PROGRESSIVE MORALITY _FOWLER_ [Illustration] PROGRESSIVE MORALITY AN ESSAY IN ETHICS BY THOMAS FOWLER, M. A. , LL. D. , F. S. A. PRESIDENT OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE WYKEHAM PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 1884 PREFACE. These pages represent an attempt to exhibit a scientific conception ofmorality in a popular form, and with a view to practical applicationsrather than the discussion of theoretical difficulties. For this purposeit has been necessary to study brevity and avoid controversy. Hence, Ihave made few references to other authors, and I have almost altogetherdispensed with foot-notes. But, though I have attempted to state ratherthan to defend my views, I believe that they are, in the main, thosewhich, making exception for a few back eddies in the stream of modernthought, are winning their way to general acceptance among the moreinstructed and reflective men of our day. It is necessary that I should state that this Essay is independent of amuch larger work, entitled the 'Principles of Morals, ' on which I was, some years ago, engaged with my predecessor, the late Professor Wilson. Owing to the declining state of his health during the latter years ofhis life, that work was, at the time of his death, left in a conditionwhich rendered its completion very difficult and its publicationprobably undesirable. For the present work I am solely responsible, though no one can have been brought into close contact with so powerfula mind as that of Professor Wilson, without deriving from it muchstimulus and retaining many traces of its influence. It has long been my belief that the questions of theoretical Ethicswould be far less open to dispute, as well as far more intelligible, ifthey were considered with more direct reference to practice. This littlebook will, I trust, furnish an example, however slight and imperfect, ofsuch a mode of treatment. C. C. C. _July_ 25, 1884. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introduction. The Sanctions of Conduct. CHAPTER II. The Moral Sanction or Moral Sentiment. ItsFunctions and the Justification of its claimsto Superiority. CHAPTER III. Analysis and Formation of the Moral Sentiment. Its Education and Improvement. CHAPTER IV. The Moral Test and its Justification. CHAPTER V. Examples of the Practical Application of the MoralTest to existing Morality. PROGRESSIVE MORALITY. * * * * * CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THE SANCTIONS OF CONDUCT. All reflecting men acknowledge that both the theory and the practice ofmorality have advanced with the general advance in the intelligence andcivilisation of the human race. But, if this be so, morality must be amatter capable of being reasoned about, a subject of investigation andof teaching, in which the less intelligent members of a community havealways something to learn from the more intelligent, and the moreintelligent, in their turn, have ever fresh problems to solve and newmaterial to study. It becomes, then, of prime importance to everyeducated man, to ask what are the data of Ethics, what is the method bywhich its general principles are investigated, what are theconsiderations which the moralist ought to apply to the solution of thecomplex difficulties of life and action. And still, in spite of theseobvious facts, ethical investigation, or any approach to an independentreview of the current morality, is always unpopular with the great massof mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject whichmost concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient ofspeculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man ofindolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moralprinciples on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usuallyapportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general rules, with little or no regard to the individual circumstances of the case. And of all innovators, the innovator on ethical theory is apt to be themost unpopular and to be the least able to secure impartial attention tohis speculations. And hence it is that vague theories, couched inunintelligible or only half-intelligible language, and almost totallyinapplicable to practice, have usually done duty for what is called asystem of moral philosophy. The authors or exponents of such theorieshave the good fortune at once to avoid odium and to acquire a reputationfor profundity. In the following pages, I shall attempt (1) to discriminate morality, properly so called, from other sanctions of conduct; (2) to determinethe precise functions, and the ultimate justification, of the moralsentiment, or, in other words, of the moral sanction; (3) to enquire howthis sentiment has been formed, and how it may be further educated andimproved; (4) to discover some general test of conduct; (5) to giveexamples of the application of this test to existing moral rules andmoral feelings, with a view to shew how far they may be justified andhow far they require extension or reformation. As my subject is almostexclusively practical, I shall studiously avoid mere theoreticalpuzzles, such as is pre-eminently that of the freedom of the will, which, in whatever way resolved, probably never influences, and neverwill influence, any sane man's conduct. Questions of this kind willalways excite interest in the sphere of speculation, and speculation isa necessity of the cultivated human intellect; but it does not seem tome that they can be profitably discussed in a treatise, the aim of whichis simply to suggest principles for examining, for testing, and, ifpossible, for improving the prevailing sentiment on matters of practicalmorals. To begin with the first division of my subject, How is morality, properly so called, discriminated from other sanctions of conduct? By asanction I may premise that I mean any pleasure which attracts to aswell as any pain which deters from a given course of action. In books onJurisprudence, this word is usually employed to designate merely painsor penalties, but this circumstance arises from the fact that, at leastin modern times, the law seldom has recourse to rewards, and effects itsends almost exclusively by means of punishments. When we are consideringconduct, however, in its general aspects and not exclusively in itsrelations to law, we appear to need a word to express any inducement, whether of a pleasureable or painful nature, which may influence a man'sactions, and such a word the term 'sanction' seems conveniently tosupply. Taking the word in this extended sense, the sanctions of conductmay be enumerated as the physical, the legal, the social, the religious, and the moral. Of the physical sanction familiar examples may be foundin the headache from which a man suffers after a night's debauch, thepleasure of relaxation which awaits a well-earned holiday, the danger tolife or limb which is attendant on reckless exercise, or the glow ofconstant satisfaction which rewards a healthy habit of life. Thesepleasures and pains, when once experienced, exercise, for the future, anattracting or a deterring influence, as the case may be, on the coursesof conduct with which they have respectively become associated. Thus, aman who has once suffered from a severe headache, after a night'sdrinking-bout, will be likely to exercise more discretion in future, orthe prospect of agreeable diversion, at the end of a hard day's work, will quicken a man's efforts to execute his task. The legal sanction is too familiar to need illustration. Without penallaws, no society of any size could exist for a day. There are, however, two characteristics of this sanction which it is important to point out. One is that it works almost exclusively[1] by means of penalties. It would be an endless and thankless business, in a societyof any size, even if it were possible, to attempt to reward the virtuousfor their consideration in not breaking the laws. The cheap, theeffective, indeed, in most cases, the only possible method is to punishthe transgressor. By a carefully devised and properly graduated systemof penalties each citizen is thus furnished with the strongestinducement to refrain from those acts which may injure or annoy hisneighbour. Another characteristic of the legal sanction is that, thoughit is professedly addressed to all citizens alike, it actually affectsthe uneducated and lower classes far more than the educated and higherclasses of society. This circumstance arises partly from the fact thatpersons in a comfortable position of life are under little temptation tocommit the more ordinary crimes forbidden by law, such as are theft, assault, and the like, and partly from the fact that their education andassociations make them more amenable to the social, and, in most cases, to the moral and religious sanctions, about to be described presently. Few persons in what are called the higher or middle ranks of life haveany temptation to commit, say, an act of theft, and, if they experiencedany such temptation, they would be at least as likely to be restrainedby the consideration of what their neighbours would think or say aboutthem, even apart from their own moral and religious convictions, as bythe fear of imprisonment. [Footnote 1: There are a few exceptions to the rule that the sanctionsemployed by the state assume the form of punishments rather than ofrewards. Such are titles and honours, pensions awarded for distinguishedservice, rewards to informers, &c. But these exceptions are almostinsignificant, when compared with the numerous examples of the generalrule. ] One of the most effective sanctions in all conditions of life, butespecially in the upper and better educated circles of a civilizedsociety, is what may be called the social sanction, that is to say, aregard for the good opinion and a dread of the evil opinion of those whoknow us, and especially of those amongst whom we habitually live. It isone of the characteristics of this sanction that it is much morefar-reaching than the legal sanction. Not only does it extend to manyacts of a moral character which are not affected, in most countries, bythe legal sanction, such as lying, backbiting, ingratitude, unkindness, cowardice, but also to mere matters of taste or fashion, such as dress, etiquette, and even the proprieties of language. Indeed, as to thelatter class of actions, there is always considerable danger of thesocial sanction becoming too strong. Society is apt to insist on all menbeing cast in one mould, without much caring to examine the character ofthe mould which it has adopted. And it frequently happens that a whollydisproportionate value thus comes to be attached to the observance ofmere rules of etiquette and good-breeding as compared with acts andfeelings which really concern the moral and social welfare of mankind. There is many a man, moving in good society, who would rather be guiltyof, and even detected in, an act of unkindness or mendacity, than beseen in an unfashionable dress or commit a grammatical solecism or abroach of social etiquette. Vulgarity to such men is a worse reproachthan hardness of heart or indifferent morality. In these cases, as weshall see hereafter, the social sanction requires to be corrected by themoral and religious sanctions, and it is the special province of themoral and religious teacher in each generation to take care that thiscorrection shall be duly and effectively applied. The task may, fromtime to time, require the drastic hand of the moral or religiousreformer, but, unless some one has the courage to undertake it, we arein constant danger of neglecting the weightier matters of the law, whilewe are busy with the mint and cummin and anise of fashion andconvention. But, notwithstanding the danger of exaggeration andmisapplication, there can be no doubt of the vast importance and thegenerally beneficial results of a keen sensitiveness to the opinions ofour fellow-men. Without the powerful aid of this sanction, therestraints of morality and religion would often be totally ineffective. When the social sanction operates, not through society generally, butthrough particular sections of society, it may be called a Law ofHonour, a term which originated in the usages of Chivalry. In a complexand civilized form of society, such as our own, there may be many suchlaws of honour, and the same individual may be subject to several ofthem. Thus each profession, the army, the navy, the clerical, the legal, the medical, the artistic, the dramatic profession, has its own peculiarcode of honour or rules of professional etiquette, which its members canonly infringe on pain of ostracism, or, at least, of loss ofprofessional reputation. The same is the case with trades, and isspecially exemplified in the instance of trades-unions, or, theirmediaeval prototypes, the guilds. A college or a school, again, has itsown rules and traditions, which the tutor or undergraduate, the masteror boy, can often only violate at his extreme peril. Almost every club, institution, and society affords another instance in point. The class of'gentlemen, ' too, that is to say, speaking roughly, the upper and uppermiddle ranks of society, claim to have a code of honour of their own, superior to that of the ordinary citizen. A breach of this code iscalled 'ungentlemanly' rather than wrong or immoral or unjust or unkind. So far as this code insists on courtesy of demeanour and delicacy offeeling and conduct, it is a valuable complement to the ordinary rulesof morality, though, so far as it fulfils this function, it plainlyought not to be the exclusive possession of one class, but ought to becommunicated, by means of example and education, to the classes who arenow supposed to be bereft of it. There are points in this code, however, such as that the payment of 'debts of honour' should take precedence ofthat of tradesmen's bills, and that less courtesy is due to persons inan inferior station than to those in our own, which at least meritre-consideration. It may, indeed, be said of all these laws or codes ofhonour, that, though they have probably, on the whole, a salutary effectin maintaining a high standard of conduct in the various bodies orclasses where they obtain, they require to be constantly watched, lestthey should become capricious or tyrannical, and specially lest theyshould conflict with the wider interests of society or the deeperinstincts of morality. It must not be forgotten that we are 'men' beforewe are 'gentlemen, ' and that no claims of any profession, institution, or class can replace or supplant those of humanity and citizenship. We see, then, or rather we are obliged at the present stage of ourenquiry to assume, that the social sanction, whether it be derived fromthe average sentiment of society at large or from the customs andopinions of particular aggregates of society, requires constantcorrection at the hands of the moralist. The sentiment which itrepresents may be only the sentiment of men of average moral tone, or itmay even be that of men of an inferior or degraded morality, and henceit often needs to be tested by the application of rules derived from ahigher standard both of feeling and intelligence. Nor is it the moralstandard only which may be used to correct the social standard. We mayoften advantageously have recourse to the legal standard for the samepurpose. For the laws of a country express, as a rule, the sentiments ofthe wisest and most experienced of its citizens, and hence we mightnaturally expect that they would be in advance of the average moralsentiment of the people, as well as of the social traditions ofparticular professions or classes. And this I believe to be usually thecase. For instances, we have to go no further than the comparisonbetween the laws and the popular or professional sentiment on bribery atelections, on smuggling, on evasion of taxation, on fraudulent businesstransactions, on duelling, on prize-fighting, or on gambling. At thesame time it must be confessed that, as laws sometimes becomeantiquated, and the leanings of lawyers are proverbially conservative, it occasionally happens that, on some points, the average moralsentiment is in advance of the law. I may select as examples, fromcomparatively recent legal history, the continuance of religiousdisabilities and the excessive punishment of ordinary or even trivialcrimes; and, perhaps, I may venture to add, as a possible reform in thefuture now largely demanded by popular sentiment, some considerablemodifications of the laws regulating the transfer of and the successionto landed property. Thus it will be seen that law and the sentiment ofsociety may each be employed as corrective of the other, and that, consequently, their comparison implies a higher standard than either, bymeans of which each may be tested, and to which each, in its turn, maybe referred. This higher or common standard it will be our business toconsider in a subsequent part of this Essay. Meanwhile, it may bepointed out that, in addition to its function as an occasionalcorrective of the legal sanction, the social sanction subserves twogreat objects: first, it largely complements the legal sanction, beingapplicable to numberless cases which that sanction does not, and, infact, cannot reach; secondly, the legal sanction, even in those caseswhich it reaches, is greatly reinforced by the social sanction, whichadds the pains arising from an evil reputation, and all the indefinablesocial inconveniences which an evil reputation brings with it, to theactual penalties inflicted by the law. The religious sanction varies, of course, with the different religiouscreeds, and, in the more imperfect forms of religion, by no means alwaysoperates in favour of morality. But it will be sufficient here toconsider the religious sanction solely in relation to Christianity. Asenforced by the Bible and the Church, the religious sanctions of conductare two, which I shall call the higher and the lower sanctions. By thelatter I mean the hope of the divine reward or the fear of the divinepunishment, either in this world or the next; by the former, the love ofGod and that veneration for His nature which irresistibly inspires theeffort to imitate His perfections. The lower religious sanction isplainly the same in kind with the legal sanction. If a man is induced todo or to refrain from doing a certain action from fear of punishment, the motive is the same, whether the punishment be for a long time or ashort one, whether it is to take immediate effect or to be deferred fora term of years. And, similarly, the same is the case with rewards. Nopeculiar merit, as it appears to me, can be claimed by a man because heacts from fear of divine punishment rather than of human punishment, orfrom hope of divine rewards rather than of human rewards. The onlydifferences between the two sanctions are (1) that the hopes and fearsinspired by the religious sanction are, to one who believes in theirreality, far more intense than those inspired by the legal sanction, thetwo being related as the temporal to the eternal, and (2) that, inasmuchas God is regarded as omnipresent and omniscient, the religious sanctionis immeasurably more far-reaching than the legal sanction or even thanthe legal and the social sanctions combined. Thus the lower religioussanction is, to those who really believe in it, far more effective thanthe legal sanction, though it is the same in kind. But the higherreligious sanction appeals to a totally different class of motives, themotives of love and reverence rather than of hope and fear. In thishigher frame of mind, we keep God's commandments, because we love Him, not because we hope for His rewards or fear His punishments. Wereverence God, and, therefore, we strive to be like Him, to be perfecteven as He is perfect. We have attained to that state of mind in whichperfect love has cast out fear, and, hence, we simply do good and actrighteously because God, who is the supreme object of our love and thesupreme ideal of conduct, is good and righteous. There can be noquestion that, in this case, the motives are far loftier and purer thanin the case of the legal and the lower religious sanctions. But thereare few men, probably, capable of these exalted feelings, and, therefore, for the great mass of mankind the external inducements toright conduct must, probably, continue to be sought in the coarsermotives. It may be mentioned, before concluding this notice of thereligious sanctions, that there is a close affinity between the higherreligious sanction and that form of the social sanction which operatesthrough respect for the good opinions of those of our fellow-men whom welove, reverence, or admire. But, quite distinct from all the sanctions thus far enumerated, there isanother sanction which is derived from our own reflexion on our ownactions, and the approbation or disapprobation which, after suchreflexion, we bestow upon them. There are actions which, on noreasonable estimate of probabilities, can ever come to the knowledge ofany other person than ourselves, but which we look back on with pleasureor regret. It may be said that, though, in these cases, the legal andthe social sanctions are confessedly excluded, the sanction which reallyoperates is the religious sanction, in either its higher or its lowerform. But it can hardly be denied that, even where there is no belief inGod, or, at least, no vivid sense of His presence nor any effectiveexpectation of His intervention, the same feelings are experienced. These feelings, then, appear to be distinct in character from any of theothers which we have so far considered, and they constitute what mayappropriately be called the moral sanction, in the strict sense of theterm. It is one of the faults of Bentham's system that he confounds thissanction with the social sanction, speaking indifferently of the moral_or_ popular (that is to say, social) sanction; but let any one examinecarefully for himself the feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfactionwith which he looks back upon past acts of his own life, and ask himselfwhether he can discover in those feelings any reference to the praise orblame of other persons, actual or possible. There will, if I mistakenot, be many of them in which he can discover no such reference, but inwhich the feeling is simply that of satisfaction with himself for havingdone what he ought to have done, or dissatisfaction with himself forhaving done that which he ought not to have done. Whether these feelingsadmit of analysis and explanation is another question, and one withwhich I shall deal presently, but of their reality and distinctness nocompetent and impartial person, on careful self-examination, can welldoubt. The answer, then, to our first question, I conceive to be thatthe moral sanction, properly so called, is distinguished from all othersanctions of conduct in that it has no regard to the prospect ofphysical pleasure or pain, or to the hope of reward or fear ofpunishment, or to the estimation in which we shall be held by any otherbeing than ourselves, but that it has regard simply and solely to theinternal feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with which, onreflexion, we shall look back upon our own acts. CHAPTER II. THE MORAL SANCTION OR MORAL SENTIMENT. ITS FUNCTIONS AND THE JUSTIFICATION OFITS CLAIMS TO SUPERIORITY. I now proceed to consider more at length what are the precise functionsof the moral sentiment or moral sanction[1], and what is the justificationof the weight which we attach to it, or rather of the preference whichwe assign to it, or feel that we ought to assign to it, over all theother sanctions of conduct. We have already seen that the moralsentiment or sanction is the feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfactionwhich we experience when we reflect on our own acts, without anyreference to any external authority or external opinion. Now it isimportant to ask whether this feeling is uniformly felt on theoccurrence of the same acts, or whether it ever varies, so that acts, for instance, which are at one time viewed with satisfaction, are atanother time regarded with indifference or with positivedissatisfaction. It would seem as if no man who reflects on ethicalsubjects, and profits by the observation and experience of life, couldpossibly answer this question in any other than one way. There must bevery few educated and reflective men who have not seen reason, withadvancing years, to alter their opinion on many of, at least, the minorpoints of morality in which they were instructed as children. A familiarinstance occurs at once in the different way in which most of us viewcard-playing or attendance at balls or theatres from the much stricterviews which prevailed in many respectable English households ageneration ago. On the other hand, excess in eating and drinking isregarded with far less indulgence now than it was in the days of ourfathers and grandfathers. On these points, then, at least, and such asthese, it must be allowed that there is a variation of moral sentiment, or, in other words, that the acts condemned or approved by the moralsanction are not invariably the same. Moreover, any of us who areaccustomed to reason on moral questions, and can observe carefully theprocesses through which the mind passes, will notice that there isconstantly going on a re-adjustment, so to speak, of our ethicalopinions, whether we are reviewing abstract questions of morality or thespecific acts of ourselves or others. We at one time think ourselves orothers more, and, at another time, less blameable for the self-sameacts, or we come to regard some particular class of acts in a differentlight from what we used to do, either modifying our praise or blame, or, in extreme cases, actually substituting one for the other. But, thoughthese facts are patent, and may be verified by any one in his experienceeither of himself or others, there have actually been moralists who haveappeared to maintain the position that, when a man is unbiassed bypassion or interest, his moral judgments are and must be invariably thesame. This error has, undoubtedly, been largely fostered by the looseand popular use of the terms conscience and moral sense. These terms, and especially the word conscience, are often employed to designate asort of mysterious entity, supposed to have been implanted in the mindby God Himself, and endowed by Him with the unique prerogative ofinfallibility. Even so philosophical and sober a writer as Bishop Butlerhas given some countenance to this extravagant supposition, and to theexaggerated language which he employs on the prerogatives of conscience, and to the emphatic manner in which he insists on the absolute, if notthe infallible, character of its decisions, may be traced much of themisconception which still prevails on the subject. But we have only totake account of the notorious fact that the consciences of two equallyconscientious men may point in entirely opposite directions, in order tosee that the decisions of conscience cannot, at all events, be creditedwith infallibility. Those who denounce and those who defend religiouspersecution, those who insist on the removal and those who insist on theretention of religious disabilities, those who are in favour of andthose who are opposed to a relaxation of the marriage laws, those whoadvocate a total abstention from intoxicating liquors and those whoallow of a moderate use of them, --men on both sides in thesecontroversies, or, at least, the majority of them, doubtless actconscientiously, and yet, as they arrive at opposite conclusions, theconscience of one side or other must be at fault. There is no act ofreligious persecution, there are few acts of political or personalcruelty, for which the authority of conscience might not be invoked. Idoubt not that Queen Mary acted as conscientiously in burning theReformers as they did in promulgating their opinions or we do incondemning her acts. It is plain, then, not only that the decisions ofconscience are not infallible, but that they must, to a very largeextent, be relative to the circumstances and opinions of those who formthem. In any intelligible or tenable sense of the term, consciencestands simply for the aggregate of our moral opinions reinforced by themoral sanction of self-approbation or self-disapprobation. That we oughtto act in accordance with these opinions, and that we are acting wronglyif we act in opposition to them, is a truism. 'Follow Conscience' is theonly safe guide, when the moment of action has arrived. But it isequally important to insist on the fallibility of conscience, and tourge men, by all means in their power, to be constantly improving andinstructing their consciences, or, in plain words, to review and, wherever occasion offers, to correct their conceptions of right andwrong. The 'plain, honest man' of Bishop Butler would, undoubtedly, always follow his conscience, but it is by no means certain that hisconscience would always guide him rightly, and it is quite certain thatit would often prompt him differently from the consciences of other'plain, honest men' trained elsewhere and under other circumstances. Toact contrary to our opinions of right and wrong would be treason to ourmoral nature, but it does not follow that those opinions are notsusceptible of improvement and correction, or that it is not as much ourduty to take pains to form true opinions as to act in accordance withour opinions when we have formed them. [Footnote 1: I use the expressions 'moral sanction' and 'moralsentiment' as equivalent terms, because the pleasures and pains, whichconstitute the moral sanction, are inseparable, even in thought, fromthe moral feeling. The moral feeling of self-approbation orself-disapprobation cannot even be conceived apart from the pleasures orpains which are attendant on it, and by means of which it reveals itselfto us. It should be noticed that the expression 'moral sentiment' is habituallyused in two senses, as the equivalent (1) of the moral feeling only, (2)of the entire moral process, which, as we shall see in the thirdchapter, consists partly of a judgment, partly of a feeling. It is inthe latter sense, for instance, that we speak of the 'current moralsentiment' of any given age or country, meaning the opinions then orthere prevalent on moral questions, reinforced by the feeling ofapprobation or disapprobation. As, however, the moral feeling alwaysfollows immediately and necessarily on the moral judgment, whenever thatjudgment pronounces decisively for or against an action, and alwaysimplies a previous judgment (I am here again obliged to anticipate thediscussion in chapter 3), the ambiguity is of no practical importance atthe present stage of our enquiry. It is almost needless to add that theword 'sentiment, ' when used alone, has the double meaning of a feelingand an opinion, an ambiguity which is sometimes not without practicalinconvenience. ] The terms 'conscience' and 'moral sense' are very convenient expressionsfor popular use, provided we always bear in mind that 'illuminate' or'instruct' your 'conscience' or 'moral sense' is quite as essential arule as 'follow' your 'conscience' or 'moral sense. ' But the scientificmoralist, in attempting to analyse the springs of moral action and todetect the ultimate sanctions of conduct, would do well to avoid theseterms altogether. The analysis of moral as well as of intellectual actsis often only obscured by our introducing the conception of 'faculties, 'and, in the present instance, it is far better to confine ourselves tothe expressions 'acts' of 'approbation or disapprobation, ' 'satisfactionor dissatisfaction, ' which we shall hereafter attempt to analyse, thanto feign, or at least assume, certain 'faculties' or 'senses' asdistinct entities from which such acts are supposed to proceed. I shall, therefore, in the sequel of this work, say little or nothing of'conscience' or 'moral sense, ' not because I think it desirable tobanish those words from popular terminology, but because I think that, in an attempt to present the principles of ethics in a scientific form, they introduce needless complexity and obscurity. If the statements thus far made in this chapter be accepted, it followsthat the feelings of self-approbation and self-disapprobation, whichconstitute the moral sanction, by no means invariably supervene on actsof the same kind even in the case of the same individual, much less inthe case of different individuals, and that the acts which elicit themoral sanction depend, to a considerable extent, on the circumstancesand education of the person who passes judgment on them. The moralsanction, therefore, though it always consists in the feelings ofself-approbation, or self-disapprobation, of satisfaction ordissatisfaction at one's own acts, is neither uniform, absolute, norinfallible; but varies, as applied not only by different individuals butby the same individual at different times, in relation to varyingconditions of education, temperament, nationality, and, generally, ofcircumstances both external and internal. Lastly, it admits of constantimprovement and correction. How, then, it may be asked, do we justifythe application of this sanction, and why do we regard it as not only alegitimate sanction of conduct, but as the most important of allsanctions, and, in cases of conflict, the supreme and final sanction? The answer to this question is that, if we regard an action as wrong, nomatter whether our opinion be correct or not, no external considerationswhatsoever can compensate us for acting contrary to our convictions. Human nature, in its normal condition, is so constituted that theremorse felt, when we look back upon a wrong action, far outweighs anypleasure we may have derived from it, just as the satisfaction withwhich we look back upon a right action far more than compensates for anypain with which it may have been attended. The 'mens sibi conscia recti'is the highest reward which a man can have, as, on the other hand, theretrospect on base, unjust, or cruel actions constitutes the most acuteof torments. Now, when a man looks back upon his past actions, what heregards is not so much the result of his acts as the intention and themotives by which the intention was actuated. It is not, therefore, whathe would now think of the act so much as what he then thought of it thatis the object of his approbation or disapprobation. And, consequently, even though his opinions as to the nature of the act may meanwhile haveundergone alteration, he approves or disapproves of what was hisintention at the moment of performing it and of the state of mind fromwhich it then proceeded. It is true that the subsequent results of ouracts and any change in our estimate of their moral character mayconsiderably modify the feelings with which we look back upon them, but, still, in the main, it holds good that the approval or disapproval withwhich we regard our past conduct depends rather upon the opinions ofright and wrong which we entertained at the moment of action than thosewhich we have come to entertain since. To have acted, at any time, in amanner contrary to what we then supposed to be right leaves behind it atrace of dissatisfaction and pain, which may, at any future time, reappear to trouble and distress us; just as to have acted, in spite ofall conflicting considerations, in a manner which we then conceived tobe right, may, in after years, be a perennial source of pleasure andsatisfaction. It is characteristic of the pleasures and pains ofreflexion on our past acts (which pleasures and pains of reflexion may, of course, connect themselves with other than purely moralconsiderations), not only that they admit of being more intense than anyother pleasures and pains, but that, whenever there is any conflictbetween the moral sanction and any other sanction, it is to the moralsanction that they attach themselves. Thus, if a man has incurredphysical suffering, or braved the penalties of the law or the ill wordof society, in pursuance of a course of conduct which he deemed to beright, he looks back upon his actions with satisfaction, and the moreimportant the actions, and the clearer his convictions of right and thestronger the inducements to act otherwise, the more intense will hissatisfaction be. But no such satisfaction is felt, when a man hassacrificed his convictions of right to avoid physical pain, or to escapethe penalties of the law, or to conciliate the goodwill of society; thefeeling, on the other hand, will be that of dissatisfaction withhimself, varying, according to circumstances, from regret to remorse. And, if no similar remark has to be made with reference to the religioussanction, it is because, in all the higher forms of religion, thereligious sanction is conceived of as applying to exactly the sameactions as the moral sanction. What a man himself deems right, that heconceives God to approve of, and what he conceives God as disapprovingof, that he deems wrong. But in a religion in which God was not regardedas holy, just, and true, or in which there was a plurality of gods, somegood and some evil, I conceive that a man would look back withsatisfaction, and not with dissatisfaction, on those acts in which hehad followed his own sense of right rather than the supposed will of theDeity, just as, when there is a conflict between the two, he nowcongratulates himself on having submitted to the claims of consciencerather than to those of the law. The justification, then, of that claim to superiority, which is assertedby the moral sanction, consists, I conceive, in two circumstances:first, that the pleasures and pains, the feelings of satisfaction anddissatisfaction, of self-approbation and self-disapprobation, by meansof which it works, are, in the normally constituted mind, far moreintense and durable than any other pleasures and pains; secondly, that, whenever this sanction comes into conflict with any other sanction, itsdefeat is sure, on a careful retrospect of our acts, to bring regret orremorse, whereas its victory is equally certain to bring pleasure andsatisfaction. We arrive, then, at the conclusion that it is the moralsanction which is the distinctive guide of conduct, and to which we mustlook, in the last resort, to enforce right action, while the othersanctions are mainly valuable in so far as they reinforce the moralsanction or correct its aberrations. A man must, ultimately, be thejudge of his own conduct, and, as he acts or does not act according tohis own best judgment, so he will subsequently feel satisfaction orremorse; but these facts afford no reason why he should not take painsto inform his judgment by all the means which physical knowledge, law, society, and religion place at his disposal. CHAPTER III. ANALYSIS AND FORMATION OF THE MORALSENTIMENT. ITS EDUCATION AND IMPROVEMENT. Before proceeding to our third question, namely, how the moralsentiment, which is the source of the moral sanction, has been formed, and how it may be further educated and improved, it is desirable todiscriminate carefully between the intellectual and the emotionalelements in an act of approbation or disapprobation. We sometimes speakof moral judgment, sometimes of moral feeling. These expressions oughtnot to be regarded as the symbols of rival theories on the nature of theact of moral approbation, as has sometimes been the case, but asdesignating distinct parts of the process, or, to put the same statementrather differently, separate elements in the analysis. Hume, whosetreatment of this subject is peculiarly lucid, as compared with that ofmost writers on ethics, after reviewing the reasons assigned by thoseauthors respectively who resolve the act of approbation into an act ofjudgment or an act of feeling, adds[1]: 'These arguments on each side(and many more might be produced) are so plausible, that I am apt tosuspect they may, the one as well as the other, be solid andsatisfactory, and that reason and sentiment concur in almost all moraldeterminations and conclusions. The final sentence; it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praiseworthyor blameable; that which stamps on them the mark of honour or infamy, approbation or censure; that which renders morality an active principle, and constitutes virtue our happiness and vice our misery: it isprobable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal senseor feeling, which nature has made universal in the wholespecies. For what else can have an influence of this nature?But, in order to pave the way for such a sentiment and givea proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, thatmuch reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, justconclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relationsexamined, and general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species ofbeauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance, commandour affection and approbation; and, where they fail of this effect, itis impossible for any reasoning to redress their influence, or adaptthem better to our taste and sentiment. But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ muchreasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish mayfrequently be corrected by argument and reflexion. There are justgrounds to conclude that moral beauty partakes much of this latterspecies, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, inorder to give it a suitable influence on the human mind. ' [Footnote 1: Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Section I. ] This passage, which I have thought it worth while to quote at length, exhibits, with sufficient clearness, the respective provinces of reasonand feeling in the ethical estimation of action. Whether we arereviewing the actions of ourselves or of others, what we seem to do, inthe first instance, is to refer them to some class, or associate themwith certain actions of a similar kind which are familiar to us, and, then, when their character has thus been determined, they excite theappropriate feeling of approbation or disapprobation, praise or censure. Thus, as soon as we have realised that a statement is a lie or an act isfraudulent, we at once experience a feeling of indignation or disgust atthe person who has made the statement or committed the act. And, in thesame way, as soon as we have recognised that an act is brave orgenerous, we regard with esteem or admiration the doer of it. But, though the feeling of approbation or disapprobation followsinstantaneously on the act of judgment, the recognition of the characterof the action, or its reference to a class, which constitutes this actof judgment, may be, and often is, a process of considerable length andcomplexity. Take the case of a lie. What did the man really say? In whatsense did he employ the words used? What was the extent of his knowledgeat the time that he made the statement? And what was his intention?These and possibly other questions have to be answered, before we arejustified in accusing him of having told a lie. When the offence is notonly a moral but a legal one, the act of determining the character ofthe action in question is often the result of a prolonged enquiry, extending over weeks or months. No sooner, however, is the intellectualprocess completed, and the action duly labelled as a lie, or a theft, ora fraud, or an act of cruelty or ingratitude, or the like, than theappropriate ethical emotion is at once excited. The intellectual processmay also be exceedingly rapid, or even instantaneous, and always is sowhen we have no doubt as to the nature either of the action or of theintention or of the motives, but its characteristic, as distinguishedfrom the ethical emotion, is that it may take time, and, except inperfectly clear cases or on very sudden emergencies requiring subsequentaction, always ought to do so. We are now in a position to see the source of much confusion in theordinary mode of speaking and writing on the subject of the moralfaculty, the moral judgment, the moral feeling, the moral sense, theconscience, and kindred terms. The instantaneous, and the apparentlyinstinctive, authoritative, and absolute character of the act of moralapprobation or disapprobation attaches to the emotional, and not to theintellectual part of the process. When an action has once beenpronounced to be right or wrong, morally good or evil, or has beenreferred to some well-known class of actions whose ethical character isalready determined, the emotion of approval or disapproval is excitedand follows as a matter of course. There is no reasoning or hesitationabout it, simply because the act is not a reasoning act. Hence, itappears to be instinctive, and becomes invested with those superiorattributes of authoritativeness, absoluteness, and even infallibility, which are not unnaturally ascribed to an act in which, there being noprocess of reasoning, there seems to be no room for error. And, indeed, the feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation can never beproperly described as erroneous, though they are frequently misapplied. The error attaches to the preliminary process of reasoning, reference, or classification, and, if this be wrongly conducted, there is nojustification for the feeling which is consequent upon it. But, insteadof our asking for the justification of the feeling in the rationalprocess which has preceded it, we often unconsciously justify ourreasoning by the feeling, and thus the whole process assumes theunreflective character which properly belongs only to the emotional partof it. It is the want of a clear distinction between the logical processwhich determines the character of an act, --the moral judgment, --and theemotion which immediately supervenes when the character of the act isdetermined, --the moral feeling, --that accounts for the exaggeratedepithets which are often attributed to the operations of the moralfaculty, and for the haste and negligence in which men are consequentlyencouraged to indulge, when arriving at their moral decisions. Let it berecollected that, when we have time for reflexion, we cannot take toomuch pains in forming our decisions upon conduct, for there is always apossibility of error in our judgments, but that, when our judgments areformed, we ought to give free scope to the emotions which they naturallyevoke, and then we shall develope a conscience, so to speak, at onceenlightened and sensitive, we shall combine accuracy and justness ofjudgment with delicacy and strength of feeling. There remains the question whether the feelings of approval anddisapproval, which supervene on our moral judgments, admit of anyexplanation, or whether they are to be regarded as ultimate facts of ourmental constitution. It seems to me that, on a little reflexion, we areled to adopt the former alternative. What are the classes of acts, undertheir most general aspect, which elicit the feelings of moralapprobation and disapprobation? They are such as promote, or tend topromote, the good either of ourselves or of others. Now the feelings ofwhich these classes of acts are the direct object are respectively theself-regarding and the sympathetic feelings, or, as they have beensomewhat uncouthly called, the egoistic and altruistic feelings. We havea variety of appetites and desires, which centre in ourselves, includingwhat has been called rational self-love, or a desire for what, on coolreflexion, we conceive to be our own highest good on the whole, as wellas self-respect, or a regard for our own dignity and character, and forour own opinion of ourselves. When any of these various appetites ordesires are gratified, we feel satisfaction, and, on the other hand, when they are thwarted, we feel dissatisfaction. Similarly, we have anumber of affections, of which others are the object, some of them of amalevolent or resentful, but most of them of a benevolent character, including a general desire to confer all the happiness that we can. Here, again, we feel satisfaction, when our affections are gratified, and dissatisfaction, when they are thwarted. Now these feelings ofsatisfaction and dissatisfaction, which are called reflex feelings, because they are reflected, as it were, from the objects of our desires, include, though they are by no means coextensive with, the feelings ofmoral approbation and disapprobation. When, for instance, we gratify theappetites of hunger or thirst, or our love of curiosity or power, wefeel satisfaction, but we can hardly be said to regard the gratificationof these appetites or feelings with moral approval or disapproval. Weperform thousands of acts, and see thousands of acts performed, everyday, which never excite any moral feeling whatever. But there are fewmen in whom an undoubted act of kindness or generosity or resistance totemptation would not at once elicit admiration or respect, or, if theyreflected on such acts in their own case, of self-approval. Now, whatare the circumstances which distinguish these acts which merely cause ussatisfaction from those which elicit the moral feeling of approbation?This question is one by no means easy to answer, and the solution of itmust obviously depend to some extent on the moral surroundings andprepossessions of the person who undertakes to answer it. But, attempting to take as wide a survey as possible of those acts which, indifferent persons, elicit moral approbation or disapprobation, I willendeavour to discriminate the characteristics which they have in common. All those acts, then, it seems to me, which elicit a distinctively moralfeeling have been the result of some conflict amongst the variousdesires and affections, or, to adopt the more ordinary phraseology, of aconflict of motives. We neither approve nor disapprove of acts withregard to which there seems to have been little or no choice, whichappear to have resulted naturally from the pre-existing circumstances. Thus, if a well-to-do man pays his debts promptly, or a man of knownpoverty asks to have the time of payment deferred, we neither visit theone with praise nor the other with censure, though, if their conductwere reversed, we should censure the former and praise the latter. Thereason of this difference of treatment is plain. There is not, or atleast need not be, any conflict, in the case of the well-to-do man, between his own convenience or any reasonable gratification of hisdesires and the satisfaction of a just claim. Hence, in paying the debtpromptly, he is only acting as we might expect him to act, and hisconduct excites no moral feeling on our part, though, if he were to actdifferently, he would incur our censure. The poor man, on the otherhand, must have put himself to some inconvenience and exercised someself-denial in order to meet his engagement at the exact time at whichthe payment became due, and hence he merits our praise, though, if hehad acted otherwise, the circumstances might have excused him. Another characteristic of acts which we praise or blame, in the case ofothers, or approve or disapprove, on reflexion, in our own case, seemsto be that they must possess some importance. The great majority of ouracts are too trivial to merit any notice, such as is implied in a moraljudgment. When a man makes way for another in the street, or refrainsfrom eating or drinking more than is good for him, neither he nor thebystander probably ever thinks of regarding the act as a meritoriousone. It is taken as a matter of course, though the opposite conductmight, under certain circumstances, be of sufficient importance to incurcensure. It is impossible here, as in most other cases where we speak of'importance, ' to draw a definite line, but it may at least be laid downthat an act, in order to be regarded as moral or immoral, must be ofsufficient importance to arrest attention, and stimulate reflexion. Thus far, then, we have arrived at the conclusion that acts which arethe objects of moral approbation and disapprobation must have a certainimportance, and must be the result of a certain amount of conflictbetween different motives. But we have not as yet attempted to detectany principle of discrimination between those acts which are the objectsof praise or approbation and those which are the objects of censure ordisapprobation. Now it seems to me that such a principle may be found inthe fact that all those acts of others which we praise or those acts ofourselves which, on reflexion, we approve involve some amount ofsacrifice, whereas all those acts of others which we blame, or thoseacts of ourselves which, on reflexion, we disapprove involve some amountof self-indulgence. The conflict is between a man's own lower and highergood, or between his own good and the greater good of others, or, incertain cases, as we shall see presently, between the lesser good ofsome, reinforced by considerations of self-interest or partiality, andthe greater good of others, not so reinforced, or even, occasionally, between the pleasure or advantage of others and a disproportionateinjury to himself; and he who, in the struggle, gives the preference tothe former of these motives usually becomes the object of censure or, onreflexion, of self-disapprobation, while he who gives the preference tothe latter becomes the object of praise or, on reflexion, ofself-approbation. I shall endeavour to illustrate this position by a fewinstances mostly taken from common life. We praise a man who, by dueeconomy, makes decent provision for himself in old age, as we blame aman who fails to do so. Quite apart from any public or socialconsiderations, we admire and applaud in the one man the power ofself-restraint and the habit of foresight, which enable him tosubordinate his immediate gratifications to his larger interests in theremote future, and to forego sensual and passing pleasures for thepurpose of preserving his self-respect and personal independence inlater life. And we admire and applaud him still more, if to these purelyself-regarding considerations he adds the social one of wishing to avoidbecoming a burden on his family or his friends or the public. Just inthe same way, we condemn the other man, who, rather than sacrifice hisimmediate gratification, will incur the risk of forfeiting hisself-respect and independence in after years as well as of making otherssuffer for his improvidence. A man who, by the exercise of similareconomy and forethought, makes provision for his family or relations weesteem still more than the man who simply makes provision for himself, because the sacrifice of passing pleasures is generally still greater, and because there is also, in this case, a total sacrifice of allself-regarding interests, except, perhaps, self-respect and reputation, for the sake of others. Similarly, the man who has a family or relationsdependent upon him, and who neglects to make future provision for them, deservedly incurs our censure far more than the man who merely neglectsto make provision for himself, because his self-indulgence has tocontend against the full force of the social as well as the higherself-regarding motives, and its persistence is, therefore, the lessexcusable. I will next take the familiar case of a trust, voluntarily undertaken, but involving considerable trouble to the trustee, a case of a much morecomplicated character than the last. If the trustee altogether neglectsor does not devote a reasonable amount of attention to the affairs ofthe trust, there is no doubt that, besides any legal penalties which hemay incur, he merits moral censure. Rather than sacrifice his own easeor his own interests, he violates the obligation which he has undertakenand brings inconvenience, or possibly disaster, to those whose interestshe has bound himself to protect. But the demands of the trust may becomeso excessive as to tax the time and pains of the trustee to a fargreater extent than could ever have been anticipated, and to interfereseriously with his other employments. In this case no reasonable person, I presume, would censure the trustee for endeavouring, even at someinconvenience or expense to the persons for whose benefit the trustexisted, to release himself from his obligation or to devolve part ofthe work on a professional adviser. While, however, the work connectedwith the trust did not interfere with other obligations or with thepromotion of the welfare of others, no one, I imagine, would censure thetrustee for continuing to perform it, to his own inconvenience ordisadvantage, if he chose to do so. His neighbours might, perhaps, saythat he was foolish, but they would hardly go to the length of sayingthat he acted wrongly. Neither, on the other hand, would they be likelyto praise him, as the sacrifice he was undergoing would be out ofproportion to the good attained by it, and the interests of others towhich he was postponing his own interests would not be so distinctlygreater as to warrant the act of self-effacement. But now let us supposethat, in attending to the interests of the trust, he is neglecting theinterests of others who have a claim upon him, or impairing his ownefficiency as a public servant or a professional man. If the intereststhus at stake were plainly much greater than those of the trust, as theymight well be, the attitude of neutrality would soon be converted intoone of positive censure, unless he took means to extricate himself fromthe difficulty in which he was placed. The supposition just made illustrates the fact that the moral feelingsmay attach themselves not only to cases in which the collision isbetween a man's own higher and lower good, or between his own good andthat of another, but also to those in which the competition is entirelybetween the good of others. It may be worth while to illustrate thislast class of cases by one or two additional examples. A man tells a liein order to screen a friend. The act is a purely social one, for hestands in no fear of his friend, and expects no return. It might be saidthat the competition, in this example, is between serving his friend andwounding his own self-respect. But the consciousness of cowardice andmeanness which attends a lie spoken in a man's own interest hardlyattaches to a lie spoken for the purpose of protecting another. And, anyway, a little reflexion might show that the apparently benevolentintention comes into collision with a very extensive and very stringentsocial obligation, that of not impairing our confidence in one another'sassertions. Without maintaining that there are no conceivablecircumstances under which a man would be justified in committing abreach of veracity, it may at least be said that, in the lives of mostmen, there is not likely to occur any case in which the greater socialgood would not be attained by the observation of the general rule totell the truth rather than by the recognition of an exception in favourof a lie, even though that lie were told for purely benevolent reasons. In all those circumstances in which there is a keen sense ofcomradeship, as at school or college, or in the army or navy, this is aprinciple which requires to be constantly kept in view, and to beconstantly enforced. The not infrequent breach of it, under suchcircumstances, affords a striking illustration of the manner in whichthe laws of honour, spoken of in the first chapter, occasionallyover-ride the wider social sentiment and even the dictates of personalmorality, _Esprit de corps_ is, doubtless, a noble sentiment, and, onthe whole, productive of much good, but, when it comes into collisionwith the more general rules of morality, its effects are simplypernicious. I will next take an example of the conflict between twoimpulses, each having for its object the good of others, from the veryfamiliar case of a man having to appoint to, or vote in the election to, a vacant office or situation. The interests of the public service or ofsome institution require that the most competent candidate should bepreferred. But a relative, or a friend, or a political ally is standing. Affection, therefore, or friendship, or loyalty to party ties oftendictates one course of conduct, and regard for the public interestsanother. When the case is thus plainly stated, there are probably fewmen who would seriously maintain that we ought to subordinate the widerto the narrower considerations, and still, in practice, there are fewmen who have the courage to act constantly on what is surely the rightprinciple in this matter, and, what is worse still, even if they did, they would not always be sustained by public opinion, while they wouldbe almost certain to be condemned by the circle in which they move. Sofrequently do the difficulties of this position recur, that I have oftenheard a shrewd friend observe that no man who was fit for the exerciseof patronage would ever desire to be entrusted with it. The moral rulein ordinary cases is plain enough; it is to appoint or vote for thecandidate who is most competent to fulfil the duties of the post to befilled up. There are exceptional cases in which it may be allowableslightly to modify this rule, as where it is desirable to encourageparticular services, or particular nationalities, or the like, but, evenin these cases, the rule of superior competency ought to be thepreponderating consideration. Parliamentary and, in a lesser degree, municipal elections, of course, form a class apart. Here, in theselection of candidates within the party, superior competency ought tobe the guiding consideration, but, in the election itself, the mainobject being to promote or prevent the passing of certain publicmeasures, the elector quite rightly votes for those who will give effectto his opinions, irrespectively of personal qualifications, though, evenin these cases, there might be an amount of unfitness which wouldwarrant neutrality or opposition. Peculiarly perplexing cases ofcompetition between the rival claims of others sometimes occur in thedomain of the resentful feelings, which, in their purified andrationalised form, constitute the sense of justice. My servant, or afriend, or a relative, has committed a theft. Shall I prosecute him? Ageneral regard to the public welfare undoubtedly demands that I shoulddo so. There are few obligations more imperative on the individualcitizen than that of denouncing and prosecuting crime. But, in thepresent case, there is the personal tie, involving the obligation ofprotection and assistance. This tie, obviously, must count forsomething, as a rival consideration. No man, except under the mostextreme circumstances, would prosecute his wife, or his father, or hismother. The question, then, is how far this consideration is to countagainst the other, and much must, evidently, depend on the degree ofrelationship or of previous intimacy, the time and amount and kind ofservice, and the like. A similar conflict of motives arises when thepunishment invoked would entail the culprit's ruin, or that of his wifeor family or others who are dependent upon him. It is impossible, incases of this kind, to lay down beforehand any strict rules of conduct, and the rectitude of the decision must largely turn on the experience, skill, and honesty of the person who attempts to resolve the difficulty. Instances of the last division, where the conflict is between thepleasure or advantage of others and a disproportionate injury tooneself, are of comparatively infrequent occurrence. It is not oftenthat a man hesitates sufficiently between his own manifest disadvantageand the small gains or pleasures of his neighbours to make this class ofcases of much importance to the moralist. As a rule, we may be trustedto take care of ourselves, and other people credit us sufficiently withthis capacity not to trade very much upon the weakness of meregood-nature, however much they may trade upon our ignorance and folly. The most familiar example, perhaps, of acts of imprudence of the kindhere contemplated is to be found in the facility with which some peopleyield to social temptations, as where they drink too much, or bet, orplay cards, when they know that they will most likely lose their money, out of a feeling of mere good fellowship; or where, from the mere desireto amuse others, they give parties which are beyond their means. Thegravest example is to be found in certain cases of seduction. Instancesof men making large and imprudent sacrifices of money for inadequateobjects are very rare, and are rather designated as foolish than wrong. With regard to all the failings and offences which fall under this head, it may be remarked that, from their false show of generosity, society isapt to treat them too venially, except where they entail degradation ordisgrace. If it be asked how actions of this kind, seeing that they aredone out of some regard to others, can be described as involvingself-indulgence, or the resistance to them can be looked on in the lightof sacrifice, it may be replied that the conflict is between a feelingof sociality or a spirit of over-complaisance or the like, on the oneside, and a man's self-respect or a regard to his own highest interests, on the other, and that some natures find it much easier to yield to theformer than to maintain the latter. It is quite possible that the spiritof sacrifice may be exhibited in the maintenance, against temptation, ofa man's own higher interests, and the spirit of self-indulgence inweakly yielding to a perverted sympathy or an exaggerated regard for theopinions of others. Before concluding this chapter, there are a few objections to be met andexplanations to be made. In the first place, it may be objected that thetheory I have adopted, that the moral feeling is excited only wherethere has been a conflict of motives, runs counter to the ordinary view, that acts proceeding from a virtuous or vicious habit are done withoutany struggle and almost without any consciousness of their import. I donot at all deny that a habit may become so perfect that the actsproceeding from it cease to involve any struggle between conflictingmotives, but, in this case, I conceive that our approbation ordisapprobation is transferred from the individual acts to the habit fromwhich they spring, and that what we really applaud or condemn is thecharacter rather than the actions, or at least the actions simply asindicative of the character. And the reason that we often praise orblame acts proceeding from habit more than acts proceeding frommomentary impulse is that we associate such acts with a good or evilcharacter, as the case may be, and, therefore, include the character aswell as the acts in the judgment which we pass upon them. It may possibly have occurred to the reader that, in the latter part ofthis chapter, I have been somewhat inconsistent in referring usually tothe social sanction of praise and blame rather than to the distinctivelymoral sanction of self-approbation and self-disapprobation. I haveemployed this language solely for the sake of convenience, and to avoidthe cumbrous phraseology which the employment of the other phrases wouldsometimes have occasioned. In a civilized and educated community, thesocial sentiment may, on almost all points except those which involveobscure or delicate considerations of morality, be taken to be identicalwith the moral sentiment of the most reflective members of the society, and hence in the tolerably obvious instances which I have selected therewas no need to draw any distinction between the two, and I have feltmyself at liberty to be guided purely by considerations of convenience. All that I have said of the praise or blame, the applause or censure, ofothers, of course, admits of being transferred to the feelings withwhich, on reflexion, we regard our own acts. I am aware that the expressions, 'higher and lower good, ' 'greater andlesser good, ' are more or less vague. But the traditional acceptation ofthe terms sufficiently fixes their meaning to enable them to serve as aguide to moral conduct and moral feeling, especially when modified bythe experience and reflexion of men who have given habitual attention tothe working of their own motives and the results of their own practice. As I shall shew in the next chapter, any terms which we employ todesignate the test of moral action and the objects of the moral feelingare indefinite, and must depend, to some extent, on the subjectiveinterpretation of the individual. All that we can do is to availourselves of the most adequate and intelligible terms that we can find. But, admitting the necessary indefiniteness of the terms, it may beasked whether it can really be meant, as a general proposition, that thepraise of others and our approbation of ourselves, on reflexion, attachto acts in which we subordinate our own good to the greater good ofothers, however slight the preponderance of our neighbour's good overout own may be. If we have to undergo an almost equal risk in order tosave another, or, in order to promote another's interests, to foregointerests almost as great, is not our conduct more properly designatedas weak or quixotic, than noble or generous? This would not, I think, bethe answer of mankind at large to the question, or that of any personwhose moral sentiments had been developed under healthy influences. Whena man, at the risk of his own life, saves another from drowning, or, ata similar risk, protects his comrade in battle, or, rushing into themidst of a fire, attempts to rescue the helpless victims, surely thefeeling of the bystanders is that of admiration, and not of pity orcontempt. When a man, with his life in his hands, goes forth on amissionary or a philanthropic enterprise, like Xavier, or Henry Martyn, or Howard, or Livingstone, or Patteson, or when a man, like FrederickVyner, insists on transferring his own chance of escape from a murderousgang of brigands to his married friend, humanity at large rightlyregards itself as his debtor, and ordinary men feel that their verynature has been ennobled and exalted by his example. But it is not onlythese acts of widely recognised heroism that exact a response frommankind. In many a domestic circle, there are men and women, whohabitually sacrifice their own ease and comfort to the needs of an agedor sick or helpless relative, and, surely, it is not with scorn fortheir weakness that their neighbours, who know their privations, regardthem, but with sympathy and respect for their patience and self-denial. The pecuniary risks and sacrifices which men are ready to make for oneanother, in the shape of sureties and bonds and loans and gifts, arefamiliar to us all, and, though these are often unscrupulously wrungfrom a thoughtless or over-pliant good-nature, yet there are manyinstances in which men knowingly, deliberately, and at considerabledanger or loss to themselves, postpone their own security or convenienceto the protection or relief of their friends. It is in cases of thiskind, perhaps, that the line between weakness and generosity is mostdifficult to draw, and, where a man has others dependent on him forassistance or support, the weakness which yields to the solicitations ofa reckless or unscrupulous friend may become positively culpable. The last class of instances will be sufficient to shew that it is notalways easy to determine where the good of others is greater than ourown. Nor is it ever possible to determine this question withmathematical exactness. Men may, therefore, be at least excused if, before sacrificing their own interests or pleasures, they require thatthe good of others for which they make the sacrifice shall be plainlypreponderant. And, even then, there is a wide margin between the actswhich we praise for their heroism, or generosity, or self-denial, andthose which we condemn for their baseness, or meanness, or selfishness. It must never be forgotten, in the treatment of questions of morality, that there is a large number of acts which we neither praise nor blame, and this is emphatically the case where the competition is between aman's own interests and those of his neighbours. We applaud generosity;we censure meanness: but there is a large intermediate class of actswhich can neither be designated as generous nor mean. It will beobserved that, in my enumeration of the classes of acts to which praiseand blame, self-approbation and self-disapprobation attach, I havecarefully drawn a distinction between the invariable connexion whichobtains between certain acts and the ethical approval of ourselves orothers, and the only general connexion which obtains between theomission of those acts and the ethical feeling of disapproval. Simply tofall short of the ethical standard which we approve neither merits norreceives censure, though there is a degree of deficiency, determinedroughly by society at large and by each individual for himself, at whichthis indifference is converted into positive condemnation. A likeneutral zone of acts which we neither applaud nor condemn, of course, exists also in the case of acts which simply affect ourselves or simplyaffect others, though it does not seem to be so extensive as in the casewhere the conflict of motives is between the interests of others andthose of ourselves. In determining the cases in which we shall subordinate our own intereststo those of others, or do good to others at our own risk or loss, it isessential that we should take account of the remote as well as theimmediate effects of actions; and, moreover, that we should enquire intotheir general tendencies, or, in other words, ask ourselves what wouldhappen if everybody or many people acted as we propose to act. Thus, atfirst sight, it might seem as if a rich man, at a comparatively smallsacrifice to himself, might promote the greater good of his poorneighbours by distributing amongst them what to them would beconsiderable sums of money. If I have ten thousand a year, why should Inot make fifty poor families happy by endowing them with a hundred ayear each, which to them would be a handsome competency? The loss offive thousand a year would be to me simply an abridgment of superfluousluxuries, which I could soon learn to dispense with, while to them thegain of a hundred a year would be the substitution of comfort for penuryand of case for perpetual struggle. The answer is that, in the firstplace, I should probably not, in the long run, be making these familiesreally happy. The change of circumstances would, undoubtedly, conferconsiderable pleasure, while it continued to be a novelty, but theirimproved circumstances, when they became accustomed to them, would soonbe out-balanced by the _ennui_ produced by want of employment; while, the motive to exertion being removed, and the taste for luxuriesstimulated, they or the next generation would probably lapse again intopoverty, which would be all the more keenly felt for their temporaryenjoyment of prosperity. Moreover, I should be injuring the community atlarge, by withdrawing a number of persons from industrial employmentsand transferring them to the non-productive classes. Again, if the fivethousand a year were withdrawn not from my personal expenditure, butfrom industrial enterprises in which I was engaged, I should be actuallydepriving the families of many workmen and artisans of the fruits oftheir honest labour for the purpose of enabling a smaller number offamilies to live in sloth and indolence. But, now, suppose the case Ihave imagined to become a general one, and that it was a commonoccurrence for rich men to dispense their superfluous wealth amongsttheir poorer neighbours, without demanding any return in labour orservices. The result would inevitably be the creation of a large classof idle persons, who would probably soon become a torment to themselves, while their descendants, often brought up to no employment and with aninsufficient income to support them, would probably lapse intopauperism. The effect on the community at large, if the evil becamewidely spread, would be the paralysis of trade and commerce. Of course, I am aware that these evils would be, to a certain extent, modified inpractice by the good sense of the recipients, some of whom might employtheir money on reproductive industries instead of on merely furnishingthemselves with the means of living at their ease; but that the generaltendency would be that which I have intimated no one, I think, who isacquainted with the indolent propensities of human nature, can welldoubt. Similar results might be shewn to follow from an indiscriminatedistribution of charity on a smaller scale. It seems hard-hearted torefuse a shilling to a beggar, or a guinea to a charitable association, when one would hardly miss the sum at the end of the week or the month. But, if we could trace all the consequences, direct and remote, of theseapparent acts of benevolence, we should often see that the small act ofsacrifice on our own part was by no means efficacious in promoting the'greater good' of the recipient, and still less of society at large. Alife of vagrancy or indolence may easily be made more attractive thanone of honest industry, and well-meant efforts to anticipate all thewants and misfortunes of the poor may often have the effect of makingthem careless of the future and of destroying all elements ofindependence and providence in their character. Another instance of thecontrast between the immediate and remote, or apparent and real, resultsof acts of intended beneficence is to be found in the prodigality withwhich well-to-do persons often distribute gratuities amongst servants. These gratuities have the immediate effect of giving gratification tothe recipients and securing better service to the donors, but they haveoften the remote and more permanent effect of rendering the recipientsservile and corrupt, and (as in the case of railway porters) ofdepriving poorer or less prodigal persons of services to which they areequally entitled. In adducing these illustrations, I must not be understood to beadvocating or defending a selfish employment of superfluous wealth, butto be shewing the evils which may result from an unenlightenedbenevolence, and the importance of ascertaining that the 'greater goodof others, ' to which we sacrifice our own interests or enjoyments, is areal, and not merely an apparent good, and, moreover, that our conduct, if it became general, would promote the welfare of the community atlarge, and not merely particular sections of it to the injury of therest. To sum up the results of this chapter, we may repeat that we mustdistinguish carefully between the intellectual act of moral judgment, orthe judgment we pass on matters of conduct, and the emotional act ofmoral feeling, or the feeling which supervenes upon that judgment, andthat, so far as we can give a precise definition of the latter, it is anindirect or reflex form of one or other of the sympathetic, resentful, or self-regarding feelings, occurring when, on consideration, we realisethat, in matters involving a conflict of motives and of sufficientimportance to arrest our attention and stimulate our reflexion, one orother of these feelings has been gratified or thwarted: moreover, thatwe praise, in the case of others, and approve, in our own case, allthose actions of the above kind, in which a man subordinates his ownlower to his higher good, or his own good to the greater good of others, or, when the interests only of others are at stake, the lesser good ofsome to the greater good of others, as well as, under certaincircumstances, those actions in which he refuses to subordinate his owngreater good to the lesser good of others; while we blame, in the caseof others, and disapprove, in our own case, all those actions of theabove kind, in which he manifestly and distinctly (for there is a largeneutral zone of actions, which we neither applaud nor condemn)subordinates his own higher to his lower good, or the greater good ofothers to his own lesser good, or, where the interests only of othersare at stake, the greater good of some to the lesser good of others, or, lastly, under certain circumstances, the lesser good of others to thegreater good of himself, especially where that greater good is the goodof his higher nature. Even at the present stage of our enquiry, it must be tolerably evidentto the reader that moral progress, if such a fact exist, will be duemainly to the increasing accuracy and the extended applications of ourmoral judgments, or, in other words, to the development of the rationalrather than the emotional element in the ethical act. The moral feelingfollows on the moral judgment, and awards praise or blame, experiencessatisfaction or dissatisfaction, in accordance with the intellectualdecisions which have preceded it. The character of the feeling, therefore, as distinct from its intensity, is already determined for itby a previous process. And its intensity is undoubtedly greater amongstprimitive and uneducated men than it is in civilized life. Amongstourselves, not only are the feelings of approbation and disapprobationthemselves largely modified by the account we take of mixed motives, qualifying circumstances, and the like, but the expression of, them isstill further restrained by the caution which the civilized manhabitually practises in the presence of others. Indeed, great, in manyrespects, as are the advantages of this moderation and restraint, thereis a certain danger that, as civilisation advances, the approval ofvirtue and the disapproval of vice may cease to be expressed insufficiently plain and emphatic terms. But, on the other hand, with theextension of experience and the ever-improving discipline of theintellectual faculties, the moral judgment, we may already presume (forthe confirmation of this presumption I must refer to the next chapter), will always be growing in accuracy, receiving further applications, andbecoming a more and more adequate representative of facts. The analysis, therefore, of the moral act, with which we have been mainly engaged inthe foregoing chapter, besides being essential to the determination ofany theoretical problem of ethics, has a most important practicalbearing from the indication which it affords of the direction in whichmoral progress is, in the future, most likely to be found. It must never be forgotten, however, that men may know what is right anddo what is wrong, and, hence, the due stimulation of the moral emotions, so that they may respond to the improved moral judgments, is at once anindispensable branch of moral education and an indispensable conditionof moral progress. But this is the function, not so much of thescientific moralist, as of the parent, the instructor of youth, thepoet, the dramatist, the novelist, the journalist, the artist, and, above all, of the religious teacher. CHAPTER IV. THE MORAL TEST AND ITS JUSTIFICATION. The moral feeling, as we have seen, follows immediately and necessarilyon the moral judgment. But what considerations guide the moral judgment?Our moral judgments, as we have also seen, are the result of a logicalprocess of reference to a class or of association with similars. Thisparticular action is like certain other actions, or belongs to a classof actions, which we habitually regard as right or wrong, and, consequently, as soon as the reference or association is made, the moralfeeling supervenes. Now, in this process, there are two possible sourcesof error. In the first place, the act of reference or association may befaulty, and the action may not really belong to the class to which werefer or really be like the other actions with which we associate it. This fault is one of classification, and can only be remedied, as allother faulty acts of classification, by learning to discriminate betweenthe essential and the non-essential marks of similarity, and insistingon the presence of the essential marks. In criminal cases, this is oneof the functions of the jury, and, unless they exercise great care, theymay easily be mistaken as to whether an alleged act of fraud, theft, assault, &c. , was really an act of that kind. But, even if the action bereferred to its right head, there remains the second question whether weare really justified in regarding the class of actions itself as rightor wrong. Failure to prosecute for or punish heresy or witchcraft was atone time regarded at least as wrong as failure to punish or prosecutefor theft or murder would now be. To decline to fight a duel was, tillquite recently, to place yourself outside the pale of gentlemen. Areluctance to sacrifice herself on the funeral pile of her dead husbandwas, till the practice of Suttee was abolished by the Britishgovernment, one of the most immoral traits which a Brahman widow couldexhibit. Now, have we any means of discriminating, and, if so, how do wediscriminate, between those acts which are really, and those which areonly reputed, right or wrong? That there is great need of such a test, if it can be discovered, is plain. The wide divergences of opinion onmatters of conduct in different ages, in different countries, indifferent classes of society, and even amongst men of the same class Inthe same country and at the same time, shew at once the vast importanceof ascertaining some common measure of actions, and that there is nouniform rule of right and wrong to be found in the human mind itself. Ifthere is such a rule, it must be derived from some externalconsiderations, and, if there is no such rule, then morality must be, toa large extent, a matter of prejudice, fancy, and caprice. Now Iconceive that there is a simple mode of ascertaining whether there isany test of actions other than the merely subjective determinations ofour own minds, or, in other words, whether there are any reasons orexternal considerations by which the mind guides itself in its decisionson matters of conduct. Do our moral opinions merely vary, or do theygrow? Is there any progress to be traced in morality, or does it simplyoscillate, within certain limits, round a fixed point? If some 'simple'and 'innate' idea of right, or some universal sense, were the test ofmorality, then we might expect that the moral decisions of all men wouldbe uniform, or, at least, approximately uniform; if, on the other hand, there were no test at all, or, what amounts to much the same thing, amerely personal test, then we might expect that the moral judgments ofmankind would vary arbitrarily according to the disposition andtemperament of each individual man. But, if there be a test derived fromexternal considerations and capable of being applied to particular casesby the ordinary processes of reasoning, then we may fairly expect that, as the opportunities of observation and experience increase, the testwill be applied more widely and more accurately, and that the science ofconduct will grow, like all other sciences, with the advance ofknowledge and of general civilisation. Now, what, as a mutter of fact, has been the case? Can anyone affect to doubt that the morality ofcivilized countries is far higher and purer, and far better adapted tosecure the preservation and progress of society, than the customs ofsavage or barbaric tribes? Or, however enamoured a man may be ofclassical antiquity, is there any one who would be prepared to changethe ethical code and the prevailing ethical sentiment of modern timesfor those of the Greeks or Romans? Or, again, should we be willing, inthis respect, to go back three hundred, or two hundred, or even onehundred years in our own history? Are not the abolition of slavery, theimproved and improving treatment of captives taken in war, of women andchildren, of the distressed and unfortunate, and even of the loweranimals, alone sufficient to mark the difference between the morality ofearlier and of later times? I shall assume, then, that there is a testof conduct, and that this test is of such a character that its continuedapplication, by individual thinkers or by mankind at large, consciouslyor semi-consciously, is sufficient to account for the existence of aprogressive morality. But, if so, it must be a test which experienceenables us to apply with increasing accuracy, and which is derived fromexternal considerations, or, in other words, from the observation of theeffects and tendencies of actions. And here I may observe, parenthetically, that to make 'conscience' or 'moral reason' or 'moralsense' the test of action, as, for instance, Bishop Butler appears to doin the case of conscience, is, even on the supposition of theindependent existence of these so-called 'faculties, ' to confound thejudge with the law which governs his decisions, the 'faculty' with therules in accordance with which it operates. Limiting ourselves, therefore, to a test which is derived from a consideration of theresults, direct and indirect, immediate and remote, of our actions, wesimply have to enquire what is the characteristic in these results whichmen have in view when they try to act rightly, and which they mistake, ignore, or lose sight of, when they act wrongly. There are, in the main, three answers to this question, though they arerather different modes, I conceive, of presenting the same idea, thandistinct and independent explanations. It may be said that we look tothe manner in which the action will affect the happiness or pleasure ofthose whom it concerns, or their welfare or well-being, or thedevelopment or perfection of their character. Now it seems to me thatthese are by no means necessarily antagonistic modes of speaking, andthat, in attempting to determine the test of right action, they are alluseful as complementing each other. There is, however, a view of themeasure of actions which, though derived from external considerations, is opposed to them all, and which it may be desirable to notice at once, with the object of eliminating it from our enquiry. It is that we areonly concerned with actions so far as they affect ourselves, and that, providing we observe the law of the land, which will punish us if we donot observe it, we are under no further obligations to ourfellow-citizens. This paradox, for such it is, has mainly acquirednotoriety though the advocacy of Hobbes, though it has sometimes beenignorantly attributed to Bentham and other writers of what is called theutilitarian school. But, be this as it may, it is so plainlyinconsistent with some of the most obvious facts of human nature, andspecially with the existence of that large and essential group ofemotions which we call the sympathetic feelings, as well as with theconstitution of family, social, and civic life, that it is unnecessaryhere further to discuss it. The views now generally accepted as to theorigin of society in the family or tribal relations are alikeirreconcileable with the selfish psychology from which Hobbes educes hissystem of morality and with that 'state of nature in which every man wasat war with every man' from which he traces the growth of law andgovernment. Reverting, therefore, to those tests of conduct whichrecognise, the independent existence of social as well as self-regardingsprings of action, I shall now make some remarks on the appropriatenessand adequacy, for the purpose of designating such tests, of the threeclasses of terms, noticed above. To begin with happiness or pleasure. Taking happiness to mean the balance of pleasures over pains, anddegrees of happiness the proportions of this balance, it will besufficient if I confine myself to the word 'pleasure. ' One statement, then, of the test of the morality or rightness of an action is that itshould result in a larger amount of pleasure than pain to all those whomit affects. But it is at once objected that there is the greatestvariety of pleasures and pains, intellectual, moral, aesthetic, sympathetic, sensual, and so on; and it is asked how are we to determinetheir respective values, and to strike the balance between theconflicting kinds? How much sensual pleasure would compensate for thepangs of an evil conscience, or what amount of intellectual enjoymentwould allay the cravings of hunger or thirst? The only escape from thisdifficulty is frankly to acknowledge that there are some pleasures andpains which are incommensurable with one other, and that, therefore, where they are concerned, we must forego the attempt at comparison, andso act as to compass the immeasurably greater pleasure or avoid theimmeasurably greater pain. Especially is this the case with thepleasures and pains attendant on the exercise of the moral feelings. Aman who is tormented with the recollection of having committed a greatcrime will, as the phrase goes, 'take pleasure in nothing;' while, similarly, a man who is enjoying the retrospect of having done his duty, in some important crisis, will care little for obloquy or even for theinfliction of physical suffering. Making this admission, then, as wellas recognising the fact that our pleasures differ in quality as well asin volume, so that the pleasures of the higher part of our nature, thereligious, the intellectual, the moral, the aesthetic, the sympatheticnature, affect us with a different kind of enjoyment from the sensualpleasures, or those which are derived from them, we may rightly regardthe tendency to produce a balance of pleasure over pain as the test ofthe goodness of an action, and the effort and intention to perform actshaving this tendency as the test of the morality of the agent. But whenwe enunciate the production of pleasure as our aim, or the balance ofpleasure-producing over pain-producing results as the test of rightaction, we are not always understood to have admitted theseexplanations, and, consequently, there is always a danger of our beingsupposed to degrade morality by identifying it with the gratification, in ourselves and others, of the coarser and more material impulses ofour nature. Though, then, if due distinctions and admissions be made, the tendency to produce, in the long run, the greatest amount ofhappiness or misery, pleasure or pain, may be taken as the test of thegoodness or badness of an action, the phraseology is so misleading, andso liable to frustrate the practical objects of the moralist, that it isdesirable, if possible, to find terms not equally lending themselves tomisinterpretation and perversion. Let us now, then, consider whether weare supplied with such terms in the phrases 'perfection' or'development' of 'character. ' It is a noble idea of human action tosuppose that its end is the perfection of individual men, or thedevelopment of their various capacities to the utmost extent that isavailable. And yet, as the phrases 'pleasure' and 'happiness' are apttoo exclusively to suggest material well-being and the gratification ofthe more animal parts of our nature, so the phrases 'perfection' or'development' of 'character' are apt altogether to keep out of sightthese necessary pre-suppositions of a healthy and progressive conditionof humanity. Unless there were some standard of comfortable living, anda constant effort not only to maintain but to improve it, and unlesssome zest were given to every-day life by the gratification of theappetites, within reasonable limits, and the endeavour to obtain themeans of indulging them, men, constituted as they are, would be indanger of sinking into sloth, squalor, and indigence, and, to the greatmass of mankind, the opportunity of developing and perfecting theirhigher nature would never occur. We seem, therefore, to require someterm which will not only suggest the highest results of moral endeavour, but also the conditions which, in the case of humanity, are essential tothe attainment of those results. Moreover, to a greater extent even thanthe words 'pleasure' and 'happiness, ' the expressions 'perfection' and'development' of 'character' are in danger of being supposed to imply anexclusive reference to self. It is true that we cannot properly developeour characters, much less attain to all the perfection of which they arecapable, without quickening the moral feeling and giving larger scope tothe sympathetic emotions; but, in the mere attempt to improve their ownnature, men are very apt to lose sight of their relations to others. Thephrases ought, however, to be taken, and usually are intended to betaken, to include the effort to improve the character of others as wellas our own; and if this extension of their meaning be well understood, and it is also understood that the development or perfection ofcharacter implies certain conditions of material comfort and thegratification, within reasonable limits, of our appetitive nature, thereought to be no objection on the part of the moralist to their employmentfor the purpose of designating the test of right conduct; and, any way, they are useful as supplementing, correcting, and elevating theassociations attached to the more commonly employed terms, pleasure andhappiness. But are there no terms by which the somewhat exclusiveassociations connected with the two sets of phrases already examined maybe avoided? I venture to suggest that such terms may be found byreverting to the old, but now usually discarded, expressions 'welfare'and 'well-being. ' These words, it seems to me, do not primarily suggestmaterial prosperity, like happiness, nor the gratification of the lowerparts of our nature, like pleasure, nor the exclusive development of thehigher parts of our nature, like perfection, but cover the whole groundof healthy human activity and the conditions which are favourable to it. Corresponding, too, almost exactly with the [Greek: eudaimonia] ofAristotle, they have the advantage of venerable historic associations. Lastly, they seem to have less of a personal and more of a socialreference than any of the other terms employed. We speak, I think, morenaturally of the well-being or welfare of society, than of thehappiness, pleasure, or perfection of society. I cannot, therefore, butthink that the moralist would be wise in at least trying the experimentof recurring to these terms in place of those which, in recent systemsof ethics, have usually superseded them. If it be said that they arevague, and that different people will attach different meanings to them, according to their own prepossessions and their own theories of life, Ican only reply that this objection applies with at least equal force toany of the other terms which we have passed in review. And, if it besaid that our conceptions of well-being and welfare are not fixed, butthat our ideas of the nature and proper proportions of theirconstituents are undergoing constant modification and growth, I may askif this is less the case with regard to happiness, or the sum ofpleasures, or the balance of pleasures over pains, or the perfection ordue development of human character, all of which expressions, indeed, when properly qualified and explained, I acknowledge to be theequivalents of those for which I have stated a preference. And hereoccurs a difficulty with respect to all these expressions and ideas. Iftheir meaning or content is not fixed, and specially if they areundergoing a constant change, in the way of growth, with the progress ofreason and society, how can we employ them as a test of morality, whichis itself also a variable conception? Surely this is to make oneindefinite idea the gauge of another indefinite idea. The answer to thisquestion will, I trust, bring out clearly the nature of a moral test, aswell as the different modes of its application. The ultimate origin of moral rules, I conceive, so far at least asscience can trace them, is to be found in the effort of men to adaptthemselves to the circumstances, social and physical, in which they areplaced. At first, probably, this process of adaptation was almostautomatic and unconscious, but, when men once began consciously to adaptmeans to ends, they would soon begin to reflect on their acts, and toask themselves the reasons why they had selected this course of conductrather than another. The justifying reasons of their past acts, like theimpelling motives of their future acts, could have reference to nothingbut the convenience or gratification of themselves or those amongst whomthey lived. And the acts which they justified in themselves they wouldapprove of in others. Here, then, already we have a test consciouslyapplied to the estimation of conduct. Experience shews that this or thataction promotes some object which is included in the narrow conceptionof well-being entertained by the primitive man. He, therefore, continuesto act in accordance with the rule which prescribes it, or the habitfrom which it proceeds. And, in like manner, if he finds from experiencethat the action does not promote that object, and he is free to exercisehis own choice, he desists from it and, perhaps, tries the experiment ofsubstituting another. Now, in these cases, it is plain that any judgmentwhich the man exercises independently, and apart from the society ofwhich he is a member, is guided solely by the consideration whether thecourse of conduct is efficacious in attaining its end, that end beingpart of his conception of the well-being of himself, his family, or histribe. If he thinks about the matter for himself at all, this is theonly consideration of which he can take account. There are three coursesopen to him. He need not reflect on the action at all, but simply followin the wake of his neighbours (and this, of course, is far the commonestcase); or, if there is any divergence of opinion about it amongst hisneighbours, he may deliberate as to whose opinion it is safest tofollow; or, lastly, he may consider for himself, whether the action isreally the best means of attaining the end aimed at, that is to say, hemay test the means by its conduciveness to the end, which is always, insome shape, the welfare of himself or others. If he follows the opinionof others, it is plain that their opinion, so far as it has been formedindependently, has been formed in the manner above described. The onlyalternative, therefore, is between the acceptance of existing opinions, without any consideration or examination, and their reference to theconception of well-being, or however else the idea may be expressed, asa measure of their appropriateness and sufficiency. The idea ofwell-being itself may be inadequate, and even in parts incorrect, and, as society advances, it is undoubtedly undergoing a constant process ofexpansion and rectification; but it seems to me that this regard fortheir own welfare or that of others, however we may phrase it, is theonly guiding-principle of conduct, in the light of which men canreconsider and review their rules. Unless they follow the mere blindimpulses of feeling (in which case they do not follow rules at all, butsimply act irrationally), or else observe implicitly the maxims ofconduct which they find prevalent around them, they must, and can only, ask the question whether it is possible to alter their conduct for thebetter, that is to say, whether they can better promote their ownwelfare or that of others by some modification of their actions. Takethe case of Slavery. There was a time when savage or barbaric tribes, moved by a regard to their own interests, and also, we may trust, touched by some compassion for their victims, began to substitute, forthe wholesale butchery of their enemies defeated in war, the practice ofretaining some or all of them for the purposes of domestic or agrarianservice. Again, there came a time when, viewed by the side of otherforms of service which had meanwhile come into existence, slavery, withits various incidents, began to shock the philanthropic sentiments ofthe more civilized races of mankind, while the question also began to beraised whether slave-labour was not economically at a disadvantage, whencompared with free labour, and the result of these combinedconsiderations, often aided by a strong and enthusiastic outburst ofpopular feeling, has been the total disappearance of slavery amongstcivilized, and its almost total disappearance even amongst barbaric orsemi-civilized races. Take, too, the revolting practice, common amongmany savage tribes, past and present, of killing and eating aged parentsor other infirm members of the tribe, when engaged in war. This practicewhich, at first sight, seems so utterly unnatural, was doubtlessdictated, in part at least, by the desire to save their victims from theworse fate of being tortured and mutilated by their enemies. Subsequently, in the history of some of these tribes, there has come atime when it has been discovered that a more humane mode of attainingthe same object is to build strong places and leave the feebler folk athome. If we follow the varying marriage customs of savage or barbarictribes, we shall find, in the same way, that they have always beenoriginally framed on reasons of convenience, and that, when they havebeen changed, it has been because different views of well-being, including the needs of purity, closer attachment, increased care ofchildren, and the like, have begun to prevail. In all these examples, which might be multiplied to any extent, it is plain that changes ofconduct are moulded and determined by changes of opinion as to what isbest and most suitable for the circumstances of the individual, thefamily, the tribe, or whatever the social aggregate may be. And I mayventure to affirm that, wherever any change of moral conduct takesplace, unless it be dictated by blind passion, or mere submission toauthority, enforced or voluntary, the change is invariably due to somechange of opinion on what constitutes the advantage of the persons whomit affects. It is true, therefore, that moral conduct varies, and it istrue that our conceptions of well-being vary, but the two do not varyindependently of one another, or either of them capriciously. Increasedexperience of ourselves and of others, enlarged observation of theexternal world, more matured reflexion are constantly expanding andrectifying our conceptions of what constitutes human welfare, and tothis constantly amended conception are readjusted, from time to time, our conduct and our sentiments on the conduct both of ourselves and ofothers. In brief, then, the conduct of men and the sentiments of men onconduct vary with their conceptions of well-being, and their conceptionsof well-being are determined by experience (including the opportunityfor experience) and reflexion. My conclusion may, perhaps, be illustrated and enforced by one furtherconsideration. It generally happens, in the progress of society, that, after a number of rules of conduct have been accumulated, they becomeenshrined in some sacred book, some code, or, at least, some constantand authoritative tradition. In this manner they may be stereotyped forages. Now, after a time, these rules, especially if they are numerousand minute, become unsuited, at least in part, to the alteredcircumstances of the society, and probably bear hardly on many of theindividuals composing it. When this condition of things is beginning tobe intolerable, there often arises the social reformer, and what is thecourse which he pursues? He endeavours to shew how unsuitable the ruleshave become to attain the ends which they were originally intended tocompass, in how much better a manner other rules would attain theseobjects, how grievously the present rules bear on many classes andindividuals in the state, how unequal they are in their incidence, atwhat a disadvantage they place the community in comparison withneighbouring communities, how easily they may be altered, and the like. In fact, the considerations which he urges may all be included in theone argument that the existing rules are opposed to the well-being ofthe state, and that the advantages resulting from their abrogation willmore than compensate for any disturbance of existing relations which mayensue from the change. Apart from force, or mere rant, rhetoric, orimposture, it is difficult to see what other resource the reformer hasopen to him. And, in those cases where there is no accumulation ofantiquated rules and no need of the individual reformer, but wheresociety at large has the happy knack of imperceptibly accommodating itspractice and principles of action to altered circumstances, there can beno doubt that it is by considerations of well-being, half consciousthough the process of application may be, that the change is directed. The plastic power by which men accommodate their actions and even theirmaxims of conduct to modifications in surrounding circumstances is oneof the advantages which they gain by the progress of civilisation. Inancient society the tyranny of custom is often almost absolute. Inmodern society changes, which would otherwise require the drastic handof the reformer, are often quietly effected by the gradual and almostimperceptible action of the people themselves. It is thus that theequity branch of English law, and much of our case law, grew up, givingexpression to changes which had already occurred in the current ofpopular opinion. It is thus that the obligation of 'gentlemen' to offer, on the slightest provocation, and to accept, without questioning, a'challenge' to take each other's lives, has, in most civilizedcountries, now grown obsolete, having gradually become enfeebledtogether with the exaggerated military spirit which gave it birth. It isthus also that, with an increase of the industrial spirit, with softenedmanners, and with that quickening of our sympathetic nature which hasgradually been effected by the teaching of Christianity, a strongsentiment against slavery, a respect for human life as such, a regardfor the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and many tender feelings ofa similar kind, have almost insensibly been developed as an essentialelement in modern civilisation. These considerations naturally lead me to notice the two different waysin which the test of conduct may be, and as a fact is, applied. One modeis the conscious and intentional application of it by the reflectiveman. The other is the semi-conscious and almost instinctive applicationof it by the community at large. In morals, as in the arts, men, almostwithout knowing it, are constantly re-adjusting their means to theirends, feeling their way to some tentative solution of a new difficultyor a better solution of an old one, shaping their conduct with referenceto the special needs of the situation in which they are placed. It isthus, for the most part, that new circumstances develope new rules, andthat the simple maxims of a primitive people are gradually replaced bythe multifarious code of law and morals with which we are now familiar. The guiding principle throughout the process is the conception of theirown good, comprehending, as it does, not only ease, personal comfort, and gratification of the various appetites and desires, which, in theearly stages of society, are the preponderating considerations, but alsothose higher constituents of welfare, both individual and social, whichattain an ever-increasing importance as society advances, such as arethe development of the moral, the intellectual, and the aestheticfaculties; the purification of the religious sentiments, the expansionof the sympathetic feelings, the diffusion of liberty and prosperity, the consolidation of national unity, the elevation of human life. Thisprinciple works throughout the community, actuating some men in itshigher, others in its lower forms; but, except where the force oftradition or prejudice is too strong for it, invariably moulding conductinto accordance with the more complex requirements of advancingcivilisation. Its action, of course, is not wholly advantageous. Growingneeds and more complicated relations suggest to men fresh devices forcompassing their selfish ends, such as the various forms of fraud, forgery, and conspiracy, as well as more enlarged or more effectiveschemes of beneficence, stricter or more intelligent applications of theprinciple of justice, and possibilities of higher and freer developmentsof their faculties. But, on the whole, and setting aside as exceptionalcertain periods of retrogression, such as the decline of the RomanEmpire, the evolution of society seems to be attended by the progress ofmorality, and specially by the amelioration of social relations, whetherbetween individuals, families, or states. The intelligence thatapprehends the greater good re-acts upon the desire to attain it, andthe result is the combination of more rational aims with a purerinterest in the pursuit of them. This tendency in society at large to modify and re-adjust its conduct inconformity with fuller and more improved conceptions of well-being, which are themselves suggested by a growing experience, is reinforced, especially in the later stages of civilisation, by the consciouslyreflective action of philosophers and reformers. It is the function ofthese classes not only to give expression to the thoughts which areworking obscurely in the minds of other men, but also to detect thoseaspects and bearings of conduct which are not obvious to the generalintelligence. This task is effected partly by tracing actions to theirindirect and remote results, partly by more distinctly realising theirresults, whether immediate or remote, direct or indirect, and partly bygeneralising them, that is to say, by considering what would happen tosociety if men generally were to act in that manner. Thus, take the caseof lying. In primitive states of society, and even in some more advancednations, no great opprobrium attaches to telling a lie. In ancientGreece, for instance, veracity by no means occupied the same prominentposition among the virtues that it does among ourselves, and, even now, Teutonic races are generally credited with a peculiar sensitiveness onthe subject of truthfulness. This improved sentiment as regards veracityis, no doubt, partly due to the realisation of its importance and of theinconveniences which result from the breaches of it, especially incommercial affairs, by the members of a community at large; but it mustalso, to a great extent, have been produced by the definite teachingconveyed in books, and by moral and religious instructors. Follow out alie to all its consequences, realise the feelings of the person deceivedby it, when he has discovered the deception, above all, consider whatwould be the result if men were commonly to deceive one another, and noman could place any dependence on the information which his neighbourgave him; and then a falsehood excites very different feelings from whatit does when regarded simply as an isolated act. Or, again, take theevasion of taxes. There is probably, even yet, no country in which thepopular sentiment on this subject is sufficiently enlightened andsevere. A man smuggles a box of cigars, or evades paying a tax for hisdog, or makes an insufficient return of his income, and few of hisneighbours, if the fact come to their knowledge, think the worse of him. The character and consequences of the action are not obvious, and hencethey do not perceive what, on reflexion, or, if guided by properinstruction, they could hardly fail to realise, that the act is really atheft, only practised on the community at large instead of on anindividual member of it, and that, if every one were to act in the sameway, the collection of taxes and, consequently, the administration anddefence of the country, the maintenance of its army and navy, itspolice, its harbours and roads, would become an impossibility, and itwould quickly relapse into barbarism. Other familiar instances of theadvantage to be derived from the conscious and intentional applicationof the reasoning powers to matters of conduct may be found in thesuccessive reforms of the penal code of any civilized country, or in theabolition of slavery. Punishment is, in all very early stages ofsociety, capricious, mostly unregulated by any definite customs orenactments, and, consequently, often disproportioned, either in the wayof excess or defect, to the character of the offence. As the communityadvances in complexity and intelligence, successive reformers arise whoattempt, by definite enactment, to regulate the amount of punishment dueto each description of offence, and, from time to time, to increase ordiminish, as occasion seems to require, the severity of the existingcode. The considerations by which, at least in our own time, thesereforms are determined are such as these: the adequacy or inadequacy ofthe punishment to deter men from the commission of the offence, thetendency of excessive punishment to produce a reaction of sentiment infavour of the criminal, and a reluctance on the part of the judge orjury to convict, the superfluous suffering inflicted by that part of thepunishment which is in excess of the requirements of the case, duepublicity and notoriety as a means of warning others, the reform of thecriminal himself, and so on. All these considerations, it will beobserved, are derived from tracing the effects of the punishment eitheron the criminal himself, or on persons who are under a similartemptation to commit the crime, or on the sentiment of society at large, or of that portion of society which is connected with the administrationof justice, and it is only by the exercise of great circumspection, andof a keen intelligence on the part of the statesman, the jurist, or themoralist, that grave errors can be avoided, and an adequate estimate ofthe probable results can be formed. The mere instinct of the community, unmodified and uncorrected by the conscious speculations of its morethoughtful members, would be in much danger of either causing a largeamount of needless suffering to the criminal, or of seriouslydiminishing the security of society. It would almost certainly be guiltyof grave inequalities in the apportionment of punishment to specificcrimes. The history of slavery similarly shews the importance of thefunctions of the moralist and the reformer. It must have been at thesuggestion of some prominent member of a tribe, whose intelligence wasin advance of that of his fellows, that men first took to capturingtheir defeated enemies, with a view to future service, instead ofslaughtering them on the field of battle. And we know that, in the timeof Plato and Aristotle, there had already arisen a strong sentimentagainst the enslaving of Greeks by Greeks, originating probably in theinstinctive sympathy of race, but quickened and fostered, doubtless, bythe superior capacity which men possess of realising suffering andmisfortune in those who are constituted and endowed like themselves, bythe new conception of a Pan-hellenic unity, and by the vivid sensewhich, on reflexion, the citizens of each state must have entertained oftheir own liability to be reduced, in turn, to the same condition. Inmodern times, the movement which has led to the entire abolition ofslavery in civilized countries owes much, undoubtedly, to the softenedmanners and wider sympathies of a society largely transformed by thecombined operation of Christianity and culture, but it has beenpromoted, to no inconsiderable degree, by conscious reflexion and directargument. Social and religious reasons, derived from the community ofnature and origin in man, reinforced by a vivid realisation of thesufferings of others, and appealing forcibly to the tender andsympathetic feelings, have co-operated with the economicalconsiderations drawn from the wastefulness and comparative inefficiencyof slave labour, and with what may be called the self-regarding reasonof the hardening and debasing effect of slave-owning on the character ofthe slave-owner himself. It will be sufficient, in this connexion, simply to allude to the idealsof mercy, purity, humility, long-suffering, and self-denial, which arepourtrayed in the Christian teaching and have, ever since the early daysof Christianity, exercised so vast and powerful an influence on largesections of mankind. There is, of course, a process of constant Interaction going on betweenthe two elements in the constitution of moral sentiment which I havebeen attempting to describe. The circumstances, opinions, and feelingsof the society of which he is a member, must necessarily contribute todetermine the opinions and feelings, the character and aims, of themoralist or the reformer. In turn, the moralist or reformer modifies, corrects, and elevates the current moral sentiment of those who arebrought within the influence of his work. And this result is usually apermanent one. When the average moral sentiment on a particular point ofconduct has been consciously raised, and the change is fully realised, it seldom happens that it afterwards recedes, though the automatic orsemi-conscious adaptations of society to new needs and circumstances, when regarded from a more general point of view, are not infrequentlyfound to be regressive as well as progressive. Thus, though we mayimagine the distinctions between the different classes of societybecoming more numerous or more accentuated (as I believe to haveactually occurred in England during the present century), or the evasionof taxation becoming more general than it at present is, we can hardlyconceive a recurrence to slavery, or a needless increase in the severityof punishments, or a revival of the hard-drinking habits of the lastcentury. When society is fully aware of its moral gains, it is notlikely knowingly to surrender them. Hence, allowing for occasionaloscillations and for possible exceptions in certain departments ofconduct, morality, as a whole, almost necessarily advances with thegeneral progress of intelligence. It is not altogether easy to adjust the respective claims of society atlarge and of the individual thinker in the constitution of moral theory, or, in other words, to determine the limits within which the speculativemoralist may legitimately endeavour to reform the existing moralsentiment. It is plain that it must be open to the moralist, and, infact, to every intelligent citizen, to criticize the current morality, or else moral progress, even if it took place at all, would, on manypoints of conduct, be exceedingly slow. But, on the other hand, it isequally plain that a constant discussion of the accepted rules ofconduct would weaken the moral sentiment, lessen the sense ofobligation, and suggest a general uncertainty as to the validity of themaxims which, in their relations to one another, men usually take forgranted. Hence, though it would be almost fatal to moral progress todiscourage speculation on moral topics, the moralist must always bear inmind that his task is one which is not lightly to be undertaken, andthat, with an exception to be noticed presently, the presumption shouldalways be in favour of existing rules of conduct. If for no otherreason, this presumption ought to be made on the practical ground that adisturbance of the moral sentiment on one point is likely to weaken itsforce generally, and, before we expose men to this danger, we ought tohave some adequate justification. But there is also the speculativeground that any given society, and indeed mankind generally, has beenengaged for ages in feeling its way, instinctively or semi-consciously, towards a solution of the self-same problems which the philosopher isattempting to solve consciously and of set purpose. That, on the whole, a society has solved these problems in the manner best suited to itsexisting needs and circumstances may fairly be taken for granted, and, even where the ethical stand-point of the reformer is very superior tothe stand-point of the society which he wishes to reform, he will bewise in endeavouring to introduce his reforms gradually, and, ifpossible, in connexion with principles already acknowledged, rather thanin attempting to effect a moral revolution, the ultimate results ofwhich it may be impossible to foresee. The work of the moralist is, therefore, best regarded as corrective of, and supplementary to, thework which mankind is constantly doing for itself, and not asantagonistic to it. The method is the same in both cases: only it isapplied semi-consciously, and merely as occasions suggest it, in the onecase; consciously and spontaneously in the other. In both cases alikethe guiding principle, whether of action or of speculation upon action, is the adaptation of conduct to surrounding circumstances, physical andsocial, with a view to promote, to the utmost extent possible, thewell-being of the individual and of the society of which he is a member. Where the interests of the individual and of the society clash, society, that is to say, a man's fellow-citizens, usually approves, as we saw inthe last chapter, of the sacrifice of individual to social interests, acourse of conduct which is also, on reflexion, usually stamped by theindividual's own approbation, and hence we may say briefly that theirtendency to promote or impair the welfare of society is the test bywhich, in different ways, all actions are estimated alike by thephilosopher, in his hours of speculation, and by the community at large, in the practical work of life. In laying down the principle that the presumption of the moralist shouldalways be in favour of existing rules of conduct, I intimated that therewas one exception to this principle. The exception includes all thosecases which are legitimate, though not obvious, applications of existingrules, and to which, therefore, the ordinary moral sentiment does notattach in the same way that it does to the plainer and more directapplications. Thus, if it can be shewn, as it undoubtedly can be, thatsmuggling falls under the head of stealing, and holding out false hopesunder that of lying, the moralist need take no account of the lax moralsentiment which exists with regard to these practices, though, ofcourse, in estimating the guilt of the individual as distinct from thecharacter of the act, due allowance must be made for his imperfectappreciation of the moral bearings of his conduct. This exception, aswill be found in the next chapter, covers, and therefore at oncejustifies, a large proportion of the criticisms which, in the presentadvanced stage of morality, when the more fundamental principles havebeen already settled, it is still open to us to make. It remains now to enquire what is the justification of the testpropounded in this chapter. I do not found it on any externalconsiderations, whether of Law or Revelation, both of which, I conceive, presuppose morality, but on the very make and constitution of ournature. The justification of the moral test and the source of the moralfeeling are alike, I conceive, to be discovered by an examination ofhuman nature, and, so far as that nature has a divine origin, so far isthe origin of morality divine. Whatever the ultimate source of moralitymay be, to us, at all events, it can only be known as revealed orreflected in ourselves. What, then, is it in the constitution of ournature, which leads us to aim at the well-being of ourselves and thosearound us, and to measure our own conduct and that of others by theextent to which it promotes these ends? In answering this question, Imust give a brief account of the ultimate principles of human nature, though this account has been partly anticipated in the last chapter. Human nature, in its last analysis, seems, so far as it is concernedwith action, to consist of certain impulses or feelings, and a power ofcomparing with one another the results which follow from thegratification of these feelings, which power reacts upon the severalfeelings themselves by way of intensifying, checking, or controllingthem. This power we call Reason. The feelings themselves fall into twoprincipal groups, the egoistic or self-regarding feelings, which centrein a man's self, and are developed by his personal needs, and thealtruistic or sympathetic feelings, which centre in others and aredeveloped by the social surroundings in which he finds himself placed. These two groups of feelings, I conceive, were independent of oneanother from the first, or at least as soon as man could be called man, and neither of them admits of being resolved into the other. As the onewas developed by and adapted to personal needs, so the other wasdeveloped by and adapted to the manifold requirements of family ortribal life, which, from the first, was inseparable from the life of theindividual. Intermediate between these two groups of feelings, thepurely self-regarding and the purely sympathetic, and derived probablyfrom the interaction of both, is another group, which may be called thesemi-social group. This group includes shame, love of reputation, loveof notoriety, desire of fame, and the like, but, on analysis, it will befound that all these feelings admit of being referred to two heads, thelove of approbation and the fear of disapprobation. Lastly, if any ofour desires or feelings are thwarted by the intentional action of othermen, the result in our minds is a feeling which we call Resentment, andwhich, though it regards others, is, unlike the sympathetic feelings, amalevolent and not a benevolent feeling. It is important, in consideringthe economy of human nature, to notice that Resentment, as is also thecase with the love of cruelty, is a secondary not a primary, a derivednot an original affection of our minds; for, apart from the desire togratify some self-regarding or sympathetic feeling, or disappointmentwhen that desire is not gratified, there is, I conceive, no such thingas ill-feeling in one human being towards another. Resentment isproperly a reflex form of sympathy or self-regard, arising when oursympathetic feelings are wounded by an injury done to another, or ourself-regarding desires are frustrated by an injury done to ourselves;when, in fact, any emotional element in our nature is, by theintentional intervention of another, disappointed of attaining its end. Each of these groups of feelings admits of being studied apart, thoughin the actual conduct of life they are seldom found to operate alone, and each, under the continued action of reason, assumes a form or formsin which its various elements are brought into harmonious working witheach other, so as best to promote the ends which the whole groupsubserves. These forms, thus rationalised or moralised, if I may beallowed the use of such expressions, are, in the case of theself-regarding feelings, self-respect and rational self-love; in thecase of the sympathetic feelings, rational benevolence; in the case ofthe semi-social feelings, a reasonable regard for the opinion of others;and in the case of the resentful feelings, a sense of justice. Thesehigher forms of the several groups of feelings themselves require to beharmonised, before man can satisfy the needs of his nature as a whole. And, when co-ordinated under the control of reason, they become arational desire for the combined welfare of the individual and ofsociety, or, if we choose to use different but equivalent expressions, of the individual considered as an unit of society, or of societyconsidered as including the individual. In a settled state of existence, the interests of the individual and of society, even leaving out ofaccount the pleasures and pains of the moral sanction, are, for the mostpart, identical. If an individual pursues a selfish course of conduct, neglecting the interests and feelings of others, he is almost certain tosuffer for it in the long run. And the prosperity and general well-beingof the community in which they live is, to citizens, living a normallife and pursuing ordinary avocations, an essential condition of theirown prosperity and well-being. On the other hand, it is by each manattending to his own business and directing his efforts to the promotionof his own interests or those of his family, his firm, or whatever maybe the smaller social aggregate in which his work chiefly lies, that theinterests of the community at large are best secured. Men whose time ismainly taken up with philanthropic enterprises are very likely toneglect the duties which lie immediately before them. 'To learn andlabour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state oflife, unto which it shall please God to call me' is a very homely, butit is an essential lesson. That the great mass of the citizens of acountry should lay it well to heart, and act habitually on it, is thefirst condition of national prosperity. Of course, this primary regardto our own interests, or those of the persons with whom we are moreimmediately connected, must be limited by wider considerations. A manhas duties, not only to himself and his own family, but to hisneighbours, to the various institutions with which he is connected, tohis town, his country, mankind at large, and even the whole sentientcreation. How far these should limit each other or a man's individual orfamily interests is a question by no means easy to answer, and is themain problem which each man has to be perpetually solving for himself, and society at large for us all. There is hardly any waking hour inwhich we have not to attempt to settle rival claims of this kind, and, according as we settle them to our own satisfaction or not, so have wepeace or trouble of mind. No one can reasonably deny that the moreimmediate interests of the individual and of the various socialaggregates, including society at large, are frequently in conflict. Itseems to me, I must confess, that it is also futile to deny that thereare occasions, though such occasions may be rare, in which even a man'sinterests in the long run are incompatible with his social duties. Totake one or two instances. It may sometimes be for the good of societythat a man should speak out his mind freely on some question of privateconduct or public policy, though his utterances may be on the unpopularside or offend persons of consideration and influence. The man performswhat he conceives to be his duty, but he knows that, in doing so, he issacrificing his prospects. Or, again, he is invited to join in somepopular movement which he believes to be of a questionable or pernicioustendency, and, because he believes that to take part in it would beuntrue to his own convictions and possibly harmful to others, herefrains from doing so, at the risk of losing preferment, or custom, orpatronage. Then, we are all familiar with the difficulties in which menare often placed, when they have to record a vote; their convictions andthe claims of the public service being on one side, and their owninterests and prospects on the other. In all these cases it is truethat, if their moral nature be in a healthy condition, they approve, onreflexion, of having taken the more generous course, while it is often amatter of life-long regret if they have sacrificed their nobler impulsesto their selfish interests. And, taking into account theseafter-feelings of self-approbation and self-disapprobation, it is oftenthe case, and is always the case where these feelings are very strong, that a man gains more happiness, in the long run, by following the pathof duty and obeying his social impulses than by confining himself to thenarrow view which would be dictated by a cool calculation of what ismost likely to conduce to his own private good. But, where the moralfeelings are not strong, and still more where they are almost inabeyance, I fear that the theory that virtue and happiness areinvariably coincident will hardly be supported by a candid examinationof facts. To some men, I fear it must be acknowledged, present wealthand power and dignity are more than a sufficient recompense for anyremorse which they may continue to feel for past greed or lack ofcandour or truthfulness. These considerations will serve to shew theimmense importance of moral education, alike in the family, the school, and the state. If we are to depend on men acting rightly, and with a dueregard to wider interests than their own, we must take pains to developein them moral feelings sufficiently strong and sensitive to make thereflexion on wrong or selfish acts more painful to them than thesacrifice which is needed for dutiful and generous conduct. So far associety, through its various instruments of law and opinion, ofeducation and domestic influences, can effect this object, so far willit promote its own security and advancement. Our adoption, then, of a tendency to promote social welfare orwell-being, as the test of conduct, is justified, I conceive, by anexamination of the internal constitution of human nature and of theconditions which are necessary to secure the harmonious working of itsvarious parts. It may be objected that this test is vague in itsconception and difficult in its application. Both objections, to a greatextent, hold good. If they did not, moral theory and moral practicewould be very easy matters, but, as a fact, we know that they are by nomeans easy. The conception of social well-being must be more or lessvague, because we are constantly filling it up by experience; it is nota fixed, but a growing conception, and, though we may be certain of thecharacter and importance of many of the elements which have already beendetected in it by the experience of past generations, it seemsimpossible to fix any limits to its development in the future history ofmankind. Man will constantly be discovering new wants, new and morerefined susceptibilities of his nature, and with them his conception ofhuman well-being must necessarily grow. But, though not a fixed or finalconception, the idea of social well-being is sufficiently definite, ineach generation, to act as a guide and incentive to conduct. It is thestar, gradually growing brighter and brighter, which lights our path, and, any way, we know that, if it were not above us in the heavens, weshould be walking in the darkness. It must be confessed that the test of social well-being is not alwayseasy of application. Even, when we know what the good of the communityconsists in, it is not always easy to say what course of action willpromote it, or what course of action is likely to retard it. Societyarrives, in a comparatively early period of its development, at certainbroad rules of conduct, such as those which condemn murder, theft, ingratitude to friends, disobedience to parents. But the more remoteapplications of these rules, the nicer shades of conduct, such as thoserelating to social intercourse, the choice between clashing duties, therealisation of our obligations to the community at large, require fortheir appreciation a large amount of intelligence and an accumulatedstock of experience which are not to be found in primitive societies. Hence, the rules of conduct, which at first are few and simple, gradually become more numerous and complex. Nor have we yet arrived atthe time, nor do we seem to be within any appreciable distance of it, when the code is complete, or even the parts of it which already existare altogether free from doubt and discussion. In the simpler relationsof life, he that runs may read, but with increasing complications comesincreasing uncertainty. To remove, as far as may be, this uncertaintyfrom the domain of conduct is the task of advancing civilisation, andspecially of those members of a community who have sufficient leisure, education, and intelligence to review the motives and compare theresults of actions. The task has doubtless its special difficulties, andthe conclusions of the moralist will by no means always command assent, but that the art of life is an easy one, who is there, at allexperienced in affairs or accustomed to reflexion, that will contend? I may here pause for a moment, in order to emphasise the fact, which isalready abundantly apparent from what has preceded, that, with everwidening and deepening conceptions of well-being, man is constantlylearning to subordinate his individual interests to those of society atlarge, or rather to identify his interests with those of the largerorganism of which he is a part. It is thus that we may justify thepeculiar characteristic of the moral sentiment, indicated in the lastchapter, which seems, in all acts of which it approves, to demand anelement of sacrifice, whether of the lower to the higher self, or of theindividual to his fellows. In order thoroughly to realise ourselves, wemust be conscious of our absorption, or at least of our inclusion, in agreater and grander system than that of our individual surroundings; inorder to find our lives, we must first discover the art of losing them. CHAPTER V. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE MORAL TEST. In this chapter I propose, without any attempt to be exhaustive orsystematic, to give some examples of the manner in which the test ofconduct may be applied to practical questions, either by extendingexisting rules to cases which do not obviously fall under them, or bysuggesting more refined maxims of conduct than those which are commonlyprevalent. In either case, I am accepting the somewhat invidious task ofpointing out defects in the commonly received theory, or the commonlyapproved practice, of morality. But, if morality is progressive, as Icontend that it is, and progresses by the application to conduct of atest which itself involves a growing conception, the best mode ofexhibiting the application of that test will be in the more recentacquisitions or the more subtle deductions of morality, rather than inits fundamental rules or most acknowledged maxims. I shall begin with a topic, the examples of which are ready to hand, andmay easily be multiplied, to almost any extent, by the reader forhimself--the better realisation of our duties to society at large asdistinct from particular individuals. When the primary mischiefresulting from a wrong act falls upon individuals, and especially uponour neighbours or those with whom we are constantly associating, it canhardly escape our observation. And, even if it does, the probability isthat our attention will be quickly called to it by the reprobation ofothers. But, when the consequences of the act are diffused over thewhole community, or a large aggregate of persons, so that the effect oneach individual is almost imperceptible, we are very apt to overlook themischief resulting from it, and so not to recognise its wrongfulcharacter, while, at the same time, from lack of personal interest, others fail to call us to account. Hence it is that men, almost withoutany thought, and certainly often without any scruple, commit offencesagainst the public or against corporations or societies or companies, which they would themselves deem it impossible for them to commitagainst individuals. And yet the character of the acts is exactly thesame. Take smuggling. A man smuggles cigars or tobacco to an amount bywhich he saves himself twenty shillings, and defrauds the state to thesame extent. This is simply an act of theft, only that the object of thetheft is the community at large and not an individual. So far as themischief or wrongfulness of the act goes, apart from the intention ofthe agent, he might as well put his hands into the pocket of one of hisfellow-passengers and extract the same amount of money. The twentyshillings which, by evading payment of the duty, he has appropriated tohis own uses, has been taken from the rest of the tax-payers, and he hassimply shifted on to them the obligation which properly attached tohimself. Sooner or later they must make up the deficit. If many men wereto act in the same way, the burden of the honest tax-payer would belargely increased, and, if the practice became general, the state wouldhave to resort to some other mode of taxation or collect itscustoms-revenue at a most disproportionate cost. Thus, a littlereflexion shows that smuggling is really theft, and I cannot but thinkthat it would be to the moral as well as the material advantage of thecommunity if it were called by that name, and were visited with the samepunishment as petty larceny. Exactly the same remarks, of course, applyto the evasion of income-tax, or of rates or taxes of any kind, whichare imposed by a legitimate authority. Travelling on a railway without aticket or in a higher class or for a greater distance than that forwhich the ticket was taken is, similarly, only a thinly disguised caseof theft, and should be treated accordingly. The sale or purchase ofpirated editions of books is another case of the same kind, the personsfrom whom the money is stolen being the authors or publishers. Manypaltry acts of pilfering, such as the unauthorised use ofgovernment-paper or franks, or purloining novels or letter-paper from aclub, or plucking flowers in a public garden, fall under the same headof real, though not always obvious, thefts. There is, of course, acertain degree of pettiness which makes them insignificant, but there isalways a danger lest men should think too lightly of acts of this kind, whether done by themselves or others. The best safeguard, perhaps, against thoughtless wrong-doing to the community or large socialaggregates is to ask ourselves these two questions: Should we committhis act, or what should we think of a man who did commit it, in thecase of a private individual? What would be the result, if every one whohad the opportunity were to do the same? Many of these acts would, then, stand out in their true light, and we should recognise that they are notonly mean but criminal. Other, but analogous, instances of the failure of men to realise theirobligations to society or to large social aggregates are to be found inthe careless and perfunctory manner in which persons employed bygovernment, or by corporations, or large companies, often perform theirduties. If they were in the service of a private employer, they would atall events realise, even if they did not act on their conviction, thatthey were defrauding him by idling away their time or attending to theirown affairs, or those of charities or institutions in which they wereinterested, when they ought to be attending to the concerns of theiremployer. But in a government or municipal office, or the establishmentof a large company, no one in particular seems to be injured by theineffective discharge of their functions; and hence it does not occur tothem that they are receiving their wages without rendering theequivalent of them. The inadequate supervision which overlooks orcondones this listlessness is, of course, itself also the result of asimilar failure to realise responsibility. The spirit in which patronage is often administered affords an instanceof a similar kind. If a man were engaging a person to perform someservice for himself or his family, or one of his intimate friends, hewould simply look to competency, including, perhaps, moral character, for the special work to be done. But, when he has to appoint to a publicpost, and especially if he is only one of a board of electors, he isvery apt to think that there is no great harm in appointing or votingfor a relative or friend, or a person who has some special bond ofconnexion with him, such as that of political party, though he may notbe the candidate best qualified for the position. And, if it does occurto him that he is acting wrongly, he is more likely to think of thewrong which he is doing to the individual who possesses the highestqualifications (and to him it is an undoubted wrong, for it frustratesjust expectations) than of the wrong which he is doing to the communityor the institution which he is depriving of the services of the fittestman. And yet, if he takes the trouble to reflect, he must see that he isguilty of a breach of trust; that, having undertaken a public duty, hehas abused the confidence reposed in him. A vote given in return for a bribe, a case which now seldom occursexcept in parliamentary elections, is open to the same ethicalobjections as a vote given on grounds of partiality; and, as the motivewhich dictates the breach of trust is purely selfish, it incurs theadditional reproach of meanness. But why, it may be asked, should not aman accept a bribe, if, on other grounds, he would vote for thecandidate who offers it? Simply, because he is encouraging a practicewhich would, in time, deprive Parliament of most of its more competentmembers, and reduce it to an oligarchy of millionaires, as well asdegrading himself by a sordid act. To receive a present for a vote, evenif the vote be given conscientiously, is to lend countenance to apractice which must inevitably corrupt the consciences, and pervert thejudgment, of others. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the man whooffers the bribe is acting still more immorally than the man who acceptsit. He is not only causing others to act immorally, but, as no man canbe a proper judge of his own competency, he is attempting to thrusthimself into an office of trust without any regard to his fitness tofill it. Intimidation, on the part of the man who practises it, is onthe same ethical level as bribery, with respect to the two points justmentioned; but, as it appeals to the fears of men instead of their loveof gain, and costs nothing to him who employs it, it is more odious, anddeserves, at the hands of the law, a still more severe punishment. Toyield to intimidation is, under most circumstances, more excusable thanto yield to bribery; for the fear of losing what one has is to most mena more powerful inducement than the hope of gaining what one has not, and, generally speaking, the penalty threatened by the intimidator isfar in excess of the advantage offered by the briber. As it betrays a vain and grasping disposition, when a man attempts tothrust himself into an office to which he is not called by thespontaneous voice of his fellow-citizens, so to refuse office, whenthere is an evident opportunity of doing good service to the community, betrays pride or indolence, coupled with an indifference to the publicwelfare. In democratic communities, there is always a tendency on thepart of what may be called superfine persons to hold aloof from public, and especially municipal, life. If this sentiment of fastidiousness orindifference were to spread widely, and a fashion which begins in onesocial stratum quickly permeates to those immediately below it, therewould be great danger, as there seems to be in America, of the publicadministration becoming seriously and permanently deteriorated. Toprevent this evil, it is desirable to create, in every community, astrong sentiment against the practice of persons, who have the requisitemeans, leisure, and ability, withholding themselves from public life, when invited by their fellow-citizens to take their part in it. Theremay, of course, be paramount claims of another kind, such as those ofscience, or art, or literature, or education, but the superiorimportance of these claims on the individuals themselves, where theyobviously exist, and where the claims of the public service are noturgent, would readily be allowed. It seems to be a rapid transition from cases of this kind to suicide, but, amongst the many reasons, moral and religious, which may be urgedagainst suicide, there is one which connects itself closely with theconsiderations which have just been under our notice. As pointed outlong ago by Aristotle, the suicide wrongs the state rather than himself. Where a man is still able to do any service to the state, in either aprivate or a public capacity, he is under a social, and, therefore, amoral obligation to perform that service, and, consequently, to withdrawfrom it by a voluntary death is to desert the post of duty. Thisconsideration, of course, holds only where a man's life is still ofvalue to society, but it should be pointed out that, where this ceasesto be the case, many other considerations often, and some always do, intervene. There are few men who have not relatives, friends, orneighbours, who will be pained, even if they are not injured materially, by an act of suicide, and, wherever the injury is a material one, as inthe case of leaving helpless relatives unprovided for, it becomes an actof cruelty. Then, under all circumstances, there remain the evil exampleof cowardice and, to those who acknowledge the obligations of religion, the sin of cutting short the period of probation which God has assignedus. Amongst duties to society, which are seldom fully realised in theirsocial aspect, is the duty of bringing up children in such a manner asto render them useful to the state, instead of a burden upon it. Underthis head, there are two distinct cases, that of the rich and that ofthe poor, or, more precisely, that of those who are in sufficiently goodcircumstances to educate their children without the assistance of thestate or of their neighbours, and that of those who require suchassistance. In the latter case, it is the duty of society to co-operatewith the parent in giving the child an education which shall fit it forthe industrial occupations of life, and hence the moral obligation onthe richer members of a community to provide elementary schools, aidedby the state or by some smaller political aggregate, or else byvoluntary efforts. The object of this assistance is not so much charityto the parent or the individual children, as the prevention of crime andpauperism, and the supply of an orderly and competent industrial class. In rendering the assistance, whether it come from public or privatefunds, great care ought to be taken not to weaken, but, rather tostimulate, the interest of the parent in the child's progress, both byassigning to him a share of the responsibility of supervision, and, ifpossible, by compelling him to contribute an equitable proportion of thecost. So largely, if not so fully, are the duties of the state and ofindividuals of the wealthier classes, in the matter of educating thechildren of the poor, now recognised, that the dangers arising from adefective or injudicious education seem, in the immediate future, tothreaten the richer rather than the poorer classes. Over-indulgence andthe encouragement of luxurious habits during childhood; the weakenedsense of responsibility, on the part of the parent, which is oftencaused by the transference to others of authority and supervision duringboyhood or girlhood; the undue stimulation of the love of amusement, orof the craving for material comforts, during the opening years ofmanhood or womanhood; the failure to create serious interests or teachadequately the social responsibilities which wealth and position bringwith them, --all these mistakes or defects in the education of thechildren of the upper classes constitute a grave peril to society, unless they are remedied in time. It seems, so far as we can forecastthe future, that it is only by all classes taking pains to ascertaintheir respective duties and functions in sustaining and promoting thewell-being of the community, and making serious efforts to perform them, that the society of the next few generations can be saved from constantconvulsions. As intelligence expands, and a sense of the importance ofsocial co-operation becomes diffused, it is almost certain that theexistence of a merely idle and self-indulgent class will no longer betolerated. Hence, it is as much to the interests of the wealthierclasses themselves as of society at large, that their children should beeducated with a full sense of their social responsibilities, andequipped with all the moral and intellectual aptitudes which arerequisite to enable them to take a lead in the development of thecommunity of which they are members. And here, perhaps, I may take occasion to draw attention to theimportance of the acquisition of political knowledge by all citizens ofthe state, and especially by those who belong to the leisured classes. It is a plain duty to society, that men should not exercise politicalpower, unless they have some knowledge of the questions at issue. Theamount of this knowledge may vary almost infinitely, from that of theveteran statesman to that of the newly enfranchised elector, but it iswithin the power of every one, who can observe and reason, to acquiresome knowledge of at least the questions which affect his own employmentand the welfare of his own family and neighbourhood, and, unless he willtake thus much pains, he might surely have the modesty to forego hisvote. To record a vote simply to please some one else is only one degreebaser than to barter it for money or money's worth, and indeed it isoften only an indirect mode of doing the same thing. There is a large class of cases, primarily affecting individuals ratherthan society at large, which, if we look a little below the surface andtrace their results, are of a much more pernicious character than isusually recognised, and, as ethical knowledge increases, ought to incurfar more severe reprobation than they now do. Foremost amongst these iswhat I may call the current morality of debts. A man incurs a debt witha tradesman which he has no intention or no reasonable prospect ofpaying, knowing that the tradesman has no grounds for suspecting hisinability to pay. The tradesman parts with the goods, supposing that hewill receive the equivalent; the customer carries them off, knowing thatthis equivalent is not, and is not likely to be, forthcoming. I confessthat I am entirely unable to distinguish this case from that of ordinarytheft. And still there is many a man, well received in society, whohabitually acts in this manner, and whose practice must be more thansuspected by his friends and associates. He and his friends would bemuch astonished if he were accosted as a thief, and still I cannot seehow he could reasonably repudiate this title. Short of this extremecase, which, however, is by no means uncommon, there are many degrees ofwhat may be called criminal negligence or imprudence in contractingdebts, as where a man runs up a large bill with only a slenderprobability of meeting it, or a larger bill than he can probably meet infull, or one of which he must defer the payment beyond a reasonabletime. In all these cases, which are much aggravated, if the goodsobtained are luxuries and not necessaries (for it is one of the plainestduties of every man, who is removed from absolute want, to live withinhis means), there is either actual dishonesty or a dangerousapproximation to it, and it would be a great advance in every-daymorality if society were to recognise this fact distinctly, andapportion its censures accordingly. Where the tradesman knows that he isrunning a risk, the customer being also aware that he knows it, andadapts his charges to the fact, it is a case of 'Greek meet Greek, ' and, even if the customer deserves reprobation, the tradesman certainlydeserves no compassion. But this is a case outside the range of honestdealing altogether, and must be regulated by other sentiments and otherlaws than those which prevail in ordinary commerce. There is anotherwell-known, and to many men only too familiar, exception to the ordinaryrelation of debtor and creditor. A friend 'borrows' money of you, thoughit is understood on both sides that he will have no opportunity ofrepaying it, and that it is virtually a gift. Here, as the creditor doesnot expect any repayment, and the debtor knows that he does not, thereis no act of dishonesty, but the debtor, by asking for a loan and not agift, evades the obligation of gratitude and reciprocal service whichwould attach to the latter, and thus takes a certain advantage of hisbenefactor. In this case it would be far more straightforward, even ifit involved some humiliation, to use plain words, and to accept at oncethe true position of a recipient, and not affect the seeming one of aborrower. Connected with the subject of debtor and creditor is theungrounded notion, to which I have already adverted, that the payment ofwhat are called debts of honour ought to take precedence of all otherpecuniary obligations. As these 'debts of honour' generally arise frombets or play or loans contracted with friends, the position assumed issimply that debts incurred to members of our own class or persons whomwe know place us under a greater obligation than debts incurred tostrangers or persons belonging to a lower grade in society. As thusstated, the maxim is evidently preposterous and indefensible, andaffords a good instance, as I have noticed in a previous chapter, of thesubordination of the laws of general morality to the convenience andprejudices of particular cliques and classes. If there is anycompetition at all admissible between just debts, surely those whichhave been incurred in return for commodities supplied have a strongerclaim than those, arising from play or bets, which represent nosacrifice on the part of the creditor. Another instance of the class of cases which I am now considering is tobe found in reckless gambling. Men who indulge in this practice areusually condemned as being simply hare-brained or foolish; but, if welook a little below the surface, we shall find that their conduct isoften highly criminal. Many a time a man risks on play or a bet or ahorse-race or a transaction on the stock exchange the permanent welfare, sometimes even the very subsistence, of his wife and children or othersdepending on him; or, if he loses, he cuts short a career of futureusefulness, or he renders himself unable to develope, or perhaps even toretain, his business or his estates, and so involves his tenants, orclerks, or workmen in his ruin, or, perhaps, he becomes bankrupt and isthus the cause of wide-spread misery amongst his creditors. And, even ifthese extreme results do not follow, his rash conduct may be the causeof much minor suffering amongst his relatives or tradesmen ordependents, who may have to forego many legitimate enjoyments inconsequence of his one act of greed or thoughtlessness, while, in allcases, he is encouraging by his example a practice which, if not his ownruin, is certain to be the ruin of others. The light-heartedness withwhich many a man risks his whole fortune, and the welfare of all who aredependent on him, for what would, if gained, be no great addition to hishappiness, is a striking example of the frequent blindness of men to allresults except those which are removed but one step from their actions. A gamester, however sanguine, sees that he may lose his money, but hedoes not see all the ill consequences to himself and others which theloss of his money will involve. Hence an act, which, if we look to theintention, is often only thoughtless, becomes, in result, criminal, andit is of the utmost importance that society, by its reprobation, shouldmake men realise what the true nature of such actions is. I pass now to a case of a different character, which has only, withinrecent years, begun to attract the attention of the moralist andpolitician at all--the peril to life and health ensuing on the neglectof sanitary precautions. A man carelessly neglects his drains, or allowsa mass of filth to accumulate in his yard, or uses well-water withouttesting its qualities or ascertaining its surroundings. After a time afever breaks out in his household, and, perhaps, communicates itself tohis neighbours, the result being several deaths and much sickness andsuffering. These deaths and this suffering are the direct result of hisnegligence, and, though it would, doubtless, be hard and unjust to callhim a murderer, he is this in effect. Of course, if, notwithstandingwarning or reflexion, he persists in his negligence, with a fullconsciousness of the results which may possibly ensue from it, he incursa grave moral responsibility, and it is difficult to conceive a casemore fit for censure, or even punishment. Nor are the members of acorporation or a board, in the administration of an area of which theyhave undertaken the charge, less guilty, under these circumstances, thanis a private individual in the management of his own premises. If menwere properly instructed in the results of their actions orpretermissions, in matters of this nature, and made fully conscious ofthe responsibility which those results entail upon them, there wouldsoon be a marked decrease in physical suffering, disease, and prematuredeaths. The average duration of life, in civilized countries, hasprobably already been lengthened by the increased knowledge and theincreased sense of responsibility which have even now been attained. Closely connected with these considerations on the diminution of death, disease, and suffering by improved sanitary arrangements, is thedelicate subject of the propagation of hereditary disease. It is acommonplace that the most important of all the acts of life, is that onwhich men and women venture most thoughtlessly. But experience shews, unmistakably, that there are many forms of disease, both mental andbodily, which are transmitted from the parents to the children, andthat, consequently, the marriage of a diseased parent, or of a parentwith a tendency to disease, will probably be followed by the existenceof diseased children. In a matter of this kind, everything, of course, depends on the amount of the risk incurred, that is to say, on theextent of the evil and the probability of its transmission. The formerof these data is supplied by common observation, the latter by theresearches of the pathologist. It is for the moralist simply to drawattention to the subject, and to insist on the responsibility attachingto a knowledge of it. The marriages of persons who are very poor, andhave no reasonable prospect of bringing up children in health, decency, and comfort, are open to similar considerations but, as in the lastcase, I must content myself with simply adverting to the responsibilityattaching to them, and noting the extent to which that responsibility isusually ignored. In connexion with this question, it may be added thatmany of the attempts made by well-meaning people to alleviate povertyand distress have, unfortunately, too often the effect of ultimatelyaggravating those evils by diverting attention from their real causes. Anot unnatural reluctance to discuss or reflect on matters of thisdelicate character, combined with the survival of maxims and sentimentsderived from an entirely different condition of society, are, doubtless, to a great extent, the reasons of the backward condition of morality onthis subject. The importance, from a social point of view, of the careful education ofchildren with reference to their future position in life has alreadybeen considered, but, in connexion with the class of duties I am nowtreating, I may draw attention to the obligation under which parentslie, in this respect, to their children themselves. The ancientmorality, which was the product of the patriarchal form of society, whenthe _patria potestas_ was still in vigour, laid peculiar stress on theduties of children to parents, while it almost ignored the reciprocalduties of parents to children. When the members of a family were seldomseparated, and the pressure of population had not yet begun to be felt, this was the natural order of ideas with respect to the parentalrelation. But now that the common labour of the household is replaced bycompetition amongst individuals, and most young men and women have, atan early age, to leave their families and set about earning their ownliving, or carving out their own career, it is obvious, on reflexion, that parents are guilty of a gross breach of duty, if they do not usetheir utmost endeavours to facilitate the introduction of their childrento the active work of life, and to fit them for the circumstances inwhich they are likely to be placed. To bring up a son or daughter inidleness or ignorance ought to be as great a reproach to a parent as itis to a child to dishonour its father or mother. And yet, in the upperand middle classes at all events, there are many parents who, withoutincurring much reprobation from their friends, prefer to treat theirchildren like playthings or pet animals rather than to take the pains totrain them with a view to their future trials and duties. It ought to bethoroughly realised, and, as the moral consciousness becomes betteradapted to the existing circumstances of society, it is to be trustedthat it will be realised, that parents have no moral right to do whatthey choose with their children, but that they are under a strictobligation both to society and to their children themselves so to mouldtheir dispositions and develope their faculties and inform their mindsand train their bodies as to render them good and useful citizens, andhonest and skilful men. It is to be hoped that, some day, people willregard with as much surprise the notion that parents have a right toneglect the education of their children as we now regard with wonder, when we first hear of it; the maxim of archaic law, that a parent had aright to put his child to death. Much of the trouble, vexation, and misery of which men are the cause tothemselves is due to cowardice, or the false shame which results fromattaching undue importance to custom, fashion, or the opinion of others, even when that opinion is not confirmed by their own reflexion. Shame isan invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But theobjects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects ormisfortunes. While it confines itself to objects such as these, it isone of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians ofvirtue and self-respect. But, as soon as a man begins to care about whatothers will say of circumstances not under his own control, such as hisrace, his origin, his appearance, his physical defects, or his lack ofwealth or natural talents, he may be laying up for himself a store ofincalculable misery, and is certainly enfeebling his character andimpairing his chances of future usefulness. It is under the influence ofthis motive, for instance, that many a man lives above his income, notfor the purpose of gratifying any real wants either of himself or hisfamily, but for the sake of 'keeping up appearances, ' though he isexposing his creditors to considerable losses, his family to manyprobable disadvantages, and himself to almost certain disgrace in thefuture. It is under the influence of this motive, too, that many men, inthe upper and middle classes, rather than marry on a modest income, anddrop out of the society of their fashionable acquaintance, formirregular sexual connexions, which are a source of injury to themselvesand ruin to their victims. A circumstance which has probably contributed largely, in recent times, to aggravate the feeling of false shame is the new departure which, incommercial communities, has been taken by class-distinctions. The oldline, which formed a sharp separation between the nobility and all otherclasses, has been almost effaced, and in its place have been substitutedmany shades of difference between different grades of society, togetherwith a broad line of demarcation between what may be called the genteeland the ungenteel classes. It was a certain advantage of the old linethat it could not be passed, and, hence, though there might be somejealousy felt towards the nobility as a class, there were none of theheart-burnings which attach to an uncertain position or a futile effortto rise. In modern society, on the other hand, there is hardly any onewhose position is so fixed, that he may not easily rise above or fallbelow it, and hence there is constant room for social ambition, socialdisappointment, and social jealousy. Again, the broad line of gentility, which now corresponds most closely with the old distinction of nobility, is determined by such a number of considerations, --birth, connexions, means, manners, education, with the arbitrary, though almost essential, condition of not being engaged in retail trade, --that those who are justexcluded by it are apt to feel their position somewhat unintelligible, and, therefore, all the more galling to their pride and self-respect Itwould be curious to ascertain what proportion of the minorinconveniences and vexations of modern life is due to the perplexity, onthe one side, and the soreness, on the other, created by theexclusiveness of class-distinctions. That these distinctions are anevil, in themselves, there can, I think, be no doubt. Men cannot, ofcourse, all know one another, much less be on terms of intimacy with oneanother, and the degree of their acquaintance or intimacy will always belargely dependent on community of tastes, interests, occupations, andearly associations. But these facts afford no reason why one set of menshould look down with superciliousness and disdain on another set of menwho have not enjoyed the same early advantages or are not at presentendowed with the same gifts or accomplishments as themselves, or whythey should hold aloof from them when there is any opportunity ofcommon action or social intercourse. The pride of class is eminentlyunreasonable, and, in those who profess to believe in Christianity, pre-eminently inconsistent. It will always, probably, continue to exist, but we may hope that it will be progressively modified by the advance ofeducation, by the spread of social sympathy, and by a growing habit ofreflexion. The ideal social condition would be one in which, though mencontinued to form themselves into groups, no one thought the worse orthe more lightly of another, because he belonged to a different groupfrom himself. Connected with exaggerated class-feeling are abuses of-esprit decorps_. Unlike class-feeling, _esprit de corps_ is, in itself, a good. It binds men together, as in a vessel or a regiment, a school or acollege, an institution or a municipality, and leads them to sacrificetheir ease or their selfish aims, and to act loyally and cordially withone another in view of the common interest. It is only when itsacrifices to the interests of its own body wider interests still, andsubordinates patriotism or morality to the narrower sentiment attachingto a special law of honour, that it incurs the reprobation of themoralist. But that it does sometimes deservedly incur this reprobation, admits of no question. A man, to save the honour of his regiment, mayimpair the efficiency of an army, or, to promote the interests of hiscollege or school, may inflict a lasting injury on education, or, toprotect his associates, may withhold or pervert evidence, or, toaggrandize his trade, may ruin his country. It is the special provinceof the moralist, in these cases, to intervene, and point out how themore general is being sacrificed to the more special interest, the widerto the narrower sentiment, morality itself to a point of honour oretiquette. But, at the same time, he must recollect that the _esprit decorps_ of any small aggregate of men is, as such, always an ennoblingand inspiriting sentiment, and that, unless it plainly detach them fromthe rest of the community, and is attended with pernicious consequencesto society at large, it is unwise, if not reckless, to seek to impairit. To descend to a subject of less, though still of considerable, importance, I may notice that cowardice and fear of 'what people willsay' lies at the bottom of much ill-considered charity and of thatfacility with which men, often to the injury of themselves or theirfamilies, if not of the very objects pleaded for, listen to thesolicitations of the inconsiderate or interested subscription-monger. Ithas now become a truism that enormous mischief is done by theindiscriminate distribution of alms to beggars or paupers. It is no lesstrue, though not so obvious, that much unintentional harm is often doneby subscriptions for what are called public objects. People ought tohave sufficient mental independence to ask themselves what will be theultimate effects of subscribing their money, and, if they honestlybelieve that those effects will be pernicious or of doubtful utility, they ought to have the courage to refuse it. There is no good reason, simply because a man asks me and I find that others are yielding to him, why I should subscribe a guinea towards disfiguring a church, orerecting an ugly and useless building, or extending pauperism, orencouraging the growth of luxurious habits, or spreading opinions whichI do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when Iconsider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those whosolicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of afeeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving forpreferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of theiractivity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, connected with this subject, whichoften escapes notice, namely, the extent to which new and multipliedappeals to charity often interfere with older, nearer, and more pressingclaims. Thus, the managers of the local hospital or dispensary orcharity organisation have often too good cause to regret theenthusiastic philanthropy, which is sending help, of questionableutility, to distant parts of the world. People cannot subscribe toeverything, and they are too apt to fall in with the most recent andmost fashionable movement. In venturing on these remarks, I trust it isneedless to say that I am far from deprecating the general practice ofsubscribing to charities and public objects, a form of co-operationwhich has been rendered indispensable by the habits and circumstances ofmodern life. I am simply insisting on the importance and responsibilityof ascertaining whether the aims proposed are likely to be productive ofgood or evil, and deprecating the cowardice or listlessness which yieldsto a solicitation, irrespectively of the merits of the proposal. These solicitations often take the offensive form, which isintentionally embarrassing to the person solicited, of an appeal torelieve the purveyor of the subscription-list himself from theobligation incurred by a 'guarantee. ' The issue is thus ingeniously andunfairly transferred from the claims of the object, which it is designedto promote, to the question of relieving a friend or a neighbour from aheavy pecuniary obligation. 'Surely you will never allow me to pay allthis money myself. ' But why not, unless I approve of the object, and, even if I do, why should I increase my subscription, on account of anobligation voluntarily incurred by you, without any encouragement fromme? In a case of this kind, the 'guarantee' ought to be regarded assimply irrelevant, and the question decided solely on the merits of theresult to be attained. Of course, I must be understood to be speakinghere only of those cases in which the 'guarantee' is used as anadditional argument for eliciting subscriptions, not of those cases inwhich, for convenience sake, or in order to secure celerity ofexecution, a few wealthy persons generously advance the whole sumrequired for a project, being quite willing to pay it themselves, unlessthey meet with ready and cheerful co-operation. In the department of social intercourse, there are several applicationsof existing moral principles, and specially of the softer virtues ofkindness, courtesy, and consideration for others, the observance ofwhich would sensibly sweeten our relations to our fellow-men and, topersons of a sensitive temperament, render life far more agreeable andbetter worth living than it actually is. A few of these applications Ishall attempt to point out. Amongst savage races, and in the lesspolished ranks of civilized life, men who disagree, or have any grudgeagainst one another, resort to physical blows or coarse invective. Inpolite and educated circles, these weapons are replaced by sarcasm andinnuendo. There are, of course, many advantages gained by thesubstitution of this more refined mode of warfare, but the mere factthat the intellectual skill which it displays gives pleasure to thebystanders, and wins social applause, renders its employment far morefrequent than, on cool reflexion, could be justified by the occasionsfor it. There can be no doubt that it gives pain, often intense pain, especially where the victim is not ready enough to retaliate effectivelyin kind. And there can be no more justification for inflicting thispeculiar kind of pain than any other, unless the circumstances are suchas to demand it. Any one, who will take the trouble to analyse his actsand motives, will generally find, when he employs these weapons, that heis actuated not so much by any desire to reform the object of his attackor to deter, by these means, him or others from wrong-doing, as by adesire to show off his own cleverness and to leave behind him a mark ofhis power in the smart which he inflicts. These unamiable motives areleast justifiable, when the victim is a social inferior, or a personwho, by his age or position, is unable to retaliate on equal terms. Tovanity and cruelty are then added cowardice, and, though all these vicesmay only be displayed on a very small scale, they are none the lessreally present. It may be laid down, however difficult, with our presentsocial habits, it may be to keep the rule, that sarcasm should never beemployed, except deliberately, and as a punishment, and that forinnuendo, if justifiable by facts, men should always have the courage tosubstitute direct assertion. Of the minor social vices, one of the commonest is a disregard, inconversation, of other persons' feelings. Men who lay claim to thecharacter of gentlemen are specially bound to shew their tact anddelicacy of feeling by avoiding all subjects which have a disagreeablepersonal reference or are likely to revive unpleasant associations inthe minds of any of those who are present. And yet these are qualitieswhich are often strangely conspicuous by their absence even in educatedand cultivated society. One of the most repulsive and least excusableforms which this indifference to other persons' feelings takes is inimpertinent curiosity. There are some people who, for the sake ofsatisfying a purposeless curiosity, will ask questions which they knowit cannot be agreeable to answer. In all cases, curiosity of this kindis evidence of want of real refinement, and is a breach of the finerrules of social morality; but, when the questions asked are intended toextract, directly or indirectly, unwilling information on a man'sprivate life or circumstances, they assume the character of sheervulgarity. A man's private affairs, providing his conduct of them doesnot injuriously affect society, are no one's business but his own, andmuch pain and vexation of the smaller kind would be saved, if this veryplain fact were duly recognised in social intercourse. It may be noticed in passing, that there still lingers on in society aminor form of persecution, a sort of inquisition on a small scale, whichconsists in attempting to extract from a man a frank statement of hisreligious, social, or political opinions, though it is known orsuspected all the time, that, if he responds to the invitation, it willbe to his social or material disadvantage. In cases of this kind, itbecomes a casuistical question how far a man is called on to disclosehis real sentiments at the bidding of any impertinent questioner. Thatthe free expression of opinion should be attended with this danger is, of course, a proof how far removed we still are from perfectintellectual toleration. Impertinent curiosity is offensive, not only because it shews anindifference to the feelings of the person questioned, but because itsavours of gratuitous interference in his affairs. This quality itshares with another of the minor social vices, the tendering of unaskedfor advice, or, in brief, impertinent advice. There are certaincircumstances and relations in which men have the right, even if theyare not under the obligation, to give unsolicited advice, as where a manis incurring an unknown danger or foregoing some unsuspected advantage, or to their servants, or children, or wards, or pupils; but, in allthese cases, either the special circumstance or the special relationimplies superiority of knowledge or superiority of position on the partof the person tendering the advice, and to assume this superiority, where it does not plainly exist, is an act of impertinence. Just as theassumption of superiority wounds a man's self-respect, so does thedisposition to meddle in his affairs, which is generally founded on thatassumption, affect his sense of independence, and, hence, an act whichincludes both grounds of offence seems to be a peculiarly legitimateobject of resentment. The lesson of letting other people alone is onewhich men are slow to learn, though there are few who, in their owncase, do not resent any attack on their liberty of judgment or action. This is emphatically one of the cases in which we should try to putourselves in the place of others, and act to them as we would that theyshould act towards us. Excessive, and often ill-natured, criticism of others is one of theminor vices which seem to grow up with advancing civilisation andintelligence rather than to retreat before them. It seems, as a rule, toprevail much more in educated than in uneducated society. The reason isnot difficult to find. Education naturally makes men more fastidious andmore keenly alive to the defects of those with whom they associate. Andthen, when educated men converse together, they are apt, merely from thefacility with which they deal with language, to express in anexaggerated form the unfavourable estimate which they have formed ofothers, especially if this exaggerated form can be compressed into anepigram. But it requires little reflexion to see that this keen andexaggerated habit of criticism must be productive of much discomfort ina society in which it is general, and that, when applied to literarywork, even though it may be a protection against inaccuracy and breachesof taste, it must be a great discouragement to the young and repressiveof much honest and valuable effort. To restrain the critical spirit, whether applied to mind or conduct, with proper limits, it is necessary, keeping these considerations in view, to ask how much we can reasonablyor profitably require of men, and, above all, never to lose thatsympathetic touch with others which renders us as keenly alive to theirdifficulties as their errors, to their aspirations as their failure tofulfil them. I shall say nothing here of detraction, backbiting, or maliciousrepresentation, because these are social vices which are too obvious andtoo generally acknowledged to be of any service as illustrations ofthose extensions or new applications of morality which I have in view inthe present chapter. I may, however, notice in passing, that theinvention or exaggeration of stories, which have a tendency to bring meninto ridicule or contempt, is a practice which, from the entertainmentit affords, is too easily tolerated by society, and usually fails tomeet with the reprobation it deserves. I shall advert to only one other topic, namely, the treatment of thelower animals. With rare exceptions, it is only of late that thissubject has been regarded as falling within the sphere of ethics, and itis greatly to the credit of Bentham that he was amongst the first torecognise its importance and to commend it to the consideration of thelegislator. That the lower animals, as sentient beings, have a claim onour sympathies, and that, consequently, we have duties in respect ofthem, I can no more doubt than that we have duties in respect to theinferior members of our own race. But, at the same time, consideringtheir place in the economy of nature, I cannot doubt that man has aright, within certain limits, to use them, and even to kill them, forhis own advantage. What these limits are is a question by no meansdevoid of difficulty. There are those who maintain that we have no rightto kill animals for food, while there are those who, without maintainingthis extreme position, hold that we have no right to cause them pain forthe purposes of our own amusement, or even for the alleviation of humansuffering by means of the advancement of physiological and medicalscience. It will be seen that the three questions here raised are thelegitimacy of the use of animal food, of field sports, and ofvivisection. As respects the first, I do not doubt that, consideringtheir relative places in the scale of being, man is morally justified insacrificing the lives of the lower animals to the maintenance of his ownhealth and vigour, let alone the probability that, if he did not, theywould multiply to such an extent as to endanger his existence, and wouldthemselves, in the aggregate, experience more suffering from theprivation caused by the struggle for life than they now do by incurringviolent deaths. At the same time, though man may kill the lower animalsfor his own convenience, he is bound not to inflict needless sufferingon them. The torture of an animal, for no adequate purpose, isabsolutely indefensible. Cock-fights, bull-fights, and the like seem tome to admit of no more justification than the gladiatorial shows. Arefield-sports, then, in the same category? The answer, I think, dependson three considerations: (1) would the animal be killed any way, eitherfor food, or as a beast of prey; (2) what is the amount of sufferinginflicted on it, in addition to that which would be inflicted by killingit instantaneously; (3) for what purpose is this additional sufferinginflicted. I shall not attempt to apply these considerations in detail, but I shall simply state as my opinion that, amongst the results of alegitimate application of them, would be the conclusions that worrying adog or a cat is altogether unjustifiable; that fox-hunting might bejustified on the ground that the additional suffering caused to the foxis far more than counterbalanced by the beneficial effects, in healthand enjoyment, to the hunter; that shooting, if the sportsman beskilful, is one of the most painless ways of putting a bird or a stag todeath, and, therefore, requires no justification, whereas, if thesportsman be unskilful, the sufferings which he is liable to cause, through a lingering and painful death, ought to deter him frompractising his art. With regard to the much-debated question ofvivisection, it seems to me utterly untenable, and eminentlyinconsistent on the part of those who eat animal food or indulge infield-sports, to maintain that, under no circumstances, is it morallyjustifiable to inflict pain on the lower animals for the purpose ofascertaining the causes or remedies of disease. But, having once madethis admission, I should insist on the necessity of guarding it byconfining the power of operating on the living animal to persons dulyauthorised, and by limiting it to cases of research as distinct fromdemonstration. Those, moreover, who are invested with this seriousresponsibility, ought to feel morally bound to inflict no superfluoussuffering, and ought, consequently, to employ anaesthetics, whereverthey would not unduly interfere with the conduct of the experiment; toresort, as far as possible, to the lower rather than the higherorganisms, as being less susceptible of pain; and to limit theirexperiments, both in number and duration, as far as is consistent withthe objects for which they are permitted to perform them. This wholequestion, however, of our relation to the lower animals is one which isfraught with much difficulty, and supplies a good instance of the rangeof subjects within which the moral sentiment is probably in the courseof development. Recent researches, and, still more, recent speculations, have tended to impress us with the nearness of our kinship to otheranimals, and, hence, our sympathies with them and our interest in theirwelfare have been sensibly quickened. The word philanthropy no longerexpresses the most general of the sympathetic feelings, and we seem torequire some new term which shall denote our fellow-feeling with thewhole sentient creation. Such is a sample, and I must repeat that it is intended only as asample, of the class of questions to which, as it seems to me, the moraltest still admits of further application. Morality, or the science andart of conduct, had its small beginnings, I conceive, in the primevalhousehold and has only attained its present grand proportions by gradualincrements, derived partly from the semi-conscious operations of thehuman intelligence adapting itself to the circumstances in which it isplaced, partly from the conscious meditations of reflective men. That itis likely to advance in the future, as it has done in the past, notwithstanding the many hindrances to its progress which confessedlyexist, is, I think, an obvious inference from experience. We may notunreasonably hope that there will be a stricter sense of justice, a morecomplete realisation of duty, more delicacy of feeling, a greaterrefinement of manners, more kindliness, quicker and wider sympathies inthe coming generations than there are amongst ourselves. I haveattempted, in this Essay, briefly to delineate the nature of thefeelings on which this progress depends, and of the considerations bywhich it is guided, as well as to indicate some few out of the manydirections which it is likely to take in the future. In the former partof my task, I am aware that I have run counter to many prejudices oflong standing, and that the theories which I consider to be aloneconsistent with the fact of the progress of morality, may by some bethought to impair its authority. But if morality has its foundations inthe constitution of human nature, which itself proceeds from the DivineSource of all things, I conceive that its credentials are sufficientlyassured. In the present chapter, I have, in attempting to illustrate thepossibility of future improvements in the art and theory of conduct, been necessarily led to note some deficiencies in the existing moralsentiment. This is always an unwelcome and invidious task. Men do notlike to be reminded of their moral failings, and there is hardly anyman, however critical he may be of others, who, in the actual conduct oflife, does not appear to delude himself with the idea that his own moralpractice is perfect. I appeal, however, from the unconscious assumptionsof men to their powers of reflexion, and I ask each man who reads thisbook to consider carefully within himself whether, on the principleshere set out, much of the conduct and many of the ethical maxims whichare now generally accepted do not admit of refinement and improvement. In the sphere of morals, as in all other departments of human activity, we are bound to do for our successors what our predecessors were boundto do, and mostly did, for us--transmit the heritage we have receivedwith all the additions and adaptations which the new experiences andchanging conditions of life have rendered necessary or desirable.