یکشنبه ۰۸ مهر ۰۳ | ۱۹:۵۶ ۹ بازديد
fully admit, and have stated it elsewhere, as positively
and emphatically as any one. Will, the active
phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of
passive sensibility, and though originally an offshoot
from it, may in time take root and detach itself from the
parent stock; so much so, that in the case of an habitual
purpose, instead of willing the thing because we desire it,
we often desire it only because we will it. This, however,
is but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit,
and is nowise confined to the case of virtuous actions.
Many indifferent things, which men originally did from a
motive of some sort, they continue to do from habit.
Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the consciousness
coming only after the action: at other times with
conscious volition, but volition which has become
habitual, and is put into operation by the force of habit,
in opposition perhaps to the deliberate preference, as
often happens with those who have contracted habits of
vicious or hurtful indulgence. Third and last comes the
case in which the habitual act of will in the individual
instance is not in contradiction to the general intention
prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as in the
case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who
pursue deliberately and consistently any determinate end.
The distinction between will and desire thus understood,
is an authentic and highly important psychological fact;72
other parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit, and
that we may will from habit what we no longer desire for
itself, or desire only because we will it. It is not the less
true that will, in the beginning, is entirely produced by
desire; including in that term the repelling influence of
pain as well as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take
into consideration, no longer the person who has a
confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous
will is still feeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to
be fully relied on; by what means can it be strengthened?
How can the will to be virtuous, where it does not exist
in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened? Only by
making the person desire virtue—by making him think
of it in a pleasurable light, or of its absence in a painful
one. It is by associating the doing right with pleasure, or
the doing wrong with pain, or by eliciting and impressing
and bringing home to the person's experience the
pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain in the
other, that it is possible to call forth that will to be
virtuous, which, when confirmed, acts without any
thought of either pleasure or pain. Will is the child of
desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only
to come under that of habit. That which is the result of
habit affords no presumption of being intrinsically good;
and there would be no reason for wishing that the
purpose of virtue should become independent of pleasure73
and painful associations which prompt to virtue is not
sufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of
action until it has acquired the support of habit. Both in
feeling and in conduct, habit is the only thing which
imparts certainty; and it is because of the importance to
others of being able to rely absolutely on one's feelings
and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's
own, that the will to do right ought to be cultivated into
this habitual independence. In other words, this state of
the will is a means to good, not intrinsically a good; and
does not contradict the doctrine that nothing is a good to
human beings but in so far as it is either itself
pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting
pain.
But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is
proved. Whether it is so or not, must now be left to the
consideration of the thoughtful reader.74
Between Justice and Utility
*
In all ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles
to the reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness
is the criterion of right and wrong, has been drawn from
the idea of Justice, The powerful sentiment, and
apparently clear perception, which that word recalls with
a rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct, have
seemed to the majority of thinkers to point to an inherent
quality in things; to show that the Just must have an
existence in Nature as something absolute-generically
distinct from every variety of the Expedient, and, in idea,
opposed to it, though (as is commonly acknowledged)
never, in the long run, disjoined from it in fact.
In the case of this, as of our other moral sentiments, there
is no necessary connexion between the question of its
origin, and that of its binding force. That a feeling is
bestowed on us by Nature, does not necessarily75
be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our
other instincts, to be controlled and enlightened by a
higher reason. If we have intellectual instincts, leading us
to judge in a particular way, as well as animal instincts
that prompt us to act in a particular way, there is no
necessity that the former should be more infallible in
their sphere than the latter in theirs: it may as well
happen that wrong judgments are occasionally suggested
by those, as wrong actions by these. But though it is one
thing to believe that we have natural feelings of justice,
and another to acknowledge them as an ultimate criterion
of conduct, these two opinions are very closely
connected in point of fact. Mankind are always
predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not
otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some
objective reality. Our present object is to determine
whether the reality, to which the feeling of justice
corresponds, is one which needs any such special
revelation; whether the justice or injustice of an action is
a thing intrinsically peculiar, and distinct from all its
other qualities, or only a combination of certain of those
qualities, presented under a peculiar aspect. For the
purpose of this inquiry, it is practically important to
consider whether the feeling itself, of justice and
injustice, is sui generis like our sensations of colour and
taste, or a derivative feeling, formed by a combination of76
people are in general willing enough to allow, that
objectively the dictates of justice coincide with a part of
the field of General Expediency; but inasmuch as the
subjective mental feeling of Justice is different from that
which commonly attaches to simple expediency, and,
except in extreme cases of the latter, is far more
imperative in its demands, people find it difficult to see,
in Justice, only a particular kind or branch of general
utility, and think that its superior binding force requires a
totally different origin.
To throw light upon this question, it is necessary to
attempt to ascertain what is the distinguishing character
of justice, or of injustice: what is the quality, or whether
there is any quality, attributed in common to all modes of
conduct designated as unjust (for justice, like many other
moral attributes, is best defined by its opposite), and
distinguishing them from such modes of conduct as are
disapproved, but without having that particular epithet of
disapprobation applied to them. If, in everything which
men are accustomed to characterize as just or unjust,
some one common attribute or collection of attributes is
always present, we may judge whether this particular
attribute or combination of attributes would be capable
of gathering round it a sentiment of that peculiar
character and intensity by virtue of the general laws of77
inexplicable, and requires to be regarded as a special
provision of Nature. If we find the former to be the case,
we shall, in resolving this question, have resolved also
the main problem: if the latter, we shall have to seek for
some other mode of investigating it.
*
To find the common attributes of a variety of objects, it
is necessary to begin, by surveying the objects
themselves in the concrete. Let us therefore advert
successively to the various modes of action, and
arrangements of human affairs, which are classed, by
universal or widely spread opinion, as Just or as Unjust.
The things well known to excite the sentiments
associated with those names, are of a very multifarious
character. I shall pass them rapidly in review, without
studying any particular arrangement.
In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to deprive
any one of his personal liberty, his property, or any other
thing which belongs to him by law. Here, therefore, is
one instance of the application of the terms just and
unjust in a perfectly definite sense, namely, that it is just
to respect, unjust to violate, the legal rights of any one.
But this judgment admits of several exceptions, arising78
injustice present themselves. For example, the person
who suffers the deprivation may (as the phrase is) have
forfeited the rights which he is so deprived of: a case to
which we shall return presently. But also,
Secondly; the legal rights of which he is deprived, may
be rights which ought not to have belonged to him; in
other words, the law which confers on him these rights,
may be a bad law. When it is so, or when (which is the
same thing for our purpose) it is supposed to be so,
opinions will differ as to the justice or injustice of
infringing it. Some maintain that no law, however bad,
ought to be disobeyed by an individual citizen; that his
opposition to it, if shown at all, should only be shown in
endeavouring to get it altered by competent authority.
This opinion (which condemns many of the most
illustrious benefactors of mankind, and would often
protect pernicious institutions against the only weapons
which, in the state of things existing at the time, have any
chance of succeeding against them) is defended, by those
who hold it, on grounds of expediency; principally on
that of the importance, to the common interest of
mankind, of maintaining inviolate the sentiment of
submission to law. Other persons, again, hold the directly
contrary opinion, that any law, judged to be bad, may
blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it be not judged79
confine the licence of disobedience to
necessary to show, not only that people desire happiness,
but that they never desire anything else. Now it is
palpable that they do desire things which, in common
language, are decidedly distinguished from happiness.
They desire, for example, virtue, and the absence of vice,
no less really than pleasure and the absence of pain. The
desire of virtue is not as universal, but it is as authentic a
fact, as the desire of happiness. And hence the opponents
of the utilitarian standard deem that they have a right to
infer that there are other ends of human action besides
happiness, and that happiness is not the standard of
approbation and disapprobation.
But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire
virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired?
The very reverse. It maintains not only that virtue is to be
desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for
itself. Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian
moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is
made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that
actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they
promote another end than virtue; yet this being granted,
and it having been decided, from considerations of this
description, what is virtuous, they not only place virtue at
the very head of the things which are good as means to
the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a65
individual, a good in itself, without looking to any end
beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a right state,
not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most
conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love
virtue in this manner—as a thing desirable in itself, even
although, in the individual instance, it should not
produce those other desirable consequences which it
tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be
virtue. This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a
departure from the Happiness principle. The ingredients
of happiness are very various, and each of them is
desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as
swelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not
mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance, or
any given exemption from pain, as for example health,
are to be looked upon as means to a collective something
termed happiness, and to be desired on that account.
They are desired and desirable in and for themselves;
besides being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue,
according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and
originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming
so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become
so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to
happiness, but as a part of their happiness.
To illustrate this farther, we may remember that virtue is66
were not a means to anything else, would be and remain
indifferent, but which by association with what it is a
means to, comes to be desired for itself, and that too with
the utmost intensity. What, for example, shall we say of
the love of money? There is nothing originally more
desirable about money than about any heap of glittering
pebbles. Its worth is solely that of the things which it will
buy; the desires for other things than itself, which it is a
means of gratifying. Yet the love of money is not only
one of the strongest moving forces of human life, but
money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the
desire to possess it is often stronger than the desire to use
it, and goes on increasing when all the desires which
point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling
off. It may be then said truly, that money is desired not
for the sake of an end, but as part of the end. From being
a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a principal
ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness.
The same may be said of the majority of the great objects
of human life—power, for example, or fame; except that
to each of these there is a certain amount of immediate
pleasure annexed, which has at least the semblance of
being naturally inherent in them; a thing which cannot be
said of money. Still, however, the strongest natural
attraction, both of power and of fame, is the immense aid
they give to the attainment of our other wishes; and it is67
all our objects of desire, which gives to the direct desire
of them the intensity it often assumes, so as in some
characters to surpass in strength all other desires. In these
cases the means have become a part of the end, and a
more important part of it than any of the things which
they are means to. What was once desired as an
instrument for the attainment of happiness, has come to
be desired for its own sake. In being desired for its own
sake it is, however, desired as part of happiness. The
person is made, or thinks he would be made, happy by its
mere possession; and is made unhappy by failure to
obtain it. The desire of it is not a different thing from the
desire of happiness, any more than the love of music, or
the desire of health. They are included in happiness.
They are some of the elements of which the desire of
happiness is made up. Happiness is not an abstract idea,
but a concrete whole; and these are some of its parts.
And the utilitarian standard sanctions and approves their
being so. Life would be a poor thing, very ill provided
with sources of happiness, if there were not this
provision of nature, by which things originally
indifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated
with, the satisfaction of our primitive desires, become in
themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the
primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space of
human existence that they are capable of covering, and68
conception, is a good of this description. There was no
original desire of it, or motive to it, save its
conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protection
from pain. But through the association thus formed, it
may be felt a good in itself, and desired as such with as
great intensity as any other good; and with this difference
between it and the love of money, of power, or of fame,
that all of these may, and often do, render the individual
noxious to the other members of the society to which he
belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so
much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the
disinterested, love of virtue. And consequently, the
utilitarian standard, while it tolerates and approves those
other acquired desires, up to the point beyond which they
would be more injurious to the general happiness than
promotive of it, enjoins and requires the cultivation of
the love of virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as
being above all things important to the general happiness.
It results from the preceding considerations, that there is
in reality nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is
desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond
itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a
part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has
become so. Those who desire virtue for its own sake,
desire it either because the consciousness of it is a69
it is a pain, or for both reasons united; as in truth the
pleasure and pain seldom exist separately, but almost
always together, the same person feeling pleasure in the
degree of virtue attained, and pain in not having attained
more. If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other
no pain, he would not love or desire virtue, or would
desire it only for the other benefits which it might
produce to himself or to persons whom he cared for.
We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what
sort of proof the principle of utility is susceptible. If the
opinion which I have now stated is psychologically true
—if human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing
which is not either a part of happiness or a means of
happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require
no other, that these are the only things desirable. If so,
happiness is the sole end of human action, and the
promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human
conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must
be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the
whole.
And now to decide whether this is really so; whether
mankind do desire nothing for itself but that which is a
pleasure to them, or of which the absence is a pain; we
have evidently arrived at a question of fact and70
evidence. It can only be determined by practised self-
consciousness and self-observation, assisted by
observation of others. I believe that these sources of
evidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desiring
a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking
of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or
rather two parts of the same phenomenon; in strictness of
language, two different modes of naming the same
psychological fact: that to think of an object as desirable
(unless for the sake of its consequences), and to think of
it as pleasant, are one and the same thing; and that to
desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is
pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it will
hardly be disputed: and the objection made will be, not
that desire can possibly be directed to anything
ultimately except pleasure and exemption from pain, but
that the will is a different thing from desire; that a person
of confirmed virtue, or any other person whose purposes
are fixed, carries out his purposes without any thought of
the pleasure he has in contemplating them, or expects to
derive from their fulfilment; and persists in acting on
them, even though these pleasures are much diminished,
by changes in his character or decay of his passive
sensibilities, or are outweighed by the pains which the71
fully admit, and have stated it elsewhere, as positively
and emphatically as any one. Will, the active
phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of
passive sensibility, and though originally an offshoot
from it, may in time take root and detach itself from the
parent stock; so much so, that in the case of an habitual
purpose, instead of willing the thing because we desire it,
we often desire it only because we will it. This, however,
is but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit,
and is nowise confined to the case of virtuous actions.
Many indifferent things, which men originally did from a
motive of some sort, they continue to do from habit.
Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the consciousness
coming only after the action: at other times with
conscious volition, but volition which has become
habitual, and is put into operation by the force of habit,
in opposition perhaps to the deliberate preference, as
often happens with those who have contracted habits of
vicious or hurtful indulgence. Third and last comes the
case in which the habitual act of will in the individual
instance is not in contradiction to the general intention
prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as in the
case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who
pursue deliberately and consistently any determinate end.
The distinction between will and desire thus understood,
is an authentic and highly important psychological fact;72
other parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit, and
that we may will from habit what we no longer desire for
itself, or desire only because we will it. It is not the less
true that will, in the beginning, is entirely produced by
desire; including in that term the repelling influence of
pain as well as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take
into consideration, no longer the person who has a
confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous
will is still feeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to
be fully relied on; by what means can it be strengthened?
How can the will to be virtuous, where it does not exist
in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened? Only by
making the person desire virtue—by making him think
of it in a pleasurable light, or of its absence in a painful
one. It is by associating the doing right with pleasure, or
the doing wrong with pain, or by eliciting and impressing
and bringing home to the person's experience the
pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain in the
other, that it is possible to call forth that will to be
virtuous, which, when confirmed, acts without any
thought of either pleasure or pain. Will is the child of
desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only
to come under that of habit. That which is the result of
habit affords no presumption of being intrinsically good;
and there would be no reason for wishing that the
purpose of virtue should become independent of pleasure73
and painful associations which pro
recognize it, to wait for those social influences which
would make its obligation felt by mankind at large. In the
comparatively early state of human advancement in
which we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that
entireness of sympathy with all others, which would
make any real discordance in the general direction of
their conduct in life impossible; but already a person in
whom the social feeling is at all developed, cannot bring
himself to think of the rest of his fellow creatures as
struggling rivals with him for the means of happiness,
whom he must desire to see defeated in their object in
order that he may succeed in his. The deeply-rooted
conception which every individual even now has of
himself as a social being, tends to make him feel it one of
his natural wants that there should be harmony between
his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures. If
differences of opinion and of mental culture make it
impossible for him to share many of their actual feelings-
perhaps make him denounce and defy those feelings-he
still needs to be conscious that his real aim and theirs do
not conflict; that he is not opposing himself to what they
really wish for, namely, their own good, but is, on the
contrary, promoting it. This feeling in most individuals is
much inferior in strength to their selfish feelings, and is
often wanting altogether. But to those who have it, it
possesses all the characters of a natural feeling. It does61
education, or a law despotically imposed by the power of
society, but as an attribute which it would not be well for
them to be without. This conviction is the ultimate
sanction of the greatest-happiness morality. This it is
which makes any mind, of well-developed feelings, work
with, and not against, the outward motives to care for
others, afforded by what I have called the external
sanctions; and when those sanctions are wanting, or act
in an opposite direction, constitutes in itself a powerful
internal binding force, in proportion to the sensitiveness
and thoughtfulness of the character; since few but those
whose mind is a moral blank, could bear to lay out their
course of life on the plan of paying no regard to others
except so far as their own private interest compels.62
Proof the Principle of Utility is
Susceptible
*
It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate
ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of
the term. To be incapable of proof by reasoning is
common to all first principles; to the first premises of our
knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the
former, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a
direct appeal to the faculties which judge of fact—
namely, our senses, and our internal consciousness. Can
an appeal be made to the same faculties on questions of
practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cognizance
taken of them?
Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what
things are desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is, that
happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an63
end. What ought to be required of this doctrine—what
conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should fulfil—
to make good its claim to be believed?
The only proof capable of being given that an object is
visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that
a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the
other sources of our experience. In like manner, I
apprehend, the sole evidence it is possi
most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the
other acquired capacities above referred to, the moral
faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural outgrowth
from it; capable, like them, in a certain small degree, of
springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being
brought by cultivation to a high degree of development.
Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a sufficient use of the
external sanctions and of the force of early impressions,
of being cultivated in almost any direction: so that there
is hardly anything so absurd or so mischievous that it
may not, by means of these influences, be made to act on
the human mind with all the authority of conscience. To
doubt that the same potency might be given by the same
means to the principle of utility, even if it had no
foundation in human nature, would be flying in the face
of all experience.
But moral associations which are wholly of artificial
creation, when intellectual culture goes on, yield by
degrees to the dissolving force of analysis: and if the
feeling of duty, when associated with utility, would
appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading
department of our nature, no powerful class of
sentiments, with which that association would
harmonize, which would make us feel it congenial, and
incline us not only to foster it in others (for which we56
in ourselves; if there were not, in short, a natural basis of
sentiment for utilitarian morality, it might well happen
that this association also, even after it had been
implanted by education, might be analysed away.
But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment; and
this it is which, when once the general happiness is
recognized as the ethical standard, will constitute the
strength of the utilitarian morality. This firm foundation
is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be
in unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a
powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of
those which tend to become stronger, even without
express inculcation, from the influences of advancing
civilization. The social state is at once so natural, so
necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some
unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary
abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as
a member of a body; and this association is riveted more
and more, as mankind are further removed from the state
of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which
is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more
an inseparable part of every person's conception of the
state of things which he is born into, and which is the
destiny of a human being. Now, society between human
beings, except in the relation of master and slave, is57
interests of all are to be consulted. Society between
equals can only exist on the understanding that the
interests of all are to be regarded equally. And since in
all states of civilization, every person, except an absolute
monarch, has equals, every one is obliged to live on
these terms with somebody; and in every age some
advance is made towards a state in which it will be
impossible to live permanently on other terms with
anybody. In this way people grow up unable to conceive
as possible to them a state of total disregard of other
people's interests. They are under a necessity of
conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from all the
grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection.)
living in a state of constant protest against them. They
are also familiar with the fact of co-operating with
others, and proposing to themselves a collective, not an
individual, interest, as the aim
obedient to any other moral principle than to the
utilitarian one. On them morality of any kind has no hold
but through the external sanctions. Meanwhile the
feelings exist, a feet in human nature, the reality of
which, and the great power with which they are capable
of acting on those in whom they have been duly
cultivated, are proved by experience. No reason has ever
been shown why they may not be cultivated to as great
intensity in connection with the utilitarian, as with any
other rule of morals.
There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a
person who sees in moral obligation a transcendental
fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of
"Things in themselves," is likely to be more obedient to
it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective,
having its seat in human consciousness only. But
whatever a person's opinion may be on this point of
Ontology, the force he is really urged by is his own
subjective feeling, and is exactly measured by its
strength. No one's belief that Duty is an objective reality
is stronger than the belief that God is so; yet the belief in
God, apart from the expectation of actual reward and
punishment, only operates on conduct through, and in
proportion to, the subjective religious feeling. The
sanction, so far as it is disinterested, is always in the53
transcendental moralists must be, that this sanction will
not exist in the mind unless it is believed to have its root
out of the mind; and that if a person is able to say to
himself, That which is restraining me, and which is
called my conscience, is only a feeling in my own mind,
he may possibly draw the conclusion that when the
feeling ceases the obligation ceases, and that if he find
the feeling inconvenient, he may disregard it, and
endeavour to get rid of it. But is this danger confined to
the utilitarian morality? Does the belief that moral
obligation has its seat outside the mind make the feeling
of it too strong to be got rid of? The fact is so far
otherwise, that all moralists admit and lament the ease
with which, in the generality of minds, conscience can be
silenced or stifled. The question, Need I obey my
conscience? is quite as often put to themselves by
persons who never heard of the principle of utility, as by
its adherents. Those whose conscientious feelings are so
weak as to allow of their asking this question, if they
answer it affirmatively, will not do so because they
believe in the transcendental theory, but because of the
external sanctions.
It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to decide
whether the feeling of duty is innate or implanted.
Assuming it to be innate, it is an open question to what54
supporters of that theory are now agreed that the intuitive
perception is of principles of morality, and not of the
details. If there be anything innate in the matter, I see no
reason why the feeling which is innate should not be that
of regard to the pleasures and pains of others. If there is
any principle of morals which is intuitively obligatory, I
should say it must be that. If so, the intuitive ethics
would coincide with the utilitarian, and there would be
no further quarrel between them. Even as it is, the
intuitive moralists, though they believe that there are
other intuitive moral obligations, do already believe this
to be one; for they unanimously hold that a large portion
of morality turns upon the consideration due to the
interests of our fellow creatures. Therefore, if the belief
in the transcendental origin of moral obligation gives any
additional efficacy to the internal sanction, it appears to
me that the utilitarian principle has already the benefit of
it.
On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral
feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that
reason the less natural. It is natural to man to speak, to
reason, to build cities, to cultivate the ground, though
these are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not
indeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being hi any
perceptible degree present in all of us; but this,55
most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the
other acquired capacities above referred to, the moral
faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural outgrowth
from it; capable, like them, in a certain small degree, of
springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being
brought by cultivation to a high degree of development.
Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a sufficient use of the
external sanctions and of the force of early impressions,
of being cultivated in almost any direction: so that there
is hardly anything so absurd or so mischievous that it
may not, by means of these influences, be made to act on
the human mind with all the authority of conscience. To
doubt that the same potency might be given by the same
means to the principle of utility, even if it had no
foundation in human nature, would be flying in the face
of all fluence of considerations of utility,
afford a free scope for the action of personal desires and
partialities. We must remember that only in these cases
of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite
that first principles should be appealed to. There is no
case of moral obligation in which some secondary
principle is not involved; and if only one, the
another, and marking out the region within which one or
the other preponderates.
Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called
upon to reply to such objections as this—that there is not
time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the
effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness.
This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is
impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because
there is not time, on every occasion on which anything
has to be done, to read through the Old and New
Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has
been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the
human species. During all that time mankind have been
learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on
which experience all the prudence, as well as all the
morality of life, is dependent. People talk as if the
commencement of this course of experience had hitherto
been put off, and as if, at the moment when some man
feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of
another, he had to begin considering for the first time
whether murder and theft are injurious to human
happiness. Even then I do not think that he would find
the question very puzzling; but, at all events, the matter
is now done to his hand. It is truly a whimsical
supposition, that if mankind were agreed in considering42
without any agreement as to what is useful, and would
take no measures for having their notions on the subject
taught to the young, and enforced by law and opinion.
There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard
whatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be
conjoined with it, but on any hypothesis short of that,
mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs
as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and
the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of
morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until
he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers
might easily do this, even now, on many subjects; that
the received code of ethics is by no means of divine
right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to the
effects of actions on the general happiness, I admit, or
rather, earnestly maintain. The corollaries from the
principle of utility, like the precepts of every practical
art, admit of indefinite improvement, and, in a
progressive state of the human mind, their improvement
is perpetually going on. But to consider the rules of
morality as improvable, is one thing; to pass that much towards weakening
the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only
the principal support of all present social well-being, but
the insufficiency of which does more than any one thing
that can be named to keep back civilisation, virtue,
everything on which human happiness on the largest
scale depends; we feel that the violation, for a present
advantage, of a rule of such transcendent expediency, is
not expedient, and that he who, for the sake of a
convenience to himself or to some other individual, does
what depends on him to deprive mankind of the good,
and inflict upon them the evil, involved in the greater or
less reliance which they can place in each other's word,
acts the part of one of their worst enemies. Yet that even
this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possible exceptions, is
acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is
when the withholding of some fact (as of information
from a male-factor, or of bad news from a person
dangerously ill) would preserve some one (especially a
person other than oneself) from great and unmerited evil,
and when the withholding can only be effected by denial.
But in order that the exception macation of a transcendental law,
having no connexion with usefulness or with happiness.
Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an
immoral doctrine by giving it the name of Expediency,
and taking advantage of the popular use of that term to
contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in the sense
in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that
which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent
himself: as when a minister sacrifices the interest of his
country to keep himself in place. When it means
anything better than this, it means that which is
expedient for some immediate object, some temporary
purpose, but which violates a rule whose observance is
expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in
this sense, instead of being the same thing with the
useful, is a branch of the hurtful. Thus, it would often be
expedient, for the purpose of getting over some
momentary embarrassment, or attaining some object
immediately useful to ourselves or others, to tell a lie.
But inasmuch as the cultivation in oy not extover the
intermediate generalizations entirely, at all against so mere an
assumption, we may say that the question depends upon
what idea we have formed of the moral character of the
Deity. If it be a true belief that God desires, above all
things, the happiness of his creatures, and that this was
his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a
godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any
other. If it be meant that utilitarianism does not recognise
the revealed will of God as the supreme law of morals, I
answer, that an utilitarian who believes in the perfect
goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily believes that
whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of
morals, must fulfil the requirements of utility in a
supreme degree. But others besides utilitarians have been
of opinion that the Christian revelation was intended, and
is fitted, to inform the hearts and minds of mankind with
a spirit which should enable them to find for themselves
what is right, and incline them to do it when found,
rather than to tell them, except in a very general way,
what it is: and that we need a doctrine o and endeavour to
test each individual action directly by the first principle,
is another. It is a strange notion that the acre can
seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in the mind of46
But moral associations which are wholly of artificial
creation, when intellectual culture goes on, yield by
degrees to the dissolving force of analysis: and if the
feeling of duty, when associated with utility, would
appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading
department of our nature, no powerful class of
sentiments, with which that associatio(at least for the time
being) of their actions. So long as they are co-operating,
their ends are identified with those of others; there is at
least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are
their own interests. Not only does all strengthening of
social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each
individual a stronger personal interest in practically
consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to
identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at
least with an ever greater degree of practical58
that anything is desirable, is that people do actually
desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine
proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice,
acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince
any person that it was so. No reason can be given why
the general happiness is desirable, except that each
person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires
his own happiness. This, however, being mpt to virtue is not
sufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of
action until it has acquired the support of habit. Both in
feeling and in conduct, habit is the only thing which
imparts certainty; and it is because of the importance to
others of being able to rely absolutely on one's feelings
and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's
own, that the will to do right ought to be cultivated into
this habitual independence. In other words, this state of
the will is a means to good, not intrinsically a good; and
does not contradict the doctrine that nothing is a good to
human beings but in so far as it is either itself
pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting
pain.
But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is
proved. Whether it is so or not, must now be left to the
consideration of the thoughtful reader.74
laws: but again, some say, that all laws which are
inexpedient are unjust; since every law imposes some
restriction on the natural liberty of mankind, which
restriction is an injustice, unless legitimated by tending
to their good. Among these diversities of opinion, it
seems to be universally admitted that there may be unjust
laws, and that law, consequently, is not the ultimate
criterion of justice, but may give to one person a benefit,
or impose on another an evil, which jus
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