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Utilitarianism

Klassiker, 2008, 78 Seiten

Philosophie - Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts

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Klassiker

Institution / Hochschule

Keine

John Stuart Mill

Utilitarianism

[First published in 1861]

Content

Chapter 1: General Remarks...2

Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is...8

Chapter 3: Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility...31

Chapter 4: Of what sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is

Susceptible...41

Chapter 5: On the Connection between Justice and Utility...49

Chapter 1: General Remarks

There are few circumstances among those which make up the

present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might

have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in

which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than

the little progress which has been made in the decision of the

controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the

dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum,

or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality,

has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has

occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and

schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And

after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue,

philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners,

and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being

unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to

the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's dialogue be grounded on

a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular

morality of the so-called sophist.

It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some cases

similar discordance, exist respecting the first principles of all the

sciences, not excepting that which is deemed the most certain of

them, mathematics; without much impairing, generally indeed

without impairing at all, the trustworthiness of the conclusions of

those sciences. An apparent anomaly, the explanation of which is,

that the detailed doctrines of a science are not usually deduced

from, nor depend for their evidence upon, what are called its first

principles. Were it not so, there would be no science more

precarious, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out,

than algebra; which derives none of its certainty from what are

commonly taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid

down by some of its most eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as

English law, and of mysteries as theology. The truths which are

ultimately accepted as the first principles of a science, are really the

last results of metaphysical analysis, practised on the elementary

notions with which the science is conversant; and their relation to

the science is not that of foundations to an edifice, but of roots to a

tree, which may perform their office equally well though they be

never dug down to and exposed to light. But though in science the

particular truths precede the general theory, the contrary might be

expected to be the case with a practical art, such as morals or

legislation. All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of

action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character

and colour from the end to which they are subservient. When we

engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are

pursuing would seem to be the first thing we need, instead of the

last we are to look forward to. A test of right and wrong must be the

means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and

not a consequence of having already ascertained it.

The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the popular

theory of a natural faculty, a sense or instinct, informing us of right

and wrong. For- besides that the existence of such- a moral instinct

is itself one of the matters in dispute- those believers in it who have

any pretensions to philosophy, have been obliged to abandon the

idea that it discerns what is right or wrong in the particular case in

hand, as our other senses discern the sight or sound actually present.

Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are

entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general

principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of

our sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract

doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete. The

intuitive, no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of

ethics, insists on the necessity of general laws. They both agree that

the morality of an individual action is not a question of direct

perception, but of the application of a law to an individual case.

They recognise also, to a great extent, the same moral laws; but

differ as to their evidence, and the source from which they derive

their authority. According to the one opinion, the principles of

morals are evident a priori, requiring nothing to command assent,

except that the meaning of the terms be understood. According to

the other doctrine, right and wrong, as well as truth and falsehood,

are questions of observation and experience. But both hold equally

that morality must be deduced from principles; and the intuitive

school affirm as strongly as the inductive, that there is a science of

morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list of the a priori

principles which are to serve as the premises of the science; still

more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those various

principles to one first principle, or common ground of obligation.

They either assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of a priori

authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those

maxims, some generality much less obviously authoritative than the

maxims themselves, and which has never succeeded in gaining

popular acceptance. Yet to support their pretensions there ought

either to be some one fundamental principle or law, at the root of all

morality, or if there be several, there should be a determinate order

of precedence among them; and the one principle, or the rule for

deciding between the various principles when they conflict, ought to

be self-evident.

To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency have been

mitigated in practice, or to what extent the moral beliefs of mankind

have been vitiated or made uncertain by the absence of any distinct

recognition of an ultimate standard, would imply a complete survey

and criticism, of past and present ethical doctrine. It would,

however, be easy to show that whatever steadiness or consistency

these moral beliefs have, attained, has been mainly due to the tacit

influence of a standard not recognised. Although the non-existence

of an acknowledged first principle has made ethics not so much a

guide as a consecration of men's actual sentiments, still, as men's

sentiments, both of favour and of aversion, are greatly influenced

by what they suppose to be the effects of things upon their

happiness, the principle of utility, or as Bentham latterly called it, the

greatest happiness principle, has had a large share in forming the

moral doctrines even of those who most scornfully reject its

authority. Nor is there any school of thought which refuses to admit

that the influence of actions on happiness is a most material and

even predominant consideration in many of the details of morals,

however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental principle of

morality, and the source of moral obligation. I might go much

further, and say that to all those a priori moralists who deem it

necessary to argue at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable. It is

not my present purpose to criticise these thinkers; but I cannot help

referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the most

illustrious of them, the Metaphysics of Ethics, by Kant. This

remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of

the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in

the treatise in question, lay down a universal first principle as the

origin and ground of moral obligation; it is this: "So act, that the

rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by

all rational beings." But when he begins to deduce from this precept

any of the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to

show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say

physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the

most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that

the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no

one would choose to incur.

On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of the

other theories, attempt to contribute something towards the

understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness

theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident

that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of

the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct

proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being

shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without

proof. The medical art is proved to be good by its conducing to

health; but how is it possible to prove that health is good? The art

of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces

pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good?

If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula,

including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever

else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be

accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly

understood by proof. We are not, however, to infer that its

acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse, or arbitrary

choice. There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this

question is as amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions

of philosophy. The subject is within the cognisance of the rational

faculty; and neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the way of

intuition. Considerations may be presented capable of determining

the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and

this is equivalent to proof.

We shall examine presently of what nature are these considerations;

in what manner they apply to the case, and what rational grounds,

therefore, can be given for accepting or rejecting the utilitarian

formula. But it is a preliminary condition of rational acceptance or

rejection, that the formula should be correctly understood. I believe

that the very imperfect notion ordinarily formed of its meaning, is

the chief obstacle which impedes its reception; and that could it be

cleared, even from only the grosser misconceptions, the question

would be greatly simplified, and a large proportion of its difficulties

removed. Before, therefore, I attempt to enter into the philosophical

grounds which can be given for assenting to the utilitarian standard,

I shall offer some illustrations of the doctrine itself; with the view

of showing more clearly what it is, distinguishing it from what it is

not, and disposing of such of the practical objections to it as either

originate in, or are closely connected with, mistaken interpretations

of its meaning. Having thus prepared the ground, I shall afterwards

endeavour to throw such light as I can upon the question,

considered as one of philosophical theory.

Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is

A passing remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder

of supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right

and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial

sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to

the philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the

momentary appearance of confounding them with any one capable

of so absurd a misconception; which is the more extraordinary,

inasmuch as the contrary accusation, of referring everything to

pleasure, and that too in its grossest form, is another of the

common charges against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly

remarked by an able writer, the same sort of persons, and often the

very same persons, denounce the theory "as impracticably dry when

the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and as too practicably

voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word utility."

Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every

writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of

utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from

pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and

instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental,

have always declared that the useful means these, among other

things. Yet the common herd, including the herd of writers, not only

in newspapers and periodicals, but in books of weight and

pretension, are perpetually falling into this shallow mistake. Having

caught up the word utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever

about it but its sound, they habitually express by it the rejection, or

the neglect, of pleasure in some of its forms; of beauty, of

ornament, or of amusement. Nor is the term thus ignorantly

misapplied solely in disparagement, but occasionally in compliment;

as though it implied superiority to frivolity and the mere pleasures

of the moment. And this perverted use is the only one in which the

word is popularly known, and the one from which the new

generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning. Those

who introduced the word, but who had for many years discontinued

it as a distinctive appellation, may well feel themselves called upon

to resume it, if by doing so they can hope to contribute anything

towards rescuing it from this utter degradation.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the

Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in

proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend

to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended

pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the

privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set

up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what

things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what

extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary

explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of

morality is grounded- namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain,

are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things

(which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are

desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means

to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them

in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate

dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end

than pleasure- no better and nobler object of desire and pursuitthey

designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only

of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early

period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the

doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite

comparisons by its German, French, and English assailants.

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is

not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a

degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be

capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If

this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but

would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of

pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the

rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good

enough for the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that

of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast's pleasures do

not satisfy a human being's conceptions of happiness. Human

beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and

when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as

happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not,

indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless

in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian

principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as

Christian elements require to be included. But there is no known

Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of

the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral

sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere

sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in

general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures

chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the

former- that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their

intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved

their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be

called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible

with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of

pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would

be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is

considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be

supposed to depend on quantity alone.

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or

what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a

pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one

possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or

almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference,

irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is

the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are

competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other

that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a

greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any

quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we

are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in

quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of

small account.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally

acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying,

both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence

which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would

consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise

of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human

being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an

ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish

and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the

dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with

theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he for

the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in

common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases

of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would

exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their

own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him

happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly

accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in

spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he

feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation

we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name

which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of

the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable: we may

refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal

to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for

the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of

excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it:

but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all

human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by

no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is

so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong,

that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than

momentarily, an object of desire to them.

Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of

happiness- that the superior being, in anything like equal

circumstances, is not happier than the inferior- confounds the two

very different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable

that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the

greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed

being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as

the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its

imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him

envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but

only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections

qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig

satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And

if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they

only know their own side of the question. The other party to the

comparison knows both sides.

It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher

pleasures, occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone

them to the lower. But this is quite compatible with a full

appreciation of the intrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often,

from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good,

though they know it to be the less valuable; and this no less when

the choice is between two bodily pleasures, than when it is between

bodily and mental. They pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of

health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater good.

It may be further objected, that many who begin with youthful

enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in years sink into

indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that those who

undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower

description of pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe that

before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have

already become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler

feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only

by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the

majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations

to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into

which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher

capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their

intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for

indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not

because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either

the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they

are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether

any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of

pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though

many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to

combine both.

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there

can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of

two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most

grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its

consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by

knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among

them, must be admitted as final. And there needs be the less

hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of

pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to even on

the question of quantity. What means are there of determining

which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two

pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are

familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous,

and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to

decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost

of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the

experienced? When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare

the pleasures derived from the higher faculties to be preferable in

kind, apart from the question of intensity, to those of which the

animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is suspectible,

they are entitled on this subject to the same regard.

I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly

just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive

rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable

condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that

standard is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest

amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted

whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness,

there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that

the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism,

therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of

nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited

by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is

concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare

enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation

superfluous.

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained,

the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all

other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own

good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as

possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in

point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for

measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who

in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their

habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best furnished

with the means of comparison. This, being, according to the

utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the

standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules

and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an

existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent

possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as

the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors,

who say that happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose

of human life and action; because, in the first place, it is

unattainable: and they contemptuously ask, what right hast thou to

be happy? a question which Mr. Carlyle clenches by the addition,

What right, a short time ago, hadst thou even to be? Next, they say,

that men can do without happiness; that all noble human beings

have felt this, and could not have become noble but by learning the

lesson of Entsagen, or renunciation; which lesson, thoroughly learnt

and submitted to, they affirm to be the beginning and necessary

condition of all virtue.

The first of these objections would go to the root of the matter

were it well founded; for if no happiness is to be had at all by

human beings, the attainment of it cannot be the end of morality, or

of any rational conduct. Though, even in that case, something might

still be said for the utilitarian theory; since utility includes not solely

the pursuit of happiness, but the prevention or mitigation of

unhappiness; and if the former aim be chimerical, there will be all

the greater scope and more imperative need for the latter, so long at

least as mankind think fit to live, and do not take refuge in the

simultaneous act of suicide recommended under certain conditions

by Novalis. When, however, it is thus positively asserted to be

impossible that human life should be happy, the assertion, if not

something like a verbal quibble, is at least an exaggeration. If by

happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it

is evident enough that this is impossible. A state of exalted pleasure

lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with some intermissions,

hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not

its permanent and steady flame. Of this the philosophers who have

taught that happiness is the end of life were as fully aware as those

who taunt them. The happiness which they meant was not a life of

rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and

transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided

predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the

foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is

capable of bestowing. A life thus composed, to those who have

been fortunate enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of

the name of happiness. And such an existence is even now the lot

of many, during some considerable portion of their lives. The

present wretched education, and wretched social arrangements, are

the only real hindrance to its being attainable by almost all.

The objectors perhaps may doubt whether human beings, if taught

to consider happiness as the end of life, would be satisfied with

such a moderate share of it. But great numbers of mankind have

been satisfied with much less. The main constituents of a satisfied

life appear to be two, either of which by itself is often found

sufficient for the purpose: tranquillity, and excitement. With much

tranquillity, many find that they can be content with very little

pleasure: with much excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a

considerable quantity of pain. There is assuredly no inherent

impossibility in enabling even the mass of mankind to unite both;

since the two are so far from being incompatible that they are in

natural alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation for,

and exciting a wish for, the other. It is only those in whom

indolence amounts to a vice, that do not desire excitement after an

interval of repose: it is only those in whom the need of excitement

is a disease, that feel the tranquillity which follows excitement dull

and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct proportion to the

excitement which preceded it. When people who are tolerably

fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment

to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for nobody

but themselves. To those who have neither public nor private

affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any

case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish

interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after

them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have

also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of

mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in

the vigour of youth and health. Next to selfishness, the principal

cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.

A cultivated mind- I do not mean that of a philosopher, but any

mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and

which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its

faculties- finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds

it; in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations

of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind, past and

present, and their prospects in the future. It is possible, indeed, to

become indifferent to all this, and that too without having exhausted

a thousandth part of it; but only when one has had from the

beginning no moral or human interest in these things, and has

sought in them only the gratification of curiosity.

Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an

amount of mental culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in

these objects of contemplation, should not be the inheritance of

every one born in a civilised country. As little is there an inherent

necessity that any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid of

every feeling or care but those which centre in his own miserable

individuality. Something far superior to this is sufficiently common

even now, to give ample earnest of what the human species may be

made. Genuine private affections and a sincere interest in the public

good, are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly

brought up human being. In a world in which there is so much to

interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve,

every one who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual

requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable;

and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will

of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness

within his reach, he will not fail to find this enviable existence, if he

escape the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and

mental suffering- such as indigence, disease, and the unkindness,

worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection. The main

stress of the problem lies, therefore, in the contest with these

calamities, from which it is a rare good fortune entirely to escape;

which, as things now are, cannot be obviated, and often cannot be

in any material degree mitigated. Yet no one whose opinion deserves

a moment's consideration can doubt that most of the great positive

evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human

affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow

limits. Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may be completely

extinguished by the wisdom of society, combined with the good

sense and providence of individuals. Even that most intractable of

enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by good

physical and moral education, and proper control of noxious

influences; while the progress of science holds out a promise for the

future of still more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And

every advance in that direction relieves us from some, not only of

the chances which cut short our own lives, but, what concerns us

still more, which deprive us of those in whom our happiness is

wrapt up. As for vicissitudes of fortune, and other disappointments

connected with worldly circumstances, these are principally the

effect either of gross imprudence, of ill-regulated desires, or of bad

or imperfect social institutions.

All the grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great

degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care

and effort; and though their removal is grievously slow- though a

long succession of generations will perish in the breach before the

conquest is completed, and this world becomes all that, if will and

knowledge were not wanting, it might easily be made- yet every

mind sufficiently intelligent and generous to bear a part, however

small and unconspicuous, in the endeavour, will draw a noble

enjoyment from the contest itself, which he would not for any bribe

in the form of selfish indulgence consent to be without.

And this leads to the true estimation of what is said by the objectors

concerning the possibility, and the obligation, of learning to do

without happiness. Unquestionably it is possible to do without

happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of

mankind, even in those parts of our present world which are least

deep in barbarism; and it often has to be done voluntarily by the

hero or the martyr, for the sake of something which he prizes more

than his individual happiness. But this something, what is it, unless

the happiness of others or some of the requisites of happiness? It is

noble to be capable of resigning entirely one's own portion of

happiness, or chances of it: but, after all, this self-sacrifice must be

for some end; it is not its own end; and if we are told that its end is

not happiness, but virtue, which is better than happiness, I ask,

would the sacrifice be made if the hero or martyr did not believe

that it would earn for others immunity from similar sacrifices?

Would it be made if he thought that his renunciation of happiness

for himself would produce no fruit for any of his fellow creatures,

but to make their lot like his, and place them also in the condition

of persons who have renounced happiness? All honour to those

who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life,

when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the

amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or professes

to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration

than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may be an inspiriting

proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an example of what

they should.

Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's

arrangements that any one can best serve the happiness of others by

the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that

imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such

a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man. I will

add, that in this condition the world, paradoxical as the assertion

may be, the conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best

prospect of realising, such happiness as is attainable. For nothing

except that consciousness can raise a person above the chances of

life, by making him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they

have not power to subdue him: which, once felt, frees him from

excess of anxiety concerning the evils of life, and enables him, like

many a Stoic in the worst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate

in tranquillity the sources of satisfaction accessible to him, without

concerning himself about the uncertainty of their duration, any

more than about their inevitable end.

Meanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the morality of self

devotion as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them,

as either to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The utilitarian

morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing

their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to

admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not

increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers

as wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion

to the happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others;

either of mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits

imposed by the collective interests of mankind.

I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom

have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the

utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's

own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own

happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as

strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the

golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the

ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your

neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian

morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal,

utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should

place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the

interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with

the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion,

which have so vast a power over human character, should so use

that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an

indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of

the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of

such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the

universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to

conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with

conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse

to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the

habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith

may fill a large and prominent place in every human being's sentient

existence. If the, impugners of the utilitarian morality represented it

to their own minds in this its, true character, I know not what

recommendation possessed by any other morality they could

possibly affirm to be wanting to it; what more beautiful or more

exalted developments of human nature any other ethical system can

be supposed to foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to

the utilitarian, such systems rely on for giving effect to their

mandates.

The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with

representing it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among

them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested

character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high

for humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people

shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general

interests of society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a

standard of morals, and confound the rule of action with the

motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our

duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics

requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty;

on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done

from other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not

condemn them. It is the more unjust to utilitarianism that this

particular misapprehension should be made a ground of objection

to it, inasmuch as 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.

He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally

right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his

trouble; he who betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a

crime, even if his object be to serve another friend to whom he is

under greater obligations.

But to speak only of actions done from the motive of duty, and in

direct obedience to principle: it is a misapprehension of the

utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as implying that people

should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or

society at large. The great majority of good actions are intended not

for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which

the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most

virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the

particular persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure

himself that in benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is,

the legitimate and authorised expectations, of any one else. The

multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, the

object of virtue: the occasions on which any person (except one in a

thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in

other words to be a public benefactor, are but exceptional; and on

these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in

every other case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some

few persons, is all he has to attend to. Those alone the influence of

whose actions extends to society in general, need concern

themselves habitually about large an object. In the case of

abstinences indeed- of things which people forbear to do from

moral considerations, though the consequences in the particular case

might be beneficial- it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not

to be consciously aware that the action is of a class which, if

practised generally, would be generally injurious, and that this is the

ground of the obligation to abstain from it. The amount of regard

for the public interest implied in this recognition, is no greater than

is demanded by every system of morals, for they all enjoin to

abstain from whatever is manifestly pernicious to society.

The same considerations dispose of another reproach against the

doctrine of utility, founded on a still grosser misconception of the

purpose of a standard of morality, and of the very meaning of the

words right and wrong. It is often affirmed that utilitarianism

renders men cold and unsympathising; that it chills their moral

feelings towards individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry

and hard consideration of the consequences of actions, not taking

into their moral estimate the qualities from which those actions

emanate. If the assertion means that they do not allow their

judgment respecting the rightness or wrongness of an action to be

influenced by their opinion of the qualities of the person who does

it, this is a complaint not against utilitarianism, but against having

any standard of morality at all; for certainly no known ethical

standard decides an action to be good or bad because it is done by a

good or a bad man, still less because done by an amiable, a brave, or

a benevolent man, or the contrary. These considerations are

relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of persons; and there

is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent with the fact that

there are other things which interest us in persons besides the

rightness and wrongness of their actions. The Stoics, indeed, with

the paradoxical misuse of language which was part of their system,

and by which they strove to raise themselves above all concern

about anything but virtue, were fond of saying that he who has that

has everything; that he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king.

But no claim of this description is made for the virtuous man by the

utilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians are quite aware that there are other

desirable possessions and qualities besides virtue, and are perfectly

willing to allow to all of them their full worth. They are also aware

that a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous character,

and that actions which are blamable, often proceed from qualities

entitled to praise. When this is apparent in any particular case, it

modifies their estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the agent.

I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of opinion, that in the long

run the best proof of a good character is good actions; and

resolutely refuse to consider any mental disposition as good, of

which the predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct. This

makes them unpopular with many people; but it is an unpopularity

which they must share with every one who regards the distinction

between right and wrong in a serious light; and the reproach is not

one which a conscientious utilitarian need be anxious to repel.

If no more be meant by the objection than that many utilitarians

look on the morality of actions, as measured by the utilitarian

standard, with too exclusive a regard, and do not lay sufficient stress

upon the other beauties of character which go towards making a

human being lovable or admirable, this may be admitted. Utilitarians

who have cultivated their moral feelings, but not their sympathies

nor their artistic perceptions, do fall into this mistake; and so do all

other moralists under the same conditions. What can be said in

excuse for other moralists is equally available for them, namely, that,

if there is to be any error, it is better that it should be on that side.

As a matter of fact, we may affirm that among utilitarians as among

adherents of other systems, there is every imaginable degree of

rigidity and of laxity in the application of their standard: some are

even puritanically rigorous, while others are as indulgent as can

possibly be desired by sinner or by sentimentalist. But on the whole,

a doctrine which brings prominently forward the interest that

mankind have in the repression and prevention of conduct which

violates the moral law, is likely to be inferior to no other in turning

the sanctions of opinion again such violations. It is true, the

question, What does violate the moral law? is one on which those

who recognise different standards of morality are likely now and

then to differ. But difference of opinion on moral questions was not

first introduced into the world by utilitarianism, while that doctrine

does supply, if not always an easy, at all events a tangible and

intelligible mode of deciding such differences.

It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of the common

misapprehensions of utilitarian ethics, even those which are so

obvious and gross that it might appear impossible for any person of

candour and intelligence to fall into them; since persons, even of

considerable mental endowments, often give themselves so little

trouble to understand the bearings of any opinion against which

they entertain a prejudice, and men are in general so little conscious

of this voluntary ignorance as a defect, that the vulgarest

misunderstandings of ethical doctrines are continually met with in

the deliberate writings of persons of the greatest pretensions both

to high principle and to philosophy. We not uncommonly hear the

doctrine of utility inveighed against as a godless doctrine. If it be

necessary to say anything at all against so mere an assumption, we

may say that the question depends upon what idea we have formed

of the moral character of the Deity. If it be a true belief that God

desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and that this

was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a godless

doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other. If it be

meant that utilitarianism does not recognise the revealed will of

God as the supreme law of morals, I answer, that a utilitarian who

believes in the perfect goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily

believes that whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject

of morals, must fulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme

degree. But others besides utilitarians have been of opinion that the

Christian revelation was intended, and is fitted, to inform the hearts

and minds of mankind with a spirit which should enable them to

find for themselves what is right, and incline them to do it when

found, rather than to tell them, except in a very general way, what it

is; and that we need a doctrine of ethics, carefully followed out, to

interpret to us the will God. Whether this opinion is correct or not,

it is superfluous here to discuss; since whatever aid religion, either

natural or revealed, can afford to ethical investigation, is as open to

the utilitarian moralist as to any other. He can use it as the testimony

of God to the usefulness or hurtfulness of any given course of

action, by as good a right as others can use it for the indication of a

transcendental law, having no connection with usefulness or with

happiness.

Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatised as an immoral doctrine

by giving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the

popular use of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the

Expedient, in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally

means that which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent

himself; as when a minister sacrifices the interests of his country to

keep himself in place. When it means anything better than this, it

means that which is expedient for some immediate object, some

temporary purpose, but which violates a rule whose observance is

expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in this sense,

instead of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the

hurtful. Thus, it would often be expedient, for the purpose of

getting over some momentary embarrassment, or attaining some

object immediately useful to ourselves or others, to tell a lie. But

inasmuch as the cultivation in ourselves of a sensitive feeling on the

subject of veracity, is one of the most useful, and the enfeeblement

of that feeling one of the most hurtful, things to which our conduct

can be instrumental; and inasmuch as any, even unintentional,

deviation from truth, does that much towards weakening the

trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principal

support of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of

which does more than any one thing that can be named to keep

back civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness on

the largest scale depends; we feel that the violation, for a present

advantage, of a rule of such transcendant expediency, is not

expedient, and that he who, for the sake of a convenience to

himself or to some other individual, does what depends on him to

deprive mankind of the good, and inflict upon them the evil,

involved in the greater or less reliance which they can place in each

other's word, acts the part of one of their worst enemies. Yet that

even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possible exceptions, is

acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is when the

withholding of some fact (as of information from a malefactor, or

of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would save an individual

(especially an individual other than oneself) from great and

unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by

denial. But in order that the exception may not extend itself beyond

the need, and may have the least possible effect in weakening

reliance on veracity, it ought to be recognised, and, if possible, its

limits defined; and if the principle of utility is good for anything, it

must be good for weighing these conflicting utilities against one

another, and marking out the region within which one or the other

preponderates.

Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to

reply to such objections as this- that there is not time, previous to

action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of

conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were

to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity,

because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has

to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The

answer to the objection is, that there has been ample time, namely,

the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time,

mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of

actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the

morality of life, are dependent. People talk as if the commencement

of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and as if, at

the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the

property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first

time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness.

Even then I do not think that he would find the question very

puzzling; but, at all events, the matter is now done to his hand.

It is truly a whimsical supposition that, if mankind were agreed in

considering utility to be the test of morality, they would remain

without any agreement as to what is useful, and would take no

measures for having their notions on the subject taught to the

young, and enforced by law and opinion. There is no difficulty in

proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we suppose

universal idiocy to be conjoined with it; but on any hypothesis short

of that, mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as

to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs

which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the

multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding

better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many

subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine

right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to the effects of

actions on the general happiness, I admit, or rather, earnestly

maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility, like the

precepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement,

and, in a progressive state of the human mind, their improvement is

perpetually going on.

But to consider the rules of morality as improvable, is one thing; to

pass over the intermediate generalisations entirely, and endeavour to

test each individual action directly by the first principle, is another. It

is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is

inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a

traveller respecting the place of his. ultimate destination, is not to

forbid the use of landmarks and direction-posts on the way. The

proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not

mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that

persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction

rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of

nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to

on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the

art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors

cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational

creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational

creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on

the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of

the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as

long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will

continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of

morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by; the

impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems,

can afford no argument against any one in particular; but gravely to

argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if

mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without

drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life,

is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in

philosophical controversy.

The remainder of the stock arguments against utilitarianism mostly

consist in laying to its charge the common infirmities of human

nature, and the general difficulties which embarrass conscientious

persons in shaping their course through life. We are told that a

utilitarian will be apt to make his own particular case an exception to

moral rules, and, when under temptation, will see a utility in the

breach of a rule, greater than he will see in its observance. But is

utility the only creed which is able to furnish us with excuses for evil

doing, and means of cheating our own conscience? They are

afforded in abundance by all doctrines which recognise as a fact in

morals the existence of conflicting considerations; which all

doctrines do, that have been believed by sane persons. It is not the

fault of any creed, but of the complicated nature of human affairs,

that rules of conduct cannot be so framed as to require no

exceptions, and that hardly any kind of action can safely be laid

down as either always obligatory or always condemnable. There is

no ethical creed which does not temper the rigidity of its laws, by

giving a certain latitude, under the moral responsibility of the agent,

for accommodation to peculiarities of circumstances; and under

every creed, at the opening thus made, self-deception and dishonest

casuistry get in. There exists no moral system under which there do

not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting obligation. These are the

real difficulties, the knotty points both in the theory of ethics, and in

the conscientious guidance of personal conduct. They are overcome

practically, with greater or with less success, according to the

intellect and virtue of the individual; but it can hardly be pretended

that any one will be the less qualified for dealing with them, from

possessing an ultimate standard to which conflicting rights and

duties can be referred. If utility is the ultimate source of moral

obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when

their demands are incompatible. Though the application of the

standard may be difficult, it is better than none at all: while in other

systems, the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is

no common umpire entitled to interfere between them; their claims

to precedence one over another rest on little better than sophistry,

and unless determined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged

influence of considerations of utility, afford a free scope for the

action of personal desires and partialities. We must remember that

only in these cases of conflict between secondary principles is it

requisite that first principles should be appealed to. There is no case

of moral obligation in which some secondary principle is not

involved; and if only one, there can seldom be any real doubt which

one it is, in the mind of any person by whom the principle itself is

recognised.

Chapter 3: Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of

Utility

The question is often asked, and properly so, in regard to any

supposed moral standard- What is its sanction? what are the motives

to obey it? or more specifically, what is the source of its obligation?

whence does it derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of

moral philosophy to provide the answer to this question; which,

though frequently assuming the shape of an objection to the

utilitarian morality, as if it had some special applicability to that

above others, really arises in regard to all standards. It arises, in fact,

whenever a person is called on to adopt a standard, or refer morality

to any basis on which he has not been accustomed to rest it. For the

customary morality, that which education and opinion have

consecrated, is the only one which presents itself to the mind with

the feeling of being in itself obligatory; and when a person is asked

to believe that this morality derives its obligation from some general

principle round which custom has not thrown the same halo, the

assertion is to him a paradox; the supposed corollaries seem to have

a more binding force than the original theorem; the superstructure

seems to stand better without, than with, what is represented as its

foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I am bound not to rob or

murder, betray or deceive; but why am I bound to promote the

general happiness? If my own happiness lies in something else, why

may I not give that the preference?

If the view adopted by the utilitarian philosophy of the nature of

the moral sense be correct, this difficulty will always present itself,

until the influences which form moral character have taken the same

hold of the principle which they have taken of some of the

consequences- until, by the improvement of education, the feeling

of unity with our fellow-creatures shall be (what it cannot be denied

that Christ intended it to be) as deeply rooted in our character, and

to our own consciousness as completely a part of our nature, as the

horror of crime is in an ordinarily well brought up young person. In

the meantime, however, the difficulty has no peculiar application to

the doctrine of utility, but is inherent in every attempt to analyse

morality and reduce it to principles; which, unless the principle is

already in men's minds invested with as much sacredness as any of

its applications, always seems to divest them of a part of their

sanctity.

The principle of utility either has, or there is no reason why it might

not have, all the sanctions which belong to any other system of

morals. Those sanctions are either external or internal. Of the

external sanctions it is not necessary to speak at any length. They

are, the hope of favour and the fear of displeasure, from our fellow

creatures or from the Ruler of the Universe, along with whatever we

may have of sympathy or affection for them, or of love and awe of

Him, inclining us to do his will independently of selfish

consequences. There is evidently no reason why all these motives for

observance should not attach themselves to the utilitarian morality,

as completely and as powerfully as to any other. Indeed, those of

them which refer to our fellow creatures are sure to do so, in

proportion to the amount of general intelligence; for whether there

be any other ground of moral obligation than the general happiness

or not, men do desire happiness; and however imperfect may be

their own practice, they desire and commend all conduct in others

towards themselves, by which they think their happiness is

promoted. With regard to the religious motive, if men believe, as

most profess to do, in the goodness of God, those who think that

conduciveness to the general happiness is the essence, or even only

the criterion of good, must necessarily believe that it is also that

which God approves. The whole force therefore of external reward

and punishment, whether physical or moral, and whether

proceeding from God or from our fellow men, together with all that

the capacities of human nature admit of disinterested devotion to

either, become available to enforce the utilitarian morality, in

proportion as that morality is recognised; and the more powerfully,

the more the appliances of education and general cultivation are

bent to the purpose.

So far as to external sanctions. The internal sanction of duty,

whatever our standard of duty may be, is one and the same- a

feeling in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on

violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in

the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility.

This feeling, when disinterested, and connecting itself with the pure

idea of duty, and not with some particular form of it, or with any of

the merely accessory circumstances, is the essence of Conscience;

though in that complex phenomenon as it actually exists, the simple

fact is in general all encrusted over with collateral associations,

derived from sympathy, from love, and still more from fear; from all

the forms of religious feeling; from the recollections of childhood

and of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of

others, and occasionally even self-abasement. This extreme

complication is, I apprehend, the origin of the sort of mystical

character which, by a tendency of the human mind of which there

are many other examples, is apt to be attributed to the idea of moral

obligation, and which leads people to believe that the idea cannot

possibly attach itself to any other objects than those which, by a

supposed mysterious law, are found in our present experience to

excite it. Its binding force, however, consists in the existence of a

mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what

violates our standard of right, and which, if we do nevertheless

violate that standard, will probably have to be encountered

afterwards in the form of remorse. Whatever theory we have of the

nature or origin of conscience, this is what essentially constitutes it.

The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motives

apart) being a subjective feeling in our own minds, I see nothing

embarrassing to those whose standard is utility, in the question, what

is the sanction of that particular standard? We may answer, the same

as of all other moral standards- the conscientious feelings of

mankind. Undoubtedly this sanction has no binding efficacy on

those who do not possess the feelings it appeals to; but neither will

these persons be more obedient to any other moral principle than to

the utilitarian one. On them morality of any kind has no hold but

through the external sanctions. Meanwhile the feelings exist, a fact

in human nature, the reality of which, and the great power with

which they are capable of acting on those in whom they have been

duly cultivated, are proved by experience. No reason has ever been

shown why they may not be cultivated to as great intensity in

connection with the utilitarian, as with any other rule of morals.

There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a person who sees

in moral obligation a transcendental fact, an objective reality

belonging to the province of "Things in themselves," is likely to be

more obedient to it than one who believes it to be entirely

subjective, having its seat in human consciousness only. But

whatever a person's opinion may be on this point of Ontology, the

force he is really urged by is his own subjective feeling, and is exactly

measured by its strength. No one's belief that duty is an objective

reality is stronger than the belief that God is so; yet the belief in

God, apart from the expectation of actual reward and punishment,

only operates on conduct through, and in proportion to, the

subjective religious feeling. The sanction, so far as it is disinterested,

is always in the mind itself; and the notion therefore of the

transcendental moralists must be, that this sanction will not exist in

the mind unless it is believed to have its root out of the mind; and

that if a person is able to say to himself, This which is restraining

me, and which is called my conscience, is only a feeling in my own

mind, he may possibly draw the conclusion that when the feeling

ceases the obligation ceases, and that if he find the feeling

inconvenient, he may disregard it, and endeavour to get rid of it.

But is this danger confined to the utilitarian morality? Does the

belief that moral obligation has its seat outside the mind make the

feeling of it too strong to be got rid of? The fact is so far otherwise,

that all moralists admit and lament the ease with which, in the

generality of minds, conscience can be silenced or stifled. The

question, Need I obey my conscience? is quite as often put to

themselves by persons who never heard of the principle of utility, as

by its adherents. Those whose conscientious feelings are so weak as

to allow of their asking this question, if they answer it affirmatively,

will not do so because they believe in the transcendental theory, but

because of the external sanctions.

It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to decide whether the

feeling of duty is innate or implanted. Assuming it to be innate, it is

an open question to what objects it naturally attaches itself; for the

philosophic supporters of that theory are now agreed that the

intuitive perception is of principles of morality and not of the

details. If there be anything innate in the matter, I see no reason

why the feeling which is innate should not be that of regard to the

pleasures and pains of others. If there is any principle of morals

which is intuitively obligatory, I should say it must be that. If so, the

intuitive ethics would coincide with the utilitarian, and there would

be no further quarrel between them. Even as it is, the intuitive

moralists, though they believe that there are other intuitive moral

obligations, do already believe this to one; for they unanimously

hold that a large portion of morality turns upon the consideration

due to the interests of our fellow-creatures. Therefore, if the belief

in the transcendental origin of moral obligation gives any additional

efficacy to the internal sanction, it appears to me that the utilitarian

principle has already the benefit of it.

On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not

innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason the less natural. It

is natural to man to speak, to reason, to build cities, to cultivate the

ground, though these are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are

not indeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being in any

perceptible degree present in all of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact

admitted by those who believe the most strenuously in their

transcendental origin. Like the other acquired capacities above

referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural

outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain small degree, of

springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being brought by

cultivation to a high degree of development. Unhappily it is also

susceptible, by a sufficient use of the external sanctions and of the

force of early impressions, of being cultivated in almost any

direction: so that there is hardly anything so absurd or so

mischievous that it may not, by means of these influences, be made

to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience. To

doubt that the same potency might be given by the same means to

the principle of utility, even if it had no foundation in human

nature, would be flying in the face of all experience.

But moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation, when

intellectual culture goes on, yield by degrees to the dissolving force

of analysis: and if the feeling of duty, when associated with utility,

would appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading department

of our nature, no powerful class of sentiments, with which that

association would harmonise, which would make us feel it congenial,

and incline us not only to foster it in others (for which we have

abundant interested motives), but also to cherish it in ourselves; if

there were not, in short, a natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian

morality, it might well happen that this association also, even after it

had been implanted by education, might be analysed away.

But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment; and this it is

which, when once the general happiness is recognised as the ethical

standard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality. This

firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire

to be in unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a powerful

principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to

become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the

influences of advancing civilisation. The social state is at once so

natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some

unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he

never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and

this association is riveted more and more, as mankind are further

removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition,

therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and

more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state

of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a

human being.

Now, society between human beings, except in the relation of

master and slave, is manifestly impossible on any other footing than

that the interests of all are to be consulted. Society between equals

can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be

regarded equally. And since in all states of civilisation, every person,

except an absolute monarch, has equals, every one is obliged to live

on these terms with somebody; and in every age some advance is

made towards a state in which it will be impossible to live

permanently on other terms with anybody. In this way people grow

up unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard

of other people's interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving

themselves as at least abstaining from all the grosser injuries, and (if

only for their own protection) living in a state of constant protest

against them. They are also familiar with the fact of co-operating

with others and proposing to themselves a collective, not an

individual interest as the aim (at least for the time being) of their

actions. So long as they are co-operating, their ends are identified

with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the

interests of others are their own interests. Not only does all

strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to

each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting

the welfare of others; it also leads him to identify his feelings more

and more with their good, or at least with an even greater degree of

practical consideration for it. He comes, as though instinctively, to

be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to

others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and

necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of

our existence. Now, whatever amount of this feeling a person has,

he is urged by the strongest motives both of interest and of

sympathy to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of his power

encourage it in others; and even if he has none of it himself, he is as

greatly interested as any one else that others should have it.

Consequently the smallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of and

nourished by the contagion of sympathy and the influences of

education; and a complete web of corroborative association is

woven round it, by the powerful agency of the external sanctions.

This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation

goes on, is felt to be more and more natural. Every step in political

improvement renders it more so, by removing the sources of

opposition of interest, and levelling those inequalities of legal

privilege between individuals or classes, owing to which there are

large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still practicable to

disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the influences

are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each

individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which, if perfect,

would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition

for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. If we

now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and the

whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion, directed,

as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person grow up

from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and the

practice of it, I think that no one, who can realise this conception,

will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the ultimate sanction

for the Happiness morality. To any ethical student who finds the

realisation difficult, I recommend, as a means of facilitating it, the

second of M. Comte's two principle works, the Traite de Politique

Positive. I entertain the strongest objections to the system of

politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it has

superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of

humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the

psychological power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it

take hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling, and action,

in a manner of which the greatest ascendancy ever exercised by any

religion may be but a type and foretaste; and of which the danger is,

not that it should be insufficient but that it should be so excessive as

to interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality.

Neither is it necessary to the feeling which constitutes the binding

force of the utilitarian morality on those who recognise it, to wait

for those social influences which would make its obligation felt by

mankind at large. In the comparatively early state of human

advancement in which we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that

entireness of sympathy with all others, which would make any real

discordance in the general direction of their conduct in life

impossible; but already a person in whom the social feeling is at all

developed, cannot bring himself to think of the rest of his fellow

creatures as struggling rivals with him for the means of happiness,

whom he must desire to see defeated in their object in order that he

may succeed in his. The deeply rooted conception which every

individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends to make

him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony

between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures. If

differences of opinion and of mental culture make it impossible for

him to share many of their actual feelings- perhaps make him

denounce and defy those feelings- he still needs to be conscious that

his real aim and theirs do not conflict; that he is not opposing

himself to what they really wish for, namely their own good, but is,

on the contrary, promoting it. This feeling in most individuals is

much inferior in strength to their selfish feelings, and is often

wanting altogether. But to those who have it, it possesses all the

characters of a natural feeling. It does not present itself to their

minds as a superstition of education, or a law despotically imposed

by the power of society, but as an attribute which it would not be

well for them to be without. This conviction is the ultimate sanction

of the greatest happiness morality. This it is which makes any mind,

of well-developed feelings, work with, and not against, the outward

motives to care for others, afforded by what I have called the

external sanctions; and when those sanctions are wanting, or act in

an opposite direction, constitutes in itself a powerful internal

binding force, in proportion to the sensitiveness and thoughtfulness

of the character; since few but those whose mind is a moral blank,

could bear to lay out their course of life on the plan of paying no

regard to others except so far as their own private interest compels.

Chapter 4: Of what sort of Proof the Principle of

Utility is Susceptible

It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do not

admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be

incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to

the first premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our

conduct. But the former, being matters of fact, may be the subject

of a direct appeal to the faculties which judge of fact- namely, our

senses, and our internal consciousness. Can an appeal be made to

the same faculties on questions of practical ends? Or by what other

faculty is cognisance taken of them?

Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what things are

desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and

the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only

desirable as means to that end. What ought to be required of this

doctrine- what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should

fulfil- to make good its claim to be believed?

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is

that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is

that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience.

In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to

produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.

If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not,

in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could

ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why

the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as

he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This,

however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case

admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a

good: that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the

general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.

Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and

consequently one of the criteria of morality.

But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to be the sole criterion. To

do that, it would seem, by the same rule, necessary to show, not only

that people desire happiness, but that they never desire anything

else. Now it is palpable that they do desire things which, in common

language, are decidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire,

for example, virtue, and the absence of vice, no less really than

pleasure and the absence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as

universal, but it is as authentic a fact, as the desire of happiness.

And hence the opponents of the utilitarian standard deem that they

have a right to infer that there are other ends of human action

besides happiness, and that happiness is not the standard of

approbation and disapprobation.

But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or

maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It

maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be

desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of

utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is

made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions and

dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end

than virtue; yet this being granted, and it having been decided, from

considerations of this description, what is virtuous, they not only

place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means

to the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact

the possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without

looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a

right state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most

conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in this

manner- as a thing desirable in itself, even although, in the individual

instance, it should not produce those other desirable consequences

which it tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be

virtue. This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from

the Happiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very

various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when

considered as swelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not

mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given

exemption from pain, as for example health, is to be looked upon as

means to a collective something termed happiness, and to be desired

on that account. They are desired and desirable in and for

themselves; besides being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue,

according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally

part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who

love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished,

not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.

To illustrate this farther, we may remember that virtue is not the

only thing, originally a means, and which if it were not a means to

anything else, would be and remain indifferent, but which by

association with what it is a means to, comes to be desired for itself,

and that too with the utmost intensity. What, for example, shall we

say of the love of money? There is nothing originally more desirable

about money than about any heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is

solely that of the things which it will buy; the desires for other

things than itself, which it is a means of gratifying. Yet the love of

money is not only one of the strongest moving forces of human

life, but money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the desire

to possess it is often stronger than the desire to use it, and goes on

increasing when all the desires which point to ends beyond it, to be

compassed by it, are falling off. It may, then, be said truly, that

money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end.

From being a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a

principal ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness.

The same may be said of the majority of the great objects of

human life- power, for example, or fame; except that to each of

these there is a certain amount of immediate pleasure annexed,

which has at least the semblance of being naturally inherent in

them; a thing which cannot be said of money. Still, however, the

strongest natural attraction, both of power and of fame, is the

immense aid they give to the attainment of our other wishes; and it

is the strong association thus generated between them and all our

objects of desire, which gives to the direct desire of them the

intensity it often assumes, so as in some characters to surpass in

strength all other desires. In these cases the means have become a

part of the end, and a more important part of it than any of the

things which they are means to. What was once desired as an

instrument for the attainment of happiness, has come to be desired

for its own sake. In being desired for its own sake it is, however,

desired as part of happiness. The person is made, or thinks he

would be made, happy by its mere possession; and is made unhappy

by failure to obtain it. The desire of it is not a different thing from

the desire of happiness, any more than the love of music, or the

desire of health. They are included in happiness. They are some of

the elements of which the desire of happiness is made up.

Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a concrete whole; and these

are some of its parts. And the utilitarian standard sanctions and

approves their being so. Life would be a poor thing, very ill provided

with sources of happiness, if there were not this provision of

nature, by which things originally indifferent, but conducive to, or

otherwise associated with, the satisfaction of our primitive desires,

become in themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the

primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space of human

existence that they are capable of covering, and even in intensity.

Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a good of this

description. There was no original desire of it, or motive to it, save

its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protection from

pain. But through the association thus formed, it may be felt a good

in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as any other

good; and with this difference between it and the love of money, of

power, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render the

individual noxious to the other members of the society to which he

belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so much a

blessing to them as the cultivation of the disinterested love of

virtue. And consequently, the utilitarian standard, while it tolerates

and approves those other acquired desires, up to the point beyond

which they would be more injurious to the general happiness than

promotive of it, enjoins and requires the cultivation of the love of

virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as being above all things

important to the general happiness.

It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in reality

nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise

than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to

happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired

for itself until it has become so. Those who desire virtue for its own

sake, desire it either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or

because the consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both

reasons united; as in truth the pleasure and pain seldom exist

separately, but almost always together, the same person feeling

pleasure in the degree of virtue attained, and pain in not having

attained more. If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other

no pain, he would not love or desire virtue, or would desire it only

for the other benefits which it might produce to himself or to

persons whom he cared for.

We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what sort of

proof the principle of utility is susceptible. If the opinion which I

have now stated is psychologically true- if human nature is so

constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of

happiness or a means of happiness, we can have no other proof,

and we require no other, that these are the only things desirable. If

so, happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion

of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence

it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a

part is included in the whole.

And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind do

desire nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of

which the absence is a pain; we have evidently arrived at a question

of fact and experience, dependent, like all similar questions, upon

evidence. It can only be determined by practised self-consciousness

and self-observation, assisted by observation of others. I believe

that these sources of evidence, impartially consulted, will declare

that desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and

thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or

rather two parts of the same phenomenon; in strictness of language,

two different modes of naming the same psychological fact: that to

think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake of its

consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same

thing; and that to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea

of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility.

So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it will hardly be

disputed: and the objection made will be, not that desire can

possibly be directed to anything ultimately except pleasure and

exemption from pain, but that the will is a different thing from

desire; that a person of confirmed virtue, or any other person

whose purposes are fixed, carries out his purposes without any

thought of the pleasure he has in contemplating them, or expects to

derive from their fulfilment; and persists in acting on them, even

though these pleasures are much diminished, by changes in his

character or decay of his passive sensibilities, or are outweighed by

the pains which the pursuit of the purposes may bring upon him.

All this I fully admit, and have stated it elsewhere, as positively and

emphatically as any one. Will, the active phenomenon, is a different

thing from desire, the state of passive sensibility, and though

originally an offshoot from it, may in time take root and detach

itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in the case of an

habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because we desire it,

we often desire it only because we will it. This, however, is but an

instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise

confined to the case of virtuous actions. Many indifferent things,

which men originally did from a motive of some sort, they continue

to do from habit. Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the

consciousness coming only after the action: at other times with

conscious volition, but volition which has become habitual, and is

put in operation by the force of habit, in opposition perhaps to the

deliberate preference, as often happens with those who have

contracted habits of vicious or hurtful indulgence.

Third and last comes the case in which the habitual act of will in the

individual instance is not in contradiction to the general intention

prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as in the case of the

person of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursue deliberately and

consistently any determinate end. The distinction between will and

desire thus understood is an authentic and highly important

psychological fact; but the fact consists solely in this- that will, like

all other parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit, and that we

may will from habit what we no longer desire for itself or desire

only because we will it. It is not the less true that will, in the

beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including in that term the

repelling influence of pain as well as the attractive one of pleasure.

Let us take into consideration, no longer the person who has a

confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous will is still

feeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to be fully relied on; by

what means can it be strengthened? How can the will to be virtuous,

where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or

awakened? Only by making the person desire virtue- by making him

think of it in a pleasurable light, or of its absence in a painful one. It

is by associating the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong

with pain, or by eliciting and impressing and bringing home to the

person's experience the pleasure naturally involved in the one or the

pain in the other, that it is possible to call forth that will to be

virtuous, which, when confirmed, acts without any thought of either

pleasure or pain. Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the

dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit. That

which is the result of habit affords no presumption of being

intrinsically good; and there would be no reason for wishing that the

purpose of virtue should become independent of pleasure and pain,

were it not that the influence of the pleasurable and painful

associations which prompt to virtue is not sufficiently to be

depended on for unerring constancy of action until it has acquired

the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit is the

only thing which imparts certainty; and it is because of the

importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on one's

feelings and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's

own, that the will to do right ought to be cultivated into this habitual

independence. In other words, this state of the will is a means to

good, not intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine

that nothing is a good to human beings but in so far as it is either

itself pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain.

But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is proved.

Whether it is so or not, must now be left to the consideration of the

thoughtful reader.

Chapter 5: On the Connection between Justice and

Utility

IN ALL ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the

reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion

of right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of justice. The

powerful sentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that

word recalls with a rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct,

have seemed to the majority of thinkers to point to an inherent

quality in things; to show that the just must have an existence in

Nature as something absolute, generically distinct from every variety

of the Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it, though (as is

commonly acknowledged) never, in the long run, disjoined from it

in fact.

In the case of this, as of our other moral sentiments, there is no

necessary connection between the question of its origin, and that of

its binding force. That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does

not necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice

might be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other

instincts, to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. If we

have intellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as

well as animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way,

there is no necessity that the former should be more infallible in

their sphere than the latter in theirs: it may as well happen that

wrong judgments are occasionally suggested by those, as wrong

actions by these. But though it is one thing to believe that we have

natural feelings of justice, and another to acknowledge them as an

ultimate criterion of conduct, these two opinions are very closely

connected in point of fact. Mankind are always predisposed to

believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a

revelation of some objective reality. Our present object is to

determine whether the reality, to which the feeling of justice

corresponds, is one which needs any such special revelation;

whether the justice or injustice of an action is a thing intrinsically

peculiar, and distinct from all its other qualities, or only a

combination of certain of those qualities, presented under a peculiar

aspect. For the purpose of this inquiry it is practically important to

consider whether the feeling itself, of justice and injustice, is sui

generis like our sensations of colour and taste, or a derivative

feeling, formed by a combination of others. And this it is the more

essential to examine, as people are in general willing enough to

allow, that objectively the dictates of justice coincide with a part of

the field of General Expediency; but inasmuch as the subjective

mental feeling of justice is different from that which commonly

attaches to simple expediency, and, except in the extreme cases of

the latter, is far more imperative in its demands, people find it

difficult to see, in justice, only a particular kind or branch of general

utility, and think that its superior binding force requires a totally

different origin.

To throw light upon this question, it is necessary to attempt to

ascertain what is the distinguishing character of justice, or of

injustice: what is the quality, or whether there is any quality,

attributed in common to all modes of conduct designated as unjust

(for justice, like many other moral attributes, is best defined by its

opposite), and distinguishing them from such modes of conduct as

are disapproved, but without having that particular epithet of

disapprobation applied to them. If in everything which men are

accustomed to characterise as just or unjust, some one common

attribute or collection of attributes is always present, we may judge

whether this particular attribute or combination of attributes would

be capable of gathering round it a sentiment of that peculiar

character and intensity by virtue of the general laws of our

emotional constitution, or whether the sentiment is inexplicable, and

requires to be regarded as a special provision of Nature. If we find

the former to be the case, we shall, in resolving this question, have

resolved also the main problem: if the latter, we shall have to seek

for some other mode of investigating it.

To find the common attributes of a variety of objects, it is necessary

to begin by surveying the objects themselves in the concrete. Let us

therefore advert successively to the various modes of action, and

arrangements of human affairs, which are classed, by universal or

widely spread opinion, as Just or as Unjust. The things well known

to excite the sentiments associated with those names are of a very

multifarious character. I shall pass them rapidly in review, without

studying any particular arrangement.

In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to deprive any one

of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which

belongs to him by law. Here, therefore, is one instance of the

application of the terms just and unjust in a perfectly definite sense,

namely, that it is just to respect, unjust to violate, the legal rights of

any one. But this judgment admits of several exceptions, arising

from the other forms in which the notions of justice and injustice

present themselves. For example, the person who suffers the

deprivation may (as the phrase is) have forfeited the rights which he

is so deprived of: a case to which we shall return presently. But also,

Secondly; the legal rights of which he is deprived, may be rights

which ought not to have belonged to him; in other words, the law

which confers on him these rights, may be a bad law. When it is so,

or when (which is the same thing for our purpose) it is supposed to

be so, opinions will differ as to the justice or injustice of infringing

it. Some maintain that no law, however bad, ought to be disobeyed

by an individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all,

should only be shown in endeavouring to get it altered by

competent authority. This opinion (which condemns many of the

most illustrious benefactors of mankind, and would often protect

pernicious institutions against the only weapons which, in the state

of things existing at the time, have any chance of succeeding against

them) is defended, by those who hold it, on grounds of expediency;

principally on that of the importance, to the common interest of

mankind, of maintaining inviolate the sentiment of submission to

law. Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary opinion, that

any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed, even

though it be not judged to be unjust, but only inexpedient; while

others would confine the licence of disobedience to the case of

unjust laws: but again, some say, that all laws which are inexpedient

are unjust; since every law imposes some restriction on the natural

liberty of mankind, which restriction is an injustice, unless

legitimated by tending to their good. Among these diversities of

opinion, it seems to be universally admitted that there may be unjust

laws, and that law, consequently, is not the ultimate criterion of

justice, but may give to one person a benefit, or impose on another

an evil, which justice condemns. When, however, a law is thought to

be unjust, it seems always to be regarded as being so in the same

way in which a breach of law is unjust, namely, by infringing

somebody's right; which, as it cannot in this case be a legal right,

receives a different appellation, and is called a moral right. We may

say, therefore, that a second case of injustice consists in taking or

withholding from any person that to which he has a moral right.

Thirdly, it is universally considered just that each person should

obtain that (whether good or evil) which he deserves; and unjust

that he should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which

he does not deserve. This is, perhaps, the clearest and most

emphatic form in which the idea of justice is conceived by the

general mind. As it involves the notion of desert, the question

arises, what constitutes desert? Speaking in a general way, a person is

understood to deserve good if he does right, evil if he does wrong;

and in a more particular sense, to deserve good from those to whom

he does or has done good, and evil from those to whom he does or

has done evil. The precept of returning good for evil has never been

regarded as a case of the fulfilment of justice, but as one in which

the claims of justice are waived, in obedience to other

considerations.

Fourthly, it is confessedly unjust to break faith with any one: to

violate an engagement, either express or implied, or disappoint

expectations raised by our conduct, at least if we have raised those

expectations knowingly and voluntarily. Like the other obligations

of justice already spoken of, this one is not regarded as absolute, but

as capable of being overruled by a stronger obligation of justice on

the other side; or by such conduct on the part of the person

concerned as is deemed to absolve us from our obligation to him,

and to constitute a forfeiture of the benefit which he has been led to

expect.

Fifthly, it is, by universal admission, inconsistent with justice to be

partial; to show favour or preference to one person over another, in

matters to which favour and preference do not properly apply.

Impartiality, however, does not seem to be regarded as a duty in

itself, but rather as instrumental to some other duty; for it is

admitted that favour and preference are not always censurable, and

indeed the cases in which they are condemned are rather the

exception than the rule. A person would be more likely to be

blamed than applauded for giving his family or friends no

superiority in good offices over strangers, when he could do so

without violating any other duty; and no one thinks it unjust to seek

one person in preference to another as a friend, connection, or

companion. Impartiality where rights are concerned is of course

obligatory, but this is involved in the more general obligation of

giving to every one his right. A tribunal, for example, must be

impartial, because it is bound to award, without regard to any other

consideration, a disputed object to the one of two parties who has

the right to it. There are other cases in which impartiality means,

being solely influenced by desert; as with those who, in the capacity

of judges, preceptors, or parents, administer reward and punishment

as such. There are cases, again, in which it means, being solely

influenced by consideration for the public interest; as in making a

selection among candidates for a government employment.

Impartiality, in short, as an obligation of justice, may be said to

mean, being exclusively influenced by the considerations which it is

supposed ought to influence the particular case in hand; and

resisting the solicitation of any motives which prompt to conduct

different from what those considerations would dictate.

Nearly allied to the idea of impartiality is that of equality; which

often enters as a component part both into the conception of

justice and into the practice of it, and, in the eyes of many persons,

constitutes its essence. But in this, still more than in any other case,

the notion of justice varies in different persons, and always

conforms in its variations to their notion of utility. Each person

maintains that equality is the dictate of justice, except where he

thinks that expediency requires inequality. The justice of giving

equal protection to the rights of all, is maintained by those who

support the most outrageous inequality in the rights themselves.

Even in slave countries it is theoretically admitted that the rights of

the slave, such as they are, ought to be as sacred as those of the

master; and that a tribunal which fails to enforce them with equal

strictness is wanting in justice; while, at the same time, institutions

which leave to the slave scarcely any rights to enforce, are not

deemed unjust, because they are not deemed inexpedient. Those

who think that utility requires distinctions of rank, do not consider

it unjust that riches and social privileges should be unequally

dispensed; but those who think this inequality inexpedient, think it

unjust also. Whoever thinks that government is necessary, sees no

injustice in as much inequality as is constituted by giving to the

magistrate powers not granted to other people. Even among those

who hold levelling doctrines, there are as many questions of justice

as there are differences of opinion about expediency. Some

Communists consider it unjust that the produce of the labour of

the community should be shared on any other principle than that of

exact equality; others think it just that those should receive most

whose wants are greatest; while others hold that those who work

harder, or who produce more, or whose services are more valuable

to the community, may justly claim a larger quota in the division of

the produce. And the sense of natural justice may be plausibly

appealed to in behalf of every one of these opinions.

Among so many diverse applications of the term justice, which yet

is not regarded as ambiguous, it is a matter of some difficulty to

seize the mental link which holds them together, and on which the

moral sentiment adhering to the term essentially depends. Perhaps,

in this embarrassment, some help may be derived from the history

of the word, as indicated by its etymology.

In most, if not in all, languages, the etymology of the word which

corresponds to Just, points distinctly to an origin connected with the

ordinances of law. Justum is a form of jussum, that which has been

ordered. Dikaion comes directly from dike, a suit at law. Recht, from

which came right and righteous, is synonymous with law. The courts

of justice, the administration of justice, are the courts and the

administration of law. La justice, in French, is the established term

for judicature. I am not committing the fallacy imputed with some

show of truth to Horne Tooke, of assuming that a word must still

continue to mean what it originally meant. Etymology is slight

evidence of what the idea now signified is, but the very best

evidence of how it sprang up. There can, I think, be no doubt that

the idee mere, the primitive element, in the formation of the notion

of justice, was conformity to law. It constituted the entire idea

among the Hebrews, up to the birth of Christianity; as might be

expected in the case of a people whose laws attempted to embrace

all subjects on which precepts were required, and who believed

those laws to be a direct emanation from the Supreme Being. But

other nations, and in particular the Greeks and Romans, who knew

that their laws had been made originally, and still continued to be

made, by men, were not afraid to admit that those men might make

bad laws; might do, by law, the same things, and from the same

motives, which if done by individuals without the sanction of law,

would be called unjust. And hence the sentiment of injustice came

to be attached, not to all violations of law, but only to violations of

such laws as ought to exist, including such as ought to exist, but do

not; and to laws themselves, if supposed to be contrary to what

ought to be law. In this manner the idea of law and of its

injunctions was still predominant in the notion of justice, even

when the laws actually in force ceased to be accepted as the standard

of it.

It is true that mankind consider the idea of justice and its

obligations as applicable to many things which neither are, nor is it

desired that they should be, regulated by law. Nobody desires that

laws should interfere with the whole detail of private life; yet every

one allows that in all daily conduct a person may and does show

himself to be either just or unjust. But even here, the idea of the

breach of what ought to be law, still lingers in a modified shape. It

would always give us pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of

fitness, that acts which we deem unjust should be punished, though

we do not always think it expedient that this should be done by the

tribunals. We forego that gratification on account of incidental

inconveniences. We should be glad to see just conduct enforced and

injustice repressed, even in the minutest details, if we were not, with

reason, afraid of trusting the magistrate with so unlimited an

amount of power over individuals. When we think that a person is

bound in justice to do a thing, it is an ordinary form of language to

say, that he ought to be compelled to do it. We should be gratified to

see the obligation enforced by anybody who had the power. If we

see that its enforcement by law would be inexpedient, we lament the

impossibility, we consider the impunity given to injustice as an evil,

and strive to make amends for it by bringing a strong expression of

our own and the public disapprobation to bear upon the offender.

Thus the idea of legal constraint is still the generating idea of the

notion of justice, though undergoing several transformations before

that notion, as it exists in an advanced state of society, becomes

complete.

The above is, I think, a true account, as far as it goes, of the origin

and progressive growth of the idea of justice. But we must observe,

that it contains, as yet, nothing to distinguish that obligation from

moral obligation in general. For the truth is, that the idea of penal

sanction, which is the essence of law, enters not only into the

conception of injustice, but into that of any kind of wrong. We do

not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person

ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by

law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures; if not by opinion, by the

reproaches of his own conscience. This seems the real turning point

of the distinction between morality and simple expediency. It is a

part of the notion of Duty in every one of its forms, that a person

may rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be

exacted from a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it

may be exacted from him, we do not call it his duty. Reasons of

prudence, or the interest of other people, may militate against

actually exacting it; but the person himself, it is clearly understood,

would not be entitled to complain. There are other things, on the

contrary, which we wish that people should do, which we like or

admire them for doing, perhaps dislike or despise them for not

doing, but yet admit that they are not bound to do; it is not a case

of moral obligation; we do not blame them, that is, we do not think

that they are proper objects of punishment. How we come by these

ideas of deserving and not deserving punishment, will appear,

perhaps, in the sequel; but I think there is no doubt that this

distinction lies at the bottom of the notions of right and wrong;

that we call any conduct wrong, or employ, instead, some other term

of dislike or disparagement, according as we think that the person

ought, or ought not, to be punished for it; and we say, it would be

right, to do so and so, or merely that it would be desirable or

laudable, according as we would wish to see the person whom it

concerns, compelled, or only persuaded and exhorted, to act in that

manner.

This, therefore, being the characteristic difference which marks off,

not justice, but morality in general, from the remaining provinces of

Expediency and Worthiness; the character is still to be sought which

distinguishes justice from other branches of morality. Now it is

known that ethical writers divide moral duties into two classes,

denoted by the ill-chosen expressions, duties of perfect and of

imperfect obligation; the latter being those in which, though the act

is obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to our

choice, as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeed

bound to practise, but not towards any definite person, nor at any

prescribed time. In the more precise language of philosophic jurists,

duties of perfect obligation are those duties in virtue of which a

correlative right resides in some person or persons; duties of

imperfect obligation are those moral obligations which do not give

birth to any right. I think it will be found that this distinction exactly

coincides with that which exists between justice and the other

obligations of morality. In our survey of the various popular

acceptations of justice, the term appeared generally to involve the

idea of a personal right- a claim on the part of one or more

individuals, like that which the law gives when it confers a

proprietary or other legal right. Whether the injustice consists in

depriving a person of a possession, or in breaking faith with him, or

in treating him worse than he deserves, or worse than other people

who have no greater claims, in each case the supposition implies two

things- a wrong done, and some assignable person who is wronged.

Injustice may also be done by treating a person better than others;

but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who are also

assignable persons.

It seems to me that this feature in the case- a right in some person,

correlative to the moral obligation- constitutes the specific

difference between justice, and generosity or beneficence. Justice

implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrong not to

do, but which some individual person can claim from us as his

moral right. No one has a moral right to our generosity or

beneficence, because we are not morally bound to practise those

virtues towards any given individual. And it will be found with

respect to this, as to every correct definition, that the instances

which seem to conflict with it are those which most confirm it. For

if a moralist attempts, as some have done, to make out that mankind

generally, though not any given individual, have a right to all the

good we can do them, he at once, by that thesis, includes generosity

and beneficence within the category of justice. He is obliged to say,

that our utmost exertions are due to our fellow creatures, thus

assimilating them to a debt; or that nothing less can be a sufficient

return for what society does for us, thus classing the case as one of

gratitute; both of which are acknowledged cases of justice.

Wherever there is right, the case is one of justice, and not of the

virtue of beneficence: and whoever does not place the distinction

between justice and morality in general, where we have now placed

it, will be found to make no distinction between them at all, but to

merge all morality in justice.

Having thus endeavoured to determine the distinctive elements

which enter into the composition of the idea of justice, we are ready

to enter on the inquiry, whether the feeling, which accompanies the

idea, is attached to it by a special dispensation of nature, or whether

it could have grown up, by any known laws, out of the idea itself;

and in particular, whether it can have originated in considerations of

general expediency.

I conceive that the sentiment itself does not arise from anything

which would commonly, or correctly, be termed an idea of

expediency; but that though the sentiment does not, whatever is

moral in it does.

We have seen that the two essential ingredients in the sentiment of

justice are, the desire to punish a person who has done harm, and

the knowledge or belief that there is some definite individual or

individuals to whom harm has been done.

Now it appears to me, that the desire to punish a person who has

done harm to some individual is a spontaneous outgrowth from two

sentiments, both in the highest degree natural, and which either are

or resemble instincts; the impulse of self-defence, and the feeling of

sympathy.

It is natural to resent, and to repel or retaliate, any harm done or

attempted against ourselves, or against those with whom we

sympathise. The origin of this sentiment it is not necessary here to

discuss. Whether it be an instinct or a result of intelligence, it is, we

know, common to all animal nature; for every animal tries to hurt

those who have hurt, or who it thinks are about to hurt, itself or its

young. Human beings, on this point, only differ from other animals

in two particulars. First, in being capable of sympathising, not solely

with their offspring, or, like some of the more noble animals, with

some superior animal who is kind to them, but with all human, and

even with all sentient, beings. Secondly, in having a more developed

intelligence, which gives a wider range to the whole of their

sentiments, whether self-regarding or sympathetic. By virtue of his

superior intelligence, even apart from his superior range of

sympathy, a human being is capable of apprehending a community

of interest between himself and the human society of which he

forms a part, such that any conduct which threatens the security of

the society generally, is threatening to his own, and calls forth his

instinct (if instinct it be) of self-defence. The same superiority of

intelligence joined to the power of sympathising with human beings

generally, enables him to attach himself to the collective idea of his

tribe, his country, or mankind, in such a manner that any act hurtful

to them, raises his instinct of sympathy, and urges him to resistance.

The sentiment of justice, in that one of its elements which consists

of the desire to punish, is thus, I conceive, the natural feeling of

retaliation or vengeance, rendered by intellect and sympathy

applicable to those injuries, that is, to those hurts, which wound us

through, or in common with, society at large. This sentiment, in

itself, has nothing moral in it; what is moral is, the exclusive

subordination of it to the social sympathies, so as to wait on and

obey their call. For the natural feeling would make us resent

indiscriminately whatever any one does that is disagreeable to us;

but when moralised by the social feeling, it only acts in the

directions conformable to the general good: just persons resenting a

hurt to society, though not otherwise a hurt to themselves, and not

resenting a hurt to themselves, however painful, unless it be of the

kind which society has a common interest with them in the

repression of.

It is no objection against this doctrine to say, that when we feel our

sentiment of justice outraged, we are not thinking of society at

large, or of any collective interest, but only of the individual case. It

is common enough certainly, though the reverse of commendable,

to feel resentment merely because we have suffered pain; but a

person whose resentment is really a moral feeling, that is, who

considers whether an act is blamable before he allows himself to

resent it- such a person, though he may not say expressly to himself

that he is standing up for the interest of society, certainly does feel

that he is asserting a rule which is for the benefit of others as well as

for his own. If he is not feeling this- if he is regarding the act solely

as it affects him individually- he is not consciously just; he is not

concerning himself about the justice of his actions. This is admitted

even by anti-utilitarian moralists. When Kant (as before remarked)

propounds as the fundamental principle of morals, "So act, that thy

rule of conduct might be adopted as a law by all rational beings," he

virtually acknowledges that the interest of mankind collectively, or at

least of mankind indiscriminately, must be in the mind of the agent

when conscientiously deciding on the morality of the act. Otherwise

he uses words without a meaning: for, that a rule even of utter

selfishness could not possibly be adopted by all rational beings- that

there is any insuperable obstacle in the nature of things to its

adoption- cannot be even plausibly maintained. To give any meaning

to Kant's principle, the sense put upon it must be, that we ought to

shape our conduct by a rule which all rational beings might adopt

with benefit to their collective interest.

To recapitulate: the idea of justice supposes two things; a rule of

conduct, and a sentiment which sanctions the rule. The first must be

supposed common to all mankind, and intended for their good. The

other (the sentiment) is a desire that punishment may be suffered by

those who infringe the rule. There is involved, in addition, the

conception of some definite person who suffers by the

infringement; whose rights (to use the expression appropriated to

the case) are violated by it. And the sentiment of justice appears to

me to be, the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to

oneself, or to those with whom one sympathises, widened so as to

include all persons, by the human capacity of enlarged sympathy,

and the human conception of intelligent self-interest. From the

latter elements, the feeling derives its morality; from the former, its

peculiar impressiveness, and energy of self-assertion.

I have, throughout, treated the idea of a right residing in the injured

person, and violated by the injury, not as a separate element in the

composition of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the forms in

which the other two elements clothe themselves. These elements

are, a hurt to some assignable person or persons on the one hand,

and a demand for punishment on the other. An examination of our

own minds, I think, will show, that these two things include all that

we mean when we speak of violation of a right. When we call

anything a person's right, we mean that he has a valid claim on

society to protect him in the possession of it, either by the force of

law, or by that of education and opinion. If he has what we consider

a sufficient claim, on whatever account, to have something

guaranteed to him by society, we say that he has a right to it. If we

desire to prove that anything does not belong to him by right, we

think this done as soon as it is admitted that society ought not to

take measures for securing it to him, but should leave him to chance,

or to his own exertions. Thus, a person is said to have a right to

what he can earn in fair professional competition; because society

ought not to allow any other person to hinder him from

endeavouring to earn in that manner as much as he can. But he has

not a right to three hundred a-year, though he may happen to be

earning it; because society is not called on to provide that he shall

earn that sum. On the contrary, if he owns ten thousand pounds

three per cent stock, he has a right to three hundred a-year; because

society has come under an obligation to provide him with an

income of that amount.

To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society

ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to

ask, why it ought? I can give him no other reason than general

utility. If that expression does not seem to convey a sufficient

feeling of the strength of the obligation, nor to account for the

peculiar energy of the feeling, it is because there goes to the

composition of the sentiment, not a rational only, but also an animal

element, the thirst for retaliation; and this thirst derives its intensity,

as well as its moral justification, from the extraordinarily important

and impressive kind of utility which is concerned. The interest

involved is that of security, to every one's feelings the most vital of

all interests. All other earthly benefits are needed by one person, not

needed by another; and many of them can, if necessary, be

cheerfully foregone, or replaced by something else; but security no

human being can possibly do without on it we depend for all our

immunity from evil, and for the whole value of all and every good,

beyond the passing moment; since nothing but the gratification of

the instant could be of any worth to us, if we could be deprived of

anything the next instant by whoever was momentarily stronger than

ourselves. Now this most indispensable of all necessaries, after

physical nutriment, cannot be had, unless the machinery for

providing it is kept unintermittedly in active play. Our notion,

therefore, of the claim we have on our fellow-creatures to join in

making safe for us the very groundwork of our existence, gathers

feelings around it so much more intense than those concerned in

any of the more common cases of utility, that the difference in

degree (as is often the case in psychology) becomes a real difference

in kind. The claim assumes that character of absoluteness, that

apparent infinity, and incommensurability with all other

considerations, which constitute the distinction between the feeling

of right and wrong and that of ordinary expediency and

inexpediency. The feelings concerned are so powerful, and we count

so positively on finding a responsive feeling in others (all being alike

interested), that ought and should grow into must, and recognised

indispensability becomes a moral necessity, analogous to physical,

and often not inferior to it in binding force exhorted,

If the preceding analysis, or something resembling it, be not the

correct account of the notion of justice; if justice be totally

independent of utility, and be a standard per se, which the mind can

recognise by simple introspection of itself; it is hard to understand

why that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so many things

appear either just or unjust, according to the light in which they are

regarded.

We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertain standard,

which every different person interprets differently, and that there is

no safety but in the immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakable

dictates of justice, which carry their evidence in themselves, and are

independent of the fluctuations of opinion. One would suppose

from this that on questions of justice there could be no controversy;

that if we take that for our rule, its application to any given case

could leave us in as little doubt as a mathematical demonstration. So

far is this from being the fact, that there is as much difference of

opinion, and as much discussion, about what is just, as about what is

useful to society. Not only have different nations and individuals

different notions of justice, but in the mind of one and the same

individual, justice is not some one rule, principle, or maxim, but

many, which do not always coincide in their dictates, and in

choosing between which, he is guided either by some extraneous

standard, or by his own personal predilections.

For instance, there are some who say, that it is unjust to punish any

one for the sake of example to others; that punishment is just, only

when intended for the good of the sufferer himself. Others

maintain the extreme reverse, contending that to punish persons

who have attained years of discretion, for their own benefit, is

despotism and injustice, since if the matter at issue is solely their

own good, no one has a right to control their own judgment of it;

but that they may justly be punished to prevent evil to others, this

being the exercise of the legitimate right of self-defence. Mr. Owen,

again, affirms that it is unjust to punish at all; for the criminal did

not make his own character; his education, and the circumstances

which surrounded him, have made him a criminal, and for these he

is not responsible. All these opinions are extremely plausible; and so

long as the question is argued as one of justice simply, without

going down to the principles which lie under justice and are the

source of its authority, I am unable to see how any of these

reasoners can be refuted. For in truth every one of the three builds

upon rules of justice confessedly true. The first appeals to the

acknowledged injustice of singling out an individual, and making a

sacrifice, without his consent, for other people's benefit. The second

relies on the acknowledged justice of self-defence, and the admitted

injustice of forcing one person to conform to another's notions of

what constitutes his good. The Owenite invokes the admitted

principle, that it is unjust to punish any one for what he cannot help.

Each is triumphant so long as he is not compelled to take into

consideration any other maxims of justice than the one he has

selected; but as soon as their several maxims are brought face to

face, each disputant seems to have exactly as much to say for

himself as the others. No one of them can carry out his own notion

of justice without trampling upon another equally binding.

These are difficulties; they have always been felt to be such; and

many devices have been invented to turn rather than to overcome

them. As a refuge from the last of the three, men imagined what

they called the freedom of the will; fancying that they could not

justify punishing a man whose will is in a thoroughly hateful state,

unless it be supposed to have come into that state through no

influence of anterior circumstances. To escape from the other

difficulties, a favourite contrivance has been the fiction of a

contract, whereby at some unknown period all the members of

society engaged to obey the laws, and consented to be punished for

any disobedience to them, thereby giving to their legislators the

right, which it is assumed they would not otherwise have had, of

punishing them, either for their own good or for that of society.

This happy thought was considered to get rid of the whole

difficulty, and to legitimate the infliction of punishment, in virtue of

another received maxim of justice, Volenti non fit injuria; that is not

unjust which is done with the consent of the person who is

supposed to be hurt by it. I need hardly remark, that even if the

consent were not a mere fiction, this maxim is not superior in

authority to the others which it is brought in to supersede. It is, on

the contrary, an instructive specimen of the loose and irregular

manner in which supposed principles of justice grow up. This

particular one evidently came into use as a help to the coarse

exigencies of courts of law, which are sometimes obliged to be

content with very uncertain presumptions, on account of the greater

evils which would often arise from any attempt on their part to cut

finer. But even courts of law are not able to adhere consistently to

the maxim, for they allow voluntary engagements to be set aside on

the ground of fraud, and sometimes on that of mere mistake or

misinformation.

Again, when the legitimacy of inflicting punishment is admitted,

how many conflicting conceptions of justice come to light in

discussing the proper apportionment of punishments to offences.

No rule on the subject recommends itself so strongly to the

primitive and spontaneous sentiment of justice, as the bex talionis,

an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Though this principle of

the Jewish and of the Mahometan law has been generally

abandoned in Europe as a practical maxim, there is, I suspect, in

most minds, a secret hankering after it; and when retribution

accidentally falls on an offender in that precise shape, the general

feeling of satisfaction evinced bears witness how natural is the

sentiment to which this repayment in kind is acceptable. With many,

the test of justice in penal infliction is that the punishment should

be proportioned to the offence; meaning that it should be exactly

measured by the moral guilt of the culprit (whatever be their

standard for measuring moral guilt): the consideration, what amount

of punishment is necessary to deter from the offence, having

nothing to do with the question of justice, in their estimation: while

there are others to whom that consideration is all in all; who

maintain that it is not just, at least for man, to inflict on a fellow

creature, whatever may be his offences, any amount of suffering

beyond the least that will suffice to prevent him from repeating, and

others from imitating, his misconduct.

To take another example from a subject already once referred to. In

a co-operative industrial association, is it just or not that talent or

skill should give a title to superior remuneration? On the negative

side of the question it is argued, that whoever does the best he can,

deserves equally well, and ought not in justice to be put in a position

of inferiority for no fault of his own; that superior abilities have

already advantages more than enough, in the admiration they excite,

the personal influence they command, and the internal sources of

satisfaction attending them, without adding to these a superior share

of the world's goods; and that society is bound in justice rather to

make compensation to the less favoured, for this unmerited

inequality of advantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary side it

is contended, that society receives more from the more efficient

labourer; that his services being more useful, society owes him a

larger return for them; that a greater share of the joint result is

actually his work, and not to allow his claim to it is a kind of

robbery; that if he is only to receive as much as others, he can only

be justly required to produce as much, and to give a smaller amount

of time and exertion, proportioned to his superior efficiency. Who

shall decide between these appeals to conflicting principles of

justice? justice has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible

to bring into harmony, and the two disputants have chosen opposite

sides; the one looks to what it is just that the individual should

receive, the other to what it is just that the community should give.

Each, from his own point of view, is unanswerable; and any choice

between them, on grounds of justice, must be perfectly arbitrary.

Social utility alone can decide the preference.

How many, again, and how irreconcilable, are the standards of

justice to which reference is made in discussing the repartition of

taxation. One opinion is, that payment to the State should be in

numerical proportion to pecuniary means. Others think that justice

dictates what they term graduated taxation; taking a higher

percentage from those who have more to spare. In point of natural

justice a strong case might be made for disregarding means

altogether, and taking the same absolute sum (whenever it could be

got) from every one: as the subscribers to a mess, or to a club, all

pay the same sum for the same privileges, whether they can all

equally afford it or not. Since the protection (it might be said) of law

and government is afforded to, and is equally required by all, there is

no injustice in making all buy it at the same price. It is reckoned

justice, not injustice, that a dealer should charge to all customers the

same price for the same article, not a price varying according to their

means of payment. This doctrine, as applied to taxation, finds no

advocates, because it conflicts so strongly with man's feelings of

humanity and of social expediency; but the principle of justice

which it invokes is as true and as binding as those which can be

appealed to against it. Accordingly it exerts a tacit influence on the

line of defence employed for other modes of assessing taxation.

People feel obliged to argue that the State does more for the rich

than for the poor, as a justification for its taking more from them:

though this is in reality not true, for the rich would be far better able

to protect themselves, in the absence of law or government, than

the poor, and indeed would probably be successful in converting the

poor into their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to the same

conception of justice, as to maintain that all should pay an equal

capitation tax for the protection of their persons (these being of

equal value to all), and an unequal tax for the protection of their

property, which is unequal. To this others reply, that the all of one

man is as valuable to him as the all of another. From these

confusions there is no other mode of extrication than the utilitarian.

Is, then the difference between the just and the Expedient a merely

imaginary distinction? Have mankind been under a delusion in

thinking that justice is a more sacred thing than policy, and that the

latter ought only to be listened to after the former has been

satisfied? By no means. The exposition we have given of the nature

and origin of the sentiment, recognises a real distinction; and no

one of those who profess the most sublime contempt for the

consequences of actions as an element in their morality, attaches

more importance to the distinction than I do. While I dispute the

pretensions of any theory which sets up an imaginary standard of

justice not grounded on utility, I account the justice which is

grounded on utility to be the chief part, and incomparably the most

sacred and binding part, of all morality. justice is a name for certain

classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human well-

being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation,

than any other rules for the guidance of life; and the notion which

we have found to be of the essence of the idea of justice, that of a

right residing in an individual implies and testifies to this more

binding obligation.

The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another (in

which we must never forget to include wrongful interference with

each other's freedom) are more vital to human well-being than any

maxims, however important, which only point out the best mode of

managing some department of human affairs. They have also the

peculiarity, that they are the main element in determining the whole

of the social feelings of mankind. It is their observance which alone

preserves peace among human beings: if obedience to them were

not the rule, and disobedience the exception, every one would see in

every one else an enemy, against whom he must be perpetually

guarding himself. What is hardly less important, these are the

precepts which mankind have the strongest and the most direct

inducements for impressing upon one another. By merely giving to

each other prudential instruction or exhortation, they may gain, or

think they gain, nothing: in inculcating on each other the duty of

positive beneficence they have an unmistakable interest, but far less

in degree: a person may possibly not need the benefits of others;

but he always needs that they should not do him hurt. Thus the

moralities which protect every individual from being harmed by

others, either directly or by being hindered in his freedom of

pursuing his own good, are at once those which he himself has

most at heart, and those which he has the strongest interest in

publishing and enforcing by word and deed. It is by a person's

observance of these that his fitness to exist as one of the fellowship

of human beings is tested and decided; for on that depends his

being a nuisance or not to those with whom he is in contact. Now it

is these moralities primarily which compose the obligations of

justice. The most marked cases of injustice, and those which give

the tone to the feeling of repugnance which characterises the

sentiment, are acts of wrongful aggression, or wrongful exercise of

power over some one; the next are those which consist in

wrongfully withholding from him something which is his due; in

both cases, inflicting on him a positive hurt, either in the form of

direct suffering, or of the privation of some good which he had

reasonable ground, either of a physical or of a social kind, for

counting upon.

The same powerful motives which command the observance of

these primary moralities, enjoin the punishment of those who

violate them; and as the impulses of self-defence, of defence of

others, and of vengeance, are all called forth against such persons,

retribution, or evil for evil, becomes closely connected with the

sentiment of justice, and is universally included in the idea. Good

for good is also one of the dictates of justice; and this, though its

social utility is evident, and though it carries with it a natural human

feeling, has not at first sight that obvious connection with hurt or

injury, which, existing in the most elementary cases of just and

unjust, is the source of the characteristic intensity of the sentiment.

But the connection, though less obvious, is not less real. He who

accepts benefits, and denies a return of them when needed, inflicts a

real hurt, by disappointing one of the most natural and reasonable

of expectations, and one which he must at least tacitly have

encouraged, otherwise the benefits would seldom have been

conferred. The important rank, among human evils and wrongs, of

the disappointment of expectation, is shown in the fact that it

constitutes the principal criminality of two such highly immoral acts

as a breach of friendship and a breach of promise. Few hurts which

human beings can sustain are greater, and none wound more, than

when that on which they habitually and with full assurance relied,

fails them in the hour of need; and few wrongs are greater than this

mere withholding of good; none excite more resentment, either in

the person suffering, or in a sympathising spectator. The principle,

therefore, of giving to each what they deserve, that is, good for

good as well as evil for evil, is not only included within the idea of

justice as we have defined it, but is a proper object of that intensity

of sentiment, which places the just, in human estimation, above the

simply Expedient.

Most of the maxims of justice current in the world, and commonly

appealed to in its transactions, are simply instrumental to carrying

into effect the principles of justice which we have now spoken of.

That a person is only responsible for what he has done voluntarily,

or could voluntarily have avoided; that it is unjust to condemn any

person unheard; that the punishment ought to be proportioned to

the offence, and the like, are maxims intended to prevent the just

principle of evil for evil from being perverted to the infliction of

evil without that justification. The greater part of these common

maxims have come into use from the practice of courts of justice,

which have been naturally led to a more complete recognition and

elaboration than was likely to suggest itself to others, of the rules

necessary to enable them to fulfil their double function, of inflicting

punishment when due, and of awarding to each person his right.

That first of judicial virtues, impartiality, is an obligation of justice,

partly for the reason last mentioned; as being a necessary condition

of the fulfilment of the other obligations of justice. But this is not

the only source of the exalted rank, among human obligations, of

those maxims of equality and impartiality, which, both in popular

estimation and in that of the most enlightened, are included among

the precepts of justice. In one point of view, they may be

considered as corollaries from the principles already laid down. If it

is a duty to do to each according to his deserts, returning good for

good as well as repressing evil by evil, it necessarily follows that we

should treat all equally well (when no higher duty forbids) who have

deserved equally well of us, and that society should treat all equally

well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved

equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social

and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the

efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost

possible degree to converge.

But this great moral duty rests upon a still deeper foundation, being

a direct emanation from the first principle of morals, and not a mere

logical corollary from secondary or derivative doctrines. It is

involved in the very meaning of Utility, or the Greatest Happiness

Principle. That principle is a mere form of words without rational

signification, unless one person's happiness, supposed equal in

degree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is counted for

exactly as much as another's. Those conditions being supplied,

Bentham's dictum, "everybody to count for one, nobody for more

than one," might be written under the principle of utility as an

explanatory commentary.

The equal claim of everybody to

happiness in the estimation of the moralist and the legislator,

involves an equal claim to all the means of happiness, except in so

far as the inevitable conditions of human life, and the general

interest, in which that of every individual is included, set limits to

the maxim; and those limits ought to be strictly construed. As every

other maxim of justice, so this is by no means applied or held

applicable universally; on the contrary, as I have already remarked, it

bends to every person's ideas of social expediency. But in whatever

case it is deemed applicable at all, it is held to be the dictate of

justice. All persons are deemed to have a right to equality of

treatment, except when some recognised social expediency requires

the reverse. And hence all social inequalities which have ceased to be

considered expedient, assume the character not of simple

inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people

are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated;

forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities

under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of

which would make that which they approve seem quite as

monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn. The entire

history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by

which one custom or institution after another, from being a

supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the

rank of a universally stigmatised injustice and tyranny. So it has been

with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs,

patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with

the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.

It appears from what has been said, that justice is a name for certain

moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the

scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount

obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in

which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one

of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only

be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food

or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified

medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice

which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to

some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is,

by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By

this useful accommodation of language, the character of

indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from

the necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.

The considerations which have now been adduced resolve, I

conceive, the only real difficulty in the utilitarian theory of morals. It

has always been evident that all cases of justice are also cases of

expediency: the difference is in the peculiar sentiment which

attaches to the former, as contradistinguished from the latter. If this

characteristic sentiment has been sufficiently accounted for; if there

is no necessity to assume for it any peculiarity of origin; if it is

simply the natural feeling of resentment, moralised by being made

coextensive with the demands of social good; and if this feeling not

only does but ought to exist in all the classes of cases to which the

idea of justice corresponds; that idea no longer presents itself as a

stumbling-block to the utilitarian ethics.

Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social utilities

which are vastly more important, and therefore more absolute and

imperative, than any others are as a class (though not more so than

others may be in particular cases); and which, therefore, ought to be,

as well as naturally are, guarded by a sentiment not only different in

degree, but also in kind; distinguished from the milder feeling which

attaches to the mere idea of promoting human pleasure or

convenience, at once by the more definite nature of its commands,

and by the sterner character of its sanctions.

THE END

[1] The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to be the first person

who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did not invent it, but adopted it from

a passing expression in Mr. Galt's Annals of the Parish. After using it as a

designation for several years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to

anything resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name

for one single opinion, not a set of opinions- to denote the recognition of utility as

a standard, not any particular way of applying it- the term supplies a want in the

language, and offers, in many cases, a convenient mode of avoiding tiresome

circumlocution.

[2] See this point enforced and illustrated by Professor Bain, in an admirable chapter

(entitled "The Ethical Emotions, or the Moral Sense"), of the second of the two

treatises composing his elaborate and profound work on the Mind.

[3] This implication, in the first principle of the utilitarian scheme, of perfect

impartiality between persons, is regarded by Mr. Herbert Spencer (in his Social

Statics) as a disproof of the pretensions of utility to be a sufficient guide to right;

since (he says) the principle of utility presupposes the anterior principle, that

everybody has an equal right to happiness. It may be more correctly described as

supposing that equal amounts of happiness are equally desirable, whether felt by the

same or by different persons. This, however, is not a pre-supposition; not a premise

needful to support the principle of utility, but the very principle itself; for what is

the principle of utility, if it be not that "happiness" and "desirable" are synonymous

terms? If there is any anterior principle implied, it can be no other than this, that the

truths of arithmetic are applicable to the valuation of happiness, as of all other

measurable quantities.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in a private communication on the subject of the preceding

Note, objects to being considered an opponent of utilitarianism, and states that he

regards happiness as the ultimate end of morality; but deems that end only partially

attainable by empirical generalisations from the observed results of conduct, and

completely attainable only by deducing, 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. What the exception of the word "necessarily," I have

no dissent to express from this doctrine; and (omitting that word) I am not aware

that any modern advocate of utilitarianism is of a different opinion. Bentham,

certainly, to whom in the Social Statics Mr. Spencer particularly referred, is, least of

all writers, chargeable with unwillingness to deduce the effect of actions on

happiness from the laws of human nature and the universal conditions of human

life. The common charge against him is of relying too exclusively upon such

deductions, and declining altogether to be bound by the generalisations from

specific experience which Mr. Spencer thinks that utilitarians generally confine

themselves to. My own opinion (and, as I collect, Mr. Spencer's) is, that in ethics, as

in all other branches of scientific study, the consilience of the results of both these

processes, each corroborating and verifying the other, is requisite to give to any

general proposition the kind degree of evidence which constitutes scientific proof.

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Beschreibung

Titel:

Utilitarianism

Veranstaltung:

Keine

Autor:

John Stuart Mill

Jahr:

2008

Seiten:

Archivnummer:

V120164

ISBN (eBook):

978-3-640-23499-8

ISBN (Buch):

978-3-640-23494-3

DOI:

10.3239/9783640234998

Dateigröße:

384 KB

Sprache:

Englisch

Schlagworte:

Utilitarianism

Arbeit zitieren:

John Stuart Mill, 2008, Utilitarianism, München, GRIN Verlag GmbH

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