All Fixed Rules Have Same Tendencies.—Many who strenuously object to all of these schemes of conduct, to everything which hardens it into forms by emphasizing external commands, authority and punishments and rewards, fail to see that such evils are logically connected with any acceptance of the finality of fixed rules. They hold certain bodies of people, religious officers, political or legal authorities, responsible for what they object to in the scheme; while they still cling to the idea that morality is an effort to apply to particular deeds and projects a certain number of absolute unchanging moral rules. They fail to see that, if this were its nature, those who attempt to provide the machinery which would render it practically workable deserve praise rather than blame. In fact, the notion of absolute rules or precepts cannot be made workable except through certain superior authorities who declare and enforce them. Said Locke: "It is no small power it gives one man over another to be the dictator of principles and teacher of unquestionable truths."
II. Utilitarian View of General Rules.—The utilitarians escape the difficulties inherent in the application to particular cases of a rule which has nothing to do with particular cases. Their principles for judging right and wrong in particular cases are themselves generalizations from particular observations of the effect of certain acts upon happiness and misery. But if we take happiness in the technical sense of Bentham (as meaning, that is, an aggregate of isolated pleasures) it is impossible for general rules to exist—there is nothing to generalize. If, however, we take happiness in its common-sense form, as welfare, a state of successful achievement, satisfactory realization of purpose, there can be no doubt of the existence of maxims and formulæ in which mankind has registered its experience. The following quotations from Mill bring out the essential points:
"We think utility or happiness much too complex and indefinite an end to be sought except through the medium of various secondary ends concerning which there may be, and often is, agreement among persons who differ in their ultimate standard; and about which there does in fact prevail a much greater unanimity among thinking persons, than might be supposed from their diametrical divergence on the great questions of moral metaphysics" (Essay on Bentham).
These secondary ends or principles are such matters as regard for health, honesty, chastity, kindness, and the like. Concerning them he says in his Utilitarianism (ch. ii.):
"Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are rules of morality for the multitude and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better.... To consider the rules of morality as improvable is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizations entirely and endeavor to test each individual action directly by the first principle, is another.... Nobody argues that the act of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the nautical almanac. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it already calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish."
Empirical Rules Run into Fixed Customs.—It cannot be denied that Mill here states considerations which are of great value in aiding present judgments on right and wrong. The student of history will have little doubt that the rules of conduct which the intuitionalist takes as ultimate deliverances of a moral faculty are in truth generalizations of the sort indicated by Mill. But the truth brought out by Mill does not cover the ground which needs to be covered. Such rules at best cover customary elements; they are based upon past habits of life, past natural economic and political environments. And, as the student of customs knows, greater store is often set upon trivial, foolish, and even harmful things than upon serious ones—upon fashions of hair-dressing, ablutions, worship of idols. Coming nearer our own conditions, past customs certainly tolerate and sanction many practices, such as war, cruel business competition, economic exploitation of the weak, and absence of coöperative intelligent foresight, which the more sensitive consciences of the day will not approve.
Hence are Unsatisfactory.—Yet such things have been so identified with happiness that to forego them means misery, to alter them painful disturbance. To take the rules of the past with any literalness as criteria of judgment in the present, would be to return to the unprogressive morality of the régime of custom—to surrender the advance marked by reflective morality. Since Bentham and Mill were both utilitarians, it is worth noting that Bentham insisted upon the utilitarian standard just because he was so convinced of the unsatisfactory character of the kind of rules upon which Mill is dwelling. The "Nautical Almanac" has been scientifically calculated; it is adapted rationally to its end; but the rules which sum up custom are a confused mixture of class interest, irrational sentiment, authoritative pronunciamento, and genuine consideration of welfare.
Empirical Rules Also Differ Widely.—The fact is, moreover, that it is only when the "intermediate generalizations" are taken vaguely and abstractly that there is as much agreement as Mill claims. All educated and virtuous persons in the same country practically agree upon the rules of justice, benevolence, and regard for life, so long as they are taken in such a vague way that they mean anything in general and nothing in particular. Every one is in favor of justice in the abstract; but existing political and economic discussions regarding tariff, sumptuary laws, monetary standards, trades unions, trusts, the relation of capital and labor, the regulation or ownership of public utilities, the nationalization of land and industry, show that large bodies of intelligent and equally well-disposed people are quite capable of finding that the principle of justice requires exactly opposite things.
Custom still forms the background of all moral life, nor can we imagine a state of affairs in which it should not. Customs are not external to individuals' courses of action; they are embodied in the habits and purposes of individuals; in the words of Grote (quoted above, p. 173), they "reign under the appearance of habitual, self-suggested tendencies." Laws, formulated and unformulated, social conventions, rules of manners, the general expectations of public opinion, are all of them sources of instruction regarding conduct. Without them the individual would be practically helpless in determining the right courses of action in the various situations in which he finds himself. Through them he has provided himself in advance with a list of questions, an organized series of points-of-view, by which to approach and estimate each state of affairs requiring action. Most of the moral judgments of every individual are framed in this way.
For Customs Conflict.—If social customs, or individual habits, never conflicted with one another, this sort of guidance would suffice for the determination of right and wrong. But reflection is necessitated because opposite habits set up incompatible ends, forms of happiness between which choice has to be made. Hence the need of principles in judging. Principles of judgment cannot simply reinstate past rules of behavior, for the simple reason that as long as these rules suffice there is no reflection and no demand for principles. Good and evil, right and wrong, are embodied in the injunctions and prohibitions of customs and institutions and are not thought about.