VI. PLEASURABLE FEELINGS AS AN ETHICAL CRITERION.
I know of a French teacher who has an excellent French pronunciation and speaks with perfect accuracy, but whenever he is asked to give a rule which may serve as a guide and a help to correct grammer and elocution, he says: "The chief rule in French is euphony."—"Exactly! But the same rule holds good in a certain sense for all languages."—"O no," he says, "the German is harsh and the English is tongue-breaking; only in French is the supreme law euphony."—"Now for instance," we venture to object, "you say la harpe and not l'arpe; you pronounce the ai different in different words you say j'ai, but you say il fait and you have again a different pronunciation of the ai in nous faisons." He replies, "To pronounce j'aî, or as the Germans say chaî would be barbarous. To say l'arpe, instead of la harpe is simply ridiculous."—"The question is," we continued in our attempts to understand him, "what is euphonious to the ear of an educated Frenchman?"—"Well," he says, "the ear will tell you. That which jars on the ear is wrong. To say quat' instead of quatre, or vot' instead of votre, is wrong, it is vulgar. Why? it jars on the ear."
This method of teaching French appears to me a good illustration of our objection to the happiness principle of ethics. It is perfectly true that instances of immorality jar on the feelings of ethically trained minds. Why? They have become accustomed to them and look upon them as barbarous. Ungrammatical expressions and such pronunciations as do not agree with the spirit of a language are suppressed by those who recognise them as incongruous elements. Mistakes jar on their ears because they are incorrect, but they are not incorrect because they jar.
Oatmeal is a favorite dish among the Scotch. If you ask them why they eat it, they will most likely tell you, because it has an agreeable taste. But why do they like it? Because they have through generations grown accustomed to a dish which is conducive to health. Most of the dishes that are wholesome have an agreeable taste to a non-corrupted tongue. But agreeable taste for that reason cannot be considered as the supreme rule in selecting our menu. Agreeable taste is in cases of sickness a very unreliable guide and it is no criterion for a wholesome dinner. Surely the ethics of eating could not be based on agreeable taste.
The pleasurable feeling that is perceived in the satisfaction of hunger through appropriate food or in the satisfaction of any want, is not the bedrock of fact to which we can dig down; it is in itself a product of custom, of inherited habits, and other circumstances; and it can the less be used as a criterion because it varies greatly with the slightest change of its conditions.
Liberty is generally and rightly considered as a good, even though the slave may have and very often actually has enjoyed more happiness than the freed man. Stupidity is considered as an evil, although it inflicts no direct pains and may be the source of innumerable pleasures insipid in the view of others, but delightful to the jolly fool. Professor Höffding quotes from Waitz that the Indian does not progress because he "lives a happy life." Unhappiness is the cause of progress. We look down upon the Fuegians and upon the indolent South American tribe described by Humboldt. But have they not reached the aim of ethics, if happiness be that aim? Professor Höffding says in explanation of their condition:
"That which would make such a life unendurable for us, the strong desire for activity, development, and progress, this desire does not exist at such stages."
If that is so, our strong desire for activity should be denounced as the source of evil. It would be ethical in that case, as some labor unions and trusts actually propose, to stop, or at least, to impede further progress. The attempt of the Jesuits in Paraguay, which to some extent was an unequivocal success, to rule the people through a spiritual dependence satisfying all their wants and keeping them in perfect contentment, cannot be condemned from that principle of welfare which defines welfare as a continuous state of pleasurable feelings.
I can see how a man can be induced to submit to a moment of pain in order to escape more pain in the future, but I cannot see on what ground one man can be requested to sacrifice himself to suffer pain or to forego his pleasures in order that a dozen or a hundred men may have a jolly time. It appears to me that a greater error has never been pronounced than that of making "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" the maxim of ethics.
For the same reason that prevents us from regarding the principle of happiness as the aim of ethics or as its test and criterion, we cannot consider self-humiliation, contrition, misery, and the abandonment of gayety and merriness as moral or meritorious. Joy and grief are in themselves as little wrong as they are virtuous. Any ethics the end of which is a morose austerity, simply because it makes life dreary, is at least as much mistaken as a philosophy which finds the purpose of life in mere pleasure, be it ever so vain, simply because it is pleasure. To pursue happiness or renounce it, either may sometimes be moral and sometimes immoral. Again, to undergo pain and to inflict pain on others, or to avoid pain, either may also be moral or immoral. The criterion of ethics will not be found in the sphere of feelings. Morality cannot be measured by and it cannot be expressed in pleasures and pains.