Only the Rationalists have any cause or reason to inquire into the aims of Morality, whether they look upon the moral law as dictated by society or are of the opinion that it is the sum total of the rules by which Reason, of its own initiative, successfully combats the urging of Instinct. If the moral law is a creation of society, and is obeyed by the individual out of sympathy with his fellow-men or consideration for society, the logical conclusion is that society has set up the moral law to satisfy some real or imagined need. Its aim in this case can only be the real or supposed welfare of the community. This is the most widely accepted view.
"Morality and universal welfare," says Macchiavelli, "are conceptions which coincide." In his calm assurance this apodictic writer, who doubtlessly slept well and had an excellent digestion, is never troubled by a doubt as to whether there is such a thing as an absolutely reliable measure of universal welfare, and therefore whether Morality, which is termed its equivalent, can provide us with a perfectly unimpeachable standard. He whose ethical conscience is more tender and timid will inevitably anxiously ask himself: Who decides what universal welfare demands and what is conducive to it? Is it to be the masses? Is the mob, incapable of thought, ignorant, swayed by momentary and shifting impulses, to make moral laws for the select few who are its natural guides? What tragedies would necessarily result from this definition! How often a strong personality, trained to come to independent conclusions, refuses to obey the voice of the mob! Is the sheep who trots bleating along with the herd to be taken as the type of a moral being? Must we necessarily condemn as immoral those who swim against the stream, enlightened tyrants who force upon their people hateful innovations calculated to ensure their welfare,—such men as Peter the Great, the Emperor Joseph II, the reformer who comes into violent conflict with the majority who are creatures of habit? "The aim of Morality is the welfare of society; this is indeed the essence of Morality." A sufficiently safe and most soothing formula this seems; but really the security it gives is most deceptive, and it leaves unsolved the most important problems relating to the phenomenon of Morality.
A numerous group of moral philosophers seeks the aim of moral conduct in the individual himself, not outside him. In spite of Schopenhauer's sympathy, they doubt that consideration for the well-being of the community would act forcibly enough upon the individual to induce him to wage unceasing war on his impulses and struggle to overcome them. Rather they hold that the individual must find in his inner consciousness not only the spur to moral action, but also the reward for the same, and they characterize this driving force as pleasurable emotions in every sense of the words. According to them man acts morally because, and in so far as, he anticipates pleasurable results from so doing. Epicurus considers the aim of Morality always to be Pleasure. He makes only the one reservation, that a reasonable man will renounce an immediate pleasure for the sake of a greater one in the future, and that he may delight in the anticipation of pleasurable emotions which defeat and dull present pains. Thus the martyr may be a true Epicurean, even if by his actions he exposes himself to most cruel torture and the most painful death, for he is convinced that the everlasting joys of paradise will more than indemnify him for his temporary sufferings.
I have already shown that Aristotle considers Morality the activity of practical Reason, which is accompanied by pleasurable emotions. He makes these pleasurable emotions an essential part of Morality, and Spinoza shares this view, for he says: "Knowledge of good and evil is nothing but a pleasurable or a disagreeable emotion in so far as we are conscious of it."
No less roundly, one might almost say brutally, Leibnitz declares: "We term good that which gives us pleasure; evil that which gives us pain," while Feuerbach expresses himself rather more carefully and indefinitely thus: "The instinct for happiness is the most potent of all instincts. Where existence always occurs together with volition, volition and the will to be happy are inseparable; they are, indeed, essentially one. 'I will,' means 'I have the will not to suffer, not to be hindered and destroyed, but, on the contrary, to be assisted and preserved; that is, I have the will to be happy.'" This is a wordy paraphrase of Spinoza's: "All existence is self-assertion, and Morality is only the highest and purest form of this fundamental instinct in a reasonable being."
Among those moral philosophers who see in pleasurable emotions the aim of Morality, its reward and its incentive, we must distinguish two groups: those who understand by pleasurable emotions such as appeal to the senses—the Hedonists; and those who spiritualize the meaning of the word and expect of Morality not an immediate bodily gratification, a pleasure, or an insipid satisfaction of the sense, but lasting happiness—the Eudæmonists. At the first glance the Eudæmonists seem to have a higher and more worthy conception of the subjective reaction of moral conduct than have the Hedonists; for the satisfaction the former expect and promise does not apply to the lower spheres of our organic life, but to the loftiest functions of our mind, from which alone a feeling of happiness can emanate.
But if we look into the matter more closely we find that to draw a sharp distinction between the Hedonists and Eudæmonists is more than a little arbitrary. For Pleasure and Happiness differ hardly at all in essentials, but chiefly in degree; and this would at once be obvious if one only took the trouble to define the two ideas, which, however, is mostly not done. And with good reason, for it is impossible to explain Pleasure. You can use synonyms for it; you can look wise and say: Pleasure is that which is agreeable, or that which one desires, that in which one delights, or a certain quality of feeling which accompanies such organic processes as strengthen or vitalize the system; but all that this amounts to is to say in a roundabout way, Pleasure is Pleasure. It is a fundamental fact of our inner consciousness, just as inexplicable as life, or as its antithesis, Pain. But if we assume that Pleasure is something given by subjective experience, then the idea of Happiness can be defined. Happiness is a flooding of the consciousness with sunshine; it is enjoyment of the moment, a sense of living in the present accentuated by pleasurable emotion. If this feeling is organically differentiated, that is, if it springs from a certain section of the mind or mechanism of the body and can be located there, it is ecstasy. It is only felt as Happiness when it is, so to speak, melted, dissolved, distributed throughout the organism, cœnesthetically diffused.
If we agree to this definition we can take Eudæmonism into consideration as an aim of moral action, but Hedonism we shall have to discard from the start. If Morality is to be inhibition, a victory of Reason over Instinct, then it cannot possibly arouse Pleasure, since the first and most immediate source of Pleasure is the surrender to instinct, the satisfaction of the organic appetites; but if one resists them, suppresses them, then one experiences a privation which at best occasions discomfort and may easily cause pain. By its very nature and the mechanism by which it works, Morality can therefore give rise to no pleasure, but only to discomfort. All the same, it can afford a feeling of happiness.
It may be objected that I am guilty of a contradiction when I assume the possibility of Happiness without Pleasure, as I have just described Happiness as a particular kind of Pleasure; but in reality there is no contradiction. For Pleasure springs from a special organic apparatus, whereas Happiness is not a condition of any particular apparatus in our body, but a general feeling that cannot be located; if it is roused by moral actions it originates in the self-satisfaction of Reason, in its pride in the victory over Instinct, in the rapture occasioned by one's own strength of will; therefore, it can well exist without any differentiated pleasurable emotion located in any particular organic apparatus.
Many moral philosophers have for various reasons rejected plausible Eudæmonism as well as Hedonism, and these reasons can all be traced back to the recognition, or at least an inkling, of the fact that moral action in the nature of things must exclude pleasurable emotions; at any rate immediate ones, and such as are perceived by the senses. Perhaps Fichte does this in the most naïve fashion, for he rejects every form of Eudæmonism as the aim of moral action, but admits as its purpose only bliss, that is to say, the self-satisfaction of Reason resulting from action in accordance with its own laws. However, he struggles in vain to deny that this "bliss" is of the nature of a pleasurable emotion, or to interpret it as differing from Eudæmonism. He is only giving the latter another name to make it conform in an orthodox manner with his doctrine of the Supreme Ego. "Baptizo te carpam!" I baptize thee, carp! In this way the pious man complies with the law enjoining abstinence from meat, and with an easy conscience smacks his lips over a roast pheasant which he has dubbed fish.