UTILITARIANISM
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UTILITARIANISM
the motive of self-interest to be reconciled with the
motive of benevolence; if every man necessarily
pursues his own happiness, how can the happiness of
all be the end of conduct? Unlike the later thinkers
of this school, Hume did not discuss or attempt sys-
tematically to solve the difficulty; he dismissed it by
resting on the assumption that benevolence is the
supreme virtue.
In Hartley (Observations of Man, 1748) we find the first methodical effort to justify the Utilitarian principle by means of the theory of association to which so large a part in the genesis of our moral judg- ments is assigned by subsequent speculators, espe- cially those of the Evolutionist party. From sensations and the lower elementary or primary emotions, according to Hartley, result higher feelings and emo- tions, different in kind from the processes out of which they have arisen. The altruistic motives, sympathy and benevolence, are then accounted for. With Ben- tham arises the group of thinkers who have appro- priated the name of Utilitarians as their distinctive badge. The leaders after Bentham were the two Mills, the two Austins, and Godwin, who are also known as the Philosophic Radicals. While the members of this party devoted considerable thought to the defence and development of theoretical Utili- tarianism and made it the starting-point of their political activity, they became remarkable less as philosophic speculators than as active reformers of social and economic conditions and of legislation. The keynote of their doctrines and policy is struck by Bentham in the opening of his "Principles of Morals and Legislation" (1789): "Nature has placed man- kind under the governance of two sovereign rnasters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of cause and effect are linked to their throne. They govern us in all we do; every effort we can make to throw off their subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In a word man may pretend to abjure their empire; but in reahty he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utihty recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hand of reason and law." Staunchly standing by the principle of unqualified egoism, Bentham rids himself of the task of reconciling self-interest and altruism: "Dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you, imless their advantage in doing so is obvious to them. Men never did so and never will while human nature is made of its present materials. But they will desire to serve you when by so doing they can serve themselves; and the occasions on which they can serve themselves by serving you are multitudinous" (Deon- tology, ii, 1834; posthumous work).
In the hands of Bentham and his disciples Utili- tarianism dissociates morality from its religious basis and, incorporating Determinism with its other tenets, becomes pronouncedly Posit ivistic, and moral oblig.a- tion is resolved into a i)rejudice or a feeUng resulting from a long-continued association of disagreeable consequences attending some kinds of actions, and advantages following others. The word ought Bentham characterizes as an authoritative impostor, the talisman of arrogancy. indolence, and ignorance. It is the condemnation of Utilitarianism that this estimate of duty is thoroughly consistent with the system; and no defender of the iitility theory has been able, though .some have tried, to indicate the claims of moral obligation on Positivistic Utilitarian grounds. Bentham drew up a curious scheme for computing the worth or weight to be assigneil (o all sortsof pleasures and pains, as a practical norm to determine in the concrete the moral value of any action. He fissumcs that all pleasures arc alike in kind and difTer
only in quantity, that is in intensity, certainty, dura-
tion, etc. His psychological analysis, besides the
original defect of making self-interest the sole motive
of hum.an action, contains many errors. Subsequent
writers have abandoned it as worthless for the very
good reason that to calculate, as its employment would
demand, all the results of every action, and to strike
a balance between the advantages and disadvantages
attendant upon it, woidd require an intellect nuich
more powerful than that with which man is endowed.
The classic expression of the system is John Stuart Mill's "Utilitarianism," which endeavoiu's to raise the Utilitarian ideal to a higher plane than that of the undisguised selfishness upon which Bentham rested it. As the foundation of his structure Mill asserts that every man necessarily acts in order to obtain his own happiness; but finding this ground logically insufficient to furnish a basis for an adequate criterion of conduct, and prompted by his own large sympathies, he quickly endeavours to substitute "the happiness of all concerned" for "the agent's own happiness". The argument over which he, the author of a formi- dable work on logic, endeavours to pass from the first to the second position, may serve as an example suitable to submit to the beginner in logic when he is engaged in the detection of sophisms. The argument, in brief, is that, as each one desires and pursues his own happiness, and the sum total of these individual ends makes up the general happiness, it follows that the general happiness is the one thing desirable by all and provides the Utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct. "As well might you argue", says Martineau, "that because of a hundred men each one's hunger is satisfied by his dinner, the hunger of all must be satisfied with the dinner of each." To escape some of the criticisms urged against the doc- trine as stated by Bentham, who made no distinction in the various kinds of pleasure, Mill claimed that Utilitarianism notes that pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity; that in the judgment of tho.se who have experience of different pleasures, some are preferable to others, that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Then he slips from "preferable" to "higher", thus surrepti- tiously introducing a moral classification among pleasures. The only legitimate grounds for attaching higher and lower moral values to various plea-sures, is to estimate them according to the rank of the faculties or of the kinds of action to which they belong as results. But to do this is to assume some moral standard by which we can measure the right or wrong of action, independently of its pleasurable or painful consequences. To answer the objection that virtue is desired for its own sake, and men do right frequently without any calculation of the hai^piness to be derived from their action. Mill enlists the association theory; as the result of experience, actions that have been approved or conflemned on account of their pleasur- able or disagi-eeable comsequenccs at length come to be looked upon by us as good or bad, without our actually adverting to their pleasant or painful result.
Since Mill's time the only writer who has introduced anv modification into stricllv l^filitarian thought is Sidgwick (Methods of Ethics, "lS74). who acknowledges that tlie pleasure-and-pain standard is incai)able of serving universally as the criterion of morality; but believes it to be valuable a.s an instrument for the correction of the received moral code. The general hai)piness principle he defends as the norm of conduct : but he treats it rather as a primary than a demonstra- ble one. .Although he vigorously denoimced Utili- tarianism, Herbert Spencer's ethical construction (Data of Ethics, 1S79\ which may be taken as the type of the Evolutionist school, is fundamentally Utilitarian. True, instead of happiness he makes the increase of life, that is, a fuller and more intensive
