of any non-rational desires or aversions. And nothing that has been said in the preceding section is intended as an argument in favour of Intuitionism, as against Utilitarianism or any other method that treats moral rules as relative to General Good or Well-being. For instance, nothing that I have said is inconsistent with the view that Truthspeaking is only valuable as a means to the preservation of society: only if it be admitted that it is valuable on this ground I should say that it is implied that the preservation of society--or some further end to which this preservation, again, is a means--must be valuable per se, and therefore something at which a rational being, as such, ought to aim. If it be granted that we need not look beyond the preservation of society, the primary ‘dictate of reason’ in this case would be ‘that society ought to be preserved’: but reason would also dictate that truth ought to be spoken, so far as truthspeaking is recognised as the indispensable or fittest means to this end: and the notion “ought” as used in either dictate is that which I have been trying to make clear.

So again, even those who hold that moral rules are only obligatory because it is the individual’s interest to conform to them--thus regarding them as a particular species of prudential rules--do not thereby get rid of the ‘dictate of reason,’ so far as they recognise private interest or happiness as an end at which it is ultimately reasonable to aim. The conflict of Practical Reason with irrational desire remains an indubitable fact of our conscious experience, even if practical reason is interpreted to mean merely self-regarding Prudence. It is, indeed, maintained by Kant and others that it cannot properly be said to be a man’s duty to promote his own happiness; since “what every one inevitably wills cannot be brought under the notion of duty.” But even granting[38] it to be in some sense true that a man’s volition is always directed to the attainment of his own happiness, it does not follow that a man always does what he believes will be conducive to his own greatest happiness. As Butler urges, it is a matter of common experience that men indulge appetite or passion even when, in their own view, the indulgence is as clearly opposed to what they conceive to be their interest as it is to what they conceive to be their duty. Thus the notion ‘ought’--as expressing the relation of rational judgment to non-rational impulses--will find a place in the practical rules of any egoistic system, no less than in the rules of ordinary morality, understood as prescribing duty without reference to the agent’s interest.

Here, however, it may be held that Egoism does not properly regard the agent’s own greatest happiness as what he “ought” to aim at: but only as the ultimate end for the realisation of which he has, on the whole, a predominant desire; which may be temporarily overcome by particular passions and appetites, but ordinarily regains its predominance when these transient impulses have spent their force. I quite recognise that this is a view widely taken of egoistic action, and I propose to consider it in a subsequent chapter.[39] But even if we discard the belief, that any end of action is unconditionally or “categorically” prescribed by reason, the notion ‘ought’ as above explained is not thereby eliminated from our practical reasonings: it still remains in the “hypothetical imperative” which prescribes the fittest means to any end that we may have determined to aim at. When (e.g.) a physician says, “If you wish to be healthy you ought to rise early,” this is not the same thing as saying “early rising is an indispensable condition of the attainment of health.” This latter proposition expresses the relation of physiological facts on which the former is founded; but it is not merely this relation of facts that the word ‘ought’ imports: it also implies the unreasonableness of adopting an end and refusing to adopt the means indispensable to its attainment. It may perhaps be argued that this is not only unreasonable but impossible: since adoption of an end means the preponderance of a desire for it, and if aversion to the indispensable means causes them not to be adopted although recognised as indispensable, the desire for the end is not preponderant and it ceases to be adopted. But this view is due, in my opinion, to a defective psychological analysis. According to my observation of consciousness, the adoption of an end as paramount--either absolutely or within certain limits--is quite a distinct psychical phenomenon from desire: it is a kind of volition, though it is, of course, specifically different from a volition initiating a particular immediate action. As a species intermediate between the two, we may place resolutions to act in a certain way at some future time: we continually make such resolutions, and sometimes when the time comes for carrying them out, we do in fact act otherwise under the influence of passion or mere habit, without consciously cancelling our previous resolve. This inconsistency of will our practical reason condemns as irrational, even apart from any judgment of approbation or disapprobation on either volition considered by itself. There is a similar inconsistency between the adoption of an end and a general refusal to take whatever means we may see to be indispensable to its attainment: and if, when the time comes, we do not take such means while yet we do not consciously retract our adoption of the end, it can hardly be denied that we ‘ought’ in consistency to act otherwise than we do. And such a contradiction as I have described, between a general resolution and a particular volition, is surely a matter of common experience.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] The difference between the significations of the two words is discussed later.Return to passage

[29] As, for instance, when Bentham explains (Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. i. § i. note) that his fundamental principle “states the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question as being the right and proper end of human action,” we cannot understand him really to mean by the word “right” “conducive to the general happiness,” though his language in other passages of the same chapter (§§ ix. and x.) would seem to imply this; for the proposition that it is conducive to general happiness to take general happiness as an end of action, though not exactly a tautology, can hardly serve as the fundamental principle of a moral system.Return to passage

[30] See Book iii. chap. xi. § 1.Return to passage

[31] ‘Ought’ is here inapplicable, for a reason presently explained.Return to passage

[32] In Chemistry we regard the antecedents (elements) as still existing in and constituting the consequent (compound) because the latter is exactly similar to the former in weight, and because we can generally cause this compound to disappear and obtain the elements in its place. But we find nothing at all like this in the growth of mental phenomena: the psychical consequent is in no respect exactly similar to its antecedents, nor can it be resolved into them. I should explain that I am not here arguing the question whether the validity of moral judgments is affected by a discovery of their psychical antecedents. This question I reserve for subsequent discussion. See Book iii. chap. i. § 4.Return to passage

[33] I do not even imply that any combination of individuals could completely realise the state of political relations which I conceive ‘ought to’ exist. My conception would be futile if it had no relation to practice: but it may merely delineate a pattern to which no more than an approximation is practically possible.Return to passage

[34] We do not commonly say that particular physical facts are apprehended by the Reason: we consider this faculty to be conversant in its discursive operation with the relation of judgments or propositions: and the intuitive reason (which is here rather in question) we restrict to the apprehension of universal truths, such as the axioms of Logic and Mathematics.Return to passage

[35] By cognition I always mean what some would rather call “apparent cognition”--that is, I do not mean to affirm the validity of the cognition, but only its existence as a psychical fact, and its claim to be valid.Return to passage

[36] A further justification for this extended use of the term Reason will be suggested in a subsequent chapter of this Book (chap. viii. § 3).Return to passage

[37] This is the sense in which the term will always be used in the present treatise, except where the context makes it quite clear that only the wider meaning--that of the political ‘ought’--is applicable.Return to passage

[38] As will be seen from the next chapter, I do not grant this.Return to passage

[39] Chap. ix. of this Book.Return to passage

IV. PLEASURE AND DESIRE

§ 1. In the preceding chapter I have left undetermined the emotional characteristics of the impulse that prompts us to obey the dictates of Reason. I have done so because these seem to be very different in different minds, and even to vary much and rapidly in the same mind, without any corresponding variation in the volitional direction of the impulse. For instance, in the mind of a rational Egoist the ruling impulse is generally what Butler and Hutcheson call a “calm” or “cool” self-love: whereas in the man who takes universal happiness as the end and standard of right conduct, the desire to do what is judged to be reasonable as such is commonly blended in varying degrees with sympathy and philanthropic enthusiasm. Again, if one conceives the dictating Reason--whatever its dictates may be--as external to oneself, the cognition of rightness is accompanied by a sentiment of Reverence for Authority; which may by some be conceived impersonally, but is more commonly regarded as the authority of a supreme Person, so that the sentiment blends with the affections normally excited by persons in different relations, and becomes Religious. This conception of Reason as an external authority, against which the self-will rebels, is often irresistibly forced on the reflective mind: at other times, however, the identity of Reason and Self presents itself as an immediate conviction, and then Reverence for Authority passes over into Self-respect; and the opposite and even more powerful sentiment of Freedom is called in, if we consider the rational Self as liable to be enslaved by the usurping force of sensual impulses. Quite different again are the emotions of Aspiration or Admiration aroused by the conception of Virtue as an ideal of Moral Beauty.[40] Other phases of emotion might be mentioned, all having with these the common characteristic that they are inseparable from an apparent cognition--implicit or explicit, direct or indirect--of rightness in the conduct to which they prompt. There are, no doubt, important differences in the moral value and efficacy of these different emotions, to which I shall hereafter call attention; but their primary practical effect does not appear to vary so long as the cognition of rightness remains unchanged. It is then with these cognitions that Ethics, in my view, is primarily concerned: its object is to free them from doubt and error, and systematise them as far as possible.

There is, however, one view of the feelings which prompt to voluntary action, which is sometimes thought to cut short all controversy as to the principles on which such action ought to be regulated. I mean the view that volition is always determined by pleasures or pains actual or prospective. This doctrine--which I may distinguish as Psychological Hedonism--is often connected and not seldom confounded with the method of Ethics which I have called Egoistic Hedonism; and no doubt it seems at first sight a natural inference that if one end of action--my own pleasure or absence of pain--is definitely determined for me by unvarying psychological laws, a different end cannot be prescribed for me by Reason.

Reflection, however, shows that this inference involves the unwarranted assumption that a man’s pleasure and pain are determined independently of his moral judgments: whereas it is manifestly possible that our prospect of pleasure resulting from any course of conduct may largely depend on our conception of it as right or otherwise: and in fact the psychological theory above mentioned would require us to suppose that this is normally the case with conscientious persons, who habitually act in accordance with their moral convictions. The connexion of the expectation of pleasure from an act with the judgment that it is right may be different in different cases: we commonly conceive a truly moral man as one who finds pleasure in doing what he judges to be right because he so judges it: but, even where moral sensibility is weak, expectation of pleasure from an act may be a necessary consequent of a judgment that it is right, through a belief in the moral government of the world somehow harmonising Virtue and Self-interest.

I therefore conclude that there is no necessary connexion between the psychological proposition that pleasure or absence of pain to myself is always the actual ultimate end of my action, and the ethical proposition that my own greatest happiness or pleasure is for me the right ultimate end. It may, however, be replied that if the former proposition be accepted in the same quantitatively precise form as the latter--if it is admitted that I must by a law of my nature always aim at the greatest possible pleasure (or least pain) to myself--then at least I cannot conceive any aim conflicting with this to be prescribed by Reason. And this seems to me undeniable. If, as Bentham[41] affirms, “on the occasion of every act he exercises, every human being is” inevitably “led to pursue that line of conduct which, according to his view of the case, taken by him at the moment, will be in the highest degree contributory to his own greatest happiness,”[42] then, to any one who knows this, it must become inconceivable that Reason dictates to him to pursue any other line of conduct. But at the same time, as it seems to me, the proposition that he ‘ought’ to pursue that line of conduct becomes no less clearly incapable of being affirmed with any significance. For a psychological law invariably realised in my conduct does not admit of being conceived as ‘a precept’ or ‘dictate’ of reason: this latter must be a rule from which I am conscious that it is possible to deviate. I do not, however, think that the proposition quoted from Bentham would be affirmed without qualification by any of the writers who now maintain psychological Hedonism. They would admit, with J. S. Mill,[43] that men often, not from merely intellectual deficiencies, but from “infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be less valuable: and this no less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures ... they pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater good.”[44]

This being so, Egoistic Hedonism becomes a possible ethical ideal to which psychological Hedonism seems to point. If it can be shown that the ultimate aim of each of us in acting is always solely some pleasure (or absence of pain) to himself, the demonstration certainly suggests that each ought to seek his own greatest pleasure.[45] As has been said, no cogent inference is possible from the psychological generalisation to the ethical principle: but the mind has a natural tendency to pass from the one position to the other: if the actual ultimate springs of our volition are always our own pleasures and pains, it seems prima facie reasonable to be moved by them in proportion to their pleasantness and painfulness, and therefore to choose the greatest pleasure or least pain on the whole. Further, this psychological doctrine seems to conflict with an ethical view widely held by persons whose moral consciousness is highly developed: viz. that an act, to be in the highest sense virtuous, must not be done solely for the sake of the attendant pleasure, even if that be the pleasure of the moral sense; so that if I do an act from the sole desire of obtaining the glow of moral self-approbation which I believe will attend its performance, the act will not be truly virtuous.

It seems therefore important to subject psychological Hedonism, even in its more indefinite form, to a careful examination.

§ 2. It will be well to begin by defining more precisely the question at issue. First, I will concede that pleasure is a kind of feeling which stimulates the will to actions tending to sustain or produce it,--to sustain it, if actually present, and to produce it, if it be only represented in idea--; and similarly pain is a kind of feeling which stimulates to actions tending to remove or avert it.[46] It seems convenient to call the felt volitional stimulus in the two cases respectively Desire[47] and Aversion; though it should be observed that the former term is ordinarily restricted to the impulse felt when pleasure is not actually present, but only represented in idea. The question at issue, then, is not whether pleasure, present or represented, is normally accompanied by an impulse to prolong the actual or realise the represented feeling, and pain correspondingly by aversion: but whether there are no desires and aversions which have not pleasures and pains for their objects--no conscious impulses to produce or avert results other than the agent’s own feelings. In the treatise to which I have referred, Mill explains that “desiring a thing, and finding it pleasant, are, in the strictness of language, two modes of naming the same psychological fact.” If this be the case, it is hard to see how the proposition we are discussing requires to be determined by “practised self-consciousness and self-observation”; as the denial of it would involve a contradiction in terms. The truth is that an ambiguity in the word Pleasure has tended to confuse the discussion of this question.[48] When we speak of a man doing something “at his pleasure,” or “as he pleases,” we usually signify the mere fact of voluntary choice: not necessarily that the result aimed at is some prospective feeling of the chooser. Now, if by “pleasant” we merely mean that which influences choice, exercises a certain attractive force on the will, it is an assertion incontrovertible because tautological, to say that we desire what is pleasant--or even that we desire a thing in proportion as it appears pleasant. But if we take “pleasure” to denote the kind of feelings, above defined, it becomes a really debateable question whether the end to which our desires are always consciously directed is the attainment by ourselves of such feelings. And this is what we must understand Mill to consider “so obvious, that it will hardly be disputed.”

It is rather curious to find that one of the best-known of English moralists regards the exact opposite of what Mill thinks so obvious, as being not merely a universal fact of our conscious experience, but even a necessary truth. Butler, as is well known, distinguishes self-love, or the impulse towards our own pleasure, from “particular movements towards particular external objects--honour, power, the harm or good of another”; the actions proceeding from which are “no otherwise interested than as every action of every creature must from the nature of the case be; for no one can act but from a desire, or choice, or preference of his own.” Such particular passions or appetites are, he goes on to say, “necessarily presupposed by the very idea of an interested pursuit; since the very idea of interest or happiness consists in this, that an appetite or affection enjoys its object.” We could not pursue pleasure at all, unless we had desires for something else than pleasure; for pleasure consists in the satisfaction of just these “disinterested” impulses.

Butler has certainly over-stated his case,[49] so far as my own experience goes; for many pleasures,--especially those of sight, hearing and smell, together with many emotional pleasures,--occur to me without any perceptible relation to previous desires, and it seems quite conceivable that our primary desires might be entirely directed towards such pleasures as these. But as a matter of fact, it appears to me that throughout the whole scale of my impulses, sensual, emotional, and intellectual alike, I can distinguish desires of which the object is something other than my own pleasure.

I will begin by taking an illustration of this from the impulses commonly placed lowest in the scale. The appetite of hunger, so far as I can observe, is a direct impulse to the eating of food. Such eating is no doubt commonly attended with an agreeable feeling of more or less intensity; but it cannot, I think, be strictly said that this agreeable feeling is the object of hunger, and that it is the representation of this pleasure which stimulates the will of the hungry man as such. Of course, hunger is frequently and naturally accompanied with anticipation of the pleasure of eating: but careful introspection seems to show that the two are by no means inseparable. And even when they occur together the pleasure seems properly the object not of the primary appetite, but of a secondary desire which can be distinguished from the former; since the gourmand, in whom this secondary desire is strong, is often prompted by it to actions designed to stimulate hunger, and often, again, is led to control the primary impulse, in order to prolong and vary the process of satisfying it.

Indeed it is so obvious that hunger is something different from the desire for anticipated pleasure, that some writers have regarded its volitional stimulus (and that of desire generally) as a case of aversion from present pain. This, however, seems to me a distinct mistake in psychological classification. No doubt desire is a state of consciousness so far similar to pain, that in both we feel a stimulus prompting us to pass from the present state into a different one. But aversion from pain is an impulse to get out of the present state and pass into some other state which is only negatively represented as different from the present: whereas in desire as such, the primary impulse is towards the realisation of some positive future result. It is true that when a strong desire is, for any reason, baulked of its effect in causing action, it is generally painful in some degree: and so a secondary aversion to the state of desire is generated, which blends itself with the desire and may easily be confounded with it. But here, again, we may distinguish the two impulses by observing the different kinds of conduct to which they occasionally prompt: for the aversion to the pain of ungratified desire, though it may act as an additional stimulus towards the gratification of the desire, may also (and often does) prompt us to get rid of the pain by suppressing the desire.

The question whether all desire has in some degree the quality of pain, is one of psychological rather than ethical interest;[50] so long as it is admitted that it is often not painful in any degree comparable to its intensity as desire, so that its volitional impulse cannot be explained as a case of aversion to its own painfulness. At the same time, so far as my experience goes, I have no hesitation in answering the question in the negative. Consider again the case of hunger; I certainly do not find hunger as an element of my normal life at all a painful feeling: it only becomes painful when I am in ill health, or when the satisfaction of the appetite is abnormally delayed. And, generally speaking, any desire that is not felt to be thwarted in its primary impulse to actions tending to its satisfaction, is not only not itself a painful feeling--even when this attainment is still remote--but is often an element of a state of consciousness which as a whole is highly pleasurable. Indeed, the pleasures afforded by the consciousness of eager activity, in which desire is an essential element, constitute a considerable item in the total enjoyment of life. It is almost a commonplace to say that such pleasures, which we may call generally the pleasures of Pursuit, are more important than the pleasures of Attainment: and in many cases it is the prospect of the former rather than of the latter that induces us to engage in a pursuit. In such cases it is peculiarly easy to distinguish the desire to attain the object pursued, from a desire of the pleasure of attainment: since the attainment only becomes pleasant in prospect because the pursuit itself stimulates a desire for what is pursued. Take, for example, the case of any game which involves--as most games do--a contest for victory. No ordinary player before entering on such a contest, has any desire for victory in it: indeed he often finds it difficult to imagine himself deriving gratification from such victory, before he has actually engaged in the competition. What he deliberately, before the game begins, desires is not victory, but the pleasant excitement of the struggle for it; only for the full development of this pleasure a transient desire to win the game is generally indispensable. This desire, which does not exist at first, is stimulated to considerable intensity by the competition itself: and in proportion as it is thus stimulated both the mere contest becomes more pleasurable, and the victory, which was originally indifferent, comes to afford a keen enjoyment.

The same phenomenon is exhibited in the case of more important kinds of pursuit. Thus it often happens that a man, feeling his life languid and devoid of interests, begins to occupy himself in the prosecution of some scientific or socially useful work, for the sake not of the end but of the occupation. At first, very likely, the occupation is irksome: but soon, as he foresaw, a desire to attain the end at which he aims is stimulated, partly by sympathy with other workers, partly by his sustained exercise of voluntary effort directed towards it; so that his pursuit, becoming eager, becomes also a source of pleasure. Here, again, it is no doubt true that in proportion as his desire for the end grows strong, the attainment of it becomes pleasant in prospect: but it would be a palpable mistake to say that this prospective pleasure is the object of the desire that causes it.[51]

When we compare these pleasures with those previously discussed, another important observation suggests itself. In the former case, though we could distinguish appetite, as it appears in consciousness, from the desire of the pleasure attending the satisfaction of appetite, there appeared to be no incompatibility between the two. The fact that a glutton is dominated by the desire of the pleasures of eating in no way impedes the development in him of the appetite which is a necessary condition of these pleasures. But when we turn to the pleasures of pursuit, we seem to perceive this incompatibility to a certain extent: a certain subordination of self-regard seems to be necessary in order to obtain full enjoyment. A man who maintains throughout an epicurean mood, keeping his main conscious aim perpetually fixed 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. Here comes into view what we may call the fundamental paradox of Hedonism, that the impulse towards 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 highest degree, so long as we keep our main conscious aim concentrated upon them. It is not only that the exercise of our faculties is insufficiently stimulated by the mere desire of the pleasure attending it, and requires the presence of other more objective, ‘extra-regarding,’ impulses, in order to be fully developed: we may go further and say that these other impulses must be temporarily predominant and absorbing, if the exercise and its attendant gratification are to attain their full scope. Many middle-aged Englishmen would maintain the view that business is more agreeable than amusement; but they would hardly find it so if they transacted the business with a perpetual conscious aim at the attendant pleasure. Similarly, the pleasures of thought and study can only be enjoyed in the highest degree by those who have an ardour of curiosity which carries the mind temporarily away from self and its sensations. In all kinds of Art, again, the exercise of the creative faculty is attended by intense and exquisite pleasures: but it would seem that in order to get them, one must forget them: the genuine artist at work seems to have a predominant and temporarily absorbing desire for the realisation of his ideal of beauty.

The important case of the benevolent affections is at first sight somewhat more doubtful. On the one hand it is of course true, that when those whom we love are pleased or pained, we ourselves feel sympathetic pleasure and pain: and further, that the flow of love or kindly feeling is itself highly pleasurable. So that it is at least plausible to interpret benevolent actions as aiming ultimately at the attainment of one or both of these two kinds of pleasures, or at the averting of sympathetic pain from the agent. But we may observe, first, that the impulse to beneficent action produced in us by sympathy is often so much out of proportion to any actual consciousness of sympathetic pleasure and pain in ourselves, that it would be paradoxical to regard this latter as its object. Often indeed we cannot but feel that a tale of actual suffering arouses in us an excitement on the whole more pleasurable than painful, like the excitement of witnessing a tragedy; and yet at the same time stirs in us an impulse to relieve it, even when the process of relieving is painful and laborious and involves various sacrifices of our own pleasures. Again, we may often free ourselves from sympathetic pain most easily by merely turning our thoughts from the external suffering that causes it: and we sometimes feel an egoistic impulse to do this, which we can then distinguish clearly from the properly sympathetic impulse prompting us to relieve the original suffering. And finally, the much-commended pleasures of benevolence seem to require, in order to be felt in any considerable degree, the pre-existence of a desire to do good to others for their sake and not for our own. As Hutcheson explains, we may cultivate benevolent affection for the sake of the pleasures attending it (just as the glutton cultivates appetite), but we cannot produce it at will, however strong may be our desire of these pleasures: and when it exists, even though it may owe its origin to a purely egoistic impulse, it is still essentially a desire to do good to others for their sake and not for our own.

It cannot perhaps be said that the self-abandonment and self-forgetfulness, which seemed an essential condition of the full development of the other elevated impulses before noticed, characterise benevolent affection normally and permanently; as love, when a powerful emotion, seems naturally to involve a desire for reciprocated love, strong in proportion to the intensity of the emotion; and thus the consciousness of self and of one’s own pleasures and pains seems often heightened by the very intensity of the affection that binds one to others. Still we may at least say that this self-suppression and absorption of consciousness in the thought of other human beings and their happiness is a common incident of all strong affections: and it is said that persons who love intensely sometimes feel a sense of antagonism between the egoistic and altruistic elements of their desire, and an impulse to suppress the former, which occasionally exhibits itself in acts of fantastic and extravagant self-sacrifice.

If then reflection on our moral consciousness seems to show that “the pleasure of virtue is one which can only be obtained on the express condition of its not being the object sought,”[52] we need not distrust this result of observation on account of the abnormal nature of the phenomenon. We have merely another illustration of a psychological law, which, as we have seen, is exemplified throughout the whole range of our desires. In the promptings of Sense no less than in those of Intellect or Reason we find the phenomenon of strictly disinterested impulse: base and trivial external ends may excite desires of this kind, as well as the sublime and ideal: and there are pleasures of the merely animal life which can only be obtained on condition of not being directly sought, no less than the satisfactions of a good conscience.

§ 3. So far I have been concerned to insist on the felt incompatibility of ‘self-regarding’ and ‘extra-regarding’ impulses only as a means of proving their essential distinctness. I do not wish to overstate this incompatibility: I believe that most commonly it is very transient, and often only momentary, and that our greatest happiness--if that be our deliberate aim--is generally attained by means of a sort of alternating rhythm of the two kinds of impulse in consciousness. A man’s conscious desire is, I think, more often than not chiefly extra-regarding; but where there is strong desire in any direction, there is commonly keen susceptibility to the corresponding pleasures; and the most devoted enthusiast is sustained in his work by the recurrent consciousness of such pleasures. But it is important to point out that the familiar and obvious instances of conflict between self-love and some extra-regarding impulse are not paradoxes and illusions to be explained away, but phenomena which the analysis of our consciousness in its normal state, when there is no such conflict, would lead us to expect. If we are continually acting from impulses whose immediate objects are something other than our own happiness, it is quite natural that we should occasionally yield to such impulses when they prompt us to an uncompensated sacrifice of pleasure. Thus a man of weak self-control, after fasting too long, may easily indulge his appetite for food to an extent which he knows to be unwholesome: and that not because the pleasure of eating appears to him, even in the moment of indulgence, at all worthy of consideration in comparison with the injury to health; but merely because he feels an impulse to eat food, which prevails over his prudential judgment. Thus, again, men have sacrificed all the enjoyments of life, and even life itself, to obtain posthumous fame: not from any illusory belief that they would be somehow capable of deriving pleasure from it, but from a direct desire of the future admiration of others, and a preference of it to their own pleasure. And so, again, when the sacrifice is made for some ideal end, as Truth, or Freedom, or Religion: it may be a real sacrifice of the individual’s happiness, and not merely the preference of one highly refined pleasure (or of the absence of one special pain) to all the other elements of happiness. No doubt this preference is possible; a man may feel that the high and severe delight of serving his ideal is a “pearl of great price” outweighing in value all other pleasures. But he may also feel that the sacrifice will not repay him, and yet determine that it shall be made.

To sum up: our conscious active impulses are so far from being always directed towards the attainment of pleasure or avoidance of pain for ourselves, that we can find everywhere in consciousness extra-regarding impulses, directed towards something that is not pleasure, nor relief from pain; and, indeed, a most important part of our pleasure depends upon the existence of such impulses: while on the other hand they are in many cases so far incompatible with the desire of our own pleasure that the two kinds of impulse do not easily coexist in the same moment of consciousness; and more occasionally (but by no means rarely) the two come into irreconcilable conflict, and prompt to opposite courses of action. And this incompatibility (though it is important to notice it in other instances) is no doubt specially prominent in the case of the impulse towards the end which most markedly competes in ethical controversy with pleasure: the love of virtue for its own sake, or desire to do what is right as such.

§ 4. The psychological observations on which my argument is based will not perhaps be directly controverted, at least to such an extent as to involve my main conclusion: but there are two lines of reasoning by which it has been attempted to weaken the force of this conclusion without directly denying it. In the first place, it is urged that Pleasure, though not the only conscious aim of human action, is yet always the result to which it is unconsciously directed. The proposition would be difficult to disprove; since no one denies that pleasure in some degree normally accompanies the attainment of a desired end: and when once we go beyond the testimony of consciousness there seems to be no clear method of determining which among the consequences of any action is the end at which it is aimed. For the same reason, however, the proposition is at any rate equally difficult to prove. But I should go further, and maintain that if we seriously set ourselves to consider human action on its unconscious side, we can only conceive it as a combination of movements of the parts of a material organism: and that if we try to ascertain what the ‘end’ in any case of such movements is, it is reasonable to conclude that it is some material result, some organic condition conducive to the preservation either of the individual organism or of the race to which it belongs. In fact, the doctrine that pleasure (or the absence of pain) is the end of all human action can neither be supported by the results of introspection, nor by the results of external observation and inference: it rather seems to be reached by an arbitrary and illegitimate combination of the two.

But again, it is sometimes said that whatever be the case with our present adult consciousness, our original impulses were all directed towards pleasure[53] or from pain, and that any impulses otherwise directed are derived from these by “association of ideas.” I can find no evidence that even tends to prove this: so far as we can observe the consciousness of children, the two elements, extra-regarding impulse and desire for pleasure, seem to coexist in the same manner as they do in mature life. In so far as there is any difference, it seems to be in the opposite direction; as the actions of children, being more instinctive and less reflective, are more prompted by extra-regarding impulse, and less by conscious aim at pleasure. No doubt the two kinds of impulse, as we trace back the development of consciousness, gradually become indistinguishable: but this obviously does not justify us in identifying with either of the two the more indefinite impulse out of which both have been developed. But even supposing it were found that our earliest appetites were all merely appetites for pleasure, it would have little bearing on the present question. What I am concerned to maintain is that men do not now normally desire pleasure alone, but to an important extent other things also: some in particular having impulses towards virtue, which may and do conflict with their conscious desire for their own pleasure. To say in answer to this that all men once desired pleasure is, from an ethical point of view, irrelevant: except on the assumption that there is an original type of man’s appetitive nature, to which, as such, it is right or best for him to conform. But probably no Hedonist would expressly maintain this; though such an assumption, no doubt, is frequently made by writers of the Intuitional school.

NOTE.--Some psychologists regard Desire as essentially painful. This view seems to me erroneous, according to the ordinary use of the term: and though it does not necessarily involve the confusion--against which I am chiefly concerned to guard in the present chapter--between the volitional stimulus of desire itself and the volitional stimulus of aversion to desire as painful, it has some tendency to cause this confusion. It may therefore be worth while to point out that the difference of opinion between myself and the psychologists in question--of whom I select Dr. Bain as a leading example--depends largely, though not entirely, on a difference of definition. In chap. viii. of the second division of his book on The Emotions and the Will, Dr. Bain defines Desire as “that phase of volition where there is a motive and not ability to act on it,” and gives the following illustration:--

“The inmate of a small gloomy chamber conceives to himself the pleasure of light and of an expanded prospect: the unsatisfying ideal urges the appropriate action for gaining the reality; he gets up and walks out. Suppose now that the same ideal delight comes into the mind of a prisoner. Unable to fulfil the prompting, he remains under the solicitation of the motive: and his state is denominated craving, longing, appetite, desire. If all motive impulses could be at once followed up, desire would have no place ... there is a bar in the way of acting which leads to the state of conflict and renders desire a more or less painful state of mind.”

Now I agree that Desire is most frequently painful in some degree when the person desiring is inhibited from acting for the attainment of the desired object. I do not indeed think that even under these circumstances it is always painful, especially when it is accompanied with hope. Take the simple case of hunger. Ordinarily, when I am looking forward to dinner with a good appetite, I do not find hunger painful--unless I have fasted unusually long--although custom and a regard for my digestion prevent me from satisfying the appetite till the soup is served. Still I admit that when action tending to fruition is excluded, desire is very liable to be painful.

But it is surely contrary to usage to restrict the term Desire to this case. Suppose Dr. Bain’s prisoner becomes possessed of a file, and sees his way to getting out of prison by a long process, which will involve, among other operations, the filing of certain bars. It would surely seem absurd to say that his desire finally ceases when the operation of filing begins. No doubt the concentration of attention on the complex activities necessary for the attainment of freedom is likely to cause the prisoner to be so absorbed by other ideas and feelings that the desire of freedom may temporarily cease to be present in his consciousness. But as the stimulus on which his whole activity ultimately depends is certainly derived from the unrealised idea of freedom, this idea, with the concomitant feeling of desire, will normally recur at brief intervals during the process. Similarly in other cases, while it is quite true that men often work for a desired end without consciously feeling desire for the end, it would be absurd to say that they never feel desire while so working: at any rate this restricted use of the term has never, I think, been adopted by ethical writers in treating of Desire. And in some passages Dr. Bain himself seems to adopt a wider meaning. He says, for instance, in the chapter from which I have quoted, that “we have a form of desire ... when we are working for distant ends.” If, then, it be allowed that the feeling of Desire is at any rate sometimes an element of consciousness coexisting with a process of activity directed to the attainment of the desired object, or intervening in the brief pauses of such a process, I venture to think that when the feeling is observed under these conditions, it will not be found in accordance with the common experience of mankind to describe it as essentially painful.

Take, as a simple instance, the case of a game involving bodily exercise and a contest of skill. Probably many persons who take part in such exercises for sanitary or social purposes begin without any perceptible desire to win the game: and probably as long as they remain thus indifferent the exercise is rather tedious. Usually, however, a conscious desire to win the game is excited, as a consequence of actions directed towards this end: and--in my experience at least--in proportion as the feeling grows strong, the whole process becomes more pleasurable. If this be admitted to be a normal experience, it must surely be also admitted that Desire in this case is a feeling in which introspection does not enable us to detect the slightest quality of pain.

It would be easy to give an indefinite number of similar instances of energetic activity carried on for an end--whether in sport or in the serious business of life--where a keen desire for the attainment of the end in view is indispensable to a real enjoyment of the labour required to attain, and where at the same time we cannot detect any painfulness in the desire, however much we try to separate it in introspective analysis from its concomitant feeling.

The error that I am trying to remove seems to me partly due to overlooking these cases, and contemplating exclusively cases in which Desire is for some reason or other prevented from having its normal effect in stimulating activity directed to the attainment of the desired object. Partly, however, it seems to be due to the resemblance between Desire and Pain, to which I have drawn attention in the text of this chapter, i.e. the unrestfulness which is undoubtedly a characteristic of the state of desire, and--ordinarily--of pain. For the characteristic of “unrestfulness” requires some care to distinguish it from “uneasiness,” in the sense in which this latter term signifies some degree of painfulness. The mistake is connected with the equally erroneous view--which Hobbes controverts in his usual forcible style--that “the Felicity of this life consisteth in the repose of a mind satisfied”; and it has also some affinity with the widespread view--which has left its mark on more than one European language--that labour, strenuous activity, is essentially painful. On both these points, it ought to be said, there is doubtless considerable divergence between the experiences of different individuals: but at any rate among Englishmen I conceive that a person who finds desire always painful--in the sense in which, as I have tried to show, the word is commonly used both by moralists and in ordinary discourse--is as exceptional a being as one who finds labour always painful.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] The relation of the æsthetic to the moral ideal of conduct will be discussed in a subsequent chapter (ix.) of this Book.Return to passage

[41] I here, as in chap. i., adopt the exact hedonistic interpretation of ‘happiness’ which Bentham has made current. This seems to me the most suitable use of the term; but I afterwards (Book i. chap. vii. § 1) take note of other uses.Return to passage

[42] Constitutional Code, Introduction, § 2.Return to passage

[43] Utilitarianism, chap. ii. p. 14.Return to passage

[44] Mr. Leslie Stephen, who holds (Science of Ethics, p. 50) that “pain and pleasure are the sole determining causes of action,” at the same time thinks that it “will be admitted on all hands” that “we are not always determined by a calculation of pleasure to come.”Return to passage

[45] Or, more precisely, ‘greatest surplus of pleasure over pain.’Return to passage

[46] The qualifications and limitations which this proposition requires, before it can be accepted as strictly true, do not seem to me important for the purpose of the present argument. See Book ii. chap. ii. § 2.Return to passage

[47] In the present treatise ‘Desire’ is primarily regarded as a felt impulse or stimulus to actions tending to the realisation of what is desired. There are, however, states of feeling, sometimes intense, to which the term ‘desire’ is by usage applicable, in which this impulsive quality seems to be absent or at least latent; because the realisation of the desired result is recognised as hopeless, and has long been so recognised. In such cases the ‘desire’ (so-called) remains in consciousness only as a sense of want of a recognised good, a feeling no more or otherwise impulsive than the regretful memory of past joy. That is, desire in this condition may develop a secondary impulse to voluntary day-dreaming, by which a bitter-sweet imaginary satisfaction of the want is attained; or, so far as it is painful, it may impel to action or thought which will bring about its own extinction: but its primary impulse to acts tending to realise the desired result is no longer perceptible.Return to passage

With this state of mind

--“the desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow”--

I am not concerned in the present discussion. I notice it chiefly because some writers (e.g. Dr. Bain) seem to contemplate as the sole or typical case of desire, “where there is a motive and no ability to act upon it”; thus expressly excluding that condition of desire (as I use the term) which seems to me of primary importance from an ethical point of view, i.e. where action tending to bring about the desired result is conceived as at once possible.

[48] The confusion occurs in the most singular form in Hobbes, who actually identifies Pleasure and Appetite--“this motion in which consisteth pleasure, is a solicitation to draw near to the thing that pleaseth.”Return to passage

[49] The same argument is put in a more guarded, and, I think, unexceptionable form by Hutcheson. It is perhaps more remarkable that Hume, too, shares Butler’s view which he expresses almost in the language of the famous sermons. “There are,” he says, “bodily wants or appetites, acknowledged by every one, which necessarily precede all sensual enjoyment, and carry us directly to seek possession of the object. Thus hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their end: and from the gratification of these primary appetites arises a pleasure, which may become the object of another species of inclination that is secondary and interested.” Hence Hume finds that “the hypothesis which allows of a disinterested benevolence, distinct from self-love,” is “conformable to the analogy of nature.” See Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (Appendix II.).Return to passage

[50] Some further discussion of it will be found in the note at the end of the chapter.Return to passage

[51] Professor J. S. Mackenzie, in his Manual of Ethics (3rd edition, Book i. chap. ii. note), arguing for the universal painfulness of desire, urges that the so-called “pleasures of pursuit” are really pleasures of “progressive attainment”; what causes pleasure being the series of partial attainments that precede the final attainment. There seems to me much truth in this view, as regards some forms of pursuit; but in other cases I can find nothing deserving the name in the course of the pursuit: the prominent element of the pleasure seems to be clearly the reflex of eager and hopeful, perhaps consciously skilful, activity. E.g. this is often the case in the pursuit of truth, scientific or historical. I have spent most pleasant hours in hunting for evidence in favour of a conjecture that had occurred to me as a possible solution of a difficult historical question, without any “progressive attainment” at all, as I found no evidence of any importance: but the pleasure had none the less been real, at any rate in the earlier part of the pursuit. Or take the common experience of deer-stalking, or the struggle for victory in an evenly balanced game of chess, or a prolonged race in which no competitor gains on the others till near the end. I find nothing like “progressive attainment” in these cases.Return to passage

But even granting Mr. Mackenzie’s view to be more widely applicable than I think it, the question it deals with seems to me in the main irrelevant to the issue that I am now discussing: since it remains true that the presence of antecedent desire is an essential condition of the pleasures of attainment--whether “progressive” or “catastrophic”--and that the desire is not itself perceptibly painful.

[52] Lecky, Hist. of European Morals, Introduction.Return to passage

[53] I must ask the reader to distinguish carefully the question discussed in this chapter, which relates to the objects of desires and aversions, from the different question whether the causes of these impulses are always to be found in antecedent experiences of pleasure and pain. The bearing of this latter question on Ethics, though not unimportant, is manifestly more indirect than that of the question here dealt with: and it will be convenient to postpone it till a later stage of the discussion. Cf. post, Book ii. chap. vi. § 2, and Book iv. chap. iv. § 1.Return to passage