'But, Socrates, I have heard Gorgias say that rhetoric is the greatest and usefullest of arts; and I should not like to quarrel either with him or you.' Neither is there any inconsistency, Protarchus, with his statement in what I am now saying; for I am not maintaining that dialectic is the greatest or usefullest, but only that she is the truest of arts; my remark is not quantitative but qualitative, and refers not to the advantage or repetition of either, but to the degree of truth which they attain – here Gorgias will not care to compete; this is what we affirm to be possessed in the highest degree by dialectic. And do not let us appeal to Gorgias or Philebus or Socrates, but ask, on behalf of the argument, what are the highest truths which the soul has the power of attaining. And is not this the science which has a firmer grasp of them than any other? For the arts generally are only occupied with matters of opinion, and with the production and action and passion of this sensible world. But the highest truth is that which is eternal and unchangeable. And reason and wisdom are concerned with the eternal; and these are the very claimants, if not for the first, at least for the second place, whom I propose as rivals to pleasure.
And now, having the materials, we may proceed to mix them – first recapitulating the question at issue.
Philebus affirmed pleasure to be the good, and assumed them to be one nature; I affirmed that they were two natures, and declared that knowledge was more akin to the good than pleasure. I said that the two together were more eligible than either taken singly; and to this we adhere. Reason intimates, as at first, that we should seek the good not in the unmixed life, but in the mixed.
The cup is ready, waiting to be mingled, and here are two fountains, one of honey, the other of pure water, out of which to make the fairest possible mixture. There are pure and impure pleasures – pure and impure sciences. Let us consider the sections of each which have the most of purity and truth; to admit them all indiscriminately would be dangerous. First we will take the pure sciences; but shall we mingle the impure – the art which uses the false rule and the false measure? That we must, if we are any of us to find our way home; man cannot live upon pure mathematics alone. And must I include music, which is admitted to be guess-work? 'Yes, you must, if human life is to have any humanity.' Well, then, I will open the door and let them all in; they shall mingle in an Homeric 'meeting of the waters.' And now we turn to the pleasures; shall I admit them? 'Admit first of all the pure pleasures; secondly, the necessary.' And what shall we say about the rest? First, ask the pleasures – they will be too happy to dwell with wisdom. Secondly, ask the arts and sciences – they reply that the excesses of intemperance are the ruin of them; and that they would rather only have the pleasures of health and temperance, which are the handmaidens of virtue. But still we want truth? That is now added; and so the argument is complete, and may be compared to an incorporeal law, which is to hold fair rule over a living body. And now we are at the vestibule of the good, in which there are three chief elements – truth, symmetry, and beauty. These will be the criterion of the comparative claims of pleasure and wisdom.
Which has the greater share of truth? Surely wisdom; for pleasure is the veriest impostor in the world, and the perjuries of lovers have passed into a proverb.
Which of symmetry? Wisdom again; for nothing is more immoderate than pleasure.
Which of beauty? Once more, wisdom; for pleasure is often unseemly, and the greatest pleasures are put out of sight.
Not pleasure, then, ranks first in the scale of good, but measure, and eternal harmony.
Second comes the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect.
Third, mind and wisdom.
Fourth, sciences and arts and true opinions.
Fifth, painless pleasures.
Of a sixth class, I have no more to say. Thus, pleasure and mind may both renounce the claim to the first place. But mind is ten thousand times nearer to the chief good than pleasure. Pleasure ranks fifth and not first, even though all the animals in the world assert the contrary.
…
From the days of Aristippus and Epicurus to our own times the nature of pleasure has occupied the attention of philosophers. 'Is pleasure an evil? a good? the only good?' are the simple forms which the enquiry assumed among the Socratic schools. But at an early stage of the controversy another question was asked: 'Do pleasures differ in kind? and are some bad, some good, and some neither bad nor good?' There are bodily and there are mental pleasures, which were at first confused but afterwards distinguished. A distinction was also made between necessary and unnecessary pleasures; and again between pleasures which had or had not corresponding pains. The ancient philosophers were fond of asking, in the language of their age, 'Is pleasure a "becoming" only, and therefore transient and relative, or do some pleasures partake of truth and Being?' To these ancient speculations the moderns have added a further question: – 'Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your neighbour, – of the individual, or of the world?' This little addition has changed the whole aspect of the discussion: the same word is now supposed to include two principles as widely different as benevolence and self-love. Some modern writers have also distinguished between pleasure the test, and pleasure the motive of actions. For the universal test of right actions (how I know them) may not always be the highest or best motive of them (why I do them).
Socrates, as we learn from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, first drew attention to the consequences of actions. Mankind were said by him to act rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in the language of the Gorgias, 'did what they would.' He seems to have been the first who maintained that the good was the useful (Mem.). In his eagerness for generalization, seeking, as Aristotle says, for the universal in Ethics (Metaph.), he took the most obvious intellectual aspect of human action which occurred to him. He meant to emphasize, not pleasure, but the calculation of pleasure; neither is he arguing that pleasure is the chief good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends upon a right estimate of pleasures greater or less when seen near and at a distance. The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of Plato, and we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first utilitarian; as indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which may not with reason be ascribed to him – he is Cynic and Cyrenaic, Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has already passed into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the exchange of a less pleasure for a greater can be an exchange of virtue. Such virtue is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the world of appearance; they are temperate only that they may enjoy the pleasures of intemperance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the philosopher is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near or distant: he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise the body and is yearning all his life long for a truth which will hereafter be revealed to him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge are affirmed to be superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher so estimates them; and he alone has had experience of both kinds. (Compare a similar argument urged by one of the latest defenders of Utilitarianism, Mill's Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, although he regards the enemies of pleasure with complacency, still further modifies the transcendentalism of the Phaedo. For he is compelled to confess, rather reluctantly, perhaps, that some pleasures, i.e. those which have no antecedent pains, claim a place in the scale of goods.
There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind in general have been unwilling to acknowledge that 'pleasure is the chief good.' Either they have heard a voice calling to them out of another world; or the life and example of some great teacher has cast their thoughts of right and wrong in another mould; or the word 'pleasure' has been associated in their mind with merely animal enjoyment. They could not believe that what they were always striving to overcome, and the power or principle in them which overcame, were of the same nature. The pleasure of doing good to others and of bodily self-indulgence, the pleasures of intellect and the pleasures of sense, are so different: – Why then should they be called by a common name? Or, if the equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by custom (like the use of other words which at first referred only to the body, and then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why should we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To the higher thinker the Utilitarian or hedonist mode of speaking has been at variance with religion and with any higher conception both of politics and of morals. It has not satisfied their imagination; it has offended their taste. To elevate pleasure, 'the most fleeting of all things,' into a general idea seems to such men a contradiction. They do not desire to bring down their theory to the level of their practice. The simplicity of the 'greatest happiness' principle has been acceptable to philosophers, but the better part of the world has been slow to receive it.
Before proceeding, we may make a few admissions which will narrow the field of dispute; and we may as well leave behind a few prejudices, which intelligent opponents of Utilitarianism have by this time 'agreed to discard'. We admit that Utility is coextensive with right, and that no action can be right which does not tend to the happiness of mankind; we acknowledge that a large class of actions are made right or wrong by their consequences only; we say further that mankind are not too mindful, but that they are far too regardless of consequences, and that they need to have the doctrine of utility habitually inculcated on them. We recognize the value of a principle which can supply a connecting link between Ethics and Politics, and under which all human actions are or may be included. The desire to promote happiness is no mean preference of expediency to right, but one of the highest and noblest motives by which human nature can be animated. Neither in referring actions to the test of utility have we to make a laborious calculation, any more than in trying them by other standards of morals. For long ago they have been classified sufficiently for all practical purposes by the thinker, by the legislator, by the opinion of the world. Whatever may be the hypothesis on which they are explained, or which in doubtful cases may be applied to the regulation of them, we are very rarely, if ever, called upon at the moment of performing them to determine their effect upon the happiness of mankind.
There is a theory which has been contrasted with Utility by Paley and others – the theory of a moral sense: Are our ideas of right and wrong innate or derived from experience? This, perhaps, is another of those speculations which intelligent men might 'agree to discard.' For it has been worn threadbare; and either alternative is equally consistent with a transcendental or with an eudaemonistic system of ethics, with a greatest happiness principle or with Kant's law of duty. Yet to avoid misconception, what appears to be the truth about the origin of our moral ideas may be shortly summed up as follows: – To each of us individually our moral ideas come first of all in childhood through the medium of education, from parents and teachers, assisted by the unconscious influence of language; they are impressed upon a mind which at first is like a waxen tablet, adapted to receive them; but they soon become fixed or set, and in after life are strengthened, or perhaps weakened by the force of public opinion. They may be corrected and enlarged by experience, they may be reasoned about, they may be brought home to us by the circumstances of our lives, they may be intensified by imagination, by reflection, by a course of action likely to confirm them. Under the influence of religious feeling or by an effort of thought, any one beginning with the ordinary rules of morality may create out of them for himself ideals of holiness and virtue. They slumber in the minds of most men, yet in all of us there remains some tincture of affection, some desire of good, some sense of truth, some fear of the law. Of some such state or process each individual is conscious in himself, and if he compares his own experience with that of others he will find the witness of their consciences to coincide with that of his own. All of us have entered into an inheritance which we have the power of appropriating and making use of. No great effort of mind is required on our part; we learn morals, as we learn to talk, instinctively, from conversing with others, in an enlightened age, in a civilized country, in a good home. A well-educated child of ten years old already knows the essentials of morals: 'Thou shalt not steal,' 'thou shalt speak the truth,' 'thou shalt love thy parents,' 'thou shalt fear God.' What more does he want?
But whence comes this common inheritance or stock of moral ideas? Their beginning, like all other beginnings of human things, is obscure, and is the least important part of them. Imagine, if you will, that Society originated in the herding of brutes, in their parental instincts, in their rude attempts at self-preservation: – Man is not man in that he resembles, but in that he differs from them. We must pass into another cycle of existence, before we can discover in him by any evidence accessible to us even the germs of our moral ideas. In the history of the world, which viewed from within is the history of the human mind, they have been slowly created by religion, by poetry, by law, having their foundation in the natural affections and in the necessity of some degree of truth and justice in a social state; they have been deepened and enlarged by the efforts of great thinkers who have idealized and connected them – by the lives of saints and prophets who have taught and exemplified them. The schools of ancient philosophy which seem so far from us – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and a few modern teachers, such as Kant and Bentham, have each of them supplied 'moments' of thought to the world. The life of Christ has embodied a divine love, wisdom, patience, reasonableness. For his image, however imperfectly handed down to us, the modern world has received a standard more perfect in idea than the societies of ancient times, but also further removed from practice. For there is certainly a greater interval between the theory and practice of Christians than between the theory and practice of the Greeks and Romans; the ideal is more above us, and the aspiration after good has often lent a strange power to evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolution, when the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have become corrupted by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by despotism, the lower have risen up and re-asserted the natural sense of religion and right.
We may further remark that our moral ideas, as the world grows older, perhaps as we grow older ourselves, unless they have been undermined in us by false philosophy or the practice of mental analysis, or infected by the corruption of society or by some moral disorder in the individual, are constantly assuming a more natural and necessary character. The habit of the mind, the opinion of the world, familiarizes them to us; and they take more and more the form of immediate intuition. The moral sense comes last and not first in the order of their development, and is the instinct which we have inherited or acquired, not the nobler effort of reflection which created them and which keeps them alive. We do not stop to reason about common honesty. Whenever we are not blinded by self-deceit, as for example in judging the actions of others, we have no hesitation in determining what is right and wrong. The principles of morality, when not at variance with some desire or worldly interest of our own, or with the opinion of the public, are hardly perceived by us; but in the conflict of reason and passion they assert their authority and are not overcome without remorse.
Such is a brief outline of the history of our moral ideas. We have to distinguish, first of all, the manner in which they have grown up in the world from the manner in which they have been communicated to each of us. We may represent them to ourselves as flowing out of the boundless ocean of language and thought in little rills, which convey them to the heart and brain of each individual. But neither must we confound the theories or aspects of morality with the origin of our moral ideas. These are not the roots or 'origines' of morals, but the latest efforts of reflection, the lights in which the whole moral world has been regarded by different thinkers and successive generations of men. If we ask: Which of these many theories is the true one? we may answer: All of them – moral sense, innate ideas, a priori, a posteriori notions, the philosophy of experience, the philosophy of intuition – all of them have added something to our conception of Ethics; no one of them is the whole truth. But to decide how far our ideas of morality are derived from one source or another; to determine what history, what philosophy has contributed to them; to distinguish the original, simple elements from the manifold and complex applications of them, would be a long enquiry too far removed from the question which we are now pursuing.
Bearing in mind the distinction which we have been seeking to establish between our earliest and our most mature ideas of morality, we may now proceed to state the theory of Utility, not exactly in the words, but in the spirit of one of its ablest and most moderate supporters (Mill's Utilitarianism): – 'That which alone makes actions either right or desirable is their utility, or tendency to promote the happiness of mankind, or, in other words, to increase the sum of pleasure in the world. But all pleasures are not the same: they differ in quality as well as in quantity, and the pleasure which is superior in quality is incommensurable with the inferior. Neither is the pleasure or happiness, which we seek, our own pleasure, but that of others, – of our family, of our country, of mankind. The desire of this, and even the sacrifice of our own interest to that of other men, may become a passion to a rightly educated nature. The Utilitarian finds a place in his system for this virtue and for every other.'
Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and only end of human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend, and in accordance with this all the virtues, including justice, may be explained. Admitting that men rest for a time in inferior ends, and do not cast their eyes beyond them, these ends are really dependent on the greater end of happiness, and would not be pursued, unless in general they had been found to lead to it. The existence of such an end is proved, as in Aristotle's time, so in our own, by the universal fact that men desire it. The obligation to promote it is based upon the social nature of man; this sense of duty is shared by all of us in some degree, and is capable of being greatly fostered and strengthened. So far from being inconsistent with religion, the greatest happiness principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For what can be more reasonable than that God should will the happiness of all his creatures? and in working out their happiness we may be said to be 'working together with him.' Nor is it inconceivable that a new enthusiasm of the future, far stronger than any old religion, may be based upon such a conception.
But then for the familiar phrase of the 'greatest happiness principle,' it seems as if we ought now to read 'the noblest happiness principle,' 'the happiness of others principle' – the principle not of the greatest, but of the highest pleasure, pursued with no more regard to our own immediate interest than is required by the law of self-preservation. Transfer the thought of happiness to another life, dropping the external circumstances which form so large a part of our idea of happiness in this, and the meaning of the word becomes indistinguishable from holiness, harmony, wisdom, love. By the slight addition 'of others,' all the associations of the word are altered; we seem to have passed over from one theory of morals to the opposite. For allowing that the happiness of others is reflected on ourselves, and also that every man must live before he can do good to others, still the last limitation is a very trifling exception, and the happiness of another is very far from compensating for the loss of our own. According to Mr. Mill, he would best carry out the principle of utility who sacrificed his own pleasure most to that of his fellow-men. But if so, Hobbes and Butler, Shaftesbury and Hume, are not so far apart as they and their followers imagine. The thought of self and the thought of others are alike superseded in the more general notion of the happiness of mankind at large. But in this composite good, until society becomes perfected, the friend of man himself has generally the least share, and may be a great sufferer.
And now what objection have we to urge against a system of moral philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same time so practical, – so Christian, as we may say without exaggeration, – and which has the further advantage of resting morality on a principle intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which Socrates and Plato 'grew old in seeking'? Are we not desirous of happiness, at any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all mankind? If, as is natural, we begin by thinking of ourselves first, we are easily led on to think of others; for we cannot help acknowledging that what is right for us is the right and inheritance of others. We feel the advantage of an abstract principle wide enough and strong enough to override all the particularisms of mankind; which acknowledges a universal good, truth, right; which is capable of inspiring men like a passion, and is the symbol of a cause for which they are ready to contend to their life's end.
And if we test this principle by the lives of its professors, it would certainly appear inferior to none as a rule of action. From the days of Eudoxus (Arist. Ethics) and Epicurus to our own, the votaries of pleasure have gained belief for their principles by their practice. Two of the noblest and most disinterested men who have lived in this century, Bentham and J. S. Mill, whose lives were a long devotion to the service of their fellows, have been among the most enthusiastic supporters of utility; while among their contemporaries, some who were of a more mystical turn of mind, have ended rather in aspiration than in action, and have been found unequal to the duties of life. Looking back on them now that they are removed from the scene, we feel that mankind has been the better for them. The world was against them while they lived; but this is rather a reason for admiring than for depreciating them. Nor can any one doubt that the influence of their philosophy on politics – especially on foreign politics, on law, on social life, has been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have justice done to them, for they do not agree either with the better feeling of the multitude or with the idealism of more refined thinkers. Without Bentham, a great word in the history of philosophy would have remained unspoken. Yet to this day it is rare to hear his name received with any mark of respect such as would be freely granted to the ambiguous memory of some father of the Church. The odium which attached to him when alive has not been removed by his death. For he shocked his contemporaries by egotism and want of taste; and this generation which has reaped the benefit of his labours has inherited the feeling of the last. He was before his own age, and is hardly remembered in this.
While acknowledging the benefits which the greatest happiness principle has conferred upon mankind, the time appears to have arrived, not for denying its claims, but for criticizing them and comparing them with other principles which equally claim to lie at the foundation of ethics. Any one who adds a general principle to knowledge has been a benefactor to the world. But there is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he may not recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is subjected; he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or how that which is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world; or may degenerate in the next generation. He believes that to be the whole which is only a part, – to be the necessary foundation which is really only a valuable aspect of the truth. The systems of all philosophers require the criticism of 'the morrow,' when the heat of imagination which forged them has cooled, and they are seen in the temperate light of day. All of them have contributed to enrich the mind of the civilized world; none of them occupy that supreme or exclusive place which their authors would have assigned to them.
We may preface the criticism with a few preliminary remarks: —
Mr. Mill, Mr. Austin, and others, in their eagerness to maintain the doctrine of utility, are fond of repeating that we are in a lamentable state of uncertainty about morals. While other branches of knowledge have made extraordinary progress, in moral philosophy we are supposed by them to be no better than children, and with few exceptions – that is to say, Bentham and his followers – to be no further advanced than men were in the age of Socrates and Plato, who, in their turn, are deemed to be as backward in ethics as they necessarily were in physics. But this, though often asserted, is recanted almost in a breath by the same writers who speak thus depreciatingly of our modern ethical philosophy. For they are the first to acknowledge that we have not now to begin classifying actions under the head of utility; they would not deny that about the general conceptions of morals there is a practical agreement. There is no more doubt that falsehood is wrong than that a stone falls to the ground, although the first does not admit of the same ocular proof as the second. There is no greater uncertainty about the duty of obedience to parents and to the law of the land than about the properties of triangles. Unless we are looking for a new moral world which has no marrying and giving in marriage, there is no greater disagreement in theory about the right relations of the sexes than about the composition of water. These and a few other simple principles, as they have endless applications in practice, so also may be developed in theory into counsels of perfection.
To what then is to be attributed this opinion which has been often entertained about the uncertainty of morals? Chiefly to this, – that philosophers have not always distinguished the theoretical and the casuistical uncertainty of morals from the practical certainty. There is an uncertainty about details, – whether, for example, under given circumstances such and such a moral principle is to be enforced, or whether in some cases there may not be a conflict of duties: these are the exceptions to the ordinary rules of morality, important, indeed, but not extending to the one thousandth or one ten-thousandth part of human actions. This is the domain of casuistry. Secondly, the aspects under which the most general principles of morals may be presented to us are many and various. The mind of man has been more than usually active in thinking about man. The conceptions of harmony, happiness, right, freedom, benevolence, self-love, have all of them seemed to some philosopher or other the truest and most comprehensive expression of morality. There is no difference, or at any rate no great difference, of opinion about the right and wrong of actions, but only about the general notion which furnishes the best explanation or gives the most comprehensive view of them. This, in the language of Kant, is the sphere of the metaphysic of ethics. But these two uncertainties at either end, en tois malista katholou and en tois kath ekasta, leave space enough for an intermediate principle which is practically certain.
The rule of human life is not dependent on the theories of philosophers: we know what our duties are for the most part before we speculate about them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us what we already know, but to inspire in our minds an interest about morals in general, to strengthen our conception of the virtues by showing that they confirm one another, to prove to us, as Socrates would have said, that they are not many, but one. There is the same kind of pleasure and use in reducing morals, as in reducing physics, to a few very simple truths. And not unfrequently the more general principle may correct prejudices and misconceptions, and enable us to regard our fellow-men in a larger and more generous spirit.