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Mill considers that the existing moral rules are all based on our estimate, correct or incorrect, of Utility.

JOHN AUSTIN. [1790-1859.]

Austin, in his Lectures on 'The Province of Jurisprudence determined,' has discussed the leading questions of Ethics. We give an abstract of the Ethical part.

LECTURE I. Law, in its largest meaning, and omitting metaphorical applications, embraces Laws set by God to his creatures, and Laws set by man to man. Of the laws set by man to man, some are established by political superiors, or by persons exercising government in nations or political societies. This is law in the usual sense of the word, forming the subject of Jurisprudence. The author terms it Positive Law. There is another class of laws not set by political superiors in that capacity. Yet some of these are properly termed laws, although others are only so by a close analogy. There is no name for the laws proper, but to the others are applied such names as 'moral rules,' 'the moral law,' 'general or public opinion,' 'the law of honour or of fashion.' The author proposes for these laws the name positive morality. The laws now enumerated differ in many important respects, but agree in this-that all of them are set by intelligent and rational beings to intelligent and rational beings. There is a figurative application of the word 'law,' to the uniformities of the natural world, through which the field of jurisprudence and morals has been deluged with muddy speculation.

Laws properly so called are commands. A command is the signification of a desire or wish, accompanied with the power and the purpose to inflict evil if that desire is not complied with. The person so desired is bound or obliged, or placed under a duty, to obey. Refusal is disobedience, or violation of duty. The evil to be inflicted is called a sanction, or an enforcement of obedience; the term punishment expresses one class of sanctions.

The term sanction is improperly applied to a Reward. We cannot say that an action is commanded, or that obedience is constrained or enforced by the offer of a reward. Again, when a reward is offered, a right and not an obligation is created the imperative function passes to the party receiving the reward. În short, it is only by conditional evil, that duties are sanctioned or enforced.

The correct meaning of superior and inferior is determined by command and obedience.

LECTURE II.

The Divine Laws are the known commands of the Deity, enforced by the evils that we may suffer here or hereafter for breaking them. Some of these laws are revealed, others unrevealed. Paley and others have proved that it was not the purpose of Revelation to disclose the whole of our duties; the Light of Nature is an additional source. But how are we to interpret this Light of Nature?

The various hypotheses for resolving this question may be reduced to two: (1) an Innate Sentiment, called a Moral Sense, Common Sense, Practical Reason, &c.; and (2) the Theory of Utility.

The author avows his adherence to the theory of Utility, which he connects with the Divine Benevolence in the manner of Bentham. God designs the happiness of sentient beings. Some actions forward that purpose, others frustrate it. The first, God has enjoined; the second, He has forbidden. Knowing, therefore, the tendency of any action, we know the Divine command with respect to it.

The tendency of an action is all its consequences near and remote, certain and probable, direct and collateral. A petty theft, or the evasion of a trifling tax, may be insignificant, or even good, in the direct and immediate consequences; but before the full tendency can be weighed, we must resolve the question:-What would be the probable effect on the general happiness or good, if similar acts, or omissions, were general or frequent?

When the theory of Utility is correctly stated, the current objections are easily refuted. As viewed by the author, Utility is not the fountain or source of our duties; this must be commands and sanctions. But it is the index of the will of the law-giver, who is presumed to have for his chief end the happiness or good of mankind.

The most specious objection to Utility is the supposed necessity of going through a calculation of the consequences of every act that we have to perform, an operation often beyond our power, and likely to be abused to forward our private wishes. To this, the author replies first, that supposing utility our only index, we must make the best of it. Of course, if we were endowed with a moral sense, a special organ for ascertaining our duties, the attempt to displace that invincible consciousness, and to thrust the principle of utility into the vacant seat, would be impossible and absurd.

According to the theory of Utility, our conduct would conform to rules inferred from the tendencies of actions, but

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would not be determined by a direct resort to the principle of general utility. Utility would be the ultimate, not the immediate test. To preface each act or forbearance by a conjecture and comparison of consequences were both superfluous and mischievous :-superfluous, inasmuch as the result is already embodied in a known rule; and mischievous, inasmuch as the process, if performed on the spur of the occasion, would probably be faulty.

With the rules are associated sentiments, the result of the Divine, or other, command to obey the rules. It is a gross and flagrant error to talk of substituting calculation for sentiment; this is to oppose the rudder to the sail. Sentiment without calculation were capricious; calculation without

sentiment is inert.

There are cases where the specific consequences of an action are so momentous as to overbear the rule; for example, resistance to a bad government, which the author calls an anomalous question, to be tried not by the rule, but by a direct resort to the ultimate or presiding principle, and by a separate calculation of good and evil. Such was the political emergency of the Commonwealth, and the American revolution. It would have been well, the author thinks, if utility had been the sole guide in both cases.

There is a second objection to Utility, more perplexing to deal with. How can we know fully and correctly all the consequences of actions? The answer is that Ethics, as a science of observation and induction, has been formed, through a long succession of ages, by many and separate contributions from many and separate discoverers. Like all other sciences, it is progressive, although unfortunately, subject to special drawbacks. The men that have enquired, or affected to enquire, into Ethics, have rarely been impartial; they have laboured under prejudices or sinister interests; and have been the advocates of foregone conclusions. There is not on this subject a concurrence or agreement of numerous and impartial enquirers. Indeed, many of the legal and moral rules of the most civilized communities arose in the infancy of the human mind, partly from caprices of the fancy (nearly omnipotent. with barbarians), and partly from an imperfect apprehension of general utility, the result of a narrow experience. Thus the diffusion and the advancement of ethical truth encounter great and peculiar obstacles, only to be removed by a better general education extended to the mass of the people. It is desirable that the community should be indoctrinated with

sound views of property, and with the dependence of wealth upon the true principle of population, discovered by Malthus, all which they are competent to understand.

The author refers to Paley's Moral Philosophy as an example of the perverting tendency of narrow and domineering interests in the domain of ethics. With many commendable points, there is, in that work, much ignoble truckling to the dominant and influential few, and a deal of shabby sophistry in defending abuses that the few were interested in upholding.

As a farther answer to the second objection, he remarks, that it applies to every theory of ethics that supposes our duties to be set by the Deity. Christianity itself is defective, considered as a system of rules for the guidance of human conduct.

He then turns to the alternative of a Moral Sense. This involves two assumptions.

First, Certain sentiments, or feelings of approbation or disapprobation, accompany our conceptions of certain human actions. These feelings are neither the result of our reflection on the tendencies of actions, nor the result of education; the sentiments would follow the conception, although we had neither adverted to the good or evil tendency of the actions, nor become aware of the opinions of others regarding them. This theory denies that the sentiments known to exist can be produced by education. We approve and disapprove of actions we know not why.

The author adapts Paley's supposition of the savage, in order to express strongly what the moral sense implies. But we will confine ourselves to his reasonings. Is there, he asks, any evidence of our being gifted with such feelings? The very putting of such a question would seem a sufficient proof that we are not so endowed. There ought to be no more doubt about them, than about hunger or thirst.

It is alleged in their favour that our judgments of rectitude and depravity are immediate and voluntary. The reply is that sentiments begotten by association are no less prompt and involuntary than our instincts. Our response to a money gain, or a money loss, is as prompt as our compliance with the primitive appetites of the system. We begin by loving knowledge as a means to ends; but, in time, the end is inseparably associated with the instrument. So a moral sentiment dictated by utility, if often exercised, would be rapid and direct in its operation.

It is farther alleged, as a proof of the innate character of

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the moral judgments, that the moral sentiments of all men are precisely alike. The argument may be put thus :-No opinion or sentiment resulting from observation and induction is held or felt by all mankind: Observation and induction, as applied to the same subject, lead different men to different conclusions. Now, the judgments passed internally on the rectitude or pravity of actions, or the moral sentiments, are precisely alike with all men. Therefore, our moral sentiments are not the result of our inductions of the tendencies of actions; nor were they derived from others, and impressed by authority and example. Consequently, the moral sentiments are instinctive, or ultimate and inscrutable facts.

To refute such an argument is superfluous; it is based on a groundless assertion. The moral sentiments of men have/ differed to infinity. With regard to a few classes of actions, the moral judgments of most, though not of all, men have been alike. With regard to others, they have differed, through every shade or degree, from slight diversity to direct opposition.

But this is exactly what we should expect on the principle of utility. With regard to some actions, the dictates of utility are the same at all times and places, and are so obvious as hardly to admit of mistake or doubt. On the other hand, men's positions in different ages and nations are in many respects widely different; so that what was useful there and then is useless or pernicious here and now. Moreover, since human tastes are various, and human reason is fallible, men's moral sentiments often widely differ in the same positions.

He next alludes to some prevailing misconceptions in regard to utility. One is the confusion of the test with the motive. The general good is the test, or rather the index to the ultimate measure or test, the Divine commands; but it is not in all, or even in most cases, the motive or inducement.

The principle of utility does not demand that we shall always or habitually attend to the general good; although it does demand that we shall not pursue our own particular good by means that are inconsistent with that paramount object. It permits the pursuit of our own pleasures as pleasure. Even as regards the good of others, it commonly requires us to be governed by partial, rather than by general benevolence; by the narrower circle of family and friends rather than by the larger humanity that embraces mankind. It requires us to act where we act with the utmost effect; that is, within the sphere best known to us. The limitations to this principle, the adjustment of the selfish to the social mo