Here, then, we have a clear statement of that which constitutes the character of a good will; which good will, as we have already seen, is said to exist independently of any contemplated end. Let us now observe how this theory is reduced to practice. Speaking of a man who is absolutely selfish and yet absolutely just, he represents him as saying:—
“Let everyone be as happy as heaven pleases or as he can make himself; I will take nothing from him nor even envy him, only I do not wish to contribute anything either to his welfare or to his assistance in distress! Now no doubt if such a mode of thinking were a universal law, the human race might very well subsist, and doubtless even better than in a state in which every one talks of sympathy and good will, or even takes care occasionally to put it into practice, but on the other side, also cheats when he can, betrays the rights of men or otherwise violates them. But although it is possible that a universal law of nature might exist in accordance with that maxim, 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, inasmuch 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.” (pp. 58–9.)
Thus we see illustrated the guidance of conduct in conformity with the Kantian maxim; and what is the process of guidance? It is that of considering what, in the particular case, would be the result if the suggested course of conduct were made universal; and then being deterred from willing such conduct by the badness of the conceived result. Now, in the first place, what here becomes of the doctrine of a good will, which we are told exists “without paying {215} any regard to the effect expected from it”? (p. 24). The good will, characterized by readiness to see the act it prompts made universal, has, in this particular case, as in every other case, to be decided by contemplation of an end—if not a special and immediate end then a general and remote end. And what, in this case, is to be the deterrent from a suggested course of conduct? Consciousness that the result, if such conduct were universal, might be suffering to self: there might be no aid when it was wanted. So that, in the first place, the question is to be decided by the contemplation of happiness or misery as likely to be caused by the one or the other course; and, in the second place, this happiness or misery is that of the individual himself. Strangely enough, this principle which is lauded because of its apparently implied altruism, turns out, in the last resort, to have its justification in egoism!
The essential truth here to be noted, however, is that the Kantian principle, so much vaunted as higher than that of expediency or utilitarianism, is compelled to take expediency or utilitarianism as its basis. Do what it will, it cannot escape the need for conceiving happiness or misery, to self or others or both, as respectively to be achieved or avoided; for in any case what, except the conceived happiness or misery which would follow if a given mode of action were made universal, can determine the will for or against such mode of action? If, in one who has been injured, there arises a temptation to murder the injurer; and if, following out the Kantian injunction, the tempted man thinks of himself as willing that all men who have been injured should murder those who have injured them; and if, imagining the consequences experienced by mankind at large, and possibly on some occasion by himself in particular, he is deterred from yielding to the temptation; what is it which deters him? Obviously the representation of the many evils, pains, deprivations of happiness, which would be caused. If, on imagining his act to be {216} universalized, he saw that it would increase human happiness, the alleged deterrent would not act. Hence the conduct to be insured by adoption of the Kantian maxim is simply the conduct to be insured by making the happiness of self or others or both the end to be achieved. By implication, if not avowedly, the Kantian principle is as distinctly utilitarian as the principle of Bentham. And it falls short of a scientific ethics in just the same way; since it fails to furnish any method by which to determine whether such and such acts would or would not be conducive to happiness—leaves all such questions to be decided empirically.
{217}
ABSOLUTE POLITICAL ETHICS.
[Originally published in The Nineteenth Century for January 1890. The writing of this essay was consequent on a controversy carried on in The Times between Nov. 7 and Nov. 27, 1889, and was made needful by the misapprehensions and misrepresentations embodied in that controversy. Hence the allusions which the essay contains. The last few paragraphs of it in its original form were mainly personal in their character; and, not wishing to perpetuate personalities, I have omitted them.]
Life in Fiji, at the time when Thomas Williams settled there, must have been something worse than uncomfortable. One of the people who passed near the string of nine hundred stones with which Ra Undreundre recorded the number of human victims he had devoured, must have had unpleasant waking thoughts and occasionally horrible dreams. A man who had lost some fingers for breaches of ceremony, or had seen his neighbour killed by a chief for behaviour not sufficiently respectful, and who remembered how King Tanoa cut off his cousin’s arm, cooked it and ate it in his presence, and then had him hacked to pieces, must not unfrequently have had “a bad quarter of an hour.” Nor could creeping sensations have failed to run through women who heard Tui Thakau eulogizing his dead son for cruelty, and saying that “he could kill his own wives if they offended him, and eat them afterwards.” Happiness {218} could not have been general in a society where there was a liability to be one among the ten whose life-blood baptized the decks of a new canoe—a society in which the killing even of unoffending persons was no crime but a glory; and in which everyone knew that his neighbour’s restless ambition was to be an acknowledged murderer. Still, there must have been some moderation in murdering even in Fiji. Or must we hesitate to conclude that unlimited murder would have caused extinction of the society?
The extent to which each man’s possessions among the Biluchis are endangered by the predatory instincts of his neighbours, may be judged from the fact that “a small mud tower is erected in each field, where the possessor and his retainers guard his produce.” If turbulent states of society such as early histories tell of, do not show us so vividly how the habit of appropriating one another’s goods interferes with social prosperity and individual comfort, yet they do not leave us in doubt respecting these results. It is an inference which few will be hardy enough to dispute, that in proportion as the time of each man, instead of being occupied in further production, is occupied in guarding that which he has produced against marauders, the total production must be diminished and the sustentation of each and all less satisfactorily achieved. And it is a manifest corollary that if each pushes beyond a certain limit the practice of trying to satisfy his needs by robbing his neighbour, the society must dissolve: solitary life will prove preferable.
A deceased friend of mine, narrating incidents in his life, told me that as a young man he sought to establish himself in Spain as a commission agent; and that, failing by expostulation or other means to obtain payment from one who had ordered goods through him, he, as a last resource, went to the man’s house and presented himself before him pistol in hand—a proceeding which had the desired effect: the account was settled. Suppose now that everywhere {219} contracts had thus to be enforced by more or less strenuous measures. Suppose that a coal-mine proprietor in Derbyshire, having sent a train-load to a London coal-merchant, had commonly to send a posse of colliers up to town, to stop the man’s wagons and take out the horses until payment had been made. Suppose the farm-labourer or the artisan was constantly in doubt whether, at the end of the week, the wages agreed upon would be forthcoming; or whether he would get only half, or whether he would have to wait six months. Suppose that daily in every shop there occurred scuffles between shopman and customer, the one to get the money without giving the goods, and the other to get the goods without paying the money. What in such case would happen to the society? What would become of its producing and distributing businesses? Is it a rash inference that industrial co-operation (of the voluntary kind at least) would cease?