apart from

logical proof

of utilitari

anism.

4. Mill's defence of

ism:

individual and those of his neighbours, from which the utilitarian maxim may be arrived at by a generalisation of his principle of conduct as modified by the social impulse. But this would not constitute a logical justification of utilitarianism: it would show how the principle has been arrived at, but it would not give a sufficient reason to the individual for adopting it. And this is really the tendency of much utilitarian discussion -of Bain's theory of conscience as a reflex of the external order, of George Grote's analysis of the moral sentiment, and of Mill's account of the progressive identification of the individual's feelings with those of his neighbours through the gradual increase of sympathetic pleasures and pains: for it was to this source that Mill looked for the practical solution of the antinomy between his psychological and ethical theories, though he himself tried to pass from one position to the other by means of the highway in the air' constructed by his own logic.

Mill's attempt to pass by a logical method from utilitarian psychological hedonism to utilitarianism is an instructive commentary on the difficulties which beset the transition. His work may be described as a vindication of the utilitarian morality, first, from the charge of sensualism; and secondly, from that of selfishness. And it is largely owing to his

polemic that utilitarianism is no longer looked upon as either a sensual or a selfish theory. It is not sensual, unless, indeed, the pleasures of most men are of a sensual kind. So far from being selfish, it is almost stoical in the subordination of individual desires it enjoins. But Mill wished to do more than clear the character of utilitarian ethics. He wished to show a logical reason for utilitarians pursuing elevated pleasures rather than base ones, and to demonstrate the connexion of his moral imperative with the principles laid down for human motives by the school to which he belonged. In both these respects his failure is conspicuous.

tion of kinds

of pleasure

In the former endeavour, he went against Ben- (a) distinctham by attempting to draw a distinction in kind amongst pleasures-a distinction not reducible to quantitative measurement. A higher degree of quality in the pleasure sought was to outweigh any difference in its amount or quantity. With this modification, utilitarianism is made to require a subordination of the lower or sensuous nature to the higher or intellectual nature. Pleasure, indeed, is still the end; but the higher' pleasure takes precedence over the 'lower,' irrespective of the amount of pleasant feeling that results. Pleasure is still the standard, but not the ultimate standard; for a further appeal has to be made to the criterion that distinguishes one pleasure from another, not

by authority,

as merely greater or less, but as higher or lower. As is well known, Mill did not look either to the action or to the feeling itself for this criterion. To have done so would have implied an acknowledgment that pleasure was no longer regarded as the determined ultimate standard. He found the criterion of superiority simply in the opinion people of experience have about the relative desirability of various sorts of pleasure. But such a criterion only pushes the final question of the standard one step farther back. Those people of experience to whom Mill refers-who have tried both kinds of pleasure, and prefer one of them can they give no reason for, no account of, their preference ? If so, to trust them is to appeal to blind authority, and to relinquish anything like a science of ethics. But, if Mill's authorities can reflect on their feelings, as well as feel, they can only tell us one or other of two things. Either the so-called 'higher' pleasure is actually, as pleasure, so preferable to that called 'lower,' that the smallest amount of the one would be more pleasurable than the largest amount of the other; or else the higher is called higher, and is to be preferred to the lower -even although the latter may be greater as pleasure-because of a quality belonging to it

1 I have spoken, for simplicity's sake, as if there were two kinds of pleasure easily distinguishable. But the question is really much more complicated.

be reduced

of quantity, or leads to

istic stan

over and above its character as pleasant feeling. either can The former verdict would be in the first place to difference paradoxical, and, in the second place, would give up Mill's case, by reducing quality to a quanti- non-hedontative standard. Besides, it would be no valid dard: ground of preference for men in general; since the pleasure of various actions and states differs according to the susceptibility of the subject. According to the latter verdict, the characteristic upon which the distinction of quality depends, and not pleasure itself, becomes the ethical standard.1

ties in his

proof of utilitarian

ism.

In respect of his main contention, that utili- (b) ambiguitarianism is a theory of beneficence, and not of prudence or of selfishness, Mill emphasised even more strongly than Bentham had done the distinction between the egoism which seeks its own. things, and the utilitarianism according to which everybody counts for one, and nobody for more than one. But, when he attempted to connect this doctrine logically with the psychological postulates of his school, he committed a double error. In the first place, he confused the purely psychological question of the motives that influence

1 Hence Mill's distinction of pleasure in quality has not been adopted by later utilitarians—e.g., Sidgwick, Bain. The latter's "decided opinion is that he [Mill] ought to have resolved all the so-called nobler or higher pleasures into the single circumstance of including, with the agent's pleasure, the pleasure of others."-Bain's J. S. Mill: a Criticism, p. 113.

Imperfect coherence

of ethical and theo

retical philosophy.

1

human conduct with the ethical question of the end to which conduct ought to be directed; and, in the second place, he disregarded the difference of end there may be for society as a collective whole, and for each member of the society individually. "There is in reality," he says, "nothing desired except happiness"; and this psychological proposition is too hastily identified with the ethical principle that happiness alone is desirable, or what ought to be desired and pursued. Moreover, "no reason," he says, "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." And this admission, which seems as good as saying that no reason at all can be given why the individual should desire the general happiness, is only held to be a sufficient reason for it, though the assumption that what is good for all as an aggregate is good for each member of the aggregate: "that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons."

"2

It may appear strange to offer the preceding as the logical basis of an ethical principle which has had so wide and, on the whole, beneficial an influence as utilitarianism. The explanation is to be found in the want of full coherence which often 2 Ibid., p. 53.

1 Utilitarianism, p. 57.