Principles of literary criticism

by I. A. Richards

To extend this individual morality to communal affairs is not difficult. Probably the best brief statement upon the point is the following note by Bentham, if we interpret ‘happiness’ in his formula not as pleasure but as the satisfaction of impulses.

June 29, 1827.

1. Constantly actual end of action on the part of every individual at the moment of action, his greatest happiness, according to his view of it at that moment.

2. Constantly proper end of action on the part of every individual at the moment of action, his real greatest happiness from that moment to the end of life.

3. Constantly proper end of action on the part of every individual considered as trustee for the community, of which he is considered as a member, the greatest happiness of that same community, in so far as it depends upon the interest which forms the bond of union between its members.[†]

But communities, as is well known, tend to behave in the same way to people who are better organised as well as to people who are worse organised than the standard of the group. They deal with Socrates or Bruno as severely as with Turpin or Bottomley. Thus mere interference with ordinary activities is not by itself a sufficient justification for excluding from the group people who are different and therefore nuisances. The precise nature of the difference must be considered, and whether and to what degree it is the group, not the exceptional member, which ought to be condemned. The extent to which alteration is practicable is also relevant, and the problem in particular cases becomes very intricate.

But the final court of appeal concerns itself in such cases with questions, not of the wishes of majorities, but of the actual range and degree of satisfaction which different possible systematisations of impulse yield. Resentment at interference and gratitude for support and assistance are to be distinguished from disapproval and approval. The esteem and respect accorded to persons with the social[*] virtues well developed is only in a small degree due to the use which we find we can make of them. It is much more a sense that their lives are rich and full.

When any desire is denied for the sake of another, the approved and accepted activity takes on additional value; it is coveted and pursued all the more for what it has cost. Thus the spectacle of other people enjoying both activities without difficulty, thanks to some not very obvious adjustment, is peculiarly distressing, and such people are usually regarded as especially depraved. In different circumstances this view may or may not be justified. The element of sacrifice exacted by any stable system explains to a large extent the tenacity with which custom is clung to, the intolerance directed sea innovations, the fanaticism of converts, the hypocrisy of teachers, and many other lamentable phenomena of the moral attitudes. However much an individual may privately find his personality varying from hour to hour, he is compelled to join in maintaining a public facade of some rigidity and buttressed with every contrivance which can be invented. The Wills of Gods, the Conscience, the Catechism, Taboos, Immediate Intuitions, Penal Laws, Public Opinion, Good Form, are all more or less ingenious and efficient devices with the same aim—to secure the uniformity which social life requires. By their means and by Custom, Convention, and Superstition, the underlying basis of morality, the effort to attain maximum satisfaction through coherent systematisation, is a veiled and disguised to an extraordinary degree. Whence arise great difficulties and many disasters. It is so necessary and so difficult to secure a stable and general system of public behaviour that any means whatever are justifiable, failing the discovery of better. All societies hitherto achieved, however, involve waste and misery of appalling extent.

Any public code of behaviour must, it is generally agreed, represent a cruder and more costly systematisation than those attained to by many of the individuals who live under the code, a point obviously to be remembered in connection with censorship problems. Customs change more slowly than conditions, and every change in conditions brings with it new possibilities of systematisation. None of the afflictions of humanity are worse than its obsolete moral principles. Consider the effects of the obsolete virtues of nationalism under modern conditions, or the absurdity of the religious attitude to birth control. The present lack of plasticity in such things involves a growing danger. Human conditions and possibilities have altered more in a hundred years than they had in the previous ten thousand, and the next fifty may overwhelm us, unless we can devise a more adaptable morality. The view that what we need in this tempestuous turmoil of change is a Rock to shelter under or to cling to, pane than an efficient aeroplane in which to ride it, is comprehensible but mistaken.

To guard against a possible misunderstanding it may be added that the organisation and systematisation of which I have been speaking in this chapter are not primarily an affair of conscious planning or arrangement, as this is understood, for example, by a great business house or by a railway. (Cf. p. 202.) We pass as a rule from a chaotic to a better organised state by ways which we know nothing about. Typically through the influence of other minds. Literature and the arts are the chief means by which these influences are diffused. It should be unnecessary to insist upon the degree to which high civilisation, in other words, free, varied and unwasteful life, depends upon them in a numerous society.