CHAPTER VI

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS

§ 1. The results of the three preceding chapters may be briefly stated as follows:--

The aim of Ethics is to systematise and free from error the apparent cognitions that most men have of the rightness or reasonableness of conduct, whether the conduct be considered as right in itself, or as the means to some end commonly conceived as ultimately reasonable.[71] These cognitions are normally accompanied by emotions of various kinds, known as “moral sentiments”: but an ethical judgment cannot be explained as affirming merely the existence of such a sentiment: indeed it is an essential characteristic of a moral feeling that it is bound up with an apparent cognition of something more than mere feeling. Such cognitions, again, I have called ‘dictates,’ or ‘imperatives’; because, in so far as they relate to conduct on which any one is deliberating, they are accompanied by a certain impulse to do the acts recognised as right, which is liable to conflict with other impulses. Provided this impulse is effective in producing right volition, it is not of primary importance for ethical purposes to determine the exact characteristics of the emotional states that precede such volitions. And this remains true even if the force actually operating on his will is mere desire for the pleasures that he foresees will attend right conduct, or aversion to the pains that will result from doing wrong: though we observe that in this case his action does not correspond to our common notion of strictly virtuous conduct; and though there seems to be no ground for regarding such desires and aversions as the sole, or even the normal, motives of human volitions. Nor, again, is it generally important to determine whether we are always, metaphysically speaking, ‘free’ to do what we clearly see to be right. What I ‘ought’ to do, in the strictest use of the word ‘ought,’ is always ‘in my power,’ in the sense that there is no obstacle to my doing it except absence of adequate motive; and it is ordinarily impossible for me, in deliberation, to regard such absence of motive as a reason for not doing what I otherwise judge to be reasonable.

What then do we commonly regard as valid ultimate reasons for acting or abstaining? This, as was said, is the starting-point for the discussions of the present treatise: which is not primarily concerned with proving or disproving the validity of any such reasons, but rather with the critical exposition of the different ‘methods’--or rational procedures for determining right conduct in any particular case--which are logically connected with the different ultimate reasons widely accepted. In the first chapter we found that such reasons were supplied by the notions of Happiness and Excellence or Perfection (including Virtue or Moral Perfection as a prominent element), regarded as ultimate ends, and Duty as prescribed by unconditional rules. This threefold difference in the conception of the ultimate reason for conduct corresponds to what seem the most fundamental distinctions that we apply to human existence; the distinction between the conscious being and the stream of conscious experience, and the distinction (within this latter) of Action and Feeling. For Perfection is put forward as the ideal goal of the development of a human being, considered as a permanent entity; while by Duty, we mean the kind of Action that we think ought to be done; and similarly by Happiness or Pleasure we mean an ultimately desired or desirable kind of Feeling. It may seem, however, that these notions by no means exhaust the list of reasons which are widely accepted as ultimate grounds of action. Many religious persons think that the highest reason for doing anything is that it is God’s Will: while to others ‘Self-realisation’ or ‘Self-development,’ and to others, again, ‘Life according to nature’ appear the really ultimate ends. And it is not hard to understand why conceptions such as these are regarded as supplying deeper and more completely satisfying answers to the fundamental question of Ethics, than those before named: since they do not merely represent ‘what ought to be,’ as such; they represent it in an apparently simple relation to what actually is. God, Nature, Self, are the fundamental facts of existence; the knowledge of what will accomplish God’s Will, what is, ‘according to Nature,’ what will realise the true Self in each of us, would seem to solve the deepest problems of Metaphysics as well as of Ethics. But just because these notions combine the ideal with the actual, their proper sphere belongs not to Ethics as I define it, but to Philosophy--the central and supreme study which is concerned with the relations of all objects of knowledge. The introduction of these notions into Ethics is liable to bring with it a fundamental confusion between “what is” and “what ought to be,” destructive of all clearness in ethical reasoning: and if this confusion is avoided, the strictly ethical import of such notions, when made explicit, appears always to lead us to one or other of the methods previously distinguished.

There is least danger of confusion in the case of the theological conception of ‘God’s Will’; since here the connexion between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’ is perfectly clear and explicit. The content of God’s Will we conceive as presently existing, in idea: its actualisation is the end to be aimed at. There is indeed a difficulty in understanding how God’s Will can fail to be realised, whether we do right or wrong: or how, if it cannot fail to be realised in either case, its realisation can give the ultimate motive for doing right. But this difficulty it belongs to Theology rather than Ethics to solve. The practical question is, assuming that God wills in a special sense what we ought to do, how we are to ascertain this in any particular case. This must be either by Revelation or by Reason, or by both combined. If an external Revelation is proposed as the standard, we are obviously carried beyond the range of our study; on the other hand, when we try to ascertain by reason the Divine Will, the conception seems to present itself as a common form under which a religious mind is disposed to regard whatever method of determining conduct it apprehends to be rational; since we cannot know any act to be in accordance with the Divine Will, which we do not also, by the same exercise of thought, know to be dictated by reason. Thus, commonly, it is either assumed that God desires the Happiness of men, in which case our efforts should be concentrated on its production: or that He desires their Perfection, and that that should be our end: or that whatever His end may be (into which perhaps we have no right to inquire) His Laws are immediately cognisable, being in fact the first principles of Intuitional Morality. Or perhaps it is explained that God’s Will is to be learnt by examining our own constitution or that of the world we are in: so that ‘Conformity to God’s Will’ seems to resolve itself into ‘Self-realisation,’ or ‘Life according to nature.’ In any case, this conception, however important it may be in supplying new motives for doing what we believe to be right, does not--apart from Revelation--suggest any special criterion of rightness.

§ 2. Let us pass to consider the notions ‘Nature,’ ‘Natural,’ ‘Conformity to Nature.’ I assume--in order to obtain a principle distinct from ‘Self-realisation,’[72]--that the ‘Nature’ to which we are to conform is not each one’s own individual nature, but human nature generally, considered either apart from or in relation to its environment: that we are to find the standard of right conduct in a certain type of human existence which we can somehow abstract from observation of actual human life. Now in a certain sense every rational man must, of course, “conform to nature”; that is, in aiming at any ends, he must adapt his efforts to the particular conditions of his existence, physical and psychical. But if he is to go beyond this, and conform to ‘Nature’ in the adoption of an ultimate end or paramount standard of right conduct, it must be on the basis--if not of strictly Theological assumptions, at any rate--of the more or less definite recognition of Design exhibited in the empirically known world. If we find no design in nature, if the complex processes of the world known to us through experience are conceived as an aimless though orderly drift of change, the knowledge of these processes and their laws may indeed limit the aims of rational beings, but I cannot conceive how it can determine the ends of their action, or be a source of unconditional rules of duty. And in fact those who use ‘natural’ as an ethical notion do commonly suppose that by contemplating the actual play of human impulses, or the physical constitution of man, or his social relations, we may find principles for determining positively and completely the kind of life he was designed to live. I think, however, that every attempt thus to derive ‘what ought to be’ from ‘what is’ palpably fails, the moment it is freed from fundamental confusions of thought. For instance, suppose we seek practical guidance in the conception of human nature regarded as a system of impulses and dispositions, we must obviously give a special precision to the meaning of “natural”; since in a sense, as Butler observes, any impulse is natural, but it is manifestly idle to bid us follow Nature in this sense: for the question of duty is never raised except when we are conscious of a conflict of impulses, and wish to know which to follow. Nor does it help us to say that the supremacy of Reason is Natural, as we have started by assuming that what Reason prescribes is conformity to Nature, and thus our line of thought would become circular: the Nature that we are to follow must be distinguished from our Practical Reason, if it is to become a guide to it. How then are we to distinguish ‘natural impulses’--in the sense in which they are to guide rational choice--from the unnatural? Those who have occupied themselves with this distinction seem generally to have interpreted the Natural to mean either the _common_ as opposed to the rare and exceptional, or the _original_ as opposed to what is later in development; or, negatively, what is not the effect of human volition. But I have never seen any ground for assuming broadly that Nature abhors the exceptional, or prefers the earlier in time to the later; and when we take a retrospective view of the history of the human race, we find that some impulses which all admire, such as the love of knowledge and enthusiastic philanthropy, are both rarer and later in their appearance than others which all judge to be lower. Again, it is obviously unwarrantable to eschew as unnatural and opposed to the Divine design all such impulses as have been produced in us by the institutions of society, or our use of human arrangements and contrivances, or that result in any way from the deliberate action of our fellow-men: for this were arbitrarily to exclude society and human action from the scope of Nature’s purposes. And besides it is clear that many impulses so generated appear to be either moral or auxiliary to morality and in other ways beneficial: and though others no doubt are pernicious and misleading, it seems that we can only distinguish these latter from the former by taking note of their effects, and not by any precision that reflection can give to the notion of ‘natural.’ If, again, we fall back upon a more physical view of our nature and endeavour to ascertain for what end our corporeal frame was constructed, we find that such contemplation determines very little. We can infer from our nutritive system that we are intended to take food, and similarly that we are to exercise our various muscles in some way or other, and our brain and organs of sense. But this carries us a very trifling way, for the practical question almost always is, not whether we are to use our organs or leave them unused, but to what extent or in what manner we are to use them: and it does not appear that a definite answer to this question can ever be elicited, by a logical process of inference, from observations of the human organism, and the actual physical life of men.

If, finally, we consider man in his social relations--as father, son, neighbour, citizen--and endeavour to determine the “natural” rights and obligations that attach to such relations, we find that the conception ‘natural’ presents a problem and not a solution. To an unreflective mind what is customary in social relations usually appears natural; but no reflective person is prepared to lay down “conformity to custom” as a fundamental moral principle: the problem, then, is to find in the rights and obligations established by custom in a particular society at a particular time an element that has a binding force beyond what mere custom can give. And this problem can only be solved by reference to the ultimate good of social existence--whether conceived as happiness or as perfection--or by appealing to some intuitively known principle of social duty, other than the principle of aiming at the happiness or perfection of society.

Nor, again, does it help us to adopt the more modern view of Nature, which regards the organic world as exhibiting, not an aggregate of fixed types, but a continuous and gradual process of changing life. For granting that this ‘evolution’--as the name implies--is not merely a process from old to new, but a progress from less to more of certain definite characteristics; it is surely absurd to maintain that we ought _therefore_ to take these characteristics as Ultimate Good, and make it our whole endeavour to accelerate the arrival of an inevitable future. That whatever is to be will be better than what is, we all hope; but there seems to be no more reason for summarily identifying ‘what ought to be’ with ‘what certainly will be,’ than for finding it in ‘what commonly is,’ or ‘what originally was.’

On the whole, it appears to me that no definition that has ever been offered of the Natural exhibits this notion as really capable of furnishing an independent ethical first principle. And no one maintains that ‘natural’ like ‘beautiful’ is a notion that though indefinable is yet clear, being derived from a simple unanalysable impression. Hence I see no way of extracting from it a definite practical criterion of the rightness of actions.

§ 3. The discussion in the preceding section will have shown that not all the different views that are taken of the ultimate reason for doing what is concluded to be right lead to practically different methods of arriving at this conclusion. Indeed we find that almost any method may be connected with almost any ultimate reason by means of some--often plausible--assumption. Hence arises difficulty in the classification and comparison of ethical systems; since they often appear to have different affinities according as we consider Method or Ultimate Reason. In my treatment of the subject, difference of Method is taken as the paramount consideration: and it is on this account that I have treated the view in which Perfection is taken to be the Ultimate End as a variety of the Intuitionism which determines right conduct by reference to axioms of duty intuitively known; while I have made as marked a separation as possible between Epicureanism or Egoistic Hedonism, and the Universalistic or Benthamite[73] Hedonism to which I propose to restrict the term Utilitarianism.

I am aware that these two latter methods are commonly treated as closely connected: and it is not difficult to find reasons for this. In the first place, they agree in prescribing actions as means to an end distinct from, and lying outside the actions; so that they both lay down rules which are not absolute but relative, and only valid if they conduce to the end. Again, the ultimate end is according to both methods the same in quality, i.e. pleasure; or, more strictly, the maximum of pleasure attainable, pains being subtracted. Besides, it is of course to a great extent true that the conduct recommended by the one principle coincides with that inculcated by the other. Though it would seem to be only in an ideal polity that ‘self-interest well understood’ leads to the perfect discharge of all social duties, still, in a tolerably well-ordered community it prompts to the fulfilment of most of them, unless under very exceptional circumstances. And, on the other hand, a Universalistic Hedonist may reasonably hold that his own happiness is that portion of the universal happiness which it is most in his power to promote, and which therefore is most especially entrusted to his charge. And the practical blending of the two systems is sure to go beyond their theoretical coincidence. It is much easier for a man to move in a sort of diagonal between Egoistic and Universalistic Hedonism, than to be practically a consistent adherent of either. Few men are so completely selfish, whatever their theory of morals may be, as not occasionally to promote the happiness of others from natural sympathetic impulse unsupported by Epicurean calculation. And probably still fewer are so resolutely unselfish as never to find “all men’s good” in their own with rather too ready conviction.

Further, from Bentham’s psychological doctrine, that every human being always does aim at his own greatest apparent happiness, it seems to follow that it is useless to point out to a man the conduct that would conduce to the general happiness, unless you convince him at the same time that it would conduce to his own. Hence on this view, egoistic and universalistic considerations must necessarily be combined in any practical treatment of morality: and this being so, it was perhaps to be expected that Bentham[74] or his disciples would go further, and attempt to base on the Egoism which they accept as inevitable the Universalistic Hedonism which they approve and inculcate. And accordingly we find that J. S. Mill does try to establish a logical connexion between the psychological and ethical principles which he holds in common with Bentham, and to convince his readers that because each man naturally seeks his own happiness, therefore he ought to seek the happiness of other people.[75]

Nevertheless, it seems to me undeniable that the practical affinity between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism is really much greater than that between the two forms of Hedonism. My grounds for holding this will be given at length in subsequent chapters. Here I will only observe that many moralists who have maintained as practically valid the judgments of right and wrong which the Common Sense of mankind seems intuitively to enunciate, have yet regarded General Happiness as an end to which the rules of morality are the best means, and have held that a knowledge of these rules was implanted by Nature or revealed by God for the attainment of this end. Such a belief implies that, though I am bound to take, as _my_ ultimate standard in acting, conformity to a rule which is for me absolute, still the natural or Divine reason for the rule laid down is Utilitarian. On this view, the _method_ of Utilitarianism is certainly rejected: the connexion between right action and happiness is not ascertained by a process of reasoning. But we can hardly say that the Utilitarian principle is altogether rejected: rather the limitations of the human reason are supposed to prevent it from apprehending adequately the real connexion between the true principle and the right rules of conduct. This connexion, however, has always been to a large extent recognised by all reflective persons. Indeed, so clear is it that in most cases the observance of the commonly received moral rules tends to render human life tranquil and happy, that even moralists (as Whewell) who are most strongly opposed to Utilitarianism have, in attempting to exhibit the “necessity” of moral rules, been led to dwell on utilitarian considerations.

And during the first period of ethical controversy in modern England, after the audacious enunciation of Egoism by Hobbes had roused in real earnest the search for a philosophical basis of morality, Utilitarianism appears in friendly alliance with Intuitionism. It was not to supersede but to support the morality of Common Sense, against the dangerous innovations of Hobbes, that Cumberland declared “the common good[76] of all Rationals” to be the end to which moral rules were the means. We find him quoted with approval by Clarke, who is commonly taken to represent Intuitionism in an extreme form. Nor does Shaftesbury, in introducing the theory of a “moral sense,” seem to have dreamt that it could ever impel us to actions not clearly conducive to the Good[76] of the Whole: and his disciple Hutcheson expressly identified its promptings with those of Benevolence. Butler, I think, was our first influential writer who dwelt on the discrepancies between Virtue as commonly understood and “conduct likeliest to produce an overbalance of happiness.”[77] When Hume presented Utilitarianism as a mode of explaining current morality, it was seen or suspected to have a partially destructive tendency. But it was not till the time of Paley and Bentham that it was offered as a method for determining conduct, which was to overrule all traditional precepts and supersede all existing moral sentiments. And even this final antagonism relates rather to theory and method than to practical results: practical conflict, in ordinary human minds, is mainly between Self-interest and Social Duty however determined. Indeed, from a practical point of view the principle of aiming at the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” is _prima facie_ more definitely opposed to Egoism than the Common-Sense morality is. For this latter seems to leave a man free to pursue his own happiness under certain definite limits and conditions: whereas Utilitarianism seems to require a more comprehensive and unceasing subordination of self-interest to the common good. And thus, as Mill remarks, Utilitarianism is sometimes attacked from two precisely opposite sides: from a confusion with Egoistic Hedonism it is called base and grovelling; while at the same time it is more plausibly charged with setting up too high a standard of unselfishness and making exaggerated demands on human nature.

A good deal remains to be said, in order to make the principle and method of Utilitarianism perfectly clear and explicit: but it seems best to defer this till we come to the investigation of its details. It will be convenient to take this as the final stage of our examination of methods. For on the one hand it is simpler that the discussion of Egoistic should precede that of Universalistic Hedonism; and on the other, it seems desirable that we should obtain in as exact a form as possible the enunciations of Intuitive Morality, before we compare these with the results of the more doubtful and difficult calculations of utilitarian consequences.

In the remaining chapters of this Book I shall endeavour to remove certain ambiguities as to the general nature and relations of the other two methods, as designated respectively by the terms Egoism and Intuitionism, before proceeding to the fuller examination of them in Books ii. and iii.

NOTE.--I have called the ethical doctrine that takes universal happiness as the ultimate end and standard of right conduct by the name of Bentham, because the thinkers who have chiefly taught this doctrine in England during the present century have referred it to Bentham as their master. And it certainly seems to me clear--though Mr. Bain (cf. _Mind_, January 1883, p. 48) appears to doubt it--that Bentham adopted this doctrine explicitly, in its most comprehensive scope, at the earliest stage in the formation of his opinions; nor do I think that he ever consciously abandoned or qualified it. We find him writing in his common-place book, in 1773-4 (cf. _Works_, Bowring’s edition, vol. x. p. 70), that Helvetius had “established a standard of rectitude for actions”;--the standard being that “a sort of action is a right one, when the tendency of it is to augment the mass of happiness in the community.” And we find him writing fifty years later (cf. _Works_, vol. x. p. 79) the following account of his earliest view, in a passage which contains no hint of later dissent from it:--“By an early pamphlet of Priestley’s ... light was added to the warmth. In the phrase ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number,’ I then saw delineated, for the first time, a plain as well as a true standard for whatever is right or wrong ... in human conduct, _whether in the field of morals or of politics_.”

At the same time I must admit that in other passages Bentham seems no less explicitly to adopt Egoistic Hedonism as the method of ‘private Ethics,’ as distinct from legislation: and in his posthumous ‘Deontology’ the two principles appear to be reconciled by the doctrine, that it is always the individual’s true interest, even from a purely mundane point of view, to act in the manner most conducive to the general happiness. This latter proposition--which I regard as erroneous--is not, indeed, definitely put forward in any of the treatises published by Bentham in his lifetime, or completely prepared by him for publication: but it may be inferred from his common-place book that he held it (see his _Works_, vol. x. pp. 560, 561).

FOOTNOTES:

[71] As I have before said, the applicability of a method for determining right conduct relatively to an ultimate end--whether Happiness or Perfection--does not necessarily depend on the acceptance of the end as prescribed by reason: it only requires that it should be in some way adopted as ultimate and paramount. I have, however, confined my attention in this treatise to ends which are widely accepted as reasonable: and I shall afterwards endeavour to exhibit the self-evident practical axioms which appear to me to be implied in this acceptance. Cf. _post_, Book iii. chap. xiii.

[72] The notion of ‘Self-realisation’ will be more conveniently examined in the following chapter: where I shall distinguish different interpretations of the term ‘Egoism,’ which I have taken to denote one of the three principal species of ethical method.

[73] See Note at the end of the chapter.

[74] See Note at the end of the chapter.

[75] We shall have occasion to consider Mill’s argument on this point in a subsequent chapter. Cf. _post_, Book iii. chap. xiii.

[76] It should be observed that neither Cumberland nor Shaftesbury uses the term “Good” (substantive) in a purely and exclusively hedonistic sense. But Shaftesbury uses it mainly in this sense: and Cumberland’s “Good” includes Happiness as well as Perfection.

[77] See Dissertation II. _Of the Nature of Virtue_ appended to the _Analogy_. It may be interesting to notice a gradual change in Butler’s view on this important point. In the first of his Sermons on Human Nature, published some years before the _Analogy_, he does not notice, any more than Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, any possible want of harmony between Conscience and Benevolence. A note to Sermon XII., however, seems to indicate a stage of transition between the view of the first Sermon and the view of the Dissertation.