The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

We have thus arrived at a very important conception, that of a higher interest possessing a certain priority in its claims. The higher interest as I have defined it is simply the greater interest, and greater in the sense that it exceeds a narrower interest through embracing it and adding to it. Your interest in the fulfilment of {53} to-day's interest and to-morrow's, is demonstrably greater than your interest in the fulfilment of either exclusively, because it provides for each and more. In this perfectly definite sense your preference may be justified.

Let us now apply this principle of preference to the more complex case in which there is no available action which will fulfil both interests. Suppose that you cannot both eat apples to-day and go to the play to-morrow. How is one to define a good action in the premises? In the first place the good act originally conceived in terms of the free play of the present impulse is proved to be illusory. There is no good act until your interests are reorganized. In other words, the higher interest, which is entitled to preference, requires some modification of the participating interests. But the higher interest owes its title to its liberality or comprehensiveness. Hence it must represent the maximum fulfilment of both interests which the conditions allow. Such a controlling interest may require you altogether to forego the present indulgence, or it may merely require that it be severely limited. In any case, the controlling interest will represent both interests, modified, postponed, or suppressed, as is necessary for their maximum joint fulfilment. The higher interest which thus replaces the original interest, and which is entitled to do so only {54} because it incorporates them, I propose to call moral purpose.

There are two highly important principles which we have been brought to recognize through this analysis of preference, and it will be worth our while briefly to resume them.

In the first place, no interest is entitled to your exclusive regard merely because it happens at any given time to be moving you. I shall call this the principle of the objective validity of interests. I mean simply that an interest is none the less an interest because it does not coincide with an individual's momentary inclination. In reminding you of an interest overlooked, I have not sought to justify it by subsuming it under your present interest. I have not tried to prove that it is to your interest as an epicure that you should go to the play. I have simply pointed out the other interest, and allowed it to stand on its merits. In ethical theories of a certain type, and in much impromptu moralizing, it is assumed that there is no legitimate appeal except in behalf of interests that are at the instant already alive. This is as absurd as to suppose that in order to bring you to the truth in any purely theoretical matter, I must confine myself to evidence that you already recognize. In both cases your individual experience at any given time may be narrow and limited owing to causes that are in the highest {55} degree arbitrary. It may be advisable that I should solicit your attention by connecting what I have to offer with what is already familiar to you; but this is a psychological expedient. My appeal is logically supported by objects, by principles, by data which are in no wise dependent for their claims on their connection with your present stock in trade.

Chesterton refers to one who "had that rational and deliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peace of the world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short life and a merry one." [7] I cannot regard such hedonistic opportunism as other than wantonness or wilful carelessness. It may be deliberate in the sense of being consciously persisted in, but I cannot find any rationality in it. It arises naturally enough through the greater vividness of the interests that are already adopted and proved; but all prejudices arise from such accidents, and they are none the less on that account absolutely antagonistic to the rational attitude—that willingness that things should be for me even as they are.

In the second place, it has appeared that there is no demonstrable priority of one simple interest over another differing only qualitatively from it. I propose to call this the principle of the quantitative basis of preference. I know that the term quantity has an ugly sound in this context. {56} But I believe that this is due simply to a false abstraction. Two good books are not better than one because two is better than one, but because in two of a given unit of goodness there is more of goodness than in one. Two is more than one, but not more good, unless that which is counted is itself good. Nor is two longer or heavier than one, unless the units numbered happen to be those of length or weight. To prefer two interests to one does not imply that one is a lover of quantity, but a lover of good; of that which if it be and remain good, the more the better.

At any rate it seems to me a matter of simple candor to admit that "more" is a term implying quantity, whether it be "more room," "more weight," "more goodness," or "more beauty." It seems to me to be equally evident that "more" implies commensurable magnitude; and that commensurability implies the existence of a common unit in the terms compared. Two inches are more than one inch in that they include one inch and also another like unit. Now in moral matters the unit of value is the fulfilment of the simple interest; and in consequence I see no way of demonstrating that one such simple interest is more good than another, as I see no way of demonstrating that one inch is longer than another. But I do see that if I can carry a simple interest over into a compound one, and there both {57} retain it and add to it, I shall have more—more by what I add. Such comparison is never a simple matter, perhaps in any concrete case never wholly conclusive. But I can conceive no more important and more clarifying declaration of principle. It means that any rational decision as to the precedence of social ideals, or as to historical progress from good to better, must be based on width of representation and weight of incentive.

IV

If what I have said thus far has proved convincing to you, this may be owing to the fact that you have not been called upon to adopt any interest beyond what are conventionally regarded as your own. In moral matters it is customary to attach a certain finality to personal pronouns. But there are no terms in common use which have so rough and loose a meaning, which cover so equivocal and confused an experience; albeit the necessity and frequency of their use has made them standard currency and polished them into a sort of deceptive smoothness to the touch. There is no term so altogether handy as the term "I," nor is there any so embarrassed when called on to show its credentials in the shape of clear and verifiable experience. If, then, you stand upon your interests I shall not be convinced, for I shall {58} not know what you mean. There is no sense in which you are a finished and demonstrable fact. My dealings with you, and this is peculiarly true of my rational dealings with you, cannot be tested by you in any absolute or fixed sense, simply because they may make you, as they may make me.

Let us return to our test case. You are the epicure, and I am the proprietor; you seize my apple, and I protest. But now I no longer appeal to you merely as one who enjoys eating apples, and warn you that you are selecting the wrong means of attaining that end. I simply inform you that the apple is my property, and that I desire to retain it. I appeal to you to respect my wishes, at least to the extent of non-interference. If you reply that this is no interest that you acknowledge, then I am in a position to inform you. For on no ground can you attach finality to the set of interests which at any given time you choose to acknowledge. If I may remind you of a forgotten interest, I may inform you of a new interest. In the one case, you acknowledge that there is such an interest in that you anticipate its revival, and realize that its mere absence is no proof of its non-existence. You recognize it as having its roots in your organism, and its opportunity for exercise in certain definable and predictable circumstances. This is what you mean when you acknowledge that you will desire to go to the play {59} to-morrow. But the evidence of the existence of still another interest, in this case mine, is no less convincing. Like your own latent interest, it does not at the instant move you. But it has the specific character of an interest, and its place in the existent world through its relation to my organism. Recognizing it as an interest, you cannot in the given case fail to observe that it qualifies your action as good or bad, through being affected by it. If your action fulfils your interest and thwarts mine, it is again mixed, both good and bad. In order to define the good act in the premises it is necessary, as in the previous case, to define a purpose which shall embrace both interests and regulate action with a view to their joint fulfilment.