LITMIR.BIZ

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Butler, I think, was our first influential writer who dwelt on the discrepancies between Virtue as commonly understood and “conduct likeliest to produce an overbalance of happiness.”[77] When Hume presented Utilitarianism as a mode of explaining current morality, it was seen or suspected to have a partially destructive tendency. But it was not till the time of Paley and Bentham that it was offered as a method for determining conduct, which was to overrule all traditional precepts and supersede all existing moral sentiments. And even this final antagonism relates rather to theory and method than to practical results: practical conflict, in ordinary human minds, is mainly between Self-interest and Social Duty however determined. Indeed, from a practical point of view the principle of aiming at the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” is prima facie more definitely opposed to Egoism than the Common-Sense morality is. For this latter seems to leave a man free to pursue his own happiness under certain definite limits and conditions: whereas Utilitarianism seems to require a more comprehensive and unceasing subordination of self-interest to the common good. And thus, as Mill remarks, Utilitarianism is sometimes attacked from two precisely opposite sides: from a confusion with Egoistic Hedonism it is called base and grovelling; while at the same time it is more plausibly charged with setting up too high a standard of unselfishness and making exaggerated demands on human nature.

      A good deal remains to be said, in order to make the principle and method of Utilitarianism perfectly clear and explicit: but it seems best to defer this till we come to the investigation of its details. It will be convenient to take this as the final stage of our examination of methods. For on the one hand it is simpler that the discussion of Egoistic should precede that of Universalistic Hedonism; and on the other, it seems desirable that we should obtain in as exact a form as possible the enunciations of Intuitive Morality, before we compare these with the results of the more doubtful and difficult calculations of utilitarian consequences.

      In the remaining chapters of this Book I shall endeavour to remove certain ambiguities as to the general nature and relations of the other two methods, as designated respectively by the terms Egoism and Intuitionism, before proceeding to the fuller examination of them in Books ii. and iii.

Note.—I have called the ethical doctrine that takes universal happiness as the ultimate end and standard of right conduct by the name of Bentham, because the thinkers who have chiefly taught this doctrine in England during the present century have referred it to Bentham as their master. And it certainly seems to me clear—though Mr. Bain (cf. Mind, January 1883, p. 48) appears to doubt it—that Bentham adopted this doctrine explicitly, in its most comprehensive scope, at the earliest stage in the formation of his opinions; nor do I think that he ever consciously abandoned or qualified it. We find him writing in his common-place book, in 1773–4 (cf. Works, Bowring’s edition, vol. x. p. 70), that Helvetius had “established a standard of rectitude for actions”;—the standard being that “a sort of action is a right one, when the tendency of it is to augment the mass of happiness in the community.” And we find him writing fifty years later (cf. Works, vol. x. p. 79) the following account of his earliest view, in a passage which contains no hint of later dissent from it:—“By an early pamphlet of Priestley’s … light was added to the warmth. In the phrase ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number,’ I then saw delineated, for the first time, a plain as well as a true standard for whatever is right or wrong … in human conduct, whether in the field of morals or of politics.”

      At the same time I must admit that in other passages Bentham seems no less explicitly to adopt Egoistic Hedonism as the method of ‘private Ethics,’ as distinct from legislation: and in his posthumous ‘Deontology’ the two principles appear to be reconciled by the doctrine, that it is always the individual’s true interest, even from a purely mundane point of view, to act in the manner most conducive to the general happiness. This latter proposition—which I regard as erroneous—is not, indeed, definitely put forward in any of the treatises published by Bentham in his lifetime, or completely prepared by him for publication: but it may be inferred from his common-place book that he held it (see his Works, vol. x. pp. 560, 561).

CHAPTER VII

       EGOISM AND SELF-LOVE

       Table of Contents

      § 1. In the preceding chapters I have used the term “Egoism,” as it is most commonly used, to denote a system which prescribes actions as means to the end of the individual’s happiness or pleasure. The ruling motive in such a system is commonly said to be “self-love.” But both terms admit of other interpretations, which it will be well to distinguish and set aside before proceeding further.

      For example, the term “egoistic” is ordinarily and not improperly applied to the basis on which Hobbes attempted to construct morality; and on which alone, as he held, the social order could firmly rest, and escape the storms and convulsions with which it seemed to be menaced from the vagaries of the unenlightened conscience. But it is not strictly the end of Egoism as I have defined it—greatest attainable pleasure for the individual—but rather “self-preservation,” which determines the first of those precepts of rational egoism which Hobbes calls “Laws of Nature,” viz., “Seek peace and ensue it.” And in the development of his system we often find that it is Preservation rather than Pleasure, or perhaps a compromise between the two,[78] that is taken as the ultimate end and standard of right conduct.

      Again, in Spinoza’s view the principle of rational action is necessarily egoistic, and is (as with Hobbes) the impulse of self-preservation. The individual mind, says Spinoza, like everything else, strives so far as it is able to continue in its state of being: indeed this effort is its very essence. It is true that the object of this impulse cannot be separated from pleasure or joy; because pleasure or joy is “a passion in which the soul passes to higher perfection.” Still it is not at Pleasure that the impulse primarily aims, but at the mind’s Perfection or Reality: as we should now say, at Self-realisation or Self-development. Of this, according to Spinoza, the highest form consists in a clear comprehension of all things in their necessary order as modifications of the one Divine Being, and that willing acceptance of all which springs from this comprehension. In this state the mind is purely active, without any admixture of passion or passivity: and thus its essential nature is realised or actualised to the greatest possible degree.

      We perceive that this is the notion of Self-realisation as defined not only by but for a philosopher: and that it would mean something quite different in the case of a man of action—such, for example, as the reflective dramatist of Germany introduces exclaiming:

      Ich kann mich nicht

       Wie so ein Wortheld, so ein Tugend-Schwätzer

       An meinem Willen wärmen, und Gedanken …

       Wenn ich nicht wirke mehr, bin ich vernichtet.[79]

      The artist, again, often contemplates his production of the beautiful as a realisation of self: and moralists of a certain turn of mind, in all ages, have similarly regarded the sacrifice of inclination to duty as the highest form of Self-development; and held that true self-love prompts us always to obey the commands issued by the governing principle—Reason or Conscience—within us, as in such obedience, however painful, we shall be realising our truest self.

      We see, in short, that the term Egoism, so far as it merely implies that reference is made to self in laying down first principles of conduct, does not really indicate in any way the substance of such principles. For all our impulses, high and low, sensual and moral alike, are so far similarly related to self, that—except when two or more impulses come into conscious conflict—we tend to identify ourselves with each as it arises. Thus self-consciousness may be prominent in yielding to any impulse: and egoism, in so far as it merely implies such prominence, is a common form applicable to all principles of action.

      It may be said, however, that we do not, properly speaking, ‘develop’ or ‘realise’ self by yielding to the impulse which happens to be predominant in us; but by exercising, each in its due place and proper degree, all the different faculties, capacities, and propensities, of which our nature

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