principle. He maintains, as strongly as they do, that "the ultimately supreme end" is "happiness special and general." But he disagrees with them in method, in method, holding that, owing to the incommensurability of a man's different pleasures and pains, and to the incommensurability of the pleasures and pains of one man with those of others, coupled with the indeterminateness of the means required to reach so indeterminate an end, happiness is not fitted to be the immediate aim of conduct.2 But another method is open to us. For " since evolution has been, and is still, working towards the highest life, it follows that conforming to those principles by which the highest life is achieved, is furthering that end." It is possible "to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness." Greatest pleasure, that is to say, is the end. But it is so impossible to compare different kinds of pleasure, different people's pleasure, and different means for obtaining a maximum of it, that it is not a practical end for aiming at. No doubt is expressed that greatest happiness is the ultimate end; although no good reason is given for holding that it is. But it is an indeterminate " 4 1 Data of Ethics, p. 173; cf. p. 30. 2 Ibid., pp. 154, 155. 3 Ibid., p. 171. 4 Letter to J. S. Mill, in Data of Ethics, p. 57. end, and needs to be interpreted by the course of evolution which is held to tend to it. It is not too much to say, therefore, that Mr Spencer is only nominally a utilitarian. His ethical principles are not arrived at by an estimate of the consequences of action, but by deduction from the laws of that "highest life" which is now in process of evolution. This alliance between evolutionism and hedonism will be examined in the following chapter. At present it is necessary to consider the reasons which have led other evolutionists to look upon the new morality as superseding the utilitarian end. Mr Spencer's "dissent from the doctrine of utility, as commonly understood, concerns," he tells us,1 "not the object to be reached by men, but the method of reaching it." In other writers, however, the theory of evolution has not only supplanted the method of utilitarianism, but also led to a modification of its principle. The objections they and in have taken to it may perhaps be summed up by saying that they consider utilitarianism to look upon conduct from a mechanical, instead of from an organic point of view. It prescribed conduct to a man as if he were a machine with a certain kind and quantity of work to turn out. His nature was looked upon by it as fixed, and his social con 1 Letter to J. S. Mill, in Bain's Mental and Moral Science, p. principle. utilitarian to as unpro gressive. 1 (a) Ideal of ditions as unvarying; and the ideal set before him ism objected was therefore unprogressive-something that he was to do or to get, not something that he was to become. "If consistently applied," it has been recently argued, "utilitarianism seems irrevocably committed to a stereotyped and unprogressive ideal." According to Mr Stephen, it "considers society to be formed of an aggregate of similar human beings. The character of each molecule is regarded as constant." It can, therefore, give a test which is "approximately accurate" only, which does not allow for the variation of character and of social relations.2 To the same effect Miss Simcox maintains that it "might pass muster in a theory of social statics, but it breaks down altogether if we seek its help to construct a theory of social dynamics." 3 These writers do not seem to have made it quite clear, however, in what way utilitarianism assumes a stationary condition of human nature, and so formulates conduct in a way unsuited to a progressive state. To say simply that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the end, is not in itself inconsistent with a progressive state of human nature. It is true that, in all the enthusiasm for and belief in progress to be seen in a writer such as J. S. Mill, there is a con 1 J. T. Punnet, "Ethical Alternatives"-Mind, x. 95. 3 Natural Law: An Essay in Ethics (1877), p. 101. stant goal always set to it in the possible maximum of pleasant feeling. It would not have been inconsistent for him, however, to look upon human nature as capable of developing new susceptibilities for pleasure. Progress is made by increasing the amount of pleasure actually got. And so far, the ideal itself is certainly fixed, while progress consists in its gradual realisation. But there is no special virtue in having an ideal which is itself progressive. A progressive ideal simply means an ideal which is incompletely comprehended, and the comprehension of which proceeds gradually with its realisation. At any time the definition of such an ideal can only be tentative: with the actual assimilation of character to it, the intellect comes to grasp its nature with increasing clearness. I do not myself think that we can expect to have more than such a tentative and progressive comprehension of the moral ideal of humanity. But we must not take objection to a theory because it gives at once a clear and definite view of the final end of conduct: though we must not refrain from inquiring how the end is known. objection when attempt made to But the bearing of the objection to utilitarianism Force of the becomes apparent when we try to give some definite meaning to the end greatest happiness. If we are content to receive it as simply a very general—or interpret rather abstract — expression for our ideal, nothing happiness, need be said, except to put the question, which has greatest the way in which men can obtain happiness, been already asked, How we came by such an ideal? The difficulty arises when we attempt to apply the by showing ideal to practice. With men of fixed character in an unchanging society, our way might be comparatively clear. But, when both character and social relations vary, and their variation extends to susceptibility to pleasure and pain, and depends on the actions adopted to obtain the end, utilitarianism may well appear to be without a principle by which to determine between different kinds of conduct. To an objection similar to this, but taken from the old point of view, that we have no time before acting to sum up the pleasurable and painful consequences of our actions, Mill replied that there had been ample time—namely, the whole past duration of the human species "1-in which to estimate the felicific results of conduct. The variability of faculty and function makes this answer lack convincing power. Yet, perhaps, we are apt at present to disregard the real value of this collective experience of the race. True, human nature is not a constant; yet certain of its qualities are persistent and constant enough not to leave us in doubt as to whether, say, murder and theft are beneficial or injurious to happiness. There are at least certain actions, and, still more, certain abstentions, upon which human security-the basis of happiness-depends. But it would seem that those "secondary laws" 1 Utilitarianism, p. 34. |