I. TWO DEFINITIONS OF GOOD.
While Mr. Herbert Spencer in his "Data of Ethics" may be considered as the most persuasive and popular, Prof. Harald Höffding, it appears to me, is the most scholarly and learned expounder of that ethical theory which bases morality upon the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The Monist No. 1 contained (pp. 139-141) a criticism of Professor Höffding's work on Ethics, and Professor Höffding's article in this number is in part a further exposition of his views, and in part an answer to the criticism of The Monist.
Professor Höffding proposes, as pointed out in the criticism of The Monist, two criteria of ethics, (1) that which promotes the life-totality, and (2) that which produces a continuous and permanent state of pleasurable feelings. These two criteria happen to come in conflict. John Stuart Mill calls attention to the fact that a well fed pig is more satisfied than man and a jolly fool is happier than Socrates. When Professor Höffding considers the state of man preferable to that of a pig, while granting that the latter, and not the former, enjoys a continuous state of pleasurable feelings, when he similarly prefers the doleful disposition of a sombre philosopher to the empty merriness of a happy fool, he does in my opinion unquestionably surrender the second criterion in favor of the first.
Professor Höffding's present explanation of the subject does not satisfy me. The main point of my criticism, it seems to me, has not been answered, and the difficulty is not overcome. Professor Höffding declares that the strong desire for activity, development, and progress does not exist at all stages. It is itself a consequence of development and progress (p. 537). This, it may be granted, explains why a civilised society cannot help developing workers that plod and toil, finding no satisfaction unless they plod and toil; but it does not explain why (if after all the criterion of our ethical judgment remains happiness or the continuous state of pleasurable feelings) their state is preferable to that of indolent and happy savages.
Professor Höffding says:
"If it could be proved that increasing pain followed necessarily on all advancement of civilisation … in that case it would be impossible to combine civilisation and welfare" (i. e. a continuous state of pleasurable feelings).
Well, if that be so,—as Professor Höffding himself in the comparison of man to a pig and of Socrates to a fool has actually conceded to be true,—if we stand between the dilemma of civilisation and welfare, or in other words if we have the choice only between a higher stage of life and a happier state of existence, which is preferable? That which Professor Höffding considers as preferable is his true criterion of what he calls good. The other one holds only so long as it agrees with his true and final criterion, so long as it does not come in conflict with it.
Suppose we select as the final criterion of ethics not the growth and development of the life-totality, but that of procuring to the greatest number of men, as much as possible, a continuous state of pleasurable feelings,—what will be the outcome of it? Can we suppose that, if these two principles collide, we shall be able to stop growth? Can we expect to overcome nature and to curtail natural evolution so as to bring about a more favorable balance between our pleasures and pains? If we do, we shall soon find out that we have reckoned without our host.
A conflict between civilisation and welfare, (i. e. between natural evolution and our pleasurable feelings,) would not discontinue civilisation as Professor Höffding supposes, it would rather produce a change in what we have to consider as welfare. We have to be pleased with the development of our race according to the laws of nature, and those who are displeased might just as well commit suicide at once, for they will go to the wall, they will disappear from the stage of life. Those alone will survive who are pleased with that which the laws of nature demand.
Our pleasurable feelings are subjective, nature and the laws of evolution are objective. The criterion of ethics is not subjective but objective. The question is not what produces pleasurable feelings, but what is the unalterable order of the world with which we have to be pleased.
The question of ethics, in my mind, is not what we wish to do or what we think we ought to do, but what we must do. Nature prescribes a definite course. If we choose another one, we shall not reach our aim, and if we reach it, it will be for a short time only.
The aim of nature is not the happiness of living beings, the aim of nature, in the realm of organised life, is growth, development, evolution. Pleasures and pains are phases in the household of life, they are not life's aim. Experience shows that in reaching a higher stage we acquire an additional sensibility for both, for new pleasures and new pains. The pleasures of human existence in comparison with those of animals have been as much intensified and increased as the pains. The ratio has on the average remained about the same and it has rarely risen in favor of pleasures. Rather the reverse takes place: the higher man loses the taste of enjoying himself without losing the sensitiveness of pain.
Ethics, as a science and from the standpoint of positivism, has to inquire what according to the nature of things we must do. It has to study facts and from facts it has to derive rules (the moral prescripts) which will assist us in doing at once what we shall after all have to do. The criterion of ethics is not some standard which we put up ourselves, the criterion of ethics is agreement with facts.