But if utilitarian conduct is not a political duty, it may seem evident that it is at least a moral duty. Now a moral duty is said by Bentham[38] to be "created by a kind of motive which, from the uncertainty of the persons to apply it, and of the species and degree in which it will be applied, has hardly yet got the name of punishment: by various mortifications resulting from the ill-will of persons uncertain and variable,—the community in general; that is, such individuals of that community as he whose duty is in question shall happen to be connected with." In plain language, then, moral duty simply means the ill-will of a man's neighbours which follows his conduct in so far as that conduct affects them disagreeably. Such ill-will on the part of a man's neighbours may result from success or from failure on his part, from a breach of etiquette, from refusal to sacrifice to the caprice of those neighbours the wider good of the society whom his conduct affects (but to whom it may be unknown), from deception or from telling the truth. In a word, the duty—that is, the punishment—is entirely uncertain: not only as regards the persons applying it, its nature and its amount, but also as regards the kind of actions to which it applies. They will be actions unpleasant to the people who inflict the punishment, but not necessarily hurtful to the common weal: since the immediate effects of an action are easily recognised, while its wider and more lasting consequences are neither so apparent nor appeal so surely to the interest of those who are cognisant of the action and immediately affected by it. Moral duty, therefore, as Bentham defines it, depending on, or rather identical with, the ill-will of one's neighbours, is indefinite and limited in its nature, and can command or sanction no such definite and wide-reaching rule for conduct as that a man should always act for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people whom his action may affect. Utilitarian conduct, therefore, is neither a political duty nor a moral duty; |(c) nor insisted on as a religious duty,| nor does Bentham follow Paley in insisting upon it as a religious duty "created by punishment; by punishment expected at the hands of a person certain—the Supreme Being." And "if he persists in asserting it to be a duty—but without meaning it to be understood that it is on any one of these three accounts that he looks upon it as such—all he then asserts is his own internal sentiment; all he means then is that he feels himself pleased or displeased at the thoughts of the point of conduct in question, but without being able to tell why. In this case he should e'en say so; and not seek to give an undue influence to his own single suffrage, by delivering it in terms that purport to declare the voice either of God, or of the law, or of the people."[39]
This plain piece of advice which Bentham gives to Blackstone is not often neglected by himself. The motive, he once said, of his own exceptional devotion to the interests of the community was that it pleased him. "I am a selfish man," he wrote, "as selfish as any man can be. But in me, somehow or other, so it happens, selfishness has taken the shape of benevolence."[40] But when the matter is thus brought back from the regions of political, moral, and religious duty, |(d) nor sufficiently motived in private ethics,| to the individual ground of "private ethics," we have still to refer to Bentham's own discussion of the question, "What motives (independent of such as legislation and religion may chance to furnish) can one man have to consult the happiness of another?"[41] Bentham at once replies—and indeed the answer on his principles is obvious enough—that there is no motive which always continues adequate. But yet there are, he says, "no occasions in which a man has not some motives for consulting the happiness of other men." Such are "the purely-social motive of sympathy or benevolence," and "the semi-social motives of love of amity and love of reputation." A man is directly moved to promote the happiness of others through the sympathetic feelings which make the happiness of others in some degree pleasurable to himself; and he is indirectly moved to promote their happiness through his desire of their friendship and good opinion. So far, therefore, it is quite true that "private ethics"—or what Bentham regards as such—"concerns every member—that is, the happiness and the actions of every member of any community that can be proposed."[42] It certainly concerns their happiness, but only in so far as this is a means to the happiness of the agent. So that when Bentham says that "there is no case in which a private man ought not to direct his own conduct to the production of his own happiness and of that of his fellow-creatures," he should rather say that a man will[43] only direct his conduct to the happiness of his fellow-creatures in so far as such action leads to his own happiness. |which can be reduced to prudence.| Private ethics, therefore, has to do with the happiness of others only so far as this reacts on the happiness of self; or, as Bentham ultimately defines it, in terms to which no exception can be taken: "Private ethics teaches how each man may dispose himself to pursue the course most conducive to his own happiness by means of such motives as offer of themselves."[44]
3. Bentham's treatment exhaustive from his point of view.
Under Bentham's hands "private ethics" is thus reduced to prudence, at the same time that the author has failed to show why the general happiness is to be aimed at by the individual as a religious or political or moral duty. Nor is this failure due to any lack of skill in following out the consequences which his premisses involved. The arguments used against him have thus an equally valid application to all who adopt the same general line of thought. For Bentham appears to have seen as clearly as any of his disciples the difficulty of bringing the egoistic basis of his theory of human nature into harmony with the universal reference required by his ethics. And the criticism already offered of the way in which Bentham attempts to bring about this connection may be shown not to be restricted to his special way of putting the case.
It is necessary to remember that throughout this chapter we are looking from the individual's point of view, and inquiring how far it is possible to work from it in the direction of utilitarianism. Now it is admitted that, in pursuing his own happiness, he is sometimes led, and may be led on the whole, to neglect the general happiness. A sufficient reason for following the latter—or an obligation to do it—can therefore only come either from the supreme power or from one's fellow-men, and from the latter either as organised in the State, and expressing themselves by its constituted authorities, or else by the vaguer method of social praise and blame. Bentham's classification of the possible sources or kinds of duty into religious, political, and moral [or social], is therefore a natural consequence of the individualistic system.
(a) The religious sanction,
The first of these possible sources of duty is indeed only mentioned by Bentham, and then passed by. And yet it might seem that the religious sanction is a more efficient motive-power than the social, while it applies to regions of conduct which legal enactment cannot reach. Without question, the operation of such a motive is capable of bringing egoistic conduct into harmony with utilitarianism, or with any other principle of action to which the sanction may be attached. |relied on by Paley,| "Private happiness is our motive, and the will of God our rule," says Paley;[45] and in this case such conduct will be obligatory as the rule may arbitrarily determine; while, whatever it may be, there will be a strong enough motive to follow it. The whole fabric of a moral philosophy such as Paley's, therefore, rests on two theological propositions—that God has ordained the general happiness as the rule of human conduct, and that He will punish in another life those who disregard that rule. The basis of morality is laid in a divine command enforced by a divine threat. Perhaps it will be generally agreed that Bentham acted wisely in not laying stress on this application of the "religious sanction." Even those least inclined to theological agnosticism would reject any such rough-and-ready |inverts the relation between ethics and theology.| solution of the problem which deals with the relation of morality to the divine nature. Paley's method of treatment, they would say, inverts the relation in which theism stands to morality. The divine will cannot be thus arbitrarily connected with the moral law. It can be conceived to approve and sanction such an object as the happiness of mankind only when God is first of all regarded as a moral being, and the happiness of mankind as an object of moral action. If any relation of consequence can be asserted between them, the general happiness is to be regarded as a moral duty first, and only afterwards as a religious duty.
(b) Limits of the political sanction.
When he comes to the political sanction, Bentham's treatment wants nothing in respect of fulness, and even those who do not agree with his estimate of the infelicific character of many existing institutions and enactments will admit that even the best-intentioned legislator cannot make utilitarian conduct a political duty. We must bear in mind here, also, the effect which individual desires and opinions have not only on social judgments, but also on statute-law. In arguing on the relation of the individual to the State, we are too ready to forget that the State is represented by a legislator or body of legislators, and that we can never assume that in their cases private interest has already become identified with the larger interests of the community.[46] For were this the case, the accusation of class-legislation or private interest would not be heard so often as it is.