UTILITARIANISM

BY

JOHN STUART MILL

REPRINTED FROM 'FRASER'S MAGAZINE'

SEVENTH EDITION

LONDON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

1879

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. GENERAL REMARKS

CHAPTER II. WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS

CHAPTER III. OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY

CHAPTER IV. OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY ISSUSCEPTIBLE

CHAPTER V. OF THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY

UTILITARIANISM. 

CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL REMARKS. 

There are few circumstances among those which make up the presentcondition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on themost important subjects still lingers, than the little progress whichhas been made in the decision of the controversy respecting thecriterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the questionconcerning the _summum bonum_, or, what is the same thing, concerningthe foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem inspeculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, anddivided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfareagainst one another. And after more than two thousand years the samediscussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the samecontending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seemnearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrateslistened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's dialogue begrounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism againstthe popular morality of the so-called sophist. 

It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some casessimilar discordance, exist respecting the first principles of all thesciences, not excepting that which is deemed the most certain of them, mathematics; without much impairing, generally indeed without impairingat all, the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those sciences. Anapparent anomaly, the explanation of which is, that the detaileddoctrines of a science are not usually deduced from, nor depend fortheir evidence upon, what are called its first principles. Were it notso, there would be no science more precarious, or whose conclusions weremore insufficiently made out, than algebra; which derives none of itscertainty from what are commonly taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid down by some of its most eminent teachers, are asfull of fictions as English law, and of mysteries as theology. Thetruths which are ultimately accepted as the first principles of ascience, are really the last results of metaphysical analysis, practisedon the elementary notions with which the science is conversant; andtheir relation to the science is not that of foundations to an edifice, but of roots to a tree, which may perform their office equally wellthough they be never dug down to and exposed to light. But though inscience the particular truths precede the general theory, the contrarymight be expected to be the case with a practical art, such as morals orlegislation. All action is for the sake of some end, and rules ofaction, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole characterand colour from the end to which they are subservient. When we engage ina pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing wouldseem to be the first thing we need, instead of the last we are to lookforward to. A test of right and wrong must be the means, one wouldthink, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a consequence ofhaving already ascertained it. 

The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the popular theoryof a natural faculty, a sense or instinct, informing us of right andwrong. For--besides that the existence of such a moral instinct isitself one of the matters in dispute--those believers in it who have anypretensions to philosophy, have been obliged to abandon the idea that itdiscerns what is right or wrong in the particular case in hand, as ourother senses discern the sight or sound actually present. Our moralfaculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled tothe name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles ofmoral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitivefaculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less thanwhat may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on thenecessity of general laws. They both agree that the morality of anindividual action is not a question of direct perception, but of theapplication of a law to an individual case. They recognise also, to agreat extent, the same moral laws; but differ as to their evidence, andthe source from which they derive their authority. According to the oneopinion, the principles of morals are evident _à priori_, requiringnothing to command assent, except that the meaning of the terms beunderstood. According to the other doctrine, right and wrong, as well astruth and falsehood, are questions of observation and experience. Butboth hold equally that morality must be deduced from principles; and theintuitive school affirm as strongly as the inductive, that there is ascience of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list of the _àpriori_ principles which are to serve as the premises of the science;still more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those variousprinciples to one first principle, or common ground of obligation. Theyeither assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of _à priori_authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those maxims, some generality much less obviously authoritative than the maximsthemselves, and which has never succeeded in gaining popular acceptance. Yet to support their pretensions there ought either to be some onefundamental principle or law, at the root of all morality, or if therebe several, there should be a determinate order of precedence amongthem; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between thevarious principles when they conflict, ought to be self-evident. 

To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency have beenmitigated in practice, or to what extent the moral beliefs of mankindhave been vitiated or made uncertain by the absence of any distinctrecognition of an ultimate standard, would imply a complete survey andcriticism of past and present ethical doctrine. It would, however, beeasy to show that whatever steadiness or consistency these moral beliefshave attained, has been mainly due to the tacit influence of a standardnot recognised. Although the non-existence of an acknowledged firstprinciple has made ethics not so much a guide as a consecration of men'sactual sentiments, still, as men's sentiments, both of favour and ofaversion, are greatly influenced by what they suppose to be the effectsof things upon their happiness, the principle of utility, or as Benthamlatterly called it, the greatest happiness principle, has had a largeshare in forming the moral doctrines even of those who most scornfullyreject its authority. Nor is there any school of thought which refusesto admit that the influence of actions on happiness is a most materialand even predominant consideration in many of the details of morals, however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental principle ofmorality, and the source of moral obligation. I might go much further, and say that to all those _à priori_ moralists who deem it necessary toargue at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable. It is not mypresent purpose to criticise these thinkers; but I cannot helpreferring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the mostillustrious of them, the _Metaphysics of Ethics_, by Kant. Thisremarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of thelandmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in thetreatise in question, lay down an universal first principle as theorigin and ground of moral obligation; it is this:--'So act, that therule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by allrational beings. ' But when he begins to deduce from this precept any ofthe actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to showthat there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to sayphysical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of themost outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that the_consequences_ of their universal adoption would be such as no one wouldchoose to incur. 

On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of theother theories, attempt to contribute something towards theunderstanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that thiscannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatevercan be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means tosomething admitted to be good without proof. The medical art is provedto be good, by its conducing to health; but how is it possible to provethat health is good? The art of music is good, for the reason, amongothers, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to givethat pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is acomprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselvesgood, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as amean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject ofwhat is commonly understood by proof. We are not, however, to infer thatits acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse, or arbitrarychoice. There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which thisquestion is as amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions ofphilosophy. The subject is within the cognizance of the rationalfaculty; and neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the wayof intuition. Considerations may be presented capable of determining theintellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; andthis is equivalent to proof. 

We shall examine presently of what nature are these considerations; inwhat manner they apply to the case, and what rational grounds, therefore, can be given for accepting or rejecting the utilitarianformula. But it is a preliminary condition of rational acceptance orrejection, that the formula should be correctly understood. I believethat the very imperfect notion ordinarily formed of its meaning, is thechief obstacle which impedes its reception; and that could it becleared, even from only the grosser misconceptions, the question wouldbe greatly simplified, and a large proportion of its difficultiesremoved. Before, therefore, I attempt to enter into the philosophicalgrounds which can be given for assenting to the utilitarian standard, Ishall offer some illustrations of the doctrine itself; with the view ofshowing more clearly what it is, distinguishing it from what it is not, and disposing of such of the practical objections to it as eitheroriginate in, or are closely connected with, mistaken interpretations ofits meaning. Having thus prepared the ground, I shall afterwardsendeavour to throw such light as I can upon the question, considered asone of philosophical theory. 

CHAPTER II. 

WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS. 

A passing remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder ofsupposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right andwrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense inwhich utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to thephilosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentaryappearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd amisconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the contraryaccusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in itsgrossest form, is another of the common charges against utilitarianism:and, as has been pointedly remarked by an able writer, the same sort ofpersons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory "asimpracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, andas too practicably voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the wordutility. " Those who know anything about the matter are aware that everywriter, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, butpleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead ofopposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have alwaysdeclared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet thecommon herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers andperiodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetuallyfalling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the wordutilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, theyhabitually express by it the rejection, or the neglect, of pleasure insome of its forms; of beauty, of ornament, or of amusement. Nor is theterm thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, butoccasionally in compliment; as though it implied superiority tofrivolity and the mere pleasures of the moment. And this perverted useis the only one in which the word is popularly known, and the one fromwhich the new generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning. Those who introduced the word, but who had for many years discontinuedit as a distinctive appellation, may well feel themselves called upon toresume it, if by doing so they can hope to contribute anything towardsrescuing it from this utter degradation. [A]

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or theGreatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportionas they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce thereverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and theabsence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. Togive a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much morerequires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideasof pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life onwhich this theory of morality is grounded--namely, that pleasure, andfreedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that alldesirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in anyother scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent inthemselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the preventionof pain. 

Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in someof the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. Tosuppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end thanpleasure--no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit--theydesignate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only ofswine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine areoccasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by itsGerman, French, and English assailants. 

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is notthey, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degradinglight; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of nopleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this suppositionwere true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be nolonger an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely thesame to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enoughfor the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of theEpicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely becausea beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human being's conceptions ofhappiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animalappetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anythingas happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless indrawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christianelements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theoryof life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect; of thefeelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much highervalue as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiorityof mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c. , of the former--that is, in theircircumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And onall these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but theymight have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle ofutility to recognise the fact, that some _kinds_ of pleasure are moredesirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well asquantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend onquantity alone. 

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, orwhat makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as apleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possibleanswer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all whohave experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of anyfeeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirablepleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquaintedwith both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, eventhough knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure whichtheir nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to thepreferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighingquantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account. 

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquaintedwith, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give amost marked preference to the manner of existence which employs theirhigher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed intoany of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of abeast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be afool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feelingand conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should bepersuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfiedwith his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what theypossess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all thedesires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy theywould, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escapefrom it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, howeverundesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires moreto make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and iscertainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type;but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink intowhat he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give whatexplanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it topride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and tosome of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; wemay refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appealto which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for theinculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its mostappropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beingspossess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a partof the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing whichconflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object ofdesire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at asacrifice of happiness-that the superior being, in anything like equalcircumstances, is not happier than the inferior-confounds the two verydifferent ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that thebeing whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance ofhaving them fully satisfied; and a highly-endowed being will always feelthat any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are atall bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeedunconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at allthe good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a humanbeing dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socratesdissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of adifferent opinion, it is because they only know their own side of thequestion. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. 

It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher pleasures, occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone them to thelower. But this is quite compatible with a full appreciation of theintrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity ofcharacter, make their election for the nearer good, though they know itto be the less valuable; and this no less when the choice is between twobodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental. They pursuesensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware thathealth is the greater good. It may be further objected, that many whobegin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance inyears sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe thatthose who undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lowerdescription of pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe thatbefore they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have alreadybecome incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is inmost natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostileinfluences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of youngpersons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their positionin life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men losetheir high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, becausethey have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addictthemselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately preferthem, but because they are either the only ones to which they haveaccess, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equallysusceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmlypreferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in anineffectual attempt to combine both. 

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can beno appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of twopleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful tothe feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, ifthey differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final. And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this judgmentrespecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal tobe referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there ofdetermining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of twopleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who arefamiliar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, andpain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decidewhether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of aparticular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced?When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the pleasuresderived from the higher faculties to be preferable _in kind_, apart fromthe question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitledon this subject to the same regard. 

I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectlyjust conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directiverule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable conditionto the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is notthe agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happinessaltogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble characteris always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that itmakes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely againer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end bythe general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if eachindividual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from thebenefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation superfluous. 

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, theultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all otherthings are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that ofother people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, andas rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity andquality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it againstquantity, being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunitiesof experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousnessand self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison. This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of humanaction, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which mayaccordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by theobservance of which an existence such as has been described might be, tothe greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to themonly, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentientcreation. 

Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors, whosay that happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose of humanlife and action; because, in the first place, it is unattainable: andthey contemptuously ask, What right hast thou to be happy? a questionwhich Mr. Carlyle clenches by the addition, What right, a short timeago, hadst thou even _to be_? Next, they say, that men can do _without_happiness; that all noble human beings have felt this, and could nothave become noble but by learning the lesson of Entsagen, orrenunciation; which lesson, thoroughly learnt and submitted to, theyaffirm to be the beginning and necessary condition of all virtue. 

The first of these objections would go to the root of the matter were itwell founded; for if no happiness is to be had at all by human beings, the attainment of it cannot be the end of morality, or of any rationalconduct. Though, even in that case, something might still be said forthe utilitarian theory; since utility includes not solely the pursuit ofhappiness, but the prevention or mitigation of unhappiness; and if theformer aim be chimerical, there will be all the greater scope and moreimperative need for the latter, so long at least as mankind think fit tolive, and do not take refuge in the simultaneous act of suiciderecommended under certain conditions by Novalis. When, however, it isthus positively asserted to be impossible that human life should behappy, the assertion, if not something like a verbal quibble, is atleast an exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a continuity of highlypleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that this is impossible. Astate of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and withsome intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flashof enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this thephilosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life were asfully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness which they meant wasnot a life of rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up offew and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decidedpredominance of the active over the passive, and having as thefoundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capableof bestowing. A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunateenough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of the name ofhappiness. And such an existence is even now the lot of many, duringsome considerable portion of their lives. The present wretchededucation, and wretched social arrangements, are the only real hindranceto its being attainable by almost all. 

The objectors perhaps may doubt whether human beings, if taught toconsider happiness as the end of life, would be satisfied with such amoderate share of it. But great numbers of mankind have been satisfiedwith much less. The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to betwo, either of which by itself is often found sufficient for thepurpose: tranquillity, and excitement. With much tranquillity, many findthat they can be content with very little pleasure: with muchexcitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity ofpain. There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even themass of mankind to unite both; since the two are so far from beingincompatible that they are in natural alliance, the prolongation ofeither being a preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the other. Itis only those in whom indolence amounts to a vice, that do not desireexcitement after an interval of repose; it is only those in whom theneed of excitement is a disease, that feel the tranquillity whichfollows excitement dull and insipid, instead of pleasurable in directproportion to the excitement which preceded it. When people who aretolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficientenjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caringfor nobody but themselves. To those who have neither public nor privateaffections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any casedwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests mustbe terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects ofpersonal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated afellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain aslively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youthand health. Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes lifeunsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation. A cultivated mind--I donot mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains ofknowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerabledegree, to exercise its faculties--finds sources of inexhaustibleinterest in all that surrounds it; in the objects of nature, theachievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents ofhistory, the ways of mankind past and present, and their prospects inthe future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all this, and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it; but onlywhen one has had from the beginning no moral or human interest in thesethings, and has sought in them only the gratification of curiosity. 

Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amountof mental culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in theseobjects of contemplation, should not be the inheritance of every oneborn in a civilized country. As little is there an inherent necessitythat any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid of everyfeeling or care but those which centre in his own miserableindividuality. Something far superior to this is sufficiently commoneven now, to give ample earnest of what the human species may be made. Genuine private affections, and a sincere interest in the public good, are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly brought-uphuman being. In a world in which there is so much to interest, so muchto enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who hasthis moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable ofan existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied theliberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will notfail to find this enviable existence, if he escape the positive evils oflife, the great sources of physical and mental suffering--such asindigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature lossof objects of affection. The main stress of the problem lies, therefore, in the contest with these calamities, from which it is a rare goodfortune entirely to escape; which, as things now are, cannot beobviated, and often cannot be in any material degree mitigated. Yet noone whose opinion deserves a moment's consideration can doubt that mostof the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reducedwithin narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may becompletely extinguished by the wisdom of society, combined with the goodsense and providence of individuals. Even that most intractable ofenemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by goodphysical and moral education, and proper control of noxious influences;while the progress of science holds out a promise for the future ofstill more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And every advancein that direction relieves us from some, not only of the chances whichcut short our own lives, but, what concerns us still more, which depriveus of those in whom our happiness is wrapt up. As for vicissitudes offortune, and other disappointments connected with worldly circumstances, these are principally the effect either of gross imprudence, ofill-regulated desires, or of bad or imperfect social institutions. Allthe grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort; andthough their removal is grievously slow--though a long succession ofgenerations will perish in the breach before the conquest is completed, and this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were not wanting, it might easily be made--yet every mind sufficiently intelligent andgenerous to bear a part, however small and unconspicuous, in theendeavour, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, which hewould not for any bribe in the form of selfish indulgence consent to bewithout. 

And this leads to the true estimation of what is said by the objectorsconcerning the possibility, and the obligation, of learning to dowithout happiness. Unquestionably it is possible to do withouthappiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind, even in those parts of our present world which are least deep inbarbarism; and it often has to be done voluntarily by the hero or themartyr, for the sake of something which he prizes more than hisindividual happiness. But this something, what is it, unless thehappiness of others, or some of the requisites of happiness? It is nobleto be capable of resigning entirely one's own portion of happiness, orchances of it: but, after all, this self-sacrifice must be for some end;it is not its own end; and if we are told that its end is not happiness, but virtue, which is better than happiness, I ask, would the sacrificebe made if the hero or martyr did not believe that it would earn forothers immunity from similar sacrifices? Would it be made, if he thoughtthat his renunciation of happiness for himself would produce no fruitfor any of his fellow creatures, but to make their lot like his, andplace them also in the condition of persons who have renouncedhappiness? All honour to those who can abnegate for themselves thepersonal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contributeworthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he whodoes it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no moredeserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He maybe an inspiriting proof of what men _can_ do, but assuredly not anexample of what they _should_. 

Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangementsthat any one can best serve the happiness of others by the absolutesacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfectstate, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrificeis the highest virtue which can be found in man. I will add, that inthis condition of the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, theconscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect ofrealizing such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except thatconsciousness can raise a person above the chances of life, by makinghim feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they have not powerto subdue him: which, once felt, frees him from excess of anxietyconcerning the evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in theworst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate in tranquillity thesources of satisfaction accessible to him, without concerning himselfabout the uncertainty of their duration, any more than about theirinevitable end. 

Meanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the morality ofself-devotion as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them, as either to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The utilitarianmorality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing theirown greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit thatthe sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, ortend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to thehappiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either ofmankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by thecollective interests of mankind. 

I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom havethe justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms theutilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's ownhappiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness andthat of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartialas a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesusof Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. Todo as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means ofmaking the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (asspeaking practically it may be called) the interest, of everyindividual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of thewhole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast apower over human character, should so use that power as to establish inthe mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his ownhappiness and the good of the whole; especially between his ownhappiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative andpositive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes: so that notonly he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness tohimself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but alsothat a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in everyindividual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentimentsconnected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every humanbeing's sentient existence. If the impugners of the utilitarian moralityrepresented it to their own minds in this its true character, I know notwhat recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possiblyaffirm to be wanting to it: what more beautiful or more exalteddevelopments of human nature any other ethical system can be supposed tofoster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian, such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates. 

The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged withrepresenting it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those amongthem who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterestedcharacter, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high forhumanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people shallalways act from the inducement of promoting the general interests ofsociety. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard ofmorals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It isthe business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what testwe may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motiveof all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-ninehundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightlyso done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them. It is the moreunjust to utilitarianism that this particular misapprehension should bemade a ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists havegone beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive has nothingto do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of theagent. He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morallyright, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for histrouble: he who betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of acrime, even if his object be to serve another friend to whom he is undergreater obligations. [B] But to speak only of actions done from themotive of duty, and in direct obedience to principle: it is amisapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it asimplying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality asthe world, or society at large. The great majority of good actions areintended, not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the mostvirtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particularpersons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself thatin benefiting them he is not violating the rights--that is, thelegitimate and authorized expectations--of any one else. Themultiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, theobject of virtue: the occasions on which any person (except one in athousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in otherwords, to be a public benefactor, are but exceptional; and on theseoccasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in everyother case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some fewpersons, is all he has to attend to. Those alone the influence of whoseactions extends to society in general, need concern themselveshabitually about so large an object. In the case of abstinencesindeed--of things which people forbear to do, from moral considerations, though the consequences in the particular case might be beneficial--itwould be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously awarethat the action is of a class which, if practised generally, would begenerally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation toabstain from it. The amount of regard for the public interest implied inthis recognition, is no greater than is demanded by every system ofmorals; for they all enjoin to abstain from whatever is manifestlypernicious to society. 

The same considerations dispose of another reproach against the doctrineof utility, founded on a still grosser misconception of the purpose of astandard of morality, and of the very meaning of the words right andwrong. It is often affirmed that utilitarianism renders men cold andunsympathizing; that it chills their moral feelings towardsindividuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hardconsideration of the consequences of actions, not taking into theirmoral estimate the qualities from which those actions emanate. If theassertion means that they do not allow their judgment respecting therightness or wrongness of an action to be influenced by their opinion ofthe qualities of the person who does it, this is a complaint not againstutilitarianism, but against having any standard of morality at all; forcertainly no known ethical standard decides an action to be good or badbecause it is done by a good or a bad man, still less because done by anamiable, a brave, or a benevolent man or the contrary. Theseconsiderations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but ofpersons; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistentwith the fact that there are other things which interest us in personsbesides the rightness and wrongness of their actions. The Stoics, indeed, with the paradoxical misuse of language which was part of theirsystem, and by which they strove to raise themselves above all concernabout anything but virtue, were fond of saying that he who has that haseverything; that he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king. Butno claim of this description is made for the virtuous man by theutilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians are quite aware that there are otherdesirable possessions and qualities besides virtue, and are perfectlywilling to allow to all of them their full worth. They are also awarethat a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous character, and that actions which are blameable often proceed from qualitiesentitled to praise. When this is apparent in any particular case, itmodifies their estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the agent. I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of opinion, that in the long runthe best proof of a good character is good actions; and resolutelyrefuse to consider any mental disposition as good, of which thepredominant tendency is to produce bad conduct. This makes themunpopular with many people; but it is an unpopularity which they mustshare with every one who regards the distinction between right and wrongin a serious light; and the reproach is not one which a conscientiousutilitarian need be anxious to repel. 

If no more be meant by the objection than that many utilitarians look onthe morality of actions, as measured by the utilitarian standard, withtoo exclusive a regard, and do not lay sufficient stress upon the otherbeauties of character which go towards making a human being loveable oradmirable, this may be admitted. Utilitarians who have cultivated theirmoral feelings, but not their sympathies nor their artistic perceptions, do fall into this mistake; and so do all other moralists under the sameconditions. What can be said in excuse for other moralists is equallyavailable for them, namely, that if there is to be any error, it isbetter that it should be on that side. As a matter of fact, we mayaffirm that among utilitarians as among adherents of other systems, there is every imaginable degree of rigidity and of laxity in theapplication of their standard: some are even puritanically rigorous, while others are as indulgent as can possibly be desired by sinner or bysentimentalist. But on the whole, a doctrine which brings prominentlyforward the interest that mankind have in the repression and preventionof conduct which violates the moral law, is likely to be inferior to noother in turning the sanctions of opinion against such violations. It istrue, the question, What does violate the moral law? is one on whichthose who recognise different standards of morality are likely now andthen to differ. But difference of opinion on moral questions was notfirst introduced into the world by utilitarianism, while that doctrinedoes supply, if not always an easy, at all events a tangible andintelligible mode of deciding such differences. 

 * * * * *

It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of the commonmisapprehensions of utilitarian ethics, even those which are so obviousand gross that it might appear impossible for any person of candour andintelligence to fall into them: since persons, even of considerablemental endowments, often give themselves so little trouble to understandthe bearings of any opinion against which they entertain a prejudice, and men are in general so little conscious of this voluntary ignoranceas a defect, that the vulgarest misunderstandings of ethical doctrinesare continually met with in the deliberate writings of persons of thegreatest pretensions both to high principle and to philosophy. We notuncommonly hear the doctrine of utility inveighed against as a _godless_doctrine. If it be necessary to say anything at all against so mere anassumption, we may say that the question depends upon what idea we haveformed of the moral character of the Deity. If it be a true belief thatGod desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and thatthis was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not agodless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other. If it bemeant that utilitarianism does not recognise the revealed will of God asthe supreme law of morals, I answer, that an utilitarian who believes inthe perfect goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily believes thatwhatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals, mustfulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme degree. But othersbesides utilitarians have been of opinion that the Christian revelationwas intended, and is fitted, to inform the hearts and minds of mankindwith a spirit which should enable them to find for themselves what isright, and incline them to do it when found, rather than to tell them, except in a very general way, what it is: and that we need a doctrine ofethics, carefully followed out, to _interpret_ to us the will of God. Whether this opinion is correct or not, it is superfluous here todiscuss; since whatever aid religion, either natural or revealed, canafford to ethical investigation, is as open to the utilitarian moralistas to any other. He can use it as the testimony of God to the usefulnessor hurtfulness of any given course of action, by as good a right asothers can use it for the indication of a transcendental law, having noconnexion with usefulness or with happiness. 

Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an immoral doctrine bygiving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the popularuse of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, inthe sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means thatwhich is expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself: aswhen a minister sacrifices the interest of his country to keep himselfin place. When it means anything better than this, it means that whichis expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose, butwhich violates a rule whose observance is expedient in a much higherdegree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead of being the same thingwith the useful, is a branch of the hurtful. Thus, it would often beexpedient, for the purpose of getting over some momentary embarrassment, or attaining some object immediately useful to ourselves or others, totell a lie. But inasmuch as the cultivation in ourselves of a sensitivefeeling on the subject of veracity, is one of the most useful, and theenfeeblement of that feeling one of the most hurtful, things to whichour conduct can be instrumental; and inasmuch as any, evenunintentional, deviation from truth, does that much towards weakeningthe trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principalsupport of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of whichdoes more than any one thing that can be named to keep backcivilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness on the largestscale depends; we feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of arule of such transcendent expediency, is not expedient, and that he who, for the sake of a convenience to himself or to some other individual, does what depends on him to deprive mankind of the good, and inflictupon them the evil, involved in the greater or less reliance which theycan place in each other's word, acts the part of one of their worstenemies. Yet that even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possibleexceptions, is acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is whenthe withholding of some fact (as of information from a male-factor, orof bad news from a person dangerously ill) would preserve some one(especially a person other than oneself) from great and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in orderthat the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may havethe least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought tobe recognized, and, if possible, its limits defined; and if theprinciple of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighingthese conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out theregion within which one or the other preponderates. 

Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to replyto such objections as this--that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on thegeneral happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it isimpossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is nottime, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to readthrough the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, thatthere has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the humanspecies. During all that time mankind have been learning by experiencethe tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as wellas all the morality of life, is dependent. People talk as if thecommencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, andas if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with theproperty or life of another, he had to begin considering for the firsttime whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness. Eventhen I do not think that he would find the question very puzzling; but, at all events, the matter is now done to his hand. It is truly awhimsical supposition, that if mankind were agreed in consideringutility to be the test of morality, they would remain without anyagreement as to what is useful, and would take no measures for havingtheir notions on the subject taught to the young, and enforced by lawand opinion. There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standardwhatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoinedwith it, but on any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by this timehave acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions ontheir happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rulesof morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he hassucceeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by nomeans of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as tothe effects of actions on the general happiness, I admit, or rather, earnestly maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility, likethe precepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement, and, in a progressive state of the human mind, their improvement isperpetually going on. But to consider the rules of morality asimprovable, is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizationsentirely, and endeavour to test each individual action directly by thefirst principle, is another. It is a strange notion that theacknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admissionof secondary ones. To inform a traveller respecting the place of hisultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of landmarks anddirection-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the endand aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down tothat goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to takeone direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talkinga kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk norlisten to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues thatthe art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailorscannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rationalcreatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rationalcreatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on thecommon questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far moredifficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresightis a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we requiresubordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doingwithout them, being common to all systems, can afford no argumentagainst any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no suchsecondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained tillnow, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusionsfrom the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, asabsurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy. 

The remainder of the stock arguments against utilitarianism mostlyconsist in laying to its charge the common infirmities of human nature, and the general difficulties which embarrass conscientious persons inshaping their course through life. We are told that an utilitarian willbe apt to make his own particular case an exception to moral rules, and, when under temptation, will see an utility in the breach of a rule, greater than he will see in its observance. But is utility the onlycreed which is able to furnish us with excuses for evil doing, and meansof cheating our own conscience? They are afforded in abundance by alldoctrines which recognise as a fact in morals the existence ofconflicting considerations; which all doctrines do, that have beenbelieved by sane persons. It is not the fault of any creed, but of thecomplicated nature of human affairs, that rules of conduct cannot be soframed as to require no exceptions, and that hardly any kind of actioncan safely be laid down as either always obligatory or alwayscondemnable. There is no ethical creed which does not temper therigidity of its laws, by giving a certain latitude, under the moralresponsibility of the agent, for accommodation to peculiarities ofcircumstances; and under every creed, at the opening thus made, self-deception and dishonest casuistry get in. There exists no moralsystem under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflictingobligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both inthe theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personalconduct. They are overcome practically with greater or with less successaccording to the intellect and virtue of the individual; but it canhardly be pretended that any one will be the less qualified for dealingwith them, from possessing an ultimate standard to which conflictingrights and duties can be referred. If utility is the ultimate source ofmoral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them whentheir demands are incompatible. Though the application of the standardmay be difficult, it is better than none at all: while in other systems, the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is no commonumpire entitled to interfere between them; their claims to precedenceone over another rest on little better than sophistry, and unlessdetermined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged influence ofconsiderations of utility, afford a free scope for the action ofpersonal desires and partialities. We must remember that only in thesecases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite thatfirst principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moralobligation in which some secondary principle is not involved; and ifonly one, there can seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in themind of any person by whom the principle itself is recognized. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: The author of this essay has reason for believing himselfto be the first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He didnot invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's_Annals of the Parish_. After using it as a designation for severalyears, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anythingresembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a namefor one single opinion, not a set of opinions--to denote the recognitionof utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it--theterm supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, aconvenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution. ]

[Footnote B: An opponent, whose intellectual and moral fairness it is apleasure to acknowledge (the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davis), has objected tothis passage, saying, "Surely the rightness or wrongness of saving a manfrom drowning does depend very much upon the motive with which it isdone. Suppose that a tyrant, when his enemy jumped into the sea toescape from him, saved him from drowning simply in order that he mightinflict upon him more exquisite tortures, would it tend to clearness tospeak of that rescue as 'a morally right action?' Or suppose again, according to one of the stock illustrations of ethical inquiries, that aman betrayed a trust received from a friend, because the discharge of itwould fatally injure that friend himself or some one belonging to him, would utilitarianism compel one to call the betrayal 'a crime' as muchas if it had been done from the meanest motive?"

I submit, that he who saves another from drowning in order to kill himby torture afterwards, does not differ only in motive from him who doesthe same thing from duty or benevolence; the act itself is different. The rescue of the man is, in the case supposed, only the necessary firststep of an act far more atrocious than leaving him to drown would havebeen. Had Mr. Davis said, "The rightness or wrongness of saving a manfrom drowning does depend very much"--not upon the motive, but--"uponthe _intention_" no utilitarian would have differed from him. Mr. Davis, by an oversight too common not to be quite venial, has in this caseconfounded the very different ideas of Motive and Intention. There is nopoint which utilitarian thinkers (and Bentham pre-eminently) have takenmore pains to illustrate than this. The morality of the action dependsentirely upon the intention--that is, upon what the agent _wills to do_. But the motive, that is, the feeling which makes him will so to do, whenit makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality: though itmakes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent, especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual _disposition_--abent of character from which useful, or from which hurtful actions arelikely to arise. ]

CHAPTER III. 

OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY. 

The question is often asked, and properly so, in regard to any supposedmoral standard--What is its sanction? what are the motives to obey it?or more specifically, what is the source of its obligation? whence doesit derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of moral philosophyto provide the answer to this question; which, though frequentlyassuming the shape of an objection to the utilitarian morality, as if ithad some special applicability to that above others, really arises inregard to all standards. It arises, in fact, whenever a person is calledon to adopt a standard or refer morality to any basis on which he hasnot been accustomed to rest it. For the customary morality, that whicheducation and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which presentsitself to the mind with the feeling of being _in itself_ obligatory; andwhen a person is asked to believe that this morality _derives_ itsobligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrownthe same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox; the supposedcorollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem;the superstructure seems to stand better without, than with, what isrepresented as its foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I ambound not to rob or murder, betray or deceive; but why am I bound topromote the general happiness? If my own happiness lies in somethingelse, why may I not give that the preference?

If the view adopted by the utilitarian philosophy of the nature of themoral sense be correct, this difficulty will always present itself, until the influences which form moral character have taken the same holdof the principle which they have taken of some of theconsequences--until, by the improvement of education, the feeling ofunity with our fellow creatures shall be (what it cannot be doubted thatChrist intended it to be) as deeply rooted in our character, and to ourown consciousness as completely a part of our nature, as the horror ofcrime is in an ordinarily well-brought-up young person. In the meantime, however, the difficulty has no peculiar application to thedoctrine of utility, but is inherent in every attempt to analysemorality and reduce it to principles; which, unless the principle isalready in men's minds invested with as much sacredness as any of itsapplications, always seems to divest them of a part of their sanctity. 

The principle of utility either has, or there is no reason why it mightnot have, all the sanctions which belong to any other system of morals. Those sanctions are either external or internal. Of the externalsanctions it is not necessary to speak at any length. They are, the hopeof favour and the fear of displeasure from our fellow creatures or fromthe Ruler of the Universe, along with whatever we may have of sympathyor affection for them or of love and awe of Him, inclining us to do Hiswill independently of selfish consequences. There is evidently noreason why all these motives for observance should not attach themselvesto the utilitarian morality, as completely and as powerfully as to anyother. Indeed, those of them which refer to our fellow creatures aresure to do so, in proportion to the amount of general intelligence; forwhether there be any other ground of moral obligation than the generalhappiness or not, men do desire happiness; and however imperfect may betheir own practice, they desire and commend all conduct in otherstowards themselves, by which they think their happiness is promoted. With regard to the religious motive, if men believe, as most profess todo, in the goodness of God, those who think that conduciveness to thegeneral happiness is the essence, or even only the criterion, of good, must necessarily believe that it is also that which God approves. Thewhole force therefore of external reward and punishment, whetherphysical or moral, and whether proceeding from God or from our fellowmen, together with all that the capacities of human nature admit, ofdisinterested devotion to either, become available to enforce theutilitarian morality, in proportion as that morality is recognized; andthe more powerfully, the more the appliances of education and generalcultivation are bent to the purpose. 

So far as to external sanctions. The internal sanction of duty, whateverour standard of duty may be, is one and the same--a feeling in our ownmind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more seriouscases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility. This feeling, whendisinterested, and connecting itself with the pure idea of duty, andnot with some particular form of it, or with any of the merely accessorycircumstances, is the essence of Conscience; though in that complexphenomenon as it actually exists, the simple fact is in general allencrusted over with collateral associations, derived from sympathy, fromlove, and still more from fear; from all the forms of religious feeling;from the recollections of childhood and of all our past life; fromself-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally evenself-abasement. This extreme complication is, I apprehend, the origin ofthe sort of mystical character which, by a tendency of the human mind ofwhich there are many other examples, is apt to be attributed to the ideaof moral obligation, and which leads people to believe that the ideacannot possibly attach itself to any other objects than those which, bya supposed mysterious law, are found in our present experience to exciteit. Its binding force, however, consists in the existence of a mass offeeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates ourstandard of right, and which, if we do nevertheless violate thatstandard, will probably have to be encountered afterwards in the form ofremorse. Whatever theory we have of the nature or origin of conscience, this is what essentially constitutes it. 

The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motivesapart) being a subjective feeling in our own minds, I see nothingembarrassing to those whose standard is utility, in the question, whatis the sanction of that particular standard? We may answer, the same asof all other moral standards--the conscientious feelings of mankind. Undoubtedly this sanction has no binding efficacy on those who do notpossess the feelings it appeals to; but neither will these persons bemore obedient to any other moral principle than to the utilitarian one. On them morality of any kind has no hold but through the externalsanctions. Meanwhile the feelings exist, a feet in human nature, thereality of which, and the great power with which they are capable ofacting on those in whom they have been duly cultivated, are proved byexperience. No reason has ever been shown why they may not be cultivatedto as great intensity in connection with the utilitarian, as with anyother rule of morals. 

There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a person who sees inmoral obligation a transcendental fact, an objective reality belongingto the province of "Things in themselves, " is likely to be more obedientto it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective, having itsseat in human consciousness only. But whatever a person's opinion may beon this point of Ontology, the force he is really urged by is his ownsubjective feeling, and is exactly measured by its strength. No one'sbelief that Duty is an objective reality is stronger than the beliefthat God is so; yet the belief in God, apart from the expectation ofactual reward and punishment, only operates on conduct through, and inproportion to, the subjective religious feeling. The sanction, so far asit is disinterested, is always in the mind itself; and the notion, therefore, of the transcendental moralists must be, that this sanctionwill not exist _in_ the mind unless it is believed to have its root outof the mind; and that if a person is able to say to himself, That whichis restraining me, and which is called my conscience, is only a feelingin my own mind, he may possibly draw the conclusion that when thefeeling ceases the obligation ceases, and that if he find the feelinginconvenient, he may disregard it, and endeavour to get rid of it. Butis this danger confined to the utilitarian morality? Does the beliefthat moral obligation has its seat outside the mind make the feeling ofit too strong to be got rid of? The fact is so far otherwise, that allmoralists admit and lament the ease with which, in the generality ofminds, conscience can be silenced or stifled. The question, Need I obeymy conscience? is quite as often put to themselves by persons who neverheard of the principle of utility, as by its adherents. Those whoseconscientious feelings are so weak as to allow of their asking thisquestion, if they answer it affirmatively, will not do so because theybelieve in the transcendental theory, but because of the externalsanctions. 

It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to decide whether thefeeling of duty is innate or implanted. Assuming it to be innate, it isan open question to what objects it naturally attaches itself; for thephilosophic supporters of that theory are now agreed that the intuitiveperception is of principles of morality, and not of the details. Ifthere be anything innate in the matter, I see no reason why the feelingwhich is innate should not be that of regard to the pleasures and painsof others. If there is any principle of morals which is intuitivelyobligatory, I should say it must be that. If so, the intuitive ethicswould coincide with the utilitarian, and there would be no furtherquarrel between them. Even as it is, the intuitive moralists, thoughthey believe that there are other intuitive moral obligations, doalready believe this to be one; for they unanimously hold that a largeportion of morality turns upon the consideration due to the interests ofour fellow creatures. Therefore, if the belief in the transcendentalorigin of moral obligation gives any additional efficacy to the internalsanction, it appears to me that the utilitarian principle has alreadythe benefit of it. 

On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are notinnate, but acquired, they are not for that reason the less natural. Itis natural to man to speak, to reason, to build cities, to cultivate theground, though these are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are notindeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being hi any perceptibledegree present in all of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted bythose who believe the most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the other acquired capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain small degree, of springing up spontaneously; andsusceptible of being brought by cultivation to a high degree ofdevelopment. Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a sufficient use ofthe external sanctions and of the force of early impressions, of beingcultivated in almost any direction: so that there is hardly anything soabsurd or so mischievous that it may not, by means of these influences, be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience. To doubt that the same potency might be given by the same means to theprinciple of utility, even if it had no foundation in human nature, would be flying in the face of all experience. 

But moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation, whenintellectual culture goes on, yield by degrees to the dissolving forceof analysis: and if the feeling of duty, when associated with utility, would appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading department ofour nature, no powerful class of sentiments, with which that associationwould harmonize, which would make us feel it congenial, and incline usnot only to foster it in others (for which we have abundant interestedmotives), but also to cherish it in ourselves; if there were not, inshort, a natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality, it mightwell happen that this association also, even after it had been implantedby education, might be analysed away. 

But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment; and this it iswhich, when once the general happiness is recognized as the ethicalstandard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality. Thisfirm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire tobe in unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a powerfulprinciple in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to becomestronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences ofadvancing civilization. The social state is at once so natural, sonecessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusualcircumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he neverconceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and thisassociation is riveted more and more, as mankind are further removedfrom the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, whichis essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparablepart of every person's conception of the state of things which he isborn into, and which is the destiny of a human being. Now, societybetween human beings, except in the relation of master and slave, ismanifestly impossible on any other footing than that the interests ofall are to be consulted. Society between equals can only exist on theunderstanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally. Andsince in all states of civilization, every person, except an absolutemonarch, has equals, every one is obliged to live on these terms withsomebody; and in every age some advance is made towards a state in whichit will be impossible to live permanently on other terms with anybody. In this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible to them astate of total disregard of other people's interests. They are under anecessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from all thegrosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection. ) living in astate of constant protest against them. They are also familiar with thefact of co-operating with others, and proposing to themselves acollective, not an individual, interest, as the aim (at least for thetime being) of their actions. So long as they are co-operating, theirends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporaryfeeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not onlydoes all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth ofsociety, give to each individual a stronger personal interest inpractically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him toidentify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least withan ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, asthough instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who _ofcourse_ pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thingnaturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physicalconditions of our existence. Now, whatever amount of this feeling aperson has, he is urged by the strongest motives both of interest and ofsympathy to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of his power encourage itin others; and even if he has none of it himself, he is as greatlyinterested as any one else that others should have it. Consequently, thesmallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of and nourished by thecontagion of sympathy and the influences of education; and a completeweb of corroborative association is woven round it, by the powerfulagency of the external sanctions. This mode of conceiving ourselves andhuman life, as civilization goes on, is felt to be more and morenatural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so, byremoving the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling thoseinequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing towhich there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is stillpracticable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, theinfluences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate ineach individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, ifperfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficialcondition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, andthe whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion, directed, as it once was in the case of religion, to make every persongrow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession andby the practice of it, I think that no one, who can realize thisconception, will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of theultimate sanction for the Happiness morality. To any ethical student whofinds the realization difficult, I recommend, as a means of facilitatingit, the second of M. Comte's two principal works, the _Système dePolitique Positive_. I entertain the strongest objections to the systemof politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it hassuperabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service ofhumanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both thephysical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it takehold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling, and action, in amanner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised by any religionmay be but a type and foretaste; and of which the danger is, not that itshould be insufficient, but that it should be so excessive as tointerfere unduly with human freedom and individuality. 

Neither is it necessary to the feeling which constitutes the bindingforce of the utilitarian morality on those who recognize it, to wait forthose social influences which would make its obligation felt by mankindat large. In the comparatively early state of human advancement in whichwe now live, a person cannot indeed feel that entireness of sympathywith all others, which would make any real discordance in the generaldirection of their conduct in life impossible; but already a person inwhom the social feeling is at all developed, cannot bring himself tothink of the rest of his fellow creatures as struggling rivals with himfor the means of happiness, whom he must desire to see defeated in theirobject in order that he may succeed in his. The deeply-rooted conceptionwhich every individual even now has of himself as a social being, tendsto make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should beharmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures. If differences of opinion and of mental culture make it impossible forhim to share many of their actual feelings-perhaps make him denounce anddefy those feelings-he still needs to be conscious that his real aim andtheirs do not conflict; that he is not opposing himself to what theyreally wish for, namely, their own good, but is, on the contrary, promoting it. This feeling in most individuals is much inferior instrength to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. Butto those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a naturalfeeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition ofeducation, or a law despotically imposed by the power of society, but asan attribute which it would not be well for them to be without. Thisconviction is the ultimate sanction of the greatest-happiness morality. This it is which makes any mind, of well-developed feelings, work with, and not against, the outward motives to care for others, afforded bywhat I have called the external sanctions; and when those sanctions arewanting, or act in an opposite direction, constitutes in itself apowerful internal binding force, in proportion to the sensitiveness andthoughtfulness of the character; since few but those whose mind is amoral blank, could bear to lay out their course of life on the plan ofpaying no regard to others except so far as their own private interestcompels. 

CHAPTER IV. 

OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS SUSCEPTIBLE. 

It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do notadmit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapableof proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to the firstpremises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But theformer, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal tothe faculties which judge of fact--namely, our senses, and our internalconsciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same faculties on questionsof practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cognizance taken of them?

Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what things aredesirable. The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, andthe only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being onlydesirable as means to that end. What ought to be required of thisdoctrine--what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine shouldfulfil--to make good its claim to be believed?

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is thatpeople actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is thatpeople hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In likemanner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce thatanything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the endwhich the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theoryand in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convinceany person that it was so. No reason can be given why the generalhappiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believesit to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being afact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but allwhich it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that eachperson's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has madeout its title as _one_ of the ends of conduct, and consequently one ofthe criteria of morality. 

But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to be the sole criterion. To do that, it would seem, by the same rule, necessary to show, not onlythat people desire happiness, but that they never desire anything else. Now it is palpable that they do desire things which, in common language, are decidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire, for example, virtue, and the absence of vice, no less really than pleasure and theabsence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as universal, but it is asauthentic a fact, as the desire of happiness. And hence the opponents ofthe utilitarian standard deem that they have a right to infer that thereare other ends of human action besides happiness, and that happiness isnot the standard of approbation and disapprobation. 

But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, ormaintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. Itmaintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to bedesired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion ofutilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue ismade virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions anddispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end thanvirtue; yet this being granted, and it having been decided, fromconsiderations of this description, what _is_ virtuous, they not onlyplace virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means tothe ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact thepossibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, withoutlooking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a rightstate, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state mostconducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in thismanner--as a thing desirable in itself, even although, in the individualinstance, it should not produce those other desirable consequences whichit tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be virtue. This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from theHappiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very various, andeach of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered asswelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not mean that anygiven pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given exemption frompain, as for example health, are to be looked upon as means to acollective something termed happiness, and to be desired on thataccount. They are desired and desirable in and for themselves; besidesbeing means, they are a part of the end. Virtue, according to theutilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love itdisinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as ameans to happiness, but as a part of their happiness. 

To illustrate this farther, we may remember that virtue is not the onlything, originally a means, and which if it were not a means to anythingelse, would be and remain indifferent, but which by association withwhat it is a means to, comes to be desired for itself, and that too withthe utmost intensity. What, for example, shall we say of the love ofmoney? There is nothing originally more desirable about money than aboutany heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is solely that of the thingswhich it will buy; the desires for other things than itself, which it isa means of gratifying. Yet the love of money is not only one of thestrongest moving forces of human life, but money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often strongerthan the desire to use it, and goes on increasing when all the desireswhich point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off. It may be then said truly, that money is desired not for the sake of anend, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it hascome to be itself a principal ingredient of the individual's conceptionof happiness. The same may be said of the majority of the great objectsof human life--power, for example, or fame; except that to each of thesethere is a certain amount of immediate pleasure annexed, which has atleast the semblance of being naturally inherent in them; a thing whichcannot be said of money. Still, however, the strongest naturalattraction, both of power and of fame, is the immense aid they give tothe attainment of our other wishes; and it is the strong associationthus generated between them and all our objects of desire, which givesto the direct desire of them the intensity it often assumes, so as insome characters to surpass in strength all other desires. In these casesthe means have become a part of the end, and a more important part of itthan any of the things which they are means to. What was once desired asan instrument for the attainment of happiness, has come to be desiredfor its own sake. In being desired for its own sake it is, however, desired as part of happiness. The person is made, or thinks he would bemade, happy by its mere possession; and is made unhappy by failure toobtain it. The desire of it is not a different thing from the desire ofhappiness, any more than the love of music, or the desire of health. They are included in happiness. They are some of the elements of whichthe desire of happiness is made up. Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a concrete whole; and these are some of its parts. And theutilitarian standard sanctions and approves their being so. Life wouldbe a poor thing, very ill provided with sources of happiness, if therewere not this provision of nature, by which things originallyindifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated with, thesatisfaction of our primitive desires, become in themselves sources ofpleasure more valuable than the primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space of human existence that they are capable of covering, andeven in intensity. Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is agood of this description. There was no original desire of it, or motiveto it, save its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protectionfrom pain. But through the association thus formed, it may be felt agood in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as any othergood; and with this difference between it and the love of money, ofpower, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render theindividual noxious to the other members of the society to which hebelongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so much a blessing tothem as the cultivation of the disinterested, love of virtue. Andconsequently, the utilitarian standard, while it tolerates and approvesthose other acquired desires, up to the point beyond which they would bemore injurious to the general happiness than promotive of it, enjoinsand requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greateststrength possible, as being above all things important to the generalhappiness. 

It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in realitynothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than asa means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, isdesired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itselfuntil it has become so. Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desireit either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because theconsciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both reasons united;as in truth the pleasure and pain seldom exist separately, but almostalways together, the same person feeling pleasure in the degree ofvirtue attained, and pain in not having attained more. If one of thesegave him no pleasure, and the other no pain, he would not love or desirevirtue, or would desire it only for the other benefits which it mightproduce to himself or to persons whom he cared for. 

We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what sort of proof theprinciple of utility is susceptible. If the opinion which I have nowstated is psychologically true--if human nature is so constituted as todesire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means ofhappiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, thatthese are the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end ofhuman action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of allhuman conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be thecriterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole. 

And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind do desirenothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of which theabsence is a pain; we have evidently arrived at a question of fact andexperience, dependent, like all similar questions, upon evidence. It canonly be determined by practised self-consciousness and self-observation, assisted by observation of others. I believe that these sources ofevidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desiring a thing andfinding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, arephenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the samephenomenon; in strictness of language, two different modes of naming thesame psychological fact: that to think of an object as desirable (unlessfor the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, areone and the same thing; and that to desire anything, except inproportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysicalimpossibility. 

So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it will hardly bedisputed: and the objection made will be, not that desire can possiblybe directed to anything ultimately except pleasure and exemption frompain, but that the will is a different thing from desire; that a personof confirmed virtue, or any other person whose purposes are fixed, carries out his purposes without any thought of the pleasure he has incontemplating them, or expects to derive from their fulfilment; andpersists in acting on them, even though these pleasures are muchdiminished, by changes in his character or decay of his passivesensibilities, or are outweighed by the pains which the pursuit of thepurposes may bring upon him. All this I fully admit, and have stated itelsewhere, as positively and emphatically as any one. Will, the activephenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of passivesensibility, and though originally an offshoot from it, may in time takeroot and detach itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in thecase of an habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because wedesire it, we often desire it only because we will it. This, however, isbut an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowiseconfined to the case of virtuous actions. Many indifferent things, whichmen originally did from a motive of some sort, they continue to do fromhabit. Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the consciousness comingonly after the action: at other times with conscious volition, butvolition which has become habitual, and is put into operation by theforce of habit, in opposition perhaps to the deliberate preference, asoften happens with those who have contracted habits of vicious orhurtful indulgence. Third and last comes the case in which the habitualact of will in the individual instance is not in contradiction to thegeneral intention prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; asin the case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursuedeliberately and consistently any determinate end. The distinctionbetween will and desire thus understood, is an authentic and highlyimportant psychological fact; but the fact consists solely in this--thatwill, like all other parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit, and that we may will from habit what we no longer desire for itself, ordesire only because we will it. It is not the less true that will, inthe beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including in that termthe repelling influence of pain as well as the attractive one ofpleasure. Let us take into consideration, no longer the person who has aconfirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous will is stillfeeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to be fully relied on; bywhat means can it be strengthened? How can the will to be virtuous, where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened?Only by making the person _desire_ virtue--by making him think of it ina pleasurable light, or of its absence in a painful one. It is byassociating the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong with pain, or by eliciting and impressing and bringing home to the person'sexperience the pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain in theother, that it is possible to call forth that will to be virtuous, which, when confirmed, acts without any thought of either pleasure orpain. Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of itsparent only to come under that of habit. That which is the result ofhabit affords no presumption of being intrinsically good; and therewould be no reason for wishing that the purpose of virtue should becomeindependent of pleasure and pain, were it not that the influence of thepleasurable and painful associations which prompt to virtue is notsufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of action until ithas acquired the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habitis the only thing which imparts certainty; and it is because of theimportance to others of being able to rely absolutely on one's feelingsand conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's own, that thewill to do right ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence. In other words, this state of the will is a means to good, notintrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothingis a good to human beings but in so far as it is either itselfpleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain. 

But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is proved. Whether it is so or not, must now be left to the consideration of thethoughtful reader. 

CHAPTER V. 

ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY. 

In all ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to thereception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion ofright and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of Justice, The powerfulsentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that word recalls witha rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct, have seemed to themajority of thinkers to point to an inherent quality in things; to showthat the Just must have an existence in Nature as somethingabsolute-generically distinct from every variety of the Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it, though (as is commonly acknowledged) never, inthe long run, disjoined from it in fact. 

In the case of this, as of our other moral sentiments, there is nonecessary connexion between the question of its origin, and that of itsbinding force. That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does notnecessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice mightbe a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts, to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. If we haveintellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as wellas animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there isno necessity that the former should be more infallible in their spherethan the latter in theirs: it may as well happen that wrong judgmentsare occasionally suggested by those, as wrong actions by these. Butthough it is one thing to believe that we have natural feelings ofjustice, and another to acknowledge them as an ultimate criterion ofconduct, these two opinions are very closely connected in point of fact. Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality. Our present object is to determine whether the reality, to which thefeeling of justice corresponds, is one which needs any such specialrevelation; whether the justice or injustice of an action is a thingintrinsically peculiar, and distinct from all its other qualities, oronly a combination of certain of those qualities, presented under apeculiar aspect. For the purpose of this inquiry, it is practicallyimportant to consider whether the feeling itself, of justice andinjustice, is _sui generis_ like our sensations of colour and taste, ora derivative feeling, formed by a combination of others. And this it isthe more essential to examine, as people are in general willing enoughto allow, that objectively the dictates of justice coincide with a partof the field of General Expediency; but inasmuch as the subjectivemental feeling of Justice is different from that which commonly attachesto simple expediency, and, except in extreme cases of the latter, is farmore imperative in its demands, people find it difficult to see, inJustice, only a particular kind or branch of general utility, and thinkthat its superior binding force requires a totally different origin. 

To throw light upon this question, it is necessary to attempt toascertain what is the distinguishing character of justice, or ofinjustice: what is the quality, or whether there is any quality, attributed in common to all modes of conduct designated as unjust (forjustice, like many other moral attributes, is best defined by itsopposite), and distinguishing them from such modes of conduct as aredisapproved, but without having that particular epithet ofdisapprobation applied to them. If, in everything which men areaccustomed to characterize as just or unjust, some one common attributeor collection of attributes is always present, we may judge whether thisparticular attribute or combination of attributes would be capable ofgathering round it a sentiment of that peculiar character and intensityby virtue of the general laws of our emotional constitution, or whetherthe sentiment is inexplicable, and requires to be regarded as a specialprovision of Nature. If we find the former to be the case, we shall, inresolving this question, have resolved also the main problem: if thelatter, we shall have to seek for some other mode of investigating it. 

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To find the common attributes of a variety of objects, it is necessaryto begin, by surveying the objects themselves in the concrete. Let ustherefore advert successively to the various modes of action, andarrangements of human affairs, which are classed, by universal or widelyspread opinion, as Just or as Unjust. The things well known to excitethe sentiments associated with those names, are of a very multifariouscharacter. I shall pass them rapidly in review, without studying anyparticular arrangement. 

In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to deprive any oneof his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which belongsto him by law. Here, therefore, is one instance of the application ofthe terms just and unjust in a perfectly definite sense, namely, that itis just to respect, unjust to violate, the _legal rights_ of any one. But this judgment admits of several exceptions, arising from the otherforms in which the notions of justice and injustice present themselves. For example, the person who suffers the deprivation may (as the phraseis) have _forfeited_ the rights which he is so deprived of: a case towhich we shall return presently. But also, Secondly; the legal rights of which he is deprived, may be rights which_ought_ not to have belonged to him; in other words, the law whichconfers on him these rights, may be a bad law. When it is so, or when(which is the same thing for our purpose) it is supposed to be so, opinions will differ as to the justice or injustice of infringing it. Some maintain that no law, however bad, ought to be disobeyed by anindividual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, shouldonly be shown in endeavouring to get it altered by competent authority. This opinion (which condemns many of the most illustrious benefactors ofmankind, and would often protect pernicious institutions against theonly weapons which, in the state of things existing at the time, haveany chance of succeeding against them) is defended, by those who holdit, on grounds of expediency; principally on that of the importance, tothe common interest of mankind, of maintaining inviolate the sentimentof submission to law. Other persons, again, hold the directly contraryopinion, that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it be not judged to be unjust, but only inexpedient; whileothers would confine the licence of disobedience to the case of unjustlaws: but again, some say, that all laws which are inexpedient areunjust; since every law imposes some restriction on the natural libertyof mankind, which restriction is an injustice, unless legitimated bytending to their good. Among these diversities of opinion, it seems tobe universally admitted that there may be unjust laws, and that law, consequently, is not the ultimate criterion of justice, but may give toone person a benefit, or impose on another an evil, which justicecondemns. When, however, a law is thought to be unjust, it seems alwaysto be regarded as being so in the same way in which a breach of law isunjust, namely, by infringing somebody's right; which, as it cannot inthis case be a legal right, receives a different appellation, and iscalled a moral right. We may say, therefore, that a second case ofinjustice consists in taking or withholding from any person that towhich he has a _moral right_. 

Thirdly, it is universally considered just that each person shouldobtain that (whether good or evil) which he _deserves_; and unjust thathe should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which he doesnot deserve. This is, perhaps, the clearest and most emphatic form inwhich the idea of justice is conceived by the general mind. As itinvolves the notion of desert, the question arises, what constitutesdesert? Speaking in a general way, a person is understood to deservegood if he does right, evil if he does wrong; and in a more particularsense, to deserve good from those to whom he does or has done good, andevil from those to whom he does or has done evil. The precept ofreturning good for evil has never been regarded as a case of thefulfilment of justice, but as one in which the claims of justice arewaived, in obedience to other considerations. 

Fourthly, it is confessedly unjust to _break faith_ with any one: toviolate an engagement, either express or implied, or disappointexpectations raised by our own conduct, at least if we have raised thoseexpectations knowingly and voluntarily. Like the other obligations ofjustice already spoken of, this one is not regarded as absolute, but ascapable of being overruled by a stronger obligation of justice on theother side; or by such conduct on the part of the person concerned as isdeemed to absolve us from our obligation to him, and to constitute a_forfeiture_ of the benefit which he has been led to expect. 

Fifthly, it is, by universal admission, inconsistent with justice to be_partial_; to show favour or preference to one person over another, inmatters to which favour and preference do not properly apply. Impartiality, however, does not seem to be regarded as a duty in itself, but rather as instrumental to some other duty; for it is admitted thatfavour and preference are not always censurable, and indeed the cases inwhich they are condemned are rather the exception than the rule. Aperson would be more likely to be blamed than applauded for giving hisfamily or friends no superiority in good offices over strangers, when hecould do so without violating any other duty; and no one thinks itunjust to seek one person in preference to another as a friend, connexion, or companion. Impartiality where rights are concerned is ofcourse obligatory, but this is involved in the more general obligationof giving to every one his right. A tribunal, for example, must beimpartial, because it is bound to award, without regard to any otherconsideration, a disputed object to the one of two parties who has theright to it. There are other cases in which impartiality means, beingsolely influenced by desert; as with those who, in the capacity ofjudges, preceptors, or parents, administer reward and punishment assuch. There are cases, again, in which it means, being solely influencedby consideration for the public interest; as in making a selection amongcandidates for a Government employment. Impartiality, in short, as anobligation of justice, may be said to mean, being exclusively influencedby the considerations which it is supposed ought to influence theparticular case in hand; and resisting the solicitation of any motiveswhich prompt to conduct different from what those considerations woulddictate. 

Nearly allied to the idea of impartiality, is that of _equality_; whichoften enters as a component part both into the conception of justice andinto the practice of it, and, in the eyes of many persons, constitutesits essence. But in this, still more than in any other case, the notionof justice varies in different persons, and always conforms in itsvariations to their notion of utility. Each person maintains thatequality is the dictate of justice, except where he thinks thatexpediency requires inequality. The justice of giving equal protectionto the rights of all, is maintained by those who support the mostoutrageous inequality in the rights themselves. Even in slave countriesit is theoretically admitted that the rights of the slave, such as theyare, ought to be as sacred as those of the master; and that a tribunalwhich fails to enforce them with equal strictness is wanting in justice;while, at the same time, institutions which leave to the slave scarcelyany rights to enforce, are not deemed unjust, because they are notdeemed inexpedient. Those who think that utility requires distinctionsof rank, do not consider it unjust that riches and social privilegesshould be unequally dispensed; but those who think this inequalityinexpedient, think it unjust also. Whoever thinks that government isnecessary, sees no injustice in as much inequality as is constituted bygiving to the magistrate powers not granted to other people. Even amongthose who hold levelling doctrines, there are as many questions ofjustice as there are differences of opinion about expediency. SomeCommunists consider it unjust that the produce of the labour of thecommunity should be shared on any other principle than that of exactequality; others think it just that those should receive most whoseneeds are greatest; while others hold that those who work harder, or whoproduce more, or whose services are more valuable to the community, mayjustly claim a larger quota in the division of the produce. And thesense of natural justice may be plausibly appealed to in behalf of everyone of these opinions. 

Among so many diverse applications of the term Justice, which yet is notregarded as ambiguous, it is a matter of some difficulty to seize themental link which holds them together, and on which the moral sentimentadhering to the term essentially depends. Perhaps, in thisembarrassment, some help may be derived from the history of the word, asindicated by its etymology. 

In most, if not in all languages, the etymology of the word whichcorresponds to Just, points to an origin connected either with positivelaw, or with that which was in most cases the primitive form oflaw-authoritative custom. _Justum_ is a form of _jussum_, that which hasbeen ordered. _Jus_ is of the same origin. _Dichanou_ comes from_dichae_, of which the principal meaning, at least in the historicalages of Greece, was a suit at law. Originally, indeed, it meant only themode or _manner_ of doing things, but it early came to mean the_prescribed_ manner; that which the recognized authorities, patriarchal, judicial, or political, would enforce. _Recht_, from which came _right_and _righteous_, is synonymous with law. The original meaning, indeed, of _recht_ did not point to law, but to physical straightness; as_wrong_ and its Latin equivalents meant twisted or tortuous; and fromthis it is argued that right did not originally mean law, but on thecontrary law meant right. But however this may be, the fact that _recht_and _droit_ became restricted in their meaning to positive law, althoughmuch which is not required by law is equally necessary to moralstraightness or rectitude, is as significant of the original characterof moral ideas as if the derivation had been the reverse way. The courtsof justice, the administration of justice, are the courts and theadministration of law. _La justice_, in French, is the established termfor judicature. There can, I think, be no doubt that the _idée mère_, the primitive element, in the formation of the notion of justice, wasconformity to law. It constituted the entire idea among the Hebrews, upto the birth of Christianity; as might be expected in the case of apeople whose laws attempted to embrace all subjects on which preceptswere required, and who believed those laws to be a direct emanation fromthe Supreme Being. But other nations, and in particular the Greeks andRomans, who knew that their laws had been made originally, and stillcontinued to be made, by men, were not afraid to admit that those menmight make bad laws; might do, by law, the same things, and from thesame motives, which, if done by individuals without the sanction of law, would be called unjust. And hence the sentiment of injustice came to beattached, not to all violations of law, but only to violations of suchlaws as _ought_ to exist, including such as ought to exist but do not;and to laws themselves, if supposed to be contrary to what ought to belaw. In this manner the idea of law and of its injunctions was stillpredominant in the notion of justice, even when the laws actually inforce ceased to be accepted as the standard of it. 

It is true that mankind consider the idea of justice and its obligationsas applicable to many things which neither are, nor is it desired thatthey should be, regulated by law. Nobody desires that laws shouldinterfere with the whole detail of private life; yet every one allowsthat in all daily conduct a person may and does show himself to beeither just or unjust. But even here, the idea of the breach of whatought to be law, still lingers in a modified shape. It would always giveus pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of fitness, that acts whichwe deem unjust should be punished, though we do not always think itexpedient that this should be done by the tribunals. We forego thatgratification on account of incidental inconveniences. We should be gladto see just conduct enforced and injustice repressed, even in theminutest details, if we were not, with reason, afraid of trusting themagistrate with so unlimited an amount of power over individuals. Whenwe think that a person is bound in justice to do a thing, it is anordinary form of language to say, that he ought to be compelled to doit. We should be gratified to see the obligation enforced by anybody whohad the power. If we see that its enforcement by law would beinexpedient, we lament the impossibility, we consider the impunity givento injustice as an evil, and strive to make amends for it by bringing astrong expression of our own and the public disapprobation to bear uponthe offender. Thus the idea of legal constraint is still the generatingidea of the notion of justice, though undergoing several transformationsbefore that notion, as it exists in an advanced state of society, becomes complete. 

The above is, I think, a true account, as far as it goes, of the originand progressive growth of the idea of justice. But we must observe, thatit contains, as yet, nothing to distinguish that obligation from moralobligation in general. For the truth is, that the idea of penalsanction, which is the essence of law, enters not only into theconception of injustice, but into that of any kind of wrong. We do notcall anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to bepunished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by theopinion of his fellow creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches ofhis own conscience. This seems the real turning point of the distinctionbetween morality and simple expediency. It is a part of the notion ofDuty in every one of its forms, that a person may rightfully becompelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be _exacted_ from aperson, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it might be exactedfrom him, we do not call it his duty. Reasons of prudence, or theinterest of other people, may militate against actually exacting it; butthe person himself, it is clearly understood, would not be entitled tocomplain. There are other things, on the contrary, which we wish thatpeople should do, which we like or admire them for doing, perhapsdislike or despise them for not doing, but yet admit that they are notbound to do; it is not a case of moral obligation; we do not blame them, that is, we do not think that they are proper objects of punishment. Howwe come by these ideas of deserving and not deserving punishment, willappear, perhaps, in the sequel; but I think there is no doubt that thisdistinction lies at the bottom of the notions of right and wrong; thatwe call any conduct wrong, or employ instead, some other term of dislikeor disparagement, according as we think that the person ought, or oughtnot, to be punished for it; and we say that it would be right to do soand so, or merely that it would be desirable or laudable, according aswe would wish to see the person whom it concerns, compelled or onlypersuaded and exhorted, to act in that manner. [C]

This, therefore, being the characteristic difference which marks off, not justice, but morality in general, from the remaining provinces ofExpediency and Worthiness; the character is still to be sought whichdistinguishes justice from other branches of morality. Now it is knownthat ethical writers divide moral duties into two classes, denoted bythe ill-chosen expressions, duties of perfect and of imperfectobligation; the latter being those in which, though the act isobligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to ourchoice; as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeedbound to practise, but not towards any definite person, nor at anyprescribed time. In the more precise language of philosophic jurists, duties of perfect obligation are those duties in virtue of which acorrelative right resides in some person or persons; duties of imperfectobligation are those moral obligations which do not give birth to anyright. I think it will be found that this distinction exactly coincideswith that which exists between justice and the other obligations ofmorality. In our survey of the various popular acceptations of justice, the term appeared generally to involve the idea of a personal right--aclaim on the part of one or more individuals, like that which the lawgives when it confers a proprietary or other legal right. Whether theinjustice consists in depriving a person of a possession, or in breakingfaith with him, or in treating him worse than he deserves, or worse thanother people who have no greater claims, in each case the suppositionimplies two things--a wrong done, and some assignable person who iswronged. Injustice may also be done by treating a person better thanothers; but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who are alsoassignable persons. It seems to me that this feature in the case--aright in some person, correlative to the moral obligation--constitutesthe specific difference between justice, and generosity or beneficence. Justice implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrongnot to do, but which some individual person can claim from us as hismoral right. No one has a moral right to our generosity or beneficence, because we are not morally bound to practise those virtues towards anygiven individual. And it will be found, with respect to this as withrespect to every correct definition, that the instances which seem toconflict with it are those which most confirm it. For if a moralistattempts, as some have done, to make out that mankind generally, thoughnot any given individual, have a right to all the good we can do them, he at once, by that thesis, includes generosity and beneficence withinthe category of justice. He is obliged to say, that our utmost exertionsare due to our fellow creatures, thus assimilating them to a debt; orthat nothing less can be a sufficient _return_ for what society does forus, thus classing the case as one of gratitude; both of which areacknowledged cases of justice. Wherever there is a right, the case isone of justice, and not of the virtue of beneficence: and whoever doesnot place the distinction between justice and morality in general wherewe have now placed it, will be found to make no distinction between themat all, but to merge all morality in justice. 

Having thus endeavoured to determine the distinctive elements whichenter into the composition of the idea of justice, we are ready to enteron the inquiry, whether the feeling, which accompanies the idea, isattached to it by a special dispensation of nature, or whether it couldhave grown up, by any known laws, out of the idea itself; and inparticular, whether it can have originated in considerations of generalexpediency. 

I conceive that the sentiment itself does not arise from anything whichwould commonly, or correctly, be termed an idea of expediency; but that, though the sentiment does not, whatever is moral in it does. 

We have seen that the two essential ingredients in the sentiment ofjustice are, the desire to punish a person who has done harm, and theknowledge or belief that there is some definite individual orindividuals to whom harm has been done. 

Now it appears to me, that the desire to punish a person who has doneharm to some individual, is a spontaneous outgrowth from two sentiments, both in the highest degree natural, and which either are or resembleinstincts; the impulse of self-defence, and the feeling of sympathy. 

It is natural to resent, and to repel or retaliate, any harm done orattempted against ourselves, or against those with whom we sympathize. The origin of this sentiment it is not necessary here to discuss. Whether it be an instinct or a result of intelligence, it is, we know, common to all animal nature; for every animal tries to hurt those whohave hurt, or who it thinks are about to hurt, itself or its young. Human beings, on this point, only differ from other animals in twoparticulars. First, in being capable of sympathizing, not solely withtheir offspring, or, like some of the more noble animals, with somesuperior animal who is kind to them, but with all human, and even withall sentient beings. Secondly, in having a more developed intelligence, which gives a wider range to the whole of their sentiments, whetherself-regarding or sympathetic. By virtue of his superior intelligence, even apart from his superior range of sympathy, a human being is capableof apprehending a community of interest between himself and the humansociety of which he forms a part, such that any conduct which threatensthe security of the society generally, is threatening to his own, andcalls forth his instinct (if instinct it be) of self-defence. The samesuperiority of intelligence, joined to the power of sympathizing withhuman beings generally, enables him to attach himself to the collectiveidea of his tribe, his country, or mankind, in such a manner that anyact hurtful to them rouses his instinct of sympathy, and urges him toresistance. 

The sentiment of justice, in that one of its elements which consists ofthe desire to punish, is thus, I conceive, the natural feeling ofretaliation or vengeance, rendered by intellect and sympathy applicableto those injuries, that is, to those hurts, which wound us through, orin common with, society at large. This sentiment, in itself, has nothingmoral in it; what is moral is, the exclusive subordination of it to thesocial sympathies, so as to wait on and obey their call. For the naturalfeeling tends to make us resent indiscriminately whatever any one doesthat is disagreeable to us; but when moralized by the social feeling, itonly acts in the directions conformable to the general good; justpersons resenting a hurt to society, though not otherwise a hurt tothemselves, and not resenting a hurt to themselves, however painful, unless it be of the kind which society has a common interest with themin the repression of. 

It is no objection against this doctrine to say, that when we feel oursentiment of justice outraged, we are not thinking of society at large, or of any collective interest, but only of the individual case. It iscommon enough certainly, though the reverse of commendable, to feelresentment merely because we have suffered pain; but a person whoseresentment is really a moral feeling, that is, who considers whether anact is blameable before he allows himself to resent it--such a person, though he may not say expressly to himself that he is standing up forthe interest of society, certainly does feel that he is asserting a rulewhich is for the benefit of others as well as for his own. If he is notfeeling this--if he is regarding the act solely as it affects himindividually--he is not consciously just; he is not concerning himselfabout the justice of his actions. This is admitted even byanti-utilitarian moralists. When Kant (as before remarked) propounds asthe fundamental principle of morals, 'So act, that thy rule of conductmight be adopted as a law by all rational beings, ' he virtuallyacknowledges that the interest of mankind collectively, or at least ofmankind indiscriminately, must be in the mind of the agent whenconscientiously deciding on the morality of the act. Otherwise he useswords without a meaning: for, that a rule even of utter selfishnesscould not _possibly_ be adopted by all rational beings--that there isany insuperable obstacle in the nature of things to its adoption--cannotbe even plausibly maintained. To give any meaning to Kant's principle, the sense put upon it must be, that we ought to shape our conduct by arule which all rational beings might adopt _with benefit to theircollective interest_. 

To recapitulate: the idea of justice supposes two things; a rule ofconduct, and a sentiment which sanctions the rule. The first must besupposed common to all mankind, and intended for their good. The other(the sentiment) is a desire that punishment may be suffered by those whoinfringe the rule. There is involved, in addition, the conception ofsome definite person who suffers by the infringement; whose rights (touse the expression appropriated to the case) are violated by it. And thesentiment of justice appears to me to be, the animal desire to repel orretaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom onesympathizes, widened so as to include all persons, by the human capacityof enlarged sympathy, and the human conception of intelligentself-interest. From the latter elements, the feeling derives itsmorality; from the former, its peculiar impressiveness, and energy ofself-assertion. 

I have, throughout, treated the idea of a _right_ residing in theinjured person, and violated by the injury, not as a separate element inthe composition of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the forms inwhich the other two elements clothe themselves. These elements are, ahurt to some assignable person or persons on the one hand, and a demandfor punishment on the other. An examination of our own minds, I think, will show, that these two things include all that we mean when we speakof violation of a right. When we call anything a person's right, we meanthat he has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possessionof it, either by the force of law, or by that of education and opinion. If he has what we consider a sufficient claim, on whatever account, tohave something guaranteed to him by society, we say that he has a rightto it. If we desire to prove that anything does not belong to him byright, we think this done as soon as it is admitted that society oughtnot to take measures for securing it to him, but should leave it tochance, or to his own exertions. Thus, a person is said to have a rightto what he can earn in fair professional competition; because societyought not to allow any other person to hinder him from endeavouring toearn in that manner as much as he can. But he has not a right to threehundred a-year, though he may happen to be earning it; because societyis not called on to provide that he shall earn that sum. On thecontrary, if he owns ten thousand pounds three per cent. Stock, he _has_a right to three hundred a-year; because society has come under anobligation to provide him with an income of that amount. 

To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which societyought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to askwhy it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility. Ifthat expression does not seem to convey a sufficient feeling of thestrength of the obligation, nor to account for the peculiar energy ofthe feeling, it is because there goes to the composition of thesentiment, not a rational only but also an animal element, the thirstfor retaliation; and this thirst derives its intensity, as well as itsmoral justification, from the extraordinarily important and impressivekind of utility which is concerned. The interest involved is that ofsecurity, to every one's feelings the most vital of all interests. Nearly all other earthly benefits are needed by one person, not neededby another; and many of them can, if necessary, be cheerfully foregone, or replaced by something else; but security no human being can possiblydo without; on it we depend for all our immunity from evil, and for thewhole value of all and every good, beyond the passing moment; sincenothing but the gratification of the instant could be of any worth tous, if we could be deprived of everything the next instant by whoeverwas momentarily stronger than ourselves. Now this most indispensable ofall necessaries, after physical nutriment, cannot be had, unless themachinery for providing it is kept unintermittedly in active play. Ournotion, therefore, of the claim we have on our fellow creatures to joinin making safe for us the very groundwork of our existence, gathersfeelings round it so much more intense than those concerned in any ofthe more common cases of utility, that the difference in degree (as isoften the case in psychology) becomes a real difference in kind. Theclaim assumes that character of absoluteness, that apparent infinity, and incommensurability with all other considerations, which constitutethe distinction between the feeling of right and wrong and that ofordinary expediency and inexpediency. The feelings concerned are sopowerful, and we count so positively on finding a responsive feeling inothers (all being alike interested), that _ought_ and _should_ grow into_must_, and recognized indispensability becomes a moral necessity, analogous to physical, and often not inferior to it in binding force. 

If the preceding analysis, or something resembling it, be not thecorrect account of the notion of justice; if justice be totallyindependent of utility, and be a standard _per se_, which the mind canrecognize by simple introspection of itself; it is hard to understandwhy that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so many things appeareither just or unjust, according to the light in which they areregarded. We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertainstandard, which every different person interprets differently, and thatthere is no safety but in the immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakeabledictates of Justice, which carry their evidence in themselves, and areindependent of the fluctuations of opinion. One would suppose from thisthat on questions of justice there could be no controversy; that if wetake that for our rule, its application to any given case could leave usin as little doubt as a mathematical demonstration. So far is this frombeing the fact, that there is as much difference of opinion, and asfierce discussion, about what is just, as about what is useful tosociety. Not only have different nations and individuals differentnotions of justice, but, in the mind of one and the same individual, justice is not some one rule, principle, or maxim, but many, which donot always coincide in their dictates, and in choosing between which, heis guided either by some extraneous standard, or by his own personalpredilections. 

For instance, there are some who say, that it is unjust to punish anyone for the sake of example to others; that punishment is just, onlywhen intended for the good of the sufferer himself. Others maintain theextreme reverse, contending that to punish persons who have attainedyears of discretion, for their own benefit, is despotism and injustice, since if the matter at issue is solely their own good, no one has aright to control their own judgment of it; but that they may justly bepunished to prevent evil to others, this being an exercise of thelegitimate right of self-defence. Mr. Owen, again, affirms that it isunjust to punish at all; for the criminal did not make his owncharacter; his education, and the circumstances which surround him, havemade him a criminal, and for these he is not responsible. All theseopinions are extremely plausible; and so long as the question is arguedas one of justice simply, without going down to the principles which lieunder justice and are the source of its authority, I am unable to seehow any of these reasoners can be refuted. For, in truth, every one ofthe three builds upon rules of justice confessedly true. The firstappeals to the acknowledged injustice of singling out an individual, andmaking him a sacrifice, without his consent, for other people's benefit. The second relies on the acknowledged justice of self-defence, and theadmitted injustice of forcing one person to conform to another's notionsof what constitutes his good. The Owenite invokes the admittedprinciple, that it is unjust to punish any one for what he cannot help. Each is triumphant so long as he is not compelled to take intoconsideration any other maxims of justice than the one he has selected;but as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, eachdisputant seems to have exactly as much to say for himself as theothers. No one of them can carry out his own notion of justice withouttrampling upon another equally binding. These are difficulties; theyhave always been felt to be such; and many devices have been invented toturn rather than to overcome them. As a refuge from the last of thethree, men imagined what they called the freedom of the will; fancyingthat they could not justify punishing a man whose will is in athoroughly hateful state, unless it be supposed to have come into thatstate through no influence of anterior circumstances. To escape from theother difficulties, a favourite contrivance has been the fiction of acontract, whereby at some unknown period all the members of societyengaged to obey the laws, and consented to be punished for anydisobedience to them; thereby giving to their legislators the right, which it is assumed they would not otherwise have had, of punishingthem, either for their own good or for that of society. This happythought was considered to get rid of the whole difficulty, and tolegitimate the infliction of punishment, in virtue of another receivedmaxim of justice, _volenti non fit injuria_; that is not unjust which isdone with the consent of the person who is supposed to be hurt by it. Ineed hardly remark, that even if the consent were not a mere fiction, this maxim is not superior in authority to the others which it isbrought in to supersede. It is, on the contrary, an instructive specimenof the loose and irregular manner in which supposed principles ofjustice grow up. This particular one evidently came into use as a helpto the coarse exigencies of courts of law, which are sometimes obligedto be content with very uncertain presumptions, on account of thegreater evils which would often arise from any attempt on their part tocut finer. But even courts of law are not able to adhere consistently tothe maxim, for they allow voluntary engagements to be set aside on theground of fraud, and sometimes on that of mere mistake ormisinformation. 

Again, when the legitimacy of inflicting punishment is admitted, howmany conflicting conceptions of justice come to light in discussing theproper apportionment of punishment to offences. No rule on this subjectrecommends itself so strongly to the primitive and spontaneous sentimentof justice, as the _lex talionis_, an eye for an eye and a tooth for atooth. Though this principle of the Jewish and of the Mahomedan law hasbeen generally abandoned in Europe as a practical maxim, there is, Isuspect, in most minds, a secret hankering after it; and whenretribution accidentally falls on an offender in that precise shape, thegeneral feeling of satisfaction evinced, bears witness how natural isthe sentiment to which this repayment in kind is acceptable. With manythe test of justice in penal infliction is that the punishment should beproportioned to the offence; meaning that it should be exactly measuredby the moral guilt of the culprit (whatever be their standard formeasuring moral guilt): the consideration, what amount of punishment isnecessary to deter from the offence, having nothing to do with thequestion of justice, in their estimation: while there are others to whomthat consideration is all in all; who maintain that it is not just, atleast for man, to inflict on a fellow creature, whatever may be hisoffences, any amount of suffering beyond the least that will suffice toprevent him from repeating, and others from imitating, his misconduct. 

To take another example from a subject already once referred to. In aco-operative industrial association, is it just or not that talent orskill should give a title to superior remuneration? On the negative sideof the question it is argued, that whoever does the best he can, deserves equally well, and ought not in justice to be put in a positionof inferiority for no fault of his own; that superior abilities havealready advantages more than enough, in the admiration they excite, thepersonal influence they command, and the internal sources ofsatisfaction attending them, without adding to these a superior share ofthe world's goods; and that society is bound in justice rather to makecompensation to the less favoured, for this unmerited inequality ofadvantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary side it is contended, that society receives more from the more efficient labourer; that hisservices being more useful, society owes him a larger return for them;that a greater share of the joint result is actually his work, and notto allow his claim to it is a kind of robbery; that if he is only toreceive as much as others, he can only be justly required to produce asmuch, and to give a smaller amount of time and exertion, proportioned tohis superior efficiency. Who shall decide between these appeals toconflicting principles of justice? Justice has in this case two sides toit, which it is impossible to bring into harmony, and the two disputantshave chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what it is just that theindividual should receive, the other to what it is just that thecommunity should give. Each, from his own point of view, isunanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, mustbe perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference. 

How many, again, and how irreconcileable, are the standards of justiceto which reference is made in discussing the repartition of taxation. One opinion is, that payment to the State should be in numericalproportion to pecuniary means. Others think that justice dictates whatthey term graduated taxation; taking a higher percentage from those whohave more to spare. In point of natural justice a strong case might bemade for disregarding means altogether, and taking the same absolute sum(whenever it could be got) from every one: as the subscribers to a mess, or to a club, all pay the same sum for the same privileges, whether theycan all equally afford it or not. Since the protection (it might besaid) of law and government is afforded to, and is equally required by, all, there is no injustice in making all buy it at the same price. It isreckoned justice, not injustice, that a dealer should charge to allcustomers the same price for the same article, not a price varyingaccording to their means of payment. This doctrine, as applied totaxation, finds no advocates, because it conflicts strongly with men'sfeelings of humanity and perceptions of social expediency; but theprinciple of justice which it invokes is as true and as binding as thosewhich can be appealed to against it. Accordingly, it exerts a tacitinfluence on the line of defence employed for other modes of assessingtaxation. People feel obliged to argue that the State does more for therich than for the poor, as a justification for its taking more fromthem: though this is in reality not true, for the rich would be farbetter able to protect themselves, in the absence of law or government, than the poor, and indeed would probably be successful in converting thepoor into their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to the sameconception of justice, as to maintain that all should pay an equalcapitation tax for the protection of their persons (these being of equalvalue to all), and an unequal tax for the protection of their property, which is unequal. To this others reply, that the all of one man is asvaluable to him as the all of another. From these confusions there is noother mode of extrication than the utilitarian. 

 * * * * *

Is, then, the difference between the Just and the Expedient a merelyimaginary distinction? Have mankind been under a delusion in thinkingthat justice is a more sacred thing than policy, and that the latterought only to be listened to after the former has been satisfied? By nomeans. The exposition we have given of the nature and origin of thesentiment, recognises a real distinction; and no one of those whoprofess the most sublime contempt for the consequences of actions as anelement in their morality, attaches more importance to the distinctionthan I do. While I dispute the pretensions of any theory which sets upan imaginary standard of justice not grounded on utility, I account thejustice which is grounded on utility to be the chief part, andincomparably the most sacred and binding part, of all morality. Justiceis a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern theessentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of moreabsolute obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life; andthe notion which we have found to be of the essence of the idea ofjustice, that of a right residing in an individual, implies andtestifies to this more binding obligation. 

The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another (in which wemust never forget to include wrongful interference with each other'sfreedom) are more vital to human well-being than any maxims, howeverimportant, which only point out the best mode of managing somedepartment of human affairs. They have also the peculiarity, that theyare the main element in determining the whole of the social feelings ofmankind. It is their observance which alone preserves peace among humanbeings: if obedience to them were not the rule, and disobedience theexception, every one would see in every one else a probable enemy, against whom he must be perpetually guarding himself. What is hardlyless important, these are the precepts which mankind have the strongestand the most direct inducements for impressing upon one another. Bymerely giving to each other prudential instruction or exhortation, theymay gain, or think they gain, nothing: in inculcating on each other theduty of positive beneficence they have an unmistakeable interest, butfar less in degree: a person may possibly not need the benefits ofothers; but he always needs that they should not do him hurt. Thus themoralities which protect every individual from being harmed by others, either directly or by being hindered in his freedom of pursuing his owngood, are at once those which he himself has most at heart, and thosewhich he has the strongest interest in publishing and enforcing by wordand deed. It is by a person's observance of these, that his fitness toexist as one of the fellowship of human beings, is tested and decided;for on that depends his being a nuisance or not to those with whom he isin contact. Now it is these moralities primarily, which compose theobligations of justice. The most marked cases of injustice, and thosewhich give the tone to the feeling of repugnance which characterizes thesentiment, are acts of wrongful aggression, or wrongful exercise ofpower over some one; the next are those which consist in wrongfullywithholding from him something which is his due; in both cases, inflicting on him a positive hurt, either in the form of directsuffering, or of the privation of some good which he had reasonableground, either of a physical or of a social kind, for counting upon. 

The same powerful motives which command the observance of these primarymoralities, enjoin the punishment of those who violate them; and as theimpulses of self-defence, of defence of others, and of vengeance, areall called forth against such persons, retribution, or evil for evil, becomes closely connected with the sentiment of justice, and isuniversally included in the idea. Good for good is also one of thedictates of justice; and this, though its social utility is evident, andthough it carries with it a natural human feeling, has not at firstsight that obvious connexion with hurt or injury, which, existing in themost elementary cases of just and unjust, is the source of thecharacteristic intensity of the sentiment. But the connexion, thoughless obvious, is not less real. He who accepts benefits, and denies areturn of them when needed, inflicts a real hurt, by disappointing oneof the most natural and reasonable of expectations, and one which hemust at least tacitly have encouraged, otherwise the benefits wouldseldom have been conferred. The important rank, among human evils andwrongs, of the disappointment of expectation, is shown in the fact thatit constitutes the principal criminality of two such highly immoral actsas a breach of friendship and a breach of promise. Few hurts which humanbeings can sustain are greater, and none wound more, than when that onwhich they habitually and with full assurance relied, fails them in thehour of need; and few wrongs are greater than this mere withholding ofgood; none excite more resentment, either in the person suffering, or ina sympathizing spectator. The principle, therefore, of giving to eachwhat they deserve, that is, good for good as well as evil for evil, isnot only included within the idea of Justice as we have defined it, butis a proper object of that intensity of sentiment, which places theJust, in human estimation, above the simply Expedient. 

Most of the maxims of justice current in the world, and commonlyappealed to in its transactions, are simply instrumental to carryinginto effect the principles of justice which we have now spoken of. Thata person is only responsible for what he has done voluntarily, or couldvoluntarily have avoided; that it is unjust to condemn any personunheard; that the punishment ought to be proportioned to the offence, and the like, are maxims intended to prevent the just principle of evilfor evil from being perverted to the infliction of evil without thatjustification. The greater part of these common maxims have come intouse from the practice of courts of justice, which have been naturallyled to a more complete recognition and elaboration than was likely tosuggest itself to others, of the rules necessary to enable them tofulfil their double function, of inflicting punishment when due, and ofawarding to each person his right. 

That first of judicial virtues, impartiality, is an obligation ofjustice, partly for the reason last mentioned; as being a necessarycondition of the fulfilment of the other obligations of justice. Butthis is not the only source of the exalted rank, among humanobligations, of those maxims of equality and impartiality, which, bothin popular estimation and in that of the most enlightened, are includedamong the precepts of justice. In one point of view, they may beconsidered as corollaries from the principles already laid down. If itis a duty to do to each according to his deserts, returning good forgood as well as repressing evil by evil, it necessarily follows that weshould treat all equally well (when no higher duty forbids) who havedeserved equally well of us, and that society should treat all equallywell who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deservedequally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of socialand distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and theefforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost possibledegree to converge. But this great moral duty rests upon a still deeperfoundation, being a direct emanation from the first principle of morals, and not a mere logical corollary from secondary or derivative doctrines. It is involved in the very meaning of Utility, or theGreatest-Happiness Principle. That principle is a mere form of wordswithout rational signification, unless one person's happiness, supposedequal in degree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is countedfor exactly as much as another's. Those conditions being supplied, Bentham's dictum, 'everybody to count for one, nobody for more thanone, ' might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatorycommentary. [D] The equal claim of everybody to happiness in theestimation of the moralist and the legislator, involves an equal claimto all the means of happiness, except in so far as the inevitableconditions of human life, and the general interest, in which that ofevery individual is included, set limits to the maxim; and those limitsought to be strictly construed. As every other maxim of justice, sothis, is by no means applied or held applicable universally; on thecontrary, as I have already remarked, it bends to every person's ideasof social expediency. But in whatever case it is deemed applicable atall, it is held to be the dictate of justice. All persons are deemed tohave a _right_ to equality of treatment, except when some recognisedsocial expediency requires the reverse. And hence all socialinequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume thecharacter not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear sotyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have beentolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate otherinequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, thecorrection of which would make that which they approve seem quite asmonstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn. The entirehistory of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by whichone custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primarynecessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of anuniversally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So it has been with thedistinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians andplebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with thearistocracies of colour, race, and sex. 

It appears from what has been said, that justice is a name for certainmoral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in thescale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some othersocial duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the generalmaxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medicalpractitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice which isnot a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to someother moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, byreason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By thisuseful accommodation of language, the character of indefeasibilityattributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity ofmaintaining that there can be laudable injustice. 

The considerations which have now been adduced resolve, I conceive, theonly real difficulty in the utilitarian theory of morals. It has alwaysbeen evident that all cases of justice are also cases of expediency: thedifference is in the peculiar sentiment which attaches to the former, ascontradistinguished from the latter. If this characteristic sentimenthas been sufficiently accounted for; if there is no necessity to assumefor it any peculiarity of origin; if it is simply the natural feeling ofresentment, moralized by being made coextensive with the demands ofsocial good; and if this feeling not only does but ought to exist in allthe classes of cases to which the idea of justice corresponds; that ideano longer presents itself as a stumbling-block to the utilitarianethics. Justice remains the appropriate name for certain socialutilities which are vastly more important, and therefore more absoluteand imperative, than any others are as a class (though not more so thanothers may be in particular cases); and which, therefore, ought to be, as well as naturally are, guarded by a sentiment not only different indegree, but also in kind; distinguished from the milder feeling whichattaches to the mere idea of promoting human pleasure or convenience, atonce by the more definite nature of its commands, and by the sternercharacter of its sanctions. 

THE END. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote C: See this point enforced and illustrated by Professor Bain, in an admirable chapter (entitled "The Ethical Emotions, or the MoralSense") of the second of the two treatises composing his elaborate andprofound work on the Mind. ]

[Footnote D: This implication, in the first principle of the utilitarianscheme, of perfect impartiality between persons, is regarded by Mr. Herbert Spencer (in his _Social Statics_) as a disproof of thepretentions of utility to be a sufficient guide to right; since (hesays) the principle of utility presupposes the anterior principle, thateverybody has an equal right to happiness. It may be more correctlydescribed as supposing that equal amounts of happiness are equallydesirable, whether felt by the same or by different persons. This, however, is not a pre-supposition; not a premise needful to support theprinciple of utility, but the very principle itself; for what is theprinciple of utility, if it be not that 'happiness' and 'desirable' aresynonymous terms? If there is any anterior principle implied, it can beno other than this, that the truths of arithmetic are applicable to thevaluation of happiness, as of all other measurable quantities. 

[Mr. Herbert Spencer, in a private communication on the subject of thepreceding Note, objects to being considered an opponent ofUtilitarianism; and states that he regards happiness as the ultimate endof morality; but deems that end only partially attainable by empiricalgeneralizations from the observed results of conduct, and completelyattainable only by deducing, from the laws of life and the conditions ofexistence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. With the exception of the word"necessarily, " I have no dissent to express from this doctrine; and(omitting that word) I am not aware that any modern advocate ofutilitarianism is of a different opinion. Bentham, certainly, to whom inthe _Social Statics_ Mr. Spencer particularly referred, is, least of allwriters, chargeable with unwillingness to deduce the effect of actionson happiness from the laws of human nature and the universal conditionsof human life. The common charge against him is of relying tooexclusively upon such deductions, and declining altogether to be boundby the generalizations from specific experience which Mr. Spencer thinksthat utilitarians generally confine themselves to. My own opinion (and, as I collect, Mr. Spencer's) is, that in ethics, as in all otherbranches of scientific study, the consilience of the results of boththese processes, each corroborating and verifying the other, isrequisite to give to any general proposition the kind and degree ofevidence which constitutes scientific proof. ]]