may be more properly regarded as conditions of life

than means to pleasure.

mum of it.

The difficulty, however, comes most clearly to and a maxithe front when we attempt to define the maximum, and that not for an individual or generation only, but for the race. It is not happiness merely, but greatest happiness, that is the utilitarian end. Is there any way, then, of determining how the maximum of happiness is to be obtained for generations whose characters, though inherited from present individuals, may be modified almost indefinitely? The very existence and numbers of these future generations are problematic; and Mill, as is well known, spent much of his energy in trying to convince the present generation to restrict the numbers of the next. Even on the fundamental question as to whether happiness is to be obtained by the restriction of desires or by the satisfaction which leads to their recurrence and increase, no principle can be extracted from utilitarian ethics. The theory of evolution has shown how desires may be uprooted in the character of the race, though they remain to the end in the present individuals; but in each case utilitarianism would require us to sum up and estimate the relative advantages of renunciation and satisfaction,-a problem which the modifiability of human character seems to make impracticable. Thus, even if certain rules of living may be ascertained, and justified by the utilitarian

(b) Objection to utilitari

anism as a theory of

consequences;

principle, it would seem that the end of greatest happiness for the race of man, or the sentient creation generally, must remain "abstract." There seems no principle through which it may be applied to conduct no hope of an accurate estimate of results when the variability of the individual and of social relations is taken into account.

Connected with this is the assertion that morality must have an inward, not an external standard. The evolutionists are inclined to condemn utilitarianism as a theory of consequences, dealing solely with work produced. According to Mill, "utilitarian moralists have gone beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent." And this seems to be just what evolutionism objects to. Even the worth of the agent is, according to utilitarianism, only a tendency to perform the actions called moral: "a good or a bad disposition" is said to be "a bent of character from which useful or from which hurtful actions are likely to arise."2 Against this view Mr Stephen maintains that "the attempt to secure an absolute and immutable moral law in its external shape must be illusory. The moral law can be stated unconditionally when it is stated in the form 'Be this,' but not when it is stated in the form ‘Do 2 Ibid., p. 27 n.

1 Utilitarianism, p. 26.

:

this.'" This, however, appears to express the matter in a way not free from difficulty. The organic view of conduct will object not only to considering action apart from character, but also to considering character apart from action. We must treat conduct as a whole and, in order to do so, we must treat it as both arising out of and forming character; and we must treat character not as mere potentiality, but as it realises itself in conduct. The weakness of the utilitarian theory is its method of treating actions merely in respect of their results: the evolutionist must show how results are connected with motives, how character and conduct are different. aspects of a whole.

to sensibil

ity,

The difference of the evolutionist view from utili- (c) and as related solely tarianism comes out at another point. The latter places the standard and test of conduct in its effects on the sensibility. The best is that which brings most pleasure. Utilitarians are now, for the most part, ready to admit that, to be in earnest with their theory, they must reject Mill's attempt to distinguish qualities among pleasures. "If morality is to be defined by happiness, we must, of course, allow all kinds of happiness to count, and to count equally so far as they are actually equal. We must reckon the pleasures of malevolence as well as those of benevolence." "2 Of his own pleasures-of the relative amounts of pleasure he gets from various sources 1 Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 385. 2 Ibid., p. 361.

L

of which there is no common measure.

νιμος

-each man is the final judge. One man prefers "push - pin" to poetry, another poetry to "pushpin "; and neither has a right to call the other mistaken. If we are to aim at the greatest maximum pleasure, therefore, we must not strive for what are commonly called "high" pleasures rather than "low" pleasures, except as greater in intensity. If we must have a standard, the judgment of the øpóvuos for which Mill contended must be superseded by the judgment of the average man. If pleasure is the only end, and satisfaction is simply another name for it, then it is plainly incorrect to say that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."1 As has been urged from the evolutionist point of view," there is no common measure of happiness to enable us to say that the more perfect being enjoys more of it than the less." 2 There seems one way only in which utilitarianism can bring its moral ideal into harmony with the upward tendency claimed for itself by evolutionist ethics and that is, by maintaining that the pleasures incident to what are regarded as the higher functions are the pleasures which excel others in respect of "fecundity": they are the source of future pleasures, and are frequently inexclusive even in their present enjoyment. The difficulty in making this assertion is just that these 1 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 14. 2 Simcox, Natural Law, p. 101.

higher" pleasures are but slightly appreciated by the majority of men, and can hardly be said to be pleasures for them at all. But here the theory of evolution, whose adherents have been acting the part of the candid friend to utilitarianism, must come to its aid, and admit that human nature may be so modified in the future as to allow of the "highest" becoming also the "greatest" of pleasures. The argument in the mouth of the utilitarian is perhaps a somewhat arbitrary one, since it could be applied equally well to any class of pleasures. The notion of "higher," as applied either to conduct or to pleasure, has been accepted from current moral opinion. But the theory of evolution has set itself to explain this notion, and to develop a theory of morality in harmony with its own scientific positions, and free from the defects which it has found in other systems. How far it contributes to the determination of the ethical end will form the subject of investigation in the following chapters.