The process is exactly the same, but with an evil result, if the pet vice be introduced as a powerful motive element. Let us suppose a person generally altruistic but fond of his cups. He has plans of a life of useful activity to promote the welfare of his wife and children, perhaps of others; but with him great pleasure is attached to his chosen self-indulgence. He sees that his energies are diminished, his money spent, his wife and children thereby made miserable in consequence of his evil habit; but spite of all this he cannot get happiness without his drink. He can represent the condition of himself as existing freed from his habit as a better condition, and as one in which he would be happier if he could only so change himself as to enjoy such a condition. In such a representation he feels pain at his present situation; but this feeling of pain does not compare in intensity with the feeling of pain which actually arises when he is deprived of his dram. He yields to the greater feeling; for him the greater happiness is in the cup. And by representations of his self-regarding pleasure his conduct is continually modified with a view to repetitions of it. He can see that people who are not intemperate are, by comparison with other people who are drunkards, apparently happier, secure a greater amount of pleasure, and are afflicted with less pain. He can also imagine himself as happier in such a condition; but when he proposes to conform his conduct to such an ideal, he is made aware that he is or has become so constituted that for him no happiness can subsist except with his indulgence. He has constructed in imagination another man such as he is not, for whom happiness can be maintained without drink. Perhaps I may think it would be better for me if I were an angel, and in being an angel I might have more self-satisfaction. I can imagine an angel as happier than I; but if I follow the things that pertain to humanity in preference to those I conceive are more peculiar to angelic beings, it is because, being a man, my happiness can only be secured by objects within the compass of humanity. I am what I am; and if I cannot make myself different, I shall seek what I can attain, and in that find the greater happiness, although knowing that if I were somebody or something else I might in and by other ways be better or happier. From what has preceded, it will thus be seen that the social needs produce social ends, which determine the moral law. That this law proposes as the chief social good, and thus as the social end to be attained, the maximum happiness of the greatest num ber. That the chief social good is not coincident necessarily with the maximum happiness of the individual, who may be able only to find his good in his own selfish ends; but that, on the other hand, the latter may be so educated, under certain conditions, as to derive his highest happiness from the happiness of others, and to find his chief good in life in contributing to the realisation of the social summum bonum. Obviously there is room for much doubt and question oftentimes as to what actually does tend toward the promotion of the common good, and what is opposed to it; also as to what methods are best calculated to produce in individuals the altruistic disposition and repress the egoistic. Ethics is thus a theoretical science and a practical as well; while closely connected with it is the science and art of Education. CHAPTER IX. SOME QUESTIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. THE doctrines of this work thus far unfolded, with some modifications according to varying ideas of different thinkers, but nevertheless without essential controversion, have been generally accepted as furnishing the scientific explanation of the nature of evil, as supplying the groundwork of the moral law, and as pointing out the direction in which effort should be put forth to secure its fulfilment. They furnish the theory and precepts of what we called in Chapter III. a natural as opposed to an artificial or theological morality. An influence, however, has arisen in recent English thought adverse to what is usually termed the Utilitarian or Hedonistic Ethics, which, though it certainly has theological postulates to rest upon, can scarcely be called a theological system. The advocates of this system of ethics purport to establish its theses upon a scientific examination of the facts of human consciousness without any aid from assumed divine commands, its implied theology being pantheistic. This antagonistic influence proceeds from an ethical system of Estho-egoism which is most fully developed in the Prolegomena to Ethics' of the late Professor Thomas Hill Green. Although the ethical tenets of this system are much involved with the general philosophy of knowledge upon which they are founded, which fact would prevent a very thorough examination of the whole treatise, yet in view of what has been stated above, I can scarcely pass by the propositions of this able writer without some remark, especially since I have already been taken to task by critics for omitting reference to them in a former work, wherein I have indulged in a little ethical discussion. If, then, the reader is not fond of criticism and ethical polemic, I advise him to omit this chapter, since he will find in it no new principles, and probably also no new applications of principles already advanced, except incidentally in connection with the discussion of the ethical end and the general rule of the moral law. Nevertheless the student 1 System of Psycho logy, chap. lxix. of ethics cannot fail to be interested in the new development of thought mentioned, and will demand at least some consideration of it. The concluding words of Green's work, in treating of the practical value of moral theories, declare that the author's point has been to show that a criterion for the determination of conduct to those who need some 'counsel of perfection' above the declarations of conventional morality is afforded by the theory of ultimate good as a perfection of the human spirit resting on the will to be perfect (which may be called, in short, the theory of virtue as an end in itself) but not by the theory of good as consisting in a maximum of possible pleasure.' Again, in another place, the author says: Our theory has been that the development of morality is founded on the action in man of an idea of true or absolute good consisting in the full realisation of the capabilities of the human soul.' Moral good is 'an abiding satisfaction of an abiding self.' 3 Projecting himself into the future as a permanent subject of possible well-being or ill-being-and he must so project himself in seeking for a permanent good. . . The idea of a true good as for one's self is ultimately, or in principle, an idea of satisfaction for a self that abides and contemplates itself as abiding.' This well-being he doubtless conceives as his own.'5 The intrinsic good is the perfection of the human soul. The true good for man is the realisation of his capabilities, or the perfection of human life.'7 'The good will is a will which has such perfection for its object.' The good will is 'the one unconditional good . . . the end by which we estimate the effects of an action.' 8 94 From the foregoing quotations it will appear that in last resort the ethical end of the individual's effort is egoistic. He is to seek the good, and this good is his own perfection. This is the ideal he is ever to hold before him. The will to be perfect is the unconditional good, and in attaining the good, and in labouring for it, lies the only self-satisfaction. The moral law, then, according to Green, lays upon each person an imperative to seek his own perfection, to be virtuous for virtue's sake as an end in itself. It is possible that some of the adherents of Green's ideas would demur to having the system termed egoistic; but how upon any fair con1 Book IV. chap. i. p. 308. 2 Book III. chap. v. p. 286. The references in the footnotes of this chapter will be understood as referring to Green's Prolegomena to Ethics, unless otherwise stated. 3 Book III. chap. iv. struction of language it can be made to appear otherwise I am at a loss to understand. Whenever we press the inquiry: Why ought I to do thus and not otherwise?' we invariably receive the answer, 'For the sake of your own self-satisfaction, which can be attained in no other way.' We are always thrown back upon the perfection of self as an ultimate end. When we come to consider how the individual is to realise the ideal of his own perfection, we are informed that it is in a social good which is not in conflict, but is identical with his own personal good. Society is founded on the recognition by persons of each other, and their interest in each other as persons, i.e., as beings who are ends to themselves, who are consciously determined to action by the conception of themselves as that for the sake of which they act. They are interested in each other as persons, in so far as each, being aware that another presents his own selfsatisfaction to himself as an object, finds satisfaction for himself in procuring or witnessing the self-satisfaction of the other. Society is founded on such mutual interest.——' 1 'But the converse is equally true, that only through society, in the sense explained, is personality actualised. Only through society is anyone enabled to give that effect to the idea of himself as the object of his actions, to the idea of a possible better state of himself, without which the idea would remain like that of space to a man who had not the senses either of sight or touch. . . . . And just as it is through the action of society that the individual comes at once practically to conceive his personality-his nature as an object to himself— and to conceive the same personality as belonging to others, so it is society that supplies all the higher content to this conception, all those objects of a man's personal interest in living for which he lives for his own satisfaction, except such as are derived from the merely animal nature.'2 Once more, in order to be good in the truly moral sense, the individual must observe that the contribution to human perfection in some way or other must be the object in which he seeks self-satisfaction, the object for which he is living for himself.' 3 6 Accordingly we are presented with an ideal of a society conditioned by a moral law imposing upon each individual a striving for his own perfection, which, however, is only to be attained through seeking for the common good, which is the perfection and thus the self-satisfaction of all. This is still egoism. 2 Ibid. p. 190. 1 Book III. chap. ii. p. 191. 3 Ibid. p. 191. |