Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

by John Dewey

Chapter I.—THE GOOD.

IX.

Subdivision of Theories.

We may recognize three main types of theories regarding the good, of which the first two represent (we shall attempt to show) each respectively one side of the truth, while the third combines the one-sided truths of the other two. Of the first two theories one is abstract, because it tends to find the good in the mere consequences of conduct aside from character. This is the hedonistic theory, which finds the good to be pleasure. This is either individualistic or universalistic according as it takes individual or general pleasure to be the good. The second type of theories attempts to find the good in the motive of conduct apart from consequences even as willed; it reduces the good to conformity to abstract moral law. The best type of this theory is the Kantian. We shall criticize these theories with a view to developing the factors necessary to a true moral theory.

X.

Hedonism.

According to the strict hedonistic position, the pleasure resulting to the agent from his act is the end of conduct and is therefore the criterion of its morality. The position as usually taken involves, first, that pleasure is psychologically the sole motive to action; and, secondly, that the results of an act in the way of the pain or pleasure it produces are the only tests we have of the rightness of the act.

It is said above that these two points are involved in the hedonistic position as usually taken. They are not necessarily involved.

Sidgwick (Methods of Ethics, Bk. I, ch. IV and Bk. IV, ch. I) holds that pleasure is not the object of desire or motive of action, but that happiness is the moral end and criterion. On the other hand Hodgson (Theory of Practice, Vol. II, ch. II) holds that pleasure may be the motive (in the sense of impelling force) but it is never the criterion of conduct. Kant adopts the psychology of hedonism regarding pleasure as the object of desire, but holds that on that very account no object of desire can be the standard of moral conduct.

A good statement of strict individualistic hedonism is the following from Barratt, Physical Ethics, page 71: "If man aims at pleasure merely by the physical law of action, that pleasure must evidently be ultimately his own, and whether it be or not preceded by phenomena which he calls the pain and pleasure of others, is a question not of principle but of detail, just as the force of a pound weight is unaltered whether it be composed of lead or of feathers, or whether it act directly or through pulleys."

XI.

The Hedonistic Position Supported.

Hedonism holds that pleasure is both the natural end and the proper criterion of action:

The following quotation from Bentham (Principles of Morals and Legislation, Works, Vol. I, p. 1) gives a statement of both these elements. "Nature has placed man under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, [i. e. they are criteria] as well as to determine what we shall do [motives]. On the one hand, the standard of right or wrong [criterion]; on the other the chain of causes and effects [motives], are fastened to their throne."

1. Pleasure as Criterion. That the tendency of an action to produce pleasure is the standard for judging its moral value is generally held by the hedonists to be so axiomatic as to be beyond argument.

See Bain, Moral Science, p. 27. "The ultimate data must be accepted as self-evident: they have no higher authority than that mankind generally are disposed to accept them.... Now there can be no proof offered for the position that happiness is the proper end of all human pursuits, the criterion of all right conduct. It is an ultimate or final assumption to be tested by reference to the individual judgment of mankind." So Bentham, Enquiry I, II, "The principle is not susceptible of direct proofs for that which is used to prove everything else can not itself be proved; a chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere." Mill, Utilitarianism. (Dissertations and Discussions, pp. 348-349). "The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people actually see it. In like manner the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people do actually desire it." See Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 42; Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 30-32 and p. 46; Lotze, Practical Philosophy, pp. 18-19: Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, pp. 368-369.

Hedonism, then, represents the good or the desirable and pleasure to be two names for the same fact. What indeed can be worth while unless it be either enjoyable in itself or at least a means to enjoyment? Would theft be considered bad if it resulted in pleasure or truth itself good if its universal effect were pain?

2. Pleasure as object of desire. It is also urged that psychological analysis shows that pleasure is not only the desirable, but also always the desired. Desire for an object is only a short way of saying desire for the pleasure which that object may bring. To want food is to want the pleasure it brings; to want scientific ability is to desire to find satisfaction, or attain happiness. Thus it is laid down as a general principle that the invariable object of desire, and motive of action is some pleasure to be attained; the action itself and the direct end of action being simply means to pleasure.

For a strong statement of this doctrine see Mill, Op. cit., pp. 354-5. "Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon,—in strictness of language, two different modes of naming the same psychological fact; to think of an object as desirable and to think of it as pleasant are one and the same thing." See also, Bain, Emotions and Will, p. 436, Senses and Intellect, pp. 338-344; Sully, Outlines of Psychology, p. 575, "The inclination or tendency of the active mind towards what is pleasurable and away from what is painful is the essential fact in willing." Also pp. 576-577.

XII. Criticism.

Pleasure Not the End of Impulse.

Taking up the points in reverse order, we shall endeavor to show first, that the motive of action, in the sense of end aimed at, is not pleasure. This point in itself, is, of course, rather psychological than ethical. Taking up then the psychology of pleasure in its connection with will, we shall discuss its relation to impulse, to desire and to motive.

It is generally agreed that the raw material of volition is found in some form or other of the impulsive or instinctive actions. Such tendencies (e. g., the impulse for food, for drink, for unimpeded motion) clearly precede the reaching of an end, and hence the experience of any pleasure in the end. Our first actions, at least, are not for pleasure; on the contrary, there is an activity for some independent end, and this end being reached there is pleasure in an act which has succeeded. This suggests as a possible principle that pleasure is not so much the end of action, as an element in the activity which reaches an end. What Aristotle says of another matter is certainly true of instinctive action. "It is not true of every characteristic function that its action is attended with pleasure, except indeed the pleasure of attaining its end."

See Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, pp. 299-300; Sidgwick, Op. cit., pp. 38-45.

XIII. Criticism—Continued.

Pleasure Not the End of Desire.

It may, however, be said that, while our instinctive actions have another end than pleasure, this is not true of conscious desires—that, indeed, just the difference between instinct and desire is that the former goes blindly to its end, while the latter superimposes the thought of the pleasure to be reached upon the mere instinct. So we have to analyze the nature of desire.

A child, led by impulse, has put a piece of sugar into his mouth, just as, under the same circumstances, he would put a piece of stone into his mouth. But his action results in a state of pleasure wholly unforseen by him. Now the next time the child sees the sugar he will not merely have the impulse to put it in his mouth. There will also be the remembrance of the pleasure enjoyed from sugar previously. There is consciousness of sugar as satisfying impulse and hence desire for it.

1. This is a description of an instance of desire. Does it bear us out in the doctrine that pleasure is the object of desire? It is possible that, in an irrational animal, the experience of eating food reinforces the original instinct for it with associated images of pleasure. But even this is very different from a desire for pleasure. It is simply the primordial instinct intensified and rendered more acute by new sensational factors joined to it. In the strict sense, there is still no desire, but only stronger impulse. Wherever there is desire there is not only a feeling of pleasure associated with other feelings (e. g., those of hunger, thirst), but there is the consciousness of an object in which satisfaction is found. The error of the hedonistic psychology is in omitting one's consciousness of an object which satisfies. The hedonists are quite right in holding that the end of desire is not any object external to consciousness, but a condition of consciousness itself. The error begins in eliminating all objective (that is, active) elements from consciousness, and declaring it to be a mere state of feeling or sensation. The practical consciousness, or will, cannot be reduced to mere feeling, any more than the theoretical consciousness, or knowledge, can be so reduced.

Even Mill, in its statement of the hedonistic psychology, does not succeed in making the object of desire mere pleasure as a state of feeling. It is the "pleasant thing" and not pleasure alone which he finds equivalent to the desire. It is true enough that sugar as an external fact does not awaken desire, but it is equally true that a child does not want a passive pleasure. What he wants is his own activity in which he makes the sugar his own. And it should be remembered that the case of sugar is at once a trivial and an exceptional one. Not even children want simply sweet-meats; and the larger the character which finds expression in wants, the more does the direct object of want, the bread, the meat, become a mere element in a larger system of activity. What a man wants is to live, and he wants sweet-meats, amusements, etc., just as he wants substantials—on account of their value in life.

Professor James compares the idea that pleasure is the end of desire to saying that "because no steamer can go to sea without incidentally consuming coal, ... therefore no steamer can go to sea for any other motive than that of coal-consumption." Psychology, Vol. II, p. 558. See the entire passage, pp. 549-559.

2. But granting that an 'object' and a 'pleasure' are both necessary to desire, it may be argued that the 'object' is ultimately a means to 'pleasure.' This expressly raises a question already incidentally touched upon: What is the controlling element in desire? Why is the object thought of as pleasant? Simply because it is thought of as satisfying want. The hedonists, says Green (Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 168), make the "mistake of supposing that a desire can be excited by the anticipation of its own satisfaction." This is to say, of course, that it exists before it exists, and thus brings itself into being.

Green, Op. cit., p. 167, states the matter thus: "Ordinary motives are interests in the attainment of objects, without which it seems to the man that he cannot satisfy himself, and in the attainment of which, because he has desired them, he will find a certain pleasure, but only because he has previously desired them, not because pleasures are the objects desired." Bradley says on this same point (Ethical Studies, p. 230): "The difference is between my finding my pleasure in an end, and my finding means for the end of my pleasure, and the difference is enormous." Consult the entire passage, pp. 226-235. See also Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, p. 229.

It is the object, then, which controls, and the pleasure is on account of the attaining of the desired object. But even this statement makes more division in desire than actually exists; for

3. The real object of desire is activity itself. The will takes its rise, as we have seen, in impulse; in the reaching for something to satisfy some felt lack. Now, in reality, desire adds nothing to impulse excepting consciousness of the impulse. Volitional action does not differ from impulsive or instinctive, except in bringing to consciousness the nature of the want and of the activity necessary to satisfy it. But this makes just the difference between 'natural' or animal activity, and 'moral' or human activity. To be conscious of the impulse is to elevate it from a blind impelling force to an intended or proposed end; and thus, by bringing it before consciousness, both to extend its range and to idealize it, spiritualize it. To be conscious of an impulse for food means to give up the unreasoned and momentary seizing of it; to consider the relation of things to this want, what will satisfy it best, most easily, etc. The object of desire is not something outside the action; it is an element in the enlarged action. And as we become more and more conscious of impulse for food, we analyze our action into more and more 'objects' of desire, but these objects never become anything apart from the action itself. They are simply its analyzed and defined content. Man wants activity still, but he knows better what activity means and includes.

Thus, when we learn what the activity means, it changes its character. To the animal the activity wanted is simply that of eating the food, of realizing the momentary impulse. To man the activity becomes enlarged to include the satisfaction of a whole life, and not of one life singly, but of the family, etc., connected with the single life. The material well-being of the family becomes one of the objects of desire into which the original impulse has grown. But we misinterpret, when we conceive of this well-being as an external object lying outside the action. It means simply one aspect of the fuller action. By like growing consciousness of the meaning of the impulse, production and exchange of commodities are organized. The impulse for food is extended to include a whole range of commercial activities.

It is evident that this growing consciousness of the nature of an impulse, whereby we resolve it into manifold and comprehensive activities, also takes the impulse out of its isolation and brings it into connection with other impulses. We come to have not a series of disconnected impulses, but one all-inclusive activity in which various subordinate activities (or conscious impulses) are included. Thus, in the previous example, the impulse for food is united with the family impulse, and with the impulse for communication and intercourse with society generally. It is this growing unity with the whole range of man's action that is the 'spiritualizing' of the impulse—the natural and brutal impulse being just that which insists upon itself irrespective of all other wants. The spiritualizing of the impulse is organizing it so that it becomes one factor in action. Thus we literally come to 'eat to live', meaning by life not mere physical existence, but the whole possible sphere of active human relations.

4. Relation of activity to pleasure. We have seen that the 'object' of desire in itself is a mere abstraction; that the real object is full activity itself. We are always after larger scope of movement, fuller income in order to get larger outgo. The 'thing' is always for the sake of doing; is a part of the doing. The idea that anything less or other than life (movement, action, and doing), can satisfy man is as ridiculous when compared with the actual course of things in history, as it is false psychologically. Freedom is what we want, and freedom means full unimpeded play of interests, that is, of conscious impulses (see Sec. [34] and [51]). If the object is a mere abstraction apart from activity, much more is pleasure. Mere pleasure as an object is simply the extreme of passivity, of mere having, as against action or doing. It is possible to make pleasure to some degree the object of desire; this is just what the voluptuary does. But it is a commonplace that the voluptuary always defeats himself. He never gets satisfaction who identities satisfaction with having pleasures. The reason is evident enough. Activity is what we want, and since pleasure comes from getting what we want, pleasure comes only with activity. To give up the activity, and attempt to get the pleasure is a contradiction in effect. Hence also the 'hedonistic paradox'—that in order to get pleasure we must aim at something else.

There is an interesting recognition of this in Mill himself, (see his Autobiography, p. 142). And in his Utilitarianism, in discussing the feasibility of getting happiness, he shows (pp. 318-319) that the sources of happiness are an intelligent interest in surrounding things—objects of nature, achievements of art, incidents of history—and especially an unselfish devotion to others. Which is to say that man does not find satisfaction in pleasure as such at all, but only in objective affairs—that is, in complete interpretation, in activity with a wide and full content. Further consideration of the end of desire and its relation to pleasure may be found in Green, Op. cit., pp. 123-132; pp. 163-167. Bradley, Mind, Vol. XIII, p. 1, and Dewey, Psychology, pp. 360-365.

XIV. Criticism—Continued.

Character and Pleasure.

It now being admitted that the end of desire is activity itself in which the 'object' and 'pleasure' are simply factors, what is the moving spring to action? What is it that arouses the mind to the larger activity? Most of the hedonists have confounded the two senses of motive already spoken of, and have held that because pleasure is the end of desire, therefore it is the moving spring of conduct (or more often that because it is the moving spring of conduct it therefore is the end of desire).

Mr. Stephen (Science of Ethics, pp. 46-58), although classing himself as a hedonist, has brought out this confusion very clearly. Ordinary hedonism confounds, as he shows, the judgment of what is pleasant—the supposed end—with the pleasant judgment—the moving spring. (See also Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 232-236). It may be admitted that it is feeling which moves to action, but it is the present feeling which moves. If the feeling aimed at moves, it is only as through anticipation it becomes the present feeling. Now is this present feeling which moves (1) mere pleasure and (2) mere feeling at all? This introduces us to the question of the relation of pleasure (and of feeling in general) to character.

1. If the existing state of consciousness—that which moves—were pure pleasure, why should there be any movement, any act at all? The feeling which moves must be in so far complex: over against the pleasure felt in the anticipation of an end as satisfying, there must be pain felt in the contrasting unsatisfactory present condition. There must be tension between the anticipated or ideal action, and the actual or present (relative) non-action. And it is this tension, in which pain is just as normal an element as pleasure, which moves. Desire is just this tension of an action which satisfies, and yet is only ideal, against an actual possession which, in contrast with the ideal action, is felt as incomplete action, or lack, and hence as unsatisfactory.

2. The question now comes as to the nature of this tension. We may call it 'feeling,' if we will, and say that feeling is the sole motive power to action. But there is no such thing as feeling at large, and the important thing, morally, is what kind of feeling moves. To take a mere abstraction like 'feeling' for the source of action is, at root, the fallacy of hedonism. To raise the question, What is it that makes the feeling what it is, is to recognize that the feeling, taken concretely, is character in a certain attitude.

Stephen, who has insisted with great force that feeling is the sole 'motive' to action, has yet shown with equal cogency the moral uselessness of such a doctrine, when feeling is left undefined (Op. cit., p. 44). "The love of happiness must express the sole possible motive of Judas Iscariot and his master; it must explain the conduct of Stylites on his column, of Tiberius at Capreæ, of A Kempis in his cell, and of Nelson in the cockpit of the Victory. It must be equally good for saints, martyrs, heroes, cowards, debauchees, ascetics, mystics, cynics, misers, prodigals, men, women, and babes in arms." Surely, this is only to say, in effect, that 'love of happiness' is a pure bit of scholasticism, an undefined entity.

In a hedonistic argument (by Stanton Coit, Mind, Vol. XI, p. 349), the fallacy is seen in the following discussion. The story is told of Abraham Lincoln that he once passed an animal in distress by the side of the road, and that, after going by, he finally went back and got him out of the ditch. On being praised for his act, he replied that he did it on his own account, since he kept getting more uncomfortable as he thought of the animal in distress. From this, it cannot be inferred that love of pleasure is at the basis of moral acts. The mere lumping off of feeling as the spring of conduct overlooks the only important thing morally—the fact that Lincoln felt pain at the thought of the animal unrelieved, and pleasure at the idea of its relief, just because he was a man of compassionate character. It was not the feeling, but the character revealed in, and creative of, the feeling that was the real source of the act.

To connect this with our previous account of desire (p. 26): the important thing morally is that the nature of the tension between fact and idea—the actual state and the ideal activity—is an expression of character. What kind of activity does it take to satisfy a man? Does riding in a comfortable carriage, and following the course of his own reflections exhaust his need of action? or does his full activity require that note be taken of a suffering animal? It is the kind of character one is (that is, the kind of activity which satisfies and expresses one) which decides what pleasure shall be taken in an anticipated end, what feeling of lack or hindrance (what pain) there shall be in the given state, and hence what the resulting tension, or desire, shall be. It is, therefore, character which moves to conduct.

Mere wishing, the mere floating fancy of this or that thing as desirable, is not desire. To want is an active projection of character; really and deeply to want is no surface and passing feeling; it is the stirring of character to its depths. There may be repressed activity; that is not, of itself, desire. There may be an image of larger activity; that is not, of itself, desire. But given the consciousness of a repressed activity in view of the perception of a possible larger action, and a man strives within himself to break his bonds and reach the new satisfaction. This striving within one's self, before the activity becomes overt, is the emotional antecedent of action. But this inward striving or tension, which constitutes desire, is so far from being mere emotion that it is character itself—character as it turns an inward or ideal advance into an outward, or real progress, into action.

We may fall back on Aristotle's statement (page 38, of Peters' translation of his ethics): "The pleasure or pain that accompanies an act must be regarded as a test of character. He who abstains from the pleasures of the body and rejoices in his abstinence is temperate, while he who is vexed at having to abstain is still profligate. As Plato tells us, man needs to be so trained from youth up as to take pleasure and pain in the right objects."

XV.

Summary.

The truth in hedonism is its conviction that the good, the end of man, is not to be found in any outward object, but only in what comes home to man in his own conscious experience. The error is in reducing this experience to mere having, to bare feelings or affections, eliminating the element of doing. It is this doing which satisfies man, and it is this which involves as its content (as knowledge of impulse, instead of blind impulse) objective and permanent ends. When Mill speaks of the end of desire as a "satisfied life," (p. 317 of Utilitarianism) he carries our assent; but to reduce this satisfied life to feelings of pleasure, and absence of pains, is to destroy the life and hence the satisfaction. As Mill recognizes, a life bounded by the agent's own feelings would be, as of course, a life "centred in his own miserable individuality." (Mill, p. 319). Such words have meaning only because they suggest the contrast with activity in which are comprehended, as 'ends' or 'objects' (that is, as part of its defined content) things—art, science and industry—and persons (see Secs. [34] and [35]).

Here too we must 'back to Aristotle.' According to him the end of conduct is eudaimonia, success, welfare, satisfied life. But eudaimonia is found not in pleasure, but in the fulfillment of human powers and functions, in which fulfillment, since it is fulfillment, pleasure is had. (Ethics, Bk. I, ch. 4-8).

We now take up the question whether pleasure is a standard of right action, having finished the discussion concerning it as an end of desire.

XVI.

Pleasure as the Standard of Conduct.

The line of criticism on this point may be stated as follows: Pleasure fails as a standard for the very reason that it fails as a motive. Pleasure, as conceived by the hedonist, is passive, merely agreeable sensations, without any objective and qualitative (active) character. This being so, there is no permanent, fixed basis to which we may refer acts and by which we may judge them. A standard implies a single comprehensive end which unifies all acts and through connection with which each gets its moral value fixed. Only action can be a standard for acts. To reduce all acts to means to getting a mere state of feeling is the inevitable consequence of hedonism. So reducing them is to deprive them of any standard of value.

An end to serve as standard must be (1) a comprehensive end for all the acts of an individual, and (2) an end comprehending the activities of various individuals—a common good.

1. The moral end must be that for the sake of which all conduct occurs—the organizing principle of conduct—a totality, a system. If pleasure is the end it is because each detail of conduct gets its placing, its moral value through relation to pleasure, through the contribution it makes to pleasure.

2. The moral end must also include the ends of the various agents who make up society. It must be capable of constituting a social system out of the acts of various agents, as well as an individual system out of the various acts of one agent; or, more simply, the moral end must be not only the good for all the particular acts of an individual, but must be a common good—a good which in satisfying one, satisfies others.

All ethical theories would claim that the end proposed by them served these two purposes. We shall endeavor to show that the hedonistic theory, the doctrine that the pleasure is the good, is not capable of serving either of them.

XVII.

Pleasure Not a Standard.

1. It does not unify character. In the first place, the hedonistic theory makes an unreal and impossible separation between conduct and character. The psychology of hedonism comes into conflict with its ethics. According to the former the motive of all action is to secure pleasure or avoid pain. So far as the motive is concerned, on this theory there can be no immoral action at all. That the agent should not be moved by pleasure, and by what, at the time of acting, is the greatest pleasure possible, would be a psychological impossibility. Every motive would be good, or rather there would be no distinction of good or bad pertaining to the motive. The character of the agent, as measured by his motives, could never, under such circumstances, have any moral quality.

To the consequences of action, or the conduct proper, however, the terms good and bad might be applied. Although the agent is moved by pleasurable feelings, the result of his action may be painful and thus bad. In a word, on the hedonistic theory, it is only the external consequences of conduct, or conduct divorced from character, to which moral adjectives have any application. Such a separation not only contradicts our experience (see [VIII]), but inverts the true order of moral judgment. Consequences do not enter into the moral estimate at all, except so far as, being foreseen, they are the act in idea. That is, it is only as the consequences are taken up into the motive, and thus related to character, that they are subject to moral judgment. Indeed, except so far as action expresses character, it is not conduct, but mere physical sequence, as irrelevant to morality as the change in blood distribution, which also is the 'result' of an action. Hedonism has to rule out at the start the only thing that gives totality to action—the character of the agent, or conduct as the outcome of motives. Furthermore, the ordinary judgment of men, instead of saying that the sole moral motive is to get pleasure, would say that to reduce everything to means for getting pleasure is the very essence of immorality.

On the point above, compare Bentham, Op. cit., I, p. 48. "A motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure or pain operating in a certain manner. Now pleasure is in itself a good: nay, even, setting aside immunity from pain, the only good; pain is in itself an evil, and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain and of every sort of pleasure. It follows, therefore, immediately and incontestably, that there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one. If motives are good or bad, it is only on account of their effects; good on account of their tendency to produce pleasure or avert pain; bad on account of their tendency to produce pain or avert pleasure. Now the case is, that from one and the same motive, and from every kind of motive, may proceed actions that are good, others that are bad and others that are indifferent." Further, on p. 60, Bentham asks: "Is there nothing, then, about a man that can properly be termed good or bad, when on such or such an occasion he suffers himself to be governed by such or such a motive? Yes, certainly, his disposition. Now disposition is a kind of fictitious entity, feigned for the convenience of discourse, in order to express what there is supposed to be permanent in a man's frame of mind. It is with disposition as with everything else; it will be good or bad according to its effects." The first quotation, it will be noticed, simply states that the motive is in itself always good, while conduct (i. e., consequences) may be good, bad or indifferent. The second quotation seems, however, to pass moral judgment upon character under the name of disposition. But disposition is judged according to the tendency of a person's actions. A good or bad disposition, here, can mean nothing intrinsic to the person, but only that the person has been observed to act in ways that usually produce pain or pleasure, as the case may be. The term is a 'fiction', and is a backhanded way of expressing a somewhat habitual result of a given person's conduct his motive remaining good (or for pleasure) all the time. The agent would never pronounce any such judgment upon his own disposition, unless as a sort of surprise that, his motive being 'good,' his actions turn out so 'bad' all the time. At most, the judgment regarding disposition is a sort of label put upon a man by others, a label of "Look out for him, he is dangerous," or, "Behold, a helpful man."

The moral standard of hedonism does not, then, bear any relation to the character of the agent, does not enable us to judge it, either as a whole or in any specific manifestation.

XVIII.

It Does Not Give a Criterion for Concrete Acts.

Pleasure, as the end, fails also to throw light on the moral value of any specific acts. Its failure in this respect is, indeed, only the other side of that just spoken of. There is no organizing principle, no 'universal' on the basis of which various acts fall into a system or order. The moral life is left a series of shreds and patches, where each act is torn off, as to its moral value, from every other. Each act is right or wrong, according as it gives pleasure or pain, and independently of any whole of life. There is, indeed, no whole of moral life at all, but only a series of isolated, disconnected acts. Possession, passivity, mere feeling, by its very nature cannot unite—each feeling is itself and that is the end of it. It is action which reduces multiplicity to unity. We cannot say, in the hedonistic theory, that pleasure is the end, but pleasures.

Each act stands by itself—the only question is: What pleasure will it give? The settling of this question is the "hedonistic calculus." We must discover the intensity, duration, certainty, degree of nearness of the pleasure likely to arise from the given act, and also its purity, or likelihood of being accompanied by secondary pains and pleasures. Then we are to strike the balance between the respective sums on the pleasure and pain sides, and, according as this balance is one of pleasure or pain, the act is good or evil.

Bentham, Op. cit., p. 16, was the first to go into detail as to this method. He has also given certain memoriter verses stating "the points on which the whole fabric of morals and legislation may be seen to rest.

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure,

Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure,

Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end.

If it be public, wide let them extend.

Such pains avoid whichever be thy view,

If pains must come, let them extend to few."

This, however, in its reference to others, states the utilitarian as well as the hedonistic view.

Now, it must be remembered that, if pleasure is the end, there is no intrinsic connection between the motive of the act, and its result. It is not claimed that there is anything belonging intrinsically to the motive of the act which makes it result in pleasure or pain. To make such a claim would be to declare the moral quality of the act the criterion of the pleasure, instead of pleasure the criterion of the act. The pleasures are external to the act; they are irrelevant and accidental to its quality. There is no 'universal,' no intrinsic bond of connection between the act and its consequences. The consequence is a mere particular state of feeling, which, in this instance, the act has happened to bring about.

More concretely, this act of truth-telling has in this instance, brought about pleasure. Shall we call it right? Right in this instance, of course; but is it right generally? Is truth-telling, as such, right, or is it merely that this instance of it happens to be right? Evidently, on the hedonistic basis, we cannot get beyond the latter judgment. Prior to any act, there will be plenty of difficulties in telling whether it, as particular, is right or wrong. The consequences depend not merely on the result intended, but upon a multitude of circumstances outside of the foresight and control of the agent. And there can be only a precarious calculation of possibilities and probabilities—a method which would always favor laxity of conduct in all but the most conscientious of men, and which would throw the conscientious into uncertainty and perplexity in the degree of their conscientiousness.

"If once the pleas of instinct are to be abolished and replaced by a hedonistic arithmetic, the whole realm of animated nature has to be reckoned with in weaving the tissue of moral relations, and the problem becomes infinite and insoluble".—Martineau, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 334.

But waive this; let the particular case be settled. There is still no law, no principle, indeed no presumption as to future conduct. The act is not right because it is truth-telling, but because, in this instance, circumstances were such as to throw a balance of pleasure in its favor. This establishes no certainty, no probability as to its next outcome. The result then will depend wholly upon circumstances existing then—circumstances which have no intrinsic relation to the act and which must change from time to time.

The hedonist would escape this abolition of all principle, or even rule, by falling back upon a number of cases—'past experience' it is called. We have found in a number of cases that a certain procedure has resulted in pleasure, and this result is sufficient to guide us in a vast number of cases which come up.

Says Mill (Op. cit., pp. 332-4): "During the whole past duration of the species, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions, on which experience all the prudence as well as all the morality of life are dependent.... Mankind must by this time have acquired positive belief as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher, until he has succeeded in finding better.... Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the 'Nautical Almanac'. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish."

That we do learn from experience the moral nature of actions is undoubted. The only question is: if hedonism were true, could we so learn? Suppose that I were convinced that the results of murder in the past had been generally, or even without exception (though this could not be proved), painful; as long as the act and the result in the way of feeling (pain or pleasure) are conceived as having no intrinsic connection, this would not prove that in the present instance murder will give a surplus of pain. I am not thinking of committing murder in general, but of murder under certain specific present circumstances. These circumstances may, and, to some extent, must vary from all previous instances of murder. How then can I reason from them to it? Or, rather, let me use the previous cases as much as I may, the moral quality of the act I am now to perform must still be judged not from them, but from the circumstances of the present case. To judge otherwise, is, on hedonistic principles, to be careless, perhaps criminally careless as to one's conduct. The more convinced a man is of the truth of hedonism and the more conscientious he is, the more he is bound not to be guided by previous circumstances, but to form his judgment anew concerning the new case. This result flows out of the very nature of the hedonistic ideal. Pleasure is not an activity, but simply a particular feeling, enduring only while it is felt. Moreover, there is in it no principle which connects it intrinsically with any kind of action. To suppose then that, because ninety-nine cases of murder have resulted in pain, the hundredth will, is on a par with reasoning that because ninety-nine days have been frosty, the hundredth will be. Each case, taken as particular, must be decided wholly by itself. There is no continuous moral life, and no system of conduct. There is only a succession of unlike acts.

Mill, in his examination of Whewell, (Diss. and Diss., Vol. III, pp. 158-59), tries to establish a general principle, if not a universal law, by arguing that, even in exceptional cases, the agent is bound to respect the rule, because to act otherwise would weaken the rule, and thus lead to its being disregarded in other cases, in which its observance results in pleasure. There are, he says, persons so wicked that their removal from the earth would undoubtedly increase the sum total of happiness. But if persons were to violate the general rule in these cases, it would tend to destroy the rule. "If it were thought allowable for any one to put to death at pleasure any human being whom he believes that the world would be well rid of,—nobody's life would be safe." That is to say, if every one were really to act upon and carry out the hedonistic principle, no rule of life would exist. This does very well as a reductio ad absurdum of hedonism, or as an argument against adopting hedonism, but it is difficult to see how Mill thought that it established a 'rule' on a hedonistic basis. Mill's argument comes to saying that if hedonism were uniformly acted upon, it would defeat itself—that is, pleasure would not result. Therefore, in order to get pleasure, we must not act upon the principle of hedonism at all, but follow a general rule. Otherwise put: hedonism gives no general rule, but we must have a general rule to make hedonism works and therefore there is a general rule! This begging of the question comes out even more plainly as Mill goes on: "If one person may break through the rule on his own judgment, the same liberty cannot be refused to others; and, since no one could rely on the rule's being observed, the rule would cease to exist." All of this is obviously true, but it amounts to saying: "We must have a rule, and this we would not have if we carried out the hedonistic principle in each case; therefore, we must not carry it out." A principle, that carried out destroys all rules which pretend to rest upon it, lays itself open to suspicion. Mill assumes the entire question in assuming that there is a rule. Grant this, and the necessity of not 'making exceptions,' that is, of not applying the hedonistic standard to each case, on its own merits, follows. But the argument which Mill needs to meet is that hedonism requires us to apply the standard to each case in itself, and that, therefore, there is no rule. Mill simply says—assume the rule, and it follows, etc.

See Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 96-101; Green, Bk. IV, Ch. 3; Martineau, Vol. II, pp. 329-334.

XIX.

The Sum and the Quality of Pleasure as the Standard.

We have been dealing with hedonism in its strict form—that which makes a pleasure, considered as to its intensity, certainty, etc., the end of an act. Hedonism in this form fails to unify life, and fails, therefore, to supply any standard. But the end of conduct is often stated to be the greatest possible sum of pleasures thus introducing a certain element of generality. Mill goes further and brings in the idea of quality of pleasure.

Regarding the sum of pleasures the following from Sidgwick (Op. cit., p. 382; see also p. 114) gives the hedonistic statement. "The assumption is involved that all pleasures are capable of being compared qualitatively with one another and with all pains; that every feeling has a certain intensive quality, positive or negative (or perhaps zero) in respect to its desirableness and that the quantity may be known, so that each may be weighed in ethical scales against any other. This assumption is involved in the very motion of maximum happiness," as the attempt to make "as great as possible a sum of elements not quantitatively commensurable would be a mathematical absurdity."

I. Sum of pleasures as the moral end. This, first, taken as criterion, comes into conflict with the hedonistic psychology of pleasure as the motive of acts; and, secondly, it requires some objective standard by means of which pleasure is to be summed, and is, in so far, a surrender of the whole hedonistic position.

1. If the object of desire is pleasure or a state of feeling which exists only as it is felt, it is impossible that we should desire a greatest sum of pleasures. We can desire a pleasure and that only. It is not even possible that we should ever desire a continuous series of pleasures. We can desire one pleasure and when that is gone, another, but we can not unify our desires enough to aim at even a sum of pleasures.

This is well put by Green (Op. cit, p. 236). "For the feeling of a pleased person, or in relation to his sense of enjoyment, pleasure cannot form a sum. However numerous the sources of a state of pleasant feeling, it is one and is over before another can be enjoyed. It and its successors can be added together in thought, but not in enjoyment or in imagination of an enjoyment. If the desire is only for pleasure, i. e., for an enjoyment or feeling of pleasure, we are simply victims of words when we talk of desire for a sum of pleasures, much more when we take the greatest imaginable sum to be the most desirable." See the whole passage, pp. 235-246.

2. But the phrase "sum of pleasures" undoubtedly has a meaning—though the fact that it has a meaning shows the untruth of the hedonistic psychology. Surrendering this psychology, what shall we say of the maximum possibility of pleasure as the criterion of the morality of acts? It must be conceded that this conception does afford some basis—although a rather slippery one—for the unification of conduct. Each act is considered now not in its isolation merely, but in its connection with other acts, according as its relation to them may increase or decrease the possible sum of future happiness. But this very fact that some universal, or element of relation, albeit a quantitative one, has been introduced, arouses this inquiry: Whence do we derive it? How do we get the thought of a sum of pleasure, and of a maximum sum? Only by taking into account the objective conditions upon which pleasures depend, and by judging the pleasures from the standpoint of these objective conditions. When we imagine we are thinking of a sum of pleasures, we are really thinking of that totality of conditions which will come nearest affording us self-satisfaction—we are thinking of a comprehensive and continuous activity whose various parts are adjusted to one another. Because it is complete activity, it is necessarily conceived as giving the greatest possible pleasure, but apart from reference to complete activity and apart from the objects in which this is realized, the phrase 'greatest sum of happiness' is a mere phrase. Pleasures must be measured by a standard, by a yard stick, before they can be summed in thought, and the yard stick we use is the activity in which the pleasure comes. We do not measure conduct by pleasure, but we compare and sum up pleasures on the basis of the objects which occasion them. To add feelings, mere transitory consequences, without first reducing those feelings to a common denominator by their relation to one objective standard, is an impossibility. Pleasure is a sort of sign or symbol of the object which satisfies, and we may carry on our judgment, if we will, in terms of the sign, without reference to the standard, but to argue as if the sign were the thing, as if the sum of pleasure were the activity, is suicidal.

Thus Green says (Op. cit., p. 244): "In truth a man's reference to his own true happiness is a reference to the objects which chiefly interest him, and has its controlling power on that account. More strictly, it is a reference to an ideal state of well-being, a state in which he shall be satisfied; but the objects of the man's chief interests supply the filling of that ideal state." See the argument as put by Alexander (Moral Order and Progress, pp. 199-200). Alexander has also brought out (Ibid., pp. 207-210) that even if we are going to use a quantitative standard, the idea of a sum is not a very happy one. It is not so much a sum of pleasures we want, as a certain proportionate distribution and combination of pleasures. "To regard the greatest sum of pleasures as the test of conduct, supposing that we could express it in units of pleasure, would be like declaring that when you had an atomic weight of 98 you had sulphuric acid. The numerical test would be useless unless we knew what elements were to be combined, and in what proportion. Similarly till we know what kinds of activities (and therefore what kinds of pleasures) go with one another to form the end, the greatest sum of pleasures will give us only the equivalent of the end, but will not tell us what the composition of the end is, still less how to get at it; or, to put the matter more simply, when we know what the characters of persons are, and how they are combined in morality, we then estimate the corresponding sum of pleasures." (p. 209.)

II. A certain quality of pleasure the end. Some moralists, notably John Stuart Mill, introduce considerations regarding the quality of pleasure into the conception of the end. "It is quite compatible," says Mill, "with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others." (p. 310.) Is it compatible? Is kind of pleasure the same thing as pleasure? does not strict hedonism demand that all kinds of pleasure equally present as to intensity in consciousness shall be of the same value? To say otherwise is to give up pleasure as such as the standard and to hold that we have means for discriminating the respective values of pleasures which simply, as feelings, are the same. It is to hold, that is to say, that there is some standard of value external to the pleasures as such, by means of which their moral quality may be judged. In this case, this independent standard is the real moral criterion which we are employing. Hedonism is surrendered.

Kant's position on this point seems impregnable. "It is surprising," he says, "that men otherwise astute can think it possible to distinguish between higher and lower desires, according as the ideas which are connected with the feeling of pleasure have their origin in the senses or in the understanding; for when we inquire what are the determining grounds of desire, and place them in some expected pleasantness, it is of no consequence whence the idea of this pleasing object is derived, but only how much it pleases.... The only thing that concerns one, in order to decide choice, is how great, how long continued, how easily obtained and how often repeated, this agreeableness is. For as to the man who wants money to spend, it is all the same whether the gold was dug out of the mountain or washed out of the sand, provided it is every-where accepted at the same value; so the man who cares only for the enjoyment of life does not ask whether the ideas are of the understanding or the senses, but only how much and how great pleasure they will give for the longest time."

See also Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 105-110.

When we ask how the differences in quality are established and how we translate this qualitative difference into moral difference, the surrender of pleasure as the standard becomes even more evident. We must know not only the fact of different qualities, but how to decide which is 'higher' than any other. We must bring the qualities before a tribunal of judgment which applies to them some standard of measurement. In themselves qualities may be different, but they are not higher and lower. What is the tribunal and what is the law of judgment? According to Mill the tribunal is the preference of those who are acquainted with both kinds of pleasure.

"Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all, or almost all who have experience of both, give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure." It is an unquestionable fact that such differences exist. "Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures. No intelligent person would consent to be a fool; no instructed person would be an ignoramus; no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.... It is better to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."—Mill, Op. cit., pp. 311-313. And in an omitted portion Mill says the reason that one of the higher faculty would prefer a suffering which goes along with that higher capacity, to more pleasure on a lower plane, is something of which "the most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or another."

A question immediately arises regarding this standard of preferability. Is it the mere historical fact that some man, who has experienced both, prefers A to B that makes A more desirable? Surely I might say that if that person prefers A, A is more desirable to him, but that I for my part prefer B, and that I do not intend to give up my preference. And why should I, even though thousands of other men happened to prefer A? B is the greater pleasure, none the less, to me, and as a hedonist I must cling to the only standard that I have. The hedonists, in a word, have appealed to feeling, and to feeling they must go for judgment. And feeling exists only as it is felt and only to him who feels it.

On the other hand, perhaps it is not the bare act that some men prefer one pleasure to another that makes it more desirable, but something in the character of the men who prefer. And this is what Mill implies. It is a "sense of dignity" belonging to man which makes his judgment of pleasure better than that of animals; it is the human being against the pig, Socrates against the fool, the good man against the rascal. This is the complete surrender of hedonism, and the all but explicit assertion that human character, goodness, wisdom, are the criteria of pleasure, instead of pleasure the criterion of character and goodness. Mill's "sense of dignity," which is to be considered in all estimates of pleasures, is just the sense of a moral (or active) capacity and destiny belonging to man. To refer pleasures to this is to make it the standard, and with this standard the anti-hedonist may well be content, while asking, however, for its further analysis.

To sum up our long discussion of pleasure as a criterion of conduct in respect of its unity, we may say: Pleasure, as it actually exists in man, may be taken as a criterion, although not the really primary one, of action. But this is not hedonism; for pleasure as it exists is something more than pleasurable feeling; it is qualified through and through by the kind of action which it accompanies, by the kind of objects which the activity comprehends. And thus it is always a secondary criterion. The moment we begin to analyze we must ask what kind of activity, what kind of object it is which the pleasure accompanies and of which it is a symbol. We may, if we will, calculate a man's wealth in terms of dollars and cents; but this is only because we can translate the money, the symbol, into goods, the reality. To desire pleasure instead of an activity of self, is to substitute symbol for fact, and a symbol cut off from fact ceases to be a symbol. Pleasure, as the hedonist treats it, mere agreeable feeling without active and thus objective relationships, is wholly an abstraction. Since an abstraction, to make it the end of desire results in self-contradiction; while to make it the standard of conduct is to deprive life of all unity, all system, in a word—of all standard.

XX.

The Failure of Pleasure as a Standard to Unify Conduct Socially.

Thus far our examination of the hedonistic criterion has been devoted to showing that it will not make a system out of individual conduct. We have now to recognize the fact that pleasure is not a common good, and therefore fails to give a social unity to conduct—that is, it does not offer an end for which men may coöperate, or a good which reached by one must be shared by another. No argument is needed to show, theoretically, that any proposed moral criterion must, in order to be valid, harmonize the interests and activities of different men, or to show, practically, that the whole tendency of the modern democratic and philanthropic movement has been to discover and realize a good in which men shall share on the basis of an equal principle. It is contended that hedonism fails to satisfy these needs. According to it, the end for each man is his own pleasure. Pleasure is nothing objective in which men may equally participate. It is purely individual in the most exclusive sense of that term. It is a state of feeling and can be enjoyed only while felt, and only by the one who feels it. To set it up for the ideal of conduct is to turn life into an exclusive and excluding struggle for possession of the means of personal enjoyment; it is to erect into a principle the idea of the war of all against all. No end more thoroughly disintegrating than individual agreeable sensation could well be imagined.

Says Kant, (page 116 of Abbott's Trans., entitled Kant's Theory of Ethics) on the basis of the desire of happiness "there results a harmony like that which a certain satirical poem depicts as existing between a married couple bent on going to ruin: O, marvellous harmony, what he wishes, she wishes also; or like what is said of the pledge of Francis I to the emperor Charles V, what my brother Charles wishes that I wish also (viz., Milan)."

Almost all modern moralists who take pleasure as the end conceive it to be not individual pleasure, but the happiness of all men or even of all sentient creatures. Thus we are brought to the consideration of Utilitarianism.

Says Mill (Op. cit., p. 323), "The happiness which forms the Utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned; as between his own happiness and that of others, Utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator." And (page 315) the Utilitarian standard is "not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether." See also Sidgwick (Op. cit., p. 379), "By Utilitarianism is here meant the ethical theory, first distinctly formulated by Bentham, that the conduct which, under any given circumstances is externally or objectively right is that which will produce the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that is, taking into account all whose happiness is affected by the conduct. It would tend to clearness if we might call this principle, and the method based upon it, by some such name as Universalistic hedonism." As popularly put, the utilitarian standard is the "greatest happiness of the greatest number." While in its calculation "each is to count for one and only one." (Bentham). And finally Bain (Emotions and Mill, p. 303), "Utility is opposed to the selfish theory, for, as propounded, it always implies the good of society generally, and the subordination of individual interests to the general good."

XXI.

Criticism of Utilitarianism.

The utilitarian theory certainly does away entirely with one of the two main objections to hedonism—its failure to provide a general, as distinct from a private end. The question which we have to meet, however, is whether this extension of the end from the individual to society is consistent with the fundamental principles of hedonism. How do we get from individual pleasure to the happiness of all?

An intuitional utilitarian, like Sidgwick, has ready an answer which is not open to the empirical utilitarians, like Bentham, Mill and Bain. Methods of Ethics, Bk. III, ch. 13-14, p. 355. "We may obtain the self-evident principle that the good of any one individual is of no more importance, as a part of universal good, than the good of any other. The abstract principle of the duty of benevolence, so far as it is cognizable by direct intuition" is, "that one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual as much as one's own"—and page 364, "the principles, so far as they are immediately known by abstract intuition, can only be stated as precepts to seek (1) one's own good on the whole, and (2) the good of any other no less than one's own, in so far as it is no less an element of universal good." Sidgwick, that is, differs in two important points from most utilitarians. He holds that pleasure is not the sole, or even the usual object of desire. And he holds that we have an immediate faculty of rational intuition which informs us that the good of others is as desirable an end of our conduct as is our own happiness. Our former arguments against pleasure as the end, bear, of course, equally against this theory, but not the following arguments. Criticisms of this position of Sidgwick's will be found in Green (Op. cit., pp. 406-415); Bradley (Op. cit., pp. 114-117).

The popular answer to the question how we get from individual to general happiness, misses the entire point of the question. This answer simply says that happiness is 'intrinsically desirable'. Let it be so; but 'happiness' in this general way is a mere abstraction. Happiness is always a particular condition of one particular person. Whose happiness is desirable and to whom? Because my happiness is intrinsically desirable to me, does it follow that your happiness is intrinsically desirable to me? Indeed, in the hedonistic psychology, is it not nonsense to say that a state of your feeling is desirable to me? Mill's amplified version of the popular answer brings out the ambiguity all the more plainly. He says (Utilitarianism, p. 349), "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be obtainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good; that each person's happiness is a good to that person; and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons." But does it follow that because the happiness of A is an end to A, the happiness of B an end to B, and the happiness of C an end to C, that, therefore, the happiness of B and C is an end to A? There is obviously no connection between the premises and the supposed conclusion. And there appears to be, as Mill puts it, only an account of the ambiguity of his last clause, "the general happiness a good to the aggregate of all persons." The good of A and B and C may be a good to the aggregate (A + B + C), but what universalistic hedonism requires is that the aggregate good of A + B + C, be a good to A and to B and to C taken separately—a very different proposition. Mill is guilty of the fallacy known logically as the fallacy of division—arguing from a collective whole to the distributed units. Because all men want to be happy, it hardly follows that every man wants all to be happy. There is, accordingly, no direct road from individualistic hedonism—private pleasure—to universalistic—general pleasure. Moreover, if we adopt the usual psychology of hedonism and say that pleasure is the motive of acting, it is absolutely absurd to say that general pleasure can be a motive. How can I be moved by the happiness which exists in some one else? I may feel a pleasure resembling his, and be moved by it, but that is quite a different matter.

XXII.

Indirect Means of Identifying Private and General Pleasure.

Is there any indirect method of going from the pleasure of one to the pleasure of all? Upon the whole, the utilitarians do not claim that there is any natural and immediate connection between the desire for private and for general happiness, but suppose that there are certain means which are instrumental in bringing about an identity. Of these means the sympathetic emotions and the influence of law and of education are the chief. Each of these, moreover, coöperates with the other.

1. Sympathetic and Social Emotions.

We are so constituted by nature that we take pleasure in the happiness of others and feel pain in their misery. A proper regard for our own welfare must lead us, therefore, to take an interest in the pleasure of others. Our own feelings, moreover, are largely influenced by the feelings of others toward us. If we act in a certain way we shall incur the disapprobation of others, and this, independently of any overt punishment it may lead them to inflict upon us, arouses feelings of shame, of inferiority, of being under the displeasure of others, feelings all of which are decidedly painful. The more enlightened our judgment, the more we see how our pleasures are bound up in those of others.

"The Dictates of Utility" (Bentham, Op. cit., p. 56) "are neither more nor less than the dictates of the most extensive and enlightened (that is, well advised) benevolence," and (p. 18), "The pleasures of benevolence are the pleasures resulting from the view of any pleasures supposed to be possessed by the beings who may be the objects of benevolence.... These may also be called the pleasures of good will, the pleasures of sympathy, or the pleasures of the benevolent or social affections"; and (p. 144), "What motives (independent of such as legislation and religion may choose to furnish) can one man have to consult the happiness of another?... In answer to this, it cannot but be admitted that the only interests which a man at all times and upon all occasions is sure to find adequate motives for consulting, are his own. Notwithstanding this, there are no occasions in which a man has not some motives for consulting the happiness of other men. In the first place he has, on all occasions, the purely social motive of sympathy and benevolence; in the next place he has, on most occasions, the semi-social motives of love of amity and love of reputation." And so in the Deontology, which, however, was not published by Bentham himself, page 203, "The more enlightened one is, the more one forms the habit of general benevolence, because it is seen that the interests of men combine with each other in more points than they conflict in."

2. Education and Law.

Education, working directly and internally upon the feelings, and government, appealing to them from without through commands and penalties, are constantly effecting an increasing identity of self-interest and regard for others. These means supplement the action of sympathy and the more instinctive emotions. They stimulate and even induce a proper interest in the pleasures of others. In governmental law, with its punishments, we have an express instrument for making the pleasures of one harmonize with (or at least not conflict with) the pleasures of others.

Thus Bentham, after stating that an enlightened mind perceives the identity of self-interest and that of others (or of egoism and altruism, as these interests are now commonly called), goes on (Deontology, p. 201): "The majority do not have sufficient enlightenment, nor enough moral feeling so that their character goes beyond the aid of laws, and so the legislator should supplement the frailty of this natural interest, in adding to it an artificial interest more appreciable and more continuous. Thus the government augments and extends the connexion which exists between prudence and benevolence." Mill says (Op. cit., p. 323): "To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbor as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness or the interest of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and, secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole."

XXIII.

Private Pleasures and General Welfare.

In criticism of these indirect methods of establishing the identity of 'egoism' and 'altruism,' it may be said:

1. That the supposed relation between the private and the general happiness is extrinsic, and hence always accidental and open to exception.

It is not contended that there is any order which morally demands that there be an identity of interests. It is simply argued that there are certain physical and psychological forces which operate, as matter of fact, to bring about such a result. Now we may admit, if we like, that such forces exist and that they are capable of accomplishing all that Bentham and Mill claim for them. But all that is established is, at most, a certain state of facts which is interesting as a state of facts, but which has no especial moral bearing. It is not pretended that there is in the very order of things any necessary and intrinsic connection between the happiness of one and of another. Such identity as exists, therefore, must be a mere external result of the action of certain forces. It is accidental. This being the case, how can it constitute the universal ideal of action? Why is it not open for an agent, under exceptional circumstances, to act for his own pleasure, to the exclusion of that of others? We may admit that, upon the whole (or that always, though this is wholly impossible to prove) in past experience, personal pleasure has been best attained by a certain regard for the pleasures of others; but the connection being wholly empirical (that is, of past instances and not of an intrinsic law), we may ask how it can be claimed that the same connection is certain to hold in this new case? Nor is it probable that any one would claim that the connection between individual pleasure and general pleasure had been so universal and invariable in past experience.

Intrinsic moral considerations (that is, those based on the very nature of human action) being put aside, a pretty strong case could be made out for the statement that individual happiness is best attained by ignoring the happiness of others. Probably the most that can be established on the other side is that a due prudence dictates that some attention be paid to the pleasures of others, in calculating one's own pleasures.

And this suggests:

2. That the end is still private pleasure, general pleasure being simply a means. Granting all that the hedonists urge, what their arguments prove is not that the general pleasure is the end of action, but that, private pleasure being the end, regard for the pleasures of others is one of the most efficient means of reaching it. If private pleasure is a selfish end, the end is not less selfish because the road to it happens to bring pleasure to others also.

See Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 61-74.

3. The use of education and law to bring about this identity, presupposes that we already have the ideal of the identity as something desirable to realize—it takes for granted the very thing to be proved. Why should it occur to men to use the private influence of opinion and education, and the public influences of law and penalty to identify private welfare with public, unless they were already convinced that general welfare was the end of conduct, the one desirable thing? What the hedonist has to do is to show how, from the end of private happiness, we may get to the end of general happiness. What Bentham and Mill do show is, that if we take general happiness as the end, we may and do use education and law to bring about an identity of personal and general pleasures. This may go undoubted, but the question how we get the general happiness as the end, the good, remains unanswered.

Nor is this all. The conception of general happiness, taken by itself, has all the abstractness, vagueness and uncertainty of that of personal happiness, multiplied indefinitely by the greater number of persons introduced. To calculate the effects of actions upon the general happiness—when happiness is interpreted as a state of feeling—is an impossibility. And thus it is that when one is speaking of pleasures one is really thinking of welfare, or well-being, or satisfied and progressive human lives. Happiness is considered as it would be, if determined by certain active and well defined interests, and thus the hedonistic theory, while contradicting itself, gets apparently all the support of an opposed theory. Universalistic hedonism thus, more or less expressly, takes for granted a social order, or community of persons, of which the agent is simply one member like any other. This is the ideal which it proposes to realize. In this way—although at the cost of logical suicide—the ideal gets a content and a definiteness upon which it is possible to base judgments.

That this social organization of persons is the ideal which Mill is actually thinking of, rather than any succession of states of agreeable sensation, is evident by his treatment of the whole subject. Mill is quite clear that education and opinion may produce any sort of feeling, as well as truly benevolent motives to actions. For example, in his critique of Whewell, he says, (Op. cit., p. 154): "All experience shows that the moral feelings are preëminently artificial, and the products of culture; that even when reasonable, they are no more spontaneous than the growth of corn and wine (which are quite as natural), and that the most senseless and pernicious feeling can as easily be raised to the utmost intensity by inculcation, as hemlock and thistles could be reared to luxuriant growth by sowing them instead of wheat." It is certainly implied here that legislation, education and public opinion must have as a presupposed standard the identity of general and private interests or else they may produce anything whatever. That is to say, Mill instead of arriving at his result of general happiness simply takes it for granted.

This fact and the further fact that he virtually defines happiness through certain objective interests and ends (thus reversing the true hedonistic position) is obvious from the following, (Mill, Op. cit., pp. 343-347): After again stating that the moral feelings are capable of cultivation in almost any direction, and stating that moral associations that are of artificial construction dissolve through the force of intellectual analysis (cf. his Autobiography, p. 136), and that the association of pleasure with the feeling of duty would similarly dissolve unless it had a natural basis of sentiment, he goes on. "But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment. This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures. The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man that except in some unusual circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary abstraction he never conceives of himself otherwise than as a member of a body. Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being." Mill then goes on to describe some of the ways in which the social unity manifests itself and influences the individual's conduct. Then the latter "comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our existence. The deeply-rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures. This conviction is the ultimate sanction of the greatest happiness morality."

It is to be noticed that there is involved in this account three ideas, any one of which involves such a reconstruction of the pleasure theory as to be a surrender of hedonism.

1. There is, in one instance, a natural (or intrinsic) connection between the end of conduct and the feelings, and not simply an external or artificial bond. This is in the case of the social feelings. In other words, in one case the ideal, that is, happiness, is intrinsically, or necessarily connected with a certain kind of conduct, that flowing from the social impulses. This, of course, reverses hedonism for it makes happiness dependent upon a certain kind of conduct, instead of determining the nature of conduct according as it happens to result in pleasure or pain.

2. Man conceives of himself, of his end or of his destiny as a member of a social body, and this conception determines the nature of his wants and aims. That is to say, it is not mere happiness that a man wants, but a certain kind of happiness, that which would satisfy a man who conceived of himself as social, or having ends and interests in common with others.

3. Finally, it is not mere general "happiness" which is the end, at all. It is social unity; "harmony of feelings and aims," a beneficial condition for one's self in which the benefits of all are included. Instead of the essentially vague idea of states of pleasurable sensation we have the conception of a community of interests and ends, in securing which alone is true happiness to be found. This conception of the moral ideal we regard as essentially true, but it is not hedonism. It gives up wholly the notion that pleasure is the desired, and, since it sets up a standard by which it determines pleasure, it gives up equally the notion that pleasure as such is the desirable.

In addition to the works already referred to, the following will give fuller ideas of hedonism and utilitarianism: For historical treatment see Sidgwick, History of Ethics; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, Vol. II., pp. 482-468; Bain, Moral Science, Historical Mention; Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine; Wallace, Epicureanism; Pater, Marius, the Epicurean; Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy; Grote, Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy (especially fair and valuable criticism); Lecky, History of European Morals, Vol. I, ch. I; Birks, Utilitarianism (hostile); Blackie, Four Phases of Morals: Essay on Utilitarianism (hostile); Gizycki, Students' Manual of Ethical Philosophy, (Coit's trans., favorable); Calderwood, Hand-Book of Moral Philosophy (opposed); Laurie, Ethica (e. g., p. 10). "The object of will is not pleasure, not yet happiness, but reason-given law—the law of harmony; but this necessarily ascertained through feeling, and, therefore, through happiness."

Wilson and Fowler, Principles of Morals, Vol. I, pp. 98-112; Vol. II, pp. 262-273. Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 195-210.

XXIV.

The Utilitarian Theory Combined With the Doctrine of Evolution.

There has lately been an attempt to combine utilitarian morality with the theory of evolution. This position, chiefly as occupied by Herbert Spencer and Leslie Stephen, we shall now examine.

Alexander, also, Moral Order and Progress, makes large use of the theory of evolution, but does not attempt to unite it with any form of hedonism.

For the combination, at least three decided advantages are claimed over ordinary utilitarianism.

1. It transforms 'empirical rules' into 'rational laws.' The evolutionary hedonists regard pleasure as the good, but hold that the theory of evolution enables them to judge of the relation of acts to pleasure much better than the ordinary theory. As Mr. Spencer puts it, the ordinary theory is not scientific, because it does not fully recognize the principle of causation as existing between certain acts as causes, and pleasures (or pains) as effects. It undoubtedly recognizes that some acts do result in pain or pleasure, but does not show how or why they so result. By the aid of the theory of evolution we can demonstrate that certain acts must be beneficial because furthering evolution, and others painful because retarding it.

Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 5758. "Morality properly so-called—the science of right conduct—has for its object to determine how and why certain rules of conduct are detrimental, and certain other rules beneficial. Those good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be the business of moral science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.... The objection which I have to the current utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of utility—does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of moral science.... It is supposed that in future, as now, utility is to be determined only by observation of results; and that there is no possibility of knowing by deduction from fundamental principles what conduct must be detrimental and what conduct must be beneficial." Cf. also ch. IX, and Stephen, Science of Ethics, ch. IX.

It is contended, then, that by the use of the evolutionary theory, we may substitute certain conditions, which in the very nature of things tend to produce happiness, for a calculation, based upon observation of more or less varying cases in the past, of the probable results of the specific action. Thus we get a fixed objective standard and do away with all the objections based upon the uncertainty, vagueness and liability to exceptions, of the ordinary utilitarian morality.

Spencer, Op. cit., p. 162: "When alleging that empirical utilitarianism is but introductory to rational utilitarianism I pointed out that the last does not take welfare for its immediate object of pursuit, but takes for its immediate object of pursuit conformity to certain principles which, in the nature of things, causally determine welfare."

2. It reconciles 'intuitionalism' with 'empiricism.' The theory of evolution not only gives us an objective standard on which happiness necessarily depends, and from which we may derive our laws of conduct, instead of deriving them from observation of particular cases, but it enables us to recognize that there are certain moral ideas now innate or intuitive. The whole human race, the whole animal race, has for an indefinite time been undergoing experiences of what leads to pleasure and of what leads to pain, until finally the results of these experiences have become organized into our very physical and mental make-up. The first point was that we could substitute for consideration of results consideration of the causes which determine these results; the present point is that so far as we have to use results, we can use those of the race, instead of the short span of the individual's life.

Spencer, Op. cit., pp. 123-124. "The experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition—certain emotions corresponding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.... The evolution hypothesis thus enables us to reconcile opposed moral theories.... The doctrine of innate powers of moral perception become congruous with the utilitarian doctrine, when it is seen that preferences and aversions are rendered organic by inheritance of the effects of pleasurable and painful experiences in progenitors."

3. It reconciles 'egoism' with 'altruism.' As we have seen, the relation of personal pleasure to general happiness presents very serious difficulties to hedonism. It is claimed, however, that the very process of evolution necessitates a certain identity. The being which survives must be the being which has properly adapted himself to his environment, which is largely social, and there is assurance that the conduct will be adapted to the environment just in the degree in which pleasure is taken in acts which concern the welfare of others. If an agent has no pleasure in such acts he will either not perform them, or perform them only occasionally, and thus will not meet the conditions of surviving. If surrounding conditions demand constantly certain actions, those actions in time must come to be pleasurable. The conditions of survival demand altruistic action, and hence such action must become pleasurable to the agent (and in that sense egotistic).

"From the laws of life (Spencer Op. cit., p. 205) it must be concluded that unceasing social discipline will so mould human action, that eventually sympathetic pleasures will be pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each and all.... Though pleasure may be gained by giving pleasure, yet the thought of the sympathetic pleasure to be gained will not occupy consciousness, but only the thought of the pleasure given."

XXV.

Criticism of Evolutionary Utilitarianism.

Regarding the whole foregoing scheme, it may be said so far as it is true, or suggestive of truth, it is not hedonistic. It does not judge actions from their effects in the way of pleasure or pain, but it judges pleasures from the basis of an independent standard 'in the nature of things.' It is expressly declared that happiness is not to be so much the end, as the test of conduct, and it is not happiness in general, of every sort and kind, but a certain kind of happiness, happiness conditioned by certain modes of activity, that is the test. Spencer's hedonism in its final result hardly comes to more than saying that in the case of a perfect individual in a perfect society, every action whatever would be accompanied by pleasure, and that, therefore, in such a society, pleasure would be an infallible sign and test of the morality of action—a position which is not denied by any ethical writer whatever, unless a few extreme ascetics. Such a position simply determines the value of pleasure by an independent criterion, and then goes on to say of pleasure so determined, that it is the test of the morality of action. This may be true, but, true or not, it is not hedonistic.

Furthermore, this standard by which the nature of pleasure is determined is itself an ethical (that is, active) standard. We have already seen that Spencer conceives that the modes of producing happiness are to be deduced from the "laws of life and the conditions of existence". This might be, of course, a deduction from physical laws and conditions. But when we find that the laws and conditions which Spencer employs are mainly those of social life, it is difficult to see why he is not employing a strictly ethical standard. To deduce not right actions directly from happiness, but the kinds of actions which will produce happiness from a consideration of a certain ideal of social relationships seems like a reversal of hedonism; but this is what Mr. Spencer does.

XXVI.

The Real Criterion of Evolutionary Ethics.

Mr. Spencer expressly recognizes that there exists (1) an ideal code of conduct, formulating the conduct of the completely adapted man in the completely evolved society. Such a code is called absolute ethics as distinguished from relative ethics—a code the injunctions of which are alone to be considered "as absolutely right, in contrast with those that are relatively right or least wrong, and which, as a system of ideal conduct, is to serve as a standard for our guidance in solving, as well as we can, the problems of real conduct" (p. 275 of the Data of Ethics). "The ideal code deals, it will be observed, with the behavior of the completely adapted man in a completely evolved society." This ideal as elsewhere stated, is "an ideal social being so constituted that his spontaneous activities are congruous with the conditions imposed by the social environment formed by other such beings.... The ultimate man is one in whom there is a correspondence between all the promptings of his nature and all the requirements of his life as carried on in society" (p. 275). Furthermore, "to make the ideal man serve as a standard, he has to be defined in terms of the conditions which his nature fulfill—in terms of the objective requisites which must be met before conduct can be right" (p. 179). "Hence it is manifest that we must consider the ideal man as existing in the ideal social state" (p. 280).

Here we have in the most express terms the recognition of a final and permanent standard with reference to which the nature of happiness is determined, and the standard is one of social relationships. To be sure it is claimed that the standard is one which results in greatest happiness, but every ethical theory has always claimed that the ideal moral condition would be accompanied by the maximum possible happiness.

2. The ideal state is defined with reference to the end of evolution. That is, Spencer defines pleasure from an independent standard instead of using pleasure as the standard. This standard is to be got at by considering that idea of "fully evolved conduct" given by the theory of evolution. This fully evolved conduct implies: (i.) Greatest possible quantity of life, both in length and breadth; (ii.) Similar maintenance of life in progeny; and (iii.) Life in which there is no interference of actions by one with those of another, and, indeed, life in which the "members of a society" give material help in the achievement of ends, thus rendering the "lives of all more complete". (See Chap. II of Data of Ethics). Furthermore, the "complete life here identified with the ideally moral life" may be otherwise defined as a life of perfect equilibrium (p. 74), or balance of functions (p. 90), and this considered not simply with reference to the individual, but also with reference to the relation of the individual to society. "Complete life in a complete society is but another name for complete equilibrium between the co-ordinated activities of each social unit and those of the aggregate of units" (p. 74, and the whole of chap. V. See also pp. 169-170 for the position that the end is a society in which each individual has full functions freely exercised in due harmony, and is, p. 100, "the spontaneous exercise of duly proportioned faculties").

3. Not only is pleasure thus determined by an objective standard of "complete living in a complete society" but it is expressly recognized that as things are now, pleasure is not a perfect guide to, or even test of action. And this difficulty is thought to be removed by reference to the ideal state in which right action and happiness will fully coincide.

The failure of pleasure as a perfect test and guide of right conduct, comes out in at least three cases:—

1. There is the conflict of one set of pleasures with another, or of present happiness with future, one lot having to be surrendered for the sake of another. This is wrong, since pleasure as such is good, and, although a fact at present, exists only on account of the incomplete development of society. When there is "complete adjustment of humanity to the social state there will be recognition of the truth that actions are completely right only when, besides being conducive to future happiness, special and general, they are immediately pleasurable, and that painfulness, not only ultimate but proximate, is the concomitant of actions which are wrong" (p. 29. See for various cases in which "pleasures are not connected with actions which must be performed" and for the statement that this difficulty will be removed in an ideal state of society, p. 77; pp. 85-87; pp. 98-99).

2. There is also, at present, a conflict of individual happiness with social welfare. In the first place, as long as there exist antagonistic societies, the individual is called upon to sacrifice his own happiness to that of others, but "such moralities are, by their definition, shown to belong to incomplete conduct; not to conduct that is fully evolved" (See pp. 133-137). Furthermore, there will be conflict of claims, and consequent compromises between one's own pleasure and that of others (p. 148), until there is a society in which there is "complete living through voluntary co-operation", this implying negatively that one shall not interfere with another and shall fulfill contracts, and positively that men shall spontaneously help to aid one another lives beyond any specified agreement (pp. 146-149).

3. There is, at present, a conflict of obligation with pleasure. Needed activities, in other words, have often to be performed under a pressure, which either lessens the pleasure of the action, or brings pain, the act being performed, however, to avoid a greater pain (so that this point really comes under the first head). But "the remoulding of human nature into fitness for the requirements of social life, must eventually make all needful activities pleasurable, while it makes displeasurable all activities at variance with these requirements" (p. 183). "The things now done with dislike, through sense of obligation, will be done then with immediate liking" (p. 84, and p. 186; and pp. 255-256). All the quotations on these various points are simply so many recognitions that pleasure and pain as such are not tests of morality, but that they become so when morality is independently realized. Pleasure is not now a test of conduct, but becomes such a test as fast as activity becomes full and complete! What is this but to admit (what was claimed in Sec. [XIII]) that activity itself is what man wants; not mere activity, but the activity which belongs to man as man, and which therefore has for its realized content all man's practical relationships.

Of Spencer's conception of the ideal as something not now realized, but to be some time or other realized once for all, we have said nothing. But see below, Sec. [64], and also Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 264-277, and also James, Unitarian Review, Vol. XXII., pp. 212-213.

We have attempted, above, to deal with evolutionary ethics only in the one point of its supposed connection with pleasure as a standard. Accounts and criticisms of a broader scope will be found in Darwin, Descent of Man; Martineau, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 335-393; Schurman, Ethical Import of Darwinism; Sorley, Ethics of Naturalism, chapters V, and VI; Stephen, Science of Ethics, particularly pp. 31-34; 78-89; 359-379; Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 74-85; Everett, Poetry, Comedy and Duty, Essay on the New Ethics; Seth in Mind, Jan. 1889, on Evolution of Morality; Dewey, Andover Review, Vol. VII, p. 570; Hyslop, Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 348.

XXVII.

Formal Ethics.

We come now to the ethical theories which attempt to find the good not only in the will itself, but in the will irrespective of any end to be reached by the will. The typical instance of such theories is the Kantian, and we shall, therefore, make that the basis of our examination. Kant's theory, however, is primarily a theory not of the good, but of the nature of duty, and that makes a statement of his doctrine somewhat more difficult.

"The concept of good and evil must not be determined before the moral law (of which it seems as if it must be the foundation), but only after it and by means of it" (Abbott's Trans., p. 154).

Separating, as far as we can, his theory of the good from that of duty, we get the following results:

1. Goodness belongs to the will, and to that alone. "Nothing can possibly be conceived, in the world or out of it, which can be called good without qualification except a good will." The will is not good because of what it brings about, or what it is fitted to bring about; that is, it is not good on account of its adaptation to any end outside of itself. It is good in itself. "It is like a jewel which shines by its own light, having its whole value in itself."

2. The good, then, is not to be found in any object of will or of desire, nor in the will so far as it is directed towards an end outside itself. For the will to be moved by inclination or by desire is for it to be moved for the sake of some external end, which, moreover, is always pleasure (Kant, i. e., agrees with the hedonists regarding the object of desire, but on that very ground denies that pleasure is the good or the desirable). If, then, no object of desire can be the motive of a good will, what is its motive? Evidently only some principle derived from the will itself. The good will is the will which acts from regard to its own law.

3. What is the nature of this law? All objects of desire (i. e., all material) have been excluded from it. It must, therefore, be purely formal. The only content of the law of the good will is the idea of law itself. The good will acts from reverences for law as law. It not only acts in conformity with law, but has the conception of law as its directing spring.

4. There must, however, be some application of this motive of law in general to particular motives or acts. This is secured as follows: The idea of law carries with it the idea of universality or self-identity. To act from the idea of law is then so to act that the motive of action can be generalized—made a motive for all conduct. The good will is the legislative will; the will whose motive can be made a law for conduct universally. The question in a specific case is then: Can your motive here be made universal, i. e., a law? If the action is bad, determined by an object of desire, it will be contingent and variable, since pleasures are different to different persons and to the same person from moment to moment. The will is good, then, when its motive (or maxim) is to be found solely in the legislative form of the action, or in its fitness to be generalized into a universal principle of conduct, and the law of the good will is: "Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation" (Abbott's Trans., p. 119; also p. 55).

5. The application may be illustrated by the following cases:

(a) Some one, wearied by what he conceives to be the entire misery of life proposes to commit suicide, but he asks himself whether this maxim based on the principle of self-love could become a universal law of nature; and "we see at once that a system of nature in which the very feeling, whose office is to compel men to the preservation of life, should lead men by a universal law to death, cannot be conceived without contradiction". That is to say, the principle of the motive which would lead a man to suicide cannot be generalized without becoming contradictory—it cannot be made a law universal.

(b) An individual wishes to borrow money which he knows that he cannot repay. Can the maxim of this act be universalized? Evidently not: "a system of nature in which it should be a universal law to promise without performing, for the sake of private good, would contradict itself, for then no one would believe the promise—the promise itself would become impossible as well as the end it had in view."

(c) A man finds that he has certain powers, but is disinclined to develop them. Can he make the maxim of such conduct a universal law? He cannot will that it should become universal. "As a rational being, he must will that his faculties be developed."

(d) A prosperous individual is disinclined to relieve the misery of others. Can his maxim be generalized? "It is impossible to will that such a principle should have the universal validity of a law of nature. For a will which resolved this would contradict itself, in as much as many cases might occur in which one would have need of the love and sympathy of others, and in which, by such a law of nature, sprung from his own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he desires."

In conclusion, then, the good is the good will itself, and the will is good in virtue of the bare form of its action, independently of all special material willed.

See Abbott's trans., pp. 9-46; 105-120. Caird's Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, pp. 171-181; 209-212.

XXVIII.

Relation of this Theory to Hedonism.

The Kantian theory, as already noticed, agrees in its psychology with hedonism. It holds that pleasures are the objects of desire. But it reverses the conclusion which hedonism draws from this fact as to the desirable. Since pleasures are the object of desire, and pleasures can give no law, no universality to action, the end of action must be found wholly outside the pleasures, and wholly outside the desires. It can be found only in the bare law of the will itself.

1. Hedonism finds the end of conduct, or the desirable, wholly determined by the various particular desires which a man happens to have; Kantianism holds that to discover the end of conduct, we must wholly exclude the desires.

2. Hedonism holds that the rightness of conduct is determined wholly by its consequences; Kantianism holds that the consequences have nothing to do with the rightness of an act, but that it is decided wholly by the motive of the act.

From this contrast, we may anticipate both our criticism of the Kantian theory and our conception of the true end of action. The fundamental error of hedonism and Kantianism is the same—the supposition that desires are for pleasure only. Let it be recognized that desires are for objects conceived as satisfying or developing the self, and that pleasure is incidental to this fulfillment of the capacities of self, and we have the means of escaping the one-sidedness of Kantianism as well as of hedonism. We can see that the end is neither the procuring of particular pleasures through the various desires, nor action from the mere idea of abstract law in general, but that it is the satisfaction of desires according to law. The desire in its particular character does not give the law; this, as we saw in our criticism of hedonism, is to take away all law from conduct and to leave us at the mercy of our chance desires as they come and go. On the other hand the law is not something wholly apart from the desires. This, as we shall see, is equally to deprive us of a law capable of governing conduct. The law is the law of the desires themselves—the harmony and adjustment of desires necessary to make them instruments in fulfilling the special destiny or business of the agent.

From the same point of view we can see that the criterion is found neither in the consequences of our acts as pleasures, nor apart from consequences. It is found indeed in the consequences of acts, but in their complete consequences:—those upon the agent and society, as helping or hindering them in fulfillment of their respective functions.

XXIX.

Criticism of Kantian Criterion of Conduct.

1. With reference to the unification of the conduct of the individual. Of pleasure as the object of desire, we need now say nothing further, but may proceed at once to the criticism of the theory that the will, acting according to the mere idea of law in general, is the end of man and hence that it is the criterion of the rightness or wrongness of his acts. We shall attempt to show that such an end is wholly empty, and that it fails (as much as hedonism) to unify conduct or to place any specific act as to its morality.

The difficulty of the end proposed by Kant is that it is an abstraction; that it is remote. The hedonist leaves out one element from conduct, and takes into account the merely particular or individualistic side; the Kantian abstracts the opposite element—the merely universal. The formal universal, or universal stripped of all particular content, has, considered as an end of action, at least three defects.

I. It is an end which would make impossible that very conduct of which it is taken to be the end—that is, moral conduct. In denying that pleasure is the end of action, we took pains to show that it (or rather the feeling due to the tension between pleasure of a state considered better and the pain of the experienced worse state) is a necessary element in the force impelling to action. The mere conception of an end is purely intellectual; there is nothing in it to move to action. It must be felt as valuable, as worth having, and as more valuable than the present condition before it can induce to action. It must interest, in a word, and thus excite desire. But if feeling is, as Kant declares, to be excluded from the motive to action, because it is pathological or related to pleasure as the object of desire, how can there be any force moving to action? The mind seems to be set over against a purely theoretical idea of an end, with nothing to connect the mind with the end. Unless the end interests, unless it arouses emotion, why should the agent ever aim at it? And if the law does excite feeling or desire, must not this, on Kant's theory, be desire for pleasure and thus vitiate the morality of the act? We seem to be in a dilemma, one side of which makes moral action impossible by taking away all inducing force, while the other makes it impossible by introducing an immoral factor into the motive.

Kant attempts to escape from this difficulty by claiming that there is one feeling which is rational, and not sensuous in quality, being excited not by the conception of pleasure or pain, but by that of the moral law itself. This is the feeling of reverence, and through this feeling we can be moved to moral action. Waiving the question whether the mere idea of law in general would be capable of arousing any moral sentiment—or, putting the matter from the other side, whether Kant gives us a true account of the feeling of reverence—it is clear that this admission is fatal to Kant's theory. If desire or feeling as such is sensuous (or pathological, as Kant terms it), what right have we to make this one exception? And if we can make this one exception, why not others? If it is possible in the case of reverence, why not in the case, say, of patriotism, or of friendship, or of philanthropy, or of love—or even of curiosity, or of indignation, or of desire for approbation? Kant's separation of reverence, as the one moral sentiment from all others as pathological, is wholly arbitrary. The only distinction we can draw is of the feelings as they well up naturally in reaction upon stimuli, sentiments not conceived and thus neither moral nor immoral, and sentiments as transformed by ends of action, in which case all without exception may be moral or immoral, according to the character of the end. The Kantian separation is not only arbitrary psychologically, but is false historically. So far is it from true that the only moral sentiment is reverence for law, that men must have been moved toward action for centuries by motives of love and hate and social regard, before they became capable of such an abstract feeling as reverence. And it may be questioned whether this feeling, as Kant treats it, is even the highest or ultimate form of moral sentiment—whether it is not transitional to love, in which there is complete union of the individual interest on one hand, and the objective end on the other.

For these criticisms at greater length, see Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, Bk. II, ch. IV.

II. The Kantian end would not bring about any system in conduct—on the contrary, it would tend to differences and collisions. What is required to give unity to the sphere of conduct is, as we have seen, a principle which shall comprehend all the motives to action, giving each its due place in contributing to the whole—a universal which shall organize the various particular acts into a harmonious system. Now Kant's conception of the good does not lead to such result. We may even say that it makes it impossible. According to Kant each act must be considered independently of every other, and must be capable of generalization on its own account. Each motive of action must be capable of being itself a universal law of nature. Each particular rule of action is thus made absolute, and we are left not with one universal which comprehends all particulars in their relations to one another, but literally with a lot of universals. These not only fail to have a unity, but each, as absolute, must contradict some other. If the principles always to tell the truth and always to preserve life are universal in themselves, and not universal simply through their relation to some total and controlling principle of life, it must be impossible to reconcile them when they come into conflict.

See Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 187-190, and p. 215. Cf. "Treated as universal and without exception, even two such commands as e. g., 'Thou shalt not steal,' and 'Thou shalt not kill,' must ultimately come into conflict with each other; for, if all other interests are to be postponed to the maintenance of the rights of property, it is impossible that all other interests should also be postponed to the preservation of human life—and to make either property or life an absolute end is to raise a particular into a universal, to treat a part as if it were a whole. But the true moral vindication of each particular interest cannot be found in elevating it into something universal and absolute, but only in determining its place in relation to the others in a complete system of morality."

III. The principle is so empty of all content that it does not enable us to judge of any specific act.

A caution should be noticed here, which is equally applicable to the criticism of hedonism: When it is said that the end does not enable us to judge of specific acts, the objection is not that the theory (Kantianism or hedonism, as the case may be) does not give us rules for moral conduct. It is not the business of any theory, however correct as a theory, to lay down rules for conduct. The theory has simply to discover what the end is, and it is the end in view which determines specific acts. It is no more the business of ethics to tell what in particular a man ought to do, than it is of trigonometry to survey land. But trigonometry must state the principles by which land is surveyed, and so ethics must state the end by which conduct is governed. The objection to hedonism and Kantianism is that the end they give does not itself stand in any practical relation to conduct. We do not object to Kantianism because the theory does not help us as to specific acts, but because the end, formal law, does not help us, while the real moral end must determine the whole of conduct.

Suppose a man thrown into the complex surroundings of life with an intelligence fully developed, but with no previous knowledge of right or wrong, or of the prevailing moral code. He is to know, however, that goodness is to be found in the good will, and that the good will is the will moved by the mere idea of the universality of law. Can we imagine such an one deriving from his knowledge any idea of what concrete ends he ought to pursue and what to avoid? He is surrounded by special circumstances calling for special acts, and all he knows is that whatever he does is to be done from respect for its universal or legislative quality. What community is there between this principle and what he is to do? There is no bridge from the mere thought of universal law to any concrete end coming under the law. There is no common principle out of which grows the conception of law on one hand, and of the various special ends of action, on the other.

Suppose, however, that ends are independently suggested or proposed, will the Kantian conception serve to test their moral fitness? Will the conception that the end must be capable of being generalized tell us whether this or that end is one to be followed? The fact is, that there is no end whatever that in or by itself, cannot be considered as self-identical, or as universal. If we presuppose a certain rule, or if we presuppose a certain moral order, it may be true that a given motive cannot be universalized without coming into conflict with this presupposed rule or order. But aside from some moral system into connection with which a proposed end may be brought, for purposes of comparison, lying is just as capable as truth-telling of generalization. There is no more contradiction in the motive of universal stealing than there is in that of universal honesty—unless there is as standard some order or system of things into which the proposed action is to fit as a member. And this makes not the bare universality of the act, but the system, the real criterion for determining the morality of the act.

Thus Mill remarks, regarding Kant's four illustrations (Ante, [p. 80]), that Kant really has to employ utilitarian considerations to decide whether the act is moral or not.

For the foregoing criticisms, see Bradley, Ethical Studies, Essay IV; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 185-186, and 212-214, and, indeed, the whole of ch. II of Bk. II.

XXX.

Criticism of Kantian Criterion of Conduct.

2. With reference to the furnishing of a common good or end. If the Kantian end is so formal and empty as not to enable us to bring into relation with one another the various acts of one individual, we may agree, without argument, that it does not provide us with an end which shall unify the acts of different men into a connected order of conduct. The moral end, the acting from regard for law as law, is presented to each individual by himself, entirely apart from his relations to others. That he has such relations may, indeed, furnish additional material to which the law must be applied, but is something to which the character of the law is wholly indifferent. The end is not in itself a social end, and it is a mere accident if in any case social considerations have to be taken into account. It is of the very quality of the end that it appeals to the individual as an isolated individual.

It is interesting to note the way in which Kant, without expressly giving up the purely formal character of the moral end, gives it more and more content, and that content social. The moral law is not imposed by any external authority, but by the rational will itself. To be conscious of a universal self-imposed law is to be conscious of one's self as having a universal aspect. The source of the law and its end are both in the will—in the rational self. Thus man is an end to himself, for the rational self is man. Such a being is a person—"Rational beings are persons, because their nature marks them out as ends in themselves, i. e., as beings who should never be used merely as means.... Such beings are not ends simply for us, whose existence as brought about by our action has value, but objective ends, i. e., beings whose existence is an end in itself, an end for which no other end can be substituted so as to reduce it to a mere means." Thus, we get a second formula. "Always treat humanity, both in your own person and in the person of others, as an end and never merely as a means." (Abbott's Trans., pp. 46-47; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, 219). Here the criterion of action is no longer the bare self-consistency of its motive, but its consistency with the rational nature of the agent, that which constitutes him a person. And, too, "the will of every rational being is likewise a universally law-giving will." (Abbott, p. 49). The conception of humanity embodied in others as well as in one's self is introduced, and thus our criterion is socialized. Even now, however, we have a lot of persons, each of whom has to be considered as an end in himself, rather than a social unity as to which every individual has an equal and common reference. Kant advances to this latter idea in his notion of a "Kingdom of ends." "We get the idea of a complete and systematically connected totality of all ends—a whole system of rational beings as ends in themselves as well as of the special ends which each of them may set up for himself—i.e., a kingdom of ends.... Morality is the reference of all deeds to the legislation which alone can make such a kingdom possible." (See Abbott's Trans., pp. 51-52). This transformation of a mere formal universal into a society or kingdom of persons—while not sufficiently analyzed as Kant states it (see Caird, Vol. II, pp. 225-226)—gives us truly a social criterion, and we shall hereafter meet something resembling it as the true ideal. As finally stated, it does not differ in essential content from Mill's individual who "conceives of himself only as a member of a body," or from Spencer's free man in a free society.

XXXI.

Value of Kantian Theory.

We must not leave the Kantian theory with the impression that it is simply the caprice of a philosopher's brain. In two respects, at least, it presents us, as we shall see, with elements that must be adopted; and even where false it is highly instructive.

Kant's fundamental error is in his conception that all desires or inclinations are for private pleasure, and are, therefore, to be excluded from the conception of the moral end. Kant's conclusion, accordingly, that the good will is purely formal follows inevitably if ever it is granted that there is any intrinsic opposition between inclination as such, and reason or moral law as such. If there is such an opposition, all desire must be excluded from relation to the end. We cannot make a compromise by distinguishing between higher and lower desires. On the contrary, if the end is to have content, it must include all desires, leaving out none as in itself base or unworthy. Kant's great negative service was showing that the ascetic principle logically results in pure formalism—meaning by ascetic principle that which disconnects inclinations from moral action.

Kant's positive service was, first, his clear insight into the fact that the good is to be found only in activity; that the will itself, and nothing beyond itself, is the end; and that to adopt any other doctrine, is to adopt an immoral principle, since it is to subordinate the will (character, self and personality), to some outside end. His second great service was in showing the necessity of putting in abeyance the immediate satisfaction of each desire as it happens to arise, and of subordinating it to some law not to be found in the particular desire. He showed that not the particular desire, but only the desire as controlled by the idea of law could be the motive of moral action. And if he fell into the error of holding that this meant that the desire must be excluded from the moral motive, this error does not make it less true that every particular desire must be controlled by a universal law. The truth of asceticism is that the desire must be checked until subordinated to the activity of the whole man. See Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 200; pp. 203-207; 226-227.

XXXII.

The Problem and Its Solution.

If we gather together the results of our observations of hedonism and of Kantianism we get something like the following problem and solution in outline. The end of action, or the good, is the realized will, the developed or satisfied self. This satisfied self is found neither in the getting of a lot of pleasures through the satisfaction of desires just as they happen to arise, nor in obedience to law simply because it is law. It is found in satisfaction of desires according to law. This law, however, is not something external to the desires, but is their own law. Each desire is only one striving of character for larger action, and the only way in which it can really find satisfaction (that is, pass from inward striving into outward action) is as a manifestation of character. A desire, taken as a desire for its own apparent or direct end only, is an abstraction. It is a desire for an entire and continuous activity, and its satisfaction requires that it fitted into this entire and continuous activity; that it be made conformable to the conditions which will bring the whole man into action. It is this fitting-in which is the law of the desire—the 'universal' controlling its particular nature. This 'fitting-in' is no mechanical shearing off, nor stretching out, but a reconstruction of the natural desire till it becomes an expression of the whole man. The problem then is to find that special form of character, of self, which includes and transforms all special desires. This form of character is at once the Good and the Law of man.

We cannot be content with the notion that the end is the satisfaction of the self, a satisfaction at once including and subordinating the ends of the particular desire. This tells us nothing positive—however valuable it may be negatively in warning us against one-sided notions—until we know what that whole self is, and in what concretely its satisfaction consists. As the first step towards such a more concrete formula, we may say:

XXXIII.

The Moral End or the Good is the Realization by a Person and as a Person of Individuality.

In saying that this realization is by a person and as a person we are saying nothing new. We are simply repeating what we have already learned about moral conduct (Sec. [III]). Conduct is not that which simply reaches certain consequences—a bullet shot from a rifle does that; there is conduct only when the consequences are foreseen; made the reason of action. A person is a being capable of conduct—a being capable of proposing to himself ends and of attempting to realize them.

But what is the meaning of the rest of the formula? What do we mean by individuality? We may distinguish two factors—or better two aspects, two sides—in individuality. On one side, it means special disposition, temperament, gifts, bent, or inclination; on the other side, it means special station, situation, limitations, surroundings, opportunities, etc. Or, let us say, it means specific capacity and specific environment. Each of these elements, apart from the other, is a bare abstraction and without reality. Nor is it strictly correct to say that individuality is constituted by these two factors together. It is rather, as intimated above, that each is individuality looked at from a certain point of view, from within or from without.

If we are apt to identify individuality with the inner side alone, with capacity apart from its surroundings, a little reflection will show the error. Even the most devoted adherent of "self-culture" would not hold that a gift could be developed, or a disposition manifested, in isolation from all exterior circumstances. Let the disposition, the gift be what it may (amiable or irascible, a talent for music or for abstract science, or for engineering), its existence, to say nothing of its culture, apart from some surroundings is bare nonsense. If a person shuts himself up in a closet or goes out into the desert the better to cultivate his capacities, there is still the desert or the closet there; and it is as conditioned by them, and with reference to them that he must cultivate himself. For more is true than that, as a matter of fact, no man can wholly withdraw himself from surroundings; the important point is that the manner and the purpose of exercising his capacity is always relative to and dependent upon the surroundings. Apart from the environment the capacity is mere emptiness; the exercise of capacity is always establishing a relation to something exterior to itself. All we can say of capacity apart from environment is that if certain circumstances were supplied, there would be something there. We call a capacity capability, possibility, as if for the very purpose of emphasizing the necessity of external supplementing.

We get the same fact, on the other side, by calling to mind that circumstances, environment are not indifferent or irrelevant to individuality. The difference between one individual and another lies as much in the station in which each is placed as in the capacity of each. That is to say, environment enters into individuality as a constituent factor, helping make it what it is.

On the other hand, it is capacity which makes the environment really an environment to the individual.

The environment is not simply the facts which happen objectively to lie about an agent; it is such part of the facts as may be related to the capacity and the disposition and gifts of the agent. Two members of the same family may have what, to the outward eye, are exactly the same surroundings, and yet each may draw from these surroundings wholly unlike stimulus, material and motives. Each has a different environment, made different by his own mode of selection; by the different way in which his interests and desires play upon the plastic material about him. It is not, then, the environment as physical of which we are speaking, but as it appeals to consciousness, as it is affected by the make-up of the agent. This is the practical or moral environment. The environment is not, then, what is then and there present in space. To the Christian martyr the sufferings of his master, and the rewards of faithfulness to come to himself were more real parts of his environment than the stake and fire. A Darwin or a Wallace may find his environment in South America or the Philippine Islands—or, indeed, in every fact of a certain sort wherever found upon the earth or in whatever geological era. A man of philanthropic instincts may find his environment among Indians or Congo negroes. Whatever, however near or remote in time and space, an individual's capacities and needs relate him to, is his environment. The moment we realize that only what one conceives as proper material for calling out and expressing some internal capacity is a part of his surroundings, we see not only that capacity depends upon environment, but that environment depends upon capacity. In other words, we see that each in itself is an abstraction, and that the real thing is the individual who is constituted by capacity and environment in their relation to one another.

Function is a term which we may use to express union of the two sides of individuality. The idea of function is that of an active relation established between power of doing, on one side, and something to be done on the other. To exercise a function as a student is not to cultivate tastes and possibilities internally; it is also to meet external demands, the demands of fact, of teachers, of others needing knowledge. The citizen exercises his function not simply in cultivating sentiments of patriotism within; one has to meet the needs of the city, the country in which one lives. The realization of an artistic function is not poring over emotions of beauty pumped up within one's self; it is the exercise of some calling. On the other hand, it hardly needs saying that the function of a student, a citizen, an artist, is not exercised in bare conformity to certain external requirements. Without the inner disposition and inclination, we call conduct dead, perfunctory, hypocritical. An activity is not functional, unless it is organic, expressing the life of the agent.

A function thus includes two sides—the external and the internal—and reduces them to elements in one activity. We get an analogy in any animal function. The digestive function includes the material appropriated, just as much as it does the organ appropriating. It is the service, the work which the organ does in appropriating material. So, morally, function is capacity in action; environment transformed into an element in personal service.

Thus we get another formula for the moral end:

The performance by a person of his specific function, this function consisting in an activity which realizes wants and powers with reference to their peculiar surroundings.

XXXIV.

Moral Functions as Interests.

If morality consists in the exercise of one's specific functions, it follows that no detailed account of the content of the moral end can possibly be given. This content is thoroughly individual or infinite. It is concrete to the core, including every detail of conduct, and this not in a rigid formula, but in the movement of life. All we can do is, by abstraction, to select some of the main features of the end, such as the more common and the more permanent. While each individual has his own particular functions, which can no more be exhausted by definition or description than the qualities of any other individual object, it is also true that we can recognize certain typical functions to be found permanently and in all. These make, as it were, the skeleton of the moral end which each clothes with his own flesh and blood.

Functions are interests—objective interests were not the term tautological. Interests have three traits worth special mention.

1. They are active. An interest is not an emotion produced from without. It is the reaction of the emotion to the object. Interest is identified, in ordinary speech, with attention; we take an interest, or, if we say simply 'interested,' that involves some excitation, some action just beginning. We talk of a man's interests, meaning his occupations or range of activities.

2. They are objective. The emotion aroused goes out to some object, and is fixed upon that; we are always interested in something. The active element of interest is precisely that which takes it out of the inner mood itself and gives it a terminus, an end in an object.

3. An interest is satisfaction. It is its own reward. It is not a striving for something unrealized, or a mere condition of tension. It is the satisfaction in some object which the mind already has. This object may be possessed in some greater or less degree, in full realization or in faint grasp, but interest attaches to it as possessed. This differentiates it from desire, even where otherwise the states are the same. Desire refers to the lack, to what is not present to the mind. One state of mind may be called both interest in, and desire for, knowledge, but desire emphasizes the unknown, while interest is on account of the finding of self, of intelligence, in the object. Interest is the union in feeling, through action, of self and an object. An interest in life is had when a man can practically identify himself with some object lying beyond his immediate or already acquired self and thus be led to further expression of himself.

To have an interest, then, is to be alert, to have an object, and to find satisfaction in an activity which brings this object home to self.

Not every interest carries with it complete satisfaction. But no interest can be wholly thwarted. The purer the interest, the more the interest is in the object for its own sake, and not for that of some ulterior consequence, the more the interest fulfills itself. "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all", and love is simply the highest power of interest—interest freed from all extrinsic stuff.

Of the interests, two abstract forms may be recognized, interest in persons and interest in things. And these may be subdivided: Interest in persons: interest in self and others. Interest in things—into their contemplation (knowledge) and into their production (art). And art again may be either productive of things to be contemplated (fine art), or useful—manufactures, industry, etc. The moral end, then, or the Good will consist in the exercise of these interests, varied as they may be in each individual by the special turn which his capacities and opportunities take.

XXXV.

The Exercise of Interests as the Moral End.

Let us now, as a means of rendering our conception of the moral end more concrete, consider briefly each of the forms of interest.

1. Interest in self. We must free ourselves from any notion that an interest in self is non-moral, if not actually immoral. The latter position is seldom consciously assumed, but it is not uncommon to have interest in self, under the name of prudence, marked off from the moral sphere. Interest in self, if the interest is pure, is just as much an interest in the moral end as interest in anything or anybody else. Interest in self may take the form of selfishness, or of sentimentalism; but this is only an impure interest, an interest not in self, but in some consequences to which the self may be directed. Interest in self may take many forms, according to the side of self which is the object of attention, and according to the range of the self taken into account. A rudimentary form is prudence, but even this, instead of being non-moral, is, in proper place and degree, moral, as moral as benevolence; and, if not in its proper place, immoral. From such an interest there are all stages up to the interest in self as it most deeply and broadly is, the sense of honor, moral dignity, self-respect, conscientiousness, that attempt to be and to make the most of one's self, which is at the very root of moral endeavor.

The ground that is usually given for making the distinction between Prudence, Self-Regard, Self-Love as non-moral, and Benevolence, Altruism etc., as moral, is that in the former case a mere regard for one's own advantage dictates proper conduct, while in the latter case there must be a positive virtuous intent. We may, for example, be pointed to some cool calculating man who takes care of his health and his property, who indeed is generally 'prudent', because he sees that it is for his advantage, and be told that while such an end is not immoral it is certainly not moral. But in return it must be asked what is meant here by advantage? If by it is meant private pleasure, or advantage over somebody else, then this conduct does not spring from interest in self at all, but from interest in some exterior consequence, and as springing from such an impure interest is not simply non-moral, but positively immoral. On the other hand, if 'advantage' means regard for one's whole function, one's place in the moral order, then such interest in self is moral. Care for bodily health in the interest of efficiency in conduct is supremely moral beside reckless disregard of it in the interest of some supposed higher or more spiritual function.

If it is meant that conduct is immoral because it springs from some interest on the part of the agent, the reply is that all conduct must so arise, and that any other supposition leads us immediately into asceticism and into formalism.

2. Interest in others. The generic form of interest in others is sympathy, this being specified by the various forms of social organization of which the individual is a member. A person is, we have seen, one who can conceive of ends and can act to realize these ends. Only a person, therefore, can conceive of others as ends, and so have true sympathy.

It is not meant, of course, that animals do not perform acts which, de facto, are altruistic or even self-sacrificing. What is meant is that the animal does not act from the idea of others of his kind as ends in themselves. If the animal does so act, it cannot be denied the name of person.

True interest in others is pure, or disinterested, in the sense of having no reference to some further and external consequence to one's self. Interest in others need not be moral (or pure) any more than interest in self is necessarily immoral (or impure). It is a mistake to distinguish interest in self as egoistic and interest in others as altruistic. Genuine interests, whatever their object, are both egoistic and altruistic. They are egoistic simply because they are interests—imply satisfaction in a realized end. If man is truly a social being, constituted by his relationships to others, then social action must inevitably realize himself, and be, in that sense, egoistic. And on the other hand, if the individual's interest in himself is in himself as a member of society, then such interest is thoroughly altruistic. In fact, the very idea of altruism is likely to carry a false impression when it is so much insisted upon, as it is nowadays in popular literature, as the essence of morality. The term as used seems to imply that the mere giving up of one's self to others, as others, is somehow moral. Just as there may be an immoral interest in self, so there may be an immoral 'altruism.' It is immoral in any case to sacrifice the actual relationships in the case, those which demand action, to some feeling outside themselves—as immoral when the feeling to which the sacrifice is offered up is labelled 'benevolence', as when it is termed 'greediness'. It is no excuse when a man gives unwisely to a beggar that he feels benevolent. Moral benevolence is the feeling directed toward a certain end which is known to be the fit or right end, the end which expresses the situation. The question is as to the aim in giving. Apart from this aim, the act is simply relieving the agent's own feelings and has no moral quality. Rather it is immoral; for feelings do have a moral capacity, that is, a relation to ends of action, and hence to satisfy them on their account, to deprive them of their practical reference, is bad. Aside from what this illustrates, there is a tendency in the present emphasis of altruism to erect the principle of charity, in a sense which implies continued social inequality, and social slavery, or undue dependence of one upon another, into a fundamental moral principle. It is well to "do good" to others, but it is much better to do this by securing for them the freedom which makes it possible for them to get along in the future without such 'altruism' from others. There is what has been well termed an "egotism of renunciation"; a desire to do for others which, at bottom, is simply an attempt to regulate their conduct. Much of altruism is an egoism of a larger radius, and its tendency is to "manufacture a gigantic self", as in the case where a father sacrifices everything for his children or a wife for her husband.

See Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 402. See also Hinton, The Law Breaker, p. 287: "The real meaning of the difficulty about a word for "regard for others" is that we do not want it. It would mislead us if we had it. It is not a regard for others that we need, but simply a true regard, a regard to the facts, to nature; it is only a truth to facts in our regard, and its nature is obscured by a reference to "others", as if that were the essential point.... It is not as being for others, but as being true, that the regard for others is demanded."

Some ethical writers have gone to the other extreme and held that all benevolence is a disguised or an enlightened selfishness, since having a necessary reference to self. The reference to self must be admitted; unless the action springs from an interest of the agent himself the act may be outwardly useful, but cannot be moral. But the argument alluded to inverts the true relation involved. If a man's interests are such that he can find satisfaction only in the satisfaction of others, what an absurdity to say that his acting from these interests is selfish! The very fact of such identity of self with others in his interest is the proof of his unselfishness.

See Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 241, for an admirable discussion of this difficulty. When it is said that your pain is painful to me, he says, the inference is often "insinuated that I dislike your pain because it is painful to me in some special relation. I do not dislike it as your pain, but in virtue of some particular consequence, such, for example, as its making you less able to render me a service. In that case I do not really object to your pain as your pain at all, but only to some removable and accidental consequences." (And see his whole treatment of sympathy, pp. 230-245). The whole question is shown to come to this: Is my interest in, my sympathy with, your joy and sorrow as such, or in your joy and sorrow as contributing to mine? If the latter, of course the interest is selfish, not being an interest in others at all. But if the former, then the fact that such sympathy involves one's own satisfaction is the best proof that man is not selfishly constructed. When Stephen goes on to say that such sympathy does not involve the existence of a real unity larger than the individual, he seems to me to misread his own facts, probably because he conceives of this unity as some abstract or external thing.

Discussion regarding self-love and benevolence, or, in modern phrase, egoism and altruism, has been rife in English ethics since the time of Hobbes, and especially of Shaftesbury and Butler. See, in particular, the Sermons of the latter, which gave the central point of discussion for almost a century. With reference to the special weakness of this point of view, with its co-ordination of two independent principles, see Green, Philosophical Works, Vol. III, pp. 99-104. The essential lack (the lack which we have tried to make good in the definition of individuality as the union of capacity and surroundings in function), was the failure to analyze the idea of the individual. Individuality being defined as an exclusive principle, the inevitable result was either (i.) the "disguised selfishness" theory; or (ii.) the assumption of two fundamentally different principles in man. The ordinary distinction between prudence and virtue is an echo of the latter theory. Then, finally, (iii.) a third principle, generally called conscience by Butler, was brought in as umpire in the conflict of prudence and virtue.

Suggestive modern treatment of the matter, from a variety of points of view, will be found in Spencer, Data of Ethics, chs. XI-XIII; Stephen, Op. cit., ch. VI; Sidgwick, Op. cit., Bk. V, ch. VII; Royce, Op. cit., ch. IV; Sorley, Ethics of Naturalism, pp. 134-150; Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 172-180; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 400-405; Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 295-311.

3. Interest in Science and Art. Man is interested in the world about him; the knowledge of the nature and relations of this world become one of his most absorbing pursuits. Man identifies himself with the meaning of this world to the point that he can be satisfied only as he spells out and reads its meaning. (See, for example, Browning's "Grammarian's Funeral".) The scientific interest is no less a controlling motive of man than the personal interest. This knowledge is not a means for having agreeable sensations; it is not dilettanteism or "love of culture"; it is interest in the large and goodly frame of things. And so it is with art; man has interests which can be satisfied only in the reconstruction of nature in the way of the useful and the beautiful.

I have made no distinction between 'fine' and 'useful' art. The discussion of this question does not belong here, but the rigid separation of them in æsthetic theory seems to me to have no justification. Both are products of intelligence in the service of interests, and the only difference is in the range of intelligence and interests concerned. 'Use' is a limited service and hence implies an external end; beauty is complete use or service, and hence not mere use at all, but self-expression. Historically, all art which has not been merely sentimental and 'literary' has sprung from interest in good workmanship in the realizing of an idea.

It seems as if here interests violated their general law, and, in the case of use at least, were an interest in some ulterior end. But it may be questioned whether a carpenter whose aim was consciously beyond the work he was doing, would be a good workman—and this whether the further end is his own private advantage, or social benefit at large. The thought of the further benefit to self and of the utility to accrue to some one else, will, if it becomes a part of what he is doing, undoubtedly intensify his interest—it must do so, for it enlarges its content. But to identify one's own or another's well-being with work, and to make the work a mere means to this welfare, are two quite different things. The good artisan "has his heart in his work". His self-respect makes it necessary for him to respect this technical or artistic capacity, and to do the best by it that he can without scrimping or lowering. To a good business man business is not the mere means to money-making; and it is sentimentalism (and hence immoral) to demand that it be a mere means to the good of society. The business, if it is a moral one (and any business, so far as it is thus carried on, is moral), is carried on for the sake of the activity itself, as a realizing of capacity in a specific situation.

XXXVI.

The Moral Quality of Science.

We seem, however, to meet here, in relation to science and art, a difficulty which threatens our whole theory. Can it be claimed, it may be asked, that devotion to science or art constitutes goodness in the same sense that devotion to the interests of one's family or state constitutes it? No one doubts that a good father or a good citizen is a good man, in so far forth. Are we ready to say that a good chemist or good carpenter, or good musician is, in so far, a good man? In a word, is there not a reference to the good of persons present in one case and absent in another, and does not its absence preclude the scientific and artistic activities from any share, as such, in the moral end?

It must be remembered that the moral end does not refer to some consequence which happens, de facto, to be reached. It refers to an end willed; i.e., to an idea held to and realized as an idea. And this fact shows us the way to meet the query, in part at least. If, when we say good carpenter, or good merchant, we are speaking from the standpoint of results, independently of the idea conceived as end in the mind of the agent; if we mean simply, 'we like what that man does', then the term good has no moral value. A man may paint 'good' pictures and not be, in so far, a good man, but in this sense a man may do a great deal of 'good', and yet not be a good man. It was agreed at the outset that moral goodness pertains to the kind of idea or end which a man clings to, and not to what he happens to effect visibly to others.

If a scientific man pursues truth as a mere means to reputation, to wealth, etc., we do not (or should not) hesitate to call him immoral.

This does not mean that if he thinks of the reputation, or of wealth, he is immoral, for he may foresee wealth and the reputation as necessarily bound up in what he is doing; it may become a part of the end. It means that if knowledge of truth is a mere means to an end beyond it, the man is immoral.

What reason is there why we should not call him moral if he does his work for its own sake, from interest in this cause which takes him outside his "own miserable individuality", in Mill's phrase? After all, the phrase a 'good father' means but a character manifesting itself in certain relations, as is right according to these relations; the phrase has moral significance not in itself, but with reference to the end aimed at by character. And so it is with the phrase 'a good carpenter.' That also means devotion of character to certain outer relations for their own sake. These relations may not be so important, but that is not lack of moral meaning.

XXXVII.

Adjustment to Environment.

So far we have been discussing the moral ideal in terms of its inner side—capacity, interest. We shall now discuss it on its outer or objective side—as 'adjustment to environment' in the phrase made familiar by the evolutionists. Certain cautions, however, must be noted in the use of the phrase. We must keep clearly in mind the relativity of environment to inner capacity; that it exists only as one element of function. Even a plant must do something more than adjust itself to a fixed environment; it must assert itself against its surroundings, subordinating them and transforming them into material and nutriment; and, on the surface of things, it is evident that transformation of existing circumstances is moral duty rather than mere reproduction of them. The environment must be plastic to the ends of the agent.

But admitting that environment is made what it is by the powers and aims of the agent, what sense shall we attribute to the term adjustment? Not bare conformity to circumstances, nor bare external reproduction of them, even when circumstances are taken in their proper moral meaning. The child in the family who simply adjusts himself to his relationships in the family, may be living a moral life only in outward seeming. The citizen of the state may transgress no laws of the state, he may punctiliously fulfill every contract, and yet be a selfish man. True adjustment must consist in willing the maintenance and development of moral surroundings as one's own end. The child must take the spirit of the family into himself and live out this spirit according to his special membership in the family. So a soldier in the army, a friend in a mutual association, etc. Adjustment to intellectual environment is not mere conformity of ideas to facts. It is the living assimilation of these facts into one's own intellectual life, and maintaining and asserting them as truth.

There are environments existing prior to the activities of any individual agent; the family, for example, is prior to the moral activity of a child born into it, but the point is to see that 'adjustment', to have a moral sense, means making the environment a reality for one's self. A true description of the case would say that the child takes for his own end, ends already existing for the wills of others. And, in making them his own, he creates and supports for himself an environment that already exists for others. In such cases there is no special transformation of the existing environment; there is simply the process of making it the environment for one's self. So in learning, the child simply appropriates to himself the intellectual environment already in existence for others. But in the activity of the man of science there is more than such personal reproduction and creation; there is increase, or even reconstruction of the prior environment. While the ordinary citizen hardly does more than make his own the environment of ends and interests already sustained in the wills of others, the moral reformer may remake the whole. But whether one case or the other, adjustment is not outer conformity; it is living realization of certain relations in and through the will of the agent.

XXXVIII.

The Moral End is the Realization of a Community of Wills.

Since the performance of function is, on the other side, the creation, perpetuation, and further development of an environment, of relations to the wills of others, its performance is a common good. It satisfies others who participate in the environment. The member of the family, of the state, etc., in exercising his function, contributes to the whole of which he is a member by realizing its spirit in himself. But the question discussed in section [XXXVI] recurs under another aspect. Granting that the satisfying of personal interests realizes a common good, what shall we say of the impersonal interests—interests in science and art. Is the good carpenter or chemist not only in so far a good man, but also a good social member? In other words, does every form of moral activity realize a common good, or is the moral end partly social, partly non-social?

One objection sometimes brought to the doctrine that the moral end is entirely social, may be now briefly dismissed. This is the objection that a man has moral duties toward himself. Certainly, but what of himself? If he is essentially a social member, his duties toward himself have a social basis and bearing. The only relevant question is whether one is wholly a social member—whether scientific and artistic activities may not be non-social.

The ground here taken is that the moral end is wholly social. This does not mean that science and art are means to some social welfare beyond themselves. We have already stated that even the production of utilities must, as moral, be its own end. The position then is that intellectual and artistic interests are themselves social, when considered in the completeness of their relations—that interest in the development of intelligence is, in and of itself, interest in the well-being of society.

Unless this be true there is no moral end at all, but only moral ends. There is no comprehensive unity in life, but a number of ends which, being irreducible to a common principle, must be combined on the best principle of compromise available. We have no 'The Good', but an aggregate of fragmentary ends.

It helps nothing to say that this necessary unity is found in the self to be realized, unless we are pointed to something in the self that unites the social and non-social functions. Our objection is that the separation of intellectual interests from social makes a chasm in the self.

For the same reason it follows that in the case of a collision of social with intellectual ends—say the conflict of a man's interests as a member of a family with his interests in new scientific discovery—no reconciliation is possible. If the interests are forms of social interest, there is a common end in both, on the basis of which the conflict can be resolved. While such considerations do not prove that there is but one end, and that social, they may well make us hesitate about carelessly taking a position of which they are the logical consequence.

Of course, every one recognizes that a certain amount of scientific and artistic interest is social in character. A certain amount of interest in truth, or in intelligence, a certain amount of susceptibility to beauty, a certain amount of devotion to utility, are universally recognized to be necessary to make judicious, agreeable and efficient social members. The whole system of modern education has meaning only on this supposition.

More than this: A certain amount of intelligence, and a certain amount of susceptibility to embodied ideals, must exist to give moral conduct. A moral end is, as we have seen, always a conception, an idea. The very act of bringing conduct out of the impulsive into the moral sphere, depends upon the development of intelligence so as to transform a feeling into the perception of a situation. And, as we watch moral development from childhood to maturity, is it not evident that progress consists in power to conceive of larger and better defined ends? to analyze the situation which demands active response, the function which needs exercise, into specific relations, instead of taking it partially or even upon some one else's say so? Conduct, so far as not based upon an intelligent recognition and realization of the relationships involved, is either sentimental, or merely habitual—in the former case immoral, and in the latter failing of the complete morality possible.

If the necessary part played in conduct by artistic cultivation is not so plain, it is largely because 'Art' has been made such an unreal Fetich—a sort of superfine and extraneous polish to be acquired only by specially cultivated people. In reality, living is itself the supreme art; it requires fineness of touch; skill and thoroughness of workmanship; susceptible response and delicate adjustment to a situation apart from reflective analysis; instinctive perception of the proper harmonies of act and act, of man and man. Active art is the embodiment of ideals; the clothing of ideas otherwise abstract in their peculiar and fit garb of concrete outward detail; passive art is the quick and accurate response to such embodiments as are already made. What were human conduct without the one and the other?

Granting the necessity of knowledge and of its artistic application in conduct, the question arises as to where the line is to be drawn. Evidently, if anywhere, at specialisms, remote philosophic or mathematical endeavors; life-times spent in inventive attempts without appreciable outcome. But to draw the line is not easy. The remote of one generation is the social tool of the next; the abstract mathematics and physics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the great social forces of the nineteenth—the locomotive, the telegraph, the telephone, etc. And how, in any case, can we tell a scientific investigator that up to a certain experiment or calculation his work may be social, beyond that, not? All that we can say is that beyond a certain point its social character is not obvious to sense and that the work must be carried on by faith.

Thus it is that we dispose of objections like Bradley's (Ethical Studies, p. 202): "Nothing is easier than to suppose a life of art or speculation which, as far as we can see, though true to itself, has, so far as others are concerned, been sheer waste or even loss, and which knew that it was so." That we can not see any social result in such cases has nothing to do with the question whether or not the interests themselves are social. We may imagine a life of philanthropic activity, say of devotion to emancipation of slaves in a country wholly given over to slavery, or of a teacher in an unenlightened country, which, as far as we can see, (though, in this case, as in the one referred to by Mr. Bradley, everything depends upon how far we can see) has been sheer waste, so far as influence on others is concerned. The point is whether in such cases the life lived is not one of devotion to the interests of humanity as such.

We have been trying to show that everyone admits that science and art, up to a certain point, are social, and that to draw a line where they cease to be so, is in reality to draw a line where we cease to see their social character. That we should cease to see it, is necessary in the case of almost every advance. Just because the new scientific movement is new, we can realize its social effects only afterwards. But it may be questioned whether the motive which actuates the man of science is not, when fully realized, a faith in the social bearing of what he is doing. If we were to go into a metaphysical analysis, the question would have to be raised whether a barely intellectual fact or theory be not a pure abstraction—an unreality if kept apart entirely from the activities of men in relation to one another.

XXXIX.

Science and Art as Necessary Factors of Social Welfare.

Let us consider the problem on its other side. What kind of an interest is our interest in persons, our distinctively social interest? Suppose we attempt to separate our interests in truth, beauty, and use from our interest in persons: What remains in the persons to be interested in? Is not a necessary part of out interest in persons, an interest in them as beings fulfilling their respective intellectual and artistic capacities; and if we cut this out of our social interest, have we not maimed and stunted our interest in persons? We wish the fullest life possible to ourselves and to others. And the fullest life means largely a complete and free development of capacities in knowledge and production—production of beauty and use. Our interest in others is not satisfied as long as their intelligence is cramped, their appreciation of truth feeble, their emotions hard and uncomprehensive, their powers of production compressed. To will their true good is to will the freeing of all such gifts to the highest degree. Shall we say that their true good requires that they shall go to the point of understanding algebra, but not quaternions, of understanding ordinary mechanics, but not to working out an electro-magnetic theory of light? to ability to appreciate ordinary chords and tunes, but not to the attempt to make further developments in music?

And this throws light upon the case referred to by Mr. Bradley. Social welfare demands that the individual be permitted to devote himself to the fulfilling of any scientific or artistic capacity that he finds within himself—provided, of course, it does not conflict with some more important capacity—irrespective of results. To say to a man: You may devote yourself to this gift, provided you demonstrate beforehand its social bearing, would be to talk nonsense. The new discovery is not yet made. It is absolutely required by the interests of a progressive society that it allow freedom to the individual to develop such functions as he finds in himself, irrespective of any proved social effect. Here, as elsewhere, morality works by faith, not by sight.

Indeed the ordinary conception of social interests, of benevolence, needs a large over-hauling. It is practically equivalent to doing something directly for others—to one form or another of charity. But this is only negative morality. A true social interest is that which wills for others freedom from dependence on our direct help, which wills to them the self-directed power of exercising, in and by themselves, their own functions. Any will short of this is not social but selfish, willing the dependence of others that we may continue benignly altruistic. The idea of "giving pleasure" to others, "making others happy", if it means anything else than securing conditions so that they may act freely in their own satisfaction, means slavery.

As society advances, social interest must consist more and more in free devotion to intelligence for its own sake, to science, art and industry, and in rejoicing in the exercise of such freedom by others. Meantime, it is truth which makes free.

See Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 249-257, where this doctrine is stated with great force.

Where, finally, does the social character of science and art come in? Just here: they are elements in the perfection of individuality, and they are elements whose very nature is to be moving, not rigid; distributed from one to another and not monopolistic possessions. If there are forms of science and art which, at present, are static, being merely owned collections of facts, as one may have a collection of butterflies in a frame, or of etchings in a closed portfolio, this is not because they are science and art, but imperfect science and art. To complete their scientific and artistic character is to set these facts in motion; to hurl them against the world of physical forces till new instruments of man's activity are formed, and to set them in circulation so that others may also participate in their truth and rejoice in their beauty. So far as scientific or artistic attainments are treasured as individual possessions, so far it is true that they are not social—but so far it is also true that they are immoral: indeed that they are not fully scientific or artistic, being subordinated to having certain sensations.

The intellectual movement of the last four or five centuries has resulted in an infinite specialization in methods, and in an immense accumulation of fact. It is quite true, since the diversity of fact and of method has not yet been brought to an organic unity, that their social bearing is not yet realized. But when the unity is attained (as attained it must be if there is unity in the object of knowledge), it will pass into a corresponding unity of practice. And then the question as to the social character of even the most specialized knowledge will seem absurd. It will be to ask whether men can coöperate better when they do not know than when they do know what they want. Meantime the intellectual confusion, and the resulting divorce of knowledge from practice, exists. But this constitutes a part of the environment of which action must take heed. It makes it one of the pressing duties that every man of intelligence should do his part in bringing out the public and common aspects of knowledge. The duty of the present is the socializing of intelligence—the realizing of its bearing upon social practice.

XL.

The Ethical Postulate.

We have attempted to show that the various interests are social in their very nature. We have not attempted to show that this can be seen or proved in any given case. On the contrary, in most, if not all cases, the agent acts from a faith that, in realizing his own capacity, he will satisfy the needs of society. If he were asked to prove that his devotion to his function were right because certain to promote social good, he might well reply: "That is none of my affair. I have only to work myself out as strength and opportunity are given me, and let the results take care of themselves. I did not make the world, and if it turns out that devotion to the capacity which was given me, and loyalty to the surroundings in which I find myself do not result in good, I do not hold myself responsible. But, after all, I cannot believe that it will so turn out. What is really good for me must turn out good for all, or else there is no good in the world at all." The basis, in a word, of moral conduct, with respect to the exercise of function, is a faith that moral self-satisfaction (that is, satisfaction in accordance with the performance of function as already defined) means social satisfaction—or the faith that self and others make a true community. Now such faith or conviction is at the basis of all moral conduct—not simply of the scientific or artistic. Interest in self must mean belief in one's business, conviction of its legitimacy and worth, even prior to any sensible demonstration. Under any circumstances, such demonstration can extend only to past action; the social efficiency of any new end must be a matter of faith. Where such faith is wanting, action becomes halting and character weak. Forcible action fails, and its place is taken by a feeble idealism, of vague longing for that which is not, or by a pessimistic and fruitless discontent with things as they are—leading, in either case, to neglect of actual and pressing duty. The basis of moral strength is limitation, the resolve to be one's self only, and to be loyal to the actual powers and surroundings of that self. The saying of Carlyle's about doing the "duty that lies nearest", and of Goethe's that "America is here or nowhere", both imply that faith in the existing moral capacity and environment is the basis of conduct. All fruitful and sound human endeavor roots in the conviction that there is something absolutely worth while, something 'divine' in the demands imposed by one's actual situation and powers. In the great moral heroes of the world the conviction of the worth of their destiny, and of what they were meant to do, has amounted to a kind of fatalism. They have done not simply what they could do, but what they must do.

On the other hand, effective social interest is based upon what is vaguely called 'faith in humanity', or, more specifically, belief in the value of each man's individuality, belief in some particular function which he might exercise, given appropriate conditions and stimuli. Moral interest in others must be an interest in their possibilities, rather than in their accomplishments; or, better, in their accomplishments so far as these testify to a fulfilling of function—to a working out of capacity. Sympathy and work for men which do not grow out of faith in them are a perfunctory and unfertile sort of thing.

This faith is generally analyzed no further; it is left as faith in one's 'calling' or in 'humanity'. But what is meant is just this: in the performing of such special service as each is capable of, there is to be found not only the satisfaction of self, but also the satisfaction of the entire moral order, the furthering of the community in which one lives. All moral conduct is based upon such a faith; and moral theory must recognize this as the postulate upon which it rests. In calling it a postulate, we do not mean that it is a postulate which our theory makes or must make in order to be a theory; but that, through analysis, theory finds that moral practice makes this postulate, and that with its reality the reality end value of conduct are bound up.

In calling it a postulate we do not mean to call it unprovable, much less unverifiable, for moral experience is itself, so far as it goes, its verification. But we mean that the further consideration of this postulate, its demonstration or (if the case so be) its refutation, do not belong to the realm of ethics as such. Each branch of human experience rests upon some presupposition which, for that branch, is ultimate. The further inquiry into such presuppositions belong not to mathematics, or physics, or ethics, but to metaphysics.

Unless, then, we are to extend our ethical theory to inquire into the possibility and value of moral experience, unless, that is, we are to make an excursion into the metaphysics of ethics, we have here reached our foundation. The ethical postulate, the presupposition involved in conduct, is this:

In the realization of individuality there is found also the needed realization of some community of persons of which the individual is a member; and, conversely, the agent who duly satisfies the community in which he shares, by that same conduct satisfies himself.

Otherwise put, the postulate is that there is a community of persons; a good which realized by the will of one is made not private but public. It is this unity of individuals as respects the end of action, this existence of a practical common good, that makes what we call the moral order of the world.

Shakespeare has stated the postulate—

To thine ownself be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou can'st not then be false to any man.

Its significance may be further developed by comparing it with the scientific postulate.

All science rests upon the conviction of the thorough-going and permanent unity of the world of objects known—a unity which is sometimes termed the 'uniformity of nature' or the 'reign of law'; without this conviction that objects are not mere isolated and transitory appearances, but are connected together in a system by laws or relations, science would be an impossibility. Moral experience makes for the world of practice an assumption analogous in kind to that which intellectual experience makes for the world of knowledge. And just as it is not the affair of science, as such, or even of logic (the theory of science) to justify this presupposition of science, or to do more than show its presence in intellectual experience, so it is not the business of conduct, or even of ethics (the theory of conduct) to justify what we have termed the 'ethical postulate'. In each case the further inquiry belongs to metaphysics.

XLI.

Does the End Proposed Serve as a Criterion of Conduct?

We have now concluded that an end which may be termed indifferently 'The Realization of Individuality', 'The Performance of Specific Functions', 'The Satisfaction of Interests', 'The Realization of a Community of Individuals' is the moral end. Will this end serve the two aims (see Sec. [XVI]) required of a criterion, or standard: (1) Will it unify individual conduct? (2) Will it afford a common good? We have just been endeavoring to show that it does both of these things; that as the realization of one's specific capacity, it unifies individual conduct, and that, as the performance of function, it serves to satisfy the entire community. To take up just these points, accordingly, would involve a repetition of what has been said, and we shall therefore take up instead some aspects of the individual and social unity of conduct, not already considered.

1. The System of Individual Conduct. We must be careful not to interpret the idea of specific function too rigidly or abstractly. It does not mean that each one has some supreme mission in life to which everything else must be sacrificed—that a man is to be an artist, or a soldier, or a student, or a day-laborer and nothing else. On the contrary, the idea of function is that which comprehends all the various sides of life, and it cannot be narrowed below the meaning we have already given: the due adjustment of capacity and surroundings. Wherever there is any capacity or any circumstance, no matter how trivial, there is something included in the exercise of function, and, therefore to be satisfied—according to its place, of course, in the whole of life. Amusements and all the minor details of life are included within the scope of morality. They are elements in the exercise of function, and their insignificance and triviality does not exclude them from the grasp of duty and of the good. It is a mistake to suppose that because it is optional or indifferent—as it constantly is—what acts among the minor details of life are to be done or left undone, or unimportant whether they are done or left undone at all, therefore such acts have no moral value. Morality consists in treating them just as they are—if they are slight or trivial they are to be performed as slight and trivial. Morality does not simply permit the performance of such acts, but demands it. To try to make, in the interests of duty, a serious matter out of every detail of life would be immoral—as much so, in kind, as to make light of momentous matters.

See Alexander, Op. cit. pp. 53-54.

Bradley, Op. cit., pp, 194-197.

Consider, also, how this conception of the end stands in definite relation to concrete acts; how it explains the possibility of decision as to whether this or that proposed act is right. We do not have to trace the connection of the act with some end beyond, as pleasure, or abstract law. We have only to analyze the act itself. We have certain definite and wholly concrete facts; the given capacity of the person at the given moment, and his given surroundings. The judgment as to the nature of these facts is, in and of itself, a judgment as to the act to be done. The question is not: What is the probability that this act will result in the balance of maximum pleasure; it is not what general rule can we hunt up under which to bring this case. It is simply: What is this case? The moral act is not that which satisfies some far-away principle, hedonistic or transcendental. It is that which meets the present, actual situation. Difficulties indeed, arise, but they are simply the difficulty of resolving a complex case; they are intellectual, not moral. The case made out, the moral end stands forth. No extraneous manipulation, to bring the case under some foreign end, is required.

And this suggests the elasticity of the criterion. In fact moral conduct is entirely individualized. It is where, when, how and of whom. There has been much useless discussion as to the absolute or relative character of morals—useless because the terms absolute and relative are not defined. If absolute is taken to mean immobile and rigid, it is anything but desirable that morals should be absolute. If the physical world is a scene of movement, in which there is no rest, it is a poor compliment to pay the moral world to conceive of it as static and lifeless. A rigid criterion in a world of developing social relations would speedily prove no criterion at all. It would be an abstract rule, taking no account of the individualized character of each act; its individuality of capacity and of surroundings, of time, place and relationships involved. A truly absolute criterion is one which adjusts itself to each case according to the specific nature of the case; one which moves with the moving world. On the other hand, if relative means uncertain in application, changing in time and place without reason for change in the facts themselves, then certainly the criterion is not relative. If it means taking note of all concrete relations involved, it is relative. The absoluteness, in fine, of the standard of action consists not in some rigid statement, but in never-failing application. Universality here, as elsewhere, resides not in a thing, but in a way, a method of action. The absolute standard is the one applicable to all deeds, and the conception of the exercise of function is thus absolute, covering all conduct from the mainly impulsive action of the savage to the most complex reaches of modern life.

Aristotle's well known theory of the 'mean' seems to have its bearing here. "It is possible," he says (Peters' trans. of Ethics, p. 46), "to feel fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity, and generally to be affected pleasantly and painfully, either too much or too little—in either case wrongfully; but to be affected thus at the right times, and on the right occasions, and toward the right persons, and with the right object and in the right fashions, is the mean course and the best course, and these are characteristics of virtue." The right time, occasion, person, purpose and fashion—what is it but the complete individualization of conduct in order to meet the whole demands of the whole situation, instead of some abstraction? And what else do we mean by fit, due, proper, right action, but that which just hits the mark, without falling short or deflecting, and, to mix the metaphor, without slopping over?

2. The system of social conduct, or common good. Moral conduct springs from the faith that all right action is social and its purpose is to justify this faith by working out the social values involved. The term 'moral community' can mean only a unity of action, made what it is by the co-operating activities of diverse individuals. There is unity in the work of a factory, not in spite of, but because of the division of labor. Each workman forms the unity not by doing the same that everybody else does, or by trying to do the whole, but by doing his specific part. The unity is the one activity which their varied activities make. And so it is with the moral activity of society and the activities of individuals. The more individualized the functions, the more perfect the unity. (See section [LII].)

The exercise of function by an agent serves, then, both to define and to unite him. It makes him a distinct social member at the same time that it makes him a member. Possession of peculiar capacities, and special surroundings mark one person off from another and make him an individual; and the due adjustment of capacities to surroundings (in the exercise of function) effects, therefore, the realization of individuality—the realization of what we specifically are as distinct from others. At the same time, this distinction is not isolation; the exercise of function is the performing of a special service without which the social whole is defective. Individuality means not separation, but defined position in a whole; special aptitude in constituting the whole.

We are now in a position to take up the consideration of the two other fundamental ethical conceptions—obligation and freedom. These ideas answer respectively to the two sides of the exercise of function. On the one hand, the performing of a function realizes the social whole. Man is thus 'bound' by the relations necessary to constitute this whole. He is subject to the conditions which the existence and growth of the social unity impose. He is, in a word, under obligation; the performance of his function is duty owed to the community of which he is a member.

But on the other hand, activity in the way of function realizes the individual; it is what makes him an individual, or distinct person. In the performance of his own function the agent satisfies his own interests and gains power. In it is found his freedom.

Obligation thus corresponds to the social satisfaction, freedom to the self-satisfaction, involved in the exercise of function; and they can no more be separated from each other than the correlative satisfaction can be. One has to realize himself as a member of a community. In this fact are found both freedom and duty.

---