(It should be observed, however, that the proposition that Universal Benevolence is the right means to the attainment of universal good, is not quite self-evident; since the end may not always be best attained by directly aiming at it. Thus Rational Benevolence, like Rational Self-Love, may be self-limiting; may direct its own partial suppression in favour of other impulses.)
Among later moralists, Kant is especially noted for his rigour in separating the purely rational element of the moral code: and his ethical view also appears to me to coincide to a considerable extent, if not completely, with that set forth in the preceding section. I have already noticed that his fundamental principle of duty is the ‘formal’ rule of “acting on a maxim that one can will to be law universal”; which, duly restricted,[293] is an immediate practical corollary from the principle that I first noticed in the preceding section. And we find that when he comes to consider the ends at which virtuous action is aimed, the only really ultimate end which he lays down is the object of Rational Benevolence as commonly conceived—the happiness of other men.[294] He regards it as evident a priori that each man as a rational agent is bound to aim at the happiness of other men: indeed, in his view, it can only be stated as a duty for me to seek my own happiness so far as I consider it as a part of the happiness of mankind in general. I disagree with the negative side of this statement, as I hold with Butler that “one’s own happiness is a manifest obligation” independently of one’s relation to other men; but, regarded on its positive side, Kant’s conclusion appears to agree to a great extent with the view of the duty of Rational Benevolence that I have given:—though I am not altogether able to assent to the arguments by which Kant arrives at his conclusion.[295]
§ 5. I must now point out—if it has not long been apparent to the reader—that the self-evident principles laid down in § [3] do not specially belong to Intuitionism in the restricted sense which, for clear distinction of methods, I gave to this term at the outset of our investigation. The axiom of Prudence, as I have given it, is a self-evident principle, implied in Rational Egoism as commonly accepted.[296] Again, the axiom of Justice or Equity as above stated—‘that similar cases ought to be treated similarly’—belongs in all its applications to Utilitarianism as much as to any system commonly called Intuitional: while the axiom of Rational Benevolence is, in my view, required as a rational basis for the Utilitarian system.
Accordingly, I find that I arrive, in my search for really clear and certain ethical intuitions, at the fundamental principle of Utilitarianism. I must, however, admit that the thinkers who in recent times have taught this latter system, have not, for the most part, expressly tried to exhibit the truth of their first principle by means of any such procedure as that above given. Still, when I examine the “proof” of the “principle of Utility” presented by the most persuasive and probably the most influential among English expositors of Utilitarianism,—J. S. Mill,—I find the need of some such procedure to complete the argument very plain and palpable.
Mill begins by explaining[297] that though “questions of ultimate ends are not amenable” to “proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term,” there is a “larger meaning of the word proof” in which they are amenable to it. “The subject,” he says, is “within the cognisance of the rational faculty.... Considerations may be presented capable of determining the intellect to” accept “the Utilitarian formula.” He subsequently makes clear that by “acceptance of the Utilitarian formula” he means the acceptance, not of the agent’s own greatest happiness, but of “the greatest amount of happiness altogether” as the ultimate “end of human action” and “standard of morality”: to promote which is, in the Utilitarian view, the supreme “directive rule of human conduct.” Then when he comes to give the “proof”—in the larger sense before explained—of this rule or formula, he offers the following argument. “The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.... No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, 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 persons.”[298] He then goes on to argue that pleasure, and pleasure alone, is what all men actually do desire.
Now, as we have seen, it is as a “standard of right and wrong,” or “directive rule of conduct,” that the utilitarian principle is put forward by Mill: hence, in giving as a statement of this principle that “the general happiness is desirable,” he must be understood to mean (and his whole treatise shows that he does mean) that it is what each individual ought to desire, or at least—in the stricter sense of ‘ought’—to aim at realising in action.[299] But this proposition is not established by Mill’s reasoning, even if we grant that what is actually desired may be legitimately inferred to be in this sense desirable. For an aggregate of actual desires, each directed towards a different part of the general happiness, does not constitute an actual desire for the general happiness, existing in any individual; and Mill would certainly not contend that a desire which does not exist in any individual can possibly exist in an aggregate of individuals. There being therefore no actual desire—so far as this reasoning goes—for the general happiness, the proposition that the general happiness is desirable cannot be in this way established: so that there is a gap in the expressed argument, which can, I think, only be filled by some such proposition as that which I have above tried to exhibit as the intuition of Rational Benevolence.
Utilitarianism is thus presented as the final form into which Intuitionism tends to pass, when the demand for really self-evident first principles is rigorously pressed. In order, however, to make this transition logically complete, we require to interpret ‘Universal Good’ as ‘Universal Happiness.’ And this interpretation cannot, in my view, be justified by arguing, as Mill does, from the psychological fact that Happiness is the sole object of men’s actual desires, to the ethical conclusion that it alone is desirable or good; because in Book i. chap. [iv.] of this treatise I have attempted to show that Happiness or Pleasure is not the only object that each for himself actually desires. The identification of Ultimate Good with Happiness is properly to be reached, I think, by a more indirect mode of reasoning; which I will endeavour to explain in the next Chapter.
Note.—The great influence at present exercised by Kant’s teaching makes it worth while to state briefly the arguments by which he attempts to establish the duty of promoting the happiness of others, and the reasons why I am unable to regard these arguments as cogent. In some passages he attempts to exhibit this duty as an immediate deduction from his fundamental formula—“act from a maxim that thou canst will to be universal law”—when considered in combination with the desire for the kind services of others which (as he assumes) the exigencies of life must arouse in every man. The maxim, he says, “that each should be left to take care of himself without either aid or interference,” is one that we might indeed conceive existing as a universal law: but it would be impossible for us to will it to be such. “A will that resolved this would be inconsistent with itself, for many cases may arise in which the individual thus willing needs the benevolence and sympathy of others” (Grundlegung, p. 50 [Rosenkrantz]). Similarly elsewhere (Metaph. Anfangsgr. d. Tugendlehre, Einleit. § 8 and § 30) he explains at more length that the Self-love which necessarily exists in every one involves the desire of being loved by others and receiving aid from them in case of need. We thus necessarily constitute ourselves an end for others, and claim that they shall contribute to our happiness: and so, according to Kant’s fundamental principle, we must recognise the duty of making their happiness our end.
Now I cannot regard this reasoning as strictly cogent. In the first place, that every man in need wishes for the aid of others is an empirical proposition which Kant cannot know a priori. We can certainly conceive a man in whom the spirit of independence and the distaste for incurring obligations would be so strong that he would choose to endure any privations rather than receive aid from others. But even granting that every one, in the actual moment of distress, must necessarily wish for the assistance of others; still a strong man, after balancing the chances of life, may easily think that he and such as he have more to gain, on the whole, by the general adoption of the egoistic maxim; benevolence being likely to bring them more trouble than profit.
In other passages, however, Kant reaches the same conclusion by an apparently different line of argument. He lays down that, as all action of rational beings is done for some end, there must be some absolute end, corresponding to the absolute rule before given, that imposes on our maxims the form of universal law. This absolute end, prescribed by Reason necessarily and a priori for all rational beings as such, can be nothing but Reason itself, or the Universe of Rationals; for what the rule inculcates is, in fact, that we should act as rational units in a universe of rational beings (and therefore on principles conceived and embraced as universally applicable). Or again, we may reach the same result negatively. For all particular ends at which men aim are constituted such by the existence of impulses directed towards some particular objects. Now we cannot tell a priori that any one of these special impulses forms part of the constitution of all men: and therefore we cannot state it as an absolute dictate of Reason that we should aim at any such special object. If, then, we thus exclude all particular empirical ends, there remains only the principle that “all Rational beings as such are ends to each”: or, as Kant sometimes puts it, that “humanity exists as an end in itself.”