Necessity of choosing between evolutionism and hedonism.
It follows, therefore, that, without adopting a pessimist view, we must still make our choice between evolutionism and hedonism. The course of evolution—so far as experience helps us to understand it—cannot be measured by increase of pleasure. Nothing is said here to show that it is not perfectly consistent to hold that the moral feelings and ideas, the customs to which they have given rise, and the institutions in which they are embodied, have been produced by the ordinary laws of evolution, and yet to maintain that the moral end for reflective beings is the hedonistic or utilitarian end. It may be possible, that is to say, to be an evolutionist in psychology and sociology, at the same time that one is a hedonist in ethics. But it is not allowable to adopt pleasure as the end, and yet speak of it as determined by evolution. Evolution can determine no such end until it be shown that the progress it connotes implies a proportionate increase of pleasure.
Such is the conclusion to which we are led by a consideration of the bearings of evolution upon the increase of pleasure and pain. But this argument requires to be supplemented by the more satisfactory method of an independent analysis of pleasure in relation to the development of human nature; and from this analysis we may hope to discover how far the theory of evolution is consistent with the ethics of hedonism.
4. The psychological analysis of pleasure and pain in relation to the ethics of evolution.
The relative and transient nature of pleasure has been urged as an objection against any form of hedonism by many philosophers since the time of Plato. And the argument has of late years been brought forward in a way which shows that the calculus of "pleasures" and "pains" which Bentham's ethics implies is much less certain and easy than its author supposed. This has been made clear both by the subtle analysis carried out by the late Professor Green, and by Professor Sidgwick's examination of the difficulties which beset the "hedonistic calculus." It does not appear, however, to have been made out that the nature of pleasure proves hedonism to be impossible as the end of conduct. But it may, perhaps, appear that the case is altered when we consider the matter in the light of the evolutionist form of hedonism now under examination, and estimate from this point of view the ethical bearings of the psychological analysis of feeling.
The difficulty of defining pleasure or pain is not the same as the difficulty or impossibility of defining any elementary sensation. For the latter is connected in definite ways with other similar sensations, can be compared and associated with them, and by such association go to make up an object or thing. |(a) The purely subjective nature of pleasure;| But pleasure and pain are neither objects nor parts of objects: they cannot be distinguished from or associated with the impressions of the senses so as to constitute an object. They can only be spoken of as an affection of the percipient and active subject, different in kind both from the objects it knows and the acts it performs: each can only be defined as the opposite of the other. Pleasure and pain are not real phenomena with a distinguishable existence of their own, like sensations, conceptions, or actions; they have no trace of objectivity whatever, but are, as Hamilton puts it,[176] "subjectively subjective": "pleasure is not a fact, nor is pain a fact, but one fact is pleasurable, another painful."[177] |its connection with objective states of mind,| Pleasure, therefore, is a mere feeling of the subject, concomitant with the sensory or motor presentations which, by reason of their presence to consciousness, we call objects or actions. It is not something by itself which we can choose rather than something else, as we may select a peach instead of an apple. |through which it may be made the end of conduct.| It can only be made the end of conduct in an indirect way. We must aim not at pleasure per se, but at objects which we have reason to believe will be accompanied by pleasurable feeling. Pleasure and pain, as it has been urged,[178] are not quantities that can be added and subtracted. It is not the pleasurable or painful feeling, but the perceptional or cognitive elements in the mental state of which it is an element, that admit of plurality and measurement. But we may foresee that one mental state will be accompanied by pleasurable, another by painful feeling, and, on that account, we may choose the former. In a great number of cases we are further able to make a quantitative estimate, and to say that the pleasurable feeling accompanying one object or action is more intense than that accompanying another, and thus to choose one object rather than another, not merely because one is pleasurable while the other is painful, but (in cases where both are pleasurable) because it is supposed that the one will yield more intense or more prolonged pleasure than the other. If this be true, the purely subjective nature of pleasure does not make it impossible for it to be taken as the practical end of conduct for the individual—however inexact and tentative many of its estimates must be—though it will shortly appear that its nature unfits it to be the end on the theory of evolution.
The difficulty arises when we attempt to interpret, by means of pleasure, the increase and development of life to which the course of evolution tends, and which is sometimes put forward as the end which the evolution-theory prescribes for conduct. And the difficulty also meets us when we seek to explain the conception of a maximum of pleasures as the end, by means of the conception of evolution.
As long as we are content to look upon human nature as consisting of constant sources of activity and enjoyment, and having fixed susceptibilities for pleasure and pain, it is easy to adopt the increase of pleasure and diminution of pain as our aim. But the case is altered when we take into consideration the fact that man's actions and sensibilities are subject to indefinite modification. Pleasure, as we have seen, is a feeling of the subject dependent upon the objects, sensory and motor, present at any time to consciousness. These objects alone can be our end; but we may aim at certain of them rather than others, simply on account of their pleasurable accompaniment. It may happen, however, that an object or action at one time pleasurable becomes painful at another time, and that what is now painful ceases to be so and becomes pleasurable. In this case our course of action, if motived by pleasure, would have to be entirely changed, our practical ethics revised and reversed. And, although no sudden alteration such as this ever takes place, the theory of evolution shows that a gradual modification of the kind is going on.
(b) The conditions of pleasure and pain: