Without attempting in this place to justify my opinion, or even to define the kind of justification which it admits of, I merely declare my conviction, that the general principle to which all rules of practice ought to conform, and the test by which they should be tried, is that of conduciveness to the happiness of mankind, or rather, of all sentient beings: in other words, that the promotion of happiness is the ultimate principle of Teleology.[21]
I do not mean to assert that the promotion of happiness should be itself the end of all actions, or even of all rules of action. It is the justification, and ought to be the controller, of all ends, but is not itself the sole end. There are many virtuous actions, and even virtuous modes of action (though the cases are, I think, less frequent than is often supposed) by which happiness in the particular instance is sacrificed, more pain being produced than pleasure. But conduct of which this can be truly asserted, admits of justification only because it can be shown that on the whole more happiness will exist in the world, if feelings are cultivated which will make people, in certain cases, regardless of happiness. I fully admit that this is true: that the cultivation of an ideal nobleness of will and conduct, should be to individual human beings an end, to which the specific pursuit either of their own happiness or of that of others (except so far as included in that idea) should, in any case of conflict, give way. But I hold that the very question, what constitutes this elevation of character, is itself to be decided by a reference to happiness as the standard. The character itself should be, to the individual, a paramount end, simply because the existence of this ideal nobleness of character, or of a near approach to it, in any abundance, would go further than all things else towards making human life happy; both in the comparatively humble sense, of pleasure and freedom from pain, and in the higher meaning, of rendering life, not what it now is almost universally, puerile and insignificant—but such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to have.
[§ 8.] With these remarks we must close this summary view of the application of the general logic of scientific inquiry to the moral and social departments of science. Notwithstanding the extreme generality of the principles of method which I have laid down, (a generality which, I trust, is not, in this instance, synonymous with vagueness) I have indulged the hope that to some of those on whom the task will devolve of bringing those most important of all sciences into a more satisfactory state, these observations may be useful; both in removing erroneous, and in clearing up the true, conceptions of the means by which, on subjects of so high a degree of complication, truth can be attained. Should this hope be realized, what is probably destined to be the great intellectual achievement of the next two or three generations of European thinkers will have been in some degree forwarded.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Some arguments and explanations, supplementary to those in the text, will be found in An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. xxvi.
[3] When this chapter was written, Mr. Bain had not yet published even the first part ("The Senses and the Intellect") of his profound Treatise on the Mind. In this, the laws of association have been more comprehensively stated and more largely exemplified than by any previous writer; and the work, having been completed by the publication of "The Emotions and the Will," may now be referred to as incomparably the most complete analytical exposition of the mental phenomena, on the basis of a legitimate Induction, which has yet been produced.
Many striking applications of the laws of association to the explanation of complex mental phenomena, are also to be found in Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Psychology."
[4] In the case of the moral sentiments the place of direct experiment is to a considerable extent supplied by historical experience, and we are able to trace with a tolerable approach to certainty the particular associations by which those sentiments are engendered. This has been attempted, so far as respects the sentiment of justice, in a little work by the present author, entitled Utilitarianism.