See Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 402. See also Hinton, The Law Breaker, p. 287: "The real meaning of the difficulty about a word for "regard for others" is that we do not want it. It would mislead us if we had it. It is not a regard for others that we need, but simply a true regard, a regard to the facts, to nature; it is only a truth to facts in our regard, and its nature is obscured by a reference to "others", as if that were the essential point.... It is not as being for others, but as being true, that the regard for others is demanded."
Some ethical writers have gone to the other extreme and held that all benevolence is a disguised or an enlightened selfishness, since having a necessary reference to self. The reference to self must be admitted; unless the action springs from an interest of the agent himself the act may be outwardly useful, but cannot be moral. But the argument alluded to inverts the true relation involved. If a man's interests are such that he can find satisfaction only in the satisfaction of others, what an absurdity to say that his acting from these interests is selfish! The very fact of such identity of self with others in his interest is the proof of his unselfishness.
See Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 241, for an admirable discussion of this difficulty. When it is said that your pain is painful to me, he says, the inference is often "insinuated that I dislike your pain because it is painful to me in some special relation. I do not dislike it as your pain, but in virtue of some particular consequence, such, for example, as its making you less able to render me a service. In that case I do not really object to your pain as your pain at all, but only to some removable and accidental consequences." (And see his whole treatment of sympathy, pp. 230-245). The whole question is shown to come to this: Is my interest in, my sympathy with, your joy and sorrow as such, or in your joy and sorrow as contributing to mine? If the latter, of course the interest is selfish, not being an interest in others at all. But if the former, then the fact that such sympathy involves one's own satisfaction is the best proof that man is not selfishly constructed. When Stephen goes on to say that such sympathy does not involve the existence of a real unity larger than the individual, he seems to me to misread his own facts, probably because he conceives of this unity as some abstract or external thing.
Discussion regarding self-love and benevolence, or, in modern phrase, egoism and altruism, has been rife in English ethics since the time of Hobbes, and especially of Shaftesbury and Butler. See, in particular, the Sermons of the latter, which gave the central point of discussion for almost a century. With reference to the special weakness of this point of view, with its co-ordination of two independent principles, see Green, Philosophical Works, Vol. III, pp. 99-104. The essential lack (the lack which we have tried to make good in the definition of individuality as the union of capacity and surroundings in function), was the failure to analyze the idea of the individual. Individuality being defined as an exclusive principle, the inevitable result was either (i.) the "disguised selfishness" theory; or (ii.) the assumption of two fundamentally different principles in man. The ordinary distinction between prudence and virtue is an echo of the latter theory. Then, finally, (iii.) a third principle, generally called conscience by Butler, was brought in as umpire in the conflict of prudence and virtue.
Suggestive modern treatment of the matter, from a variety of points of view, will be found in Spencer, Data of Ethics, chs. XI-XIII; Stephen, Op. cit., ch. VI; Sidgwick, Op. cit., Bk. V, ch. VII; Royce, Op. cit., ch. IV; Sorley, Ethics of Naturalism, pp. 134-150; Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 172-180; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 400-405; Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 295-311.
3. Interest in Science and Art. Man is interested in the world about him; the knowledge of the nature and relations of this world become one of his most absorbing pursuits. Man identifies himself with the meaning of this world to the point that he can be satisfied only as he spells out and reads its meaning. (See, for example, Browning's "Grammarian's Funeral".) The scientific interest is no less a controlling motive of man than the personal interest. This knowledge is not a means for having agreeable sensations; it is not dilettanteism or "love of culture"; it is interest in the large and goodly frame of things. And so it is with art; man has interests which can be satisfied only in the reconstruction of nature in the way of the useful and the beautiful.
I have made no distinction between 'fine' and 'useful' art. The discussion of this question does not belong here, but the rigid separation of them in æsthetic theory seems to me to have no justification. Both are products of intelligence in the service of interests, and the only difference is in the range of intelligence and interests concerned. 'Use' is a limited service and hence implies an external end; beauty is complete use or service, and hence not mere use at all, but self-expression. Historically, all art which has not been merely sentimental and 'literary' has sprung from interest in good workmanship in the realizing of an idea.
It seems as if here interests violated their general law, and, in the case of use at least, were an interest in some ulterior end. But it may be questioned whether a carpenter whose aim was consciously beyond the work he was doing, would be a good workman—and this whether the further end is his own private advantage, or social benefit at large. The thought of the further benefit to self and of the utility to accrue to some one else, will, if it becomes a part of what he is doing, undoubtedly intensify his interest—it must do so, for it enlarges its content. But to identify one's own or another's well-being with work, and to make the work a mere means to this welfare, are two quite different things. The good artisan "has his heart in his work". His self-respect makes it necessary for him to respect this technical or artistic capacity, and to do the best by it that he can without scrimping or lowering. To a good business man business is not the mere means to money-making; and it is sentimentalism (and hence immoral) to demand that it be a mere means to the good of society. The business, if it is a moral one (and any business, so far as it is thus carried on, is moral), is carried on for the sake of the activity itself, as a realizing of capacity in a specific situation.
XXXVI.
The Moral Quality of Science.