Identity of the Individual and General Happiness.—No algebraic summing up of sympathetic pleasures, utilities of friendship, advantages of popularity and esteem, profits of economic exchange among equals, over against pains from legal penalties and disapproving public opinion, and lack of sympathetic support by others, can ever make it even approximately certain that an individual's own interest, in terms of quantity of pleasures and pains, is to regard the interest of others.[156] Such a demonstration, moreover, if possible, would not support but would weaken the moral life. It would reduce the manifestation of character to selecting greater rather than less amounts of homogeneous ends. It would degrade reflection and consideration to ingenuity in detecting where larger quantities of pleasures lie, and to skill in performing sums of addition and subtraction. Even if such a scheme could be demonstrated, every one except the most languid and phlegmatic of pleasure-seekers would reject a life built upon it. Not only the "good," but the more vigorous and hearty of the "bad," would scorn a life in which character, selfhood, had no significance, and where the experimental discovery and testing of destiny had no place. The identity of individual and general happiness is a moral matter; it depends, that is, upon the reflective and intentional development of that type of character which identifies itself with common ends, and which is happy in these ends just because it has made them its own.
2. Social Ends and the Happiness of Others.—The same principle holds of the happiness of others. Happiness means the expression of the active tendencies of a self in their appropriate objects. Moral happiness means the satisfaction which comes when the dominant active tendencies are made interests in the maintenance and propagation of the things that make life worth living. Others, also, can be happy and should be happy only upon the same terms. Regard for the happiness of others means regard for those conditions and objects which permit others freely to exercise their own powers from their own initiative, reflection, and choice. Regard for their final happiness (i.e., for a happiness whose quality is such that it cannot be externally added to or subtracted from) demands that these others shall find the controlling objects of preference, resolution, and endeavor in the things that are worth while.
3. Happiness and Common Ends.—For all alike, in short, the chief thing is the discovery and promotion of those activities and active relationships in which the capacities of all concerned are effectively evoked, exercised, and put to the test. It is difficult for a man to attain a point of view from which steadily to apprehend how his own activities affect and modify those of others. It is hard, that is, to learn to accommodate one's ends to those of others; to adjust, to give way here, and fit in there with respect to our aims. But difficult as this is, it is easy compared with the difficulty of acting in such a way for ends which are helpful to others as will call out and make effective their activities.
Moral Democracy.—If the vice of the criminal, and of the coarsely selfish man is to disturb the aims and the good of others; if the vice of the ordinary egoist, and of every man, upon his egoistic side, is to neglect the interests of others; the vice of the social leader, of the reformer, of the philanthropist and the specialist in every worthy cause of science, or art, or politics, is to seek ends which promote the social welfare in ways which fail to engage the active interest and coöperation of others.[157] The conception of conferring the good upon others, or at least of attaining it for them, which is our inheritance from the aristocratic civilization of the past, is so deeply embodied in religious, political, and charitable institutions and in moral teachings, that it dies hard. Many a man, feeling himself justified by the social character of his ultimate aim (it may be economic, or educational, or political), is genuinely confused or exasperated by the increasing antagonism and resentment which he evokes, because he has not enlisted in his pursuit of the "common" end the freely coöperative activities of others. This coöperation must be the root principle of the morals of democracy. It must be confessed, however, that it has as yet made little progress.
Our traditional conceptions of the morally great man, the moral hero and leader, the exceptionally good social and political character, all work against the recognition of this principle either in practice or theory. They foster the notion that it is somebody's particular business to reach by his more or less isolated efforts (with "following," or obedience, or unreflective subordination on the part of others) a needed social good. Some genius is to lead the way; others are to adopt and imitate. Moreover, the method of awakening and enlisting the activities of all concerned in pursuit of the end seems slow; it seems to postpone accomplishment indefinitely. But in truth a common end which is not made such by common, free voluntary coöperation in process of achievement is common in name only. It has no support and guarantee in the activities which it is supposed to benefit, because it is not the fruit of those activities. Hence, it does not stay put. It has to be continually buttressed by appeal to external, not voluntary, considerations; bribes of pleasure, threats of harm, use of force. It has to be undone and done over. There is no way to escape or evade this law of happiness, that it resides in the exercise of the active capacities of a voluntary agent; and hence no way to escape or evade the law of a common happiness, that it must reside in the congruous exercise of the voluntary activities of all concerned. The inherent irony and tragedy of much that passes for a high kind of socialized activity is precisely that it seeks a common good by methods which forbid its being either common or a good.
LITERATURE
See references upon utilitarianism at end of ch. xiv. For happiness, see Aristotle, Ethics, Book I., and Book X., chs. vi.-ix.; Dickinson, The Meaning of Good; Paulsen, System of Ethics, pp. 268-286; Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus, Vol. I., pp. 6-39; Mezes, Ethics, ch. xv.; Santayana, The Life of Reason; Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil.
The following histories of utilitarianism bring out the social side of the utilitarian theory: Albee, History of Utilitarianism; Stephen, The English Utilitarians; Halévy, La Formation du Radicalisme Philosophique, especially Vols. I. and II.