"Ethical judgments contain a valuation of human actions…. The criterion of the ethical valuation is the contents of ethics."
If life consisted of isolated sovereign moments, every one of them would have an equal right, and no one would be obliged to resign in favor of any other moment. No valuation, no discrimination would be required. But the life of each individual, as well as the life of society, makes up a "life-totality," and we possess a conception of this life-totality. "If the state of feeling in a single moment agrees with the conception of the life-totality, a new feeling arises which is determined by this mutual relation…. The ethical valuation is conditioned by this feeling." (p. 27.) Taking this ground, Professor Höffding defines good and bad in the following way:
"'Good' accordingly becomes that which preserves the life-totality and gives fulness and life to its contents; 'bad,' on the contrary, that which has more or less the tendency to dissolve or to limit the life-totality and its contents. Bad accordingly is the single moment, the separate impulse in its revolutionary isolation from the rest of life…." (P. 29.)
"The Bad, therefore, is egotism in its various degrees and various forms. And the verdict about it will be the severer the more conscious this egotism is."
Utilitarianism as a rule has been hedonistic. Utilitarians have proposed as the criterion of an ethical valuation the consequences of an act; if the consequences give more pleasure than pain, it is said to be good; if they are attended with more pain than pleasure, it is said to be bad. In the above quoted definitions by Prof. Höffding there is no trace of hedonism, and I should consider an ethical system based upon these definitions as being in strong opposition to hedonism. But Prof. Höffding appears to have been so strongly biased by the influence of hedonistic utilitarianism, that he introduces again its fundamental idea, which identifies the good with the pleasurable. Although he objects to employing the terms "utility" and "happiness," "because they are liable to lead to misunderstandings and have indeed done so"; although he declares that "momentary feelings of pleasure and pain are no sure criterion for the total state" (p. 37); although for such reasons he proposes the word welfare, saying, "by the word 'welfare' I think of everything which serves to satisfy the wants of human nature in its whole entirety": still Prof. Höffding again returns to hedonism by limiting the idea "welfare" to the hedonistic conception of goodness. He defines welfare as "a continuous state of pleasurable feelings." (P. 98.)
Thus we are presented with two definitions of what constitutes the criterion of an ethical valuation: (1) that which promotes the life-totality, and (2) that which produces a continuous state of pleasurable feeling.
These two definitions are in many respects harmonious, but on the other hand they may come into conflict; and if they come into conflict, which of the two is to be sacrificed? Supposing that a contemplation of the evolution of organised life should teach us that the development of a "life-totality" is not at all a pleasurable process; that on the contrary it is attended with excessive and innumerable pains. Inorganic nature so far as we can judge is free from pain. The isolated atom, we may assume, exists in a state of indifference. Supposing now that pain could be proved to increase, the higher we rise in the development of a life-totality; supposing that the growth of a life-totality had to be bought with pain, what would be the consequence? I will not here enter into the subject, but I may mention that this supposition is not at all without foundation. Assuming that it were so, would not, in such a case, the good be as Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Mainlaender propose, that which destroys the life-totality of consciousness and with it the whole world of civilised humanity, built up of the innumerable consciousnesses of individuals?
Professor Höffding has seen this difficulty, which arises from a conflict of the two criteria of ethical valuation (1) the hedonistic principle and (2) the principle of progress, i. e., the constant evolution of a higher life-totality. He says:
"John Stuart Mill has declared that it is better to be a dissatisfied man than a satisfied pig, a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied fool. He bases this assertion upon the fact that even if the pig and the fool were of a contrary mind, their opinion would have to be rejected, since they possess no knowledge of the higher point of view from which man and Socrates consider life, whereas man knows the needs of the pig and Socrates fathoms the fool. We most be regulated by the judgment of those that know the two kinds of needs in question and that are consequently able to institute an estimation of the value of the same.
"But I feel obliged to put in a word for the pig and the fool. The difficulty is greater than Mill imagines. Man, it is true, knows all the wants of the pig, and it would not be difficult for a Socrates to comprehend those of the fool. But man does not have the wants of the pig, nor Socrates those of the fool, as his sole and only dominant wants. And yet this is the very circumstance that determines the matter. Man cannot transform himself into a pig without ceasing to be a man, and a Socrates will hardly be able so to identify himself with a fool as to lose completely his Socratic wants. If, now, the pig can attain the complete satisfaction of all his wants, is not his happiness greater than that of man whose desires and whose longings are never wholly satisfied? And the fool, who does not nourish many thoughts and makes no great demands upon life, is he not happier than Socrates who spends his whole life in striving to know himself and to stimulate others, only finally to declare that death is really preferable to life?"