Nor is this all. The conception of general happiness, taken by itself, has all the abstractness, vagueness and uncertainty of that of personal happiness, multiplied indefinitely by the greater number of persons introduced. To calculate the effects of actions upon the general happiness—when happiness is interpreted as a state of feeling—is an impossibility. And thus it is that when one is speaking of pleasures one is really thinking of welfare, or well-being, or satisfied and progressive human lives. Happiness is considered as it would be, if determined by certain active and well defined interests, and thus the hedonistic theory, while contradicting itself, gets apparently all the support of an opposed theory. Universalistic hedonism thus, more or less expressly, takes for granted a social order, or community of persons, of which the agent is simply one member like any other. This is the ideal which it proposes to realize. In this way—although at the cost of logical suicide—the ideal gets a content and a definiteness upon which it is possible to base judgments.
That this social organization of persons is the ideal which Mill is actually thinking of, rather than any succession of states of agreeable sensation, is evident by his treatment of the whole subject. Mill is quite clear that education and opinion may produce any sort of feeling, as well as truly benevolent motives to actions. For example, in his critique of Whewell, he says, (Op. cit., p. 154): "All experience shows that the moral feelings are preëminently artificial, and the products of culture; that even when reasonable, they are no more spontaneous than the growth of corn and wine (which are quite as natural), and that the most senseless and pernicious feeling can as easily be raised to the utmost intensity by inculcation, as hemlock and thistles could be reared to luxuriant growth by sowing them instead of wheat." It is certainly implied here that legislation, education and public opinion must have as a presupposed standard the identity of general and private interests or else they may produce anything whatever. That is to say, Mill instead of arriving at his result of general happiness simply takes it for granted.
This fact and the further fact that he virtually defines happiness through certain objective interests and ends (thus reversing the true hedonistic position) is obvious from the following, (Mill, Op. cit., pp. 343-347): After again stating that the moral feelings are capable of cultivation in almost any direction, and stating that moral associations that are of artificial construction dissolve through the force of intellectual analysis (cf. his Autobiography, p. 136), and that the association of pleasure with the feeling of duty would similarly dissolve unless it had a natural basis of sentiment, he goes on. "But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment. This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures. The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man that except in some unusual circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary abstraction he never conceives of himself otherwise than as a member of a body. Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being." Mill then goes on to describe some of the ways in which the social unity manifests itself and influences the individual's conduct. Then the latter "comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our existence. The deeply-rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures. This conviction is the ultimate sanction of the greatest happiness morality."
It is to be noticed that there is involved in this account three ideas, any one of which involves such a reconstruction of the pleasure theory as to be a surrender of hedonism.
1. There is, in one instance, a natural (or intrinsic) connection between the end of conduct and the feelings, and not simply an external or artificial bond. This is in the case of the social feelings. In other words, in one case the ideal, that is, happiness, is intrinsically, or necessarily connected with a certain kind of conduct, that flowing from the social impulses. This, of course, reverses hedonism for it makes happiness dependent upon a certain kind of conduct, instead of determining the nature of conduct according as it happens to result in pleasure or pain.
2. Man conceives of himself, of his end or of his destiny as a member of a social body, and this conception determines the nature of his wants and aims. That is to say, it is not mere happiness that a man wants, but a certain kind of happiness, that which would satisfy a man who conceived of himself as social, or having ends and interests in common with others.
3. Finally, it is not mere general "happiness" which is the end, at all. It is social unity; "harmony of feelings and aims," a beneficial condition for one's self in which the benefits of all are included. Instead of the essentially vague idea of states of pleasurable sensation we have the conception of a community of interests and ends, in securing which alone is true happiness to be found. This conception of the moral ideal we regard as essentially true, but it is not hedonism. It gives up wholly the notion that pleasure is the desired, and, since it sets up a standard by which it determines pleasure, it gives up equally the notion that pleasure as such is the desirable.
In addition to the works already referred to, the following will give fuller ideas of hedonism and utilitarianism: For historical treatment see Sidgwick, History of Ethics; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, Vol. II., pp. 482-468; Bain, Moral Science, Historical Mention; Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine; Wallace, Epicureanism; Pater, Marius, the Epicurean; Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy; Grote, Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy (especially fair and valuable criticism); Lecky, History of European Morals, Vol. I, ch. I; Birks, Utilitarianism (hostile); Blackie, Four Phases of Morals: Essay on Utilitarianism (hostile); Gizycki, Students' Manual of Ethical Philosophy, (Coit's trans., favorable); Calderwood, Hand-Book of Moral Philosophy (opposed); Laurie, Ethica (e. g., p. 10). "The object of will is not pleasure, not yet happiness, but reason-given law—the law of harmony; but this necessarily ascertained through feeling, and, therefore, through happiness."
Wilson and Fowler, Principles of Morals, Vol. I, pp. 98-112; Vol. II, pp. 262-273. Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 195-210.