A TREATISE,
ON
THE MORAL IDEALS.




Qatltultbge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.




A TREATISE
ON
THE VMORAL IDEALS
BY THE LATE
JOHN GROTE, B.D.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY
IN TEE UNIVERSITY OF CAMIBRIDGE.
EDITED BY
JOSEPH BICKERSTETHT MAYOR, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON;
LATE FELLOW OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
CAMBRIDGE:
DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS.
1876.








PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.
IN the Author's Introduction to the Exploratio Philosophica,'the present treatise is alluded.to in words
to which I have already called attention. in my Prefiace to his Examaination of the Utilitarian Philosophy.
After mentioning that he had contemplated publish-.ing an answer to Mr J. S. Mill's Utilitcricanisns in
the year' 1863, he continues,'I altered my mind as
to this, and determined rather to put together in an
uncontroversial form what seemed to me the truth,
in opposition to what I thought error. This, if it
please. God, is in theo. way of being accomplished, subject to all the delays which interest in other employments,'uncertain health, and some not, I think,
uncalled for scrupulousness and anxiety as to what.
one writes on a subject so important, may throw in
the way of it.'
The Exploratio.itself was published in 1865, and
the Author died ini the sumnmer of -the following year.
On' examining, his MSS., I found, amongst the latest
written, a series of chapters,. each with its own headb




Vi           PREFACE  BY  THE EDITOR.
ing, but not arranged in order, and often incomplete,
which appeared to answer to the description given
above. I subjoin the headings in the order in which
the chapters were apparently written.
1. Aretaics and Eudsemonics, 17 pp.
2. Moral philosophy as an art referring to an ideal,
21rpp.
3. Moral philosophy not mere imagination, 21 pp.
4. Consistency of moral ideals, 28 pp.
5. Moral ideals, their relation to positive science, 12 pp.
6. On mnoral value, 22 pp.
7. Duty, 35 pp.
8. On moral judgments and sentiments, 69 pp.
9. Distribution of action, law, justice, &c., 57 pp.
10. Relation of moral ideals to -fact and' imagination,
57 pp.
11. Anatomy of wrong-doing, 40 pp.
12. Pleasure, pain and happiness, 84 pp.
13. Moral elevation, 33 pp.
14. Application of moral philosophy, 50 pp.
i5. Character, will and education; 43 pp..
16.1 (Diversity of ethical systems), 20 pp.
17. Discussion, controversy, war, 35 pp.
18. (Importance of right belief), 18 pp.
Along with these chapters I found three Appendices, one of nearly a hundred pages entitled Idealism anid Positivism, the others much shorter, without
any title.  There can be. little doubt that it is to
1 The 16th and 18th chapters are without a heading in the MS. The
former I have not printed,'as it is mainly a repetition of what had been
said elsewhere.




PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.-          Vii
them the Author alludes in the Introduction t6 the
Expooratio, where he says that, in connexion with
his intended answer.to Mr Mill, he'was led to put
together the intellectual views; on -which the moral
view rested, -and' had meant; if they should come
within reasonable limits, to publish them in an Appendix.'  Instead.of doing this he finally resolved
to bring put the Exploratio as a sort of general Prolegomena to his ethical writings. My first intention,
as may be seen from the references in pp. 13, 60
and 380, was to have printed a portion at least of
the Appendices at the end of this volume with'the
new title Relativismz and Regulativismn, but for various
reasons I have now thought it better to reserve it:
for. the second part of the Exploratio, which I hope
shortly to prepare for the press.
It will be seen, from a comparison of the printed
chapters with the headings of the MS. chapters, that
I have used the same liberty in breaking up, rearranging, and omitting in this volume as in the one
previously edited by me. I have also made large
additions from other MSS. wherever the Author's
views seemed to be imperfectly stated in the treatise
itself. Such additions, where they do not extend
beyond a few lines, are silently inserted in the text:
otherwise thby appear, as Appendices following the
chapter to which they refer. I am further responsible for the Table of Contents, Marginal Summaries,
and all Notes signed ED.
To. prevent mistakes it may be well to mention




Viii        PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.
here that a change has been' made in the general
title of the volume. As originally advertised it bore
the name Aretatics and _Eudcemonics, the Author's
heading for the first chapter, accompanied by the
editorial interpretation, A  treatise on the Moral
Ideals.  In deference to the opinion of friends this
addition, as less startling and more easily understood,
is now left to standby itself in place of the original
title.  The form  aretaic from  Jper4, analogous to
spondaic, mosaic, prosaic, algebraic, &c., is only one
out of many instances to -be found in this volume,
of Prof. Grote's fearlessness in the use of neologisms.
Such are egence, hedonometry, equalitarianismz, felicificatble and felicificativeness, bewilled and  unbewilled, outgoingness, acturience, and even the Greek
vov7pc'aKVj3. For an account of this and other peculiarities of his style the reader is referred to my
preface to the former volume.
This may be a fitting place to say a few words
on Prof. Grote's dislike to a systematic treatment of'ethical questions, which was, I venture to think, a
little exaggerated in some of the reviews of lhis Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy. It is not in
a contr6versial work that we expect to. find a full
statement of a writer's views in their natural arrangement and with a due subordination of parts: those
who will take the trouble to' read carefully the
chapters on Duty and Virtue in the present volume,
and to notice the criticisms, passed upon Bp Butler
for failing to make his system hang together (see pp.




PREFACE BY THIE EDITOR.           iX
118, 141, 163, 181, 284, 344, 443), will at any rate
not charge the Author with being indifferent to exactness and coherence of thought.  No doubt his
mode of exposition is generally unsystematic. Writing, as he did, without any view  of immediate
publication, he thought more of putting his matter
into the form which' was most natural and expressive to himself than of putting it into *the form
which was most intelligible to his readers. Thus he
suddenly diverges in the midst of an argument, returns again, repeats what has been said.before, and
not unfrequently passes over some point which had
been previously left for further consideration. Again,
in his fear lest the scaffolding. and machinery should
be mistaken for the actual building, lest phrases and
formulas and logical divisions' should be mistaken
for the truth itself, he is perhaps- too ready to change
his form of expression, -or at any rate to represent it
as a matter of indifference whether one form or one
analysis is preferred to another.  Besides these
peculiarities in.his mode of exposition, there is a
peculiarity in his.general view of ethics which may
tend to make it appear both complicated and disconnected as compared with other systems. While
some philosophers start from a single principle, such
as man's natural love of pleasure, and profess to deduce a whole system of morality by. rigid inference
from this, he tells us on the contrary that we cannot
have a single science'of ethics, but that we may have
what he loosely expresses as'a manner of thinking -




X           -PREFACE BY'THE EDITOR.
(not even a philosophy) attended by several subordinate sciences or philosophies.''What he means by
this is, that there are several starting points for determining the rule of human'action, each of which,
if followed out, will lead to interesting and valuable
results; that for a perfect rule of action we cannot
afford to disregard any, but that these results, as
far as we are able to trace them, are not always consistent; that this apparent inconsistency would lead
to a stultification of human action if it were not for
an underlying faith in'the moral order of the universe, which faith or'manner of thinking' he holds
to be the essential part or foundation of- ethics. As he
-says in an- unpublished. essay on the relation between
ethics and religion,'the one fountain-head of both,
the primary principle of man and his actions as they
should be, is the idea, or proposition, God is good.'
To illustrate the manner in which Prof. Grote
harmonized opposing views on this principle, I will
here. quote from a  MS. marked V which may be considered in some respects a rough draught of the
present treatise.  A  comparison of the quotation
with the first three chapters as well as with the 12th
(on Pleasure) will also throw  light upon a point
*which is not quite cleared up here, the relation between Activity and Sentience on the one hand, and
* Want on the other.
The object of Ethics, as a. practical science, being to
determine future action, what it looks to in the first instance
is not what is, but what is needed, what it is right or




PREFACE BY  THE  EDITOR.                Xi
desirable should be. And for a creature such as man,
there is, we may say, a double need; need of satisfaction'for his desires, and need of direction for his action.
It is not always sufficiently remembered. that man is as
essentially an active being as a being capable of happiness.
Of course, the term happiness, or the supreme good, may be
taken in a perfectly wide sense, and consciously well directed
action may be taken as a part of it as well as enjoyment or
gratification. But so far as. this is so, we must mean by
happiness something too general for us to be able to speak
of the attainment of it, or even for us to speak of it as an
end to be striven'after. The will craving action, the counterpart in the moral' being to' that spring of irritability and
uneasiness in the physical being, which is the source of all
physical movement, demands to be considered, and calls for
its happiness, as much as the capacities for enjoyment, and
the desires corresponding to them, call for theirs.. Supposing
our impulse to action to continue, we should be more unhappy beings without wants to satisfy, or purposes to gain,
than we can be'with them. We may'imagine a state of
simply quiescent enjoyment, but it would not at all correspond to man's moral b'eing as we have experience of. it.
Theories formed with reference to a supposed'supreme good
or end of human action, all rest upon the unconscious axiom
that the entire object of life is to:gain or attain something.
This axiom supposes the one great fact of life to be ungratified desire, unsatisfied need. This is plainly an insufficient
account of life. By the side of this fact there.is anotrher
as great, namely, the' fact of power. And as the former fact
suggests to us, as the great aim  of philosophic research;
the' supreme good to be gained, so the latter'fact suggests to
us as something of equal importance, the knowledge of
the right or best thing. to be done. If by: want we under



Xii          PREFACE  BY  THE. EDITOR.
stand that which'conditions and circumstances call for,
(what the Latins expressed by the term egeo), the want of
direction for action is as primary and native a want of the
human being as the want of satisfaction to desire: in other
words, the right, or good in action, is as intimate a need of
our nature. as the desirable, or good in enjoyment. The
former indeed is not necessarily wanted, in the sense of'wished for,' as the latter most commonly is. More properly,.
perhaps, the want in this view is confused and half-unconscious. In accordance with the feeling or principle.before
spoken of, which I have called a kind of faith, and which we
must, it seems to me, take with us in all our thoughts on
these subjects, we have reason to expect that these different
lines of thought will not lead us to contradictory conclusions.
On the whole, if we knew the supreme good, we might
be sure that the right action would be that which would
lead us to it: not more, however, than conversely, if we knew
the right action, we might be confident that what it led us
towards would be our supreme good. As we cannot hope to
know either of the two things more than T7rro,-most vaguely
and generally, it is. a question whether ethical science is not
properly to be pursued along both roads. Have we any
reason to assume, that the end to which our action is
directed, or which it subserves, is the only quarter towards
which we are- to look for guidance? Shall we not know our
proper action in proportion as we become acquainted with
our nature and with the moral circumstances in which man
is placed, one part of-this knowledge being the knowledge of
what makes our happiness, but'one part, only?
The view which I have been taking depends upon the
supposition, that constituted as we are, action is with us a
necessity in the same sense, and to the same degree, in which




PREFACE'BY THE EDITOR.              X1ii
satisfaction of desire is. This is a supposition of a fixed
order of things of which we with. our definite constitution
form a portion, a supposition therefore to a certain extent of
an absence: of freedom  on our part implied in the want
of direction of our action, in the same manner as in the
want of satisfaction is implied a degree of imperfection.
Possibly, if we could place ourselves in imagination before
the constitution of anything, when there existed nothing but
the Creator with His knowledge, *and with' those -moral
attributes which must have been the incitements in Him
to give to things their being, we might be right in assuming the prime mover of all to be the anticipated enjoyment
of future sentient beings, animating and setting in action the
primseval love. But with constitution of anything, begins a
more complicated consideration of direction of action than
that of its being simply to produce happiness. With constitution of anything, begins rightness or duty; that is, the
notion, not only of what may be done with resulting increase
of happiness to some one, but what should be done by the
agent under such and such circumstances. Even the Creator
must be considered to have brought Himself into a position
of self-imposed and self-maintaihed duty towards that part
of what He had made, to which good and happiness are
possible. Pure beneficence we may imagine as the beginning
of all things, but it must soon have' generated much besides.
It. will be seen that the earlier view given in this
quotation is not in all respects the same as the later
and more developed view which we find in the present treatise.  In the former a foundation for ethics
is sought in the double want of human nature, the
want of satisfaction for desire, of direction for action:
G..                                       ~ ~  C




Xiv         PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.
in the latter the analysis is carried further back; the
primary axiom of eudsemonics is declared to be the
existence of pain as a thing undesirable to suffer,
suggesting the ideal'happiness;' the primary axiom
of aretaics is the existence of pain as a. thing undesirable to  inflict, suggesting  the ideal'right'
(p. 3); and it is not till the end of the 2nd chapter
(p. 22) that, we are introduced to want as a fact of
man's sentient, not his active, nature.  The difference is partly explained if we remember the distinction, already marked in the quotation, between
the felt want of satisfaction and the confused and
half-unconscious want of direction, and on the other
hand by the subordination, in the present treatise,
of the ideal'happiness' to the ideal'good' suggested'by the fact of want.  In p. 145 the relation
between the two former ideals receives yet a further
explanation:'Our active nature,' it is said,'adds
this to our simply sentient nature, that pain -is
instinctively felt by us, not only as unpleasant, but
as to' be avoided: our social nature superadded
widens this into the more general feeling that pain
is to be prevented, afortior'i not to be inflicted. We
find thus, from the very first, a determinant of our
action beyond ourselves, a restraint, as it were, laid
upon it.' Again, in the twelfth chapter we have a
broad distinction between the two kinds of pleasure,
the pleasure of enjoyment which is a passive affection
of the sentient nature, and the pleasure of gratification which is preceded by a sense of want, and




PREFACE BY THE EDIrTOR.           xv
accompanied by the exercise of the active powers.
The distinction here laid down between the facts
suggestive of the ideals of good and happiness is
extended to the ideals themselves in the present
treatise, while in the earlier summary the less important ideal is merged in'the more important.
As the Author thus recognizes the principles
assumed by Epicurean and Utilitarian moralists as
being equally valid with those of their antagonists,
so is it with other principles which have been turned
into party watch-words by one-sided thinkers. Reason and sentiment, honour and conscience, fact and
ideal, all find their place within the limits of moral
philosophy as he viewed it: each serves as a cornerstone to build up the practical science of which
the object is to determine how man should live.
What appears to be breadth of view is sometimes
nothing more than hastiness and looseness of thought,
which brings together a number of opposing principlesj and adopts the language now of one, now of
another, without being conscious of any inconsistency.
From this, which I should almost venture to call
the besetting sin of modern writers, Prof. Grote was
remarkably free. Consistency was no less conspicuous a feature in his mental character than breadth of
view. If he is tracing out some special line of thought,
he never allows it to blind him to the fact that there
are other lines of thought which may be equallyI important for the attainment of the truth; and he is careful
to warn us beforehand that he is about to make what
c2




XVi         PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.
he calls an'abstraction', taking for a while a partial
and limited view.  It was impossible for him  with
his far-ranging vision to- uphold in one department
the contradictory of a proposition which he asserted
in another, to maintain for instance that what was
false in philosophy might be true in theology. For
the same reason he was disposed to be impatient
of the splitting up of philosophy into parts, considering that confusion lurked in the separation of
logic and- ethics from  psychology, and in the consequent duplication of names for the same thing.
Three other characteristics I will mention which
seem to me to give a special value to all that Prof.
Grote has written. He had, in the first place, a singular
EVfvlca, a moral sensitiveness qcuick and delicate to a
most unusual degree:Few could be even slightly
acquainted with him without being struck with this
nobility of nature: o' 8E roLOVo, as Aristotle says,
X7 EL' XAC,3OL av aCpxac p! aLwo,.  It was the union of
this fine sense of rectitude with sobriety of judgment
and large-mindedness, a union rare in itself and still
more rarely found in conjunction. with speculative
and analytical capacity, which led to his being much. consulted in cases where it was difficult to discern
the right line of conduct.  The second characteristic which I will notice is one which is closely connected with the first, I mean his freshness of view:
boUros /ev 7ravapLtcrro, as Aristotle goes on, o aro~
7ravTa vorroEsL. While most of us in the course of
years get embedded in an. accumulation of other




PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.          Xvi1
people's ideas and vainly strive to penetrate. to the
native sentiment beneath, his mind.'remained a clear
mirror reflecting back the forms of nature in their
original purity. Whatever he says has at least the
merit of being genuine thought at first hand, not a
mere repetition of what others have said or the
imagination of what might be the right thing to say.
This again is a part of his simplicity of nature, the
naturalness which endeared him so much to friends,
and which shines- through all his writingS. There is
much in the chapter on Happiness, especially where,it speaks of the enjoyment of simple pleasures, which
will recall him to the memory of those:who knew
him. The homely scenery of Cambridge and Ely,
the sight of the common wayside flowers, were to
him the sources of as keen- delight as Italy or the
Alps are to others. His pocket-books contain a
curious medley of philosophical jottings mixed up
with notes on the songs and habits of birds and
memoranda as to the wild plants seen in his walks.
The third characteristic I have to mention is almost implied in what has been said already as to his
large-mindedness: I refer to the fairness and freedom
from prejudice which have' been generally recognized
by the reviewers of his former treatises.  Like his
brother, the historian, he had an almost fanatical love
of freedom of thought, even when it took a form
with which he could not himself sympathize. His
bias,' if he had one, was always in favour of the
unpopular side, i. e. of the side, whichever it might be,




Xviii       PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.
which seemed to be in danger of being unfairly
treated.
These then are the merits I should especei
ally claim for the Author whose speculations it is
not less my privilege than my duty to bring before
the public; fairness, freshness of thought, moral
sensitiveness, consistency and yet- breadth of view:
and these I think must make his writings of importance even to those who may be most inclined to
dissent fromt the conclusions at which he arrives.
It only remains for me to return my thanks to
the Syndics of the'Cambridge University Press for
the -liberal grant which they have made towards defraying the expenses of the present volume.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Two sciences included in moral philosophy.
PAGE
Eudnemonics, dealing with man from the side of his sentient nature,
has for its axiom the existence of pain as a thing undesirable to suffer;
aretaics, dealing with man from the side of activity, has for its axiom the
existence of pain as a thing undesirable to inflict..............................  1
CHAPTER II.
Moral philosophy as an art referring  to an ideal.
Meaning of the term ideal: in'what' sense Moral Philosophy is
ideal; shown in regard to the terms virtue, duty, happiness &c. Distinction between the method of the inductive sciences and that to be
followed here. Inconsistency of Bentham. Explanation of the term'want.' Man's sentient nature gives rise to the ideal happiness, his active
nature to the ideal virtue, his want to the ideal good......................... 12
APPENDIX.
On  TT7ant.
Want or egence is the starting point of action; may, or may not, be
accompanied by the sense of want. Satisfaction of egence. Egence
in   G od.................................................................................  26
CHAPTER III.
General view of the moral ideals and of the relation between
them.
The summum faciendum, or rightness, answers the question, What
should I do? the summum bonum, or the desilrable, answers the question, What shall I aim at?  Connected with this is happiness, idealized
pleasure. The character of the two latter ideals is entirely altered as




XX                            CONTENTS.
PAGE
they are viewed in relation to self or otherwise. Various other ideals. The
interpretation of one ideal by another is not necessarily an advance in.knowledge: where it is so, there is a danger of conifounding fact with
ideal.........                            ~                           34
id-ieal.,.O.....|.,.,........-.......,.Q..  *...................................
CHAPTER'IV.
The ideals are not' mere imaginations;
The ideals are imaginations founded'upon our sense of want, which
informs us of something absent which may be made present.  Besides
this basis of fact, their reality is shown by the manner in which they
influence the conduct of all, and by their consistency with the results of
observation............................ 42
CHAPTER V.
On the analogy  between the intellectual and moral ideals.
Dualism  of perception. The communication between subject and
object may be exhibited, as passive, in a scale of sensation, or as active,
in a scale of intelligence.. The corresponding moral scale illustrated in
the case of pain. Truth, the intellectual ideal, appears in two forms, as
the cogitandum or the 6'vrws ov; subordinate to these are the sub-ideals,
that which is commonly believed, that which may be acted on.  The
moral ideals and sub-ideals correspond to these and are closely connected
with them.  Faith is needed alike for the apprehension- of the moral
and intellectual ideals....................................................   54
CHAPTER -VI.
-On mnoral, value.
~The utilitarian view, that the moral value of an action is tested simply by the resultant happiness, is the negation of the first moral ideal.
The idea of good belongs to our active as well as to our sentient nature.
Readiness to forego our own happiness'(generosity) is as essential'
anf element of moral value as the wish to promoti the general happiness
(usefulness).  This shown by a consideration of man's active nature, of
his conflicting interests, of the superiority of one part of his nature to
another. Man does not act up to his nature if he confines his action to
self. The morality of consequences may'be either selfish or publicspirited.  The latter is quite consistent with intuitive morality, but errs
in denying to right any meaning beyond useful'.......................    68




CONTENTS.                               Xxi
CHAPTER VII.
Duty.
PAGE
Duty and virtue are two aspects of the first ideal differing in respect
of freedom. Duty as ideal law is definite, taking cognizance of offence
against it, and having reference not only to the second party but to a
third party, the guardian of the law. -Four views, Greek,'Roman, Hobbistic, and Absolutist, involved'in the complete definition of law. Application of the same notions to duty., Utilitarianism  subordinates
particular duties to general considerations of utility, neglecting particular 
obligation.'The particularity of duty lies in the definiteness of the thing
or the person concerned. Duty may be regarded as public spirit for the
moral universe (1), or as willing submission of. the members of the
moral universe to that which possesses authority over it (2), or as submission to arbitrary power (3), or it may be this last associated with
approval of the end for which the power is exerted (4). The full idea
involves them all...........'......................        82
CHAPTER VIII.
On the genesis of virtue: its emotional elements, benevolence.
Virtue is a development of kindly affection moralized bjy the sense
of duty and desire to excel. Kindly affection includes the natural feel;
ing of love under its various forms, passing from I'pws down to oteo\.la,
as well as the occasional feelings which spring up under special circumstances, either in consequence of the condition of others (as e.g. pity), or
their behaviour towards us (as e.g. gratitude). On the other hand we
have the antagonist feelings of jealousy, envy, revengefulness...      103
APPENDIX.
On benevolent impulse in  its relation  to virtue.
Viewed objectively, virtue is usefulness; viewed subjectively, it is
generosity. The former view was too much neglected by the ancients
and by Butler. Will is a resultant of principle' and impulse. A virtuous character involves conscientious principle and kindly impulse.
One-sided moralists confine their view to one or the other. Three kinds
of love, gpws, 0 ropy, OekXa, as th'ey exist in man and in animals. The
desire to be loved is a powerful aid to virtue............................... 116




XXii' CONTENTS.
CIIAPTER IX.
Genesis of virtue: its intellectual elements, principle.
PAGE
Benevolence, if it is to prevail over selfish impulse and selfish principle, requires to be regulated and stimulated by the two forms of moral
principle, conscience and honour. Objective and subjective view of
conscience. Defects of Butler's account of conscience. Our social joined
to our active nature suggests that pain is a thing not to be inflicted, and
thus supplies an original restraint seconding. our benevolent impulses.
Conscientiousness distinguished from benevolent sensitiveness. - Imaginative sympathy combining with the thought of our action as worthy or
unworthy constitutes the sense of honour' and shame. Our moral judgments are formed in sympathy with the judgments of others.  We are
rivals not only for. the ends of action, but in action itself. This is a
rivalry of merit which is a powerful aid to virtue, Dangers attending it.
Virtue is not mere love of approbation. Sense of honour distinguished
from conscience. Failings in regard to self-respect.  Self-respect is the
opposite to selfishness. Both self-respect and conscience are liable to
err and require to be educated................................................ 135
APPENDIX.
iOn conscience and honour.
Three kinds of moral reflexion; self-interestedness, self-estimation,
conscience. Conscience distinguished from the.practical reason. Sympathy enters into our idea of truth, both intellectual and moral. Ai6s
is the natural feeling connected with our thought of the opinion of
others. Points in which it differs from conscience. Various developments of aic&s. Characteristics of conscience.  The sense of honour is
t4e   o ament of the sense o          Shame is the fear o others'
estimate. It is coninected with certain bodily instincts and with the
sense of moral weakness. The three kinds of moral reflexion are all
associated with imagination, and modified by custom and education.
Various ways in which sensibility and reason are combined in conscience. Healthy and unhealthy consciousness. Erroneous verdicts of
conscience and honour. Conscience is self-complicity. The relation of
conscience to memory. Consciousness, though distinguished from conscience for convenience, is never really separated from it. The moral
difference between man and brute...............................;...... 166




CONTENTS.                             Xx111
CHAPTER X.
Distribution of action considered from  the ideal point of view.
PAGE
Granting that all action should tend to produce happiness, the question arises, Whose happiness? Pope's answer, the rule of preference, is
truer both to reason and fact than Bentham's, the rule of equality.
The Scripture rule'compared with both. Mistaken analogy between
self-love and love of others.  The ideal rule is to devote ourselves to
the happiness of others so far as is consistent with. avurpiceta. a  It is
only in regard to points of detail that the rule of equality is applicable;
and this has to be qualified by the rule of'preference, where opportunity or obligation requires.  Thus facts irrespective of feeling give
rise to relative duties. In case of obligation, our action must be guided
by considerations of justice combined with utility and honour. The
love of fairness. Conflict. of relative and general duty. Duty of truthfulness....................................................................................  94
APPENDIX.
On distribution of action in reference to existing  law.
The moral law appears in three stages, the law of the land, public
opinion, conscience: appeal is made at each stage to the higher stage.
The law determines rights and duties in accordance with the relations
it establishes.' Source of the authority of actual law. The primary
-essential of law is that it should conform to human nature. Its justice
and utility can only be determined in reference. to this. Shown in
reference to the two bases of legislation, property and family. Duty of.the legislator. As civilization advances the law loses. its educational
influence. Duty of subjects. The law suggests action beyond itself
both in the way of extension and intension.  A large part of conduct
can only be regulated by the higher law  of conscience and public
opinion. The business of systematic-morality is to criticize and inform
these.............;.........22......................................2....
CHAPTER XI.
~ The ancatomny  of wrong-doing.
Tefidency of language to name good dispositidns and bad'acts.
Offences 6f omission spring from cowardice or self-indulgence: offences
of commission from maleficence, injustice or unfaithfulness. Maleficence is rarely deliberate except from revengefulness.  Injustice is acting for our own benefit regardless of wrong or unkindness to others.
Unfaithfulness is injustice towards one who trusts us. Breach of promise. Moral feelings which should determine the fulfilment of engagements.  Truthfulness, reticence, openness.  Grounds of the duty. of
truthfulness.  It is sometimes a'superstition..................................   240




XX1V                         CONTENTS.
APPENDIX.
On Malevolence.
PAGE
Explanation of R'ochefoucauld's maxim  as to our pleasure at the
suffering of others.  Self-dissatisfaction leads to jealousy of others.
This is increased by a misuse of the feeling of fairness. There is no
native ill-will................2............................................  258
On justice and truthfulness.
Distributive and. corrective justice. Natural resentment has to be
controlled by considerations of benevolence and utility. Various kinds
of justice. Impartiality. Honesty. Connexion between self-respect and
truthfulness, In what sense a promise is to be kept. When it is
wrong to keep a promise. Perjury.  Lawfulness of oaths....:.....,.... 262
-ICHAPTER XII.
On pleasure and pain.
Hedonics distinguished from eudumonics.  Three kinds of pleasure
and pain: (1) of undisturbance, well-feeling opposed to discomfort;
(2) of disturbance, enjoyment opposed to suffering; (3) of.want and
satisfaction, gratification  opposed to  desire.  Distinction  between
gratification and enjoyment shown in the case of food. Enjoyment
belongs to our sentient. nature, and is not preceded by sense of want.
Our active nature is involved in gratification, which is preceded by
sense of want.  Importance  of the distinction, which was overlooked by Butler on the one hand, who denied that action is ever for
the sake of pleasure simply, and by his opponents on the other, who
held that all action is for the sake of pleasure.  In most cases, not in
all, the moving force is desire deternminedhby felt want.  H iedonometry.
Those who admit a difference in the quality of pleasures must abandon
the exact comparison of pleasures. Pleasure is a function of individual
character...........................        275
CHAPTER XIII.
On happiness.
The germ of happiness is in well-feeling, not in enjoyment. Disposition to mistake the materials of happiness for happiness itself. Action
essential to happiness. Aristotle's e67rpaita. Definition of happiness.
Difficulty of arriving at general conclusions in regard to the experience
of pleasure. Examination of maxims' bearing on happiness: (1) that it
consists in contentment; contradicted by experience, philosophy and




CONTENTS.                             XXV
PAGE
religion.  The converse is true, that discontent is unhappiness; Ambition. Covetousness. Patience under suffering. Hopefulness.. Happiness depends much on the feelings which accompany desire and
pursuit. Maxim (2) that it consists in distraction. Pleasure is.
incompatible alike with complete consciousness alid complete unconsciousness. Blending of pleasure and pain. Pleasures of malevolence.
The habit of' benevolence cannot be safely built orn the desire to obtain
pleasure from it. If philanthropy is ever developed out of selfishness
it is in virtue'of some third transmuting principle. Maxim  (3) that
happiness consists in the simpler pleasures. Coarseness, luxury, refinement.  Importance of cultivating the higher sensibilities. Freshness
of feeling a chief element of happiness. Maxim  (4) that we should
moderate our expectations. True of happiness, not true of life. The
more we hope the better................................. 291
APPENDIX.
On the unhappiness of human nature.
Man is never satisfied with happiness. This restlessness is a'sign
of the imperfection of his nature. Epicurean self-restraint is no easier
than Stoic. Complaints of human misery may denote -either a querulous disposition or a high ideal. Religion deepens the sense of imperfection, but combines it with faith in God................................. 327
On the promotion of the happiness of others.
Philanthropy includes relieving the wants of others, giving them
pleasure, improving and elevating them. Difficulty of the two latter,:
especially of' the third. The happiness of many is more easily realized
than' the happiness of one. Even action aimed at selfish happiness
contributes in the main to the happiness of others. All are the better
for the increase of wealth or intelligence in individuals..................... 332
CHAPTER XIV.
On moral elevation.
Implied in what has been said on virtue, moral value, self-respect,
and quality of pleasure. It involves three things, idealism, effort, progress. Application of the terms'high' and'low' to the-internal moral
organization. The superiority denoted may be one of authority or of
worth. Priniciple has authority over impulse: some impulses are more
worthy than others.. Butler and the ancients were not only defective in
their psychology, they also failed to mark the objective character of
virtu'e. The increase of conscientiousness is the increase of active benevolence.  Antithesis of the acting and enjoying self.  Superiority of
nobleness consists (1) in. the faculty being less animal, i. e.- not shared




XXV1                         CONTENTS.
PAGE
by brutes, as imagination, whether simple, or combined with. affection,
pleasure or will: (2) in the impulses being more spiritual, aspiring after
a higher nature or state, either in the form of religion, or of belief in
progress...................................                        339
CHAPTER XV.
On the relation of the ideals to higher and  lower fact.
The moral ideals are imaginations to which various degrees of
reality and imperativeness may be ascribed. The ideal is the connecting link between higher and lower fact. Feelings of want and duty are
facts indicative of facts beyond them.  Positivism converts the lower
fact into its ideal. Idealism  subordinates the lower fact. Two kinds
of knowledge, scientia and cognoscentia. Belief is properly incomplete
scie7ntia, imagination incomplete cognoscentia. Importance of both in
the intellectual sphere. Analogous to these is the belief in the moral
law, the inward sight of the moral Governor.  The most influential
idealisnms have combined value for. actual good with enthusiasm  for
ideal.  The higher fact is a distinct object of speculative ethics, but of
practical only in so far as it is involved in the ideal. Possibility of
knowing the higher fact. Philosophical error in regard to the Absolute
and Things-in-themselves.  The logical subject is unknowable because
it is nothing: the essential nature is partially knowable..................... 360
CHAPTER XVI.
Actual and ideal human nature.
Our ideal of human nature must be shaped by a k1iowledge of the
actual development of man. The ideal iQ to a certain extent embodied
in civilized societies. There is a general level of civilized morality
which must be taken as a starting point for all practical ethics; but
which has to be corrected by the ideal which it has helped to form.....  388
CHAPTER XVII.
On the goodness of custom.
Morality is concerned with individual character, with relation of
individual to custom, and with goodness of custom. Productiveness of
happiness is one sign of good custom; but not a satisfactory test.' Exemnplified in the case of slavery.  The first question to ask in respect of
any custom is whlether it is natural.  This. must be determined by
sociology. The second,whether its tendency has been elevating in the
past and is likely to be so in the future..................................,  403




CONTENTS.                           XXVll
CHAPTER XVIII.
Relation of individzual to custom,
PAGE
It is claimed that the individual should follow custom  on two.
grounds; (1) that it witnesses to right, (2~ that it constitutes right; Ih-,dividuality, as conscience, denies the former; as self-respect, the latter.
Education tends to produce customariness.   Systems which make
morality a product of education tend to weaken hMoral individuality.
Justice is not more a product of education than the love of the general
happiness is. The conscientious man, while respecting the judgment
of others, feels bound to maintain his independence of judgment. Selfrespect equally important for the maintenance of individual freedom.
Danger to freedom  from  democracy.  Limits of the interference of
society...............................................................  419
CHAPTER XIX.
On character, will, and education.
Internal nature in plants, animals, men'. Individuality is a permarrent limitation of the generic nature. The elements of individual. nature are predispositions to certain passions, which are developed.
by education into dispositions, and these into habits and character.
The growth of the practical habit which lessens one kind: of sensibility should replace this loss by the development of another kind
of sensibility. Criticism of character is the special province of moral
philosophy, as we see in Aristotle's Ethics. Inconsistent character.
Will in relation to character. ~ Strength, abundance, individuality of
character.  Power of the will to resist character or habit. Permanence
of original constitution:in opposition to both.................................. 433
APPENDIX.
A.
Feeling and principle are habitual in virtuous character, but should
not lose their sensitiveness and deliberateness. In what sense virtue is
a natural habit. Habit in itself is not more favourable to virtue than to
vice. Virtue is aided by the belief in the freedom. of the will............... 456
B.
Three shells of character, original, made, making. The fact that
habit is not fixed' in the mind as in the body, is an argument for the
greater longevity of the former.  Relation of character to disposition,
Mixed character. Character developed by action rather than by thought 464




XXV111                        CONTENTS.
C.
PAGE
Religion confirms the hopes 6f morality in affirming the possibility
of improvement. against habit.  Stoic view, that virtue is the condition
of stable equilibrium, confirmed by Christianity. Teaching and tiaining
in reference to virtue. Is crime voluntary? Importance of recognizing
the variety of character...................................  469'
D.
Critical moralism ignores individuality of character. The exhibition
of'mixture in character may be done for a good or a bad purpose.~ Character may be bad on'principle, or' impulse, or habit. The first may be
met by reforming the principle or rousing antagonist impulse  the
second by strengthening principle and changing impulse. Vows and
resolutions. Moral influence requires sympathy and knowledge, both of
the special case and of the general laws of moral pathology............... 476
CHAPTER XX.
Discussion, controversy, war.
The quarrelsomeness of human nature a main field of ethics. Conflict may either be of interest or of. opinion. In civilized communities
conflict of interest is settled by judicial decision..This is impossible in
the case of coniflict of opinion or between communities.. Here we are in
a dilemma between love of peace and love of justice. Historical changes
in the manner of conducting war and in the grounds for war. Question
as to the probability of the extinctioni of war. Difficulties in the way of
arbitration. A stronger sense of the duty of rulers to subjects may tend
to check war: on the other hand, increased sense of national unity may
lead to war. The best hope is from the growth of toleration, and the
conviction of the -inutility of war. Truth and right must be maintained,
as they are ascertained, by reason. Controversy has made the opinion
of the present, and is making the opinion of the future. Evils attendant on controversy...............................       487
CHAPTER XXI.
Importance of right belief.
Right belief may be important-either as necessary to right action or
as itself a duty. Some consider religious misbelief a mistake which
may have fatal consequences. Such consequences should not be called
by the name of punishment. This view resolves religion into prudence.
Various views as to the consoling or alarming effect of religion. The
suggestion of a future life comes not from nature but from religion.
Faith in the, order of the moral universe is necessary *for thought and
action, no less than faith in the order of the natural universe............ 508




ERR ATA.
p. 3, 1. 21, for: read,.,,,, 22, for, read:.
p. 31, 1. 9, for is read in.
p. 47, 1. 21, for they read we.
p. 106, 1. 14, for other's happiness read happiness of others.
p. 179, 1. 25, for ac'ds read al'as.
p. 202, 1. 5, for yourselves read yourself.
p. 207, 1. 21, for fortitude read fortitudo.
p. 380, 1. 21, for different read difficult.
p. 381, 1. 22, after be insert known.
p. 434, 1. 19, omit comma after call.








CHAPTER  1.
TWO SCIENCES INCLUDED IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
THE following treatise is constructed upon this prin- Eudsmoroes canciple: that in what is commonly known by the name ot cover
of Moral Philosophy, there are two sciences; one tgounwolf
the science of virtue, Aretaics; the other the science moral philosophy.
of happiness, Eudmemonics.  The two sciences need
each other, and affect each other; but they start
from different points. That of these two sciences
the latter exists, cannot be seriously doubted: the
question is, whether the former exists also. Again,
that this former science (i.e. a moral philosophy which
is not eudemonics) exists as a matter of fact, in so
far that there is a literature purporting to be the
literature of such a science, cannot be doubted; the
question is, whether this so-called science is chimerical
and unreal. The reason for conceiving it not to be so,
is this: that however we expand and manipulate the
science of eudoemonics, it cannot, while it continues
anything which that term can at all represent, fill
nearly the whole ground which moral philosophy is
required to fill, or give a reasonable account of all
that is to be accounted for.                        Shewn in
regard to
When, for instance, a man, without cause, inflicts the inflic.
pain upon another, the misdeed on the part of the.pain.f
G.                                       1




2            TWO SCIENCES INCLUDED
agent is a fact as well as the pain suffered by the
sufferer, and-it is a fact with a character about it different from any which it can derive from the pain.
It is not a sufficient account of the misdeed to say
that it is something which gives pain to another,
and which therefore perhaps may be expected, if not
now, at some future time, to give pain of remorse to
the doer, and which moreover, since he has been
educated to think badly of actions which give pain
to others, and to call them wrong, he himself perhaps
thinks wrong, disapproves, and dislikes, even while
he does it. I do not think that such a doctrine will
ever maintain itself against that which is called
intuitivism, but which seems to me to be the necessary voice of human reason, viz. that the doer and
men in general think the action wrong, not merely
because they have been trained to do so by education, but because it is in reality wrong. Its being
wrong is a fact; the judgment of the doer and
of men follows this fact, as it follows other facts.'Wrong' is not merely a name by which it is called,
but there is considered to be something attaching
to it which we know by the name of'wrong.' And
this which attaches to it is not simply that it causes
pain, for it might cause pain without being wrong:
it is that it causes pain under particular circumstances, pain which it ought not to cause. What is
the nature of these circumstances, the meaning and
results of this ought, it is the business of aretaics to
The evil of investigate.
suffering  Supposing then it is said that we use the term
pain the
subject of'wrong' of anything which causes pain without
enuditmo- causing, in some way, greater pleasure or happiness
evil of it- on the whole to overbalance the pain: if we grant
thesubject that this, so far as it goes, is a true description of
of aretaics.   what'wrong' means, and that wrong actions have




IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY.                3
this character about them; we have then, as a fact
of the universe,-as much a fact of the universe as
pain, or as happiness itself, —that actions bearing the
above character are marked off from others, and
marked off as what ought not to be done, what are
undesirable, improper, or however we may express it.
We may put the fact in this way, that pain has two
characters, according to the side from which we look
at it: that it is not only something unpleasant to,
and dreaded by, the sufferer, but also that it is something which another ought not causelessly to inflict
upon him.  This second fact about pain is one entirely different from the former: it is one, no doubt,
which in our judgment or feeling instantly follows
from. the former, but its so following is not from anything in experience, not from anything involved in
the nature of pain cas We feel it: the conclusion is
essentially necessary and intuitive; and it is just the
drawing this conclusion thus which constitutes us
moral beings.
Pain, thus, is a bad thing in the universe: with
its badness, and the study of this badness (so for the
present to describe it), with a view to its avoidance, is
the business of eudsemonics: the inflicting causeless
pain-is a bad thing in the universe with a different
badness, and the study of this latter badness, with a
view to avoiding that, is the business of aretaics.
In both the above views of pain, the science, Thefundamental
whether it be eudsemonics or aretaics, rests upon a axio of
natural fact, not upon an observation of what men edioes 
natural fact,                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~nics is the
do or feel. The fundamental fact of eudsemonics is, existence
of pain as
not that men do avoid pain, supposing this a matter athingundesirable
of experience or observation, or in other words, sup- for the
posing it conceivable that they might do otherwise, sufferer to
suffer.
but that pain is something which has in it that
which makes it avoided. -Let it be said, It is only
1-2




4            TWO SCIENCES INCLUDED
by experience that we know this, or in fact know
pain at all: the saying this seems to me only applying the term  experience to our perception and
knowledge altogether, and I feel no objection to its
being so applied.  But the real point of consequenceis, that our knowledge that pain is a thing undesirable, or to be avoided, is not something which
we can be supposed possibly to doubt about, in
regard of which we settle our doubt by observation
of what men do: the natural fact, the prime assumption of eudmemonics, is not that men do dislike and
avoid pain, but that there exists in the universe
something which we call pain, and that, in the very
notion of it, it is something undesirable and to be
avoided.
Funda-    In the same manner the fundamental fact of
mental
axiom of aretaics, or what for the present we will suppose the
aretaics
the exist- fundamental fact of it, is not what might be a matter
panof a of observation, whether of our consciousness or of
thing abl men's action, viz. that men do avoid giving pain to
for the  others, or have a feeling in them telling them they
giver to
give.   ought to avoid it, but is the natural fact that pain
is something, the giving of which on the one side is
as undesirable for the giver and as much to be
avoided by him, as the suffering of it is on the other
side for the sufferer. So far as we can look at the
thing in itself, no man wants to give pain any more
than to suffer it; and, in any case, what he wants,
or does not want, is not the ultimate fact.  Men's
avoidance of giving pain is a result of, and a testimony of, its being wrong to give it, in the same way
as their avoidance of suffering it is a result of, and a
testimony of, its being unpleasant to suffer it. Let
it be granted, that unless a man knew pain as suffering himself first, he would have no feeling of
repugnance to the giving it: the existence of pain as




IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY.                5
suffering (or, which is the same thing, of possibility
of increase and diminution of happiness), may be
necessary as a condition to the existence of moral
virtue; but the feeling of repugnance to the giving
pain does not follow from the feeling of dislike to
the suffering it, except through the addition of some
new element, of a something fresh which does not
belong to eudmemonics, and which is the foundation
of aretaics.
But, it will be said, is there any occasion for more We need a
than one science, when after all it is confessed that which inpain (so we will speak at present) is the leadingthiue s
idea; when what is morally to be avoided, for what- circumever reason, is after all only the causing pain, as what under
is-physically (so to speak) to be avoided is the suffering isinflicted,
it? For the one as the other, have we anything else a well as
a science
to do than to investigate what causes pain, that we which investigates
may in both ways avoid it?                          the vaWhat I have hitherto said has been said for the ptns of
sake of illustration, rather more simply than the case
will properly bear, and we shall see, as we go on-,
with how many other considerations it has to be
complicated.- Let us take the science of eudemlonics
first, which I fully admit to exist, and to be a most 
important science; the only question being, whether
it represents what people really mean and want by
moral philosophy, and covers the ground which that
must cover. We have then, in eudoemonics, to study
what is meant by suffering pain (enjoying happiness
we may say, if we like, proceeding the reverse way),
to compare different kinds of it, to say how it arises,
how it is to be avoided.  But just as, on the one side,
there is an endless variety of pains which may be.suffered or given, and it is the fact of this variety
vllich renders necessary the study of eudsemonics, so,,on the other side,- there is an endless variety of circum



6            TWO SCIENCES INCLUDED
stances under which one pain, or one pleasure, may be
given, and it is this latter variety which causes the
science of aretaics. Were there but one kind and one
degree of pain (or on the other hand of pleasure)
possible in the world; were there no other harm, for
instance, possible to be done to a man, except that of
killing him; there would then be no scope for a
science of eudsemonics; but, as there is a vast variety
of circumstances which might lead one man to kill
another, there would still be room for a large science
about these, which, on this supposition, would be the
science of aretaics. And by multiplying, in supposition, the ways in which we may do people harm, i.e.
supposing things, in that respect, as they are now,
we by no means lessen the necessity for the aretaics,
however we may introduce another science besides:
we really enrich the aretaics as well.
The       As there are some, on the one hand, who assert
former, the
science of that there is but one science contained in moral
aretais, ise philosophy, the science, namely, which I have called
upon the'eud-emonics;' so, on the other hand, some will say
latter,
though it that there is but one science, and it is what I have
upposes called'aretaics.'  The controversy, in fact, which of
the eud- these two sciences is to be considered moral philonotion of sophy, is what has constituted the history of moral
pain.
philosophy from the beginning.  The subject, they
will say, of moral philosophy, is virtue, not pain or
pleasure, however these may, in one way or another,
enter into it.
Nor can it be denied that there is at least as
much reason for saying that it is aretaics which
constitute moral philosophy as for saying that it is
the other. Pain is indeed a reality in a sense in
which no feeling of right or wrong can be: what we
say about pain or pleasure can be brought to the
test of a particular kind of experience, and corn



IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY.              7
parison can be made of individual experiences, in a
manner which cannot be done with regard to our sense
of wrong-doing. But it is quite clear that the fact,
that the inflicting causeless pain is a misdeed, an evil
in the universe of a different kind from, but as real
as, the suffering of pain, a something in the universe
which we think ought not to be, which is a defect in
it, a something undesirable;-it is clear that this is a
fact which need not wait for any observations upon
the nature &c. of pain, that is, for eudsemonics, for its
establishment: if we do not have it from the first, we
can never get it from experience. In entering upon
eudaemonics, or the science of happiness, as a science
of experience, let us suppose our minds, as they
should be, free from previous opinion, prepared to
receive what experience gives us. Experience about
pain and pleasure will doubtless shew us many things:
there may be a regular inductive science on the subject: but just as no one dreams that any amount of
experience can alter our opinion as to pain being a
thing in itself undesirable to suffer; so no experience,
everyone sees, can alter our opinion as to pain being
a thing in itself wrong to inflict. The eudeemonical
induction, if well carried out, may lead us to conclusions about happiness or about pain, as general and
as vast as the Copernican or Newtonian conclusions:
but these conclusions, whatever they may be, can
have no effect one way or the other on the fact, or
on our feeling of the fact, that pain in itself is an
evil, in one way to suffer, in another to inflict.  The
axiom then of aretaics, that it is evil or a misdeed to
inflict pain, as pain and causelessly, needs, and waits
for, no experience to suggest or prove it: no one
would think for an instant that it could be doubted,
and its truth made to depend on a trial by experience:
its truth is the same whatever the pain or happiness,




'8            TWO SCIENCES INCLUDED
in our observation of them, turn out in their particulars
to be.  It is true for all possible pain, or for all
possible happiness, so long as what we call such
answers to the definition.  The inhabitants of the
planets, if there are such, may have very different
sorts of happiness from us, but it has the same truth
for them as for us.
Aretaicis     While therefore we may admit that the fact,
the essential part of which, if it is wished, we may call a fact of eudmeMoral Philosophy, monies, the fact of the existence or possibility of
thouigh ij pain, is the first, and is necessary as a previous conbe supple- dition for the existence of aretaics, yet, on the other
mented by
eudaemo- hand, it is with aretaics, or with the above axiom,
that anything which can be called moral philosophy
begins, and all moral philosophy is no more than a
deduction from that axiom. It is indeed exceedingly
possible that the axiom might be very sterile in
-results without eudmernonical observation to give us
particulars about the pain, the infliction of which is
thus to be avoided; this we shall see as we go on.
So far as this is the case, aretaics, to be fruitful and
useful, needs (besides its presupposition of the eudcemonical notion of pain or happiness) to be largely
supplemented by eudeemonics: and this is the case
with all possible aretaics.
Similarly    Eudoemonics, conceived quite generally, need not
human
eudaemo- require to be supplemented by aretaics: but (and I
nqis re-  refer to what follows for more full illustration),
be supple- human eudaemonics do  require to  be largely so
mented by
aretaics. supplemented.  This is because man is what we
commonly describe as a moral being, that'is, his
feeling and reflection about what he does, together
with his sympathies with others and many other
feelings of a like nature, enter very largely as an
element into his happiness and his pain. The eudaemonical analysis of pleasure and pain has, there



IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY.              9
fore, with other things, to be an analysis of man's
moral nature; and it is impossible to analyse feelings
and thoughts without a reference to what the feelings
and thoughts are about: and this, when the feelings
or thoughts are what we call moral, is aretaics. We
have thus, it would appear, in reference to man, the
two sciences interlocked in an exceedingly complicated
manner.
If this is the case, it will be said again, What is
the use of calling them two? Why cannot they be
treated as one subject?                         sons for
As one subject I do treat them, but as two hteating
them as
sc;iewnces.  The reasons are various.            distinct
sciences.
The first is, that I wish to leave no part of the
ground belonging to moral philosophy unexplored (to
the small extent to which I can speak about it), and
I believe this is the only way.
The second is, that I wish to give its full force to
all that has been said, and often most truly said, on
each side in the great and noble, but often most blind
and confused, moral controversy of ages.
The third is, that I wish that the student should
learn to value and respect (if he cannot of himself
perhaps know much about) the various methods
which moral controversy has followed and the literature with which it has been associated. I should
like the study to take with him a character different
from that which it has sometimes done, and to teach
him to think liberally, without depreciating and
caricaturing what he is ignorant of.
The fourth is, that I think in this way it may be
more easy to grasp the exceedingly difficult relation
of different parts of the subject together, as intuitive
and inductive (to use for a moment terms which I
disapprove).  I am as anxious as any Utilitarian to
have, as far as possible, a good and real inductive




10           TWO SCIENCES INCLUDED
science of eudsemonics. And I think that the taking
of eudoemonics for the whole of moral philosophy,
instead of a portion of or adjunct to it, has been a
hindrance to this in every way. One side in the
traditionary moral controversy have despised eudsemonics, while those who have admired and cultivated
them have always had something to prove by them:
they have been users of them, not bonh fide inquirers
into them. They have, for instance, wanted to
establish, as a result of their investigation, that
eudaemonics would really bear upon them the whole
weight of morality. Whether they were right or
wrong in this, it is at least not the right temper for
an inductive inquirer. Or, if they were more practical
and less philosophical than this, they have had a
prejudice either for, or against, things established:
and their inductive inquiries have correspondingly
had a strong tendency to turn into a justification, or
an inculpation, of these. I have hoped, by relieving
eudaemonics from part at least of this weight of consequence, to be able to look at them more with the
eye of a simple investigator.
Fifth and last, a reason which might have superseded any others, I have treated these two portions of moral philosophy as two sciences, because,
however complicated together, I think they are
SO.
This dis-    Their being so seems to me to depend in the main
tinction
arisesfrom upon this fact,-and I think that the bringing out
doaune  of the full force of this fact is the most important
natture  business of moral philosophy at the present daysentient
andactive, that man is an active being in the same manner in
corresponding which he is a sentient (or pain-feeling and pleasuretao pter feeling) being: that his activity and his sentience are
in the  two independent portions or features of his nature
universe               s ntive,   d  inporta, as the
Mancraves each as early, as native, and as important, as the




IN  MORAL PHILOSOPHY.                     11
other1.  Man's nature, in fact the universe in general, employment for
has two  portions or characters counter-fitting  (if I activity
may use the word) the one to the other, want and just as
power in the universe, or, as I have called them  in as relief
man, sentience and activity.  I take as my principle,
that man as early and as naturally asks for an employment of his activity as for a relief from his pain;
and that the fitting of these together, going beyond
the individual, is the business of moral philosophy,
as the fitting them together with reference to the
individual is the business of simple prudence. On this
however I will not dwell now; except to say, that
the inquiry which proceeds from  the assumption of
activity  is that which I call aretaics, that which
proceeds from the assumption of sentience is eudmemonics; that in many particulars they treat, from
opposite directions, the same subjects; and that the
method which I hope to take will not be that of a
rigid separation of them, but a treating of the subject
in the way in general most convenient, with an
indication to  which  of the  sciences the manner of
treatment belongs.
1 With this agrees the division of the nerves into sentient and motor
nerves. Compare Exploratio Philosophica, ch. 3, and Prof. Bain's
language (Senses and- Intellect, Book I. ch. i.), "Movement precedes
sensation, and is at the outset independent of any stimulus from without: action is a more intimate and inseparable property of our constitution than any of our sensations, and in fact enters as a component part
into every one of the senses, giving them the character of compounds
while itself is a simple and elementary property." ED.




CHAPTER II.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ART REFERRING TO AN
IDEAL.
Moral Phi- MORAL Philosophy is the Art of Life in its highest
losophy f sense. If we understand by life what the Greeks
Life,    meant by A3os as different from  Cot4, and by living
the putting forth the powers and faculties for use
and for enjoyment, moral philosophy is the general
and summary, or architectonic, art of this. That
is, it deals with the relation to each other of the
powers, faculties, and other portions of man which
are concerned with his activity, and with their harmony as a whole.
By describing moral philosophy as an art I mean
pretty much the same as that which Aristotle meant
by describing it as a practical science, though I
would not in all respects apply the view as he did.
It sets    Moral philosophy however is more than simply
belfoae it thus an art or practical science: it is an art which
ideal.   sets before it an ideal.
Sense in    In the difficulty as to the use of language on
which this these matters, I shall use the word ideal doubly,
word is
used.   i.e. both as an adjective and a substantive: I shall
speak of an ideal as what moral philosophy sets
before itself, and I shall speak of moral philosophy
as ideal in so far as it does set this before itself:
and for contrast to ideal in its adjective sense, I




MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ART.          13
shall sometimes use the word positival. For a discussion of this latter term I refer to the Appendix.
Eudsemonics mtight be unideal. That is, in think- Eucnemonits may
ing how, we should live, and thinking about pleasure be unidea
and pain in this view, we might stop short of forming
in our thought any idea of happiness as something
to be gained: we might form our scheme of life on
the plan of avoiding pains and laying hold of pleasures as they pass, with little imagination about the
future, and no mental combination of pleasures into
an ideal happiness.
Eud(lemonics however has generally been, and is but it is
likely to be, exceedingly ideal. Man is an imagi- commonly
native being, and is both inclined to look forward ideal,
to the future and inclined to set himself an endthe influence of
to- work for. Though activity and sentience both man's
exist in man independently of each other in the nature
manner which I have described, yet man's nature ntint
is one, and the treatment of eudaemonics, or the nature.
science of man's sentient nature, inevitably takes
a colour from his active nature. In meditating how
we may enjoy ourselves, we cannot help the notion
forcing itself upon us, that happiness is something
to be worked for. We in vain try to make ourselves recognize (what reason, misapplied, tells us)
that for enjoyment we ought to have no ideal; that
to set ourselves a happiness to work for is after all
to enslave ourselves, and to leave the notion of enjoyment; that life, on this view of it, is not happiness but toil after happiness, and that toil after
one thing is no better than toil after another. Eudsemonists have at various times laboured hard to
produce an unideal eudaemonics, a real science of
pleasure as distinct from a science of happiness.
There is in the actual life of man a great abundance of
such unideal eudoemonics: but, even in the actual life




14       MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ARTI
of man, it is the ideal portion, the imagination, hope,
and enterprise, which gives it its vigour and interest;
and the difficulty of escaping idealism becomes greater
as soon as life is made a matter of thought and
reflection.   A  life of passing pleasure is natural
enough in itself: but not a thoughtful, deliberate,
reflective, life of passing pleasure.
Andthus    It should be observed, that as it is difficult to
tdhue ide f prevent the active side of human nature from coining
attach  in, and making eudsemonics ideal, so it is difficult
itself to
eudeno- to prevent the moral notions which belong to this
tems.   active side of human nature from  following and
giving to this pursuit of an ideal happiness a character of duty, which, from  the point of view  of
eudoemonics, can never belong to it. So far as our
activity or our powers are of any importance beyond
ourselves, what we do in regard of our own happiness is eminently a matter of moral consideration,
or for the notion of duty, for it may very greatly
affect this. But in this we leave eudsemonics. And
in reality, whenever, in eudsemonic investigation,
the notion comes in, as it must do, that it is a matter
of duty with us to live not for passing pleasures, but
for an ideal happiness, so far as pleasure and happiness enter into our consideration at all, we are
bearing witness to ourselves, so to speak, of our
own importance and value, and of there being something to be considered about us beyond our happiness.
Happiness The term'happiness,' EV&aLcpWovwa, itself represents
Sllsy enti- an ideal, and in fact represents little more.  All that
ideal,  is positive, or known to us as in this way, is pleasure
or freedom from pain; and the unideal form of eudsemonics of which I have spoken is hedonics, or a
science of indolentict.  Whatever it is that people
are aiming at, if they look at it as it is in relation




REFERRING TO AN' IDEAL.             15
to themselves, they will call it their happiness: this
ideal character in happiness is more intimate and
more universal than any particular character attaching to it.
Aretaics however is more essentially ideal than All aretaic
eudoemonics.  The words virtue, duty, olght, should, systemre
&c., express an ideal, whatever else they may express: oelelss
ideal.
and however we may define them or whatever line
of conduct we may consider to answer to them, they
must keep this character, or they are no longer themselves.
The words'ought,''should,' and the other similar'Ought,'
ones, are what may be called terms of art in this Should"'
sense, that they express something to be done, a terms of
art exline of conduct to be pursued, ordinarily in view pressing
the'facienof the attainment of a particular purpose.  There dum.'
is understood with them, as terms of art, the expression of the purpose which is aimed at: they
express a condition (at least a probable condition)
of the attainment of this: if you would attain this
or that end, if you want this thing or that, you
must, you ought to, you should, do this other thing,
whatever it is:'must,''ought,''should,' are only
different degrees of intensity of the expression of
the same thing; and it may be expressed still otherwise by saying, this thing is to be done, if you wish
to gain that: the Latin expresses this simply in the
form'faciendum.'
Now moral philosophy being, in the manner which In the absolute' faI described, the art of life or living, suppose we say ciendum'
to ourselves, we wish, so far as what we are noweds andre
dealing with is concerned, to attain no purpose, but involved
simply to live, to consider life, according to the together
Aristotelian notion, its own end and purpose, with
this important addition to his notion,'except so far
as the consideration of our life itself may reveal to us




I 6     MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ART
a purpose for it beyond itself.' The question then of
aretaics will be simply what we must, should, ought
to do: the addition expressing the purpose we want to
gain disappears, for we want to gain no purpose; or
it becomes a mere identical repetition, for all that we
want is to live, is to do what we ought to do or
should do: we want, it will be said, to live well, but' well' here is nothing more than the same identical
repetition, it expresses no more than as we shzould
expresses, that is, simply an ideal: to live, as something which by supposition we want, and to live well,
are the same; we are left simply with the notion of
a faciendum, of a something which we should do,
without any purpose beyond it.
To some this will appear a playing with words,
to others it will appear the saying of something too
plain to be worth saying. Trifling and plain as it
may be, this notion is that from which the whole
of moral philosophy is a deduction, and the clear
view of which would save infinite mistake and controversy.
The fctciendurm, or thing which is supposed as
that which is to be done, is what is called in philosophical language'absolute,' which means this: that
it is disengaged from the addition, or expression of
purpose, which determined it and made it conditional
or dependent in the former uses of it which I
instanced: what is to be done is not means only,
but means and  end both: and the art which
treats of what is thus to be done is an unique and
special art, in which means and end are involved
together.
forms Un-   The question whether there is such a thing as an
der which independent or intuitive morality, or however else we
ciendurn' may express it, is really no other than this: whether
presented. the notion that there is for us an absolute faciendum




REFERRING TO AN IDEAL.             17
(i.e. a thing or things which for reasons contained in
themselves, we ought to do, or should do, rather than
other things) is a notion which naturally (so I will
speak at present) suggests itself.  The form  in
which this is put may be varied infinitely: it may
be put in a markedly ethical form by some philosophers, by some in a form very non-ethical or untechnical; but the substance is the same. We may
put it in this form: that the choice which we make
as to what we do is a matter of importance or of
consequence; or in this, that, in the infinite variety
of possible action, there exists reason why we should
choose one part rather than another part: or we
may put it in the ideal form of imagining the life
which we ought to lead, which we feel it is well we
should lead, and perhaps give to this ideal:a religious
character by considering that we were intended to
lead such a life, created for it; or perhaps give it
rather an aesthetic character ~by considering it something to be admired and delighted in. However we
may think of it, the substance is the same: it is that,
when we think of ourselves as beings with faculties
and powers, the notion inevitably suggests itself of
there being some things which we should.do, ought
to do, (morally) must do, and others which we ought
not to do.
What is commonly called -the morality of con- Granting
sequences, i.e. the assumption that the reason of this the exfstan
choice of action must lie in consequences to flow from fasolute
the action, I will speak of presently'. The importance dum,'
moral phiof what I have said above lies in this: that a due osopby
consideration of it will effectually prevent us from  neot be
thinking that moral philosophy can be, as regards its inductive
-       orpositival
starting-point and main principles, a science of the science.
1 See Ch. vi.
G.                                      2




18       MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ART
kind now called inductive, and which I will call
positival, and that it can take its rank, as regards
these main principles, with sciences of experience and
of observation. The idea of'what should be,' the
expulsion of which from physical science in favour of
the observation of'what is,' has led to vast progress
in such science, lies at the heart of moral philosophy,
and can never be eradicated fromn it.
Its princi-   It will be my endeavour, as we proceed, to conbe intui- sider very carefully the importance of observation,
though  both in eudaemonics, as a subsidiary part of moral
observa- philosophy, and in some portions of aretaics, where
tion may
be of great we are concerned with the particulars of human feelservice in
regar tio ing.  But the problem of moral philosophy has been
their atp- from the first: What should I do? and the principle
plication.
upon which this question is to be answered is what
no observation can possibly give us. No observation,
however long continued, can tell us whether it is our
own happiness or that of others which we ought to
prefer. It is indeed exceedingly possible to suppose
(I will not say whether it is the fact) that the
intuitive principles (so to call them) which lie at the
base of the sciences may be very simple and evident,
and that the importance of the philosophy may lie in
the observation which is to regulate the application
of them. But this, if' it is so, is quite a different thing
from the supposition that the observation can come
in the place of the first principles, and that it is a
great advance thus to reform the philosophy, and
change it into a so-called inductive science.
Illustra-  When I see a philosopher like Bentham captivated
Bei tham' with his new phrase as to'the greatest happiness of
hgpepinst the greatest number,' and considering it a discovery
principle. which would reform all moral philosophy, and then
proceeding, with the noble enthusiasm with which he
did proceed, to construct, in his way, a methodical




REFERRING TO AN IDEAL.              19
science of eudaemonics in order to the application of
his principle, and devoting his life to this unselfish
labour,-I seem  to see, in his mind and feeling, a
region for moral philosophy which his system obstinately refuses to recognize. He says, in fact,'I
take as my ideal to be pursued, nothing selfish, but
the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and
I choose as the work of my life the study of the
particulars of happiness in order that my ideal may
be carried out.' I feel inclined to say to him, A
noble work indeed, and you are nobly aiding moral
philosophy by it, but I seem to see another work not
less important for moral philosophy in the study of
you, and in the consideration how  it is that you
have come to take this as your ideal, instead of trying
for instance to make yourself rich and powerful.
How is it that the promoting other men's happiness
presents itself to you, out of all the possible things
which you might do, as the particular thing which
you should do or which it is well for you to do?
And if you say (I have not used the word wvhich you
do not like,'ought') that you do not recognize even'should,' but that you only choose to do it'; I ask
again, There is then something in it to fix your choice:
it is conduct in itself, in your view, preferable to
any other: how is it you came to choose it? I would
rather know that than all your eudmemonics: for in
fact, for what you want, it is more necessary that
men should have your mind and feeling on the matter,
than that they should study your system. You
persist in claiming the name of complete moral philosophy for that which seems to me only a subsidiary,
Cf. Bentham's words quoted in the Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy, p. 137, " I am a selfish man, as selfish as any man can
be. But in me, somehow or other, selfishness has taken the shape of
benevolence."-ED.
2-2




~20      BI\MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ART
though an important part of it, and you call by the
name of sentimentalism, intuitivisml (though this I
think is not your word), or I know not what, that
without which all your eudaemonics will be valueless.
You say you cannot conceive it possible that any one
can think differently from you, as to'the greatest
happiness of the greatest number' being the allimportant ideal.  I answer, You seem in that to be
placing the foundation of moral philosophy where I
think it ought to be placed, on what some of your
disciples will call intuitivism: only, doing this, you
might have spared some things which you have said
yourself.
On the    Aretaics is thus ideal in its very essence   The
terms   ~'virtue,' apert or virtue which suggests the science is an ideal,'excel-  and in itself is little more.  The existence of the
lence,' as
expressive word only proves the existence of degrees of estiof an
ideal.   mation of different feelings and different courses of
conduct, together with (and this is the main point of
consideration) a belief in the existence of a reason
for this preference, in the real preferability of one
feeling or one action, as feeling and action, to others:
a belief in certain feelings as what we should have,
and certain actions as what we should do: a notion
of the valuableness or admirableness of such feelings
and actions in themselves, independent of whatever
valuableness they may have on account of consequences they may produce. The word'virtue,' if we
disengage it from the application which, in moral use,
it has had to particular courses of conduct, and from
the associations which have clung about it, means
primarily excellence; and this in itself means no more
than what should be, i.e. expresses an ideal.  The
word'excellence' itself has got an extraneous association clinging to it, that, namely, of comparison or
1 Cf. Mill, Utilitarianism, p.. 3.




REFERIING TO AN IDEAL.           21
superiority of one to another, which comparison is
only a way of ascertaining how far the ideal has been
attained: the excellence might exist without the
existence of beings less excellent, because the superiority implied in the word is only an accident of the
thing. It is the same with the words valuableness,
admirableness; virtue is a thing which people esteem
and admire, but it is not their esteeming and admiring
it which makes it virtue; they esteem and admire
it because (rightly or wrongly) they consider there
is a reason why they should esteem and admire it,
and the person who has it himself esteems and
admires it as they do; it is not constituted to him,
by the esteem and admiration which it meets with,
though it may be described and named.by them.
What constitutes it is its character of an ideal, of
that which should be.
The Greeks and Romans did not form, as we have On the
done, an adjective from their ordinary words for virtue, txer,,
but used words suggested by the admirableness which honests.
I have spoken of, the words Kakos and'honestus.' No
doubt these words would not have been the words
chosen, unless they had been considered, by those who
chose them, better words than others to express the
ideal which was intended: and this they could only be,
in consequence of the character of beauty (so we will
call it) in the one case, of meeting with the approbation of men in the other, being characters which
attached themselves very  closely to  the ideal.
Some philosophers taught that the words not only
aptly expressed what was meant, but gave the
essence of it; that virtue consisted in moral beauty,
or in deservingness of human approbation. But this
was in neither case the view. of those who used the
words with most earnestness, and most, so to speak,
believed in them. Cicero, following the Stoics, dis



22        MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ART
claimed in the strongest terms, in reference to the
word'honestus,' the notion, that the use of it in
any way suggested that it was its meeting with
human approbation which constituted virtue1. With
him, and others like him, the words simply expressed
the ideal, what should be.
On the     Virtue expresses the ideal subjectively, expresses,'duty.'  that is, an ideal disposition: KacXo  and'honestus'
ordinarily express it objectively; that is, express an
ideal course of action.  Another famous term  for
expressing the ideal objectively is'duty.'
Duty is in reality the word which expresses the
ideal character of what is meant with the most
clearness, but it is not a word of such ancient use in
this application as the others: it is a word also
which has been a good deal used in that which I
alluded to as being the less ideal portion of aretaics,
that namely, where the particular relations of individuals to each other are dealt with. It is not my
purpose however, just now, to  say anything upon
this portion of aretaics,. or upon the words expressing the moral ideal in this view  of it: both these
subjects I will for the present reserve.
But there is ano-ther view  of the moral ideal, as
important as that which we have just been speaking
of; to which we must now turn.
I described man as possessing activity or power,
and sentience or feeling. Let us examine a little
the relation of these the one to the other.
It is perfectly possible to conceive man possessing
aatureis a sentience which had no relation to his activity.
muggestive
f'want.' He might be (i.e. we can  conceive  him) always
1 "Honestum, quod, etiam si nobilitatum non sit, tamen honestuni
est, quodque vere dicimus, etiamsi a nullo laudetur, natura esse laudabile." De Off.. 4. Cf. Tusc. iII. 2.-ED.




REFERRING TO AN IDEAL.            23
happy, always enjoying himself: or he might suffer
pain which he perfectly well knew he was powerless
to prevent or diminish: and there are various other
suppositions which we might make. But, as it is,
the great mass of his feeling is indicative of a fact
which concerns him greatly, a fact which might
exist in regard of him, and does to a considerable
extent, without his feeling it: a fact which I will
call want.  And on this want I will dwell for a few
moments with a somewhat wider view.
I propose to use the word'want' strictly for a The term
fact (or supposed or possible fact), as distinct from wnsed
our feeling of the fact, if we have such a feeling. ~eesFacts which we feel, and our feeling of them, are in fact, not
the feeling
language constantly confused, and this is the case in of the
respect of the term'want.' But the fact, for instance, fact.
that our stomach is empty and that there is going on
in our system none of that nutrition which we will
suppose ought constantly to be going on in it, is a
very different thing from our feeling, if we do feel,
that such is the case, in consequence of some pain, of
hunger or otherwise, resulting from it: the former
might perfectly exist without the other. We use
the word'want' for both: if we say'our system
wants food,' we mean the former: if we say'we
want food,' we might mean either, but most likely
should mean the latter; as if we said,.'the baby,
wants a coral,' or'I want the newspaper.' Now
the word'want,' whenever I use it,. will be meant to
express the former of them, thefact.
We are thus something besides active and sen- Activity
tient beings, we are active and wanting beings.: and, and mant
extending our view beyond ourselves, the universe is and inthe
an active and a wanting universe. Not, indeed,
exactly in the sense in which we are active and
wanting, but in this sense, that there is a great deal




24       MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS AN ART
of power in the universe, and also a great deal of
want.  I use the word universe with intentional
vagueness: what I say will apply equally whether
we make the widest possible supposition of the
universe, taking in God as the Creator of it, or
whether we consider it to be merely a physical
comrnpages of matter and force. What- I mean is
simply this; that the universe, so far as the action
in it is concerned, is made up of two elements; of
beings (so we will speak at present) possessing
powers, and of opportunity or call for the exercise of
their powers, which is what I have called'want.'
an'ts     It is man's sentient nature, as we have seen,
sentient
nature   which leads to the formation of that ideal which I
suggests
the ideal of have called happiness: it is man's active nature
happiness, which leads to the formation of the ideal which I
his activity
suggests have last described, in speaking of virtue and the
that of
ditty, his corresponding terms: it is man's nature as wanting
suggests  which leads to the formation of a third ideal more
tad higrd important than the first of them, and equally imesticleal, portant with the second-the notion of'good.' In
good.   one point of view this ideal is more important than
the second: that the character of individual appropriation which belonged to the two former does not
belong to this. Man can only feel his own feelings,
and act with his own powers: but the wacntingness
which is the call to action he can be informed of by
his intellect as much beyond himself as in himself,
and the ideal'good' is in this point of view the
noblest and grandest of all.
want isan    The notion which I have here given of'want' or
wider than
sentience,'wantingness' may be objected to as really conveying
and good
than    nothing, and not making at all more clear the notion
happiness. Of good, as the ideally desirable. I am indifferent
what words are used, and what I wish to draw
attention to is the ambiguity and difficulty attending




REFERRING TO AN IDEAL.            25
even such words as'desirable'; the same which I
have noticed in respect of'want'. The universe
is, on any hypothesis of it, an orderly constitution of things, containing in it a number of beings
who can feel happiness, but who, so far as they do
feel happiness, must feel it in virtue of, and by
means of, their particular constitution, which is a
part of this order.  So far as they do not feel
happiness, it arises from their state not being what
it should be, by which I mean no more than that
they are not in their ideal state, and the degree
to which they fall short of it is the measure of
what I call their want; and this falling short of
an ideal state may exist in that which is not capable
of happiness: to that itself which is not capable of
happiness this falling short may not be important,
but it may be important on account of the relation
of things together, and the orderly constitution of
the whole.
Good, of all the ideals, is that which has played This last
the most important part, and speculations as to the idal iannature of the summum bonum have been the most both aretaics and
important of moral speculations.  I hope hereaftereudsemomore fully to dwell upon it.
- This last ideal involves together both aretaics
and eudsemonics: that is, it deals with a kind of
eudsemonics which I shall have a good deal to speak
of, in which the idea of'should be' enters into combination with that of pleasure or happiness, and one
kind of happiness is considered as superior in kind
to another. But for the present enough.




APPENDIX ON WANT1.
Aug. 20, 1864.  Byron's Pool, 8 A.M.
Action   INSTEAD of taking the epitelic view of action, what we might
characterised from  do would be to take the aparchic. With Aristotle (is it not so?)
its starting the dPXiO of action is really only another word for the TrEXo,
point,
want, as  purpose, or aim: but we might consider in regard of action
well as   its origin, or that which it starts from, as well as its rE-Xo, or
from its
end, hap- that which it tends to.
piness.     As its TA'7-O, or what it tends to, may be called good or
happiness, and what we wish to find out the summum bonum;
so its aPXt, or what it starts from, may be called want, and
what we wish to know the prima egestas.  This and the
summunm? bonum would probably from different ends coincide.
As we call the first good (or happiness), so we might call the
second want (or uneasiness). In reality, both these additions
are doubtful.  Good and want are states, and are not necessarily conceived or felt: happiness and uneasiness are the
feeling of each of them.
What, in addition to intelligence and fact, has to be
taken account of when we think of action, is want. And
what in addition to this again, has to be taken account of
when we think of moral action, is the existence of a plurality
of sentient, some or all also active, beings.
Want        Want or egence is the great fact conditioning, and stimuexhibited lating real action (by which I mean action as different from
in a scale
passing   conceivable chaotic movement).  Satisfaction is the fact corThe pages which follow seem to contain the germ of the treatise
on Aretaics and Eudaemonics. They are taken from a note-book with
the accompanying notices of the time and place of their writing.
Professor Grote was literally a peripatetic philosopher, and the places
mentioned were among his favourite haunts for philosophic meditation.
What was thus thought out was written down afterwards, generally
with great rapidity and with scarcely any correction or erasur. —ED.




ON WANT.                        27
responding to it: good is the idea, i. e. this latter fact, ex- from the
objective
tended, heightened and developed, by the intelligence.      to the subThe degrees of withoutness are (1) simple non-habence; (2) jective.
carence, i. e. the being without a thing when there is at least
some conceivable reason why it should be present (we say a
pronoun or a particular noun caret vocativo, we should with
less reason say it caret modo indicativo, and with no reason
at all it caret foliis); (3) egence, where the want is of some
particular thing according to the nature of that which wants,
and where there exists in nature a possibility of the satisfaction of the want, such satisfaction being probably striven
after or provided for in some way; (4) desiderium, or craving
and yearning, which is the last subjectively felt, and possibly
amplified by imagination, &c.; (5) czpido, or general imaginative desire, which may be without any egence as fact.
Is egence always in some measure felt or subjective? If Want in
it is, there is personality or consciousness in plants; and who piantsc is
shall say there is not, or that rudimentary (of course unreflec- panied by
tive) personality or consciousness does not begin as early and feeling?
as low down as real organic unity?
It is the nature of the leaf or root of a plant, say, to imbibe
water or air: there is egence in the plant, and there are
movements in the parts of it by which the water or air is
imbibed; the egence leads to the activity; must there not be
something like sentience and will in the passage from the
one to the other? Is not the plant in an uncomfortable or
uneasy state without what it wants; must it not have, that
is, a sort of feeling to the extent of its unitariness of organization?
So far as we start from fact, want is the reality, not good.
Good is the ideal, the absent which should be present. Ideal
and should be express the same.  Good, absent, is felt, so far
as there is feeling, as want. Good, particular, depends upon
particularity of want.
Want or egence, and want-feel or craving, are not exactly
the same thing: there may be real want unfelt, and there
may be mistaken want-feel.
Sept. 1, 1864. Great Meadows, 8 A.M.
Want is to action as sensation to intelligence.  Want is
source of action, as sensation of intelligence.




2 8                    ON WANT.
The simplest want is the absence of physical communication between two things, where such communication would
be to the advantage of one of them.
Advantage or disadvantage in this case is rather a vague
term, the same as perfection or imperfection, &c.: all imply
a fixed or regular nature.
Mutual     In the case of chemical elective affinities, there may be
want in
chemical said to be mutual want when two elements are in a position
elements. which, when other bodies are presented to them, they would
change, or in a so far unnatural position. There is not in
the elements any thing which we should describe as sentience,
disposition, impulse, or tendency; but as a fact, they change
their circumstances when the opportunity is presented to
them, and this may be described as want of such change.
When a plant is said to imbibe air or water, what takes
place is a certain mechanical movement of the parts of the
plant to which the air or water lends itself according to its
nature. In this case such advantage as occurs is one-sided,
and we say that there is in the plant want of the air or
water.
Recur-     When such want is continuous, recurring after satisfacfence of
want and tion, as in the plant, there is what we call life in the sense of
satisfac- growth or vegetance.
tion constitutes   The word'unity' is too general, and the word'personality'
life,    too restricted, to express something which we want a word to
express, viz. life as containing or involving the conditions of
possible. consciousness, though we may not know whether the
consciousness exists or not, and may rather consider that
it does not. We only use the word'personality' where
there is distinct consciousness or power of reflection. The word
unity, though likely enough suggested in the first instance
only by our felt consciousness and then by the perceived
unity of life, yet is widely extended to any form of thinghood
or reality.
Has the plant appetite after water, air, the immixture of
the pollen with the stigma, &c.? There is the same fact,
independent of any feeling on the part of the plant, that
there is in the case of appetite of animals: whether there is
appetite or not depends on whether we consider that there
is, or is not, feeling or sentience.
Looalization of     The words appetite, desire, &c. denote generally the




ON WANT.                       29
fact of want or desence, felt in some manner, and thus want in an
organized
stimulating the will to act through the intelligence for being.
the supply of it. That the feeling corresponds to the
fact of want is what we can hardly tell: in fact we can
hardly attach distinct meaning to the words. The absence
of food in the stomach we might perhaps feel in the headperhaps indeed do. The feeling of hunger is one particular
result, among many others, of the fact of the body's wanting
food: the two are conceivably quite separable. And similarly,
the gratification of the feeling of hunger and the supply,
as a fact, of the want of the body, are two things quite
distinct, though they may be concomitant.
All proper want (as distinguished from the case of chem- The feel.
ical affinities above, and similar cases) implies a more or less isgoft ant
complete unity, and therefore possibility of sentience, in the local.
wanting being. All want is thus want of the whole being.
But the want may be of different kinds, and the different
kinds may be arranged along a scale similar to that of sensation. The fact of the want may be the absence of a
corporeal or material communication which, according to
the nature of things, and of the particular being, ought
at the time to exist. Of this kind is the stomachic want
of food. This is felt as hunger, which is a feeling, not
of the stomach, but of the man, and of man not in the
stomach more than elsewhere in the body. Still, the material communication wanted is between the stomach and
certain nutritious materials.
The want and, either self-supplying or suggestive and
stimulating, absence of communication between the stomach
and such materials in this case is analogous to the fact
of communication between members of the body, limbs
or senses, and natural material agents, which aliments the
intelligence.
The good, benefit, advantage of the man consists thus, Two
as to one part of it at least, in the fact of the former of distinct
kinds of
these communications, or the supply of physical wants: and the enjoyment
fact of the supply of the wants is accompanied, ordinarily, resulting
from satisby another fact, viz. the gratification of some particular faction of
feeling (in the above case hunger) by which the want is accom- want.
panied. The enjoyment is two-fold: the concentrated and
momentary enjoyment of the gratification: and the diffused




30                     ON WANT.
and continuous enjoyment arising from the better state of
the body, and the supply of its want.
For action, in an intelligent being, both of them must
be taken into account, and to take the last into account
requires much of intelligence.
Enjoy-      If we conceive the ideal good or desirable, the summum
ment
suggests  bonum, we must conceive it as a complicated whole as we
to usthe conceive the material universe.  The ideal good is given
de thg   to us by the gratification of appetite or simple desire just
same ex- to the same extent as the material world is given to us by
tent as
sensation chemical sensation.  The mere gratification and chemical
suggests  (or pleasure-pain) sensation, suggest to us, in virtue of our
an external ni-  intelligence, in the one case good (advantage, benefit, &c.)
verse.   as a fact, in the other case independent reality as a fact.
Enjoyment or happiness is in the same sense the sumnmurn
bonum, as sentition or bare sensation is the summneum reale or
summumn verum: enjoyment is an incident or result of good,
as sensation is of reality.
Happiness may indeed be the ultimate good, as being
known to be may be the ultimate reality: but this is far off
and in the whole of things, and human action must be for
good conceived by the intelligence; to the notion of which
felt gratification or enjoyment contributes a most important
part indeed, but only a part, in the same way as human
understanding is of an orderly universe to which, bare sensation contributes only a portion.
The         That our action should be regulated by the intelligence,
bentaleogye  is, in a manner, a higher appetite or desire, leading to reguthe scale larity, orderliness, conduct on principle, and, at a later stage,
of ethics
and thei  when the presence of other moral beings with us is taken
scale of  into account, to fairness and justice: such desire is analogous
sensation to the middle part of the scale of sensation'.
That our conduct should be worthy and excellent, is,
as it were, a higher appetite or desire still, and corresponds
to the highest portion of that scale.
Sept. 3, 1864. Byron's Pool, 8 A. M.
Egence, and difference of egence, are the great facts
of the universe.
1 Cf. Exploratio, ch. VI.




ON WANT.                       31
TVe want, first expresses a fact: and what we want
in this view is some particular thing, which may be called
our happiness, but all this possibly, irrespectively of our
feeling.
WTie want, next expresses our feeling, so far as it goes, Want and
of the above fact: what we want in this case again is some the feeling'I'D     of want.
particular thing, more or less correspondent with the above:
our happiness in this case is in the presence of the particular
thing, and besides this, is the two satisfactions, the complete
satisfaction of our want-feel, the partial satisfaction, so far
as it goes, of the actual fact of our want.
The subjective feeling of want might be divided into
craving and wish: craving, which is blind, wish, which is
imaginative and more or less intelligent. Mis-craving is
physical disease, mis-wish is mental.
Imaginative wish is, as it were, double: there is uneasiness with the desire of something to satisfy it, of whatever
therefore will satisfy it: there is imagination of what will
satisfy it, and the consequent wish for this.  A great deal
of moral puzzle, intended or involuntary, arises from this
doubleness. People say,'That is not the thing you really
wish for:' meaning, when it is present, it will not satisfy
you; you will not find it what you expected.
Egence is the life of the universe: the highest forms of
egence are variously called'love': the lowest are simple appetence, perhaps merely physical.
When we speak of moral attributes in God, we ascribe to Want or
Him  an egence of the highest, but of the most imperious egence in
kind: for what are such attributes without other sentient
and moral beings on which they may be exercised? Love
with nothing to fix on-can we imagine a state of greater
defect, imperfection, unhappiness?
Suppose sentient beings created, there is a transfer of
part of this original egence: they want Him, as He wants
them.
As it is, they are created with rich and varied nature,
and with them is a rich unsentient nature as framework to
them: they want each other, and variously want it.
All this egence still again inactionates itself, and keeps
reality alive, and ever still freshly varying.




3 2                    ON WANT.
There is a principle of conservation of egence like the
mechanical principle of the conservation of force.
Philo-     The egence which there is there has always been, the
svpiehedally great original repository of it being God.
that has   In  this same sort of view  we might philosophically
been, or  abolish tenses, and say that everything which has been, is.
is now.    Absence in time is like absence in space: the absent is
separated from us, and we can only mediately and by effort
be aware of it.
The susceptibility of a thing to be acted upon is as much
3Vra/iLz as the power to act upon it, and both point to a
r5va~/t, previous to and higher than both.
If we consider time as we do space, and look with an
equal eye along its two directions, we see that what we call
the end is in one view the beginning, and vice versa. Action
proceeding from intelligence has a double beginning or
source; the end or purpose as viewed by the intelligence,
and the force in the agent.
The past and the future both are: the past is the
experienced and already bewilled, which has had will expended upon it: the future is the unexperienced and unbewilled, but (independent of the manner in which will,
which has to be spent on it, may effect it) it is continuous
like the past, real and certain like it, and only not knowable
by us because there is no experience to connect our intelligence and it.
The future, looked upon as real with a quasi-reality
modifiable by will, is real again in a higher view, inasmuch
as even all that this will will do is contained in the existing
egence, most widely taken.
The two    The two great primEeval facts are the possibility of good,
primrval
facts,.   which is in fact egence, and the fact that God has chosen
(or has been such a being as to choose) to act for this
possibility, to act, that is, morally and rightly, when He
might (or the being in his place might) have acted otherwise.
There has not been temptation in God to act wrong, but
there has been the presentation of wrong to Him with the
attendant reasons for it; and it is in the acting nevertheless
right that has consisted His moral choice: and the same




ON WANT.                         33
intellectually, among various courses He has chosen the best,
and therefore has not mistaken or failed.
The original egence of God, which is the source of all
things, is in another word felicificativeness, and this produces
by creation felicificability or the capacity for happiness in
the creature.
3




CHAPTER III.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE MORAL IDEALS AND OF THE
RELATION BETWEEN THEM.
The,sum- THOUGH I have spoken of the ideal good as in one
mum fa- point of view the noblest of all the ideals, yet from
is the first another, the summum faciendum, that which should
moral
ideal in be done, is more important still. The forming it
timero~  in the mind implies the following things: that
(chrono- the question, in regard of the conduct of our life,
logically).
which most naturally suggests itself, is not so much,
what shall I do, simply, as what should I do, involving a presumption, or, if we like to call it so, an c
priori belief, on our part, which we may variously
express; as by saying, that there exists, in such a
manner as matter of abstract thought can exist, a
course of life which is adapted to us, which belongs
to us, which there is reason we should choose: these
various ways of expression seem to me to mean one
thing, viz. the presumption or belief on our part that
there is a proper course of conduct for us. This ideal
course of conduct is that to which I shall give the
name of'rightness.'
Action however is in the nature of it for a purpose,
and, with certain qualifications, actions which serve
no purpose are wasted. The main feature of the
reasonableness of action is its subserviency to some
purpose: we apply reason to action mainly in order
to make action useful, if I may use the word in a




GENERAL VIEW OF THE MORAL IDEALS.  335
wide sense, without danger of its being wrested to a
technical or sectarian meaning.'Rightness' may be
called the first moral ideal, because the question,'what should I do?' comes before the question,'what
shall I aim at?' but this latter very speedily suggests
itself, possibly without the former, very likely as a
result or kind of interpretation of it. Perhaps the
best word in English to express the ideal purpose or
aim of action is the desirable, though here we must
guard  against  ambiguity, because the  summum
faciendum may be described as that which is desirable
to be done, in a different sense from that in which'the desirable' stands for something to be won,
gained, succeeded in. The ideally desirable is the
To aoyaOdv, the bo2num or summum bonum of the old
philosophy.
The two ideals played an equally prominent part
in ancient morals, though the second was the more
treated of in philosophical systems, the former ideal
appearing rather in religion and in practical views as
to society and law.
There is another reason why the former of these
ideals should be put first.  It not only suggests it- It is also
self first, but it is the simpler.  The desirable, or the silopest
to be desired, is a much more complicated notion. moral
ideal.
Has it, or has it not, the former ideal mixed with it?
Is the'to be desired' in any way that which'ought'
to be desired? or is it'the desired,' with appeal to
human feeling and human history? or is it'the
reasonably desired' pointing to some other ideal still
for its interpretation?
Of course, as this latter ideal is more complicated
than the former, so, through being the more concrete
and nearer to life, it may be the more valuable of the
two. But it leads on, in the minds of many, to
another and different ideal.
3 —2




36    GENERAL VIEW  OF THE MORAL IDEALS
The sum-    This is the ideal'happiness as suggested by pleabonlm,the sure.' I use these words, because the more vague or
2dl moral general ideal'-good' might also be called by the name
compli-  of happiness.  This third ideal is nearer to fact than
cated with
the 3rd, the other two, because pleasure, or at least that of
happiness
suggeste  which it is intended to express the opposite-pain, is
by plea-  an undoubted fact of actual nature.
sure,
The important character of this ideal, that which
has made it enter so largely into all conduct of human
life and all moral philosophy, is this: that while on
the one side it touches the earth by our actual sensation of pleasure and pain, so on the other it seems to
go further back than any other and to mount higher,
and to be the only one of all which offers us any
answer to the question, why should anything have
existed at all? or why should there ever have been
any action? It is an ideal which, while associated
with Elpicureanism on the one side, is much associated
with un-Epicurean notions, as of final causes, on the.other.
As the 3rd    This last ideal arises from  the coupling of the
ideal arises
from    sensible fact of pleasure and pain with the previous
the union ideal of'the desirable.' The next ideal which I will
of 2nd.
ideal with mention, arises rather from the coupling more general
observation of observation as to actual fact with the first ideal, or
fact, so acthat which should be done.'
4thural,e  I will call this ideal'the natural.' Perhaps it
arises*  may be said to take its origin from the union of a
of 1stidealbelief in an universal constitution of things, all beheratibon longing to all (a belief which I hold to be connected
of fact. with all our ideals, especially the first, and of which
I shall speak at more length hereafter), and of observation of the particular constitution of things,
especially of man and physical nature. Hence arises
-the notion of there being something which man ought
to do, in virtue of his being man, and not something




AND OF THE RELATION BETWEEN THEM.   37
different from man: and human nature is estimated in
various manners, with the view of determining this.
The number of ideals which people may form as to Othr
the conduct of their life is of course endless. Among
others, which are scarcely less important than those
which have already been noticed, may be mentioned
the following:
The fair, or just, is an ideal formed by mixing the The fair.
first, or what ought to be done, with an observational
view of the conflicting interests, and various interrelations of men.
The conscientious, or, in other words, the ideal of The cona life in which there shall be no self-condemnation, is seientious.
a mixture of the first ideal with the felt tendency to
self-judgment and to reflection.
I will not however dwell on any more of them:
but will call attention to one thing about them which
is of - importance.
Whether such a thing as morality would be con- How these
ideals are
ceivable, if we were any one of us the solitary sentient affectea by
being in creation, is a speculation on which we can sideation
hardly enter.  We can hardly affirm the contrary; that man
is not
for we suppose an existence of the Deity, good and solitary
but exists
moral, previous to everything; but I conclude that in society.
we should not consider the affixing moral epithets to
Him in such a position to have any meaning, unless
we supposed in Him the power of terminating this
solitude, and correspondingly, of imagining beings in
regard of whom His moral attributes might be exercised.
As it is however with us, and so far as zwe need
conceive it, morality begins to be possible when two
sentient beings, one of whom at least is active, come
into any sort of contact or relation with each other.
The ideals, as we have hitherto noticed them, take Especial
no account of this consideration, which is quite as irm-rim,,port



38    GENERAL VIEW  OF THE MORAL IDEALS
this con- portant in morality as any of them, whether the action
sieration (say the will and choice determining the action) and
tao h 3r2d the good or purpose of the action, are in the same
ideals.   being, or in different ones.
This consideration is so important, that, in respect
of the ideals which have any relation to good or purpose, it splits each into two, the good of ourselves,
and good that is not ours, and similarly as regards
happiness and utility.
On the      I proceed now, in reference to these ideals, to
interpreta-   n   11  1  
tion of one consider how far it is possibleto find the line of conideal by  duct (or any line of conduct) to which they point:
a.nother.
and first, how far there is any advantage in explaining or interpreting any one of them by another.
(1) No ad-    On these subjects it seems to me that there are
vance is
made by  two maxims which we may take: which I will state
change eof at first generally, subject to some qualification: the
herms:   one, that by converting one ideal into another, or
(2) where
there is  interpreting one by another, we make no step, and
advance by
approach- get no forwarder in knowledge: the other, that where
ing nearer we do advance in knowledge by fixing an ideal, or
there is  converting it into something partaking of fact, obsercorlresponding vation and experience, we must bear in mind that it
ideality.  loses its ideal character, more or less, and that it
becomes subject to a variety of difficulties, which
attach  to  everything  belonging  thus to fact and
experience.
These       Both these maxims may be illustrated by the
maxims
illustrated passage from the second ideal to the third, i. e. from
by the   the'summum  bonum' to the principle of (so called)
froummum  utility or happiness.
bonum to    This latter involves, as we have seen, a mixture
utility or
happiness, of the ideal with matter-of-fact or observation: so far
as this is so, we make a step of thought, true or false,
in the forming it.  What I wish to remark is, that so




AND OF THE RELATION BETWEEN THIEM.   39
far as we keep to an ideal character in respect of it,
we gain nothing by changing the second ideal into it:
and so far as we do gain by getting hold of tangible
or actual matter to go on, we come into difficulties
which previously we were free from.
I am  not meaning by this to make a charge
against this ideal, or semi-ideal: for what I am
saying, by way of illustration of it, is true of any
change from a higher region of ideality to a lower.
Happiness, in the ideal region, is an exceedingly
vague term, as was the Greek EcsatLov'a, of which it
may be called a translation, and when we say that
happiness is what all creatures desire, or that the
general happiness is what all ought to aim at, no one
will dispute with us. By saying here happiness,
instead of the desirable or the summum bonum, we
have made no way.
But if we want, in these two propositions, for
instance, to mean more than this, or to fix the term
happiness, and understand what it contains or applies
to, we do indeed begin to make way in thought, but
we begin also to experience the friction or resistance
which, as soon as we move, actuality opposes to us.
Pleasure and pain, as we feel them, and happiness
(if by this term we mean, not the ideal above mentioned, but agreeable feeling in life, if we can conceive this as a sort of whole in the life of each, very
variable of course in degree in the life of one and of
another), are matters of exceedingly difficult observation. The above propositions, as soon as we pass from
ideal to fact, no longer even approximate to selfevident truth. Let us try, for instance, to deal with
pleasures as we deal with plants, to dissect them first,
and then to classify, define and describe them, as thus
examined.  We shall find that it is a very small
minority of our actions which are done in order to




40   GENERAL VIE'W OF THE MORAL IDEALS
pleasure as thus describable: they ate done for an
infinity of motives into which pleasure only enters as
one. Take then the proposition, All creatures act for
happiness. As soon as we begin to mean anything by
happiness beyond the meaning which the proposition
itself gives the term (beyond, that is, the notion that
it is that for which all creatures act), the proposition
begins to mean something definite indeed, which is an
advance, but at the same time to lose all its selfevidence and generality: it becomes a question to be
examined and tested, a question which probably we
shall only be able to answer affirmatively in a very
qualified acceptation of its various terms.
by Aris-   -In the long line of controversy which makes up the
accolrding history of moral philosophy, it appears to me that
to virtue there are two things of prime importance to be
and the
Stoical  observed: the one how far, in any portion of it, there
"life according to is advance of thought, or only the changing, in our
ure." conception, of one ideal for another.  This latter is
not entirely useless or unmeaning, as we shall see:
still the ideals are of value in regard to conduct, and
advance in moral philosophy is in applying them to
life, and finding the actual line of conduct which they
indicate. For instance: was it any advance in thought
for the Stoics to say that the summum bonum was a
life according to nature, or is the one of these ideals
as difficult to fix and apply as the other? Or was it
any advance in thought for Aristotle to say that
happiness was a life according to virtue, or do we find
that we have no clearer notion of happiness through
knowing this about it? I only give these questions
as instances, without prejudging the answers.
The next thing to be watched in moral controversy is, whether, when it does make an effort to
advance, it keeps itself clear of confusion between the
fact and the ideal. -For example: a happy life is the




AND OF THE RELATION BETWEEN THEM.   41
name which we give to the sort of life which we
should any of us wish to live. And, again, we observe
in fact, that riches make some men what we call happy,
fame others, and so on. Here we have happiness as
conceived and as experienced. But the passage in
thought between the two is through a region somewhat similar to Satan's way between Pandemonium
and earth, a region in which fact and imagination
blend into something without value in either direction. We are trying, we will say, to demonstrate as
a proposition of experience, that people act for
pleasure, and if there seems to be any doubt about it,
we are at once disconcerted with the response: 0, but
you see it must be pleasure, or else people would not
act upon it.




CHAPTER IV.
THE IDEALS ARE NOT MERE IMAGINATION.
Is this IT would appear from what has been stated in a
forming of
ideals   previous  chapter that Moral Philosophy  cannot
more thand more important
dreaming? P                 the        and        important
portions of it, be considered an inductive science.
But, it may be said, in regard to this portion of it
which is not thus positive or inductive, is it anything
other than a mere imagination? Of course, in our
imagination, we may form any ideals we please: but
is this anything other than a sort of poetry or dreamTheimagi- ing? is it even philosophy, not to say science? It is
native
character difficult to know on which side one should take
of ideals hold of a question like this. Some writers have
is not
denied,  considered moral sentiments to be much akin to
but the
value of aesthetic sentiments, a fact which I have before
the imagination is alluded to in speaking of the term  KaXo's.  Those
bpheld as who take this view would not disclaim  their parbeing the
very life  taking largely of an imaginative character, and would
of our
intelli-  not think them on that account the less subjects for
gence.   a real philosophy.  The general question, to which
this question of the nature of the moral ideals is
closely subordinate, of the relation of imagination or
poetry to matter of fact, conception or judgment, is
of itself a large and difficult one. Without entering
upon it here more than can be helped, I may just
express my opinion, that the distinction ordinarily
made between reason and imagination is entirely
fallacious. So far as they represent different things,
they are not, in my view, contrasted with each other,




THE IDEALS ARE NOT MERE IMAGINATION. 43
but are intimately connected, and mutually -helpful.
I look upon imagination as the active portion of the
intelligence, that in which the life of the intelligence consists, and from which, as the intelligence advances, new deposits are ever made of actual
knowledge, which thenceforward loses a portion of
its interest, and becomes for some purposes dead.
Certain portions however of what the imagination
presents to us will never crystallize into this actual
knowledge; while yet, it seems to me, they are not
merely worthless or chimerical.  It is the main
purpose of poetry, taken in the widest sense of the
word, to express such imagination, which possesses a
truth no less real,-it may be more real,-than
actual knowledge; the difference simply being that
this truth is not put together into a whole, and
looked at from all sides, so to speak, as truth is in
knowledge. In poetry we see a number of partial
views, which we cannot harmonize and totclize or
bring into a whole: this leaves such truth as there
is, better in one way than the truth which is embodied in knowledge, because less handled about by
the human intellect — more fresh, as it were: still the
effort of the intellect is ever after the gaining of
definite knowledge, and imagination is the way to
the gaining it, while such portion of the matter of
imagination as is not or cannot be thus definitized
remains as poetry.
Let us suppose then, to begin with, that thecompari.
son of
moral ideals are pure matters of imagination-some- these
thing which people take into their heads, with idealswiarh
nothing at all about them of the nature of science. schemes.
Men set before themselves schemes of all kinds:
one man dreams of the building of a church, another
of making a fortune, Alexander of conquering the
world, Columbus of sailing across the ocean to




44 4THE IDEALS ARE NOT
Cathay: so one person forms in his' mind, as the
ideal purpose or rule of his action, the notion of
promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest
possible number; another that of acting in such a
way that he shall never feel self-condemnation or
remorse, and so for other ideals. The more general
ideals may be formed either by themselves, or in
companionship with the less general and nearer
ones. Thus, a man may either simply dream  in
general that there is an ideal'what he should do,' or
duty, which is nearly the same thing as having the
notion of his action being of importance; or, (in
respect, for instance, of the ideal greatest happiness,)
he may add, to his inmagination of acting in order to
this, the further imagination of its being well that he
should do this, of its being the proper thing for him
to do, &c.
The ideals   It will probably readily suggest itself that (on
arbitrary this view) the point at which imagination has to
orindi- pass into moral philosophy is where a man begins to
talk about his ideal to others as something which
belongs to them as well as to himself. In respect of
Bentham, I have said, that, in his feeling so strongly,
as apparently he did, that the promoting the greatest
happiness was what he and others should do, he
seemed to confess the intuitivism, or whatever he
would call it, which he so strongly disclaimed. When
pressed, he might say that he had no feeling that
this was what he should do, in the sense of its
being fit, proper, incumbent on him, but only that
this was what he chose to make his ideal of the work
of life, as Alexander made his conquering the world,
and that he constructed his system of eudemonics
with a view of aiding those who might form the
same ideal.  No one however can really think that
when ideals as to what is to be done are'formed in




MIERE IMAGINATION.                     4 5
this manner, it is as simple individual imaginations
that they are formed.  Neither Bentham, nor any
man in earnest about life ever said, Well, this is my
way of thinking: you take yours.  The same force
which makes a man form, with any earnestness, an
ideal like this for himself, makes him  also feel, that
it is what ought to be the ideal of all, and makes
him teach and preach it as such. The first ideal,
that of the faciendum, or what should be done, is
thus present in its full force: and it is this special
circumstance  about it, that he  not only  has the
ideal himself, but that he feels himself entitled to
urge it upon others, which makes it evidently present to him not as a mere individual imagination, but
as- I will not say what, but evidently something
which is neither mere imagination nor mere matter
of experience'.
However much then we may sumppose these moral They neideals, as men form  them, to be simple imaginations involve
the notion
or dreams, we cannot, in our supposition, keep them so. of the
Men will not only form  ideals for themselves, but absoulte
judge about those of others, and try to urge their be.'
own upon others; that is, the notion of the absolute'should be' will come in.  And this'should
be' really means that there exists reason why one
(whatever it may be) of these ideals is better
than another: otherwise comparing them, or urging
our  own  upon  others, is  unmeaning.   Actually,
moral philosophy may be said to have existed from
1 I am not sure that this is quite satisfactory. The difference
spoken of seems to me not to lie in the actions recommended, but in
the persons who recommend them. An enthusiastic person urges his
hobbies on every one else, whether it be to buy his favourite wines, or
read his favourite books, not with an idea of their being morally incumbent, but because he is social, and fond of sympathy, perhaps fond of
power. On the other hand, a man may have strong convictions as to
what is right or wrong for himself, but be very little of a proselytizer,
and shrink from urging any course upon others. —ED.




46            THE IDEALS ARE NOT
the earliest dawn of human reflection, and to have
existed in virtue of man's recognition, by reflection,
that he does form in himself an ideal of something,
as what he should do: moral philosophy is his process
of discovering this. But when, in later times, any.
one chooses to say that we do not form such an ideal,
but that this is merely one particular imagination
among others; still, moral philosophy, kept out for a
time, comes in afterwards in the way above mentioned: we cannot, more than for a momentary hypothesis or by a mental force upon ourselves, look on
these moral ideals as dreams.
The ideals   The moral ideals then are certain dreams or
have their imaginations of the human race, which we cannot
rise in our iminations                   whic
sense of look at without recognizing them as something more
want informing than dreams, though what more, moral philosophy
something finds it hard to tell us. They lie in the middle
non-exist- ground between imagination and knowledge of fact:
absent but they are best approached from the side of imaginawhich may
be made tion, for this reason-that, though they unite themexistent or
present or selves with fact, and lead to fact, and spring indeed
indirectly from fact themselves, yet their imzmediate
rise is not from fact, but, if I may so speak, from
absence of fact.  We have them  in virtue of our
active nature:-I do not mean this as an explanation
of these, for we might say in the same way that our
active nature means little more than that we have
ideals, these and others-but I mean this: our active
nature is turned towards the non-existent, to bring it
(if we may say it, that is, something) into existence;
and these ideals are, as it were, the shadows of various
existences in this non-existent. This seems abstract;
but the thing itself is simple enough: experience,
and all its sciences are concerned with what we have,
with what is in some way present: moral philosophy
is concerned with what we want, with the absent.




MERE IMAGINATION.             47
Experience is all a growth from, our sensations of
something as present to us: moral philosophy is a
growth from our sensation-such sensation as we can
have-of something as absent from us. This sensation
of something as absent from us is, in fact, the imagination of an ideally desirable. Without this quasisensation of the absent, no sensation of the present
would lead to action. This quasi-sensation fmight
be sensation and nothing more: might point to
nothing, and indicate no objective reality: then the
moral ideals would be, as we have just been supposing,
simple imaginations: in this respect this sensation is
on a par with all sensation: it is quite. conceivable
that our sensation of the present might have no
objective ground, and might be all imagination. In
any case, this quasi-sensation of the absent, whatever
objective validity it may have, has probably its own
conditions, laws, meaning (however we may express
it), like the sensations which we call experiences:
if things were otherwise constituted than they are,
if we were otherwise constituted than they are,
we should idealize otherwise than we do. As I
understand intuitive morality, it means (in this view)
simply the taking account of, or attributing importance to, these wants, these action-stirring ideals,
of our spiritual (i. e. our thinking and feeling) nature.
There are, I suppose, different forms of this intuitivism: though what those who use the word mean by
it, is rather their business than mine. But, in any
case, the want as sensation (the reader will remember
what I have said before about want) may be regarded
as the farthest point to which we can go in recognizing fact: then the disposition to form these ideals
will be considered a part of our nature, in the same
way in which ordinary sensation is. Or, we may go
beyond the sensation, and consider that want, as




48            THE IDEALS ARE NOT
sensation argues want as fact in the same way as the
sensation of hunger is a sign of an emptiness of the
stomach: so far as we do this, we come upon a set of
facts which depend upon our quasi-sensation of the
absent, or upon our non-experience. Nor is there
anything unreasonable in this. If we were removed
into a world where there was no atmosphere, we
should have a sensive absentation (the converse of
presentation) which would speedily kill us.  We
should have an imaginational knowledge, or a quasisensation, of atmosphere, by its necessity to us.  Of
all possible things, there is a triple division, so far as
we are concerned: into the things which we have, or
which are present; the things which we want (quibus
egemus), but which in whatever way we require or
should be the better for; and into the things which
we have not (quibus caremus) without its being of
importance to us whether we have them or not.  It
is evident, that with regard to all the second class,
there is a link between us and them which might be
converted into a knowledge of them, without our
having them: they are in a relation with us to
which at any time our consciousness might be directed, and then there would be sensation of them as
absent.
The active   The moral ideals thus represent the great and
side of
our nature higher wants of our nature, which wants, as I have
informs us
of these said, may either be simple imaginations, or may indiideals as cate want as fact, i. e. make us acquainted with fact
the sensive
side in-  beyond experience. Wants, corresponding to someforms us
of an   thing to be done or gained, are the necessary furniture
external
universe. Of our active nature, as sensive capacities, corresponding to something perceivable, are of our intellectual
nature. We should be as badly off without a work
to do as without a world to live in. And we may
fairly consider, that when in virtue of our nature to




MERE IMAGINATION.                49
which it bears a relation, we conceive our, as yet unperformed but ideal, work; there is as much reason,
though it is of a different kind, for this conception, as
there is for our conception, in virtue of the same
nature, of the world in which we are.
Moral philosophy is thus concerned with that
which is not as well as with that which is, and more
immediately.  How to observe the actual so as to
learn from it what is that complement of the actual
which our action may produce, and which will be
something gained to the actual and make it better,
this is the main problem of ethics.
Our nature is one, and of course feeling' and action On the
are concerned together: and in the same way, the anc of
things which are not (if again I may say so) are ofth relano importance to us, except as related to the things tween the
that care; but then, in the same way still, the things and the
nonwhich are are of comparatively little importance to existent.
us, except in relation to the things that are not. It
is as a pre-condition or aid to action that knowledge
has its prime value: and action, as we have seen,
is determined by wants; not by presence of anything,
but by absence of it.
But besides being thus based on the fact of our The ideals
wants, the moral ideals are distinguished from mere hraetical
imagination from the fact that they are eminently realitYinfluencing
practical, and guide more or less the conduct of all, the coneven of those who do not intellectually value them. of those
Take for instance an'esprit positif,' one wrho professes \who do
Take for instancean esprit psitif,'onehoprofessesnot acto be guided by experience alone; meaning by ex- klnowledge
them in
perience, all that constitutes what is called positive theory.
knowledge. Such experience is only an extension of
our own individual sensations, as the perception of
gravitation is only a more complicated case of the
same thing as our sensation of distance. It might be
difficult, if we looked closely, to understand how
4




50            THE IDEALS ARE NOT
sensation of itself can lead to action at all; even the
impulse to relieve ourselves of any pain which we feel,
presents something beyond sensation, viz. the rudiments of our active nature. But this is not what I
want to speak of. In any case, sensation can suggest
no action which goes beyond our own relief. Practical conclusions from sensations can go no further,
legitimately, than sensation itself, and can never make
us leave ourselves. It is quite possible indeed, that
we may feel by sympathy the troubles of others, and
for self-relief may relieve them; in fact, that we may
carry out this relief of others, in order to self-relief,
into a system: but we have still not got beyond self,
and cannot do so. To the man of matter-of-fact or
of sense, so far as he is true to himself in being so, disinterestedness is thus a practical chimera exactly in
the same manner, and to the same extent, as moral
ideals are an intellectual one. And to the extent to
which he is disinterested or public-spirited, which in
practice he is likely enough to be, he is admitting as
a ground of action something exactly of the same
nature as that which, intellectually, he will not admit
as a reality. The moral ideals of which I have
spoken, are what the man of matter-of-fact acts upon,
and must act upon: they have therefore the same
reality as human life, the reality of applicability, and
even necessary application, to action: and if we call
that which has this character visionary, I do not
know what we are to call real. If this is visionary,
there has been no greater visionary in modern times
than Bentham, with his ideal which we have spoken
of. I think, then, that the positivist, in dealing with
morals, is intellectually wrong because he is practically right; that what he admits for practice he ought
intellectually to admit as real; that it is foolish to
pride himself upon keeping to matter-of-fact against




MERE IMAGINATION.                 51
others as visionaries, when what he is really doing is
only applying his matter-of-fact principles to the
details of that which, in the substance or main character of it, is more thoroughly visionary in himt than
it is in others: it is the business of moral philosophy
to see if it cannot harmonize practical and intellectual
views at least a little more than this.
This practical reality is by some philosophers Allowing
their pracconsidered to be the kind of reality specially belong- tical realing to what I have called the moral ideals; and if it it>Y,'t
is inferior in kind, or as reality, to speculative or thetir intel
intellectual reality, it is so far superior to it, that it lidity.
is a kind of reality actually attainable or appreciable
by us, which the true speculative or intellectual
reality is only in a very small degree, according to
the philosophers I have referred to.
But, further than this, I shall endeavour to shew Other
that moral philosophy, in this its ideal or intuitivist foholding
character, is not merely visionary, by remarking a tot reality
little on the degree to which it is fruitful, on theideals.
degree to which it is self-consistent, and on the
degree to which the manner in which the mind proceeds in it bears an analogy to the way in which it
proceeds intellectually.
Moral philosophy in its ideal character, or the They lead
onto
higher portion of aretaics, is not a science, but is an further
art in the manner which we have seen, or a true trithhand
philosophy, not in itself inductive, but setting inthemaction, and giving interest to, various sciences which subordiare inductive, and which are therefore capable of all ~at i7the progress of which physical science is capable. sciences,
The only progress possible in this higher portion of
moral philosophy is greater clearness of view, firmer
hold in the mind of the principles it deals with, and
happier expression of them. It is idle to suppose
that any increase of experience can shew men, more
4-x2




52              THE IDEALS ARE NOT
certainly than they have known it from the first',
that they ought to be public-spirited rather than
selfish, just rather than unjust, kind rather than
cruel. Yet there is room for consideration in respect
of these things which men ought to be: room for a
philosophy about them, though not for an inductive
science.  And there is abundant room  for observation and for various methodical lines of consideration,
which we may call inductive sciences, in carrying out
the particulars of that which moral thought only
vaguely suggests in the imperfect outline.  If moral
philosophy is the art of living as we should, as is best
for us, as we were intended to live, as our nature
indicates to us, happy with a rightly conceived
happiness, or in whatever other way we may express
the ideal; and of doing what we can, according to our
circumstances, to help others to do the same; then it
is clear that to carry out this well may absorb any
amount of observation, methodized and generalized,
as to what we are, and what we feel, and what we
take pleasure in, and what others feel, and much
besides: nobody can doubt that with the advance of
experience, moral philosophy may progress infinitely
in these respects; but its ideals are what they were
in the time of Plato, and never can be different.
both        There is an aretaics of observation, to which beeudmamonic and  longs' the observation of dispositions and of character,
aretaic.
as to eudwemonics belongs the study of pleasures and
of pains. And there are other subsidiary sciences, or
inductive branches, of moral philosophy, of which I
shall have to speak: but I think that for the present
1'From the first' is rather ambiguous. Lower down the time of
Plato is specified as a time in which the moral ideals were the same as
at present. This of course is only true of the most general ideals; the
author would not have denied the influence of Christianity in modifying
the subordinate ideals. See Extam. of Util. Phil. p, 293.-ED.




MERE IMAGINATION.             53
enough has been said as to the existence, in the ideals
of moral philosophy, of such reality as is indicated by
fruitfulness.
But do the ideals of moral philosophy point to
any one course of conduct? and when I say that it is
the parent, or mistress, of various subsidiary sciences,
are these sciences in harmony with each other?
When the so-called intuitivism of moral philosophy They point
to one
is disliked, it is perhaps with the notion that, how- course of
ever we may form the ideals, and talk of a summum conduct.
bonum, a summum faciendum, virtue, duty, or any
such ideal, we shall be unable, with any satisfactoriness, to fix these ideals anywhere, or find any particular course of conduct to which they point. We may
understand the notion of a summum bonum, or of
there being a right thing to do, perfectly, and allow
that the notion suggests itself to us, perhaps most
vividly: but what is the good, we may say, of its
doing so, if we cannot find what the summum bonum
or the right conduct is; or if we find that our
different ideals seem to point to different sorts of
conduct? We want, we may say, to promote both our
own good, and the good of others: but, upon the best
consideration we can give, it does not seem to be the
same course of conduct which will promote both: are
these ideals other than a hopeless puzzle?
On these points something has been said already
and more will be said hereafter, but for the present
I shall stop here, going on in the next chapter with
the subject of the analogy between the mental procedure in the case of these ideals and of intellectual
perception.




CHAPTER V.'
ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE INTELLECTUAL
AND THE MORAL IDEALS.
On the  THERE are two views of knowledge, either of which,
dualism of
percep-  as it appears to me, we may take, but which we
tion. Confusion of cannot, by any means that I can see, bring together.
the or   That there is a dualism  in knowledge, a bringing
dinary
viewwhich together of two members, subject and object, is
recognizes
properties commonly understood; but the point in which I
bin the   differ from  most philosophers, is that I do not
and in the imagine it possible for us, in one view of knowledge,
object            p
apart from to conceive both of the two members possessing qualities of any kind. This looks abstract, but the thing
that I mean is exceedingly simple: suppose we are
looking at a prospect: there are undeniably two
members of what is going on, ourselves and the
prospect. This dualism we cannot get over; we are
certain that there is a subject, our perceiving selves
(or the perceiving something), and the perceived
something, the universe we will call it. But to
which side of the dualism belongs all that is intermediate between the perceiving subject and the
perceived object, this is to me an insoluble problem.
We are composed of bodies, which, as I may roughly
but intelligibly express it, are half subjective and
half objective, half ourselves and half not ourselves:
On the view of Perception here given compare Exploratio Philosophica and Mr Shadworth Hodgson's Space and Time, and Theory oJ
Practice.-ED.




THIE INTELLECTUAL AND THE MORAL IDEALS.  55
and  philosophers, extending  in  an  unauthorized
manner this supposition which is good in its place,
have endeavoured to embrace, in a single view  of
knowledge, properties of the subject and properties of
the object-a thing which seems to me not possible.
They have spoken of powers (we will say) of the
subject meeting or appreciating qualities of the
object; but we can never, on any satisfactory grounds,
make this distinction. If the subject has powers, Knowledge
is either
possibly all that takes place is in virtue of powers of a passive
the subject; the subject, by its powers, converts into imtrhessio
an object of knowledge something which, independent universe
upon us,
of the exercise of these powers upon it, is  we knowor it is
not what, a mere rude material of knowledge: if on thou ght
the other hand, the object has qualities, there is no constitut
need to suppose powers in the subject; powers in universe
to us.
the subject would then, so far as they were exercised,
be making the object something different from what it
really is. Knowledge is either a standing by and gazing,
on our part, on a universe with qualities, (in which
case we exercise no powers upon it; it is the same
whether we are gazing upon it or whether we do not
exist:) or it is a thinking, on our part, in a particular
way, which we call our understanding or intellectual
nature, about something which has to us no other
nature or existence except what we thus think about
it: in this case the universe exercises no influence
upon us except to give occasion to our thought.
Of the above views both are incomplete: bothInthe one
case truth
what we may call'abstractionsl.' They are each ofis things
impressthem a portion of the whole fact as surd or insoluble. ing themIn the former, in which difference, character, quality, Selv~eiscnature, of things is supposed to be in the object, their
proper
truth of knowledge consists in this, that, what im- being, in
presses itself upon us as this difference, character, &c. truth is
right
1 Exploraltio, p. 2, 83.          rhinking.




56         ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN
is really such, and not a something different from
this. The question, How is it that this, or anything, impresses itself upon us at all? is one which
in this point of view must not be touched on: we
are bystanders, looking on at the drama or phantlasmagoria of nature, and must direct our view to that,
not to ourselves: if we direct our view to ourselves,
there only arises an inextricable confusion; but of
course, in the other case, our own nature, that which
enables us to be bystanders of this kind, remains a
surd or insoluble.
In the latter view, difference, character, quality,
nature, of things (as we are compelled to say in
language, for language in general goes upon the
former view), is not in the things, but is difference
of our thought about —the things, again we must
say, with the same caution as to language as before,
for the things, on this view, are not things except in
virtue of our thinking of them: and perhaps here
we have a witness to the occasional Berkeleyanism
of language in the derivation of thing from think.
The difference on this view is suggested, we are not
considered to know how: whether by something in
the rude matter, or by some agency entirely different from it: which agency may even supersede
the necessity of supposing any rude matter.
Truth in this latter view is in the thinking
rightly about things: and that which in this view is
left surd and insoluble is on the side of the thing:
it is the infornm matter, the logical subject of our
thought, of which, or perhaps of some unknown
agency which we mentally substitute for it or combine with it, we predicate all that makes the difference or quality of things.
The oppo-   Very constantly, however, efforts have been made
indutive to analyse our knowledge into two portions, a portion




THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE MORAL IDEALS. 57
contributed by our mind, and a portion by the object to intuior universe: and when it has been said of anything, ledge is a
that it is intuitive or intuitivist, what has been founded
meant is, that it is something not given us by ex- on the
wrong
perience, but something coming-in this manner from view of
our mind.  It will be seen from what I have said, tieon.
that this kind of distinction between experience and
what we will call mental creation or mental addition
to experience, is one which I do not recognize.
I do however recognize a very great difference
between different kinds of what, according to the
view taken, I should call the impressions of the
universe upon us or our thoughts about the universe,
and it is of this nature.
Every operation of mind appears to me to be, if Thevaried
we look at it from the side of the intellect, intel- tion
lectual if we look at it from the side of the universe, between
subject
sensile. Colours, smells, and tastes, make an impres- and object
may be
sion upon us by means of the passive nerves of feeling exhibited,
through which we communicate with the chemical iasaive,
constitution of bodies: relations of space and force, Ifsensai.e. figures and distances and different degrees of active, in
a scale of
hardness of bodies, make an impression upon us by intellimeans of the active nerves of locomotion and pressure; gence.
an impression in fact upon our will: and there is
something in bodies besides, which it seems may
similarly be described as making an impression upon
us, though not by means of any nerves-a simply
intellectual impression,-and that is, their unity,
reality, thinghood, existence.  The nature of this,
and of other notions connected with it, I cannot here
inquire into: but it will be understood that a thing
is made a thing, is made what it is, by something
more than the fact of its having a particular figure
and colour: in our noticing, recognizing, individualizing it, we understand in it something beyond




58         ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN
anything which we can taste or handle, a Xoyo~,
raison d'etre, or however we may describe it. It is
in virtue of this that we ordinarily notice it: in other
words, this is what in the highest degree impresses
itself upon us.
All that I have described here as sensation or
impression might have been described from the opposite point of view as thought. Certain feelings of
our own, more or less of pleasure and pain, suggest
to us something beyond ourselves: we, by our understanding, interpret this something which they suggest
into what we then call a coloured body, with a particular form or figure and with a unity, reality, reason,
of its own.
The mis-    It will be seen that in all this I recognize a
toafkpercep gradation, what I should call a regular scale of
tion shows sensation or of intelligence'. What I differ from is,
itself in
attribut- the saying that what is in the higher part of this
ing the'higher  scale is given by the mind, while what is in the
part of the lower is given by the object or universe. If colour
scale to
the sub- and figure are in the object, then all the properties
ject, and
the lower of the object, of every kind, abstract as they may be,
tojehe.  are in itself, and are not mere thoughts of ours about
it: it makes its impression upon us, or makes itself
felt by us, with and by means of all its properties
alike, abstract and concrete, ideal and material.  If
the more abstract properties of the object are given
to it by us, or are something we think about it, then
colour and space also are something which we think
about it, except that in using the word it our
language slips under our feet; for we make it what
it is by thus thinking about it:  uhat we think
about it is something which becomes it in virtue of
our thinking about it.
I feel no objection to the calling what is in the
1 See Explorcatio, ch. vi.




THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE MORAL IDEALS. 59
higher part of the scale of sensation or thought ideas,
in contradistinction to what is in the lower as mere
sensations, if only it is understood that both together
belong either to the mind, or to the object: it is
probably past our power to determine which.
And the moral ideals, in my view, stand to the Corresensation of pleasure and pain, considered simply tothis prand in itself, in the same relation in which percep- eleOthlre
tions belonging to the higher part of the perceptional is a moral
scale, the
scale, or what I have just called ideas, stand to per- higher
ceptions of the lower part, or what I have just whith isn
called mere sensations: which are sensations also of no less
real than
pleasure and pain, but in which the pleasure or pain the lower.
is not the thing noticed, but serves only to set the
perceptive or interpretative intellect in motion. The
moral ideals, as formed or grasped by the mind, are
not less real, or more subjective, than the bare sensations of pain or of pleasure.
Recurring to the instance or example which I Ilustratook some time since: it appears to me, that the the two
feeling about pain, that it is what should not be views of
inflicted on others (in which feeling the ideal'should
be,' or rightness, comes in with all its force), is one
that suggests itself as naturally and necessarily, as
that it is a thing to be shrunk from or avoided by ourselves. No doubt, the latter is what is called an instinctive sensation, the former is a highly refined idea,
and they belong in this way to different points of a
scale: but I see no reason for calling the one imagination, and the other reality. The first again requires
a development of thought, it would appear, for its
possibility: there is the notion of'others'; there is
the notion, how pain could be inflicted upon them,
which how could the infant, who nevertheless instinctively shrinks himself from pain, possibly have?
I say nothing here about the time at which ideas




60          ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN
first come into distinction.  Quite independently of
this, pain seems to me to be thought of by us, or to
impress itself upon us (whichever manner of expression we like to use), in two distinct manners: as
what is unpleasant to be borne, and as what should
not be inflicted. I look upon both of these characters,
not one only, as constituting what we may call the
natural or instinctive definition of pain. And as the
one is the fruitful axiom from which flows eudaemonics, so is the other one main axiom from which
flows aretaics.
I see no reason, then, why we should consider
this notion, that we should not inflict pain, a mere
imagination, while we consider the unpleasantness
of pain a fact.
Truth, the    To go back now to what was said above as to the
intellectual ideal, double view of knowledge: the intellectual ideal,
takes two viz. truth, has correspondingly one or other of two
forms correspond- characters: it is either rightness of thought, thinking to the
two views ing as we should about what we think of, which
of perceptSion.ter is plainly an ideal: or it is, on the other view, things
t is eithe   making an impression on us as they are, according to
tandulm' their reality or proper being.  This ideal of reality
or the.- ns.. or being, -ro' O'vTo or, as the first to which the term'idea' was attached, has been written about till one
might suppose nothing fresh could be said about it,
but with an ever-recurring growth of new terminology it revives and revives again.  On the absolute,
the relative, and the positive, the principal terms
which nowu enter into the discussion, I hope to speak
another time1.
To these   The two high intellectual ideals thus, or the two
elated the notions of truth, are these, the cogitandlumn and the
sub-ideals, contemplation of real being: but truth, so far as it
that which
is com- comes actually within our grasp, does so in virtue of
monly
1 See Appendix,at the end of the Volume.




THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE MORAL IDEALS. 61
ideals, if they may be called such, much lower and believed,
that which
nearer to us.                                          is pracTruth, as we come actually to grasp it, has two tical.
characters, which with slight exaggeration we might
describe thus; that it is that which is generally considered; that it is that- which is practical, or will
answer in practice.
What sort of notion of truth we should have, if we The
former
were, any one of us, the solitary being in creation, is sub-ideal
not quite easy to tell.  As I have already made this flows from
the fact
supposition once, and may possibly do the like that man
again, it may be expedient here to say a word on nature.  oCial.
the nature of such suppositions.
The practice of supposing things other than they Illustraare, or events to have happened  otherwise than from
as they have happened, is much derided by some, imagined
and condemned by others. The general reason why man in
absolute
it has been derided and condemned is from a notion, solitude.
Use andl
more belonging to the last century than this, that danger of
imagination is a'forward  delusive faculty'l which such imahas nothing  to  do with  religion, philosophy, or
science. I hold an opinion exactly the reverse of
this, and consider that we can only so far be taken
to have intellectual grasp of a thing, a fact, or a
sequence of facts, as we are able to compare it
with  other (imagined) things, facts, or sequences,
which, consistently  with  many  of its conditions,
might have been instead of it. There is, however,
one real impropriety in suppositions of this kind,
which makes necessary much care in the using them.
It is this.  We have no business to isolate any one
thing in the universe from other things which have
relation to it, and to suppose it other than it is,
Butler's Analogy, I. 1. "As we are accustomed from our youth up
to indulge that forward delusive faculty (imagination), ever obtruding
beyond its sphere, of some assistance indeed to apprehension, but the
author of all error," &c.




62         ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN
without making corresponding suppositions (and
where shall we stop?) as to them. If we do so, we
are not simply making a different state of things
from that which is, but we are making an incongr-uous
state of things.  Still, if we keep this fact in mind,
and correct in our imagination accordingly, the
making the suppositions is not likely to deceive us,
and is often very useful.
Man       What I have meant here to convey will, I think,
cannot
help    be at once seen in reference to this particular supthinking position, that we were, any one of us, the solitary
being in creation.  That each one of us is a social
being means a great deal more than that he is an
individual of the genus man, living with other individuals of the same genus, talking with them,
and pursuing common purposes with them.  He is
social to the bottom of his mind, and each one of his
faculties is different from that which it would be, if
it was not part of his nature to associate himself.
He thinks socially, and cannot think otherwise: and
so far as, by a solitude inappropriate to his nature,
he is thrown out of actual companionship, he is like
a man deprived of his legs or anything which ought
to be his: there is feeling of want, painful effort, and
more or less supply of what is wanted from some
other source in the system.
And ideal    One part of our intellectual sociality is, that so
brcohes far as we think what we think, in our own view,
efiach ffro truly, we think it what I will call generally: I mean,
its being we think it not as for our own intelligence only, but
the way of
thinking as for a supposed general intelligence: we consider
in wheih that we are in sympathy or communion of thought
unite (ist with all who think on the same subject, so far as we
sub-ideal).
and they come up to the ideal truth. And we verify
our thought accordingly.  That is, the ideal truth
becomes fixed or actualized to us, in one way, by




THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE MORAL IDEALS. 63
its being the way of thinking in which we and others
unite. Or, to use other words, we form a lower and
nearer ideal of truth, in considering it the communion of intelligences.
The other sub-ideal of truth which I mentioned The 2nd
sub-ideal
is its applicability to action, its holding good for aplicaevery variety of our sensive capacity. Of this, and of bityto
the connexion of our active and intellectual natures, A false
sub-ideal
I hope to speak again, and also of another falsely the latest
assigned sub-ideal, test, or character of truth, viz. belief.
that, viewing the course of the thought of collective
man, his latest judgments are, at any given moment,
to be considered as truer than his earlier ones.
I shall now try to observe what is the state of
our mind in regard to these ideals of truth, and shall
compare this with our state of mind in reference to
the moral ideals.
All advance, or attempt at advance, in knowledge The subis a search after the trite, and a search in which practically
we are very imperfectly successful.  MTith regard to guide our
thought,
what we come to know, we can give but a very but they
would lose
imperfect account of what we mean by saying that it their
is true, and why we are certain of it.  If some inPteres
Berkeley asks us how we know that any external if it were
not for our
thing at all exists, we can only answer in fact, that belief in
the higher
everybody says so, and that we are able to act in it: ideals.
it mzeets, so to speak, fits or resists, all our senses and
our will, and against any individual delusion on our
part we appeal to the experience of all. But all
this is much below that ideal of truth which we
feel within us, or conceive, and cannot help seeking
for and trying to realize.  The common agreement
only means that we are organized alike, and if one is
deceived, it is natural enough that all should be: the
answering to action is nothing more than the fact,
that our organization, one part of the universe, fits




64         ON THE ANALOGY BETWrEEN
what we call external things, which is another part.
All this is very different from seeing things as they
are, from thinking as we should.
And yet it is the fact, that unless we had and
still kept in our mind the notion that these latter
things were possible, we should not strive after
knowledge at all. At every step of the process,
we seem to see something more than we did, to
think more properly. If any person could really persuade us that knowledge was nothing more than a
thinking as other people did, and a relation of what
we call external things to our senses and our faculties,
curiosity, the spring of all our intelligence, would
vanish, and knowledge itself would soon disappear.
If the notion that there is such a thing as truth is a
delusion, it is a delusion to which one of the most
important parts of our nature owes its importance.
Meaning    I shall call the manner in which we have a
and importance notion of truth and refuse to let it go believing in
of leoh  truth: it might be called, if we liked to call it so,
a believing in the universe: it is that belief that
there is something to be known, which must accompany, more or less, every act of knowledge, or
else I do not see how we could try to know anything: it is the thing which seems to me to difference
us, intellectually, from the lower animals, who learn
things habitually as we do, who notice things connected with their wants and pleasures as we do, who
perceive things as we do, and must so far be said to
reason as we do, that there can be no perception
without some sort of reasoning; but who have no
impulse to knowledge as knowledge, or in other
words, no notion in them of there being a truth of
things, attainable (apparently) and worth attaining.
Not to dwell-too long on this, which, as it is to me a
matter of prime importance, will at various times




THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE MORAL IDEALS.  65
present itself, the ideal of truth appears to us, as I
have said, in a double form: as thinking rightly or as
we should: and as seeing things as they are. And
one part of our belief in truth consists in this, in the
belief that these two aspects of the ideal represent
but one thing: though most philosophers have looked
chiefly at the one or the other of them.
Those philosophers who have looked at the ideal
of truth most in the former aspect have generally
expressed their view of it more or less in religious
language.  So far as we suppose the existence of One
Allknowing Intelligence, there is no doubt that one
character of ideal truth must be conformity to Its
thotughts: but still even this, in one sense, cannot
exhaust the ideal.  Not even such an intelligence
canll make truth  truth: its being an intelligence
implies that it perceives truth, and there must be
truth for it to perceive coseval with it.
This first ideal of truth however does not necessarily imply more than that there is a course before
our minds, which, for whatever reason, is the correct
and proper one: it implies, we may say, that truth is
what the mind, as a mind, exists for.
The second aspect of the ideal truth, that it is the
sight of what is, is the source of the ancient idealist
philosophy: I shall say no more of it, but shall
speak of the comparison of the moral ideals with
these intellectual ones.
The two great moral ideals, that of rightness and The moral
that of good, are analogous to these two aspects of rightness
the highest ideal of truth.  The relation however is sprods to
more and closer than that of analogy: the moral and ineludes the
ideal in each case is the higher, and, more or less, intellectual ideal
includes in it the intellectual.                    of the
The first moral ideal, that of rightness, is the cogitanmost genuine, and therefore, in a sense, the most
G.                                       5




66  -       ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN
vague, ideal, which can suggest itself to us. In the
doing as we should, or living as we should, thinking
as we should comes in of course as a part. And therefore in the ancient ethics or aretaics, the right action
of the intellectual portion of our nature took its
place as a portion of virtue or excellence.
It is also  But as the moral ideal thus includes the intelbgg it.ed lectual, so, on the other hand, the intellectual suggests the moral: the rightness which governs action
is an extension or wider application of the truth
which governs thought. Many philosophers, whom
we may call the Intellectual Moralists, have followed
out this view very extensively.
The moral   The relation of the second moral ideal, that of
ieal of  good, to the intellectual ideal of real being, was a
resPnods matter for very early, and very beautiful, philosophic
includes speculation. That good is the reason of being, that
the intellectual which, in the contemplation of being, we look for,
ideal of  that to which we look through being, that which
Being. being suggests to us, and by the sight of which only,
so far as we can attain to see it, we can in any way
understand or explain being-all this, in this high
region, is of course abstruse, and requires a Plato to
exhibit it to us. But it is a principle which does
not belong to this high region alone, but in a certain
degree to all speculation. It is a principle which
has generated much truth, and the misappreciation
of which has generated much error, in the treatment
of Natural Theology and of Final Causes.
Similarly    The sub-ideals of morality which I described are
the moral more or less analogous to the sub-ideals of truth.
corredt  The former are what we can find out about right or
the intel- good action, in the same way as the others are what
lectual
sub-ideals. we can find out about truth. If we consider rightness, or good, and truth to be the main ideals, the
others, the subordinate notions which I have men



THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE MORAL IDEALS. 6 7
tioned, may be considered conditions or characters of
these.
And the having the moral ideal of rightness or
good is a belief in rightness or good in the same way
as the having the ideal of truth is a belief in truth.
It is a belief, in other words, that there is a kind of
action which is proper for us and that good is possible
for us, and a belief also that both these aspects of the
ideal point to the same kind of action. Without this
moral belief, I see no more how we could act, than I
see how, without the intellectual belief, we could
think.
What I said as to the relation of the higher And th
relation
ideals to the lower, appears to me to apply in the between
the moral
same manner to the moral, as to the intellectual ideals and
ideals. The attempt to engage men the better in sub-ideals
felicific action (so I will call it) by trying to per- spoand to
suade them  that there was nothing right for them, twee the
intelleeand that the supposition of there being such a tualideals
thing as rightness was only a mental delusion, a ideals.
mistake for, and a call to, this, seems to me closely to
resemble the trying to stimulate their curiosity or
love of truth by telling them that all that truth
meant was, generally received opinion among men.




CHAPTER VI.
ON MORAL VALUE.
Recapitu. IT will be remembered that I described' moral philatio.  losophy as a kind of thought, not exactly of the
nature of science itself, but setting in action, or
overseeing, various kinds of thought, each of which
might be styled a science, and be treated in a systematic inductive manner.
It is not precisely the same view, but one not
inconsistent with the above, and in some respects
simpler, to consider moral philosophy as made up,
in the main, of two sciences, one of which, the more
important, is only in a very subordinate degree a
positive science, partaking largely of an ideal character.
This is another view which I gave, and I called the
two sciences Aretaics and Eudsemonics. There is a
certain degree of looseness in the use which I am
making of both these terms: but I hope to go into
the meaning of them, especially that of the last,
more accurately.
Utility   I have also already, to a certain degree, spoken
is a sub- of the meaning of usefulness as applied to action,
ideal relatedtothe or of'the useful' as an ideal2. The useful, as I
summum
bonum. said, has its reference, not to pleasure, but to good:
bonurn, the desirable: the ideal of'the useful' il
a subordinate ideal to that of the good or desirable'
and the action which the term designates is actioi
which serves as a means to this latter. For any
l'p. 51.            2p. 34.




QN MORAL VALUE.                 69
thing with which we are just now  concerned, this
ideal of the good or desirable might resolve itself
into  that of the pleasurable: that we will see at
a future time: for the present the word'eudaemonics,' as I said just now, is vague to us, and may,
or may not, mean more than an experiential science
of pleasure.  The same in regard to the word'happiness:' at present it might mean to us either a
state, i. e. a fact, accompanied or not by the feeling
of the fact; or it might mean a feeling, pleasure,
without any account being taken of states, or of
facts beyond the feeling. But. whatever the ideally
good or desirable may be further resolved into, it is
to that ideal unresolved that all the significance
of the term' useful' applies: I must beg that this
may be for the present kept in mind.
In speaking also of the moral ideals, I mentioned Difficulty
the result produced, in regard of them, by the intro- intreodued
duction of the consideration whether the agent were to this and
the coghimself the sentient object of his own action, ornate ideal
by the diswhether there were other sentient objects of it be-tinction
yond himself.  This divides the second great ideal betwneod
together with its subordinate ideals into two parts; and odders'
and also introduces doubt, as to one of the parts in
each case, what is its nature, how far it is a moral
ideal at all.
- The question which I propose to consider in this According
chapter is the value of actions in the abstract, that triUisit
which determines in regard of them, in the last resort, actions
whether they are worth doing or not. This value of value only
when they
them is the ultimate reason for them. Taking the effectsome
word'utilitarianism' not in a technical and sectarian dnt good
sense, but to represent what its derivation would result.
suggest, the utilitarian view of morals may be said
to be that which considers actions to be of value in
the universe, in the last resort, solely in respect of




70               ON MORAL VALUE.
their usefulness, i.e. productiveness of good, however
the meaning of the word'good' may be afterwards
determined.  Unless there is produced by them something which independently of them may be described
as good or desirable, the universe, it is said, is no;better for them; they might as well not have being;
they are wasted.  When I say'is produced,' I speak
broadly for greater intelligibility, but I mean to
include in the view any variety of modification or
qualification of it: if the actions which produce the
above are valuable in the first instance, then a great
variety of actions beyond these will be valuable in
the second instance, as tending to produce it, or
being of a kind which generally produce it, or for
many other reasons.
This no-   Utilitarianism, in this broad sense, will commend
tieoninit itself to many, and to many will seem  even selflform im- evident.  It may almost seem to be involved in the
luiveat- views!of all those philosophers who sought for a
tention to
the second C summum bonum' as the chief thing in morals, imideal without regarl plying that all actions would be good in considerato the first. tion of their tendency to that, i. e. of their usefulness.'What's the worth of any thing,
But just so much as it will bring?'
An action, it is said, is for results; it is reasonable so far as the results of it are looked to: by
its results we must ultimately try it.
There is truth in this notion, not only in its most
general form, which is simply treating what I called
the second ideal as the first and most important;
but also in its less general and nearer forms, as
when we speak of happiness more or less determined
by pleasure; still the truth contained in it is not
the whole truth.
Considera-   Let us imagine what would be our state of
tion of the
question feeling as to this value if it were not possible, in




ON MORAL VALUE.                 71I
the universe, for any one being to promote the hap- on the
piness of others.  It is evident that, on this sup- ipos(l)
position, the value of actions, so far as it depends itvidh
on the good produced or likely to be produced by couldpro
theln, is the same as before: there may be as much own hapmess but
good produced, each producing it for himself; and Potethat of
then it may be that the valuableness of actions others:
varies as their usefulness. But we surely must feel
that the view which, as it is, we take of the ultimate
valuableness of actions, is something more comrplicated than this: we need something beyond simple
productiveness of happiness when, going back as far
as we can in thought, we reflect upon the reason
which there exists for doing any action.
Let us now change the supposition.
The most important point for our consideration [Elements
in respect of happiness is that it is a thing which question
may be foregone as well as a thing which may be Statedl
promoted; and it is in the mutual play of these four
considerations, viz. the promotion of happiness, the
foregoing of happiness, thought of ourselves, thought
of others, that the circumstances of moral action lie.
If we supposed that the foregoing of happiness (2)thatthe
promotion
was possible but that its promotion was impossible, of happiwhat would have to be said in regard to such fore- lo-Sswis
impossigoing of happiness? would it have value? would ble, but
that each
there be reason for it in the universe?           might, if
he pleased,
As we found that, in the case of action merely forego his
proimotive of happiness, there might be value (if we o  hp-.
choose to call it so), but there would not be what we
consider nZorcal value, so I think we shall consider
that action involving readiness to forego happiness
would have, in the absence of purpose fbor it, only an
imperfect moral value; but that it has a character
which, on supposition of a useful purpose, becomes
moral value, and that this character is the same as




7 2             ON MiORAL VALUE.
that whlich is wantingq in order to give moral value
to actions simply promotive of happiness
We may     It is not quite easy to conceive this, nor quite
either say
that there easy to express it: but I think it may best, perhaps,
eds two  be put thus; We may either consider that the moral
value of value of action in the universe, the full reason why
actionsaretaiGand one is better, worth more, in the universe than
eudaumonic-or  another, must be sought in both the two first ideals
tetlemet  combined;-in other words, that a good action is
are needed one promotive of happiness with cost or effort on the
for an
action to part of the doer:-or we may consider that there
possess
true moral are two kinds of value, one corresponding to each of
Value,  those two ideals; the value of usefulness or result,
and the value of worthiness of feeling (so we will at
present call it) which has gone towards the result or
been expended for it.  This latter is the manner of
speak;ing which I shall the more commonly use.
The former of these is the eudaemonic worth of
actions; the latter their aretaic worth, their merit,
as we commonly call it.
There are various ways in which these two kinds
of worth may be considered.
The idea    The attribution of worth or value of the latter
pplies to kind to actions, i. e. of value independent of result, is
our active connected in my mind with what I have said before,
as well as
to oulr   of the independent importance of the active part of
sentient
nature.  our nature.  I do not look upon action in the universe as a necessary evil, arising only from the existence of want or from the imperfection of the enjoyed
happiness: the power and the want in the universe
fit each other, and the one is employed for the relief
of the other; but the action, i.e. the employment of
the power, is good in itself, as well as in its result
for the supply of the want which makes its usefulness: thus there exists a value besides the value of
usefulness, the value, namely, which I have described.




ON -MORAL VALUE.                73
The first ideal, the fac'ienldum, belongs to the Action for
t    our ideal
active part of our nature, and so, as we see, does this work imvalue. And the connection of this value with the lioesrthe
active part of our nature is concerned with its rela- tioll of our
tion to self, in the following way. We are agents in happiness.
the universe of what is to be done there, each with
our amount of power, and of course if this power has
to be absorbed in ourselves, and to go all to our
own happiness, there is none left for the independent
faciendum, our work or duty, whatever it may be.
This is spoken, no doubt, very generally, and in
application there will come many things to be considered; but still, really, though very generally,
action for our ideal work or duty is the foregoing of
happiness, however it may be accompanied with, or
produce, other happiness: there is no free action, I
will call it, or real action, without the readiness to
forego happiness and the disposition to transcend
self. We are each a machine of which a certain portion must go to internal work and sustentation, but
our value depends upon what there is disposable beyond this.
We might, conceivably, devote all our time and Self-sacrifice must
all our power to the promoting our own happiness be added
and good: in this point of view, whatever is not de- toefslvoted to it (being applied to our neighbour's happi- mrai true
ness) is so much taken front it, i.e. is self-sacrifice. value.
But it is exactly this action, the action which is, in a
small or a great degree, a withdrawing of our power
from effort after our own happiness to effort after
doing'what we should,' which, as we have seen, has
aretaic value, or merit. It should be useful: we form,
and with reason, the second ideal for our action as
well as the first: if it is useful, it has the double
value: if it fails of being useful, or, through error of
view,  goes wrong in this particular, it may have its




74              ON MORAL VALUE.
own value, and the question whether it has depends
on other considerations than those of usefulness.
Such, then, is the nature of aretaic value, or merit,
in reference to our active nature: I will now put it
in another view.
True moral   When we introduced, in speaking of the ideals,
islltsY the consideration of the agent and the object of the
where are action being possibly different, we introduced the
cnfictingt subject of what I may call the different interests of
interests.
men.  And, in reality, morality does not begin to
exist till this is introduced.  Usefulness of action,
without this, would have, as we have seen, a value,
but a value which we could not call mnoral, and the
faciendum or ideal work would correspondingly be
altered. The subject of moral philosophy is the conflicting interests of different sentient beings: I use
the word interests with intentional vagueness: their
conflicting ha931iness would do as well.
Sectarian    Utilitarianism, when it claims to be the whole of
utilitariandemoral phlosophy, takes the value of actions in their
rates the results as the one thing of importance, on which
importance of  everything else depends, and from  which everything
the conflict of  else flows.  Considering then moral philosophy fully
interests. begun and all its outline drawn, it proceeds onward,
taking quietly into itself various other considerations,
such as this of the conflicting interests of men, as if
they were matters comparatively unimportant: it
treats, perhaps, fully of them, but considers them, in
reference to the whole, comparatively subordinate.
Anti-utilitarian systems treat that which utilitarianism makes its basis (say, the value of happiness)
as something in a manner pre-moral, something with
the consideration of which morality is not as yet
properly begun.  It is only with the introduction of
the possible conflict of interests or happiness that the
real difficulties and the real importance of moral phi



ON MOTRAL VALUE.                 75
losophy commence: utilitarianism  expatiates in an
easier field, and is not sufficiently ready to face these.
The interest of human action does not arise from Truemoral
value imits being, as the utilitarian would persuade us, simply plies high
action for happiness, but in its being what I may call estimate of
a mutual action of moral beings for each other's hap- happi ess
piness, and that under strong temptation for them to with low
estimate
act each one for his own.  It is, in a manner, an in- of ourown.
terchange of happiness: only an interchange not, like
commercial interchanges, with a desire of getting as
much as possible for oneself.
And here it is that there comes in that double
character of value in action which I have mentioned.
It is evident that this mutual action, this interchange,
could not go on under the influence of the utilitarian
motive, simple value for happiness as happiness.
What is wanted, and what exists, is the concurrence,
each coming in its proper place, of value for happiness,
or high estimation of it, and non-value for happiness,
or low estimation of it.  The man who risks his own
life to save that of another would never be induced
to do this by any increase of his care for, or high
valuation of, happiness or life, if his thought for his
own life increased pctri jpcssuz  with his thought for
the life of the other.  But there concur in him the
two feelings of quite different natures: the rising
above the love of life, so far as he himself is concerned, and a very high estimation of the value of
life, so far as the other is concerned.
- Hence to the utilitarian principle of value for
happiness has to be added the counter-principle of
non-value for happiness, and each is to have its
place.
Such then is the nature of aretaic value or merit,
in relation to the conflict of interests: I will now
speak of it again in another view.




'76 (ON MORAL VALUE.
Meaning    The character of actions which gives them their
phroso  aretaic value or merit is one which is known by a'oelevatio variety of terms all more or less metaphorical, as
of character'as   moral terms must be, and also more or less misof aretaic leading.  We form, in respect of action of this kind,
Val-ie.   an ideal very similar to the first ideal or the faciendum
(rightness), and in many respects as vague, but not
quite the same.
The constant metaphor used in reference to action
of this kind is'high,' with its opposite'low.' Many
particulars of the notion of height seem  to have
pertinence in this comparison, though it is not quite
easy to tell which suggested it in the first instance.
Action of this kind is action very frequently with
effort, such as to rise up involves: it is action
looked up to by men, and giving to the agent a
feeling of self-approbation possibly approaching to
pride, raising him, as we describe it, in his own and
others' estimation: it is action belonging to a high
place in any supposed scale of being or character:
and much beside which might be said. Anyhow,
high-mindedness, elevation of character, and other
such expressions, seem generally accepted as good
descriptions of it.
I have spoken of it as a disposition to rise above
the thought of self, a readiness to forego happiness.
But it is much more various than this would imply.
And it enters very largely, as we shall find, into the
notion of happiness itself. It enters also into all the
notion of morality as ideal. In another chapter I
hope to treat of it as itself a distinct moral ideal,
though approaching to the. first, the faciendum.
elatioptu  What this chapter has been to establish is simply
Generosity this: were there no use possibly to be made of it, no
and usefulness happiness which could possibly be promoted, generous




ON MORAL VALUE.                  77
and self-forgetting action would be worth having in are, idethe universe, and the universe would be the richer pqualties
and better for it.                                  of action
In other words: there are two separate and inde- must coexist if an
pendent good qualities in regard of action, its gene- action is
to have
rosity (so to call it) and its usefulness: these ought complete
to go together, for generous action which subserves "oai
no purpose is so far thrown away: on the other hand
useful action, which is useful to ourselves alone, is
not thrown away indeed in the universe, but is
not matter for moral notice.
This latter point will perhaps be best understood man's
thus.  Man, so long as he confines the usefulness of eases
his action to himself alone, while passing beyond the him tonsed
range, or above the level, of the inferior animals in self If he
respect of his manner of action and of the powers his action
to self he
which, in virtue of his intellect, he brings to bear on does not
it, does not pass beyond their range, or above their act up to
_               his nature.
level, in respect of the object and purpose of action,
confining himself deliberately to that which they are
prevented by their nature from transcending, namely
self and particular pleasure. But actions of this kind
do not really come into consideration when we use
the- word'action' in a moral point of view.  There
is among the inferior animals much of affection towards each other and sometimes towards men, and
various things of the same nature as those which
morally concern us in man: but we do not write
about the morality of the animals, or, if we did so, it
would be with quite a different view from that
which we take of human morality, for this reason:
that they cannot rise above self. Their apparent
want of reflective and generalizing power prevents
them from forming the general notion of usefulness,
and they act, under the impulse of nature, each for
his own utility only. There are qualifications to this,




78              ON MORAL VALUE.
which I shall notice: but it represents the general
fact. Man rises above them through the wide range
and great force of his intelligence, and through the
power which he possesses of extending as widely the
purposes and objects of his action: in other words, of
transcending self. If he does not do this, he is false,
in a manner, to his moral nature: he employs powers
indefinitely higher than those of the animals for
purposes no higher: this is a sort of monstrosity.
The whole   To put this in another light.  The principal of
of aretai's
elongs tto the two sciences which I have described as making
Moral Phi up moral philosophy is'aretaics.' The whole science
bult only  of aretaics belongs to moral philosophy, whereas only
that part
of eudn- a portion of eudsemonics does: the remaining portion
nhichre of this latter, so far as it exists or has been thought
gards onr Of, being economics, prudentials, or to be designated
relations
towards  in various other ways.  This might be otherwise
others. expressed by saying that'aretaics' is moral philosophy, and eudoemonics a distinct science, partly
coining into consideration in it. Which way we
express this does not much matter.   Usefidlness
therefore, the matter of eudsemonics, only comes
into moral consideration as regards a portion of it:
the doing a thing because we should do it, the matter
of aretaics, comes under moral consideration univeirsally, even though it should happen that the thing
thus done was not useful to anybody.'The mo-    Considering all this complication of view, it is not
raluty of  wonderful that there has been much difficult controqs an am- versy about what is called'the morality of consebiguous  quences.'
expression.
It may be    Speaking shortly, action is virtuous or ideally
publie right which is done for the happiness of others or
spirited  the public good, and done because we conceive such
or selfish.
action to be the action which we should do, not
because we conceive it to be the action which will




ON MORAL VALUE.                  7 9
be most for our own happiness, though constantly
with the concomitant feeling (or as I have expressed
it, faith and trust) that it will be so.'The morality of consequences' is therefore a misleading expression, tending to the confusion together,
in our view, of different sorts of wrong morality.
It is true indeed that the supporters of these wrong
views have as great a disposition to make this confusion for themselves, as their opponents have to
make it for them. What I will call true or simple
utilitarianism, or the morality of general benevolence,
has been confused with Epicureanism (or other forms
of selfish morality) by the opponents of both, in order
to involve the former in the odium supposed to attach
to the latter, and by the supporters of both, in order
to claim for the former the character of a matter of
positive science, experience, observation, which attaches in their view to the latterl.
It is an erroneous view of morals to consider that If the
former, it
because we do an action for the happiness of others, is perfectly
or, which is the same thing, conceive that its useful- ovithSItet
ness is a proper and sufficient reason for our doing it, pendet
therefore, we can have no feeling that we do it be- tive mocause this is the sort of action which we ought to do, or, raity.
which is the same thing, that there is reason why one
sort of action (in this case it is useful action) should
be preferred to other sorts, so that not only, in doing
this useful action, we are right, but if we did other
action instead, we should be wrong. There is no
kind of necessary contradiction between'the morality
of consequences (if by it we understand simple utilitarianism or the morality of benevolence) and even
the highest and most intuitive doctrine of an absolute distinction between right and wrong. In fact,
for a true morality, we want the doctrine of conse1 Cf. Exram. of Util. Phil., chapters I., xv., xv i.




80              ON MORAL VALUE.
quences, considered in this light, to aid us against
arbitrary distinctions between right and wrong; or,
which is the same thing, against another doctrine of
consequences. When people will deprive us of our
ideal in the one direction, we must seek it in the
other. Paley tells us, in effect, that virtue is doing
the will of God, not as His will or from regard to
Him, but because He will punish or reward us. Our
feelings revolt against this description of virtue and
human motive: then, when we are told that God's
will is the happiness of all, we ask why it may not
be our will too? why, if He (with reverence be it
spoken) is allowed the free morality of consequences,
that is, the independent desire of others' happiness,
we may not be so also? why we must be slaves,
must be selfish?
The error    The reason why the view of morals which I have
dent mo- described in the first sentence of the above paragraph
rality is in is erroneous, has been made plain, I hope, in what I
its denial
of Right said some time since, and in the example which I
meaning
anything have given of Bentham. The error of what has been
more than
Useful. called'Dependent' morality, from this point of view,
does not consist in the assertion, to whatever extent,
of the importance of looking to the useful results of
our actions, but in the assertion that the doing this
must exclude the notion of there being one kind of
action (whatever it is) which we ought to do and
choose in preference to others. Supposing useful
action to be the right and proper action, still in
calling it right and proper we add something to the
notion of its being useful; and it is the assertion of
this which constitutes, from this point of view,'Independent' morality, so far as Independent morality
is the true.
The selfish The morality of consequences, in so far as we
morality
of conse- mean by the term a system of morality which looks




ON MORAL VALUE.                 81
at ll our action from the point of view of its probable quences is
consequences to ourselves, is something entirely dif- d,,blt
ferent. If we use the term'dependent' in reference
to anything on this system which is real morality,
we should call this selfish morality'doubly dependent,'
or morality with two steps of dependence. We do
what is right because it is generally useful, and we
do what is generally useful because it is our private
interest to do so. There is in this denied, not only
an independent sense of, or care for, right, but also
an independent (i.e. self-transcending or unselfish)
regard for utility.
But on this I have for the present said enough.




CHAPTER VII.
DU T Y.
I AM going to consider now an aspect of the first
ideal which has not as yet distinctly come before us.
And I will begin by saying a few words on the
relation of this first ideal, the faciendum, to the
second, the desirable, or supreme good.
The 2nd    Though the possibility of the existence of good
ideal is
subordi- or happiness may be a necessary precondition of
nate to the right action, and the second ideal might thus, abist, not
viceversa. stractly considered, be prior to the first, yet the
first would still be the higher ideal, for we might
possibly consider the second as subordinate to it,
whereas we cannot do the opposite. I mean by this
simply: there may be a good or happiness which we
ought to desire, rather than another: here the second
ideal comes under the first; but the first cannot come
under the second. If we say that among different
things which we ought to do, one is better for us
than another (on any other ground than as being
more what we og7ht to do), we are clearly descending
from a higher to a lower ground, and introducing
considerations which have no business to come in.
The same appears in this way: we may be certain
that anything which we ought to do is desirable for
us; but we have no business to say, that because a
thing is desirable for us, therefore it is what we ought
to do. This last consideration is of great importance,
as we shall in various ways find.




DUTY.                     83'It will be at once seen that between an idealwe are
free as re.
work to be done (or the first ideal), and an idealgards the
happiness (say) to be gained (or the second ideal), nd ideal
there is a great difference in this respect, viz. that
as to the second anyhow, we are free agents. If
there is a happiness possible for us, and we make no
effort to gain it, and therefore do not gain it, it is
our own loss, and that is all that is to be said. The
conduct which would have led to this happiness may
be described, if we like to describe it so, as our proper
or appropriate action, or the action fit for us or belonging to us, as what we were intended for when we
were created, or in various other such ways, rightly
or wrongly: but still, if it was in view of our own
happiness only that we were to strive towards this
ideal, folly is all that we can have been guilty of, or
can be blamed for in neglecting it. In view of this
ideal, we are in all respects free.
Still it is plain that the more ideal we make it,
the more, that is, we mean by it'something which
is good for us' rather than a distinctly conceivable
happiness, the more do we bring it near the first
ideal.  But they can  never, as ideals, coincide.
There can be no obligation upon us to choose, when
what is chosen is chosen simply as our own good.
Our own interests, as such, are our own concern, and
nobody else's.
How do we stand, as to freedom of this kind, in We are
bound as
reference to the first ideal-what we should or ought regards
to do?                                              thealst
The answer to this question must virtually in-thoughthe
volve an account, in the higher regions of thought, obligation
of that which is meant by the term'moral obliga- different
~~~~tion.'~~  persons
tion.'                   ~                          and in
I believe that the ideal is formed in a very dif- respect to
different
ferent way by different persons, in a manner varying actions.
6-2




-84                  DUTY.
indeed from all but perfect freedom to entire want of
freedom in our action. At a future time we may see
how this difference comes about. At present we will
see if there is any general statement which can be
made about it.
We may say of anything which suggests itself
to us as the thing which ought to be done, I choose
to do this, I do it because I like it: and in this felt
freedom of choice may lie a great part of the merit
and nobleness: but still there is a call to us in a different tone from that in which we are called to act
for our own happiness, a call the not listening to
which is a different kind of thing from the not listening to the call to labour for our own happiness,
which latter we are free to do, if we are willing to
dispense with the happiness.
On the other hand, we may say of a thing suggesting itself as above, I feel I must do it, I feel
I have no choice: and so difficult is it to get at the
bottom of our minds in this, their richest and noblest
part, that sometimes, just where there is the most
evident, and the most thoroughly felt, freedom of
choice, we have most the feeling that we must do the
thing, that the call upon us cannot be resisted.
Where we are most our own masters, we are more
energetic masters of ourselves than anything could
be to us.
Every one, it is probable, more or less, according
to the nature of the action, feels to have a different
degree of freedom along the scale I mentioned above,
and will use different language: it is noble, worthy,
meritorious, to risk one's life for another, it is proper
to give to the poor, it is incumbent on us to refrain
from stealing; but though each thus feels along the
scale, the amount of freedom or non-freedom felt by
each will be widely different.




DUTY.                     8 5
Roughly, it may be said, that the risking our life
for another is a thing as to which we are free, that
the refraining from stealing is a thing as to which
we are not free: though this only corresponds very
coarsely, it is probable, to what people actually feel.
But of this more another time.
To the extent to which we feel ourselves, as Virtue has
reference
above, not free, the first ideal takes to us the form to the
of an ideal law or rule, or, as it is commonly called, thheol of
duty.  On account of the division of action in the ideal, duty
manner which I have mentioned just above, it is more bind.
sometimes considered that'duty' is a term less ex~- of it.
tensively applicable to good action than'virtue' is: it
is virtuous to do our duty, and not to stop there, but
to go on doing good beyond it.. This language, as I
have just said, is only roughly significant: I hope to
analyze a little more fully both the terms and the
feelings in our mind which they indicate.
The relation to each other of the notions'duty'
and'virtue' may be exhibited in another manner in
some respects more accurate and important than this
consideration of virtue as duty-doing and something
more.
Duty being an ideal lacv, may be said to haveFour eha
four main characteristics attaching to it under this tis ote
aspect: (1) it is conceived as distinct and explicit; dutYcon(2) it takes cognizance, not, for merit, of any risings ideal law.
above it, but only, for demerit, of failings below it.
We may fail, that is, in our duty, but we cannot do
more than our duty; so far as we do so, we leave the
notion of duty and must use some other language.
Thus while virtue is a scale rising indefinitely upwards, duty is the top of a scale descending downwards.  The science of duty is the science of offences
against it. Again, duty is more or less, ideally at
least, personal in two senses: it involves (3) the




86                    DUTY.
giving up of our own interest to that of another,
and (4) the consideration of a third party with an
enforcing power. When, however, we consider these
characteristics, all taken from law, as belonging to
duty, it is with qualification of the following kind.
Duty is not a different thing from  virtue, it is
another aspect of the same ideal, the faciendum or
rightness. At the same time, for certain portions of
good action, the notion duty is the more applicable
notion: for certain portions, the notion virtue. It
is our duty not to steal, and it is virtuous, but we
should hardly think of calling it so: it is virtuous
to devote our lives to philanthropy without thought
of self-advancement: the notion of duty would not
here be so applicable. But again: there are cases in
which the notions of duty and virtue are both applicable, each in its own special way. Take grxatitude:
the word'duty' belongs to it, because special occasion
has been given for it by the person who has benefited
us; we are not free: the word'virtue' belongs to
it, because the manner of repayment is indefinite,
and we may carry it out to any extent: it is not
something which can only be offended against, but
something which we may indulge in and carry out
as we please.
Duty is    I have given these examples to illustrate the
virtue capable of nature of the exactness, definiteness, particularity,
precise  by which the notion duty, in a great degree applistatement
as to the cable to the same conduct as that to which the
object and
the thing notion virtue is, is yet, as a notion, differenced from
to be done. it. With such qualification as the above, duty may
be considered to be virtue to the extent to which
virtue can be precisely fixed for us, both as regards
the thing to be done, and the party to whom it is to
be done.
I will anticipate for a moment an after-matter of




:DUTY.                   87
consideration, to this extent: it will be said that the Is not this
too cornnotion of duty here given is exceedingly complicated, plicated a
that this is clearly no case of an ideal naturally notion to
formed by people for themselves, but a complicated ral ideal?
notion produced in them, it may be, afterwards by
drilling and education; an imaginative application
to their feeling and individual conduct of the outward or general law under which they find themselves. On the subject of notions or feelings caused
in us by education, I hope to speak afterwards more
generally. But I would wish it to be observed here
that this notion, and many others like it, though
taking many words and a long time to describe, are
not in reality complicated. This simplicity in fact,
with complicatedness in description, belongs to much
of philosophy of every kind. Good philosophy, of
whatever description, is something not far off from
our mind: it relates constantly to portions of our
consciousness which from their apparent simplicity
and triviality we think not worthy of notice: and
then when the philosopher laboriously attempts to
put this into words, it looks to us like something
very complicated and a long way off, and we puzzle
ourselves to understand it as if it were some foreign
language or an abstruse mathematical theorem.
This is very likely neither our fault nor that of
the philosopher, but simply a fact.  It is very
possible that, even to represent distinctly to ourselves the things most intimate to our consciousness,
we must go this long way about. And when there
has to be understanding between two minds, and we
are being helped or guided in the doing this, such
apparent complication or circuitousness becomes still
more necessary. After all, when we come to understand the thing it seems ridiculously simple, and
we despise it. But the folly consists in this last.




38                     -DUTY.
Simple as it is, we very likely could not have come
to separate it and see it distinctly except by some
such circuitous process.
The na-    To return now to the consideration of duty under
utur of  its aspect of ideal law.  Law is the determination of
duty illustrated   the mutual conduct of a number of agents with confrom the
nature of flicting interests (by some sufficient power, possessing
Law.   also authority so to determine it), in view  of the
advantage of each and of all.
The true   I have given this long and particular definition
definition
of law   of law in order to bring into one line of thought the
involves
four views very various views which have been taken of it.
hichbeen    All conduct is individual.  And all conduct, so
have been
taken ofit. far as determined by law, is intended to be useful,
i.e. for some advantage of somebody. Now if, in
the above definition, we leave out the centre portion,
that is, the consideration by whom the law is made
or enforced, —or rather, for we cannot really'leave out'
any portion, if we turn our special attention to the
first and the last portion, and consider the centre
portion as involved in these,-we get the first of the
great views which have been taken of the general
nature of law.
Greek view    This is in the main the old Greek notion of law,
~(1). Deter- viz. that it was a mutual agreement of all, by which
mination
of indivi- the action of each was more or less regulated for the
dual action
by mutal common advantage; such agreement being enforced
agreement upon each by the power of the whole; but the idea
of all, for   u
the com- of enforcement, coming less prominently forward since
mon advantage.  each individual is regarded as a co-maker of the law,
a co-percipient and recipient of its advantages, and a
co-enforcer of it.
In reality, this describes, to a certain extent, all
law, and is a very noble view of it.  In all cases of
law, the physical power is with the mass of people
subjected to it, and it is by their passive consent (so




IDUTY.                    89
to call it) and more or less of cooperation, that the
law is law.
Without however going further in this, I will
describe this view of law thus: that it is the common
reason ruling, for the common advantage, the conduct
of individuals to each other.
If now, instead of the above view, we unite with
the first clause of the above definition that portion of
the second, or middle one, which has reference to
authority, we get the second view of law, which I
will call the Roman. I must again call to mind that
in each case the other part of the definition is not
omitted, but only retires into the background.
The Roman notion is that of subordination of oman
individuals, not to the community as such, but toieW(l2).
the aucthority in and over the community, whatever nation of
individual
that may be. By'authority' I mean power overaction by
others, with the supposition of reason existing why sion tsthere should be such power; and I say'in and over,' rahtfiy
because the community is considered in this view to
be a community in virtue of a superior authority
regulating its arrangements.
This is the Roman ideal notion of jUts, which has
been followed by a large number of moral writers.
I will briefly describe it thus: that it is the
supposition of the same power, which makes individuals what, in a community, they are, determining
also their mutual action: power of this nature is
authority, because we see reasons why the action of
the individuals should be determined in this manner. Hobbesian
If now in this latter view, we dismiss, as visionary Detelrniand ideal, the notion of cauthority, and attend only ainiidual
to the very practical or concrete notion of Growegr, action
under fear
we get a third notion of law, which has enteredofpenalties
largely into moral speculation, and may be called the inimtedY
Hobbesian.                                          by supe-rior power,




90                    DUTJT.
We have here power not submitted to willingly as reasonable, in which case it would be the
above authority, but submitted to unwillingly as
constraining, or simply a superior force.  Of course
the constraint must be what is called mnoral, and
the unwillingness be indisposition: for the action
is still supposed to be done by the individual,
though forced upon him. The manner of the constraint is by penalty: the language of the power is,
if you do not do the thing, this or that is what you
will suffer.
Law, according to this view, is the determination
of individual action by superior power, and by the
way of penalties, no account being taken of any
reason suggesting the law, or any advantage aimed
at by it. It is of course supposed that the law is
general in its operation, applying to a number of
people, and that it is more or less steady or continuous: these considerations are in fact the only
thing which causes this notion of law to differ from
ordinary force.
Absolutist   If however to this third view of law we add the
or Patriarhl aview last particulars of the original definition, viz. that
(4) adds the force which  I have just been describing is
to Hobbesian that exercised honestly for the supposed advantage of
the superior power each and of all subject to the force, we get a view of
so pot ord the nature of law which to many will seem a correct
thegeneral and complete one: the difference of it from the
complete definition of law which I gave being in the
omission of the notion of authority, or, what is in
some respects equivalent to that of authority, the
notion of agreement on the part of those subject to
the law. This may be called the absolutist legislative view.
Of these four views, the first and the second bear
a considerable resemblance, if we understand the




DUTY.                    91
-reason of all, in the first view, to differ from the Relation
between
mere will of all as authority differs from  power. thesedifBetween these two views on the one side, and fesren t
the third view on the other, the important* point of
distinction is this: that they recognize motive to
obedience other than penalty, whereas the third does
not. According to the earlier views, the essential
point about law is that it is an arrangement or order,
such as is indicated in the Greek term vowtos': according to the third the essential point about it is that it
is a command. According to the earlier views, the
motive to obedience in the mass of the individuals
subject to the law may be considered to be agree-:ment with it, or acknowledgment of the reason
which suggested its enactment: and though of course
penalty must exist, for there must be (by the
definition) sufficient power to enforce the law, yet
the need of such enforcement is in a manner
exceptional: it is not looked upon as the chief or
only stimulant to obedience.
In the third view, those subject to the law are
supposed to have no further concern with it than to
obey it under penalty.
The fourth view is a return to the earlier views,
in so far as it supposes the law to be intended for
the advantage of those subject to it and therefore
reasonable (for this is the proper purpose of all law),
not necessarily appealing to penalty alone. At the
same time, since on this supposition the law is
arbitrary in the making of it, though not arbitrary in
the purpose, and since there is no recognition of.authority, as distinct from power, in the making it,
those who hold this view are very likely to be strong
maintainers of the third view, as regards the
making of the law: they regard the law, however
good may be its purpose, as having no force, except in




92                     DUTY,
virtue of its penalties: if they had had the making
of language, the words for law would not have been
such as imply order or arrangement, but such as
imply simply command.
Applica-   We have now to see how these different views of
tion of the
four views the nature of law enter into moral philosophy, and
heof lntio what relation they bear to the notion of duty.
of duty.   The distinctness of duty as a philosophical notion
The notion.
of duty  is owing to the Roman view of law, and to religion.
owes its  It existed in the Greek mind and language, as in all,
distinctnesspartlryin such terms as 8e6, ro Uov, &c.: but the Greek
to Romian
Law,   philosophers, and the Romans who followed them,
do not seem  distinctly to have separated the consideration of duty, as an ideal, from that of virtue:
they did so to some extent, in reference to the
entire of duty, in speaking of a man's Epyov, &c., and
in reference for instance to the details of duty, in
speaking of suitable conduct in the details of life, Ta
Kac9Kovrt, translated by the Latin officia (opificia),
mutual services or relative duties: but the question
of the obligation by which all this is bound upon us,
which differences the consideration of duty from that
of virtue, was not much entered upon by them.
The iRomans have been considered an un-ideal
people, but their ideal jus, at least as they began to
consider it when somewhat of the Stoic philosophy
mingled with it, was a very noble one. I will not
dwell on it, but will make some extracts which will
show their notion of it.
and partly Nor will I dwell, now, on the development of the
tiaCihty.  notion  of duty  which arose from  the  Christian
religion: both the Jews and the Itomans were in a
preeminent degree, though in different ways, lawloving peoples; and the notions of duty which lasted
1 The extracts were not given, but would probably have been taken
from such Sources as Cicero, De Legibus, Bk. I. and IT. c. 4. ED.




DUTY.                     93
on through the middle ages belong in part to the
Roman law, in part to the Old Testament.
When the time came for.these notions to be Hobbes in
routed out, as everything after those ages was, the narrowing
work was done by Hobbes, and his manner of doing obligation
it was simply the introducing what I have called the bypenalty
third view of law instead of the two earlier ones:
the Hobbism. or Hobbesianism, which for a long time
was the main object, whether of attack or defence,
on the part of English moral philosophers, was simply
the consideration that the obligatoriness of right
action is the only matter of importance about it, and
further that this obligatoriness is simply the requirement of obedience under threat of penalty.
The Hobbists stand to the various forms of anti- de-ideal.
ized the
Hobbism, in reference to the first ideal (or the notion ist ideal
of something as what we ought to do), in much the as'Epid'.
of something as what we ought to do), in much the rus did the
same relation as that in'which the Epicureans stand and.
to the Stoics and the schools descending from them,
in reference to the second ideal (or the notion of
something as what it is desirable that we should aimn
at). The notion of the summum bonurn was very
early de-idealized or positivized, and it was considered that nothing could, with any meaning, be
considered to answer to this description except tangible, measurable, describable, pleasure.  Though the
notion of the faciendum did not so readily lend itself
to this process; still we find here a similar de-idealization of the first ideal, in the form of duty, effected
by Hobbes; and virtue, the other form of this ideal,
has suffered in the same way, as we shall see in a
future chapter: the machinery in both -cases being
the same as that employed by the Epicureans in the
case of happiness, viz. a conversion of motive or
altering the purpose of action.                     Effect of
Hobbism eligion
The Hobbistic view was not, any more than the on religion




94                      DUTY.
andamo- Epicurean, opposed to religion, as religion is, and
rals. Its
opponents always has been, understood by many. What it
attacked  affected was, not religion itself, but the elevation and
(T) its accobintof generality of view taken, whether of morality or of
(2) its nar- religion. It was opposed in two ways, as we may
rowing
of duty to say; by stoutly maintaining, in application to morals,
obligation. the earlier view of ideal law; and by bringing into
more prominence the other form of the first ideal,
or the notion of virtue. These two views met
different portions of it: the one disputed the account
of obligation; the other disputed the assertion that
obligation (however understood) was all that morality
was concerned with.
Illustra-  For a simple illustration of this: Paley's answer
ion a's rom to lis question, Why am I obliged to keep my word?
couit of is an example of Hobbism: I should be inclined to
keeping
ourword. answer it by saying, uniting the language of the
two classes of anti-Hobbists, I keep my word for
other reasons besides being obliged to it, and by
being obliged to it I mean something different from
what you mean.
What then do I mean?
Further    Before answering, I will recall to mind the beginview of
duty as an ning of the general definition which I gave of law,
idealiza- viz. that it is the regulation of the mutual actions of
tion ofr                         o
Law: it individuals, i. e. their conduct towards each other.
prescribes
mutual     These individuals, as they stand independently,
action in
accord- are each in his own set of circumstances, having
ance with done this or that, &c.: the law, taking note of
the relations in a certain number of these circumstances, classifies
which men
stand to them, and prescribes with respect to the individuals,
each other. how they are to act towards each other accordingly.
It finds, or puts (it matters not to our present
purpose which term we use) individuals in certain
relations one towards another: and it prescribes
mutual action according to these relations. These




DUTY.                   95
legal relations were called by the Romans jura, as
they called the whole supposed mass of the relations,
or the ideal law, jus. Each individual had, if we
may say so, his own particular jus, that is, his network of legal relations, with befitting conduct,
towards those about him.  In later language it
has been more usual to make a division and to
speak of rights, claims, dues, when the relation is
considered to make a person the proper object of
some action for his advantage, and on the other hand
to speak of duties or obligations when it is his
action which is limited or determined, the advantage
being for the other party.
General law or jus, itself an ideal of human action
in respect of particular circumstances in which people
are found or placed, and with which law is supposed to be concerned, is still further idealized into
duty, the standard of mutual human action generally:
general duty is the universal system in which each
individual has his particular duty to do, as well as
his particular due, which each should render to him.
Another characteristic of duty which I mentioned It is owed
is its being personal in a twofold sense, as owed, not motheenrly
only to a particular person, a second party, but also party but
to a 3rd
to a third party, the authority and power (ideal part,the
guardian
perhaps) enforcing the law. In other words, in of the law.
respect of the performance of our duties to the
second party to whom they are actually due, we
are what is called responsible to a third party, the
guardian of the law, to the extent to which we
consider that these duties are portions of a general
duty, or real and actual law. We are in the first
instance under obligation, bound by the law, to the
second party, to do the duty: and then, in case of
failure, we are bound or liable to the enforcing or
third party, for the forfeiture.




E96     ~              DUTY.
Paley neg.   Turning now  to Paley's question, Why am  I
lects the
obligation obliged to keep my word? it will le observed that,
due to the on the Hobbistic view which is his, no notice is taken
of what I have called the actual obligation, or the
obligation in the first instance, viz. to the party with
whom word is to be kept. This, as we have seen,
belongs to Hobbism, which interprets obligation as
simply dread of penalty.  But it is not in accordance
with the natural notions of men, so far as language
suggests them. The duty or debt, the obligation or
tie, is to the second party. We are under obligation
to the person with whom we are dealing to keep our
word to him: we are responsible (in Paley's view,
to the divine law) for the performance of this obligation.
Hobbism    I mentioned before two resemblances between
and Utili
tarianismi Hobbism and Epicureanism, or, more strictly speakarticlar ing, an analogy and a connexion: I will mention
duty de- now  a resemblance between Hobbism  and Utilipend upon
general  tarianism  in general (i.e. as the word is now comduty.   monly understood), even if the Utilitarianism  be
quite un-Epicurean.
It consists in this: that in both of them the
question of relative duties, or of particular duty, is
considered to depend on that of general duty: the
relative and particular, to the extent to which they
are considered at all, are considered simply to be
consequences of the general.  And just in the same
way we find Paley here failing to notice that the
tion be-  word obligation implies a tie to another party, or
tweenjural that duties are owed to somebody.
and nonjuralviews   The recognition or non-recognition of this latter
of morality
marked by consideration  divides  moral philosophy into two
the recog- manners of thought.  That which recognizes this
nition or
partdenial of particular obligation we might call the jural: that
part                     the non-ural.     Hobbism,  Epicular.obligation. which does not, the non-jural.  Hobbism, Epicu



DUTY.                     97
reanism, and Utilitarianism, meaning by this latter
word the morality of general benevolence or of the
greatest happiness, belong to the latter class. This
is one reason for their blending readily together:
and in fact, utilitarianism, as now frequently understood, includes all the three.
I will mention also another thing about the The parparticularity of duty.  In a sense, all duty may be ticulaiity
called relative: i.e. the notion of it implies a certain ness of
duty somerelation between the two or more parties whom it timessreconcerns, beyond the fact that they are both human the party
beings or sentient creatures.  But relative duty, in tihom
a more restricted sense, may be considered to de- aS dutto
signate those cases where the particularity or definiteness, which makes the matter in question duty
rather than virtue, belongs to the individuals, and
not to the thing: whereas there are a large class of
cases in which, though there is always some reference
to the individuals or two parties, the particularity
or definiteness belongs specially to the thing owed
or due.
This will be understood better when I come to
speak of justice: but I think a little illustration will
make it sufficiently clear now.
When we speak of our duty to our parentssometimes in
(relative  duty), the  definiteness of particularity, the thing,
which belongs to the duty as such, has reference to asthe duty
the individuals or parties only, for what we owe to the truth.
them is very indefinite, though it may be generally
described; and it may be expanded or indulged in
to any amount, in this respect not answering the
character of duty: it is duty on account of the definiteness of the parties. On the other hand, when
we speak of the duty of truthfulness, the parties are
scarcely more definite than they are in respect of
benevolence: we owe truthfulness to everybody:
G.                                       7




98                    DUTY.
but the thing is definite, and hence the notion of
duty is applicable to the one in a manner in which
it is not to the other.  We cannot be truthful as we
may be benevolent, less or more, or qualifiedly. It
may be a matter of little consequence to a man that
on some occasion we break our word to him, and it
may be a matter of great consequence to a man that
on some occasion we refuse to risk our lives for him:
still in the former case we wrong him, in the latter
we do not: the cases are matter of different consideration from that of the greater or less advantage
resulting from them.
I will now summarily describe duty and obligation:
the answer to Paley's question will I trust appear.
Definition    Duty is the ideally right, or that which should
of Duty
founded  be done, in so far as we consider it determined for
tion ofde- S, and the principle which we suppose to determine
Law.   it we call' the moral law.'
I use purposely the very vague word'principle'
here, for this reason: tha;t that to which it applies,
the moral law, is understood by different persons
quite differently.  The reason why it is thus understood differently will appear from what I have said
above: it is because people understand such very
different things by the term'law.'
In accord-   If we suppose'law' to be order, arrangement,
ance with
the view  system, the result, or rather the expression, of a
taken of harmony, concurrence, agreement, of a number of
law, Duty
will be  members capable, in whatever way, of such agree-' public
spiritfor ment, or imaginatively supposed so; then duty is
the moral
universe' the great law  which the members of the moral
(I.),    universe, if we may so speak, impose upon themselves: it represents the comprehension by each of
his place and his work as it stands related to the
work of the whole; each as one of the whole, feeling
himself to be a co-imposer and co-vindicator of the




DUTY.                     99.
law, and, as such, ruling his own self, as indivii
in his interests and disposed to care for himself al;d~i
Duty in this view is public spirit: public spirit not
for a nation, but for the moral or sentient universe.
If we suppose'law' to mean a rule or system of or'willing
obedience
individual conduct, laid down not by arbitrary power, of the
but by authority (for which authority I would briefly'oral tniassign three constituents, title, wisdom, and good-thatwhich
possesses
will); then duty is the intelligent and willing authority
obedience of the members of the moral universe to overit ('),
something which their minds seem  to present to
them as possessing the above characters: they feel
their action in this view not free, and yet it is not
constrained: they are, concurrently, ruled and ruling
over themselves; obedient, but glad and proud (so
to speak) of their obedience.
If we suppose'law' to mean a rule for individual or submission to
action, of which rule we know nothing more than arbitrary
that, if we do not obey it, we shall be punished, then will,
whether
duty is bare, perhaps unwilling, obedience to some- of the
Deity, or
thing which we have no interest or pleasure in, but of society,
which we are afraid to resist.  The moral law  is or of
power gethen a yoke imposed upon us by the Deity (Paley), nerally (3),
or by society and public opinion (some Socratic interlocutors and several philosophers in later times), or
by arbitrary power in general (Hobbes).
To the extent to which we add to the last sup- or it may
position, that there is good purpose in the imposers beitehdlast
of this yoke, we make a supposition in accordance with alproval of
with the fourth view which I gave of law, and this the end
for which
is what is generally done by utilitarians who hold the power
Hobbist views.  Duty in this view is submission to is exerted
the constraining power, whatever it is, combined with
more or less of sympathy with the purpose which that
power has in its constraint. As if Paley should say,
that virtue (or duty) is the doing good to men, &c.,
7 —2




100                   DUTY.
in prospect of the reward and penalty affixed, but
still with some feeling that God's purpose is a good
one, and His wish for the happiness of His creatures
what we can enter into and appreciate. It is obvious,
that if the added supposition in this case is carried
to a great extent, we come very near the second
supposition again, as I mentioned in regard of law.
The full  I have thought it would conduce to clearness to
idea involves all put these various suppositions separately, in accordance with the four views which I gave of law, and
will now say about them, that in my view they all
belong to the notion of duty, which is made up of
them, just as I said in regard to law, that all the
special views which I gave of it seemed to me partial,
the proper general definition including them all. To
different people, the notion of duty will present itself
very differently: but if we are to give a complete
account of it, I think we must unite all the above.
nesponsi-    With respect to the third of the suppositions
bility im- above, that of responsibility, or liability to punishplies the
possibility ment for failure in duty, it is what will be repudiated
by some, as applicable to ideal duty, as earnestly as
it is maintained to be all that duty means by others.
But it is maintained, and I think correctly, by Butler
and others, that there cannot be the feeling of obligation (jural or ideal, as the second view presents it)
without somrething in addition of the feeling of
responsibility or liability to possible punishment in
the event of violation of it; the feeling of desert of
punishment, generating the feeling of expectation of
it. The admission of this, in its due proportion,
does not really weaken  the second view  at all.
With duty, as with good and living law (so far as
simple habit does not determine), it is consent, and
sympathizing obedience, which is the state of the
mass of those who obey: penalty is the influence in




DUTY.                     101
failure of this: where penalty has to do all, and
consent does not exist, the law is bad, or condemned
as worthless1.
According as we conceive the nature of the moral Our view
of obligalaw, we shall conceive that of moral obligation. We tion will
feel our action in a manner bound or not free: what coredis most present to our minds in this feeling may be our aew
the claim  which the other party has on us; the
thought of his having been aggrieved by us makes us
feel distressed, or angry, anxious to make amends to
him, or disgusted at the sight of him: or, again,
what is most prominent to our minds may be the
claim which the authority by which the law is enacted
has on our obedience, and the offence we have committed against this authority: or what we feel most
may be our responsibility as a matter of trust, or
responsibility simply as liability to punishment: and
there may be other kinds of the feeling, because other
conceptions of the law, besides all these. In speaking of conscience, I shall discuss these feelings a little
more. And also I hope to discuss, in another chapter,
what philosophers would call the objective value of
these-imaginations at first we will call them-of a
moral law and moral obligation: a part of such a
discussion must be, how far one manner of imagining
or conceiving the moral law and moral obligation is
more true, more points to or expresses fact, than
another. I could not help doing this already a little,
in criticizing the notions of law: but I have not as
yet said anything as to the manner in which these
conceptions may suggest, or imply, or prove, or help
to prove, real facts or relations as to our moral
1 This seems to me to be expressed too broadly. The law may find
no consent, not from its own worthlessness, but from the worthlessness
of the subjects. In such a case law may still be useful as a'schoolmaster,' gradually to instil higher principles of action. ED.




102                     DUTY.
being which physical observation could not suggest
to us.
Reason for   I divided the whole matter of moral philosophy
treutay ungder into two sciences, which I called aretaics and eudaethe head monics, not into three, adding to these a science of
of aretaits
instead of duty  (deontics or deontology).  I refrained from
making a
distillct  doing this, because, as I have explained, virtue and
scieonceof duty, though different, are in the main only different
as different aspects of the same thing, viz. the first
ideal or that which should be done. According,
however, as we take one or the other aspect, there is,
as will be found, a good deal of difference in our
treatment of the ideal when we go into detail and
apply it to practice. I shall endeavour always to
make clear which view we are taking.




CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE GENESIS OF VIRTUE: ITS EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS, BENEVOLENCE.
IN all that has preceded, it has indeed been with So far the
discussion
sentiments of the mind that we have been dealing, has been
but not in the manner in which I propose dealing f.riedhen
with them in this chapter. Hitherto what I haveside of the
ideal.
considered has been this: that the imagination comes
into our mind that there is, or may be, a conduct, or
a kind of action, which we ought to choose, or which
it is proper for us to choose, rather than other kinds;
that there is, or may be, something that is worth our
aiming at. Perhaps we imagine at the same time
that one or another kind of conduct is the proper
conduct, and one or another aim the worthy aim:
conduct that is useful, that is honourable, that is
conscientious, or whatever'it may be, commends itself
to our itnagination, (so at first to call it).  These
various kinds of conduct thus presenting themselves
I have called'ideals': standing at the head of them
are those very general ideals which I have called the
first and second; that of deedworthy conduct, or the'faciendum,' and that of choiceworthy aim, or the'bonum,' good.
I have entered partially into the question, how
far these'imaginations' are to be considered as
imaginations only, or how far they are to be considered as indications of real fact of some kind:
whether that fact be the existence of something




104        ON THE GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
independent of us; or whether it be that thinking
in this way, imagining thus, is our nature. It
makes little difference which of these latter views
we take; for imagining by rule and law and in virtue
of our nature is the same thing, in other words, as
thinking rightly; and thinking rightly, as I mentioned
in regard to perception, is the same thing as perception of truth of existence viewed from another side.
Moral philosophy is nothing if not'ideal'; for the
reason of its existence is our having a notion or imagination of what should be: and therefore whatever
else may belong to it, the discussion of these ideals,
what is the meaning of them, what conduct they indicate, must belong to it: and this is the main or
important part of what I have called'aretaics.'
This chap-   We must remember however that when we speak
ter. leaves
the ideal of forming these imaginations or ideals, this is a very
ground,  imperfect description of what goes on in our minds:
and deals
with prac- it is merely a convenient abstraction for the purpose
tical aretaics, con- which I have hitherto had in view; viz. that of considering
vwhat, a  sidering the nature of the ideals formed; just as we
fct, en talk, summarily and conveniently, of seeing a profeel about spect, though the process which we thus describe is
the known
thing,   a most. complicated matter, and a volume might be
virtue.  written to describe the process which we thus shortly
characterize.  I shall in the present chapter say
nothing about imaginations or ideals: I shall consider virtue as a thing understood, and shall not
discuss how it is to be defined, or what are its
limits: just as, to take the above instance, if I were
-desirous to analyze what goes on in us in sensation,
I should consider that everybody knew what'seeing
a prospect' was. I shall consider simply that the
word'virtue' has an understood meaning, that virtue
is a fact in the world, that some men practise it, and
others understand that they practise it: I shall con



ITS EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS, BENEVOLENCE.  105
sider what, as a matter of fact, men do think or feel,
about this other fact, virtue.
This way of considering things might be called, if
we cared so to call it, experiential or observational
aretaics, in distinction from the ideal aretaics with
which we have been dealing hitherto.
The three great characters or features in, or cir- The three
curnstances about, human nature which go to produce features of
human naor constitute virtue, are benevolence (using the word ture which
go to proin the loose sense in which it is ordinarily used by duce virtue are
moral philosophers), the sense of duty, and the love of benevoexcellence: or, bringing the description of virtue a nce,of
little nearer, we may say: Virtue is benevolence, duty, and
love of exmore or less stimulated and regulated by the ac-cellence:
companying sense of duty and love of excellence.
If we bear in mind what has been said about the corresfirst and second ideals, and the two aspects of the the second
former, we shall perhaps recognize these again in ideat&l d
what I have been saying here.  To the extent to aspects of
the first
which we do our action for a purpose, the disposition ideal.
to do it for a good purpose is what I mean here by
benevolence, and we have here the second ideal, viz.
what is to be aimed at. But purpose is not everything about action: and the choice of good purpose
needs a stimulus, so to speak, beyond the good purpose itself: it is here that come in the considerations
of the sense of duty, and the love of excellence, representing the two aspects of the first ideal. By
the love of excellence, or the desire of excelling, I
mean to indicate the effect upon us, in our character
as active beings, of the presence with us of a number
of beings active like ourselves, into whose feelings
we enter; just as by benevolence I have wished to
indicate the effect upon us, as sentient beings, of a
number of beings sentient, or feeling, like ourselves,
into whose feelings also, in this way, we enter; the




106        ON THE GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
effect, that is, so far as it acts towards virtue; or that
portion of the effect which aids virtue, in distinction
from a (possible) portion which hinders it; or, which
comes to the same thing, the surplus effect in this
direction, so far as it exceeds that in the other.
The term   I will proceed first to analyze further what is
lenbce' i  contained in the very loose expression,'benevolence.'
uesd to    The different feelings which we have, or may
our feel- have, associated with the thought of other people in
ings of
good-will. general, or of particular people among them, may be
classified in a great number of ways: perhaps the
simplest division is into feelings of good-will, and
feelings of ill-will; feelings, that is, accompanied
with desire of the other's happiness, or the opposite.
The feel-    It may, I suppose, be laid down as an axiom, that
ings of ill it is only feelings of the class of good-will which are
tt ctive natural, in the sense of being what I think I may for
the present purpose call, without danger of misleading, by a term which I am very shy of using, instinctive. We have instinctive loves, but no instinctive
hatreds.  It is only good-will (if I may borrow for a
moment a logical expression) which is of the first intention: ill-will, whatever abundance there may be
of it, is of the second intention, and springs up upon
occasion arising.
This is not saying much more than that our
original feelings are in harmony with the rudimentary principle of our active intelligence, viz. that
good, or happiness, is the purpose of action; that
the two belong to each other, or ideally fit. It may
be doubted whether we could really even conceive
native, or unoriginated and unoccasioned, ill-will,
such as the Paleian supposition of a Creator making
teeth for the purpose of their aching: that is, whether such a supposition does not destroy all meaning in the words mnake or organize.




ITS EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS, BENEVOLENCE.  107
The feelings however which we have thus classed Great
together are in no respect of the colourless and instintive
nearly neutral character which the term  good-will feelings of
good-will:
might indicate, but are, many of them, of a most
intense and vigorous character.
To counterbalance this, these feelings have more
or less of a merely animal or unintelligent character,
associated with the good-will: and, corresponding to
this, the indulgence of some of them may degenerate
into a merely animal enjoyment.
Hence the dealing, on the part of moral philosophers and teachers, with the strongest sources and
forms of good-will among men, has always been perplexed and difficult. The entertaining them to a
high degree is a self-indulgence needing, as much as
any other self-indulgence, to be restrained by reason
and elevated by thoughts of duty and virtue.
Our language (or, it may be, modern language) is compreperhaps fortunate in having, for purposes both of nhder he
common life, of morals, and of religion, the single single
word'love' for that which the Greek, for instance,'love' in
English:
expressed by several different words, signifying, in
fact, several different feelings; feelings, in regard of
which it has been often necessary, in a moral view,
to use language for the purpose of keeping them
asunder; but feelings which are so related to each
other that their separation in thought is in some
respects injurious. Thus the change from the more
colourless dy&-rr  and cacritas to the designation of
earnest good-will by the same term  by which we
designate the instinctive and partly animal, but at
the same time highly imaginative and idealizable,
affections; and the absence of a variety of terms
denoting various kinds of these affections:-these
perhaps enable us, both on the one side to look at
good-will in a warmer and livelier light, and. also on




108        ON THE GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
the other side to avoid confusing and degrading, under
the name of mere desire or ErTL0v/ml', morally only
to be restrained, feelings which are themselves of a
highly moral character, and main aids to virtue.
but em-    Under the general name of'love' we comprehend
bracing a
scale pass- in English, first, the intersexual feeling which belongs
ing from  to all animals, and which, in the case of man, is such
through  a main object for his imagination to dwell upon, re-r7op7~,
4ta and fine, and idealize: second, the congeneric feeling, or
(XPA, do'w family and kindred love, also instinctive and belongto qXo-  ing to all the higher animals; varying greatly as to
its instinctive character according to the different
relationships with which it is concerned, as maternal,
paternal, filial, &c.; in many ways closely resembling
the last, and expressible, in this view, in words which
include it, like the Greek or-opy4, but becoming less
instinctive or less marked by animal sensation, as it
becomes more general, and widens from the specialness of the last to the generality of that which follows.
The third feeling which the general term'love'
may be said to comprehend, is in some respects wider,
in some respects narrower, than the last: it is that
LX&a or lovingness which creates, so to speak, a kindred and brotherhood, or the feelings belonging to
one, where nature has not made one.  I have not
called it'friendship,' or'friendliness,' because those
words, like all moral words, by frequent complimentary use (and it may be added, in the case of the
former at least of these terms, by frequent commonplace and moralistic enlarging upon), have lost much
of their warmth and force, like the word'benevolence' itself. I would rather call it companionship,
or comracleshiip; not that presence is a necessary constituent, but something like community of views or
action is.  Into ancient ethics, as we may see in




ITS EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS, BENEVOLENCE. 109
Aristotle, this feeling, as an aid to virtue, entered
far more largely, and with reason, than it has done
into modern.
The fourth feeling is the last but one, generalized
into  XcavwOpcmar  or regard for the happiness of all
men: and I should not myself hesitate to add, more
generally still, a 4LXo44ta or interest in the happiness
of all sentient beings.
These are in sum the natural feelings of good- such of
these feelwill: what I mean by'natural'will appear more fully ings as are
in a moment, when I speak of the feelings from which of apn8pI distinguish them. There are, as I said, no natural ftive character are
feelings of ill-will; but there are a set of feelings liable to
tending that way which more or less accompany some producy
of the above feelings of good-will, and which I will fleliTs of
notice.                                            and even
in themAll the above feelings which are, in any degree, selves are
not excluof a separative or appropriative character have more sively proor less connected with them  other feelings, perhaps ductie of
of neglect and depreciation, and, what is of more consequence, of that class which we call jealousy. All
feelings of this kind, it seems to me, spring from a
double source, or rather have two characters united
in them: the one, the general disposition to selfregard, the other, the tendency to look upon others
as rivals. Now when moralists and others speak of
the benevolent affections, or often when religious
teachers speak of love, they are apt to speak as if
these represented something steady and uniform,
rather dull perhaps and neutral, and all productive
of good. In reality, the term, or any similar term,
is a kind of general expression for a mass of feeling
most un-uniform and irregular, often most intense and
enthusiastic, by no means even itself always productive of good, and constantly attended by accompaniments, such as I have alluded to, productive of some




110         ON THE GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
of the worst evil and wrong that can be. Affection
of good-will that is distinctive (and none that is forcible or warm can be otherwise), has a double dark
side, one towards the non-subjects of it, the other
towards rivals in the affection: we constantly hear
the supposition of marvellous effects to be produced
by general benevolence or love, while in our conception of the feeling we strip it of all the earnest and
enthusiastic elements which make its force.
Still on   It may then be considered, that the natural benethesena- volent affections, thus understood, with abstraction
ituralffel- made, to such extent as is necessary, of their bad acgood-will companiments, are the first and most copious source
mainp i   of that stream. of sentiment which, united with other
stream of       
virtuous joining streams, and being directed, as to its course,
sentiment. in various ways, forms virtue as a feeling within:
leading to conduct, as I have mentioned, for public
rather than for private good.
Besides    From natural affections of good-will, as I have just
these there
are the oc- now used the word, I shall distinguish what, for my
feelintgs ofpresent purpose, I will call occasional ones: these
good-will are, in the main, of two kinds.
springing
np under   They have respect, either to the condition and
special  circumstances of the persons with the thought of
tances  whom they are associated, or to the position of such
toence of persons in relation to ourselves, as, for instance, our
tion of  benefactors or the opposite.
others as
happy or   The sympathies or sympathetic emotions, which
niappy are the feelings of good-will belonging to the former
of these divisions, pour into the general current of
virtuous feeling a stream scarcely less in amount than
that contributed by what I have called the natural
is more  affections.
easilyd    The text,'Rejoice with them that do rejoice and
moved in
the case of weep with them that weep,' has been often comunhappiness.    mented on, with the observation how much more dif



ITS EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS, BENEVOLENCE.   11i
ficult the former of these precepts is than the latter;
and those who, like Butler, trace Divine purpose in
the organization of our moral nature, consider that
there is a reason for this greater disposition to compassion, than to congaudence (so to speak), because
the former is more necessary, and more useful. That
there does exist this greater disposition, appears from
the word'compassion' itself: which means properly
what we now express by sympathy, but on account
of the much greater occasion for its application to
sympathy with suffering, has come to mean that
alone. In fact the word sympathy, which has been
adopted into its place, is rapidly following in the
same direction.
Quite consistently with Butler's view of the case Besides
it is possible to consider how it comes about that we ings of
have less sympathy with joy; that is, what are the good-will,
feelings of
secondary causes to which this fact is attributable. ill-will
may arise
Feelings either of ill-will or of good-will are possible both at the
at the sight either of the prosperity or the suffering itog happiof another.  In the case of prosperity there is the ess and
unhappiwell-known feeling envy on the one side, and on the ness of
other the feeling of congaudence, which does not appear to exist in practice sufficiently to have a name.
In the case of the suffering of another, there are in
like manner the feelings of good-will, pity, and of illwill, &rTXatpeKaKCa, pleasure at the suffering of others.
That it is difficult to  know  how, exactly  in
these circumstances, people do feel; that they cannot
always even tell themselves, may appear from the
manner in which Rochefoucauld's maximl, more
pointed than Lucretius' lines2, has been considered
1 Dans l'adversite de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours
quelque chose qui ne nous deplait pas.
2    Suave mari magno turbantibus equora ventis
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quemquamst jucunda voluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.




112        ON THE GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
to embody a great discovery or perhaps a revelation
very humiliating to human nature.
Such ill-  There exists in our mind doubtless, together with
feeling
arisesfrom a disposition to sympathy, a disposition acting exactly
looking  in the opposite direction, which arises from a geneothers as ralization, so to call it, of the notion of our each
our rivals
for hap- having his individual interest, and of life being a
piness:
but the conflict of such interests, so that we are not so much
feelng is co-pursuers of happiness as rivals for it.  Something
mixed,  of dissatisfaction or uneasiness is the pri~nun mobile
of human nature: the natural outlet for this is in
action for happiness (our own in the first instance):
where it is not absorbed in this, it may to a certain
degree take the form of jealousy of the happiness (or
supposed happiness) of others. This is a feeling which,
darkly and undefinedly, is very wide-spread. It is
what men hate and are ashamed of, suspect in themselves and others, but do not like to confess: it is
what more than anything prompts that sort of feeling
of self-disgust or self-abhorrence, which I imagine to
be not uncommon with all at certain moments, and
which in religion becomes repentance: it is the feeling which gives the reality which they have to
notions of the corruption and depravity of human
nature: it is the feeling which with many gives
special point and sting to calamity and misfortune,
making them distrust pity, as being in reality a sort
of covert triumph over them. It is the feeling which
makes it plausible for some to say, that men really
hate, do not love, each other.  Being, as I have
described it, a kind of going astray, a turning sour,
as it were, of another feeling which is meant to be
absorbed in action, it is usually strongest in the
least active minds: and hence also it is most
likely to exist, and most likely to be observed,
in societies where there is not a great deal of
active energy, but a great deal of self-observa



ITS EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS, BENEVOLENCE.  113
tion, and comparatively idle inter-communication.
And, because in general people naturally try to
smother it and keep it to themselves as much as
possible, so far as it does exist, therefore there is
always a special pleasure, on the part of those who
care for such pleasure, in the bringing it to light, and
any smart utterance of it has the character at once
both of a discovery and of an acknowledged truth.
Where this disposition is strong, the man is of course
both envious of the prosperous, and unsympathetic,
if not worse, with the suffering. Where it exists in
slight degree, the feeling is rather a tendency at the
sight of others' prosperity or suffering, to recur to the
thought of ourselves: then, without envy, the sight
of the greater prosperity of others may cause a pang,
and quite consistently with abundant pity, something
may be felt of self-congratulation at the sight of
suffering.  It is this last state which Lucretius in
his qualification of what he says seems to wish to
express.
I feel inclined to say, that perhaps our feelings
of joy altogether are, upon the whole, less intense,
as feelings, than our feelings of pain: and if this
is the case with the primary feelings, of course it
must be the case with the sympathetic or secondary
ones.
Pity and envy are both great agents in life: if we Pity is a
use the word'envy' loosely, we might hesitate to powerful
say which  was greatest: in which case all we age.tha
could say of this class of sympathies would be, that
it counterbalanced the bad disposition to look upon
others as rivals for happiness, without leaving any
surplus on the side of virtue. But under the notion
of envy, we ought not to include those feelings of
active emulation in which there is really no ill-will,
but only a strong feeling, on occasion of another's
prosperity, of our own want of it: if wre exclude
G.                                       8




114        ON THE GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
these, envy, though a great poisoner of life, is in no
respect a powerful agent in it like pity.
Pity, however, is but one form of the very wide
and various feeling of sympathy with others. Sympathy is the emotional imagination: through it, the
feeling of others, whatever their condition or circumstances, becomes part of our emotional consciousness, and excites action as if it were our own primary
feeling, action, of course, to their benefit, not to ours.
The other    The other kind of'occasional' feelings of good or
occasional ill-will, as I called them, has reference to the position
feelings  of people in relation to us, as having, for instance,
are those 
which rise done us good or harm.  There is complication about
out of the
behaviour these, and I shall touch upon them again in speaking
towards  of justice.
Us (2).    When persons have done us good we feel and
Such feelings are  practise gratitude, indifference, or ingratitude (for
fgratinge, this latter word has more generally a positive meanness and ing), and when they have done us ill we feel and
their opposites.   practise revengefulness, indifference, or active forgivingness, the returning of good for evil.
Gratitude    Perhaps I shall be understood best on this sub~idstwo ject, by saying, that there are two entirely distinct
connected feelings of gratitude possible: the gratitude which
eitherwith
justice or is connected with feelings akin to justice, which I
kindness.
shall speak of presently: and the gratitude which is
connected with feelings akin to kindliness, and in the
case of which the benefit done to us has generated
a love on our part to the doer.
I have put this rather broadly, and I do not
mean but that most gratitude is compounded of
these two feelings, and possibly they may never
exist quite separate: but I think it will be seen that
gratitude is concerned with the two.
This may be put simply thus: one man's gratitude may be of such a kind that the feelings which
compose it are such as would make him, if the other




ITS EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS, BENEVOLENCE.  115
party had done him ill instead of good, revengeful:
another's may be of such a kind that the feelings
composing it would make him, in such a case, forgiving.
It is only of gratitude in its connexion with kind- The latter
liness that I will speak now; and there is no doubt withwhich
that from this source a vast amount of good-will is we a~re now
contributed to go to the constitution of virtue.
The relations of benefactor and benefited, and of Other ocinjurer and injured, are only two out of the countless feelings
relations which circumstances may bring about be-' sritng ont
tween men: and I have spoken of the feelings relations.
belonging to them only as an instance of such relative feelings.
Each such possible relation suggests, and con- On the
whole the
stantly produces, its appropriate kindliness: men ~ocasional
love each other, not only because they have been feelings
tend to
benefited, but because they have benefited or because inerease
they canz benefit; because they are strong and lence.
another is weak, because they are weak and another
is strong, and for a number of reasons endless to recount. Of course all these relations may, and sometimes do, generate ill-will and not good: but I think
the mass of good-will generated by inter-relation
among men is the greater. This, also, will come
under our considerationm again: I will only say now
that the best witnesses on this side seem those who
have most tried to depreciate human nature: somehow or other, human nature seems to have the gift
of turning its selfishness to kindliness, and its mutual hostility to sociability; it is kindliness which
is generated in sum, and on the whole.
I have thus endeavoured to sketch roughly the'benevolence,' which, stimulated and accompanied
by the sense of duty, and the love of excellence, constitutes virtue.  We are now to examine these, and
see how they act on the benevolence.
8-2




APPENDIX ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE IN ITS
RELATION TO VIRTUE'.
Virtuous.
ness de.    Virtuousness is the disposition to take an interest in the
fined.
welfare of others, and to postpone or sacrifice self-indulgence
and self-interest to their good, whether this latter be the
public good, ot particular kinds of good of particular indiIts objec- viduals, to whom regard of this kind may be due from us.
tive as-    At the basis of all virtuous action, viewed objectively,
pect, utility.    that is, if we look at it by itself and abstractedly from  the
agent who does it, is its usefulness, or its being conducive to
some real welfare.  This it is, which makes action in one
Its sub-  way more desirable than action in another.
jective as-    But again, at the basis of all distinctively virtuous action
rosity.   viewed subjectively, that is, looked at as done by the agent,
is its usefulness to others or to the public and society.  I say
distinctively virtuous, because it is not the case that all
action which is not virtuous is the contrary or vicious. As
between action which is useful and that which is injurious,
there is a great deal which is useless or resultless, so between
action which is virtuous and that which is vicious there is
a great deal which, of itself, has no moral character at all.
The useless action, as so much action lost and wasted where
all ought to be useful, may be regarded as injurious or wrong.
And in a similar view, the action which has no subjective
moral character, which is done without any virtuous purpose
or any accompaniment of conscientious feeling, may be regarded as wrong or vicious in so far as we think that all
action, all life, ought to have conscientiousness or virtuous
1 This Appendix is taken almost entirely from a MS marked V,
which is in some respects an earlier draft of the present treatise. The
commencement anticipates what is said in the next chapter about the
intellectual elements of virtue, but the bulk of it is occupied with the
fuller exposition of the elementary feelings of benevolence which were
treated of in the last chapter. ED.




ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE.                  117
principle mixed with it.' Conscience, with some, supplies
purpose to life, with others, supplies no more than restraining
rule. Its nature, as I have described it, is to supply the
former as well as the latter.  It is difficult to use the words'right' and'wrong' in respect of the extent of the applicability of the feeling of conscientiousness.  But that is a very
low degree of virtuousness where conscience does no more
than guard from  wrong action, and does not animate and
stimulate to right.
In order to action bearing this character of self-trans- The carcending usefulness (so to call it) which makes it virtuous, dirtues.
two kinds of power over self are needed: the one the power
(various in its degrees of consciousness and deliberation)
of forgetting, neglecting, denying, ourselves: the other, the
power of controlling and governing ourselves. It is in the
amount of these two dispositions that consists, in the main,
individual elevation of character or excellence. The first
nearly corresponds to the ancient virtue cavrpet'a, which ethical language has rendered by'fortitude', but which in many
particulars is more akin to our notion of generosity: the
second is the ancient virtue of wwopoo-rvvq, soberness or selfcontrol.  These are the conditions of self preparatory and
necessary to that self-transcending usefulness or attention to
the interests of others which is the ancient eatoo-67CrV, and is
the more complete and finished virtuousness: and the three
together form the three great moral prerogatives of man,
the three great elements of that moral nature which raises
him above other animals. Put together with the intellectual
prerogative of prudence or wisdom they form a famous quaternion, the character of which later ethical language has in
some degree disguised in calling them the four cardinal virtues.
These different dispositions have reason and value of their Utility
own, and yet it is true to a certain extent, that the importance guide
of utility in actions is a paramount principle, and should without
exercise a restraining power even in regard of them.  In our generosity
nature, we may say, provision is made for the doing of useful
actions not by one principle-alone, but by many various principles, which act, in this view of their action, in an irregular
manner, some of them rarely reaching the mark, others
very constantly going far beyond it. It is by this that our
nature is rendered complicated as it is: and whether we are




118            ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
better beings or not, certainly we are more interesting beings
and good with a greater variety of goodness, than if we had
had an exact utilitarian sense, i.e. instantly knew the proper
useful action to be done and instantly did it.  The objective
rightness or usefulness of action becomes multiplied subjectively, (that is,. when it is transferred to the mind and feeling,)
into goodness or virtuousness almost infinite in variety: the
mistaken effort to do right leads sometimes to the doing
things which, we may almost even say, are better than right:
actions which are wasted in the universe so far as resulting
usefulness is concerned, lives nobly sacrificed, sufferings voluntarily undergone, are felt as what least of all can really be
called wasted, and most thoroughly have a moral value.  Still,
before such action, the thought of utility, where it may
be, should come in: though there should be action of this
kind, usefulness of result should be desired likewise.
Division of   The action thus according to good dispositions and the
ethicllsYS action which would be determined upon by calculation of
accord-  reason for useful purposes, do not in all particulars correspond:
this with and under these circumstances there are two ways in which
fold aspect Ethics may tend. There may be a tendency to think lightly
of virtue.
of the value and trustworthiness of dispositions, and to try to
bring about a calm  consideration, upon grounds merely of
reason, (or as it would be called by those holding the opposite
view, a cold calculation,) of the utility of the probable results.
Or there may be a comparative inattention to these latter,
and a pleasure taken in the action, whether its results are
useful or not, as an exhibition of the virtuousness of the
character, and of the possible nobleness of human nature.
Utility     The ancient moralists probably paid too little attention to
neglected the utility of the action as of importance in respect of the
by Plato
andButler. regulation and estimation of the dispositions.  In Plato and
in his follower Butler, there is, as I have already hinted,
scarcely sufficient information given as to the principles, or
law, or whatever we may style it, in accordance with which
reason (or conscience) is to direct the rest of the inner man.
Failing information on this point, one does not see, for instance,
why the reasons of different men should not direct their several
kingdoms or systems differently: to say that it is on principles
of reason itself is vague, and is saying little. Plato however, I
suppose, would conceive t.hat reason directs by reference to an




IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE.               119
ideal of what perfect man should be: Butler again, that
conscience does so by reference to a law of God of which it is
itself the vehicle, publisher, and witness. In neither of them
however is this point clear. Only it is clear that they neither
of them think much about a regulation of the dispositions, as
to their strength and amount, by a consideration of the consequences, as to utility, of the action which they would engender.
Aristotle attributes the same importance as Plato to the
dispositions of courage (or generosity) and self-control, and And by
may be said to give (in different language or under a different Aristotle.
metaphor, from those used by Plato) a theory which substan- fective
tially resolves the whole of virtue into the latter.  In respect account of
of the different dispositions which man may have, virtue in
his view, is the having them in the proper amount or proportion: reason judges or fixes this amount. It is obvious that
this is not saying much. Some dispositions perhaps we ought
not to have at all, others in a very large amount. Aristotle
accordingly takes account of those dispositions only, which it
is considered we should have in some measure: as to them
we should avoid both excess and defect, keeping in the middle
between them; this middle however not being a spatial or
geometrical middle, but very likely nearer to the one point
than the other; reason finding it where it is. Now as reason
must be supposed to be that which fixed whether we should
have the disposition at all, so here again reason fixes the
amount which we should have of it: and the question arises,
what is reason supposed to look to in fixing these? Reason,
in general, must be supposed able to assign. reasons, in
particular, for its proceeding: for what reason, then, is one
special definite amount of the disposition which leads us to
face danger to be called a virtue, and named courage, while
both a greater quantity and a less quantity are to be called
vices, and named, as such, rashness and cowardice?
I do not think that Aristotle gives any answer to this
question, otherwise than by that appeal which he continually
makes to human judgment and opinion. And this answer is It requires
not sufficient; for ethical science, though taking account of to be supplemented
human opinion, still ought in the main rather to lead than by a referfollow it. The real answer, I apprehend, must be sought in nce teo
some extwo directions, both of them different from this: one in the ternal
direction of an ideal of human character, so far as we are able standard.




120           ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
to form it, or of a divine law of human action, so far as we
have reason to suppose that such exists: this is the way of
Plato and Butler: the other the way of examination of the
consequences of the actions which arise from the dispositions,
and the pronouncing accordingly, that that amount of fearlessness which, looked at generally, is likely to produce useful
action is virtue, while a greater or less amount, not being
likely to produce such action, is not so. W~hen we talk of
r'eason acting, unless there is a rule or law at hand for it to go
by, it is evidently by such consideration of consequences that
we suppose it to act. The whole theory then of self-governnent, self-control, avoiding excess and defect, having dispositions in their right amount-however we may express itcann6t stand by itself: it has necessary reference to some
external or objective considerations: and these considerations,
to be found to a certain extent in the supposition of a divine
law guiding us and an ideal of human character commending
itself to us, yet are more fully and more specially to be found
in utility.
However, the difference in value of dispositions even supposing them unregulated, that is, supposing reason, with all
calculations of consequences, were away, is perhaps recognised
by Plato and Aristotle both, but in any case by Plato. The
portion of the soul which is active for activity's sake, without
any view to ulterior enjoymenit, which struggles with opposing
difficulty, and finds its pleasure in effort (the Ov/Ooelt3) to
which most specially belongs the disposition of generosity
(cvipeta) —this, with the dispositions flowing from it, independent of any regulation of them by reason which might have
to do with consequences, is itself of a noble nature, and is a
virtue, or, in the language which I have used, has moral value.
We have here two lines of virtue which sometimes, as I
have said, will not coincide: when this is the case, and we are
calmly judging or framing a moral system, regulation by reason
on proper consideration of consequences is what belongs to
the higher region of thought, and is more essentially moral than
any impulses can be, however noble. But we destroy man's
nature altogether if we do not take account, and full account
of the worthiness and moral character of these impulses independently of reason.




IN  ITS RELATION  TO VIRTUE.               121
I have mentioned that human conduct is compounded Will is a
internally, in various degrees, of principle and impulse.  In of princiother words, the primary desire (so to call in general the pie and
original spring of action) rarely acts immediately to influence impulse.
conduct, but commonly is mingled in the thought with
various other things, and these together result in the will or
resolution from which the action proceeds.
In speaking of desire as a spring of action, we must The primthe one the iinagination ary  imconsider it to consist of two elements, the one, the imagination pulse is
of an object as desirable and as absent, the other, the feeling to action
of restlessness or desire of action itself. This is a very old as tmuch
and popular analysis: the springs of human conduct, says pleasure.
Gibbon, are the love of pleasure and the love of action.
I do not know whether it is of consequence how far we
consider the proper germ of the resulting will to be this restlessness or irritability, rather than the other portion of the
complicated desire or impulse. The mere restlessness however, or inward demand of action, cannot be called'will'; it
is at best but the embryo of it, till it is attached to an object
of desire.
Action is not the object of moral consideration unless in Action
the mental process preceding it, mere desire has become beomes
converted into will by the mixture of something of imagina- impulse
tion, deliberation, and choice. Otherwise the action is what, into wesill.
in our proper language, is called involuntary; that is, possibly
with consciousness, but without deliberate consciousness; not
on purpose; not with consciousness as of things done of and
by ourselves.
Defect of consciousness in action may be the subject of The two
moral condemnation in so far as it is to be considered that ingredients of
there should never be action Without such consciousness.  A will may
high degree of consciousness or deliberateness is called self- aOeist in
possession: a low degree of it, with much vehemence of feel- proportions.
ing, is called'transport', or by various similar mames.
With respect to the provinces of reason and feeling (or Strength
passion) when we enter on action, the language from  the of will
implies a
beginning of ethics has been, under all sorts of metaphors, high dethe same, ascribing the moving power to the latter, thetgree of
guiding power to the former. Under these circumstances
what is described as a strong will, would signify a mind in
which both of them existed in great amount, so that a great




122           ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
deal of deliberation could coexist with vigorous action. In
this case there is what we call resolution or determination.
Moral      With regard to what is desirable as to the proportion in
character the mind of these two elements, ethical science has not much
is injured
by defect to say, only neither must be deficient. A man in whom
bfitither  t impulse or feeling is deficient, is called' hard', even if he be
most men virtuous: a man in whom  principle is deficient is called
there is a'weak', even if he, in a way, be virtuous.  He is less likely
preponder.
ance of  however to be so than the other. The virtue of the former
one or   is unsatisfactory, but real.  That of the latter is specious, but
untrustworthy. The words in almost all languages point us
to this: Kcacla, vitimn, are in original signification this same'weakness'; apewri and virtuls mean strength. In thus arguing
from the history of words we must of course bear in mind
that it is more or less a general rule in language for ethical
terms to degenerate in their application, arising from the
tendency of men on the whole, to speak of such things cautiously, considerately, and indulgently, rather than strongly
and exaggeratedly: still, that there  is  importance  in
wrong-doing being expressed by a term  which once meant
weakness, is marked by virtue being in a similar manner
associated with strength.
There cannot then be virtuousness without any conscientiousness, but there may be without a very great deal: that
is, the same result in action, which in some proceeds from conscientiousness, may proceed in others from the happy following
up and cultivating a happy temperament as to feeling: while
the state of mind, though very different in the two cases,
cannot be described in the one as worse than in the other.
And where there is conscientiousness, it will generally
happen that it is largely mixed with feeling. I have on
purpose described it rather barely, in order that the different
elements which result in good conduct may be more distinctly
understood: but in moral life these different elements go
together, and form an organization or a new whole.
Difficulty  Rightness or goodness of action is not a thing which can
of deter- be decided absolutely. There are problems of moral difficulty
mining
goodness which may probably be pronounced insoluble.  One of the
of action. real and wise reasons for the disposition which people have
often had to refer such cases away from themselves to others
who may be supposed competent to form a good judgment, is,




IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE.               123
that it is, probable that no judgment come to will ever
be entirely satisfactory to the framer of it (if he be a good
one), who has looked at the matter on all sides, and is aware
of the objections against, as well as the reasons for, his judgment. The agent therefore is more likely to act with full
persuasion in his own mind, when there is added to his own
feelings on the subject confidence in another's judgment, and
when his'own resolution is not weakened by the continued
recurrence of doubts and objections. In any such difficult
questions, there needs the strong overruling feeling which I
suppose a judge must have, that a judgment must be come to,
that reasons must be found to distinguish some things, some
line of conduct, from other alternatives, as the best and, if
not satisfactory, still the least unsatisfactory.  Some one line
of conduct must be chosen to pursue.  This, chosen as it best
can be, is for the agent the absolute faciendum or right thing
to be done, in spite of all the accompanying unsatisfactoriness. But looking at it in the general, it is very clear that it
is not thus absolutely right or good. It is its being under
the circumstances the best, that makes it the absolutely right
for the doer at that time.
But, difficult as it may be to determine goodness of action, Still
goodness of character can much less be absolutely decided on. geaiffite
difficulty
It is like beauty of form or feature, with regard to which of deterin the abstract certain absolute principles may be laid down mnimng
goodness
but which affords, as it is met with, endless scope for variety of characof taste and of principles of judgment.  The notion  of ter'
rilghtness suggests to us one thing right or to be done, as
against many wrong, or' not to be done: but in application
to disposition and character, virtuousness is as various as
viciousness. And in comparing different virtues, or' forms of
virtuousness, together, as to their relative importance, it is
hard to find any certain principle on which to go.
Love, if by the term we mean such love, e. g. as is indi- In what
cated by St Paul in the Epistles to the Rlomans and Corin- teue ithtS
thians, may be said to be the temper of virtue, and to produce love is the
virtuous actions without any intervention of conscientiousness, tempre of
intellectual principle, or reason. But the form in which this
has been often put is very erroneous. Love, to do what St
Paul thus describes, is no simple feeling or primary impulse:
it is an exceedingly complicated- result, development, pro



124            ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
duction, of a course of feeling and action; which result
the Apostle here calls ayc~'rv, or love, but which might not
have been misdescribed in other manners. When people
say that the Christian religion removes morality from other
bases, whatever they may be, to fix it on that of love, they do
not always sufficiently reflect what they mean. If they mean
here by'love' any simple feeling or impulse, they are much
in error.  The love which does all the noble works, and
possesses all the noble qualities, *which St Paul and St John
enumerate, is clearly a special temper growing more and more
out of the Christian mental discipline and Christian inward
life: what Christianity does, is not to give any new basis for
morality, btut to supply means for the engendering certain new
tempers of which this dcyawrr?, or Christian love, is the principal, which are likely to be more powerful agents for virtuous
action than any tempers which can exist independent of
Christianity.
In Plato    With Plato, justice, which, he says, consults the interests
jtes the  of others, is put to a certain extent in the moral position in
place of  which St Paul puts love, when he describes this latter as
Chrlovetian working no ill to his neighbour.  But a very important
though he by-place in morals is filled in Plato, as all are aware, by
allows
moral ia  passionate love, or sp`o.  His thoughts in this respect very
portance much penetrated the ancient world.  Christianity, which in
to Pws:  some things showed sympathy with him, did not in that.
As Aris-    Aristotle's main or direct system  takes less account of
totle does attention to the interests of others as distinct from our own
to   tXlia:
than does that of Plato. He however, like Plato, has what
we may call a by-place, but an important place, for love, not
however spos, but the love of attachment and companionship,
lovingness or energetic friendship, which with the Greeks
indeed was often passionate too: for the Latin'amicitia'
and our'friendship' represent a colder feeling than the
Greek was. Aristotle's two books of the Ethics about lOtXa,
though important in the ancient world, still were not so
much so as Plato's thoughts on the subject of spoow. But it
being a wider form of love that he spoke of, there is, in some
points of view, more ethical importance in what he says.
And the     The Stoics introduced the notion of what we should now
Stoics to  call an universal brotherhood, an o0be6eT?'1, or kindred of the
LXavarOpwail.    whole human race, a dtkalOpo7ria, or general love of man.




IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE.               1 25
The doctrine in this respect which was preached by our
Lord and his Apostles was common with Christians to the
Stoics.
The Christian writers make slight use of the term phi-'AYv-'I
and
lanthropy, or love towards man, greater use of the notion'caritas'
LXa8eX~t[a, or brotherly love, to represent the mutual affec- used to
tion within the Christian family. But the word they chose Christian
to represent the Christian temper which I have spoken of lo~e.
was not pwos- or otXla, which indeed were preengaged, the
former in a less worthy, the latter at least in a different
application, but adrya'7. I suppose the. early Latin translators were influenced by a kindred feeling in avoiding'amor'
to represent it, and using'caritas.' Our translators, undecided between the medioevally-consecrated, and the more
significant word, have confused us by giving to represent
arya.r7, according to the place and author, both'charity' and'-love.'
Charity or love then, in the Christian dispensation, is a The ChrisChristian temper, exercised in the main towards men, but in tian and
certain respects towards God also. Being this, it was very nalvirtues.
reasonably described in the mediaeval ethics as a theological
virtue: two other Christian tempers mentioned along with
it in 1 Cor. xiii.,'faith,' and'hope,' being considered to constitute two more such: and the three forming what we may
call a Christian constellation; holding a higher place than
the pre-Christian constellation of virtues, the Platonic quaternion or cardinal virtues. The seven together formed,
in the middle ages, the frame for systematizing virtuous
feeling and conduct. Love is the principal theological or
Christian virtue, and therefore the principal virtue altogether.
Virtue may be said, as something existing in the mind, conscien.
to have two sources, one in conscientiousness, the other in tiousness
and love
kindly feeling, the streams from which unite to form virtue the two
complete.  Moralists, determined to shut their eyes to one virtue 
of these sources or to the other, have in general gone on with
a weary battle. Those of them who are determined to make
out that the motive for men's association is fear of each
other, and therefore desire of each other's protection, shut
their eyes to the mutual attraction which nature furnishes in
all the various forms of love, which would, so far as we are
able to see, bring them together even if they had nothing,




126           ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
any of them, to be afraid of. These various feelings of love
are, as it were, the nutriment provided by nature for the
developing moral nature, while moral principle, partly
formed out of these feelings, is infixing itself. Suppose
that the reason why men should come together in society
were only the not very high one of mutual protection, and
that we were to attribute no value to the elevation of intellectual and moral nature which results from their society; I
think we may doubt whether their intellectual perception of
this reason would have overcome the mutual repulsion which
there must have been, if they saw in each other only rivals
and probable enemies. Nature has brought them together
and enabled them to protect each other by conquering any
tendency there might have been to this repulsion through
an opposite principle, the attraction of love.
One-sided    The different parts of kindly affection, or love, fall in with
moralists the different parts of relative duty, and, even in the absence
confine
their view of conscientiousness, would secure the performance of a good
to one or deal of this, while, in the presence of conscientiousness,
other.
they reinforce and facilitate it. Things are best, as I have
said, when the two fitly concur. Conscientiousness by itself
is dry and cold. Feeling by itself is occasional and variable.
The element of self-transcendence or self-sacrifice which conscientiousness brings adds on its side new worthiness and
beauty. On the other hand, the spontaneousness, the absence
of effort, the genuine willingness, which there is in feeling,
brings a worthiness of a different kind. There is a kind of
native intolerance in us due to contraction of sympathy and
limitation of intellectual view, from which it results that few
persons see moral beauty in both these things, conceiving it
must exist only in one, or only in the other. There hence
arises (for there are few persons more intolerant than ethical
systematists) a continual contest between the moralists of
duty and the moralists of feeling, the oficictrciats and emotionalists; while anti-moralists adopt, in conjunction, the
views of each on the subject of the other, finding in the
morality of duty a want of spontaneousness, in the morality
of feeling a want of reason. "So far as we do right because
it is our duty, we do it as something forced upon us, as
something which, except for its being our duty, we had
rather not do, the action is therefore not genuinely ours




IN ITS RELATION  TO VIRTUE.              127
moral obligation is thus constraint.  So far as we do right
because we like it, there is no merit in it: it is like the
instincts of the animals, and does not belong to our rational
nature: we do it not deliberately and of purpose, but one
happens to be led by his tastes to it, another not to be,
whereas the action which we do deliberately and of purpose
is that which is really ours."
Surely it would be better to accept the nature and life of
man as complicated than to be determined to simplify it in
these various intolerant manners. It is not necessary, except
to the logic of a systematic moralist and the limited comprehension of his sectarian admirers, that because we do
right as our duty, and as under obligation, therefore right is
what we certainly should not do otherwise, and what must
be disagreeable and forced upon us. Nor again does it follow, because we find ourselves drawn by some of the kindly
affections as unconsciously, as almost irresistibly, as some
animals, e. g. by their maternal instincts, that therefore these
same affections and actions according to them, may not as
well be commended to us by our reason for the purpose
which they answer and the good which they do.
Love seems to consist in the main of (1) pleasure in the Threechasociety of its object, (2) pleasure in the thought of its ob- lovters of
ject, and (3) pleasure in the thought of the pleasure of its
object: and of course the converse of these under opposite
circumstances.
There seem also in the main to be three kinds or types of Three
love: OtXla, or love of association and companionship, arop,' lionds of
or family affection, and'p`so, or sexual love.
To begin with the last of these, as the most definite and tpws, in
distinct: it is a natural passion, making itself strongly felt animals:
in the organization. It belongs to all animals, in most cases
with them obeying very definite instinctive laws according
to the species, and producing often in them a violence of
temper and action quite exceptional as compared with their
generic habit. It is in some cases with them, as e.g. in most
birds, associated with a certain degree of family affection
and pleasure of association and companionship, but in the
greater number of cases, even of the higher organizations,
in no respect so, but perfectly independent of both of these.




128            ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
Nor does it appear in any of them to be associated with anything like what we may call imagination, or particular observation and distinction of the object of it.
9pos in     In man the natural character of this passion is to shew
man.    itself in conjunction with all that is thus wanting to it in
animals. As in other cases, in the comparison of man and
animals, so in this, there is with man little of that very definite instinctive limitation which there is with them: but,
to counterbalance this, the passioni tends to unite itself
strongly in man, not only with the o7-opyr which we shall
soon speak of, but with the rational and distinctive elements of his nature. It gives occasion to a"stirring of his
imagination greater than any other cause of exaltation and excitement can produce, and in conjunction with this it animates
the feeling of enjoyment in sight, talk, and association, and
increases the feeling of sympathy, in a manner which could
not exist under any other circumstances.  Where this is the
case, and in the better sort of natures, it is probable that
the passion itself hardly makes itself consciously felt otherwise than by its intensifying effects upon the whole nature;
and its distinctness is lost in the variety and vigour of the
imaginative action which it helps to excite.
Not pro-    There seems to me but little significance in classing it
ppeltite. among appetites and putting it with hunger and thirst.  If
we consider them as the types of appetite, appetite is an
indication of a want of nature which must be supplied for
the health and existence of the individual.  This is only the
case, or anything like it, with regard to the passion in question, in cases where the mental organization is in some way
very defective, and the corporeal, through want of self-control, in a state unworthy of man.  Where the tendency to
society and sympathy and the imagination are active and as
they should be, they will absorb the passion into themselves
without allowing it to degenerate into appetite.
Its con-    It is evident that the association of this passion with
neithtlhe  imagination introduces dangers nearly as great, if of a someimagina- what more honourable kind, than what would arise from its
tion.    being, as in animals, bare appetite.  But the moral teacher
in this respect must look at human nature as it is. Three
parts out of four of elegant literature and of art are concerned, one way or another, with imagination as connected




IN- ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE.              129
directly or indirectly with this passion.  It is at the age,
when character is being fixed, when purposes are being
formed, and when the intellectual powers are, taking one
tlhing with another, at their strongest, that the inflaming of
the imagination from this cause usually takes place. And the
steps, whatever they may be, to which it leads, are generally
such as are felt through life.
We may accept it then as natural that some such stirring Moral
of the imagination should in some way or other take place, dangers
and count it as a blessing in comparison with the infinite from or
associated
degradation which results to the character in cases where with it,
the passion makes itself felt, and where there is neither
moral self-control on the one side, nor the elevating, and to
a certain extent diverting and absorbing accompaniments I
have spoken of on the other. If once the coarseness or carelessness of companionship causes the passion to be looked
on as an appetite which, if it is felt, may be satisfied, many
of the best chances for future imaginative elevation and
nobleness in the character are gone. A coarseness is introduced where delicacy and refinement are necessary, not
simply for the goodness of the moral character, but for the
clearness, and vividness and elevation of the imagination:
the most promising shoot for future nobleness is cut off.
I shall not dwell here on the manner in which this coarseness of what should be the best part of the mind, is likely
to be multiplied tenfold by the associations which it leads
to, when what man's imagination has in its noblest flights
taken pride in exalting, is viewed in desecration and degradation,-desecration and degradation which the author of
them must abundantly participate in, through his own sympathy and consciousness, so long as there is anything left in
his nature to degrade.
Even where the imagination and higher parts of the cha- Not in
racter are in exercise there is of course no occasion possible itself
stronger
in life in which more of reason is required for the purposes than there
of consideration and foresight, than this, in which so many iforcasion
things occur to render the exercise of reason difficult. Onthe other hand, supposing the feeling to be associated with
the imagination and under due self-control, as it should be
in man, we shall not probably consider that it is stronger
than there is occasion for in reference to the whole of life
G.                                            9




130           ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
which follows it. If it is strong, there is a demand for
strength of feeling to correspond to the closeness and intimacy
of that particular relative duty which it concerns, the mutual
duty between husband and wife. In man's various moral
nature the early provision of it is intended not to be exhausted and done with, but to fill the moral being in such
a way as to influence the whole of after life: the merely emotional feeling of passion and devotion which might of itself
evaporate, is preserved and rendered continuously active by
its being incorporated in the conscientious feeling of duty.
IZrop5yr in    Family affection, or crropyr, is a feeling extending along a
animals  scale from  maternal affection, which is an instinct of the
anll  ill
lman.    strongest kind, till in the affection of brothers and other
kindred it widens out into more general forms of love.
Here, we seem to see an instance how, as instinctive feeling
and duty generally coincide, so they do not necessarily: and
the greater complication and worthiness of the life of man,
as compared with that of the animals, wants considerations
of conscience to be superadded to those of feeling. Nature,
in regard of animals, makes great provision for the weakness of youth: little, if any, for the weakness of age. The
former it cares for: the latter, its work being done, it does
not.  Correspondingly, when nature transfers its animal
dealings to man, there is a vast provision of instinctive
affection to support the relative duty of parents to children,
and by no means so much to support that of children, grown
up, to parents, weak and old. But old age, though not dear
to instinctive or lower nature, is eminently dear to social
or higher nature.  Morality has two characters, one falling
in with instinctive affections, the other supplementing them.
It is in the spirit of this latter that regard for parents
and regard for old age has ever been a special point of
positive morality. It is as important a matter for life and
for society, and as important a relative duty, that parents
should take care of their children, as that children should
honour their fathers and mothers, but we do not so comnmonly find it included in schemes of relative duty such
as the Decalogue or the'Duty towards our neighbour.'
Four kinds   Besides these markedly instinctive associations, there are
(f associa- the less strong ones concerned with general friendliness and
tionamongC       n
animals.  companionship.




IN  ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE.              131
Of such association among animals there are various
kinds, principally perhaps four:
I.  Association of community or with the appearance Political
ossciaof political organization, such as that of bees. This rather ti (baees).
takes place, it would appear, low down in the animal scale,
arguing less complete individual distinction and independence.  It is one form which is taken by the as yet insufficient detachment of individual existence from common:
and it furnishes a figure of what, in the highest moral
existences, reason tends to produce; namely, a conscious
reabsorption, to a certain extent, of individual interests
in the common.
2.  Gregariousness, which is not real sociality, or rather Gregariwhich furnishes us an image of what sociality would be, were
all individuals (speaking generally) similar.  Sociality is
founded on difference as rmuch as on resemblance.  Society
in general as much depends on difference in the individuals
who form it as social economy on difference of employments.
3. Congeneric attachment or recognition, which seems Feeling of
kind.
to exist at least in all the higher kinds of animals, giving
them  a different feeling towards individuals of their own
kind from that which they have towardls creatures of any
other kind.
4. Familiarity, habitual proximity, or eonsuetudo, which Consuetudo.
seems to bind together almost into a real friendship, and
without any regard to kind, creatures the most dissimilar.
There is another kind of animal association, more like [Cooperation in
human association in some respects, and much more like lnttin
human  association  as viewed by some moralists, which prey.]
nevertheless I have not thought fit to reckon with tlhe
others: I mean that joining together for the purpose of
taking their prey which seems the nature of some animals
(wolves for instance), and would indicate a high degree of
reason.  But I do not think it would help us in what is
my business now, the comparison of human affections with
those belonging to animals.
All the different characters which I have mentioned
as belonging to animal association belong to the association
of man with man, together with several more.
All human kindly affection is discriminiative, that is, Allfound
in man
it attaches itself to some individuals in distinction from combinec




-13-2          ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE
ith Clis-. others. -The discrimination depends partly on reasons percrimina. sonal to him  who feels the affection, partly on reasons
general, or good for all. These two kinds of reason are
often closely involved together, leading to intellectual error,:which may be of importance, or which may not be so.
Love may C  The love produced by gratitude, and the love produced
spring   by moral admiration (a particular, and a general reason), are
from a
general  "probably not of themselves very different in kind: that
ticular. is, the difference which there is in one instance and another
cause.   of love of the above kinds, depends, in each case, -upon
the particularity of the circumstances which have caused it.
It is action that is to the benefit of men that moves our
moral approbation: and this benefit being by sympathy
made ours, the moral approbation thus felt is very similar
in character to the feeling of gratitude.  On the other hand,
we cannot help (more or less) generalizing kindness to
ourselves into goodness and worthiness in our benefactor:
it is in the nature of things that we should.  Though in
this we may be often, intellectually, wrong, it is what we
could not wish, within limits, otherwise.
Love or affection, in the main, bestows itself,- and speaking broadly bestows itself right,-in  the manner which
I mentioned  when  speaking of its accompanying  relative duties.  But in individual instances it is by no means
certain to bestow itself right, and the providing, as far as
possible, that it shall do so, is a great part of moral training.
It is an    The confusion between love for individual, and love
advantage for general, reasons is in reality a very great advantage
to morality
that the  in morals, though at the first sight it perhaps does not
two are  seem  so. On -bare principles of reason we shall perhaps
often
blellena  be told, that we ought to love, not our actual brother,
ofused.   who may be no better than other people, not our benefactor,
who may be good to nobody but us, but the man whom for
his goodness everybody should love, who is in his way virtuous and kind to all. But it is the producing this same
affection in different ways which (always of course within
limits) makes the strength and value of it. It is produced
by felt benefit to ourselves, it is produced by familiarity
and companionship, it is produced by knowledge of good
deeds: this latter marks specially what should be loved
on grounds of reason, but the bestowing the affection in




IN  ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE.              133
the -other ways is no injury to this, for by it a character of
warmth is given to the whole affection, and love as caused
by moral approbation is all the bettor for it.
We ought to love what is worthy of love and what
is not worthy of love both, in different ways and for different
reasons. What is not worthy of love in general is often
worthy of it from its, as I have said. It may be said to
be a moral provision of nature on the side of good, that
the sensation of being loved and thought well of by any
is elevating and beneficial. It is a provision by which
good is gained from  circumstances which no doubt give
rise to much harm.
For the misbestowal of love and, as a consequence of General
esteem and
it, the attributing moral approbation (or what is equiva-le and
lent to this) where it is not deserved, does of course do much strong
natural
harm. It is hard to give any moral precepts as to which help to
people will not, in their eagerness to make morality simple, virtue.
exaggerate their applicability and so destroy their talue.
This is preeminently the case in regard to all precepts
tending to diminish the discriminativeness of the kindly
affections. The great moral provision made by nature for
the securing virtue in the world, is the approbation and,
more than approbation, love, felt for the virtuous. Every
good and virtuous man is, in his measure, a benefactor of
all: and nature has to a certain extent provided that
all shall love him as such. This is the real moral notion of'merit.' One reward which virtuousness looks to, and may
look to without losing its disinterestedness, is the kindly
feeling of men: and virtue, when considered as the object
of this, is called, in the moral application of the term,'merit.' The position of the virtuous, in this respect, is
like that of the man who does a kindness to another: if
it is done on account of an act of gratitude expected, of a
kindness in return, it is no proper kindness, it is interested.
But if it is done on account of the good it will do and
the pleasure it will give, with full anticipation, as well, of
the feeling of gratitude on the part of the receiver, this
does not make the action interested: under many circulmstances it makes it the better, the kinder.  And so in
respect of virtue and the love or approbation of men. As
well say that no man cares really for anolther's good because




134           ON BENEVOLENT IMPULSE.
all men value gratitude, as say (as moralists have occasionally done) that virtue or kind action is nothing real, is
not done for its own sake or loved for its own sake, because
men value the love and approval with which it is welcomed.
I-ow far   The bestowal of love or affection is not a thing to be
affection
shoald be entirely subordinated to reason, or it ceases to be what it is.
under con- It must have much in it that is accidental. But it must
trol of
reason.  in some degree go by reason: feeling is to some degree
matter for self-possession and direction. Kindly affection
is founded on opinion about the persons whom it concerns.
That this opinion should be entirely wise and correct,
does not matter: but it should not be too much otherwise.
The relations of life perplex the intelligence in judging of
people, and ought to be allowed to a certain extent to do
so. But beyond this, the being led away by accidental
associations and by insignificant particulars in our opinions
about people and affections towards them, is the source of
a vast deal of mischief and a vast deal of vice.




CHAPTER  IX.
GENESIS OF VIRTUE: ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS,
PRINCIPLE.
AT the beginning of the last chapter I defined virtue Feelings
as benevolence stimulated and regulated by the ill resense of duty and love of excellence.  We have seen qire tl, be
what is meant by the loose expression benevolence, and reenforeedby
and have now to consider how this is affected by the principle
before they
other things spoken of.                           can be
Considering then benevolence as above described called virtuous.
in its relation to virtue, there has to be said the following: first, that it wants something before it can
be called virtuous itself: and next, that even if it
were entirely virtuous in itself, it needs to be reinforced by something besides itself,
In the first place, simply impulsive action, or
action on feeling only, would not lead to virtue, or
the public-spirited action which I designated by that
name. The benevolent impulses themselves would
want direction and management from what I will
call principle, not to mention that we should be
moved by a great variety of impulses besides those
of benevolence.  Man is thus a being whose virtue
has two distinct features belonging to it, good impulse and self-control: I mean by the vague word
principle whatever it is that brings about the latter.
It is to emotion, from its nature, that the stcarting
of action mainly belongs, while the controlling of
emotion belongs to intelligence.




136            GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
Principle    Principle in one sense is always good, in another
in itself is
ilfi~s  sense it may be good, neutral, or bad: or, in other
good.   words, it is always good in so far as it is prqincip'le,
though in the particular case it may be wrong, and
the self-control which it generates may be perverted
and misapplied.  We shall probably see this more
plainly when we come in a moment to speak of distinctively moral principle, commonly  called  conscence.
Human      In all huitman conceptions of virtue principle and
virtue a
componld impulse concur, and must do so. The being of purely
of princi- good impulse, without need, and without possibility,
pie and  g           w
impulse. of good principle, is, in the Aristotelic phrase,'
O7PLov r' eOo%, which means, that this is a state of
moral consciousness, if we are to call it so, which we
cannot at all picture to ourselves. Again, if we
imag'ine a being of purely good principle, or rather, a
being whose virtue was of principle alone, we should
either have to suppose him without impulse or feeling or with none but bad: neither of which suppositions would represent what we call virtue.
Virtue being thus compounded of principle and
impulse, is voluntary partly with the voluntariness
of premeditation and deliberation, and partly with
the voluntariness of spontaneousness: it is self-command and self-mastery, and yet not something which,
with whatever view, we merely force upon ourselves:
it is good impulse, and yet not merely the unreflective result of our emotional organization.
Increase   When we picture to ourselves increasing virtue,
in virtue    consider the struggle involved in the self-control
is not the 
same as  or principle as continually diminishing: but we canthe formation of not really picture to ourselves our ideal of perfection
mechanicalhabit. in this respect, for if the self-control (which loses
meaning without the supposition of something to be
controlled) entirely vanished, then we should have,




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE. -1 37
come round to the supposition of a being inferior to
man in one respect, that his action, however good in
result, was simply spontaneous and without the
higher form of will, the premeditative and deliberate.
There is no meaning in choice of virtue without
some degree of supposition of possible choice of vice.
The process of increasing virtue, in which the,struggle which results in self-control is continually
diminishing, is called by philosophers the formation
of moral habits: and it is highly important that
those who speak of these should remember that the
process is not in any respect the extinction of reflecition. and principle, which would be the falsifying the
moral nature of man and making him, morally, an
inferior kind of creature, however he might, individually, become a better creature of his kind.  Moral
philosophers, in their desire of explanation and simplification, are probably more in danger in this respect than ordinary men. The ordinary view, from
its point of inferior exactness, seems to allow distinctly enough, the difference between mechanical
and moral habit: there is danger lest philosophers,
in their desire of greater simplicity and exactness,
should confound them.
But not to dwell on this: benevolence, in what- Benevo.
ever degree it exists, wants princeple before it can needs
be conceived to constitute virtue: that is to say, it -finirtPle,
must be regulated in various respects: some benevo- regulate
lence would be wrong, not as benevolence, but as
coming into the place of what would be right; and
there must exist in the mind not only the feeling
that this regulation of it is desirable and necessary,
but also the power, the self-mastery, required to bring
it about.
On the various respects in which benevolence, if
we wish it to result in virtue, must be regulated by




138             GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
principle, I will not linger.  In the benevolence
which is virtue there is more or less a definite aim
or purpose (that is, an ideal, as I called it, of the
second kind), a conception formed of the happiness
which we wish to promote, and of the manner in
which it is to be promoted.
There is in such benevolence also a feeling of
*very great importance which I have yet to speak of,
that of fairness and justice. And more generally,
the notion of duty which I have discussed at length,
comes in: comes in, as respects what is now before
us, to determine the objects of the benevolence, and
to ensure account being taken in it of those relations
among men which I have spoken of.
second, to   But, in the second place, besides that benevolence,
reinforce to whatever amount it existed, would not, without
principle, constitute virtue, it would not, without
principle, exist in sufficient quantity to produce or
account for, —not to say the virtue which the world
wants, which is not the matter of our present consideration,-but the virtue which the world has.
as against   In speaking of benevolence or good-will, I have
glf-o.  spoken also of the feeling which is directly opposite
to it, ill-will: but I have not spoken of the feeling
(so to call it) which, though not thus directly opposite to it, is a far greater counter-worker of it, viz.
self-regard or self-engrossment.
This latter is of two kinds, according as there is
or is not applied to it such principle (as I just now
explained the word) as is consistent with it and does
not destroy its character.
Self-re.   Self-regard, without such principle, is self-inatselfyb dulgence; with it, it is that which is known by
under the various names, in later moral philosophy as self-love
control of
principle, or rational self-love, in common language either (with
in which
case it blame implied) as selfishness or self-interestedness,




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  139
or (in absence of blame) as prudence.  The term becomes'prudence' is itself a term of praise or the supposed thdrwidse
name. of a virtue: it may be exercised on behalf of t is selfindul.
others as well as on behalf of ourselves: it represents gence.
in fact all the lower portion of that which I have
called principle: I mean by'lower,' all that portion
of it which is intellectual only, as distinguished from
what is moral. When prudence is exercised for ourselves only, it is a virtue in so far as it is prudence
(as I said about principle in general): in so-far as it
is for our own benefit alone, it is of no moral account.
The work of moral principle is threefold: first, to
make benevolence, as above described, prevail over
self-regard and self-engrossment; second, to regulate
and govern the benevolence, in the way which I a
short time since mentioned: and third, to elevate,
stimulate, govern, and discipline, the individual dispositions in accordance with the above,
And of moral principle (all these divisions are to Two forms
be taken very generally, for exact classifications, in a principale
subject such as we are now dealing with, are a mere
appearance) there are two forms: one more definite
and precise, which we will call the sense of duty:
the other more aspiring, but at the same time more
vague, which we will call the love of excellence.
The sense of duty goes by the name, with a large Sense of
number of moral philosophers, of conscience.  The enisnee
word'conscience,' at first signifying what in legal (I)
phrase is called'guilty knowledge,' then the notion,
not far removed from this, of self-condemnation for
some particular offence, came at last to signify what
we may generally express as'the mind acting
morally': judgment of actions or possible actions as
portions of, or contraventions of, duty, i. e. as in accordance with, or in opposition to, the ideal moral
law.




140             GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
There is   In the case of conscience on the one side and the
the same
difficulty moral law on the other, the same thing is to be said
in regard which I have said in each case where we speak of
to this as
in regsrd perception on our part of anything, viz. that we may
tion.    consider the reality and truth either to be on the
subjective side, and to consist in rightness of thought
or judgment, or to be on the objective side, and to
consist in the fact, that that which is supposed to be
perceived presents itself to us as it is: which of these
two we do is of no further importance than in respect
of their comparative facility of consideration; the
only thing of importance being that we must know
which we are doing, and avoid a confusion between
the two.
Some, as   Of these two views that which may be called the.
tae ther,  subjective has been taken by those moral philosophers
tiubve vie   who speak much of conscience and little of the
and speak moral law, or. who consider conscience itself to be
of conscience; that law: virtue, as Butler would describe it, is
others
the objec- the acting according to  conscience (or the moral
tive, and mind) judging rightly.
speak of
the moral    Of what importance, however, are these two latlaw.
ter words? and why is it not sufficient to say, that
virtue is acting according to conscience?
How far is    We may say so altogether or absolutely, upon
it true that
action ac- one supposition: and without any supposition, we
cordliiig to may say so approximately, and with a degree of
conscience            ay
is right  truth.
action?
The supposition is, that we consider the operation
of anything and its ideal or proper operation the same
thing. On this view,'according to conscience' would
mean' according to conscience judging rightly,' for it
is the function of conscience to judge, and in mentioning it, we suppose it to discharge its function properly. It is on this view that philosophers speak of
reasom  as an authority in morality, or in fact, that




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  141
we use the words'acting according to reason,''reasonable,' at all. for reason may, actually, be wrong as
well as right, judge mistakenly as well as correctly;
and when there is any danger of mistake from
taking the ideal view, a philosopher like Aristotle is
careful to take the actual one, and to say 6pO$ X6yo%,
right reason.  It is in the same way that we speak
of conscience judging rightly.
But without any such supposition, and simply
considering how conscience actually does judge, there
is an approximate truth in our saying that virtue is
acting according to conscience, in this double way:
that conscientiousness is one step of virtue, and the
person who makes the one step is likely to make the
other, and to be  iqightly conscientious, careful, in
theological language, to have his conscience well informed: and next, that without the supposition of
such special care, conscience, when put in exercise, is
more likely to judge right than wrong: its wrong
judgment will be the exceptional.
Butler may be said, not to make two virtues, but; Butler
describes
to give two different forms of virtue, which ought to virtue at
fit together, and to be shown to coincide, but whose oe time
fitting he does not sulhciently describe.  His two scientiousforms of virtue are'conscientiousness,' and'the act- another as
benevoing according to the public, rather than to the private ience,
affections,' or, as he has also called it and I call it: withiut
here,'benevolence.' He has given what we may call the relation of
two moral philosophies without any account of their these to
relation to each other.  I conceive, that in giving eachother.
what, as they stand in him, are two moral philosophies, he is right: but that there wanted more account of their relation, and attempt to make them
one.
It is a part of this, and probably a part of the e shows
reasonr of it, that his account of conscientiousness is tsiat ccel




142             GENESIS OF VIRTUE':
has au-  not sufficient: he gives no reason why molcral princithority  pie, or conscience, should be superior to intellectucal
pulse, but principle, or prudence.   The account which he gives
niiot that it       puec            a         w     h
has au-  of the supremacy of conscience is applicable to all of
o-e pru- that which I have called principle, and in fact, is
delnpore only one particular, new, and striking form  of the
principle
ofanysort universal account of it.  Everything in our nature is
to be supposed for a purpose, and if either a faculty
whose function is to review does not review, or if its
judgments of reviewal are unregarded, it is as good
as if it were not, and there is something wrong about
it.  Every faculty, in its function, has given to it
authority for its function, and the supposed supervising faculty has the authority to supervise. But
this applies to reflection, or as I have called it principle, of all kinds: and we want to know why mnorcal
reflection has authority over other kinds of reflection.
Let us take then the stream of virtue composed,
so far as we have seen as yet, of the various concurring streams of benevolence: let us see what is
contributed to it by conscientiousness; and whether
that which is so contributed is of such importance as
to deserve to be considered the main stream.
[Danger of   I use the word conscientiousness rather than conpnegrSaif- science, and in the same way I shall often use the
stract   word virtuousness instead of virtue in general, and
speak of forms or kinds of virtuousness instead of
particular virtues, because I prefer to use terms
which on the face of them, are plainly no more than
abstract, the old abstract terms having been realized
and personified in a very perplexing way. Men are
conscientious or virtuous in the same way as they are
physically black or white: the terms may express
imperfectly what it is wished to express, but there is
no puzzle about them, no question as to what region
of thought they belong to; and conscientiousness or




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE. 143
virtuousness is at once understood to be the abstract
substantive of the corresponding adjective.
The word conscientiousness may be applied in a Consience
wider' or narrower sense, but I am now going toof inagiuse it in the narrower.  I mean, it might mean  sim- ntive
ply sensitiveness: we might, if we liked to widen the ness.
use of the word, speak of a conscience of benevolence,
and, in a way which I shall speak of presently, of a
conscience of honour. There is a kind of self-judgment, taking account of benevolence alone, in reference to any past failure of benevolence on our part.
Independent of any feeling of right and wrong, without anything that can be distinctly called self-condemnation, past unkindness on our part may be remembered by us with pain; and the thought of the
suffering which our unkindness may have caused,
may dwell in our minds most unpleasantly. That
this is a different thing from conscience is clear front
the consideration, that this feeling of the consequences
of our act may exist in cases in which the unkindness (so still to call it) is justified by our real conscience or sense of duty. Conscientiousness thus is
not simply sensitiveness in general: not simply the
imagination in application to our actions towards
others, but one form only of such.
Again, in acting from benevolence only, without, or Disti]calmost without, anything of what I have called prin- volelet
ciple, we may form ideals for action, and exercise our -acioe ilimagination in this way also. I say calost, because principle
alin to,
the acting for an ideal does always involve something but not
of principle or force exerted by the mind on itself: t:hlesaCe
it makes the action to some extent distinctively Science.
intellectual. The amount to which it is intellectual
depends upon how far the force, which keeps us from
wandering from the ideal, is the imaginative presence
to our mind of others' sufferings or pleasure, that is,




1] 44           GENESIS OF VIRTUE:             -
a matter of feeling and the same kind of thing as stii's
our benevolent impulse, or how far, on the other hand,
it is a resistance, from other quarters than this, to
those temptations and distractions from  occasional
impulse or otherwise, which will always make acting
for an ideal an effort. Speaking generally, a person
who is to act distinctively for a benevolent ideal must
not be too distinctively benevolent. That is, he must
conceive benevolence in a large way which would be
disturbed in some degree by being too keenly alive
to the details of it. I mention this simply philosophically, without any insinuation: each of the two manners of benevolence is good in its way.  The thing
which I am  saying, put in an exaggerated way, has
been made a subject of reproach to supposed professional philanthropists: again, an exaggeration of the
reverse, view has been made a reproach against emotional impulse.  I have nothing to do with these.
Conscientiousness or moral principle differs from
benevolent sensitiveness and idealization by having
reference, in the first instance, rather to what we do
than to what others feel.
Our active   It will be remembered that I said some time since,
nature
conjoined in speaking of pain, that its being what we ought not
with our to inflict seemed to me quite as much a part of what
social nature sug- I may call the instinctive definition of ii, as its being
gests that
pain isnot what we do not like to suffer. It is commonly asto be infticted on sumed, that its unpleasantness to ourselves or rather,
athers,just its to-be-ctvoidedness is an immediate feeling (as no
joinedwith doubt it is), and its not-to-be-in{jlicteclness a secondary
our sentient na- feeling which can only come to us after observation,
sggests on our part, of it in others, and sympathy with their
that itis  suffering under it.  This does not seem  to me so.
to be
avoided Our nature is, as I have tried before to describe, in
for ourselves. itself, in its very rudiments, active and social as well
as sentient: i.e. we are, to start with, different beings,




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE. 145
in every portion of our make, from what we should
be, not only if we were going to grow up stones, but
if we were going to grow up in a world where motion
was impossible or in a world of necessary solitude.
Our active nature superadds this to our simply sentient nature, that pain is instinctively felt by us not
only as unpleasant, but as to be avoided; in other
words, that uneasiness causes movement: our social
nature, superadded, widens this into the more general feeling, that pain is to be prevented, ac fortiori
not to be caused or inflicted: there does not need
experience of pain in others, and actual sympathy
with their suffering, for this: the supposition of their
resemblance to us is, if anything is, instinctive. We Thus our
nature
find thus, from the very first, a determinant of our supplies
action beyond ourselves, a restraint, as it were, laid anorigilre
~~~~~~~~~~~~~upon it. ~~straint
- _IDupon it.                                     which
It is simply an expansion of this principle, when secoBds
we find ourselves possessed with the notion that, in volent imhurting others, we are doing that which action is not pulses.
for; that such action is improper action, not the action
that should be; that, as hurting ourselves is what action is not for, and we call it unwise, so hurting others
is what action is not for, and we call it wrong. The
two notions, of that which we should not do, and of
the causing pain to others, are thus from the first in
our nature combined: and thus, for the constituting
virtue, we have not only the mass of affection which
I have spoken of and called benevolence, but we have
the notion of restriction or determination of our own
action, and that to actions which are benevolent, and
agcainst actions which are contrary to these: we have
in fact the stream of principle, of should or ought, flowing into that of benevolent emotional impulse, to
make virtue.
Import.
Some notion or assumption of this kind was, I ance of
G.                                     10




146            GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
this consi- think, wanted by Butler, to make it appear how or
derationas why conscience (moral principle) determines action
explaining
the rela- in the direction of benevolence rather than any other
tion of
conscience way. If virtue is made to consist at one time solely
to benevolence;  in conscientiousness and at another time solely in
benevolence, it ought to have been explained how it
is that, as a matter of fact, right moral judgment does
determine our action in the direction of benevolence.
and also   Some consideration like that which I have given.
the a-y  seems required, to tell us not only how it is that bethoity                               oof.con-  nevolence is the conduct to which conscience impels
science.
us, but also why conscience is to be looked on as something in human nature which should be thought
highly of, rather than as a weakness of it. Why is
the virtuous view, that conscience is to be honoured,
to be preferred to the vicious view, that "conscience
doth make cowards of us all," that conscientiousness,
and the habit of taking ourselves to task as to what
we do, is a foolish weakness, that consideration for
others is a foolish weakness also? It seems to me,
that the real answer to these questions is contained
in the consideration that our very notion of pain is,
as much, that it is something wrong to inflict, as that
it, is something which it is well or wise to avoid: in
this way we have from the first the conscientious feeling leading us to direct our action so as not to inflict
pain, in the same way as we have the prudent feeling
leading us to avoid it: and thus both conscientiousscience  ness and consideration for others are provided for in
voaidsene by our nature from the first, and cannot be considered
restrain- as weaknesses into which it may fall.
ing what
is opposed    The impulsive maxim then, or axiom of benevoto it; the
preventionlence,  Love all in their degree ('in their degree'
being a  marking the different nature of the affections which I
more posi- have spoken of), becomes. reinforced by the maxim of
tive idea
than the principle or conscience, less emphatic in its contents




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  147
but more emphatic in its enforcement of them upon production
us, Hurt no one, nenbinen lcede.                 surPe.a
Conscience is, as I described, another expression
for the sense of duty; and it will be remembered
that I said that the notion of duty differed from
that of virtue in its generally negative or prohibitive character; guarding against offence, rather
than pointing to heights of aspiration.  This is
apparent in what I have given as the general maxim
of moral principle here. In speaking of the nature
of pain and pleasure, I shall endeavour to show
how it is, that pain is, as it were, the positive consideration, and that pleasure, as it is called, does
not suggest the effort after it for ourselves and for
others, in the same, immediate way in which pain
suggests the effort against it, and the disinclination
to inflict it. In the same way, as regards duty, possible offence against it is the positive consideration.
Conscience is not a stimulating, but a restraining
principle.
Still, as I said about duty, that it was an ideal, Conso principle, as I have described it, may almost be mornal
defined, as acting by an ideal.  Conscience is com- ioaginot
monly described as moral judgment: it might more merely
moral
widely be described as moral imagination, including judgment.
judgment where judgment is required. Each act of
conscience, as some moral philosophers have put the
matter, is a moral syllogism: there is a contemplated
action, as minor premiss, referred to a general principle, as major premiss. In reasoning, the syllogism is
only the conclusion of a long process of preparation in
the way of consideration of the subject, determination
of premisses, &c., just as a trial in law is the conclusion and final result of a long process of investigation,
search after evidence, &c.  This previous consideration, in reasoning, is the work of imagination. In the
10 —2




148           GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
same -manner conscientious judgment is the result of
a process of moral imagination: there are principles
in the mind, which correspond, in the subjective view
we are now taking, to the objective particulars of the
ideal moral law, or duty. The right information of
the conscience is the same thing, in the one way of
speaking, that the discovery what the moral law says
upon the subject in question, is in the other.
The 2nd    I will not however say more on conscience just
forlf  now: I shall speak of duty in the next chapter from
principle a slightly different point of view, and we may have to
is love of
excellence. refer again to the sense of duty, or conscience: I now
proceed to the love of excellence.
Our social    Man's sociality consists in his being born into
enatble Us society with a number of beings who are not only
to sympa- co-sentient with him, but co-active: and in his
thize with
each    having a nature correspondent with this.  He is
thoerghts imaginatively aware not only of their pains and pleaand pur- sures, but also of their thoughts and purposes.  The
poses, as
well as former of these kinds of imaginative knowledge we
with pleasures or  call sympathy, and have spoken of it in treating of
pains,   benevolence: the latter has no word to express it,
not coming much into common consideration: we will
for the moment call it co-intelligence: though, as it
is a form of sympathy, I shall sometimes speak of it
under that term.
Our moral,   I have already said of how much importance the
like our in known or supposed sympathy of others with our
tellectual,
judgments thought is in respect of our notions of truth.  In the
are formed           rep
in imagin- same way, all our conscientious or moral judgments
ed sympathy with are formed in imagined sympathy with the judgments
the judg- of others.  The fact that this is so, has sometimes
ments of
others. been perverted to signify that conscience is nothing
more than a representation to ourselves of the probable judgments of others, that thus it is no indivi



ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE. 149
dual judgment, and only a cowardly abdication of our
own authority over ourselves, a mis-subordination of;
our conduct. But this is only in close analogy with
our intellectual judgments. When we judge even in
a si'mple matter of sight, as e. g. that such a tree is
green, we may be said implicitly to make the assertion, that others think so too, or would if they were
in our position. If anything led us to doubt this
assertion, we should doubt the tree's being green, in
spite of our eyes. For we see, as it were, not with
eyes of our own, but with all men's eyes, and if anything made us think we saw with eyes of our own
distinctively from this, we should not have the faith
in our senses which we are considered to have. When
anything leads us to test our knowledge from what
I have called the subjective point of view, that is,
whether we see rightly or correctly, or however it
may be, we instinctively have recourse to what is the
real meaning of truth from this point of view, viz.
what I will call ideal or right thoughtness, towards
which the thought of our fellow-intelligent beings is
an approximation.
In analogy with this, our conscientious judgments
also are always made in the imagined company of our
fellow-moral beings. We encourage ourselves with
their imagined approval, (even with no thought of actual knowledge on their part), and reproach ourselves
with all the imagined authority of their common
voice.
The importance of this imagined union of the
general moral judgment with our own we shall see
more fully directly. But I turn first to something
else.
We are all, by our very nature, each other's rivals Ouractive,
in action, i. e. the action of one stimulates another. with our
This may be said to be hardly more than another way social,
nature




1 5 0           GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
makesus of expressing the union of sociality with activity.
rivals, not This consideration, in some respects, acts in the directhe enads tion against virtue. There is in the world a great
deal of conflict of interests, and this notion of rivalry
with each other leads to an imaginative generalization of this partial conflict, i.e. to a sort of half-formed
notion that another's happiness is a loss to ourselves.
This is the disposition to vague general grudging,
sometimes called envy, and not uncommon. I have
already said something about this rivalry for happiness.
but in     Were action really to be considered a necessary
actofn  evil, only existing in the universe on account of the
insufficiency of happiness, this mutual rivalry would
probably all act on the side of vice. But, as it is,
action is as natural to man as enjoyment, as much a
pleasure as a pain: and we are each other's rivals in
action independently of being rivals for the object
which the action is to gain.
This is    Hence arises that rivalry, as I will for a moment
in meritry call it, in worth, merit, or moral value, which is a
which is main mover of the world, and a far more efficient
so powerful an aid agent in aid of virtue than rivalry of interests is a
to virtue. difficulty on the other side. This rivalry in worth is
not a mere dispute as to which shall have the most of
men's approbation, but a stimulating of the good in
one by the thought of the good in another.
Real worth    The words signifying'virtue' in modern languages
which ist have been transferred or translated from ancient phitested by losophy without independent life in themselves, but
actual ex-              i
celling and the notions from which the old terms started were all,
supposed
by estima- more or less, of excellence or comparative worth. What
tion.    may be called the fact of excellence is worth: the test
of it is actual excelling, or comparison: and the presunption of it, or a presumption for it, is estimation.
onsists in    I have discussed'moral value' above, and the con



ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  151'
sideration of worth must go upon the principles laid usefulness
combined
down there. A man's worth in the universe is his use- with cer.
fulness taken in connexion with the personal qualities tsnalqua
which cause or accompany that usefulness, not his use- lities.
fulness alone, even supposing we take a very elevated
view of the nature of usefulness. The high estimation
for instance of courage among the Romans, which
caused'virtus' to represent, in conjunction, both
courage as worth, and worth as courage, was not
solely because courage was, in a state of society like
theirs, what the state most wanted, but because they,
like all men, had an independent admiration of
courage.
The test of worth is actual excelling, and here we Men are
rivals for
come to that rivalry of which I have just spoken. The that which
rivalry or contest for superiority or excelling is a force tests
worth.
of great moment in the world, both for evil and for
good. It is different from the conflict of interests.
This latter arises from our sentient nature; and not
only to the extent to which it exists, but also to the
extent to which it is imaginatively expanded, it is
altogether a difficulty in the way of virtue, though an
important field for virtue to exercise itself in. The
rivalry for excelling, on the other hand, in the main
line of its operation, is more an aid than a hindrance
to virtue: men, as active beings, are rivals of each
other in many efforts and pursuits whichare unworthy,
but in more that are worthy. There are however a
variety of subsidiary feelings most of which are against
virtue: these are suspicions, jealousies, chafings under
defeat or inferiority, sour regrets, and other feelings
of that nature.
I mentioned some time since, that active or unoc- This
casioned ill-will from one sentient being to another thvaly
was hardly conceivable. If we are to imagine then a mainly
beginning for moral evil or wrong, we shall probably virtue yet




1-52           GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
easily  look for it in the conflict of interests, and the rivalry
evil in the connected with that.  If we suppose a state where
form of  this is not possible, we shall still have remaining, for
ambition.
supposition, the rivalry for superiority which is an
incident of the co-existence of any active beings.
Accordingly, when people have theorized about the
beginning of moral evil, this is what they have very
commonly supposed: and the way in which it has
been expressed has been by saying, that the mother
of all offence, the arch-sin, is pride, or, in Wolsey's
language, ambition. It is here that there seems most
readily possible a passage from good to evil, a sort of
transmutation of the one into the other.
Effects of    For it is clear that ambition, in so far as it is a
ambition. desire to excel another in pursuits or efforts which
are proper for both, has nothing in it of evil, but is,
on the contrary, a most powerful agent on the side of
virtue and good. Our sociality, i. e. our living in the
society of fellow-moral beings, is not only an occasion
for benevolence, but it is (and that independent of
mutual estimation, which I shall consider directly) a
most powerful stimulant to action: the thought of
companions in the same endeavour communicates
courage, animates enterprize, and makes moral action
quite a different thing from what it would be if we
were solitary actors.
Danger of   It requires however a considerable effort of absthinking
too muoh traction, though, one occasionally very necessary, to
of the es- consider the effort only without the estimation, or, in
timation
of others: other words, to consider our fellow-moral beings only
as fellow-combatamts. and not at all as witnesses: we
had better therefore proceed to that which I have
spoken of as being a psesumption of excellence, viz.
estimation.
I mentioned some time since that, so far as their
derivation goes, the words expressing excellence are




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  153
very likely to express, in the first instance, the estimation of it, as is the case for instance with the term'honestus.' If we want to express anything so abstract as the ideally right, we must do it through the
medium of some metaphor (as it is frequently called)
or, more properly, through the medium of something
different from it, nearer to us, and less abstractl.
Of course then we are always liable to the charge,
that this latter is really all that we mean, that we
have nothing in our minds beyond. And it is difficult to meet the charge: for; to express what we
have beyond, we can only use some other metaphor,
and so fall under the charge again.
Hence it has been often said that the _praiseworthy of confounding
means really no: more than the prcaised: that we bhave the praiseno means of knowing what sort of conduct is worthy wioththe
of approval, except by seeing what generally is ap- praised.
proved: and that in fact there is no meaning in talking of worthiness, beyond this.  The notion, that the
conduct which goes by the name of virtue is entirely Some phia result of man's love of others' approbation, that the lhsp herl
term  has in men's minds nothing else corresponding that vitotu
to it and means nothing else, has been widely held, more than
love of apand has taken various forms. If, when anything of probation.
this kind is said, it is still allowed that men praise
what is praiseworthy, and that therefore the fact of
their praising virtue is an argument that virtue is in
itself, independently of their judgment, worthy of
praise, then what is said really is that men are actua,ted by an inferior motive in doing that which it is
well they should do from any motive; that they are
1 The author was in the habit of using the word dianoematism to
express this universal law of language. See his (posthumous) articles on
Glossology in the Cambridge Journal of Philology, vols. IV, v. As an
instance of fallacious reasoning grounded on inattention to this law, it
may suffice to refer to Mr Matthew Arnold's examination of terms expressive of existence, in the Contemporary Review for Nov. 1874.-ED.




154            GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
doing right with a very imperfect conception of what
they are doing, and, though looking upon virtue, mistake the outside and dress of it for itself, possibly
with disadvantage to their practice, possibly not. If,
on the other hand, people do not regard general praise
as a sign of a thing being praiseworthy, but stop at
the fact of the general praise, then there arises
the view of virtue which treats it as conventional.
Thrasy- The rudest form of this view is that maintained against
iewthat Socrates, that men wish others to be virtuous, while
itpis    wishing, if possible, to avoid being so themselves;
dkXd6ptov
Wyado'.  that everybody therefore praises virtue, in order to
induce his neighbour to it, that being what is to his
own interest; that hence there is universal praise of
virtue, with universal desire, in each one, to avoid the
practice of it; that with some, the love of the praise
conquers this desire, and these are the virtuous.
This       The thing may be put, and has been put, in a
tueresult great many other ways, and on all of them the same
feorm avi- sort of thing is to be said which has been said on
tiousness, the Hobbistic notion of duty, to which this is the
as Hobbes
makes be- counterpart in respect of virtue. It seems to me,
nresltfrce that those who, in the interest of natural theology,
universal look for skilful contrivances on the part of the
hostility.
Creator, could find none more skilful than this,
were the world such as philosophers of this kind
consider. It goes further than the simpler Hobbistic
notion, of universal mutual hostility producing universal kindness: if everybody can injure everybody,
it is the best policyfor all that nobody should injure
anybody. But in this notion of virtue we have
virtue in a manner existing without itself —existing,
and not existing. It is the effort on the part of
each to escape being virtuous himself, which produces such virtue as exists.  In order to avoid it
himself, everybody praises it in others; and this




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.:155
universal praise has its effect on some: hence virtue.
-The contrivance is admirable.
But why are men really to be supposed thus
double-minded, and to praise not because they do
like, but because they do not?
Without however going to any such extent asvirtue is
the above, almost all philosophers who are jealousprelyaP
of intuitivism are more or less driven to Hobbistic \uith the
feeling
views on this part of moral philosophy, and are thus that it is
worthy of
liable to the same censure as the above.  When approval.
people are said to be influenced to virtue by what,
in the language of many philosophers, is called the
moral sanction, this moral sanction is often described
as the general approbation of the thing to be done, as
virtue. Now with what view is this approbation
given? If those who approve approve because they
think the thing ought to be approved, they must
think also it ought to be done, and must themselves
feel, more or less, the disposition to do it, though,
in the particular case, this disposition in them might
be overcome: then, speaking generally, the person
who is supposed to be influenced by this moral
sanction will be influenced also by the feelings
which produce (in the supposed approvers of the
thing) the moral sanction, and will himself approve
the thing in the same way that they do: and this
is the real moral; sanction, rather than the other
second-hand one, however as a fact, as no one would
dispute, this latter may come in aid. I said just
above,'speaking generally,' because doubtless there
are many particular cases in which the individual
himself would not have the feelings which cause the
approval in others: but where this is so, it is not
any moral sanction or influence which moves him,
but respect or care for others' opinion.
If, on the other hand, those who describe the view is




156            GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
untrue to moral sanction as above will not allow that the aphtuae.  probation of virtue, in the approvers, is determined
by their feeling that it is worthy of approbation,
then their view is really that which I mentioned
before, though not rudely expressed like it. They
must hold that there exists an opinion, resting at
best upon nothing, resting possibly, like that, on
the feeling in the approvers that the thing approved
is undesirable, not desirable.
All notions of this kind, to whatever extent
carried, of people making, in whatever manner, interested or heartless or unmeaning conventions by
which individuals are influenced to what is then
called virtue, are evidently untrue to human nature,
and do not represent any fact. The approbation of
others. is in many respects a most powerful influence on the side of virtue: but when it acts as a
really moral influence, then it is united with an
approval by the man himself of the thing which the
others approve, and this is conscience.
As imagi-    All. the various attempts which have been made
native
sympathy to discredit virtue because it is what is highly
combines esteemed among men, seem to me founded on error.
with the
thought of I have described how the fact, that our conscience
our action 
as rightorudges in conjunction with the imagined judgment
wrong;  of others, is not a moral weakness, but a part of
our nature and of our- manner of judging altogether,
intellectual as well as moral. I will speak now of
some feelings cognate to conscience, in which this
character, of reference to the imagined judgments
of others, is more prominent.
and as    I mentioned that benevolent sensitiveness made
kind or
unkind; a sort of conscience, b.e. that we think about, and
think over, our conduct in respect of it, not properly
with self-approval or self-condemnation," for that




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  157
would belong to our real conscience, but with plea-sure in the imagination of the pleasure we may have
caused, and pain in the imagination of the pain we
have caused, or the pleasure we have refrained from
causing: brooding and imagination in these respects
will produce a benevolent sensitiveness, in a manner
very analogous to that in which reflection and
moral judgment will produce conscientiousness.
Similarly, we may form an ideal to ourselves of- so it
excellence, I might say, worth, worthiness: none of~itmhbthe
them  express with sufficient wideness the notion. thought of
our action
It is superiority without reference to any as sur- asworthy
or unworpassed; praiseworthiness or admirableness withoutthy, without dereference to actual admiration.  Almost every one, stroying
from the highest to the lowest, forms some sort ofthe in-                  dependideal of this kind.  The degree of moral importance ence of
such
of any such ideal depends upon two considerations: thought.
how far what it is concerned with has really moral
value, and how far it is-not disengaged from the
thought of others' actual estimation of us, for that
it cannot be nor would it be well it was, but-with
a strong root of self-judgment and self-trial in ourselves independent of this.
Favourable estimation of a man by others on This is the
grounds of excellence, worth, or superiority is called sense of
or                     honour
honour of him, and a man who is in such a position and
shame.
is said to be honoured or to be in honour. The
regard on a man's part to his own self-judgment
in the above particulars, in conjunction with the
imagination of the judgment of others about him,
or, which is the same thing, his care for a, deserved
estimation of this kind by others, is called'a sense
of honour.' And if he acts at all systematically
in this respect, or has an ideal law, rule, principle
of this kind to go by, this is called, in reference to
him, honour, or the law of honour.  More generally,




158            GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
the same notion is expressed by self-respect, or a
regard to character.
The opposite condition to a man's being in honour
is his being in disgrace, and the state of mind of
feeling disgrace is called'shame.''Shame' indeed is a
word of earlier, more positive, and wider signification
than honour.  And for this reason I shall often call
what I defined above as the sense of honour, in its
wide application, the sense of honour and shame.
How this    It is more difficult to distinguish the sense of
differs
from, and honour and of shame from conscience, or the sense
resembles, Of duty, than it is to distinguish benevolent sensiscience. tiveness from that. The sense of honour has the
appearance of being a higher feeling than the sense
of duty, in so far as in some respects it is freer, and
there is not in it any thought of penalty, or dread
of that kind.  On the other hand, it is lower than
the sense of duty, as there is certainly more imaginative reference in it than in that to men's opinion
and judgment: it is therefore less individual and
self-held; it has less hold of real moral value or
merit; it is more likely to be fantastical and conventional; it stands more apart from benevolence; it
is more occupied with our relation to our equals, or
to those equally strong with us, than to the weaker:
and hence the ideal law which it sets before us becomes
often strangely at variance with that' of duty.
The frame -But the sense of honour and shame, as to the
of honour
is self-re- manner of its acting, is exactly a conscience like the
spect.  sense of duty: it judges, controls, supervises, if we
are to use such language, exactly as that does: it
judges of law and fact, i.e. reminds us that we have
done such and such a thing, and tells us that we
have been wrong in doing it, exactly as that does:
it is a moral reason, and syllogizes, as that does,
bringing particular facts under a general principle.




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  159
The sense of honour and the sense of duty coincide to the extent to which, keeping strictly to the
term'honestum,' we identify the honourable with
the right. To the extent to which we identify
it with the'beautiful,' (supposing the word KaXov
ambiguous between this and the honourable), for
the sense of duty or honour we have a kind of
elevated aesthetic sense: on this another time.
Adopting now'self-respect' in reference to theFailings
sense of honour as the analogous term  to conscien- treglfard
tiousness in reference to the sense of duty, we have respect.
three ways of possible wrong about it: (1) a man
may be deficient in self-respect, or, supposing him
to have it, it may be to a great degree unregarded,
or not powerful; just as conscience, with all its de
jure authority, may not have actual power: or, (2)
a man's self-respect may, like his conscience, be
mis-informed: he may act strictly from considerations of honour, but may have an exceedingly bad
code of honour: or, (3) his self-respect may be of
a bad kind, bad in the manner of it, mixed with bad
feelings: we shall see how.
One of the many ways, true, if not over-stated, Self-rein which virtue may be described, is that it is the entiato
substitution of one kind of self-regard for another; virtue and
may not
the substitution of self-respect for self-indulgencebe sacriand self-interestedness; of regard to character (i.e. self-indulactual character, of which repute is an image or gene.
mark) for regard to pleasure and advantage. It is
as much a part of virtue to foster self-attention, in
this point of view, as it is to restrain self-attention,
in the view of enjoyment. If this is forgotten, there
is a danger, greatest perhaps in the cases in which the
impulse to virtue is the strongest, of what we might
call the suicide of morality by some such supposition
as this: "the end which I want to gain is, by the




160             GENESIS OF VIRTUE:
allowance of all, a worthy and a noble one, one which
is worth any sacrifice: what matters it what I do,
one individual like me, and why should I not sacrifice to it myself, my conscience and character? Why
should I not gain it by crime? There is then a noble
end gained, and to counterbalance this there is
nothing but muy moral self-ruining; what am I in
the universe, that this should be of any count? Is
not moral self-sacrifice of this kind even nobler and
worthier, because greater and more difficult, than any
other kind of self-sacrificel'?"
Utilitari-  On any kind of utilitarianism, or supposition of
would lead the moral value of actions being all in their results,
swrong I do not see what answer could be given to this,
except the following: You must take care that others
do not imitate you in this particular, for if they do,
that very powerful motive to virtue, regard for character, will become depreciated. To which the man
would rejoin, No fear, there will not be many like
me: it is an emergency, and I feel how much I am
sacrificing: depend  upon it, regard for character
and reputation will always be powerful enough in
the world: well if it is not too powerful. The man
who feels like me its value, who knows what he is
doing, has a right to sacrifice it.
Self-re-   The proper view  seems to me to be, that selfspect is the
oepCosite respect, or regard for our real character (as distinof elfish- guished from reputation) instead of being, so to, speak,
ness andgs
helps self- a very elevated form of selfishness, so as to be a matsacrifice:
ter in which a sacrifice of self could possibly be made,
is really exactly the reverse of selfishness, or selfinterestedness, if we take even the widest and highest
views of this.  Our own moral individuality is a
matter of entirely different nature from our individual
1 The name' Danton' is written by the side in the MS., no doubt
with a reference to the famous words'que mon nom soit fletri, que la
France soit libre.'-ED.




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE.  161
interest, and is not a thing which, like that, can possibly be matter of sacrifice.  It is very well to put
our individual interest in the scale against a mass of
public interest, and sacrifice that: but the putting
our individual virtue or moral being in the scale
against the same, and sacrificing theat, is another
matter.  No amount of the one will in reason bear
down the'other.  To the extent to which we feel the
promotion of the public good.our duty, we shall, in
reason, feel the force of duty in general,' and not
sacrifice duty even for that.
Moral self-maintenance then, so to call it, is the
temper of virtue, exactly in the same way as selfabnega.tion' or self-sacrifice is with reference to indulgence and to interest.  And the way of this selfmaintenance is by conscientiousness and self-respect;
by the existence, i. e. of such' feelings, and by their
effectiveness for action.
Self-respect thus, as well as conscientiousness,. to because it
raises us
the.extent to which we consider them different, brings above the
in a large.reinforcement to the stream of virtue. Its care for
operation is, to encourage feelings and conduct of that interests.
kind which I described as having moral value according to the first ideal, not the second, the value, i. e.
not of utility, but of self-transcendence and self-sacrifice.  Conduct which has this kind of value has far
most usually the other kind as well (the converse not
being true); for conduct which I just now called
self-maintenance, care for our'moral.self, is more or
less the same thing as superiority to the care, in any
undue extent, of ourself in the point of view of indulgence and interest. Hence the aim or purpose of
action transcends self in the same degree in which
the moral principle is firmly self-rooted: care for our
own mnoral being involves no conflict of interest,
G.                                      11.




162            GENESIS OF VIRTUE.;
appropriates nothing which anybody else could have,
does not. subtract (or at least need not and ought; not
to subtract) any time or labour from  others' utility,
but directs conduct to* this from another side, and
gives an additional value and energy to the conduct
which is for it,
The ideals   Conscientiousness and self-respect are both kinds
set before
us by con- of what I have called principle: this we have seen:
essntinds a-nd they both idealize, i.. e. act very much by the way
self re-  of imagination, fill our mind with, or set before our
maybe  mind, an ideal of conduct which we consider ought
erroneous.
to be ou9r conduct.: particular conduct suggested to
us we judge one way or the other according to its
conformity to this ideal.
But is this ideal, in either of the cases, always a
good one?
There is no doubt but that it is often fari from
being so, and. where this is the case, both conscientiousness and self-respect become ministers of vice and
wrong, not of virtue-.  In themselves they are still
each good, as I have already said -in reference to
conscientiousness: the acting by principle is good, and
the man is in a way which ought to have led him
right; but owing to circumstances, particular indeed,
but by no means very unlikely to- occur, it has led
him wrong.
This is    I explained before why a man's -being conscienthe case tious makes it more probable than otherwise that he
with th  will act right: and exactly the same may be said of
self-re- self-respect.
spect than
with tiat    It is commonly considered that the sense of honsciece;' our and of shame is a less sure guide in conduct than
conscience is.  This is so partly in one respect which
I[ shall treat of soon, viz. in the manner of the feel



ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS,. PRINCIPLE.  163
ing: is it so -in the view of the ideal law or ideal of
conduct, which it supposes, being more likely to be a
false and bad one?
It probably is, but- still there are various things till con~.science
which must be considered as to this.  When con- needs to be
science has been written about, it has been generally, if itris t
even by th6 best philosophers, with a strange inat- guiCl us
right and
tention to the distinction between'the ideal view of have real
-a -thority.
cons.cientiousness, in which conscience is supposed to
be properly performing its function, and- the actual
view of it, as it exists in men, associated with all
sorts of error. The Republic of Plato with its ruling
reason, and.the Butlerian system or constitution with.
conscience for its regulator, never admit the possibility of the reason and the regulator going wrong,
or -what is to happen then? But it is clear that one
of'two things must be the case,  If Butler means- by
conscience the ideal conscience, necessarily right, then
men's actual conscientiousness, the conscience in each
of them, is quite a differei4t thing (for it is often in
error), and in that case there is a wide.field of moral
philosophy which he quite passes over, which should
consider the relation of the actual conscientiousness
to the ideal conscience, and the means by which each
is to know whether his own individual conscience
tells him right. If, on the other hand, Butler means
by conscience the actual conscience or conscientiousness of particular men, then there is entirely omitted
by him all that large subject which is called by theologians the informnation of conscience: and what is of
more consequence (for in general a writer is not to be
blamed -for what is not in his book, unless he professes to give it), the descriptions of the authority or
rightful supremacy of conscience lose very much of
their point and meaning.  The authority becomes
exceedingly untrustworthy: it is -a judge requiring
11- 2




164            GENESIS OR VIRTUE:
supervision, a sentinel who wants a sentinel over him:
and hence the question, as difficult in morals as in
politics, about the right of resistance to this authority, and whether conscience really ought always to
be obeyed.
Honour     While honour has been idealized by some philosohas more
reference phers in a manner not very different from conscience,
to opinion
and is   many more have set -themselves to describe the evils
bocltvoen of its action when wrongly applied, a thing which'has
tional and been but little done in the case of conscience. Not
capricious.
to dwell on the fact that honour has become a cant
term among many persons professing to be guided by
it, so that any true notions of it have been superseded
by mere conventionalities, it cannot be denied that
considerations of honour are more capricious, more
liable to error, than anything which can be called
conscience; and this mainly on account of the greater
reference in them  to opinion,. or, which is the same
thing, on account of the greater strength and intimateness of the individual feeling which really lies at
the root of the other, though boih, in different degrees, associate themselves with opinion. The individual feeling is of the same kind in both; it may be
described as'regard, not for self (except for doing
right), but for others:' in duty or conscience it is
simpler, plainer, less aspiring, more intimate.
How con-    Our sense whether of duty or of honour is, with
science
and sense each one of us, as to the particular circumstances of
afre ednu  it, the product of our.particular individuality, of our
cated.   education, of the companions we have had, and of the
life we have lived: by all this each sense is educated
or informed   but still. there is something in each
sense which is the same with everybody.  Of training and.education I hope to speak hereafter.
There remains now-to speak of conscientiousness
-and the sense. of honour as to tbthe mzanner in which




ITS INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLE. 165
they exist in a man; I mean as to the particular nature
of the feeling, and what feelings it is associated with..
What I have just said has had reference to the application of the feeling, or its content, as some might
express it, i. e. the conduct which it urges upon us:
but independently of this, there may be a very great
difference in the feeling itself; more especially perhaps in the case of the sense of honour.




APPEYNDIX ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR'.
Three        Let us. proceed now to consider the nature of introversion
kinoalrsf  of the mind, or-consciousness,. or reflexion, not in its intelflexion:  lectual, but in its moral. bearing.
Self-in-     The simplest; readiest, and most superficial thought about
terestedness (I.).  one's self, is about one's own enjoyment and provision for
ope's self,-what I have called above, self-care. If it has however much of the character of thonught, it would be better
called'self-interestedness.'  This sort of reflexion furnishes
of course sometimes self-congratulation, as on occasion of success; sometimes self-reproach,  as on occasion of failure by
one's own mistake.
Self-esti-.    Another sort'of thought about one's self is what I will
nation(). Ccall self-estimation. By this I mean that consciousness which
is concerned with the various feelings, good or bad, of pride,
vanity, shame, modesty, and many others of the like kind.
This sort of thought about one's self furnishes, as we know,
often much of self-congratulation and pleasure; often, again,
much of self-reproach and pain, and that of the bitterest.
1 In the last paragraph of the 9th chapter, it is said that'it still
remains to speak of'the particular nature of the feelings of conscientiousness and.honour, and of the manner in which they are associated
with other feeling:' and, in the original MS., the following loose
jottings appear at the end of the paragraph:' Is it like pride, or like
what? Aiiscussion of the feelings of pride, vanity, &c.'. I have thought
it wellitherefore to supply from earlier MSS. what the author intended
to insert here. The first passage is taken from a course of lectures
marked II. 1.: this is followed by a quotation from an older MS., of a
somewhat fragmentary character, marked b; and this again by quotations
from MSS. G and Q forming part of a long series intermediate in age.
The commencement of each quotation is marked in the notes. In.
bringing together a number of passages, written at different times upon
the same subject-, it is inevitable that there. should be a certain: amount'of repetition and want of order; but each passage se6med to me to
contain something of independent value, and I did not feel justified in
making the alterations which would have been required in order to fuse
them into one whole. ED.




ON CONSCTENCE AND HONOUR.                167
Both these kinds of thought about one's self are natural
as to th'e fact of them, but as regards the form and detail,
they are almost entirely the creatures of education and custom.
Conscience is a feeling, on the whole, intermediate between Conscithese two, but containing in it elements not belonging to enDe (3).
either. Self-reproach. arising from the first of the feelings I
mentioned is in the main of the nature of fear; so is the selfreproach arising from a guilty conscience: self-reproach arising
from the latter of these is of the nature of shame; so again is
that of conscience. Again, there is in the reproach of conscience self-blame for a failure: this is the same sort of blame
as prudential self-blame, but it is for. a higher nobler cause:
it is failure and coming short of the right, instead of failure
as to the useful. Similarly, on the other hand, there is in the
reproach of conscience a sympathetic self-condemnation, by
which I'mean a self-condemnation accompanied by the feeling that others, to. the extent to which they know what we
know, condemn us likewise, and if they knew all that we know,
would condemn us altogether. This is a feeling closely analogous to' the general feeling of' shame, as we shall have to
see; but'it is more pointed and particular; it conveys' to us
the idea not only of failure and disgrace, but of astonishment
at and shrinking from ourselves, that it should be so. And
conscience contains in it the element of sympathetic feeling
in another way belonging to it alone. It is the pleading and
remonstrance in our imagination of those whomi we may have
wronged.- It is the imaginative putting ourselves in the
place of others.
Conscience, as it is usually treated by moralists, is looked Consciupon in its medium state of neither self-approval nor self- tinguished
reproach, but as an inward voice, indicating to us, on the from the
occasion of an action presenting itself, what is its moral practical
character, whether good or bad. Conscience clearly does this,
so far as it does it, by the incipient tendency to the selfapproval or self-reproach, by the anticipating of the one
or the other, according to what we do under the circulmstances.. Conscience is said to be the reason acting morally;
but it is this only properly for ourselves, and on a real occasion for action, and the term  is n6t properly applied to
general moral judgment on occasion of action of others, or




168        ON CONSCIENCE AND HIONOUR.
action merely suggesting itself to our imagination. INo:doubt,
with'certain qualifications to be mentioned, the judgments of
these.two. are likely to be in harmony, and it is by the
education of the moral judgment that the conscience is to be
made what it should be: but the extension in this manner
of the word conscience has produced many practical incon-veniences, which we shall see.
Sympathy   In regard of all the forms of introversion of thought, or
enters into
our idea of reflexion, it is a matter of interest and importance to ascertruth, both tain how far there enters in sympathy with the imagined
intellectual  judgments of others.
As to this, it is first to be considered what is the meaning
in any case of our judgments being supposed to be independent of the presumed.judgments of others; and next what
is the real nature of shamne.
Intellectually, the presumed accordance of our judgment
with that of others is one of the two great canons of conviction, or feeling of truth, the other being that the judgment is
what we can certainly act upon, with expectation of such
and such results. One definition of truth which we instinctively give to ourselves is, that it is the common thought and
conviction of rational beings: or in other words, a part of the
definition of truth is, that what is true for one intellect is
true for another. Reason removes us from a region of. particular and wilful thought into one in which the thought.
belongs no longer to us alone, but to united intelligence.
This is in some respects what is meant when we are told of
the submission and bowing down of the'intellect to nature
and to fact, the giving up the idols of individuality, and the
yielding ourselves to truth. In this respect, the advance of
knowledge in the individual is his entering more and more
into the commonwealth of rational beings: it is intellectually
an unselfing, a gradual passage from thoughts, distinct, separate, and individual, to thoughts more than sympathetic,
really common and identical. The true is something fixed
and limited independently of us, and in entering upon it
we quit oufr own will,. as we are aware that others do also;
their wills otherwise being individually various. In their
common judgment, therefore, we take them as not speaking from themselves, but from the truth independent of
them.




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.               169
We must thus bear in mind, that in regard of truth of
any kind, obne part of'the conviction of it in ourselves consists in our supposition that others, though they may not
perhaps think as we do (for they very likely do not know the
circumstances, or may be mistaken), yet still judge in a manner which would inevitably make them think so, if they knew
what we know, and were in the same position as we are.
All certainty is thus fortified in our minds by the imagined
sympathy of others in our thoughts, and it may be questioned whether without this support we could individually
maintain it.
Whether we care much, or do not, for the particular
opinions of those whom we are actually concerned with, depends very much upon our particular disposition: but supposing we maintain in our minds our own opinion against
theirs, the question whether we maintain it as true, or simply
as ours, depends very much upon how far in our imagination
we appeal from their judgment to a more general and higher
judgment, If we feel that our judgmenit is true, we feel that
we cannot be alone in holding it, but that we are in sympathy
with universal reason.
Imagination therefore of the judgment of others is more and
or less a necessary part of the judgment of ourselves, so far moral.
as we conceive this judgment of ourselves to be sincere and
true. And the growth of conscience, and of our observation
of the consequences, and therefore of the character of actions,
is accompanied from the first b) a growth also of thought of
the opinion of others.
The first and readiest form of judgment of ourselves and The simidea of others' judgment of us is in reference to the com-plestform
of regard
parison of us with others, as to one form or another of merit, for other
excellence, and superiority.                            person
In regard to this, it is important for us to remember that refers to
though we may fix independently What are the proper points oumer own
of human excellence and merit, the ro /caXov, the honestum,
yet that which measures it, and gives it. in one respect its
special character, is the fact of one man's excelling or being
superior to others. And as the morality of feeling is in danger of erring on the side of weakness, the morality. of justice
on. that of over-exactness and yet insufficiency, and the
morality of reason on that of selfishness, so the morality of




170    - ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
freedom and.honour is in danger of erring on the side of
rivalry, comparison, and pride.''
The number of words expressing modifications of feeling
connected with out judgment of ourselves, and our thoughts
of others' judgment of us,.in reference to our possession of
supposed points of excellence or superiority, and our doing
things generally well or ill, is.in all languages very large.
There is also: much complication in regard to the degree
of truth in the judgment, the mixture of judgment of oneself with regard for the judgment of others, the sort of bearing and action which the judgment -leads to, and much
besides.
Aid& s is   The first feeling of this kind which I will mention is the
the natural feeling general one of a8co6s, or regard, respect, reverence for opinion
connected and custom and the judgment of others. Aristotle makes
with such
regard for this regard for others''feeling a sort of fear,. comparing it
the opin- with actual fear or O6/3os. This: moral or imaginative fear
others.  is a real passion, attended with the bodily. ar-aOo9 of blushing,
in the same manner as actual fear is attended with paleness, shivering, and its other accompaniments.  We might
make a scheme of ai8&o0, similar to that which might be made
as to actual fear, qb6oib, and fix the proper place between
impudence and bashfulness for the virtue of moral courage,
as we should between rashness and -cowardice for the virtue
of simple or actual courage. Aristotle is rather disposed to
place the mean, as with actual fear, nearer the side of boldness, answering to; what we should call moral courage; but
we shall probably consider that there is at any rate another
virtue nearer the other extreme, which we should call
modesty. This it is which is also'j or ao-zSvvni, as a good
quality. There is not however much resemblance between
the two kinds of fear, so to call them, between the Latin
vereri and metuere.  They'have in common something of the
nature of restraint, but not much besides.
It belongs    Ai&/8,. as shame, is, in one shape or another, an instinctive
esPeialy feeling of the growing intelligence.  It is evidently a feeling
answering to and fitted for a state of understood comparative
ignorance in the presence of others supposed to be wise and
experienced: it is the graceful awkwardness of expanding and
inexperienced intelligence and feeling, corresponding to the
same facts as we see them in the external frame. The eyes




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.                17.1
and the judgnment of those supposed superior and wiser are
thus naturally shrunk from, and, iln default of knowledge as
yet unformed, opinion and custom  are, may be foolishly,
reverenced: the' fact of this being so is one of the main
sources of the ductility and docility of man's mind. There
can be in the youth but little intelligent self-confidence, for
he is but little tried and known even to himself: and in the
absence of it, he is eminently the creature of association or
companionship, and of respect. The first is the habitual
modifier of his mind, the general stiffener of it in its pliability: the second, the'ingenuus pudor' of- the Latins, is
what indeed large classes of society are almost compelled by
their circumstances to grow up without, but the loss of which
can probably never be made up to them.
This ai'8ds, or respect for the feeling of others, is a complicated sentiment, for there is in it both a feeling of' its
reasonableness and of the real superiority of -others, and also
more or less, and that, growing, a feeling on the part of the
youth of an independent judgment of- his own, partly in
harmony with, partly protesting against, what he.considers
others to think. - Except that,'as I have said before, so far as.
he does protest against it, and believes he is right in doing
so, he of necessity believes that he has wiser others.on his
side.
Conscience differs from  this acl3U, or respect for the Points in
feeling of others, in so far as (1) it is full and felt self-judg- whilhconment, however in harmony with the supposed judgment of differs
others, and however this judgment of- others may have gone.fr~m'asi'
to form it:: (2) it is concerned. not with the comparison of
ourselves with others (whether or not the thought of others
may have suggested this feeling), but with things which are
considered to have their reason in themselves, to be binding:
and it is accompanied thus not simply with fear of others'
judgment, but with'actual fear of results and consequences:
and (3) it is connected, by. feeling' and sympathy, with the.
judgment of us by a person. in a peculiar circumstance as
regards us, viz. in some way or other injured by us.
Conscience appears in the' very first beginning of intelligence in the last of these three' ingredients, and- gradually forms itself in regard of the- other two: in regard
of (1) chiefly throfigh means of the aiSi above mentioned:




172        ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
which in this respect goes to generate a habit of mind
beyond and above itself: in regard of (2) conscience gradually
forms itself from the habit of exercising the reason and judgment and of observing mutual rights and claims, which the
experience of life, bringing one into all sorts of relations and
collisions, will suggest.
The third  feeling  here  by which  I have supposed
conscience to differ from shame or al80;,% is one however which
in a certain degree may be said to belong to them as well as
to it: whlere this is so, alc.cs is not much short of general
moral sentiment. A.ti&a  and Bl1,V in this point of view are
not far from representing. subjective and objective, free and
definite; morality.  Ai&oSJ as used by the Greeks was made
to comprehend more or less all the. elements of conscience:
it was in fact the feeling of relative duty, a feeling of special
regard for each person according to his circumstances; regard
as such for the unfortunate, for those who have benefited us,
for elders and superiors. It had also a very strong religious
reference, and in this way came to possess'in a certain
degree the ideas of definiteness of obligation and fear of
punishment, which more properly attach to conscience. But
the general fact which. it represents and which the Latin
pudor, our'ingenuous shame,' does not go beyond, falls short
of conscience in the main by the three particulars above
mentioned.
Conscience then involves (besides a regard for opinion or
reputation) self-attention or self-examination, attention to
the fact of duty or rightness, and sympathy. The more
developed conscience is, the more do these three latter tend
to supersede the former, upon which they may very possibly
have been in point of fact actually built.
The education of conscience involves accordingly the right
management of consciousness, a good eye, judgment and
knowledge as to actual duty, and the cultivation of feeling
and sympathy.
Feelings.  I have mentioned that the number of words expressing
connected
withali.  modifications of feelings of self-estimation &c. is in all
languages very large.  Those expressing modifications of
feelings of conscientious self-judgment are by no means so
numerous.. The former are more conspicuous in their action,
and are in practice more powerful movers of human affairs;




ON. CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.               173
the latter, though there is really a great variety of them, are
more inward and individual.'The general principle of. action which is concerned with
ad860', self-estimation or regard for opinion, is what we
generally call'honour.' The character formed upon it is
noble and generous.. The feeling in the mind corresponding
to the distinction of actions into honourable. and.otherwise is
highmindedness' or self-respect,,u/eyaoXo'vxia.
I have mentioned that one great complication of feelings How comof this kind arises from the different manner in which self- plicated:
pride andcl
judgment, and thought of the judgment of us by others, come vanity.
to be mixed. Another complication related to this arises
from the comparative strength or weakness of the character
in -which the feeling is. According to the disposition, the.
feeling of'self-respect and care for honour has more in it of
the feeling of value for credit and reputation, or of the
feeling of value for self-approval and self-congratulation..
Where the feeling of self-respect becomes vicious, either by
being excessive as regards other feelings, or by being too
much a matter of thought and attention, such misdevelopement takes the form of pride and vanity.* The distinction
between them cannot be very accurately drawn, but in a
general way we mean by the former word the feeling as it is
self-dependent, self-satisfied, to a certain degree unsocial,
connected with a strong will and a strong nature; and, by
the latter, the feeling as it leans, more or less, either imaginatively or in fact, on others, and is connected thus with a
nature more sdcial probably, but less distinctive and individual
than the other. A  special complication arises in case of
disappointment, when we sometimes find regard for others'
opinion disguising itself under the form of the most frantic
opposition and contempt.
Other' forms of abuse of the feeling of self-esteem have Self-confirelation to future action, and are of the nature of self-con- dence and
fidence. This may be actual-or moral, may have relation
i. e. to 0%/3oS or at6&o: in the former case it is presumptuousness and  rashness: in the latter, impudence, insolence,
arrogance, haughtiness, according to the circumstances of its
exercise.
High-mindedness or self-respect is, as the'words imply,
right self-esteem, but it does not follow that the estimation




l 724        ON CONSCJL ENCE AND HONOUR.
of self which it involves is actually a high one.  Where it is.not, and yet the feeling exists, there is what we commonly
call modesty.
Hufmility,    Humility is a simple low estimation of one's self; it is
modesty considered independently of the feeling  of selfrespect.  When practically thought of, it is mostly looked
upon in a negative light, and considered as the absence of,
or opposite to, pride.
In reference to future action, modesty and humility are
closely akin to diffidence and self-distrust, qualities which
though attractive for -association are on the whole disadvantageous for action. Aristotle, in his practical view, and with
the feeling of a Greek, which-certainly in these respects differed  much  from  ours at present, depreciates all these
qualities.  His /ucgpoqlrvXla is little other than the Christian
humility.
Three fea-    As the principle of honour rests mainly upon the comparitures of
honour;. son of man with man, and the idea of excellence and supefreedom, riority, the fact of individuality is brought out very strongly.
distinction,    by it; and with this there are three feelings associated, those
genuine-  of freedom, of distinction, and of genuineness or truth.
Freedom  is shown in regard of it; sometimes not in a
good way, by wilfulness and caprice, but most chiefly by the
readiness and willingness to give and to sacrifice; which is
called, according to the greater or less intimateness of the
things it is concerned with, munificence, liberality, generosity,
devotion, self-sacrifice, &c..
Distinction is the basis of the desire of fame and glory.
The idea of it gives to mail's individuality a value in his own
eyes, which may have a bad effect on his character.. The
feeling is associated more or less with the thought of. the
feelings of others about him, in a manner to which applies
what has been said'about pride and vanity.
Genuineness, or truth, of course lies at' the root of all
real feeling of honour. In the cases, not perhaps unfreqtuent,
where the man knows that the self of him which others
honour or think highly of is something quite different from
his actual self, as he knows it, there is om real self-estimation
at all: he is simply playing a part; and his own estimation of
himself, whatever it may be, is something quite independent
of -others' estimate of this his mask.




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.:175
There is very much needed in morals a word corre- Abuses of
honour.
sponding to the inelegant but useful word'selfish,' to express
the temper of mind which leads to a man's actions being.
much under the guidance of a strong self-judgm.ent and selfopinidn, when this is of a nature rather concerned with
honour than with obligation and conscience. For it is
obvious that honourable action shades off into the wrong
(just as prudence, or proper self-care, shades off into selfishness), in a direction which, according to the circumstances and the character,-we should call -that of pride,
wilfulness, harshness, or various other like terms: there is
then a self-assertion. which is wrong, in whatever way, and in
whatever degree. I should like to call this by the name of
self liness.
I mentioned above that one difference between the feeling Further
of at6alS and conscience was the fact that the latter had in it examinamore of distinct self-judgment. But in a strong, noble and distinction
well-bred nature, honour is as much an individual- feeling, betwonscence
as real self-conviction, as little fluctuatin-g with the partial and honjudgment of others, as conscience can be. Each of them in our:
this way is a genuine and individual sensitiveness which,
being, as such, discriminating, we may call a sense, if we like.
it. Only they are neither of them -native, except as regards
certain rudimentary principles: it is from association, instruction, and habit, that they have grown to discriminate in
the way they do: they are the sense of many worked by
these into the one.
The great and important distinction between conscience in regard
and the principle of honour as a guide to action lies in the to theirty
greater definiteness of the former, owing to its association
with actual law, with definite rights and duties. Conscience
is a continual inward voice to us, telling us that we are not
free. How, as a matter of fact, this feeling of obligation in.us may take its origin, is what I am not at present concerned.
with: we may suppose it a matte.r of education, of our being
brought up under discipline and government, constantly told
that we ought to do this and ought not to do that, &c.. This
may be so, and. then the feeling of'ought' and'ought not'
might become naturalized and self-fixed in the mind, just as
regard'for the judgment of others may gradually change into
an habitual judgment of ourselves. Conscience grows, none




— 76         ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
can doubt, and is not natural and authoritative in the sense
of being from the first complete and mature. What there is
natural in it arises from its representing, without instruction,
the great principles of our nature, which must exist alike in
all, and from  its growing with instruction.  Its authority
arises from  its being our moral mind made what it is by
reason; from its being the voice of reason in us. It possesses
authority, not as conscience but as reason. It is not our
feeling it, but our understanding it as an expression to us of
reality independent of us, which makes it our duty to obey it.
in regard   The relations of the principles of honour and of conscience
to the idea
of punish- to the idea of punishment are altogether different. With the
ment.   former the idea does not enter in. There is an impulse to
do the right act: if it is not done, th6 punishment lies in the
fact of its not being done; not in any feeling of grief that it
has not been done, though there may be such; for this is felt
and understood as nothing like punishment; in fact, punishment is in one way or another reparation, and on the
principle of honour what is done wrong is understood as once
for all, and irreparable. Punishment, were it possible, would
be} desired.
Conscience, starting from solider and lower ground, supplies simpler and more generally acting motives, and is
enabled thus practically to act in many cases where the other
would vanish and fail. The being not our own masters, but
being under obligation, supposes punishment, and the fact of
punishment recognizes the existence of fear. Instead of the
vague feeling of degradation resulting from offence, conscience supplies a distinct feeling of demerit, guiltiness, and
consequent fear. Our education and life under law among
men has made us feel that the same is likely to be our position in the great commonwealth of reasonable beings.
Three cha-   Conscience is the moral mind, a part of the sentiment or
racteris-  feeling of the mind as to action and life in general, but disties of conscienep  tinguished from the rest of this (1) by being limited in the
considered
as the eo- range of actions which it concerns, viz. those of which it can
ral mind. be said that they are right or wrong; (2) by being very precise and definite in its judgments upon them, and having
reason to go upon in them; and (3) by leaving in the mind,
in cases where it is not attended to,.a sense'of guilt and
indebtedness, and of something deserved and coming.




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.                 177
Conscience is formed and grows like all the rest of the
u:::i:ual sentiment and feeling of which it forms a part,
-\:-::i that owing  to  its connexion with reason, more
iii~;.:instruction and more definite inoculation of prin<-1  ~ arie ossible with regard to it than with regard to the
re:;..':;:';-,; i: —<e, as it is felt, is susceptible of many of those As a feelvarie;"-i  -:-.~'  manner of it which have been described in ing, it is
refere:.:: t::-.,.:;eral self-estimation.  Though the substance differeit
of it mu;|i: >, -; i-,irong feeling of personal self-judgment, yet idualsv
this, acco::,i >-i.;.; -"he temper, will be accompanied with more
or less of:ii-l:. f, and fear of, the judgment of others.
Independent:;'f the conscientious faithfulness as to
self-judgment         ul  liar cases, there will be as to habitual
action more of! i:1 adence and boldness, or more of fearfulness and self-:,1strust, according to the individual temper.
A good conscience may sometimes be an anxious and depressed one: the stings of one not so good may be accompanied with much of sanguineness and hopefulness.  And in
the same way there is much variety in the amount of
brooding and self-attention which conscience gives rise to.
Conscience, viewed as the,moral mind, is not only the Conscimoral judgment for action to be, but it is the moral memory enreais
and experience as to action which has been.  This is indeed judgment,
true of mind in general: it is a record of the past, and a but it is
more espower for the future. It is by experience and teaching that pecially
we learn in everything: and our moral judgment or faculty moral menow is what it is in consequence of what it has gone through
in conjunction with what has been taught it. This idea of
the moral experience is the original one, in respect to morals,
of the term conscience. It is in this sense that we speak of
a good, and a guilty or bad conscience,;or of conscience being
purged. On the other hand, when we speak of its being informed and enlightened, we mean by it the moral judgment.
One point in which conscience, as the moral mind, differs
from simple intellect, is that what its experience tells of lives
for it in quite a different way from that in which the experience of the intellect can be said to live for it.  To a
certain degree the way in which we have arrived at our
knowledge, lives in our mind still, but only to a certain
degree: forgetfulness is as necessary for knowledge as reG.                                            12




178         ON CONSCIENCE. AND HONOUR.
membrance: if we had always to preserve in our mind all
the abortive guesses and mistaken observations we have
made, we could have no systematic knowledge at all.  But
the moral experience is a record of actions which have their
reality and their value, —i. e. their merit and demerit,-independently of the result which in the mind they have led to.
Our intellectual history has no significance except as to this
result: our moral history has concerned others as well as ourselves, and has been right or wrong, meritorious or guilty
towards them; this is a real fact of which our experience is
the impression.
The content then of conscience, in this view of it, is our
own moral history: on the other view of it, what it contains
is a view of life and of our proper action, the result of observation and instruction: it is the producing of this which is
the informing the conscience. The moral law is an impression or transcript of life as it should be: and our moral mind,
inward moral view, or conscience, should be an impression or
transcript of this moral law. It is in this sense that conscience is our law, a law to us. Its authority over us is
not derived from  our feeling it, but from  its being to us the
outward authoritative law, the way in which this comes to
us. The informing the conscience is really only instructing
the mind in the actual outward law.
The sonse'Moral action, as perfect, is the acting (1) for good ends,
of honour
is a deve- (2) by good rules, and (3) with good feelings,-or, intelligent,
lopment of orderly, unconstrained.
the sense
ofhfreedom,   The freedom of action which is involved in (1) and (3)
which is  is as necessary to make action moral, as the control which is
an element
in perfect involved in (2).
moral ac-    The feeling of honour, or honourableness, is a strong
tion.    development of the feeling of freedom, balanced by a strong
consideration for the imagined opinion of others, when our
own sympathizes with and justifies it.
It answers   Honour, as a feeling, is the reactionary feeling to trust or
to trust,
and is felt confidence, placed, or imagined to be placed, in us, by others.
as pain  It is the accepting the fact of others making us a law to ourat the
thoughtof selves, when they might impose law upon us, and the detertrust de- mination to justify the confidence thus shown.
ceived.
The quotation from MS. b commences here.




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.                179
The pangs of the conscience, so to call it, of honour, are
only dne part of the pangs of conscience in general. The
imagination paints, and the reason justifies, the feeling of
disappointment and contempt with which those who trust us
would look upon us, if they knew we had done what, in such
a case, we are ourselves conscious of having done.
The root of all society is communication of feeling and
knowledge, and upon this communication rests all sympathy
and all personal feeling. These all therefore involve trust,
and wherever there is trust, there is a possibility of deceit;
there is no power to prevent the party trusted from taking
advantage of the other.
In all these cases therefore the feeling of honour comes in
with the freedom above spoken of, and acts (as described)
through the imaginative consciousness. The first and main
thing thus that honour is concerned with is deceit. The
great organ of communication is of course language, and the
typical or most marked form of deceit is verbal falsehood.
The hearer trusts the speaker; and, so far as the particular
communication is concerned, is in the speaker's power.  This
power to deceive makes the dishonourableness of deceiving
felt so strongly in minds capable of such feeling, that the
consciousness of falsehood, even in cases where it might appear
justifiable or right, is almost unbearable.
The feeling of moral fear, shame (at'&so, pudor), or con- Shame is
the fear of
sciousness, exists in reference to the simple estimation of us others' esby others, independent of any consequences of that estimation. timate.
I call it moral fear, but it is also a corporeal passion, no less
than physical or actual fear, producing blushing, as the other
produces paleness. This is noted by Aristotle1: where consciousness (so to call it) produces paleness, it has mixed with
it actual fear, or fear of consequences. This moral fear is
concerned (besides the exercise of our freedom above
mentioned) principally with two other sets of circumstances.
These are:                                                It is as(1)  Certain corporeal feelings and animal instincts, with sociated
with cerwhich it is associated physically, i.e. by nature arbitrarily, tain bodily
as it would appear, and  independently of reason.  The instincts
and with
tendency to this instinctive shame or concealment we see the conin many animals which approach the rank of man,           sciousness
of moral
1 Eth. N. IV. 9. 1.                  weakness.
12- 2




180         ON CONSCIENCE AIND HONOUR.
(2) Circumstances of moral weakness and self-indulgence,
arising from want of self-control and of higher purpose. To
a certain extent, what has been said above about truth may
be brought under this, the keeping of our word being viewed
as strength of mind in contrast with the weakness of yielding
to the temptation of breaking it.
Reason for   We may suppose the feeling of shame associated in the
its associa-                      fei
tionwith manner in which it is by nature with certain particular
bodily in- animal instincts, for the purpose of giving the reason, or
stincts.
moral power, a special or additional hold over them, which is
needed on account of some of them being far stronger than
any other instincts of nature. And generally the feeling of
honour or shame or moral fear, may be said to attach itself
to the exercise of reason and the less self-regarding feelings,
so as to enable them to prevail over indulgence and the more
self-regarding feelings.
There are three distinct points of view from which men
judge of themselves and their actions: viz. (1) as to their
prudence, (2) as to their justice and benevolence (or rightness
in general), and (3) as to their honourableness.
Three       Corresponding to this we have three cardinal genera of
kinds of cvice  viz.  (1)  Vices of selfishness, or selfish prudence.
conscience
corre-   (2) Vices of weakness, or self-indulgence.  (3) Vices of
sponding pride or false honour. And similarly three kinds of conscious,
to three
genera  rational, controlled or deliberate action, all of which tend to
of vice.  restrain the self-indulgent or impulsive parts of nature; three
forms, we may say, of conscience:
(1) the prudential conscience, or judgment of our actions as affecting our own permanent welfare:
(2) the mnoral conscience, or judgment of our actions as
affecting the welfare of others, of the public, of mankind, and
as judged of by any power or authority which may have that
welfare for its care:
(3) the conscience of honour, or judgment of our actions
as bearing a character in our own eyes and in those of
others.
All these different kinds of inward judgment, involve in
their character of judgments or reviews of action, a difference
or supremacy of nature above human facts or principles
which lead more directly to action, and which are the objects




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOTR.                18 1
of the judgment. Butler's idea of the rightful supremacy of
conscience applies to all of these.
The special prerogative of (2) the moral conscience is Groundof
the suthat it has an authority over the two other forms ofiperior
conscience, as well as in common with them  over the authority
of the
impulses.  It has this, because it represents our position moal conmore truly than either of them do. It may come into error science.
through misinformation, or through misplaced action: but in
the other two there is very likely to be, though there need
not be, an error involved from the beginning. In (1) the
error, that we are, as regards the entirety of our action, all
to ourselves, with no one else to consider, as if there was no
one else in the world. In (3) the error, that we are really
free, with no law over us or duty incumbent upon us, so
that what we do right we do simply because we choose it,
that there is a merit therefore in it, which is represented
and measured by our opinion of ourselves, and by the
imagined opinion of us in others. On the other head (2)
suggests to us against (1) purposes for action beyond ourselves, and against (3) the fact of right action being incumbent upon us, not merely done because we like to do it. It
is evident, that (2) in this case approaches much more
nearly to (3) than it does to (1): in a good many cases there
being no difference in regard of the action, whether it is
suggested by (2) or (3), only in the feelings accompanying it.
But this difference of feeling in some cases, where the action
is the same, will lead to a difference of actions in other cases.
All the forms of conscience, so to call it, are very much How the
associated with imagination.  In respect of (1), the imagina- imagination generalizes from the particular desires an ideal unity of into each
happiness, which it more or less looks forward to and dwells kind of
conscion. In the same way also it expands the personal feeling, ence.
or creates an enlarged personality, and makes us feel, as a
part of ourselves, all that investiture of property, family, &c.
which we consider and call ozurs.
In the same manner, in respect of (3) the imagination
converts our feeling of personality into a reflexly conceived
character, which we look at, but look at, so to speak, with the
eyes of others, bringing to bear thus upon it a general judgment. The actual character which we bear in the individual
minds of others we have seldom means of knowing; but be



182         ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
tween this and our imaginative judgment there lies generally
the common character which we bear in the world, so far as
we form a subject of interest or conversation to others. This,
our good name, so far as it is one, is recognized by the law
usually as a sort of property, which no one has any business
wantonly to injure.
In respect of (2), the imagination idealizes the happiness
of others, and gives us by sympathy an interest in it as ours,
in many respects in a similar manner, though with different
objects, from the way in which it acts as to (1): while as
compared with (3) it idealizes our character and the merits
of our action as seen by impartial judgment, with this difference, that the judgment is one conveying with it the idea
of authority, and consequently of possible future penalty.
There are actual facts corresponding to all these imaginations, though what the exact facts are we cannot readily
determine, and the imagination gives to them, in many
respects, their dress and colour.
Influence    All the forms of self-judgment are very much associated
oaf sdtoam with customn; and, what is to a certain degree the same thing,
tion on  they are all, as to their particular form, generated by life and
eonei   action, and are susceptible thus of education and training.
In regard of prudence, foresight, and value for property,
this is most evident: it is the tone of society which nourishes
it so far as it exists, and very great pains are often taken by
educators to produce it.
The conscience, or sensibility, of honour is stimulated and
cherished in some societies very much as that of prudence in
others: great pains are taken to instil and guide it, and
to nourish a value for reputation and glory for their own
sakes.
The moral conscience is, in the manner of its generation,
training, and nourishment, very similar to these others; differing from them in its roots lying deeper and its being in consequence more really universal, in its being higher than the
one, and less capricious than the other.
The moral   In its perfect state, it may be defined as a habitual, though
conscience not necessarily explicit, accompaniment of action, of the
combines
sensibility nature of a sensibility to the character of the action as good
and rea-  or bad, right or wrong, the mind being always ready, in the
event of the action being perceived to be one of them, or




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.                 183
rather and specially, in the event of its being perceived to be
otherwise than right, to give some reason to itself why it is
so. It is thus not proper to call it a moral sense, inasmuch
as it is mixed with reason, and, like everything which has to
do with reason, is the result of growth and development, and
may possibly be erroneous and tell false. On the other hand,
it is, as existing and developed, a sensibility, not a simple
operation of reason.  The questioning of every action in
detail by reason in the course of the doing of it, would produce, even if well meant, a sort of calculated action very
different from moral action as it is actually done.
There are thus two circumstances or conditions of moral Different
conscience; (1) consciential sensibility, or an habitual atten- kinds of
consciention to, and care for, the rightness of our actions: (2) conscien- tious sential deliberation, or the consideration, as to a particular action sibility.
or habit, whether it is right or wrong, with reason rendered
to ourselves. We call a man conscientious in whom the sensibility is strong, and scrupulous in whom it is too much so.
There are, however, two steps in the process, and therefore
two elements in the sensibility: there is the anxiety to
be sure of what is right, and the determination when known
to do it. It will frequently happen that the one of these
elements of conscience is more strongly developed than the
other: thus, a man's scrupulousness as to being sure of what is
right may prevent action altogether, even in cases where' it is
quite certain that, whatever may be right, to do nothing is
wrong.- Or conversely, a man's scrupulous determination to
act according to his conscience may be of such a nature as to
preclude any misgiving as to the possibility of his not being
right in his judgment.
Again, consciential deliberation may be of two kinds; Different
(1) as to the rightness or wrongness of a sort of actions, or kinds.of
conscienhabit, the fixing, in this respect, a general rule or principle: tious deand (2) as to the rightness or wrongness of a particularliberation.
action arising out of a conjuncture, or (which is the same
thing) how, in such particular conjuncture, we may or ought
to act. This latter part is more especially casuistry.
Consciential deliberation again goes in what we may call
two steps; the first, answering to that idea of the inward process which gives rise to the word conscience, is the consideration how the common judgment of men would view the




184        ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
matter, or, which is the same thing, what we ourselves
should think of the action if we saw it done by another.
The second and more important, answering to the idea of the
inward process as being practical reason, is the consideration
of the fact upon which this common judgment must be supposed to rest, i.e. whether there is anything to enable us to
conclude as to the will of God in regard of the action, and
otherwise, whether it is natural, fair, kind, and honourable.
For conscience, when we speak of it as the moral guide of
action, or as what we should act according to, is the law of
right and wrong as it exists in our minds, or as it is bona fide
understood by us. But no true conscience can exist (though
many of the good effects of it may) without the idea on our
part of there being an eternal law, or absolute right and
wrong, and of its requiring effort also on our part to know
and understand it. A part of true conscience is of necessity
consciousness of our having done our best to know the right.
The law of right and wrong, as objective and real, is
independent of us, and may be digested into rules, and
observed in this form as a matter of fact, from whatever
motive, without the intervention of any consciential perception of it. But in order to be applicable to the various
circumstances of life, it needs to be, and as a matter of
fact it is, worked into the mind by experience and training,
in such a manner as to become, what it has been called
above, a sensibility, of which account can be given, when
called for, by reason, or a habit, habitus, 3Ls', of the mind,.still with the same provision as to reason.
It is not simply a habit in the sense of custom, nor can it
by training be made to take any form indifferently, because
experience goes to it as well as training. It is a gradual
generalization of the good feelings, noted as good by reason,
into one indistinct mental idea of right and good, accompanied with a perception also, more or less vivid, of the
fact, that there are reasons in the reality of things why they
are good or should be done, and that the general feeling of
men goes with us in considering them good. The practical
conscience or moral self-judgment contains in it thus the
elements of natural feeling, of custom, of reason, and of
sympathy.




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.              185'A feeling in its substance similar to what we call con- Sound and
scientiousness spreads from it in the direction of religion into cunsiouns
a desire of pleasing God (to use religious language), and com- ness.
mending ourselves to His judgment, and, in the direction of
common worldly action, into what is called honourableness of
feeling or conduct; we use the term conscience in regard of
the most definite obligation and what is most exhibitable in
~law, but the feeling of general honourableness is quite as real
as that of conscientiousness, and quite as necessary to take
note of in morals. The definite judgment of ourselves which we
call conscience, is contained in a sort of general atmosphere
of what it is hard to describe in words, self-attention, selfrespect, self-maintenance, value not for our own good name
with men, but for our character with our own secret selves.
There is an imagined sympathy with others, an imagination?. e. of their opinion about us, on the supposition of their
knowing about us what we know, not of their opinion about
us knowing what they do; rather, if it is true conscience and
self-respect, it stoutly maintains its independence against
this. Unhealthy consciousness is the uneasy consideration
of what people with their half knowledge and imperfect judgments are thinking about us: sound consciousness and honourableness is an assertion to ourselves of our independent
judgment of ourselves, with the. feeling that this judgment is
in sympathy with the substantial moral standard or judgment of others, though the actual exercise of this moral
judgment by them  in our case may, from their defective
knowledge of the facts, be very wrong. Conscientiousness
and honourableness often involve therefore much of imagination, i.e. imagination comes in aid of the maintenance of the
independence of our own judgment against the actual judgments of others, by helping us to rise from these to sympathy
with the true moral feeling of others, of which these judgments may very likely be mistaken: exercises.
It has often been observed that honour has constituted, Honour
with those who have made much of it, a sort of religion. may be a
kind of reThe meaning of this is, that the lofty ideal standard of ho- ligion.
nourable character, according to which the disciples of honour
have, often with much self-sacrifice, tried to maintain their
conduct, and in regard to which they have always felt sure of
1 The quotation from MS. G commences here.




186        ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
the true sympathy of mankind, has been to them very much
what the religious man finds in the glorious aim which he
proposes to himself, of carrying out what he believes to be
the will of God, of the reference of himself to the divine
judgment, of the struggle towards a moral ideal, which is as
it were a shadow of the divine perfection. In both, the
resistance to unworthy gratification and the maintenance of
independence against weak and unworthy compliance are
fundamental.
Indepen-   This independence of the moral judgment and the
dence essentialeto volition consequent on it, with the constant feeling however
honour  that it is in real sympathy with the truest and deepest feelsid Oice  ings of mankind, is an essential part of moral action: it
belongs to what is called its freedom. The assertion of the
individual will is a part of the morality both of action and of
judgment. " I am at liberty, so far as any force is concerned,
not to do this honourable action, many people would not:
many people even would not think it honourable, that is,
would not enter into the idea what'honourable' means:
but I will do it because I feel it would be honourable, and I
am quite sure that in my doing so all those whom I should
wish to sympathize with me, all the best part of mankind,
would, if they knew what I do, sympathize."
Honour     On freedom I will not say more now; but one word about
and con- conscience and honour as mistaken. This is what they may
science
may both both be,. one really almost as much as the other; and there is
akemn.  one special respect in which they are both liable to be so.
Independence, self-assertion as we may call it, is, as I have
said, a special part of each of them: the peculiar province of
both of them lies out of the region of actual law, with its
sanctions and penalties: they may each of them become, and
sometimes have become, the watchword of a particular understanding, and sympathy among a particular set of people,
which understanding may be moral and in accordance with
actual human law, but may be the reverse. In these cases as
in all, conscience is indeed the better of the two; but there
is a considerable degree of resemblance in the results. Paley
has given a sort of satirical description of the law of honour,
by which he means a certain understanding among fashionable people, leading them to a course of conduct quite different from that to which morality or actual law would lead




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.              187
them: it is an understanding involving mutual confidence,
and amounting to a law having for its sanction honour and
nothing else, the essence of such honour, as I have said, being
independence and freedom. It is, as he describes it, a bad
understanding, but there is no reason why an understanding
among men with honour for its sanction should be bad, and
many such particular understandings are good. If you look
at many books, which in some degree perhaps now, but more
especially two centuries ago, ridiculed some forms of religion
where the word' conscience' was much in use, you will find
acting according to the law of conscience satirized very much
in the way in which Paley satirized acting by that of honour:
some parts of Hudibras you may take for an example. Mistaken conscience may be supposed to establish a separate
code among those who understand the same thing by it, and
this possibly in some points immoral, just in the same way
as mistaken honour may.'Consciousness or conscience, in its most general and Conwidest present sense, is self-dividedness or self-doubleness.  sienlcO
self-comThe origin of the word is primarily from its moral point plicity.
of view, and its first meaning is self-complicity or self-accompliceship, of evil in the first instance, but possibly also of
good.
The reason of this prominence of the idea of evil seems
threefold: (1) that failing in obligation is both more common
and more important to others than merit, or the exceeding of
obligation.; (2) that fear, with which the sense of self-condemnation is likely to be connected, makes a deeper impression, and dwells in the mind more than hope, with which
merit would be connected, (3) that complicity, as a thing
between two people, is in a sense a secret held against others,
while association in good is more likely to be a public and
unconcealed matter, not a subject for conscientic between
the two.
The relation of conscience to memory is two-fold, accord- Relation
ing as we are considering the nature of the mind itself, or the of coning as we re considering the nature of theminditsscience to
nature of knowledge.                                   memory.
The mind is a qualitied unity, the pattern or origin of
unities. Qua qualified, we may consider it as quasi-extended,
1 The quotation from MS. Q commences here.




188         ON CONSCIENCE AND  HONOUR.
having  contemporaneous variety, several different things
existing at one time, and making up one whole: but qua
unity, which is the truest view of it, its variety is in time
only, it has no extended or contemporaneous variety. In
this point of view, instead of being made up of many parts or
faculties, it is one thing passing through a succession of
states.
Every act    The word'reflexion' supposes as to its dicanoematisml
Of intro-  that the natural or direct action of the mind is from  within
spection
involves  outwards, and that this operation is susceptible of being
memory. reverted, and the contrary process performed. Of course this,
as in fact the word retro or re itself, implies time as well as
space, and reflexion will mean a turning back in point of
time as well as a turning backward in space. But if we
translate the consideration of the mind from spatial to
temporal language, and convert compositeness into successionalism, every act of reflexion is seen to be an act of memory.
The very idea of personality is in this way closely involved with memory, so closely that some philosophers have
entirely absorbed the former in the latter.
In self-    Self-observation or introspection is thus memory in a
conscious- sense in which direct outward observation is not; but being
noess
proper   thus memory as observation, it is still more memory as knowthere is a ledge.
double exercise of   Action is not of itself conscious or self-conscious, nor is
memory. outward observation; where consciousness exists, it is something superadded, and there are two thoughts in the mind,
one backward, the other forward. Actional or direct thought
is objective and unconscious, simply regardful of its object or
end: so also subjectivity in itself is unconscious: consciousness arises when the subject i, objectified as knowledge; nor
does even this in all cases give rise to that which we properly
call consciousness.  There is, for instance, the common process of unconscious thinking about one's self; in which we
1 The Author was in the habit of using the term no'm to denote
the word as thought, in distinction to phone, the word as spoken:
noematism he employed more generally as equivalent to'meaning,'
and dianoematism was the term by which he expressed the original
metaphor involved in all abstract terms. The process of forming a
noem he denoted by the term unification. See his posthumous papers
-on Glossology, printed in the Cambridge Journal of Philology, Vols.
IV. and V. ED.




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.                 189
form a sort of idea of ourselves ah individuals like others'whom  we see and act with, and think about ourselves as,about them.  This is in point of fact becoming, what we
very speedily do, cosmocentric instead of autocentric in our
knowledge: it is what reason naturally leads to and makes
US.
True consciousness, or reflexion, only arises when we
bring together into one observation this previously remembered or known self, and self as the subject of some particular
remembered feeling or act.
The general noem'conscientia' is now practically divided Consciousby philosophers into two parts, which we in English call ess has
been dis-'consciousness,' and'conscience,' meaning by the first intel- tinguished
lectual introspection, such as we are able to make, and by from conscience for
the second, moral introspection, reflexion or judgment, the the sake of
word having drifted to this noematism from  its early one of convenience:
moral self-complicity or self-accompliceship. The. distinction
of the two, or rather the distinct unification of the first, is, I
should think, in origin English: it exists in German, perhaps
after English example; the philosophic term  -bewusstseyn
standing beside the old moral term for' conscientia,' gewissen;
but I think it does not generally in other languages.
Now though it is very convenient for philosophic and in.- but is
vestigatory purposes to unify the noem'consciousness,' and never
really sesuppose the existence of a purely intellectual self-knowledge parated
or self-observation, I am inclined to think that, in an from it.
analysis of the mind, we do not really find such a thing to
exist, and ought not, as matter of fact, to suppose it.  Man,
it is to be considered, is essentially a moral or active being,
and intellective properly, mediately and subsidiarily to this:
and though his intellectiveness expatiates by curiosity as I
have described, and part of its essence and effectiveness lies
in this expatiation, yet intellect is felt to be dependent and
subordinate at both ends,-dependent on the limitations
which fact and reality supply to it for its substantial interest,
and dependent on its conceived applicability to possible
action for the concern we take in it.  Moral relations we of
necessity conceive as prior in time, and posterior in purpose,
to anything which is appreciable by, and concerned with,
intellect alone.  Now self-introspection or self-consciousness is
a thing which concerns our whole nature, and has no:special




190         ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
relation with, is not in anyway like, any particular process
which is intellective and which we may call knowledge.
Knowledge, or knowing, is in fact simply the qualifying of
an old idea by a new observation, or, if we like it, the
dividing off a new unity from an old: self-introspection is
nothing in the world like this. The knowledge or feeling of
our personality is moral, the base of our moral or active
being; we may, of set purpose and with effort, accompany
our outgoing intellectual processes with this, and we may do
this for philosophic or intellectual purposes, and when it is
done for these we may call it consciousness: but there is
nothing intellectual in it.
Man's na-   It is on account of the nature of man being thus primarily
ture being
primarily moral or active, and not intellectual or speculative, that remoral,  flexion or self-consciousness, whenever it arises in practice,
every introspec-  is accompanied with self-judgment, or an application of the idea
tive act is of right to the operations of the moral being, resembling the
accompanied by  application of the analogous idea of truth to the results of the
self-judg- intellectual. In consciousness of ourselves as willing and
mlent.
acting, the idea of whether the thing is right or not comes to
us just as, in thinking of knowledge or imagination, the
idea comes whether it is or is not true: the idea is not in
either case definitely before us till it is drawn out and made
a matter of thought; but when we attend, we become aware
that there is a judgmernt both in self-consciousness and in
objective knowledge, will in the one case, and conclusion in
the other, being supposed or assumed to be according to
right, and to truth, in such a way that if they are not so, the
feeling strikes us painfully. Both right and truth, as either
objectified and abstracted, or defined and measured, are exceedingly complicated and elaborate ideas; but they enter
substantially, the one into every reasonable or reflexional
volition, the other into every perception, and constitute in
each case a judgment.
In a supposed primary perception, where a sensation is
decomposed and knowledge is taken by the subject of the
object of it, it is not correct to say that any knowledge is
taken by the subject of itself. Such knowledge might be
taken, but we are not to suppose that it is, any farther than
as the moral being may be considered to wake up simultaneously with the intellectual. Otherwise the subject comes




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.               191
no farther into notice or sentience than as discriminated
from the object, the object being what is noticed, and the felt
subjective unity not dwelt upon, but only transferred or
counter-attributed to the object. The subject, when it is itself
matter of notice, is no longer subject, which term has only
reference to sentience and knowledge, but is person or moral
being.
Have brutes consciousness? There is no doubt but that, Brutes
have subif we mean by consciousness merely subjectivity as the base jectivity,
of knowledge and of sentience of pleasure and pain, they
have: consciousness in this sense is the differentia between
animal life and vegetable. At the same time we know that
they have no reflexion, the real conscientia in its wide and
old noematism: how is this?
For one thing, in the same way as we have seen before but no rethat they have no general ideas, it may be said that they flex gen~
eral idea
have no reflex general idea of themselves or their own being, of their
which would make them persons. Such a reflex objective wn personality.
general idea is what would arise after the ideas gained of
other individuals similar to ourselves: and since they have
not those, of course they have not this. The absence or incapability of general ideas would of itself thus mark them as
unmoral beings, or not properly persons, since subjective
morality presupposes intellectiveness.
It is a question whether all conceivable intellective beings,
by the fact of their intellectiveness, are also moral? The
question seems to me to be analogous to that, whether all
sentient beings, by the fact of their being sentient, are also
intellective? The answer it seems to me in each case should
be, that they are capable of intellection, and capable of morality, rather than intellectual and moral. The sentient being,
by the fact of his existence, has a relation to everything else
which exists, and his sentience may be conceived such, that
this relation shall not only exist, but be made sensible to
him, which is knowledge. Similarly the intellectiveness of
the intellective being supposes the possibility of his knowledge of all the inter-relations and mutual fitnesses of moral
beings with whom he could come into contact: and action
according to such would be morality. At the same time,
as in the case of the sentience before; we must suppose
his intellectiveness not simply general, but specialized and




192         ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.
adapted for the gaining of such knowledge. In man therefore, just in the same way as the possible general sentience,
by which he might be made aware of his relation to everything else in the universe, is modified, for knowledge, by all
sorts of limitations, concentrations, definite sensibilities and
powers, the whole apparatus of the human mental organization: so for morality and moral action, the general intellectiveness requires to have definite directions given, and limitations set to it. The result of the outgoing mental organization, the rule of judgment in it, is what we call truth:
the result of the introspective or reflective moral constitution
is right.
Man dif-    Intellectually I cannot find that the brutes differ from us
fers from
brutes,  by any particular faculty, or by any separately conceivable
both mo- power: they differ by a tendency, an impulse, which I have
rally and
intellect- elsewhere spoken of, partaking of curiosity and imagination,
nally, ra- the tendency in fact to dwell on the perceived and known as
ther in
impulse  something of interest in itself, independent of the occasion of
than in  the knowledge and use of it. Juist so I conceive the moral
difference between man and brutes to be a difference of impulse and tendency, rather than of inward sense or faculty.
Right is probably not a thing of a nature to be cognizable by
anything like a separate sense, but it is a relation, or fact, in
regard of which it may make all the difference in the world
between kinds of creatures, whether they have an impulse or
tendency to note, attend to, and care for it or not. I cannot
but. think that in man there is such an impulse, giving him
his distinctive moral nature, as the previously mentioned impulse gives him his distinctively intellectual one.
There is a    Consciousness proper then or reflexion may be considered
special  from  the first.as something of a moral nature, involving
moral im- 
pulse in  moral judgment and an obscure intimation therefore of a
man.   rule to jludge by. Were there no impulse to attention to
right, such as I have spoken of, reason might indeed, in its
nature, supply the materials for moral judgment in reflexion;
but in the vast extent of the possible applicability of reason,
with the importunacy of appetite and the likelihood of the
connexion of reason with that, it is doubtful how far moral
considerations would be attended to. In fact, that they are
attended to very much more than, supposing a mere unstimulated deduction of them from reason, they would be,




ON CONSCIENCE AND HONOUR.               193
may appear from this, that conscience or moral anxiety is a
much more common phenomenon in the world than, if we
judged of the world from the idea which the writings of the
specially rational moralists would give of it, we should conclude it to be. I do not mean conscientious acting, but
anxiety of one form or another about the matter, quite different from  any care or anxiety about intellectual truth.
Such anxiety, whether folly or not, is a fact, and often exists
without any reference to religious considerations: now if
morality were a matter simply shown to us by reason, I
cannot think it would exist in this way. It seems to manifest to us a special call, in some way or other, to considerations of this kind..
Reflexion of this kind, involving moral judgment, pro- Different
duces what I have called a self-dividedness.  Self-conscious- degrees of
consciousness may exist in any degree; and according to the degree ness in acin which it exists is the nature of the exertion of power or
of the action modified. We may conceive a continuous scale
from the most perfect involuntariness to the most complete
double-mindedness, or self-observation, and criticism on each
particular of it. At the.one limit, the involuntary, our personality may be said to vanish, the action is no longer ours:
at the other, our individuality vanishes, and such an entire
self-possession may be conceived as would make us two
beings rather than one.
Along this scale we might distinguish three kinds of
action:
(1) Spontaneous action, or action on impulse,
(2) Considerate action,, or action on principle,
(3) Reflexional or self-conscious action.
These only differ in degree, and after Aristotle's fashion
we might say that the middle sort was the best and the most
proper, for with the first we have no security for its being
moral at all, and the third, if moral, is yet probably defective
as action, and can hardly be otherwise than hesitating and
weak, much of the power and attention, which should go to
the action, going of necessity to the reflexion upon it.
G.                                         13




CHAPTER X.
DISTRIBUTION  OF ACTION  CONSIDERED  FROM  THE
IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.
In this  I HAVE, for convenience sake, all along used the
chapter it  i
is assumed term'action as a general term to express any protohatnis d ceeding on our part which is the result of will, and
termined can possibly have a moral character. Action, as I
solely by 
its end. have used the term, includes in itself its negative,
or, forbearance to act, when this is the result of will:
it includes also internal action, or any effort of our
will upon our own feelings or inward man.
There is a great difference between the meaning
of the term'action' as thus applied generally to life,
behaviour, bearing, conduct, and its more restricted
meaning as expressing something definite done for a
definite purpose. What we do, in the wider sense of
the term'action,' is done in an infinity of different
manners; never quite without thought, and always
with something of will mixed with it, and always, in
so far as there is this thought and will, with something which may be called purpose: but with the
utmost variety of degree of deliberation, and the
utmost variety of impelling or accompanying feeling.
The more restricted sense of action, if we include
in it the negative, or forbearance to act, differs
from the other, mainly in the attention given by
us to the definite purpose, and the non-attention
to the accompanying circumstances or feelings. We
may call this more restricted sense of the term'action' the real sense: in that case, when we speak




DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION.         195
of our moral life as made up of actions, we use
what philosophers call an' abstraction': we take
a particular view or make a particular supposition:
a thing very constantly necessary, in philosophy, to
be done, and not misleading, if we remember that
we must not apply our results to actual life without
taking account of the considerations which we had,
for a particular purpose, neglected.
In the present chapter I omit all attention to
accompanying feelings, and consider each action as
done for its purpose, taking nothing else into account
about it. Very few actions are really done in this
way, but some are: and, with the proper additions,
our considerations on this view will be useful generally.
We may say, to begin with, that the _purpose of
each action is some good, or if we like to use the
term, some happiness; under the following qualifications.
If we mean what we say to be absolutely and
universally true, we must be content to consider our
proposition convertible or identical, i.e. to mean
by good or happiness, no more than the purpose
of action. Except on such an understanding there
is much of action, as, for instance, revengeful action,
which has no good or happiness for its purpose.
All native action however is for something which All native
is good or happiness in itself, independently of its "tid1to
being so in the above way as purpose of the action, good.
and all action which has value in the result is for
good or happiness also, similarly understood.
By saying that all native action is for happiness,
I mean that it is either self-regarding or else benevolent, not malevolent: I expressed the same thing
in a former chapter by saying there was no such
thing as native ill-will.
13-2




196    DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
It may be considered a principle in our nature
independent of morality, that action should not be
lost or wasted: i. e. that it should be useful; though
some action not useful may be, as we have seen,
morally valuable, and in that way not wasted.
Nature makes a provision in the first instance for
the usefulness of action by giving us no native illwill: as we pass on to non-native feelings, we ourselves must take care that our action is for good or
happiness only, i. e. is useful.
Utilitari-    It is this principle, barely and by itself, which
this gene- some philosophers consider the cardinal, or even the
raizantion only, principle of morality.  So far from this, it canrule of hu- not properly be considered a principle of morality at
man life;
neglecting all. I have mentioned that the existence or possithe complication bility of happiness, and the possibility of acting so
arises   as to promote it, may be considered a necessary prefrom di- condition of morality: and in the same region of
versity of
interest. thought as this, the principle that action should be
useful, or should be calculated to produce some
happiness, may be considered a part of our notion of
action.  But this principle is anterior, logically, to
the supposition of our being social beings, or of there
being any others whose happiness we may promote
besides our own: and it is not till this supposition is
made that morality begins or becomes possible. The
moral value of actions may sometimes consist, as we
have seen, in their non-utility-in the negation of
utility to ourselves. It is with the variety of individualities and interests that morality begins. It is
in the additions which we have to make to the above
proposition, that action should be useful or should
promote happiness, that morality consists. We have
not only to ask ourselves the question which I will
reserve for another chapter: what sort of utility?
what sort of happiness? but we have also to ask our



FROM  THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.             197
selves another question more important still, which I
will discuss in this chapter: viz. wvhose happiness?
whose utility?
Our own first, says one philosopher, next that of
our relations, next that of our friends, finally that of
all the world. By'first' he will mean, first in consideration, and to the greatest degree.
In a very rough way, this does probably represent
actual human conduct.  That, in order of consideration, things go in some degree in this manner is
evident.  We feel our own wants, pains, and desires
with an immediateness which we cannot share even
with those nearest to us.  And unless we take care
of ourselves, to some degree, first, we could not, if we
would, take care of anybody else.
Those philosophers who have gone upon the basis Pope's
of actual emotion and sentiment, without examining rule of
preference
it very accurately, have generally taken this view. is wrong
in identiIt may suffice to give the lines of Pope:                fying love
for self
and love
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,  for others.
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake:
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next, all human race;
Wide and more wide, th' o'erflowings of the mind
Take ev'ry creature in, of ev'ry kind.
The important thing to be attended to about
this, is, that there is really no analogy between what
is here called self-love, and the love of any one else.
The word self-love, and other such words, are formed
upon the notion of such an analogy: but it is altogether misleading. The above lines do represent
with a certain degree of correctness the way and the
different degrees  in  which  comparative  care for
others' happiness should exist, after the chasm  between -self and any others is passed. This is because




198   DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
there is a degree of resemblance in the different
feelings described, which allows of the speaking of
them, with meaning, as constituting a diminishing
scale.  But neither actually nor ideally, neither
looking at what is nor at what should be, is there, or
can there be, any resemblance between our love of
self, so to call it, and our love of any one else. I do.not mean that the former is necessarily greater than
the latter: it might be, and often is, so far as there
is any meaning in speaking of comparative magnitude, even less: but it is quite different in kind.
It is only by a very ill-applying metaphor that we
can speak of self-love.
The point, or real significance, of the above lines
is, that in the love which we have, and should have,
to kindred, as compared with the love which we
have to strangers, there is mingled something of the
feeling with which we regard ourselves, something,
to speak loosely, of selfishness. And, proceeding the
other way, we learn to love, it may be said, by
taking an interest in the welfare of our kindred and
those near us, and we apply what we have learnt, in
a less degree, to those not near us or strangers: the
necessary moral care being, that the increase of love
to kindred should, by application, increase the love
to strangers, not, by engrossment, diminish it. The
truth of all this is, that our love to kindred is composed of two elements, a selfish one and a loving
one, and thus has two aspects: but it is the loving
element, not the selfish one, which breeds love to
strangers. The selfish element causes our love to
kindred, on account of its double character, to bear
some resemblance to the feeling with which we
regard ourselves, but it does not, in the other direction, make the feeling with which we regard ourselves bear any resemblance to the loving element of




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.          199
our love to kindred. It is the assumption that it
does, and that thus love to kindred has the same
relation to general love, as self-love has to love to
kindred, which makes the falseness of the lines. But
reflection soon satisfies us, that self-regard or selfengrossment is against all love of every kind, against
love to those nearest as much as against love to
those farthest: it has no tendency to expand, as love
to kindred has: it is what all the kinds of love
oppose and diminish.
The philosophy then which the above quoted Itaelines generally express gives us no rule as to the dis- correctly
tribution of our action for happiness between our-thoughy
selves and others in general, i.e. as to the compara- tp scalo
tive degree in which we should care for ourselvesference
amongst
and care for others. All it says in reference to this others.
goes on a false analogy. Amongst others, it gives
us vaguely a comparative scale of action or of care,
what I will call a scale of preference.
A different line has been taken by some philosophers who have thought less of the emotions, and
more of the happiness, which is the definite object of
the action.
Thus Bentham  in the famous maxim  "each to Bentham's
count for one, ourselves included" gives a principle equality
of supposed equity or fairness.  The view expressed fails in
both cases.
in Pope's lines he would admit as roughly representing fact, but fact which, in his view, morality ought
to correct.
Of Bentham's view also it may be said that it
roughly represents fact: in the actual world, preference and equity are engaged in conflict; but
morally, it is of less value than the preceding. It
has importance as a correction of the other, but has
less importance than it.
The other gave an account, to a certain degree




200   DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
true, of the comparative degree of care due from us
to different individuals among others, though it did
not give a true account of the comparative care due,
as between ourselves and others in general: this
does not give a true account in either case.
It sounds well to say, we should take no more
care of ourselves than we should of any one else:
but it does not sound well to say, that we should
take no more care of our father or our wife than
we should of any one else.
But in regard of the former of these, though it
may sound well, that is all. The two relations, that
of ourselves to others in general, and that of one
individual amongst others to another, are no more
comparable in this case than they are in the preceding one. To say, as a general rule of conduct, that
we should take the same care and thought for ourselves that we do for each other, as much, no more, has
simply no meaning. There are certain definite circumstances, there is no doubt, in which this rule of
equity, so to call it, is the true one. There is something to be divided: let us divide it equally. We
are on the deck of a steamer going down, and can be
saved only one at a time. Even here every one sees
the principle will hardly hold: the noble-minded
gives place to others, the cowardly tries to press before others: there is no meaning, and no virtue,,
though it may be a convenient arrangement, in
striking an Aristotelian mean or balance between the
generosity and the cowardice. The virtue is in the
regard for others: with the virtue there is mixed, in
each, a certain amount of regard for self: it is likely
that where there is more of the former there will be
less of the latter: virtue has nothing to do with any
relation of equality or otherwise between the two,
but simply with the abundance of the former. The




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.          201
latter is not virtue; but neither is it vice, except so
far as it stands in the way of the former: it is simply,
as I expressed it before, of no moral account.
It will be said, that the Scripture precept'Love The Scripture rule
thy neighbour as thyself' both recognizes the above compared'equity' as the rule of conduct, and also exhibits an rule ofthe
analogy between our love for ourselves and our love preference, and
for others, which I have said does not exist.      the rule of
But really it neither implies such an analogy, nor equality
does it recognize equity as the rule in the manner
above, but only as a general consideration.
So far as the precept, Love thy neighbour as thyself, is understood to indicate a Benthamic equity,
i. e. a relation of equality between the two loves, it
must regulate our love for ourselves as well as the
others, and have an understood supplement, viz.' and
thyself as thy neighbour.' But the precept is manifestly of the same kind, and commends itself to men's
approbation as being of the same kind as many others,
such as, Love your enemies, Love all men as brethren. On this principle'Love your enemies,' i. e.'Treat them as friends,' must be understood as having
the understood supplement,' and treat your friends
no better than your enemies:''Love all men as brethren,' will have the supplement,'and your brethren no
better than other men.'
Now when precepts of this kind are accepted as
they have been by human nature, as showing to it its
duty and its feelings, it is evidently not in that view
of them which we are here considering. The passages
will to a certain degree bear putting into the form
of the preferential system which I gave at first: in
which case we should read them thus, Give to your
neighbour, or spread over him, some of the feeling
which you have for yourself, to all men some of the
feeling which you have for your brethren: even to




202   DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
your enemies (here however we change the sign and
almost lose the view) some of the feeling which you
have for your friends. But they will not bear putting in the equalitarian form-strike a balance between
yourselves and your neighbour, between your friends
and your enemies, between your brethren and men
in general: they have nothing to do with quantity.
Nor will they do well for the preferential system
given previously, as is manifest from the different
manner in which each must be observed:'Love thy
neighbour as thyself,' means, Diminish your care for
yourself, and care more for your neighbour:'Love
your enemies' (it being supposedly your friends that
you do love) means, on the other hand, do not diminish your love for your friends, but love your
enemies too; it is here that appears the want of
analogy between the passage from ourselves to any
others, and the passage from one to another amongst
others: and clearly love for friends has no tendency
to suggest love for enemies, as love for kindred might
suggest love for non-kindred, but the contrary. In
reality, human nature accepts these passages as
describing, vaguely but pointedly, an ideal to be
aimed at: try if you cannot come to care for your
neighbour, as a regular thing, in something of the
same proportion in which you naturally and inevitably
care for yourself.
However, I do not mean to say but that the precept,'Love thy neighbour as thyself,' implies equity,
real equity, as a very important consideration. The
manner in which it does so may be seen best by comparing another precept with a strong reference to
equity,'Do as you would be done by,''Do to others
as ye would they should do to you.' Whatever reason
of equity exists for taking the former passage exactly,
applies in the same way in this. But we see at once




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.    203
it can mean no more than, Do not act towards anybody without the thought what you would like if
you were in his place and he in yours. It is only in
a very moderate degree that this (one form of the
consideration of equity) can regulate action: the
juryman must take care that he does not allow his
feeling how much he, if he were in the prisoner's
place, would like to hear'not guilty,' to influence
him: and in the same way,'Love thy neighbour as
thyself,' does not imply any real putting of him in
our place and ourselves in his: it implies that we
should not forget that happiness is as dear to him as
it is to us, and pain as painful: such remembrance
will have its influence on our action, though it is only
one consideration in regulating it.
I will endeavour to make out the principles upon Question
examinec
which action is really distributed, and to examine herefronm
what share is taken in the distribution of it by each theide a
of the two considerations above mentioned, that of view.
preference, and that of equity or equality: and I will
do this in reference to two views, or two stages of
view, of the manner in which we act or may act: the
one of which I will call the moral or ideal, the other
the jural: and I will examine what relation these two
views or stages of view have the one to the other.
By'action' in the above I mean all the particulars of our life and conduct, in so far as we have any
purpose in view of these, and assuming that this purpose is somebody's pleasure or welfare, our own included: and the point under examination is whose
pleasure or welfare this is or should be, in what
degree that of one, in what degree that of another.
We might say instead of action, if we pleased,
thought, care, interestedness.
In this chapter I will discuss the question from
the moral or ideal point of view.




204    DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED.Theequali- The division of our action between ourselves and
tarian rule
is aforeign others in general is regulated on the principle that
to thei  irtue, worth, merit, excellence, is in proportion to
itaiian  the extent we act for others rather than for ourselves.
system,
which sug- Our acting for our own happiness, and our acting for
gests simply the - that of others, do not come under the same considerapursuit of tion.  The mistake of the simple utilitarian scheme
our own
happiness. (I mean that which simply considers the important
thing about action to be, that it should tend to some
happiness) is that, to whatever extent it attributes
merit to the acting for others' happiness, it must do
so also to the acting for our own. The distinction
between these two ways of acting seems to me the
cardinal point of morals, a distinction which utilitarianism, as a principle, endeavours as much as it can
to obliterate. It may indeed not attribute merit in
either case, neither to the acting for others' happiness
nor to acting for our own: it may not recognize the
notion of merit, and think it only a result of education, a late human conventionalism: it may view all
action for any happiness as alike useful and good.
If this is so, it seems to me that Bentham's principle
of equity, given above, is an arbitrary superaddition
on his (in fact on the general utilitarian) supposition
of action being for the greatest happiness. In spite
of the mention of'the greatest number,' it seems to
me that the direct tendency of all thought of this
kind, if only anybody could be considered really to
hold it (which I question whether anybody ever did,
in spite of utilitarian attempt at system), would be to
make action self-regarding and selfish. Nay, I question whether it ought not.  So far as we can abstract' action for happiness,' or look at action, in each case,
as effort for some definite happiness, considering the
human, doubtful, view  which we must have as to
what is happiness, and the importance of making




FRlOM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.    205
sure that our action is not wasted but produces somze
happiness-it almost seems to me that the most
reasonable course, even with the view of being sure of
producing the most happiness, and even in spite of
the addition'of the greatest number,' would be for
each to take care of himself, and be sure of making
himself as happy as he can. "Mirato ingentia rura;
exiguum colito."  Look widely around and wish well
to others: but, mindful how likely dispersed effort is
to be lost, and how ignorant you are of their feelings
and circumstances, concentrate your felicific effort
where you can make tolerably sure that none of it
will be lost, and let youre production of happiness be
on your own ground, your contribution to the sum
of happiness, your own happiness.
I am well aware that many other considerations, Answer to.           ~        supposed
in reason, enter in here, and that every man's pleasure utilitarian
depends very largely on the pleasure of those about objector.
him, and is most, intimately complicated with it, so
that he could not produce happiness for himself
alone, and in trying to produce it for himself, he would
have to do -this through the process of producing it
for others. This complication of different sorts of happiness, and of different people's happiness, together,
represents the reality of human life: and moreover,
there is something besides this; viz. that happiness
does not really offer itself as a distinct and definite
object to be striven after or produced, as all our present hypothesis supposes, but is, in various ways, too
fugitive and intangible. All this I shall have shortly
to speak of, upon the subject of'happiness.' But
the view which we are taking now, as to action being
directed in each case to some definite happiness of
somebody, though a hypothesis and an abstraction,
is a view which people often do take and which it
is convenient to take: and since it is assumed as




206    DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
the foundation of the utilitarian moral philosophy,
many questions, having reference to utilitarianism,
must be discussed upon this view. If it is the utilitarian who urges what I have said in the first part
of this paragraph as an objection to what I have said
in the last paragraph, he is really meeting an objection to his view by abandoning his view altogether.
The principle of utilitarianism is that human happiness may be made distinct and exhibited distinctly,
with measurement, as an object for action, and that
morality is the production of as much as possible of it.
It is replied: We are so much more likely to be able
to calculate, with accuracy, our own happiness than
that of others, that probably, for the mere production
of quantity, it would be best each should attend only
to his own. Though others may answer, the utilitarian must not,'No, for happiness is indistinct and
complicated, cannot be exhibited distinctly or measured: when trying to produce the happiness of
others we constantly, without intending it, produce
our own, and if we work distinctly for our own we
are sure not to be able to gain it.'
The inde-    The distribution then of our action between ourvalue of selves and others in general is given us by the prinself-sacri- ciples of moral value which I discussed some'time
be recog- since: viz. that that action has most moral value, or
nized before we most virtue or merit, in which there is effort for the
can lay  happiness of others accompanied with postponement
down a happiness
rule for of our own: that in reality both these elements must
distribution of to a certain extent go together, (since consulting the
action.
happiness of others is, to a certain extent, always
self-postponement, or employing  otherwise  effort
which might have been for ourselves:) and that
actions which are done for the happiness of others,
have their highest merit as they are done with the
most of self-sacrifice or self-devotion.




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.         207
There will be more then of thought, care, and effort
devoted to others' utility and others' good, according,
in the first place, as we have more of that which
utilitarians rightly praise, value for human happiness, imagination how it may be best promoted,
ideals of it floating before us, and much more of
this kind; accompanied, according to our temperament, with more or less of emotion, and sympathy
with seen or imagined misery: and, in the second
place, according as we have more or less of the
feelings which belong to self-forgetfulness, selfpostponement, self-devotion, and which have the
most special moral value or merit.'Generosity' is
perhaps the most general and expressive term for
this kind of feelings: but it hardly expresses the
feeling belonging to the highest and worthiest acts
of the kind, for which, I think, we should deem it
insufficient: and it has also associated with it notions
not necessarily connected with actions of this kind,
and leading perhaps sometimes to misconception.
The ancient &vSpac', fortitude or manliness, may This selfbe considered to be this'generosity', with great theriseis
reference to these associated notions, and with but as the
Greek
little reference to the good to others which the self- dvapeia.
forgetfulness might be likely to produce.  The word'generous' in English is usually applied to self-forgetfulness for the cause of others: the Latin'fortitudo' had a wider signification, or perhaps it rather
signified self-forgetfulness, absence of fear, when
honour or shame was in question. Still both it and
the Greek av'pEca expressed a character of mind
which is essential to the exercise of a high and large
benevolence: for the valuing the imagined result is
not enough, unless there exist also the disposition,
and the capacity, to make the effort and the selfsacrifice.




208   DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
The pro-    As between ourselves, then, and others in general,
portion of
care which and with reference to our conduct as a whole, there
we should is no place for any considerations either of equality
devote to
ourselves or of preference.  No morality can tell us any proand to
others  portion in which we ought, respectively, to care for
cannot be
determin- ourselves and for others.
ed by con-   The bidding of what I will call bare nature, by
siderations    which I mean nature as the inferior or ordinary
either of
equity or reason (distinguished from the higher reason, or
prefer-  aspiration and imagination, and also from emotion),
ence.   a
the operation of which is simply to take cognizance
of our own condition, circumstances and wants, is to
call upon us simply to take care of ourselves.
Self-preservation is the instinct of which selfsustentation  (to  be spoken of however also  in
another quite different view) is the rational development.
With the vast majority of mankind, the great
mass of their thought must, by the mere necessity of
the case, be devoted to self-care, modified indeed,
and extended, in a manner which we shall shortly
see. In such cases, it makes little difference whether
we consider that life altogether and the whole laying
out of it should be modelled upon moral principle and
upon considerations of virtue, or whether we consider
that self-care must be the main modeller, virtuous
principle only coming in to restrain from wrong, to
animate with more or less of good feeling, to elevate
with more or less of aspiration and ideal.
The life, or its laying out, would have on either
view to be very much the same: self-care must be
the leading feature of it: virtue would on the latter
view TLapeCl'eEX0Ev, come in on a second thought,
as a corrector; on the former view, virtue would be
the first thought and the leading principle indeed,
but, like some Oriental despots, would have to be




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW           209
content with its superiority, and to give up the actual
conduct of life to the inferior principle, reserving
only to itself the same degree of intervention or correction as on the other hypothesis. Still, the mere
acknowledgment of its  superiority is noble  and
elevating.
The degree then, in which we should care for Our first
duty is
others, is the degree in which we can do so: making airdpe.a;
certain in the first instance, that our life is not ofwhen th"at
is secured
such a kind, as to lay upon them  the necessity of ourduty
is to give
taking care of us.  This is the other view of self-care all we can
to our
or self-sustentation to which I just now alluded, in neighbour.
which it is one of the first, if not the very first, of
duties, for it is one without the performance of
which we shall not be able to perform any other.
It is no use to think of bearing the burdens of others
if we begin by making ourselves, or leaving ourselves
to be, a burden for them to bear. The first condition
of good or worthy action for help of others is such a
condition of aL3TapKELCL, self-helpfulness, independence,
as shall enable us to call our action our own, and so
give us the right to dispose of it: this by itself, with
many, will of necessity fix a considerable portion of
their action upon themselves.
All that I am saying now goes, it is to be remembered, upon a hypothesis which very imperfectly
fits to the facts: for in fact all our life, in most cases,
is a web of self-care and care for others, mixed and
often indistinguishable. All this in its place.
I said that, in respect of the apportioning our
care between ourselves and others in general, considerations of equity do not enter in as regards the
whole of our conduct, or our conduct on the whole: I
might have said, our conduct to others in general.
I have to explain what I mean by this.
G.                                      14




210    DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
The rule    There is a sentiment of fairness as between ourof eqtiity selves and others, in the same way as there is a
cable as sentiment of fairness in respect of our conduct as
between
oneself  between two parties.  But this regards particulacrs
and one's
neighbour of our conduct and particular persons: it has no
only in  bearing on our conduct as a whole, or on the
points of
detail. question between us and others in general. It is
flagrantly, and plainly, only in regard of particular
circumstances and particular people that we can
make the supposition upon which utilitarians seem
to suppose that our whole conduct can be regulated,
viz. Here are two parties, myself, and whoever else
it may be: I will act, in any transactions between
the two, as if they were two parties independent of
me; as if neither of them were myself.  No doubt
there are many occasions in life in which fairness of
this kind is required: but it is treating moral philosophy as if it were a matter on which people might
say just what they pleased, to talk of regulating our
whole conduct, as between ourselves and others, by
it. It takes for granted certain already existing
relations between us and others, which will come
before us shortly: till then, it cannot be applied,
and is mere words.  Fairness, with any meaning
in the word, implies conflicting individual interests: but the existence of individual interest at
all, implies a transgression of the Benthamic or unmeaning fairness, according to which we should take
the same thought, and no more, for ourselves and
for each one else, or count ourselves for one only,
like any other, in the universe.
Fairness consists in refraining from taking an
undue advantage of another in any matter in which
we are rivals: it is no unfairness to work for our own
bread rather than for his, though it is self-preference.
All this, however, will be better understood after




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.             211i
I have spoken, as I shall now do, about the distri- It is applicable
bution of our care, or our action for happiness, generally
between different individuals amongst others.           mine the
In respect of this, fairness or equality may be disbusaid to be the natural starting-point or foundation: action
In                   amongst
all individuals who may be the objects of our action, others.
are, as a matter of course, to be treated equally
or similarly, except so far as reason may appear for
the preferring of some to others.  But besides this,
equity may possibly come in afterwards, in a manner
more important, as a restraint upon over-preference,
or mis-preference.
Probably the two main principles of preference Butreamong objects of our action are these two: want, or be qualiopportunity; merit, or obligation.                     frule by theof
rule of
In the last chapter I spoke entirely of feeling or preferonee in
emotion: in this, I wish, so far as I can, to leave it answer to
out of account.  It is by putting  together these hoe call of
pportunivarious abstractions or partial views that we shall tyor obiget, so far as we can get, a general view of human
nature.
Let us then leave out of account family affection, Opportui.e. as a reason why we should care more for kindred iZty 1llUsthan for others: I think the simple existence of the from the
case of
family relation, as a fact, is a sufficient reason why mother
preference should be given to kindred over others.
Putting this more generally, the various descriptions
of benevolence or goodwill, which I went through in
a previous chapter, indicate or suppose various relations of fact, which (even if we supposed the feeling,
the goodwill, not to exist) would show opportunity
and need for care, and thus, as facts, call for care,
i.e. preferential care. Supposing there were no such
thing as maternal love, the mother and infant are, as
a matter of fact, in such a position the one towards
the other, that the mere fact, if we were beings who
1t4-r-2




212    DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
acted in that way, would demand that same conduct
on the mother's part which maternal love now ensures.  I mean, of course, supposing a general goodwill, of which the direction has in some way to
be determined.
The fact   This, which I have called the demand of fact, is
of the
relation the same thing as what I have already spoken of
particulers under the name of duty. The fact, i. e. the relation,
of duty. or relative position, as a matter of fact, does not give
the notion of duty, but, supposing this to exist in
general, it supplies the application and the particularity of it. If we are such that nothing calls upon
us to help others, if we have no ears for such a call,
then of course this relation will not call: but if our
nature is prepared for the call, that is, if we possess
the general notion of mutual duty, then the relation
or fact gives the call, or fixes the particuclars of
duty.
The existence of what are called in moral philosophy'relative duties', i.e. duties from  father to
child, from child to father, from brother to brother,
&c., is in reality a call to us for preferential care or
action for happiness in the case where such duties
exist. The nature of the care or action is generally
indicated by the relation, or, which is the same
thing, readily suggested by the mind. The description of the duty owed, is, in many cases, little
more than the same thing as describing the fact of
the relation.
The relation is, perhaps, a simply natural one:
perhaps, as that of friends, it is a self-created one:
in this case the want and opportunity are self-created,
but do not the less exist.
We come next to relations which imply merit or
obligation: it might be better to style them  generally'relations of occasion' in accordance with the




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.          213
language used in a former chapter. Some of them,
in any case, come best under this title: but it is not
of consequence.
The important thing about relations of this kind An action
is, that the conduct which the relation, as a fact, cessarily
suggests to us is not necessarily virtuousj thoughbiegctu
it comes, in a manner, into moral consideration; in tllreofi a
other words, that the conduct, which, so far as the obligation
to it.
relation goes, is reasonable, may not be the proper
conduct.
The chief relation of this kind is the position in Obligation
which any one stands towards us in respect of pre- founded
vious conduct, either on his part or on ours.  He Olle omu
has benefited or injured us, or we have benefited or disturbinjured him.  The consideration of the setting right relations
the inequality (in the language of the ancient philo- which
sophers), or readjusting the disturbance thus created, redress.
suggests in the former case, on our part, benefit or
injury to him; in the latter case, on our part, expectation of benefit or injury from him, and, so far
as our conduct is concerned, desire to redress the
injury we have done, and to injure if our benefit is
not repaid.
This is what bare equity or fairness, justice (the
first time we have used the word) as Zcr-roi  or
equality, and as &0op0oTtKr  or expletrix, the redresser
of inequality, would suggest: but there are two
exceedingly important considerations to come in.
The first consideration is that with which I have 11 such
started in this chapter, in the same way as I started castae our
with the consideration of benevolence in the last, must be
governed
viz. that it is the nature of action to be done for the not by
justice
production of some good or happiness: action exists alone, but
in the universe as a means of producing something bycr.oi-os
wanted; action is possible in the universe in virtue of utility,
of there being capacity for good or happiness, which




21z4   DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
the action can supply. Utilitarians have with reason
complained of the manner in which this principle
has been often assumed without acknowledgment by
their opponents. When, in consequence of mis-action
past, there is call on the principle of reason as fairness, for action which is intended to produce not
happiness, but pain, there is a counter-call on the
principle of reason as utility (i.e. reason looking to
the good result of actions) against such action, as
what ought not to be. What I am now speaking
of, it is to be remembered, is the fact of the relative
position of the parties, and the consequent suggestion
of reason. As reason is divided against itself, so
also is feeling; the intellectual feeling of fairness,
of which I shall speak in a moment, is very strong
on the one side, and in aid of it are various malevolent feelings; while there is benevolence, in whatever degree of strength, on the other.
and also  The second consideration is that we are rivals of
of arivalry each other (as I have before mentioned), not only in
interest, but, in a different and more important way,
in merit and excellence. I put the thing here rather
coarsely and broadly on purpose. These two rivalries
(of interest and merit) act in opposite directions;
and elevation of nature, the Aristotelian magnanimity, depends upon the degree to which the latter
prevails over the former. In the rivalry of interest
the party who has injured the other is the superior;
that is to say, he has gained an advantage: in the
rivalry of merit the party who has conferred benefit
is the superior: and on this ground it is not he that
desires the repayment, but the other party. Similarly,
forgiveness of injuries is a moral triumph to the
forgiver, and a humiliation to the forgiven: and in
the interest of virtue, what we have reason to fear
is sometimes lest it should be only too much felt so.




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.         215'Injury' and'benefit' are of course however very
vague expressions. To take injury: there are two
great heads of it, insult and wrong, which stand, in
reference to what I have been saying, on a very
different footing: but still what I have said applies
in general.
In respect then of that relative position of two Manner in
parties in which there has passed between them iohCsa
injury or benefit, the suggestions of bare fairness nfluenceed
by these
are qualified by the double consideration, of utility three conor benevolence, and of superiority or merit.  All tions.
these concur to enforce gratitude, which, as I mentioned in the last chapter, may be urged upon us by
very different motives. On the other hand, revenge
is urged by mere fairness, while it is always opposed
by benevolence and the desire that our conduct shall
be beneficial and useful, and ordinarily by magnanimity also. If we have been the benefactors, mere
fairness, careless of feeling, suggests offence at failure
of repayment, while benevolence and magnanimity
suggest the contrary.  If, on the other hand, we
have injured another, fairness, benevolence, and magnanimity all concur to enforce restitution, redress,
contrition, and more or less increased goodwill.
In the first and last cases indeed, secondary
feelings of a terrible nature sometimes come in,
instead of the above-mentioned secondary feeling
of increased goodwill. Men hate those by whom
they have been benefited, as odious creditors; they
hate those whom they have injured, as likely to be
nursing feelings of revenge.
Though I am in this chapter concerned mainly The love
with the intellectual view of fact, yet as just now omfparneds
in the case of benevolence, I cannot entirely escape to the love
of truth.
notice of feeling, and I will say a few words here on
what I have called the intellectual feeling of fairness.,




216   DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
I described, some time since, the analogy between
the moral desire to do right, or love of duty or virtue
in general, and the intellectual love of, or value for
truth. The love of fairness, which I am now speaking of, is the same thing as this desire to do right, in
a particular application and in a more definite shape:
and on account of this greater particularity and definiteness, it is in special analogy with the love of
truth.
The love of fairness means first, the desire to ascertain how interest, on our part, happiness, advantage, should be distributed, balanced, apportioned
between two parties in a particular case; what is
due to the one, what to the other: and next, the
desire that this knowledge may be acted upon,
both by the parties and by others concerned. The
desire to find out this, is in fact the same thing as
the intellectual thirst after truth, with the addition,
that the practical feelings, the sympathies and care
for good and happiness, are strongly enlisted in
the case. And then, when this has been ascertained,
there comes the anxiety for its being acted on, and
the corresponding dissatisfaction or displeasure, often
most intense, at its not being so. I have called
this love of fairness an intellectutal feeling, because it
has nothing at all to do either with benevolence or
with any Aesthetic feelings: the feelings with which
it most readily associates itself are the semi-malevolent feelings; it tends to produce rather indignation at wrong than any sympathy with happiness.
This is because that which is fair is considered the
normal state, something natural or which ought to
exist as a matter of course, capable of exciting dissatisfaction if disturbed, but giving rise to no particular satisfaction in its existence. The peculiar
intensity of the feeling which springs up at the




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.             217
sight of wrong done is owing to the wounding of the
sense of fairness or equity, analogous to the wounding of the sense of truth, combined with the more
emotional feelings of pity for the sufferer, and aversion for the inflictor of pain.
I have here been going out of my way to speak a For right
little about the feeling of fairness, which, like other dstribfufeelings, often exists more or less arbitrarily, and errs tio, the'y~ ~   principle
in various ways. I am now rather concerned with of particularity has
fairness as a fact, or, which is the same thing, with to be comwhat the feeling of fairness, which should follow fact, bined with
should be.                                             equity and
preferOur conduct to different people should be regu- ence.
lated, in other words, our care for them apportioned,
on three principles combined: proper preference;
proper fairness, or absence of preference; and proper
particularity.
Our duty to kindred, for instance, has, as we
have seen, this character, that more interest is to be
taken in them than in others, in other words, that our
action, as useful, is engaged as it were to them, before
we have right to the general disposal of it; and also
that the nature of our action towards or for them is
determined by the nature of the relation: it is different according as they are parents, according as
they are children, according to what they are. The
principles of preference and particularity both come
in.
On the other hand, the principle of equity or
fairness exists, to prevent over-preference and mispreference. It exists, as between the preferred and
the non-preferred; and as among the preferred.
How fa' it
I mentioned that our preference, in care and istruethat
action, of kindred and others standing in similar benevo-an
relation to us, is a feeling which in some respects etension
resembles self-peference, or hasof selfresembles self-preference, or has selfish elements in it. love.




218    DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
In one point of view, it is an extended self-regard:
and this is important for various reasons.
The view that all benevolence is an extension of
self-love, which, as I said, roughly represents a real
fact, does so in this way for one; that, as affection
to kindred and friends, if we compare it on the one
side with simple self-regard, may be called benevolence, so, if we compare it on the other side with
philanthropy and the wider desire of human happiness,
it may be called selfishness. To this is to be added,
that many really selfish elements associate themselves
with it, while, exactly to the same degree in which
this takes place, benevolent elements mix with our
selfishness: an interchange takes place: we think of
those whom we love with selfishness; we are ready
to sacrifice ourselves for those we love. The greater
part of the selfishness or self-interestedness which
exists is of this character: it is very far from being
mere care for our single selves. But then, correspondingly, our love for those connected with us takes a
selfish character: our reputation, our success, our
pleasures, are bound up in them.
Conflict of So strongly is this the case, that carrying relative
relative
and gene- duty too far, as against general duty, is an offence
ralutvy. against duty altogether, as great as the neglect of
relative duty would be; and within the limits of
relative duty itself, there is duty to be maintained
which is not relative. Undue preferences in families,
as amongst children for instance, is one of the most
fertile sources of evil and trouble.
The principle which, in these respects, is to be set
against relative duty is, what we may call in general,
fairness or equity: as we are considering it now, it is
vague and without very much meaning: its meaning
will come to it chiefly at a later stage of consideration,
after we have supposed people existing in a definite




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.    219
social state under law. Still it has importance in
the earlier stage: we owe duty to everybody: in some
respects all are to be treated alike; no one's happiness should be matter of indifference to us.
What has been said as to the wrongness of overcare for kindred, &c., applies in the same way to the
occasional relations which I have spoken of, of benefactor and benefited, &c.  Gratitude is a stronger
call upon us perhaps even than family affection; but
still one which, like that, must have its law and
limit. Nor, if we have injured any, shall we do any
good by violating fairness in some other way to redress
the wrong.
But enough perhaps of relations which suggest a The duty
of truthpreference, in our care, thought or good-will for one fulness.
over another. There are other relations which suggest our action in particular cases, some of them most
important: and I will here discuss one which is
perhaps the most important of all.
This is the relation of trusting and trusted.
By our nature, we are, to a certain extent, a
sealed book each one to others: we can keep our
thoughts to ourselves, while we can saywhat we please.
And besides this, our will is exceedingly fluctuating
and uncertain; we constantly do not know our own
mind for the future.
Now if we have given occasion to any to trust us,
so as to regulate by this trust in any way his mind
and lhought, our action is pledged by this or engmged to him in the same way as I mentioned in
respect of relative duty, and much more definitely.
And independent of any act of ours, in virtue of our
mere nature as men, we give occasion to others to
trust what we say as expressing our thought: and
hience truthfulness is an inevitable duty of speech. I




220   DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION CONSIDERED
suppose, if we individually could, in any way, let
each person know that we were an exception to human
nature, and that we wished it to be universally understood that what we said did not at all necessarily,
though it might, represent our thought; in this case,
there would be no duty of truthfulness for us, because
our speech would not be human speech, but would be
only sound without meaning. As it is, the most
untruthful speech is human speech, because it is
understood as addressed to people who more or less
trust us, and because it has, ordinarily, one of two
purposes, either to express the man's mind, or to
mis-express it and deceive: it is not human speech
unless it has some purpose in relation to understanding.
It is best    The proper moral aspect of truthfillness seems to
viewed as
one aspect me to be that it is one case of the very wide duty of
of faithfulness.   faithfulness to trust, which alone renders possible
the correspondent virtue of trustfulness; the two
together constituting almost the highest prerogative,
the greatest glory, and at the same time, the greatest
pleasure of human nature.
Truthfulness comes more simply thus, as a branch
or case of faithfulness, than as a branch or case of'openness,' which latter, as virtue, is a matter of
difficult consideration.
There is no more occasion that we should wear
our heart and mind on our sleeve, than that we
should turn our heart inside out, and live in public,
except so far as others may be benefited by our openness, or as it may affect their action; or, on the other
hand, except so far as any reserve or incommunicativeness is the result of fear. Our minds are, by the
necessity of our nature, individual, and very often
what is in them cannot be communicated, because
such communication is a double process, involving




FROM THE IDEAL POINT OF VIEW.    221
conditions on the part of the listener as well as on
the other side.
The action suggested to us by the above relations, For the
and other similar ones, constitutes duty, or the law of ion of
duty, as to its particulars; or, if we like so to express dutyd a
it, it gives us the contents of that law of duty, the system of
positive
ideal of which we form to ourselves in the manner relations.
which I described in a former chapter, which, so to
speak, we imaginatively impose upon ourselves, or
imagine as binding upon us.
The law of duty, in so far as we consider it not
an ideal presenting itself to our imagination, but as
something actually existing, or which has existed,
or which might possibly exist, as an understood and
more or less obeyed rule of conduct among men, is
called natural law or the law of nature.
But, as a rule of conduct, though it has thus contents or particulars, it is evidently exceedingly vague.
Before it can be applied to any extent, there is
quite a different set of considerations upon which we
have to enter. We have to consider men as existing,
as in fact they always do exist, in certain relations
to each other more complicated and more definite
than those which we have as yet considered: they
are what are called positive as distinct from moral
relations, and the system of them is what is called
positive law. I shall more generally call them jural
relations. The law of duty has to be applied to the
conduct of men to each other, in reference to these
relations; to take cognizance, both of the manner of
the formation of the relations, and of men's conduct
in them. These will form the subject of our next
chapter.




APPENDIX ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION IN
REFERENCE TO EXISTING LAW1.
Justice   JUSTNESS, in the highest degree of abstractness or general
has reference to   application to which we can trace the word, is indistinguishthree    able from fairness, fitness, rightness.
stages of
law, law of   Between this point of abstractness and the most definite
the state, understanding which can subsist amonc men as to the most
of human. -
ity, of   accidental relations, there is a continuous course of possible
God.    relation and action, which we may divide into three regions,
commencing from the lowest:
(1).  That to which applies particular and express human
law, with its definite authority and penalties.
(2).  That to which applies general and unformalized
human law, i.e. universal, public, or (more or less) general
opinion.
(3). That to which applies conscience, imaginatively representing to us a more general and higher opinion or
judgment still, viz. that of all possible intelligent and moral
beings, to which our intelligence and moral judgment, so far
as they are true and right, must be conformable. Natural
religion concentrates this judgment into that of God, and
revelation makes it definite, and makes known to us the
particulars of it.
There lies thus always an inward or moral appeal from
express human law to universal human feeling, and from
(apparent) universal human feeling to our own conscience,
1 In the preceding chapter the Author had proposed to consider the
principles on which action should be distributed, first, from the ideal, and,
second, from the jural point of view, and also to examine the relation of
these two views to each other. He has completed the first part of his
task, but has left only the merest sketch of the second and third. 1 have
thought it better therefore to insert here a discussion of the same subject
taken from an older MS. marked Series 3, incorporating in it one or two
paragraphs from the later sketch. ED.




ON DISTRIBUTION  OF ACTION.               223
as representing to us, in the only way practicable, the law of
universal intelligence or of God.
The definition which I gave of law some time back will Definition
be remembered: it is the restraint or regulation of the acts of law.
of individuals, in view of the advantage of each and all, by
sufficient authority and power. The authority, recognized
by the common reason, distinguishes it from mere violence:
the power, acting upon individuals by penalty, where necessary, distinguishes it from mere custom.
Duty is concerned with actual human law in three ways: Duty in
it regulates, to a certain extent, the making it: it enforces regard to
actual law.
obedience to it as actual law, except in cases where it is
contrary to duty itself: beyond such obedience, it regulates
action in conformity with the relations which actual law has
introduced.
In considering relative duty as it exists in society and The law
civilization, or under actual law, we have to consider indivi- derduals as clothed, so to speak, with various circumstances and rights and
duties in
conditions. The simplest view of these is to call them rights accordance
and duties. Duties exist as we have seen prior to any actual with the
relations
law: the term'rights' was introduced in later jural language estabto express the circumstances of the party to whom duty was lished by
owed, signifying the same as claim, call, due.
The purpose of law is to regulate individual action, but
the manner in which this is done, in all actual law which is
in other than its rudest stage, is not by mere isolated injunction, but is by the recognition of individuals as in various
relations to each other, or by the placing them  in such
relations, with certain things which each must do and which
each may claim; and then saying to individuals, If you do
anything inconsistent with, or offending against, these arrangements, you incur such and such a penalty.
Law is thus an order, vd/,oq, or distribution of men in a Law is
society: that is, it is an authoritative distribution or appor- thus an
authoritationment of a certain portion of their actions for them.    tive distriThis general distribution is the sum of a number of less bution of
action.
general distributions, or arrangements as to the things people
may claim or must do, and these arrangements, in so far as
they are brought into being by the actual law, are called'institutions.'  An actual society is abstractly a congeries of
such institutions.




224          ON DISTRIBUTION  OF ACTION..Sottrees of    Actual law is, at no one time, without its authority, i.e.
the authority of   power accepted by reason as right: but the authority which
actual law. there is for it at any one time is, in a measure, accidental:
that is, the authority which there is for it at the particular
time, is representative more or less of three separate things,
(1) of the superiority of the whole society to each individual
member of it: (2) of the superiority which there is in the
continued society, as existing in past and (prospectively) in
future time, over the collection of individuals at any moment:
and (3) of that general government of all intelligent beings
by God, which is the moral law.  The form of the representation is in a great measure accidental.  The power and
reason both come, more or less from each one of the things
which are represented.
Its embo-    Prima facie, the power is in the whole body; but practidiment is cally, the power at any time is very much according to the
often accidental.  accidental grouping of the members, and the third consideration supplies an additional element of moral power the
practical effect of which is very great.  Prima facie, again,
the reason (the business of which is the consideration of the
good of all) is in. the whole body: but practically some will
be better judges of this than others, and experience will
very probably have suggested certain ways of selecting such
judges, as well as the best means for judging, and for carrying into effect their judgment.
Barepower   When it is said that, of particular law, the authority at
intoatgho-ed any time is a matter of accident, what is meant is that it is
rity by the equally authority of whatever sort it is, and whencesoever it
tieognf-  has come; the two elements of it as authority being power
relations  and recognition.  Practically, in many cases, authority or
on both
sides.   Iegific competence has begun in bare power; and law, so to
call it, that is, such regulation of action as there has been,
has been simply the result of a struggle between two parties,
in which the weaker has yielded. Sociality or political life
has been the gradual conversion of this state of things into
one of mutual understanding and consideration: bare power
has become authority by the prevalence of the feeling on the
one side that obedience to it is a duty, and on the other that
the exercise of it is not meant for private benefit, but for the
Growth of benefit of all.
law from
custom.     Law grows of itself, like language, and passes from  one




IN RtEFERENCE TO EXISTING LAW.            225
state to another. Much of it begins in the form of custom:
and, of the great and important parts of it, there are few
which, as a matter of fact, have ever been established as the
result of previous deliberate discussion. They have established themselves gradually: one and another has been convinced of the utility of a practice, it has been imitated, and
has grown by more or less general assent into a custom: and
then such customs have authoritatively established themselves as law. Such discussion as has come, in human experience, on these greater points of law, has hence been of
defence and attack, rather than of previous consideration of
advisability. What has been deliberate has been sometimes
repeal or alteration.of the great principles, but more generally various development and modification, with addition of
smaller accompaniments.
In speaking therefore of law as something enacted, we The main
framework
have to consider that the great framework of  law in any frawork
system has (speaking generally) never been matter of proper existed
enactment, but has had its authority in a great degree inde-ePrart
pendent of such: what enactment it has had has been a ment,
which has
formal expression of something previously existing. When merely
we speak of the institution of property, we do not,mean that served to
property is a thing which has ever been historically instituted:;the human race has never been without it. It is,
historically, an universal human custom, made definite, in
various ways,.by particular law. Deliberation,or previous
discussion as to the establishment of cardinal institutions
of this kind would have been impossible, in the same way as
a previous discussion, on the part of any number of men,
whether they should adopt the practice of language: the
possibility of orderly organization for the previous discussion
involves the existence of the institution.
Keeping then in remembrance this, that, historically, The
much of law has never had an express purpose, we may say primryt
that the purpose of law is the public utility, and that law is of law is
good in proportion to its utility, that no law which we are that it
certain is useful can be unjust. But in respect of law there conform
are three things, justness, utility, naturalness, very closelyto human
are three - things, justness, utility,' naturalness, very closely.
complicated together. And the first which we have need to
notice is natuzralness.  Naturalness expresses both primary
justice, as the word is applicable to laws, and primary utility.
G.                                          15




226          ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION
The     Before we can settle as to particulars, what is just, or not
utility of a unjust, and what is useful, we must have before us the facts
law can  of human nature to which justice and utility are to be
only be determined referred. A law that the wife should support the husband
in refer-  would be unjust, because nature has made man the stronger
ence to its
natural-  of the two. A law that female children (or a certain portion
ness.    of them) should be destroyed (as enacted in Rajpootana
on grounds of presumed public utility) would really be unuseful, as doing violence to those primary facts of nature
to which all utility must be referred. We must therefore
have given to us the great outlines of law from considerations of what is n atural to man, and then law may be developed on the principle, that whatever is for the general
good, including the maintenance of these as a part of it,
and is not contrary to the higher law of rightness, is what
should be.
Bases of   The two great bases of legislation, in all human exlegislation,    perience, have been facmily and property, the one going with
family and the other: and these again are results of two facts belonging
property  to human nature, one, that man in society, speaking generally,
can produce or add to the whole stock of wealth more than
he wants, at least for his immediate and individual use: the
other, that man is not insulated, i.e. that the self, whose
interest self-regard makes him  seek, is not divided by a
definite boundary from the not-self, in rivalry with which he
seeks it. As the body is, for sensiveness, at once a part
of ourselves and of the physical external world, being the
medium between the two, so family stands between a man's
self and the society, at once a part of both. The two facts
(of the gaining power of men and the needs of the helpless
part of the family) are clearly correspondent: the law says no
more than nature does in saying the community will help
you to preserve what you gain, on condition that you use
your gains in support of those whom you ought to support.
Both, in different ways, shall belong to you.
Inequality    That the institution of property is in this manner natural
ofproperty for the human race, i. e. was what, considering what men are,
is natural
could not fail to take place and what human experience
could not fail to ratify, has not probably been disputed.
But it might be considered that the existence of separate
property was a primseval abuse, necessary perhaps in early




IN REFERENCE TO EXISTING LAW.              227
ages, but one which civilization might be expected to rectify;
that mutual trust, the great character of civilization, might
increase to such an extent that the stock of property might
without injury be held in common: or in any case, without
going so far as this, it might be considered that the great
inequality of property, which would very likely develope
itself, is what law, in the interest of all, might check. The
inequality which does develope itself in this respect, and
which seems more and more to do so the higher the economical civilization is carried, is a thing, in some respects,
painful to contemplate; and it is a great hindrance to moral
civilization.  But so far as human experience goes, it seems
as if a high economical civilization or a large population
(which can only exist on the supposition either of this, or
else of a very low level of material welfare on the part of
the mass) cannot arise or be kept up without the full
allowance of such inequality. The inequality of property
which arises in a comparatively uncivilized time, from preoccupation and superior strength on the part of some, though
this cause acts with diminished force in the advance of
civilization, yet is reinforced from another source, in the
exceeding inequality of commercial success, and the tendency
to accumulation in particular hands which commerce involves. This again arises from the same fact of the superiority, if we are to call it so, of one man to another, the result
of such individual superiority being continued in families.
Many efforts have been made, at one time or another, to
cause by legislation comparative equality, but their result
has always been as yet to paralyse commerce and industry
(upon which the national support depends) and in this way
to prevent the increase of property in general, while the
existing property has only changed hands, without any
greater equality than before being at all secured.  It appears as if human nature was such, as not to allow the
stretching of the cord of mutual trust too tight. It is the
union of the feeling of it with- an equally strong feeling of
individual liberty, enterprise and interest, which alone seems
able to produce that amount of exertion which is required to
make nations prosperous.  It is not only human selfishness
but individual independence, which revolts against equalization: inequality of property is only one form of that general
15- 2




228          ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION
variety of condition, which seems. a necessary part of human
nature. And man, though rising above most of the brute
animals in having the idea of a community to work for, and
in the fact that there are some of his race with whom this
will be a sufficient stimulus, yet is not so far raised above
them as that it is sure to be a sufficient stimulus for all.
The stimulus of individual necessity seems to be still indispensable.
The        It may perhaps then be considered as what human nature,
incidental
evils of  at least as interpreted by and known from human experience,
inequality suggests as one base or primary provision for law, that each
may be to 
a certain member of the community should continue undisturbed in
extentd  the possession of what is his, as the representative of a
obviatedl
by poor  former pre-occupation; and that he should also be allowed to
laws:   enjoy the fruits of his abilities and industry, to whatever
amount they may accumulate, and whatever degree of inequality of condition may result from such accumulation.
The law of England is honourably distinguished at present
in doing what the law certainly ought to do, viz. providing
that this inequality shall never go so far as to admit of really
unsupported destitution. In a complicated society, where the
soil is all appropriated in such a manner that independent
support of life is entirely impossible, there is doubtless a
right in each individual to support at the hands of the community to this extent; it is a part of the common law of
mankind.  The community says to him, Instead of the
aboriginal and barbarous ways of gaining your bread which
are now not possible, we open to you a thousand others: if
these are all, for whatever reason, impracticable for you,
then we will support you: more particularly we charge ourselves with your support in those times of sickness and old
age, which barbarism cut short or neglected.
In England such a provision is fitting and equitable, not
only from the general complication of society, but also from
the difficulty and expense of moving from one place to
another where support may be more easily obtained.
and by     It has never been the condition of human nature, nor
emigration.    ever could be, that every man should claim, as his right,
a ready-made society to be born into, with all the advantages which could arise from  the previous labour of
others in his behalf. If men are so fortunate, well and good:




IN REFERENCE TO EXISTING LAW.              229
if not, they have only to do what their forefathers have done
before them, and make a place in the world for themselves.
Property rights in England are representative of former
movements, emigrations, and occupations continued through
many generations: it is competent for those who are born
into a pre-occupied land to repeat such movements in other
lands.  So it is thatnew communities are established and
civilization extends.
Legislation in respect of family, which is the other great
primary matter of law, is parallel and correspondent with
that in respect of property.
The economical unit of a state is the property of each The
member of it, and the social unit is each family, to the ftaily is
members of which that property is, speaking generally, unit.
common.
Legislation about property is, so far as necessity goes, Legal connexion of
chiefly concerned with its relation to the family, and with its family and
(wrongful or rightful) passing from one hand to another property.
(which indeed includes much of the former).
Historically, much complication has arisen from  the
association of property with service to be done, which is
what we call the feudal system. But without entering into
details of law, we have merely to speak of a few facts of
society with which it is concerned.
The first family relation is that of husband and wife.
The experience of mankind shews us as facts, which have Permaexisted in nations to some extent civilized, polygamy, and a nent monogamy is
terminable monogamy so to call it.                       thenatural
But one special condition of civilization and human im- form of
marriage
provement is "concubitu prohibere vago," and the experience associaof civilization may be taken as leading us to think that tion.
neither of the above is so far a remove from it as is desirable.
Our previous ideas of human nature would tend the same
way.
The feelings which should lead to the marriage association are of such a nature, that unless concentrated on one,
they can hardly have that elevating, higher than sensual,
character, or produce that entireness of union which it is a
fact in human nature that they do have and produce. And,
under either of the above-mentioned conditions, the family
can hardly exist in the manner in which it should, con



230          ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION
sidering its importance as the foundation-stone and rudiment
of society.
Hence religion with which these primary relations of
human society have always been a matter of special care,
and the Christian revelation in particular, has drawn the
marriage bond and the restriction to one very tightly.
One reason for dissolution of marriage is expressly
allowed by Christianity, and there are others besides which
might be considered valid: but in dealing with this subject
it must never be forgotten, that the loosening of the marriage
tie is the loosening of society altogether.  To say that
nothing can authorize exceptions may be too much; but the
engagement bona fide till death do part seems as much an
anchor of civilization as of religion.
The legal    The relation, as to power and property, between husband
position
of then  and wife, is a matter upon which laws have varied and
sexes    nature has not apparently given principles so clearly: but
should
cnlform  perhaps it may be said to have given this, that the idea of
to their  moral similarity of the sexes, the keystone of Plato's educanatural
differ-   tion, is fallacious.  ifind has given rise to a possibility of
ences.   difference which destroys the analogy in this respect between
lato.r f man and the brute animals, even supposing there were in
their case, which may be doubtful, that similarity of sexes
which Plato assumes.  That human society derives much of
its interest and value from the moral differehce between the
sexes, is what we should hardly now hesitate to say, and
surely human experience is with us. Each needs and helps
the other.
That law then should recognize a difference between the
sexes, is no more than its expressing a  natural fact: and if
this is to be considered a political inferiority of the one, it is
an inferiority surely balanced by the social influence, power
and importance on their side, which there is no doubt but
that it greatly helps, and with the best result.
Natural-    I have briefly discussed these two heads of legislation by
hiess is   way of illustrating the manner in which we have to proceed
justice and
utility in in mlaking, defending, or altering laws. We have to attend
the first  first of all to what is natural, which is known partly by the
lerlee.
examination of the circumstances of the physical nature of
man, and partly by an observation of the experience of mankind about it.




IN REFERENCE TO EXISTING LAW.                231
Then, when from these first principles we have fixed the
purposes and parties to which definite utility and justice are
to be referred, we may discuss what is just or useful as to
details.
In respect of any of the first institutions of society, such
as marriage, the details of its usefulness may be exhibited;
but the examining whether it is useful or not almost of
necessity involves a fallacy. For there is assumed in the
process that society, constituted as it is upon it, could have
existed in anything like the manner it does independently of
it.  What these are useful for is not the improvement only,
but the very existence of society.
Passing on from  this framework, the test of a good law, Justice
as to detail, is that it is useful, and not unjust.  In thii and utility
second degree usefulness means, in the main, conduciveness second deto the stability  of that first framework which we have gree.
alluded to, which, as has been said, gives the principles to
which utility is to be referred.  And justice here means
fairness among the different individuals whom the law concerns, on the supposition of that framework, which determines their relations, and consistently with it.
We shall shortly discuss the idea of hacppiness and the Legal
nature of utility as referred to that: at present we will say ltility and
that happiness is an idea not definite, and that legal happi- happiness.
ness (that to which utility as predicated of laws, refers) must
be taken to mean the possession and enjoyment of those
things, which  human  experience, as exhibited in actual
human arrangements, seems to shew  man likes.  Property
and the preservation of it against others, family power,
affection, protection, stability, these and many other such
things in the eye of all practical law, are notfor happiness
(i. e. useful) but are happiness, and legal utility is the being
helpful or contributory to them.
It will be asked, Is law to have no higher purpose than Should
this, and is not the legislator to form  his own idea of what thtelegis~ lator be
will make the subjects of the law happy and be for their good, content to
aim at
and to make his laws accordingly?                            this?at
Theoretically, and to the extent to which we can, with any His. aim
significance, speak of a legislator and of power on his part, must be
practical
this is so.  But practically human nature or political society, as well as
in many things, legislates for itself. Of definite or pre-expe- elevated.




232          ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION
rimental systems of law, a part takes hold, a part dies or becomes inert. It is not what the legislator promulgates, but
what he can make the people more or less act upon, which is
the law worth considering as such.
The views which determine what laws are to be, should be
both elevated and practical: the former character is not likely
to exist in the first instance in a mass of people, though it is
very possible that when it is once initiated, they may heartily
respond to it: large and exalted views belong to the legislator. The latter character, if it does not exist in the legislator, will probably shew itself in fact afterwards, by rendering
part of his work useless. While the legislator therefore may
form for himself a high, ideal of what he would wish his
people to be, he must bear in mind, that judging by human
experience, his enactments, be they what they may, will
one way or another make, themselves. There still remains
perhaps much that he can do,: and the higher the aim in
this, the better.
In old     Legislators, in earlier times, were looked upon as educatimes the
legislator tors, and no doubt they often were so. In respect of actual
was an   codes of law which history tells us about, it is often difficult
educator.
to make sure how much of each of them was embodiment or
re-embodiment of what existed, before in the form of custom
or law, and how much came fresh from the legislator. But
the power of individuals for good. in. this, way must often have
been very great. It is possible that much of what has been
described as the foundation of law may in the first instance
have owed its suggestion to individuals, conceiving more
strongly than others that which must have been more or less
common to the thoughts of all, and with the art of putting it
into practical shape and influencing the wills of others in
favour of it. In simpler society, a man in character at once
representative of others and, more high and large-minded
might actually by laws effect, much in the way of educating
and civilization. In the more complicated states of civilization this of course is not so possible. But it is still possible
to have, and to encourage in those who are to make laws,
elevated views of what those laws may at least try to effect.
Society is    A society is a partnership not only for the purposes of
a partner- police, i. e. for the mutual protection of property, but also for
shionly or  the purpose o helping the coon   progress, and for the aid
only for  the purpose of helping the common progress, and for the aid




IN REFERENCE TO EXISTING LAW.            233
which the members may give each other in all which makes mutual
human nature better. The law is the action of the society iro,te but
in doing this. In vast societies like some of the states of for immodern times, with the multitudes of conflicting interests and Poet
opinions which they involve, it is doubtless difficult for the
general law to effect much more than the keeping of the peace
and the maintenance of the above named first principles.
But so far as it can act to improve public morals and the
general character of the population, it should. And the wish
that such means should be found, is one which should exist in
the minds of those whose business is to legislate. Without
regulating everything and making, as was the tendency of
some of the ancient legislation, the society all, the individual
nothing, we yet need not take the opposite extreme of considering the partnership and, its expression, the law, simply an
evil and a restraint, of which therefore the less there is the
better. The law should be not merely a restraint, but a
means of common action for good.
Prevention therefore of anything injurious to public morals It must
is thus one thing the law may aim- at, and means of effecting therefore
it what it should look for. In a more positive way the law vision
both for
should provide for the education of the people and the encou- education
ragement of religion; this latter, not only as a part of the en- and recouragement of morality,, but as a common paying of the duty ligion.
which every member of the community owes to God. The
distinction of the Sunday from. other days is at once a part of
traditional and revealed religion, and is an ordinance for the
benefit of all engaged in labour. By ancient usage of our
country the state itself is considered in some degree a religious union; more or less of a religious character is given to
important acts of it; and the law provides, by ancient endowments, for the keeping up of the worship and knowledge of
God among the people. This, is at once in the highest degree
auxiliary to the general purpose of the law, in the preserving
the public peace and morality, and in itself it is the highest
purpose which the law could subserve. Nor is there any opposition between such action on the part of- the law and that
individuality of religion, which is demanded by the spirit of
Christianity.  It would be hard if improvement of faith
should lead to apparent godlessness, and Christian communities should fail to do what all other communities have done,




234          ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION
viz. make their society and their law, so far as they could, a
help to their religion.
With the    In a civilized and complicated community, law as to its
Progress  form and method, loses certain characters, which in a simpler
of society
law be-  one it may have, in regard of the education or improvement
comes
nore tech,,  of the people. It necessarily becomes professional: it becomes
nical, and so vast in detail that principles and leading features are lost:
is looked          its
at withe  it acquiries its own language, which is unintelligible to the
less sym- majority: it ceases to influence the mind or modes of thought
pathy and of people, being rather looked on with awe and dislike, and
the necessity for paying any attention to it being, deplored as
a calamity. This progress is gradual: in simpler states of
society, the law is an interesting and important part of national literature: long after this, and after it has become to a
certain degree technical, the study of it makes, so to speak, a
part of the apprenticeship of a gentleman: at last its extent
and technicality become so great, as to render even this impossible.  How far this progress of things is necessary, we
cannot here discuss.  It is concerned with morality in this
manner.  So long as laws continue within the scope of the
general mind of the people, they are viewed with an interest
and respect which disappear as they become more technical.
It is desirable that law should present itself to the minds of
people as, not simply offering to their choice the alternative
of either a particular course of action or the penalty of disobedience, but as having a claim upon their obedience and
regard independent of penalties, for the reason involved in it
and the good purposes which it serves. Of course the paying
or not of such regard will depend in the main on the substance
of the laws, and in a large community and system of laws there
must be various laws which one and another will consider unjust, and what ought to be altered. But still, a right view in
this respect would surely be very much helped if laws were
more distinctly presented before the minds of people: both
the reasons for their existence and the manner in which they
might be improved would thus be made more apparent. The
public reason would make itself better felt, as such, if it were
not too much dissociated in manner and language front reason in individuals.
There is a further practical difficulty as to laws of formal
procedure.  Occasions will continually arise, when these will




IN  REFERENCE TO EXISTING  LAW.              235
exactly defeat the purpose which they are intended to subserve.
It is when there are no more of them than necessary, when
the purpose for which they are intended is definite, that people will be likely to understand that the good which they cause
2upon the whole would not be attainable except at the hazard
of the occasional injustice which seems inherent in them.
We are naturally led from the duty of the legislator to the Duty of
those who
duty of those subject to the law.  In fact, what we have last are subject
treated about makes a transition between the two.           to the law.
We will speak another time of the difficulties which may
arise from the conflict of the requirements of the laws of the
land with those of higher or moral law.
In earlier society, the law of the society (not always accu- The law
rately distinguished from the unwritten custom of it) is con- itself tis
b VVIJ ~LI~VI~LL                                suggestive
sidered to furnish at least a general outline of moral behaviour, of action
and to be the first thino  to  e rthe first thing to        beyoand
b, - -                               the law:
Vir bonus est quis?
Qui consulta patrum, qui leges juraque servat.:But " ad legem bonum esse" can hardly from the first be both in
considered sufficient.  The law suggests and, for obedience to the way
it, almost requires a corresponding education and general tone sion and
extension.
of feeling which, without any express provision, must cause a
much wider and completer action in the direction indicated
than is demanded by the law itself.  Next come, in various
*forms of philosophy, considerations of virtuousness, excellence,
and free good action superior to mere legal obedience and to
custom: and often, as in the main in our time and country,
the care of influencing and educating the morals of a country
belongs to religion, and is considered a part of it.
The wider sphere of good action suglgested by the narrower
law of the land is both an expansion of it and supplementary
to it. The law requires particular conduct on our part towards
certain people, on account of their particular circumstances or
relation to us: the corresponding virtuousness will consist in
the acting, not only by the letter but in the spirit, of such conduct to them, and also in acting in the same spirit, so far as
it is applicable, to others, to whom we are not so bound.
These two processes, of the intensification of legal relations,
and the supposition, so to call it, of moral ones beyond them,
lmust be contemporaneous.  The legal obligation of care for




236          ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION
our family must be raised into special kindred love, and must
further be supplemented by more general love, by the supposition of a moral relation beyond that of kindred. We are to
love brethren more, and to count all men brethren: the additional amount of moral feeling generated is to go partly in
intensifying the legal or express relation, and partly in extending the feeling belonging to it, as far as we can, beyond itself,
to others with no such definite claim upon us. This expanding and supplementing of actual law is in fact bringing it
into relation with more general law, or moral feeling.'Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him
labour, working with. his hands the thing that is good, that
he may have to give to him, that' needeth.' This passage
is singularly expressive as a general sketch of what moral
education should aim at when it takes the definite law as
its starting point. The crime or offence is distinct, and
the disposition of mind prompting it is so likewise: the
thing to be aimed at is to. draw' the mind as far as
possible the other way, to produce a disposition as far as
possible different.  It is not merely that he may have lawfully what he has tried. to gain unlawfully; but that he may
have to give to others, instead of its being (apparently)
necessary for him to take from them. Stealing or injury
suggests the idea of its opposite, beneficence or benefit.
Public     The laws of a nation are a more or less definite and compfiillole  plete expression of a public spirit and feeling which is propression  duced in the first instance by education, using the word in a
lacwtuad  wide sense, and which afterwards operates to extend and
is itself a supplement the laws in the manner above described.
more gene.   The wider law thus generated derives its authority from
of law    public opinion; its sanctions are public approval and diswith sanetions of  approval, and they are very powerful.  To many it will conits own.  stitute nearly the whole law of their action: by those who think
and feel more deeply it will be respected as a representation,
though often inadequate, of what is higher than itself, the
common feeling of human nature, and also of that which
when not inconsistent with this, is itself also valuable, the
traditional individuality of the nation.
The comrn-    This common feeling of human nature, though indefinite
on Ofeel- and not easy to fix as to the detail, is yet a reality, and is, in
ing of
human   practice, that which most commends and brings home to




IN REFERENCE TO EXISTING LAW.              237
man the facts of rightness. It is the jus gentium or jus nature
natvurale of the Roman law. It is a law, the authority and repestin
penalties of which, in this form of it, are in conscience and higher
law.
human opinion, the former imaginatively representing the
second, where this latter cannot itself act. This is the law,
certain particulars of which become, in the manner which we
have mentioned, the great framework of national law. In
those who are able to enter into the idea of it, it generalizes
and exalts and supplements the national or public spirit as
this does the particular national law.
There are certain parts of human conduct, which not Certain
entering much into express law, are regulated greatly by of conduct,
general feeling, and refer themselves a good deal to this, such as
decency,
without the possibility of reason much more definite being are mainly
given for them. Of this class is much of what we call regulated
deec                                                      by this
decency of manner and purity of conduct. There is much higher
that is necessarily conventional in the details of these, but law.
the conventions, so to call them, upon which the main principles rest, are deep rooted and widely spread human feelings.
There is no part of human conduct, the regulation of which
more concerns the orderliness of human society and the
elevation of character of the individual: and it is this fact
together with that just mentioned, that it is harder to give
definite reason as to this part of rightness than others, which
has always more specially placed it under the guardianship
of religion.
That which this common feeling of human nature repre- This law
0. is the
sents is what is understood by the moral or supreme law in supreme
its application to man. To the independent reason it is that moral law
systematic arrangement of all things (relations of persons reason
included) upon which the rightness of actions depends. informs
This system, to the eye of such reason, has of necessity one us
Author, who is concerned to maintain and vindicate it, and
from whom therefore penalty for infringement of its arrangements may be expected.
The conscience and feeling of man presents from a dif- and to
ferent side this same feeling of a law, the violation of which which conscience
is anticipatedly punishable. Human and conscientious dis- bears
approval or condemnation is felt not as the punishment, but witness
as the presage, the warning, the indicator of it. The offender
has not only offended against human opinion and law, for




238          ON DISTRIBUTION OF ACTION
which men and his conscience hate and torture him, but he
has offended against something which that opinion represents,
and for which offence punishment from somewhere beyond
man, a Nemesis or Ate, indistinct sketches of a real future
judgment, await him. Law is the establishing of rights, and
the righting of wrongs; human feeling indicates to'ls, more
or less distinctly, what the rights are, and at the same time
anticipates, more or less distinctly also, the manner in which
the wrongs done in violation of them will be righted.
Actual law   In the view which we have been taking, obedience to the
very is  actual law is looked upon as the lower limit of moral duty,
complete but, in a manner, as representative of the extent of it: so
scheme of
moral   that it in some measure directs towards what general conaction.   duct should be.
This however it can only be very imperfectly, even taking
duty in its most positive or objective form. For the law has
to be very definite, and in this way, it may have to pass over
conduct which may be more injurious to society than many
of the crimes which it punishes.
A code of    And all that large part of morality which is concerned
morality  rathle  with the constant outgrowth of tempers and disis impossible. positions than with definite actions is one to which considerations from  actual law  have no direct application.
A man without doing any special action which can be considered an offence against family duty, may make all those
about him miserable: without being dishonest, he may be
oppressive.
We have    Objective morality, or the rule and law of proper conduct
to judge of and of a good life, is not anything which can be expressed in
right or
wrong by any sort of way in a code or system. For the'forming, mengopinieronl tally, some sort of method of it, the consideration of the
variously great heads or subjects of actual or particular law may be
criticized. 
useful, in the way which we have mentioned: but, besides
that they themselves are with difficulty systematized, they
are incomplete as an index to morality.  And if those
tangible relations of human beings which law can attend to
are so large in number as the great extent of particular law
shews theem to be, how infinite in number must be the relations which morality is concerned with, Practically, the
book to which we each one of us have to refer, to discover, as
to a particular action or line of conduct, whether it is right




IN REFERENCE TO EXISTING LAWN.           239
or wrong, is the general opinion of our age and time variously
commented upon, interpreted, or criticized, by the more immediate circle in which we move, by the books which we
have read, and by the view of life which our past or present'
circumstances have given to us. Of the nature of this
general opinion, and of the degree to which we ought to
consider it right or wrong, what we should follow, or what
we should rise above, we shall speak again. But for the
direct practical purposes of human life, systematic morality is
of no use. What it is of use for, is to enable us rationally to
judge and criticize the public or general opinion which of
necessity is what we first refer our conduct to.
From the first we compare, and must do so, our conduct The chief
with the conduct of others, and our judgment on that con- use of
systematic
duct with the judgment of others.                      morality
is to
The object of systematic morality is to give us rational criticize
grounds on which to make these comparisons. The actions, general
succeeding one another in infinite number and variety of pinion'
life, cannot be classified under heads. Life cannot be lived
by rule, or it is not life. As well might we make it our
business to classify the different possible movements of
muscles, limbs and body, and for the sake of our health
determine to be always making some movements and never
others; irrespective of the fact that movement is for purpose,
and that, if we are to live and act, a continual complicated
movement must always be going on, our business therefore
(as to the body) being to learn to make this in the manner
which shall be most healthy for us.




CHAPTER XI.
THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
Moral   ALL proper moral terms are descriptive adjectives
terms are
applied to applicable to actions; or to transient feelings, which
actions,  I shall call feelings; or to  permanent feelings
disposi-  which I shall call dispositions; or to permanent
tions
habits:  feelings steadily influential upon the will, which I
shall call habits.
Each good moral habit is a particular kind or
branch of virtuousness, as each bad moral habit is a
kind of viciousness. Virtuousness and viciousness,
and again virtues and vices, stand in a rude kind of
opposition to each other, like pleasure and pain, or
pleasures and pains.  I say'rude,' because the
general opposition, between virtue and vice, is, like
that between pleasure and pain, of a very imperfect
and inaccurate kind: the particular oppositions are,
like those of propositions in logic, of very various
sorts.  Sometimes a man must have the virtue or
the vice; as he must be either just or unjust: sometimes there may be a middle ground; as a man may
be an ordinary character, neither courageous nor
cowardly; sometimes (in Aristotle's view always)
there may be a second vice which stands in a more
point-blank opposition to the first vice than the
virtue does, as in the opposition of rashness to
most   cowardice: and so probably in various ways besides.
properly   WMorality is properly concerned with action, and
to actions
anahabits. therefore the most strictly moral terms are applicable




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.          241
only to actions, and to habits which, we have seen,
are closely associated with actions. Feelings may
be good, but, as being transient, cannot be called virtuous; and dispositions, if they are properly called
virtuous, are such as cause action, or are habits. Virtuousness is a continuance of good feelings, and an
exercise of good dispositions.
As we have seen, language presents us With Tendency
of lannames, in abundance, both of virtues and vices. guage to
Most commonly, I think, it will be found, it is the giv
virtue which has the positive or, more properly, nence to
good disaffirmative name, the vice the negative; even where, positions
upon the whole, it is rather the virtue that has the ant bad
negative character and the vice the positive; as in
justice and injustice.
However this may be, certainly the reverse is
the fact in regard of single actions. To describe bad
actions, we have a great many terms of loose and
varying application, from all sorts of metaphors; but
we have no general name for a good action, like the
Stoic KaTordpowa.
I must here call to mind what I said before, that
the term'action' in its wide sense must be taken to
include forbearance from action, when opportunity or
temptation occurs.
Action thus generally spoken of, may be conveniently divided in two ways: according as it affects
ourselves or others, and according as it is action or
forbearance to act, activity or inactivity.
Inactivity of itself, the neutral state, is good or Forbearbad according to the kind of action from which we actem tayb
consider it to be an abstinence.                   inmoral:
Abstinence from bad action affecting others is
harmlessness: abstinence from bad action of any kind
is innocence.
Inactivity or indolence, segnitia or ignacvia, is
G.                                     16




242      THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
abstinence from  action, considered  as blameable
partly in the view of the action abstained from
being good, partly in view of action, as opposed to
inaction, being of itself proper for man.
proceeding   The two chief causes for such inactivity are selffrom  selfindul-  indulgence and cowardice; the inactivity is either
frgene o  voluptuous, or inert and timid: there is a want of
cowardice. principle and self-government, or there is a want of
courage.  Self-government accordingly and courage
were counted by the old moral philosophers so important, that they were made to constitute two of
the four great divisions of virtue.
Inactivity in some respects may be coupled with
very great activity in others, as I shall explain more
fully in speaking of character.
Broadly, setting aside the very large mass of
action in life which must, from the nature of things,
be devoted to the care of ourselves, and which, as I
have said, we may call of no moral account, action
beyond this may be considered good if for the benefit
of others; not good if for our own benefit when it
might be for theirs; not good if for the injury of
others; good or meritorious if for our own loss, rather
than theirs.
Inactivity prevents us from being self-seeking or
actively selfish, prevents us from injuring others
deliberately, prevents us also from benefiting them:
possibly it may lead to conduct which, looked at in
reference to others, is virtue; and it is very likely to
lead to conduct not at all injurious to them, and not
in this way wrong.
Self-indul-   A great mass of the conduct which it expresses,
ewronegly  and of similar conduct, all self-indulgence, for indsaribed stance, is wrong as being, in the language of some
breach of philosophers, against duty to ourselves. This is not
duty to
self,    a good expression: we may, and must divide or




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.          243
double ourselves in imagination for various purposes,
as e.g. we ourselves judge ourselves: but to imagine
ourselves as having claim upon ourselves seems
absurd. Wrong self-indulgence is offence against
the general law of duty as distinguished from offence
against particular relative duty, in which the other
party is marked and clear. This law of duty, which
I have described, is ideal, and is considered by us to
be owed to God, in so far as we are religious: failing
religion, it is a due on our part imagined or believed
in, according to what our views of the moral universe
are.
Bad conduct has been classified, by law, so far as It is easier
to classify
it is amenable to penalty; by theology, so far as par- wrong
ticular portions of it are considered as more or less a ath risght
hindrance to salvation.  Good conduct, independent actions.
of there being less reason for its classification, is also
more difficult to classify as being freer and wider.
Conduct which can be classified is that which has
reference to duty: and duty, as I have said, though
markedly positive and affirmative in certain cases
where the other party is distinct, yet as regards the
mass of it is, in particulars, negative or prohibitory.
Conduct which has reference to an ideal for imitation
or effort cannot be classified. Hence the tendency
in language to notice and name good dispositions,
and bad acts. Hence also it is simpler to anatomize
wrong-doing than right; and probably the simplest
way of doing so in the first instance, is to ask, Do you
do to others all the good you can? And do you refrain
from doing them any wrong, harm, or injury?
The causes which make us inactive when we vices of
ought to be doing good to others, may be roughly inactiYlt
summed up in the three dispositions which I have
just now noticed, and which may be called in general
indolence or idleness, cowardice, and self-indulgence.
16-=-2




244      THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
The two latter of them are, as I have mentioned, the
opposites of two of the old cardinal virtues, and may
be called cardinal vices. The first, according to its
kind, would come under one or another of these.
Vices of  The circumstances under which we are active in
activity.
doing harm to others may similarly be considered as
coming under three great heads, though we cannot
speak of there being any particular disposition of
mind accompanying each, which we could call a vice.
Active offences, or crimes against others, would then
be classified as offences of maleficence, offences of
simple injustice, and offences of unfaithfulness.
Male-     By'maleficence' I mean the attempt to give pain,
iroeneas as such, to others. This can hardly arise, deliberately
from the and in a mature mind, except from revengefulness;
desire to
revenge  in which we must include, in some degree, jealousy
supposed
injustice. and envy, which produce a sort of half feeling of injury done to ourselves by the person envied.  Combativeness indeed, love of pursuit and conquest, love
of exercising power, and other feelings of these kinds,
produce a certain amount of capricious cruelty, in
which more or less pleasure is felt at the mere infliction of pain; but scarcely as a matter of deliberate
purpose.
Acts, offences, and crimes, of revenge justify
themselves to the person committing them as acts of
justice, and indeed are constantly felt as such: it
is this mixture of a most powerful sentiment, and
one so associated with virtue, which makes them so
terrible.
By simple injustice I mean when pain or loss is
inflicted by us on others, not for any pleasure taken
by us in their pain or loss as such, but in order to
pleasure or benefit to ourselves ensuing from it. I
use the term injustice rather more widely than we




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.        245
commonly use it, about as widely as we commonly
use injury. I mean the causing of harm to others
for our own advantage, whether this is done by our
action or by our failing to act, if this is deliberate,
not arising from  mere inaction, of which I have
spoken before.
Roughly, we may' divide the hurting of others Injustice
dividled
into wrong and unkindness. Fairness, the instinc-into
tive form, or fundamrental feeling of justice, is a legal an
feeling of tremendous power, but very rudimentary moral, and
and blind. This feeling, in the first instance, inspires ness.
and commands law and custom, regulating mutual conduct; and then itself submits to be commanded
and regulated, to a certain extent, by what it has
thus inspired; and thus there grows up the feeling
of justice in society. A certain amount of wrong,
such as can be laid down clearly and with profit to
the community, is fixed and forbidden by law, and
is legal wrong. Outside of this there is a large
margin of conduct in some respects of the same
nature as this, which may be even more keenly felt
as wrong, but which, either from defect in the law,
or from the matter not being adapted for legal enforcement, is not legal wrong. All this wrong is
violation of duty, which duty, in order for the conduct to be a wronging of others rather than simple
unkindness, must have, more or less, the characters
which I described as belonging to proper duty: that
is, there must be definite parties to it, it must be
clear and particular, it must appear as in some way
incumbent, and much besides.
By unkindness positive (unkindness negative, i. e.
neglect to take trouble to do kindness, belonging to
inaction) I mean the giving pain when the hurt is
not of such a nature as to be called a wrong done,
even when we speak of a moral, as distinguished




246      THIE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
from a legal, wrong. It is a violation of justice, understood in its wide sense, as the social virtue, the general
duty due from one man to another. Of course, justice,
as thus understood, may be described as the whole of
virtue, and in fact, more than any other particular virtue, it has been so understood: but in reality the same
is true of any one of the great virtues, or great heads
of virtue; in many respects, instead of calling them
divisions of the whole of virtue, it would be better
to call them sides or faces of it.
Pleas of   Offences of injustice justify themselves to the
injustice. doer probably in one or other of the following
ways. If slight, they are sometimes excused, as of
no consequence, what will be but little felt by the
sufferer; at other times, as what there will very
likely be opportunity to repair. Sometimes (by a
curious kind of borrowing from maleficence, which, as
I have said, appeals itself to justice or fairness) the
excuse is supplied through a momentary supposition
of universal mutual hostility —the man would do to
me what I am going to do to him, if our places were
reversed, and he had my opportunity or temptation.
In the gravest cases, most probably the self-justification is helplessness-the motive, the temptation is
so strong-I cannot help it.
In all these cases of injustice, it will of course be
remembered, that what is just in one view may be
unjust and unkind in another. Legal non-injustice
is compatible with very much undutifulness, and
with an infinite amount of unkindness.  And besides this, the duties may be contradictory and conflicting.  Of such cases I do not speak here.
Unfafisthe   I distinguish offences of unfaithfulness from those
fulness the
worst case of simple injustice by the fact that the person injured
of in-  russ             therefore more vulnerable by u
j-ptice: trusts us, and is therefore more vulnerable by us.




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.           247
They will be considered generally the worst of all.
This is on account of the ingratitude and cowardice
which, in addition to the injustice, they more or less
involve.
They are however cases of injustice, and may be
divided, as we divided those of injustice, into legal,
distinctly moral, and more general, fraud or betrayal;
only with this consideration, that the moral portion
of unfaithfulness involves more guilt, in comparison
with the legal, than is the case with injustice.
In one point of view, unfaithfulness might be
considered better to represent all wickedness, or the
essence of wickedness, than injustice; in so far as it
more than the other unites in itself the two elements
which go to wickedness, that of injury to others,
and that of self-degradation.
All that unfaithfulness which  is opposed to is partly
owing to
steadiness and constancy in friendship and associa- aai:tion, belongs rather to the inactive portion of vice,
and is probably the worst instance of it.  This portion of unfaithfulness is what stands in the most
flagrant opposition to the old virtue of avSpetca or
fortitude and courage, and is the worst description
of the old'ignavia.'
All relative duty is sure to be accompanied with generally
much of trust; and offence against it, as involving accom
betrayal of trust, is worse than simple injustice. offence
Duty to friends, e.g., which I placed among relative relative
duties, is such, that its violation is almost entirely of duty.
this kind.
Unfaithfulness to agreements and promises, the Breach of
opposite of'keeping one's -word,' is that form  ofpromise
unfaithfulness which has had most attention given
to it.
An engagement or promise is a pledging our own
future conduct to another, so that it morally belongs




248      THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
to him, though of course it is we who must actually
do the thing.
Unlawful    It is clear that an engagement to do what is not
tgsage' lawful, i.e. pledging what is not ours to give, is no
not to be more binding upon us, as to our doing the thing
itself, than our giving to any one the property of
another makes it the property of the receiver. If
we have given any one another person's property it
must either have been in fraud or by mistake. Supposing the former, we have already committed an
offence, and that against two parties, against the engagee, in the case of the unlawful engagement, and
against duty, the law, or the public: but we should
only make the offence worse by trying to maintain
the property as the property of the now unlawful
possessor: we must repair the wrong, as we can, towards both parties; towards duty or the law, by nonperformance of the engagement; towards the engagee,
by whatever equivalent, or more than equivalent,
may possibly indemnify him for the wrong we have
done him. If it has been mistake, there has been
no offence on our part in the first instance, but there
will be in persistency, and we have got ourselves into
a great difficulty.
Two feel-    To an engagement there go on the part of the
shouldac engager two main feelings; persistent absence of
company fraud in intention; steadiness of effort in performan engagement.  ance. It is not well therefore to mai e engagements
where we cannot reasonably rely on ourselves for
the latter; though the fact of the engagement, if
we are right-minded, will be a most urgent motive
to us.
What is    There are two kinds of feelings on our part which
promptend will impel us to the fulfilment of a promise or enlence and  gaoement which is for another's benefit: one is of the
self-re-spect, and is closely allied with the
spect-in nature of self-respect, and is closely allied with the




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.         249
feeling of justice or fairness, the feeling namely of regard to
dislike of failing in what we have pledged ourselves keermg
to do: the other is the feeling of benevolence towards ments.
the engagee, who will not only have lost what we
have promised, but to whom the loss of it will be a
double loss, he having counted upon it, and probably
regulated his conduct accordingly. I will call to
mind here what I mentioned in the case of gratitude,
viz. that there go to it two feelings, one of which,
under other circumstances, woucld dispose a man to be
revengeful, the other the opposite. In the same way
here: the disposition which urges a man to be faithful to his promises may be of such a nature as shall
equally impel him to be true to his threats: or it
may be the opposite, and such as under given circumstances would make him forgiving, and not disposed to be true to his word.
Considerations from the morality of benevolence Promptings of
or utilitarianism  are necessary here against the benevosimple morality of justice or duty; and are valuable needed to
even against possible delusion in our common thought, correct the
other.
and in respect of some of our reasonings about religion. Being true to our word is not necessarily
pure virtue, or all of it virtue; any more than being
a hearty friend is. A portion of the feeling which
goes to the former is such as may, in a different relation, make us unforgiving, as a portion of the feeling
which goes to the latter may make a man, in a different relation, a good hater.'Be true to your
promises and your threats' is the same morality as,'Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine
enemy.' But in the minds of many of us I think
there lurks, if not a feeling in ourselves that we
ought to do what we have positively said we will do,
even if it is to another's disadvantage; yet at least a
kind of respect for the person who does act in this




250      THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
manner: and in respect of religion, we seem to think
that promises and denunciations on God's part stand
in the same relation to his truth and the keeping of
his word; that any hope of his relenting in the
carrying out of his denunciations is equivalent to a
doubt of his faithfulness to his promises.
There is  But in reality, faithfulness is not a' relation benoligation tween us and things; it is a relation between us and
to fulfil an persons, the fulfilling of an indebtedness on our part
engagement   to them  for their benefit. The fairness, equality,
which is
only pro- truth, correspondence between deed and word, which
nhappi of may all be associated with very strong feeling on our
ness.   part, is yet not of a properly moral nature unless it
is applied in the interest of benevolence or the production of happiness, which is the business of all
action, the basis, in the sense of precondition, of all
morality. The performing of action which produces
no happiness or does no good, a fortiori of action
which produces only unhappiness, for the simple
reason that a word passed may be kept, is the subjecting moral considerations to a kind of unmoral
fate or necessity: and faithfulness is not of this
nature: the indefeasibility of word given is not the
inevitable action of a machine or mechanical force.
What qualification there is to this we shall see perhaps in a moment, when I speak, as I am going to
do, of mechanical truth.
TrUthful-   Faithfulness, and in a certain degree faithfulness
ness.   to engagements, might exist, even if we had not the
power of speech, nor consequently of writing: but, of
course, our having these enables engagements to be
much more definite.  That part of faithfulness in
engagements which refers to the meaning what we
say in them  is called truthfulness.  Truthfulness
however of itself, has properly reference to that




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.        251
which is the proper use of our power of speech, the
communication of thought from one mind to another:
our word is the expression or representation of our
thought in the hearing of another. The important
thing about truthfulness is, not necessarily the
transference of the whole thought in our mind
to another, which is in many cases impossible;
but the transference of thought in such a manner,
that there shall be no wrong supposition on the part
of the receiver as to the character, or place in our
mind, of the thought transferred.
Openness, or the making our thought common to
others, stands in the same relation to truthfulness
as the simple, semi-moral feeling which I spoke of in
reference to faithfulness stands in to it: and we
must add to the feeling which we have as to openness the feeling besides, that speech is an action on
our part which, like all action, ought to be useful or
productive of happiness, and very strongly ought not
to be the opposite; that it ought to do good, and not
to do harm. Truth and openness are the subjects in
regard of which the careless and thoughtless language, in which moral subjects are most usually
spoken of among men, have their fullest play. The
moral feelings of each person are exceedingly imperfect, associated with much wrong feeling, and
there is very much said and done which comes to
the knowledge of some individuals and ought not
to come to the knowledge of others and ought not to
be public; and while this is the case reticence is Reticence
is as much
quite as important a duty as truthfulness; even needed as
those who talk so foolishly about openness, when they openness.
think for a moment, are perfectly aware of this. Of
course, supposing reticence and reserve were impossible, and each could see into his neighbour's
breast, one most powerful support of evil disposi



252     THIE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
tions, the manner, viz., in which people are able to
withdraw them from the judgment of their neighbours, and keep them hugged and cherished in their
own breasts, would be removed. But the removal of
it would do no good, if along with it were removed,
as might probably be the case, all care for others'
judgments. Without going so far, or near so far, as
to say that complete mutual knowledge would produce mutual contempt, —I believe in many respects
its tendency would be the opposite way-we may
yet say that men's self-respect and mutual respect
belong, as things are, to a state of mind which would
indispose them to make their every thought public,
and would make them hold back in some degree
from the thoughts of others. But independent of
these considerations, the world could not go on if,
with the limited knowledge which we have of one
another's thoughts and feelings, there were not combined a very extensive ignorance. There could be
really no intercourse among people, and no knowledge of each other: thought would be impossible,
and there would be nothing to know. It would be
as if, to make more light and brightness in the
world, we were to abolish all the material objects
about us on the charge of their intercepting the
sun's rays: we should have no reflection of those
rays, no colour: for the sake of the light we should
be abolishing every thing we might see by it.
The real    The real praise of openness is of two kinds: the
opentfs. man is to be praised, who has nothing in himself to
conceal, and who keeps (and is in a position to keep)
nothing to himself for his own sake: the man is
partly to be praised, and still more to be loved, who
trusts others, because he, often at some hazard,
kindles good feeling in them which would not otherwise exist, and is thus a producer of virtue and a




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.           253
binder together of man to man. It is this trust which
is the foundation of the charming openness and unreserve of youth. In both these cases, it is to be observed
that a moral consideration supervenes, besides the
simple intellectual one of the experience and thought
of one mind being open to another mind.
Truthfulness is faithfulness, from the one side, to Trustfulthe communication by speech from mind to mind theheaer
the correlative faithfulness from  the other side is respondtrustfulness or disposition to give credit and believe. ing virtue
Offence on either of these sides is treason, in various fulness
in the
degrees, against the great bond of human society. speaker.
Truthfulness is the disposition to give correct information.  Trustfulness or believingness on the other
side is the disposition believed in, or supposed to
exist, by the speaker; which belief on his part is
one main ground of his own disposition to tell the
truth.
The general principle on which we must go in Three
grounds of
regard to knowledge is that it is a benefit to-the the duty
person who possesses it: doubtless in many cases fultreuth
it is not so, yet it is hard for us to judge where
it is not; and consequently, when we have not
the option of silence or doing nothing, but must
either give knowledge or deceive, deception is an
injury to the person deceived; it is a case of injustice
or wrong to him, and not of simple injustice, but of
unfaithfulness, because it is presumably a betrayal of
trust or belief.
Truthfulness as a duty rests thus in the firstnatureof
speech:
instance upon these two pillars conjunctly, the one, trust re.
the consideration that speech evidently exists as aosed
means for community of thought among men; the
other, when it appears, as we have seen, that this
community cannot be, and (as men are) had better
not be, complete, the consideration that we have a




254      THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
trust reposed in us by the person desiring information, which we may easily violate, and which, the
more easily we may violate it, calls upon our conscience the more imperatively not to do so.
and self-    Truthfulness however as a duty rests in the
second instance, and most fully, not upon these
feelings themselves, but upon a feeling derived
from them.
A man's words are the most simple and natural
expression of himself, and are taken to be so. His
actions are the actual putting forth of his character,
but his words are taken as the sign of it. It is
taken for granted that they naturally follow his
thought, as instantly and inevitably as a dog's howl
follows (if it can be said to follow) your treading on
his foot: if they do not do so, there must be some
motive. The motive might be the advantage of the
person spoken to; but it is considered of course
more probable that the motive is the advantage of
the speaker. The motive is much more likely to be
either of the nature of fear, or of the nature of
covetousness. And our lips are our own: a man's
speech is so thoroughly in his own power, that his
betraying trust in this particular is looked upon as
the most complete sign that there could be of want of
courage, and also as the taking the most contemptible and unworthy advantage of others that could
well be taken.
The feeling of self-respect and the love of substantial truthfulness are so intimately associated,
both in a man's thoughts of himself and in his
imagination of the thoughts of others about him,
that they come to be in a manner the same thing.
The man has the feeling about himself, and the
feeling that others have the feeling about him, that
if he is untruthful in his words he is not to be




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.           255
trusted in anything; and the man who feels himself
not to be trusted, and not trusted by others, is without the greatest guarantee of virtue.
I used deliberately just now, the words'substantial truthfulness.' I will explain why.
In speaking of faithfulness to engagements, Regard for
truth may
I said that, unless somebody was interested for pass into
good in an engagement made, the words of them-  superselves carried no force. On this point there has
often been a superstitious feeling in men's minds,
the removal of which is highly important, in the
interest of morals.
We are not really bound to our threats as we are cases of
conscience
bound to our promises, and the mistaken self-respect under this
which tends to induce us to stick to them  is what head.
benevolence and a regard to the purpose of action
should triumph over.
What is to be done a's to speaking the truth, first,
in cases where the matter is trifling, next, in cases
where our speaking the truth must evidently be injurious, either to the person spoken to, or to some
other parties, especially if we are bound to them by
special duty, or to ourselves, in certain flagrant cases
where the person has no right to put us to the trial
of answering? Granted that in all these latter cases
we may be silent, if that will answer the purpose;
but may we deceive?
I have mentioned these various cases not with Substanthe view of going into them but for the purpose of fulness is
saying in regard to them this. Reverence for the not oPspoken word, in the way I just now  alluded to, the useof
I imaginaseems to me all superstition.  But in respect of tion.
truthfulness, there is a religion as well as a superstition; and the religion seems to me weakened and
degraded by being carried into superstition. The
abolishing, for the supposed sake of truthfulness,




256      THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.
imagination out of thought and language, whether
it be in the form of figure and metaphor, or of fable
and story, or of filling up and expanding fact by the
supposition of what might be, would speedily, if all
were to practise it, render truthfulness valueless by
the extinction of knowledge, to which this imagination is the road. We may talk with as much of
mutual untruthfulness as we will, provided we understand each other in doing so. Truthfulness is
one side of the communication between mind and
mind, to which speech is but the means: whatever
aids this communication is the real and substantial
truthfulness.
No sum-    The application however of the consideration,
a bule that what is said or done should do good, and not
given to harm, is met in the case of truthfulness by a real
cases of religion, as it seems to me, not, as in the case of enconflicting
duty.   gagements, only by a superstition.
The association of word with thought in a character of real self-respect is so intimate, that the
utmost you can probably teach is silence, and that
with difficulty, while conscious falsehood is all but
impossible. In the case therefore, where important
utility, or marked duty of another kind, conflicts with
truthfulness, there arises the most painful conflict
which can arise in the mind of man. It is the misfortune of such conflicts, that instead of being considered in the frame of mind which properly belongs
to them, viz. the seriousness and anxiety which any
right-minded man actually brought into such circumstances would feel, they have been first rather
coldly and heartlessly digested into system, and then
been made a mere ground for fighting and mutual
depreciation between one moral teacher and another,
or moral teachers in general and those without
thought at all. When such cases arise, they are




THE ANATOMY OF WRONG-DOING.        257
real conflicts; that is, neither the clinging to truth
nor the desire to do the other good, or fulfil the
other duty is to be depreciated. If Effie Deans had
been hung, I suppose we should not have blamed
Jeanie Deans, nor should we on the other side, I
suppose, blame the man who misdirected the murderers pursuing his father. I do not see how we
can say in general, for such cases, either that truthfulness, in this extreme, is a superstition and what
must yield, or that it is a clear and distinct duty to
which everything else must yield. Each case must
stand on its own merits.
G.                                   17




APPENDIX ON MALEVOLENCE1.
The sight    There are many ways, we will say five, in which Rochefouof others' cauld's maxim has some truth.
pain may
be produc-   There is something not disagreeable to us in the sufferings
tive of   of others:
pleasure
in five    (1)  On account of the feeling which I will call here
Ways.   rivalry between us and them  for happiness, or jealousy of
their happiness.
(2) On account of the thought being brought home to
us that we are free from the suffering, or that we are at least
not worse off than they.
(3) On account of the opportunity afforded us for action
and for helping them, and the pleasure taken in doing this.
(4) On account of the quasi-superior position in which
we are thus placed, and the idea that the sufferer is likely to
envy us, and to wish that he were in our position.
(5)  On account of the imaginational interest taken in
looking on effort and suffering, and on the calling forth of
human feeling and power, when we are ourselves unaffected
by, and independent of it.
Jealousy    The basis of the half-felt and undeveloped jealousy of the
of others happiness of others, which is apt to burst into life on occasion,
is caused
by self-  as momentary ill-will, and to produce that subnote of pleasure
factins  in the suffering of others which Rochefoucauld's maxim is
generally considered to refer to, is a sort of discontent and
dissatisfaction with ourselves and our own happiness.
There are, in our minds, two general and vague feelings of a very different nature which nevertheless continually confuse themselves together: the one, an unbounded
desiringness, arising from the manner in which our imagination runs beyond our power and condition; the other a
1 The Appendix is taken from a MS. volume marked IV. 2, which
consists mainly of short essays and notes on moral questions.




ON MALEVOLENCE.                    259
feeling of fairness or, more properly, of pain at anything
which we consider violation of fairness.
This second feeling ought, with any rightness of judgment The feelon our part, to correct the first, and the efforts of moralists negofsfairhave always been to make it do so, and to urge upon us the misused to
consideration that we ought not to wish to engross all the hisaphappiness to ourselves, but should be contented to take our pointment
share as things go.  The second feeling however, being in boundless
general the less strong of the two, instead of acting to restrain desire.
and keep in order the other, is usually overborne by it and
pressed into its service, and there is generated more or less
an under-feeling in us, not only that we have not got all we
want, but that it is hard and unfair upon us, somehow or
other, that we have not. In the general half-latent state of
this feeling, there is no direct comparison of our lot with
that of others; for if there were, it would often rather
correct the feeling, it being clear, in almost every case, how
many others must be more hardly treated still. But, the
feeling thus lying smouldering, often before we have time to
think, the news of others' suffering kindles it into a momentary
blaze; and our latent self-pity or repiningness, our, in fact,
unreasonable and unconfessed envy of others, has for a
moment a weight taken off it, and is relieved by tidings of
calamity to them.
Moral ill, or badness, may be said to be generated only Variety of
from actual ill or pain, if we take care to consider that the ways in
which the
mind has the power of making actual ill or pain where it inclividoes not at all necessarily exist. Desiringuess, uncorrected dual's coTnand untempered with other feelings, will of itself produce it. of unhapImperfection of condition, or wcantingness, is regarded as loss piness
may be
or privation, and loss or privation as suffering, producing affected
discontent or repining, and this again jealousy and envy, by the
thought of
and this ill-will, anger, and hatred.                       the unIf we go back to an earlier point than that which is taken happiness
when we say that the non-disagreeableness of the sufferings
of others is a mark of the malevolence of human nature, we
might say that it is a mark rather of the unhappiness of
human nature, not necessarily, that is, of actual unhappiness,
but of the feeling or supposition of it. The sight of others'
suffering is an illustration that we are not alone unhappy;
this wide and universal theatre contains more woful pageants
17-2




260               ON MALEVOLENCE.
than our unhappiness furnishes. When we observe on the
one side the moralist maintaining the benevolence of human
nature against the man of the world, maintaining its malevolence, we should observe on the other side that the
prescribed moral maxim for comfort in unhappiness is to
observe that others are unhappy too, while we constantly
have people, speaking from feelings and from life alone,
saying to us that this knowledge and sight does not diminish
their unhappiness, but increases it. The sort of unhappiness,
unsatisfiedness, or felt imperfection, which is the experience
of individual human nature, has the unhappiness which is in
the world and in others for the congenial object of its view,
and is variously and complicatedly affected by it; it is rebuked, encouraged, soothed or half comforted, embittered,
interested, and affected even in more ways than this, according to the mind in which it exists.
It is probable that all native and original ill-will, —native
and original, that is, in so far as it does not arise from any
distinct ulterior purpose of good to ourselves-is connected
with a perversion of the feeling of justice, making it appear
to ourselves that we have some cause of complaint and wrong
against the person towards whom it is felt, or against somebody or something which benefits him unduly and more than
us. This is the manner in which the sort of rivalry for
happiness which exists among men turns sour, and becomes
productive of malevolence. The feeling of hopeful effort,
which is the life of life, and which naturally measures itself,
in one way, by concurrence and competition with others, is,
like that of desiringness which is its source, properly inconsistent with, and almost contradictory to, the feeling of
delight'in fairness which is the source of that of justice.
But in a similar manner to the other it subordinates this
latter to it, and makes us think that what we aim at gaining
is our right and what we ought to have; and then, since our
success measures itself in one way, as I have said, by that of
others, success on their part seems so far failure on ours.
First the feeling of disappointment is produced where there
is no reason for it: then this again becomes a sort of feeling
of being wronged.
The existence of this feeling of fairness is important to
observe. It is quite distinct from the feeling of conscience




ON MALEVOLENCE.                     261
or right determination of our own conduct; the mis-application of it, in the manner which we have just seen, being
one of the things which this latter has often most to guard
against. At the same time it is of course much associated
with it, and helpful to it.
Moralists, it appears, have been wrong, both on the one There is
no native
side in disputing the existence of pure ill-will, and on the ill ill.
other in considering it native in the same manner in which It springs
pure good-will is.  Ill-will is perhaps always a form or mode inas from
of vindictivolence, i. e. is connected with a feeling of ourselves an imagination of
as somehow wronged: whereas good-will on the other hand, is wrong reby no means necessarily a form or mode of gratitude: but ill- ceived.
will undoubtedly exists pure in so far that it is felt for no purpose of good to ourselves.
It appears therefore that there may be pure and intense
hatred or ill-will entirely disinterested as regards the future,
but not entirely disinterested as regards the past, i.e. not
uncaused by some feeling akin to injuredness.
The lines of Lucretius seem to refer mainly to the fifth The lines
source of pleasure particularized above,                    of Lucretius need
The sight of others in labour and danger is interesting, not be
and on the supposition that we are unable to give active understood of
help ourselves, and that we hope their escape, this interest malignant
may have more in it of a pleasurable, than of a painfulPleasmue.
nature, without supposing anything of positive malignity in
the spectator.




APPENDIX ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS1.
Distribu-   Justice consists in making preferences where they should
tive and  be made, and carefully abstaining from making them where
corrective
justice.  they should not be made.  Using Aristotle's distinction,
distributive justice teaches what preferences should be made;
and in virtue of this, might be taken to teach when preferences should not or need not be made; while corrective
justice restores equality or sets things even again, where conduct has been determined by preferences uncalled for or wrong.
The notion of justice then simply as fairness or impartiality, that is, neither as relative duty on the one side, nor
as recompense on the  other, is something  intermediate
between the two Aristotelian notions.  It might be considered a case of the first, or the basis of the second; the
former, because equality is itself a relation; the latter,
because to set things even when disturbed, we must have
given to us what constitutes their evenness.
The for-    The two Aristotelian kinds of.justice are most markedly
mer is the distinguished from each other in a subjective point of view,
manifestation of  that is, in the temper of mind belonging to each.  The
the feeling temper belonging to the former we might call'the feeling
of duty,
the latter of duty;' that belonging to the latter,'the love of right.'
of the love The  former is of a more constant, uniform, ever-ready
nature: the latter is less uniform  than the other, because
not regularly called out, but when it is called out, is stronger
and more energetic.
The action    When we speak of the temper of justice, and compare
of correc- justice  with  proportion, equality, or other intellectual
tive justice
must be  notions of this kind, it is to be remembered that justice,
controlled in so far as it is morally valuable, must fulfil the condition
by benevolence.      1 This Appendix is taken from the MS. marked V. It contains
a fuller discussion of some of the questions touched on in Ch. xi,
treating especially of'commercial credit,''vows,' prevarication,' which
are noted as points for further consideration at the end of the MS. of
that chapter. ED.




ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.             263
not only of satisfying the intellect, which is what these
notions of proportion and equality belong to, but also of
satisfying the description of the objective value of the
action of a reasonable being, namely, that some good is
produced by it. From this it follows, that when the balance
has been disturbed in the direction of more good being done
by any one than he was called upon to do, the moral call for
the setting this right is not absolute, but only subjective,
affecting particular people: on the other hand, when the
balance is disturbed in the direction of ill being done to
any, there is an absolute call for the making up the good
which has been failed in, but there is not a subjective
call on the sufferer to repay evil to the doer. To put this
more plainly. If in speaking of fairness in relation to Vengeance
for private
recompense and repayment, we think only of notions of wrong is
equality, evenness, &c., we shall be in danger of supposing, thus left
on the one hand, that revengefulness is a duty in the same commumanner as gratitude, and on the other, that it is the duty of nity;
gratitude
individuals not directly interested (as for instance the state) for private
to reward gratitude in the same way in which it is their benefit to
-                                             the indiduty to punish wrong. As it is, the duty of repayment vidual.
of good is a private or particular one: the duty of repayment of evil is a public or general one. Speaking without
reference to feelings of love or friendship, which I have not
here to do with, it is equally to our private honour to be in
no man's debt for favours, and to be above taking revenge on
any-for injuries. And this action for intellectual fairness on
the one side, and against it on the other, will in each case be
produced by the same feeling, which I have described as the
first basis of all action, viz. the desire that it should be
devoted to some good or welfare, not simply to the production of ill and pain: for if we suppose for a moment
that happiness of our own resulted from such production,
that is a feeling which we should rise above. The obligations therefore of justice in regard to ourselves, are to
gratitude only, and not correspondingly to revengefulness:
in regard to others, while we have no call to take upon
ourselves the rewarding of their benefactors, we are called
upon to punish those who have injured them.
When duty between two persons is failed in, there is,
besides the loss to the sufferer which he may do his best to




264        ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.
regain, a bad or hostile disposition on the part of the offender
which it would be revengefulness in him to punish, but
which others (as the state) may punish, and should.
Moral ad-    The feeling which lies at the bottom  of justice compenvance in
the imdi- satory or corrective is resentment, not in the sense in which
vidual   Butler uses the word, but in the more general sense in which
self in the it was used at an earlier time, as applied both to good and
increase of evil —a quick sensitiveness to benefits and to injuries. Till
indigna-t  corrected (if not by natural kindness and love) by the feeling
public   about action of which I spoke, the tendency of this sensiwnogf'  tiveness is probably to revengefulness in the same way as to
gratitude gratitude, and to what we call'taking offence' for wrong done
for private
beanefit.  to ourselves, as well as to moral indignation for wrong
done to others. Moral advance consists in keeping up the
feeling, and cultivating it, on the side of gratitude, and extinguishing it on that of revenge: and again, in keeping it up
as moral indignation on behalf of others, but extinguishing
it as readiness to take offence for ourselves.
Different   Justice, as I have said, consists equally in making distinckinds of  tions or preferences where they ought to be, and avoiding
justice:
them where they ought not: and it is because this description
has so many different aspects that there are so many different kinds of justice.
observance   Justice, as'attention to duty,' is regard to'jus,' or to
of relative those relations of nature and usage which determine a large
portion of our action from one to another.
imparti-    Justice as'impartiality' is an important pendant to this
ality, (2). regard to jus, and is indeed frequently in direct antagonism
Difficulties in    with it.  There are many difficulties connected with its
respect to practical application.  Those moralists who have come forward as advocates of impartiality in opposition to what they
have called  sinister interests, have often not sufficiently
considered that the public interests would be quite as badly
off (in fact considerably worse) if these interests, which only
become sinister when they get out of their place, were in
any degree less powerful motives of action than they are.
The difficulty in the case of impartiality arises not only from
the strength of the particular adverse interest, but from the
difficulty of determining what are the cases in which impartiality is called for, and what, in such cases, is the proper
impartiality.  Where impartiality, as it not unfrequently




ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.              265
does, becomes a passion, and where conscientiousness in this
direction is wrought up very highly; and where moreover,
the way and limits of impartiality are not distinctly marked
out, in the manner in which they are with judges or
administrators of law; dread of supposed self-interest and of
partiality constantly leads to mistake and cruelty; and we
want strength of mind to conquer the fear of partiality as
much as for any other purpose. Impartiality, as it should
be, is a public virtue of a very high order: partly from the
difficulties mentioned; partly from the facility of censuring
conduct which concerns it, while at the same time it would
not have been easy for the censurers to agree upon the right
conduct; and partly again from the fact that what is called
partiality is often the most readily suggested line of conduct,
and therefore where the agent can neither satisfy himself,
nor hope to satisfy others, with a different conduct, he
naturally adopts this.
It is in reference to its character as impartiality, and
as being'no respecter of persons,' that justice is drawn blind.
The often quoted and very curious passage of Leviticus will
be remembered,'Thou shalt not countenance a poor man
in his cause.' Justice might perhaps better have been
drawn with many eyes to see the difficulties which from
opposite directions beset impartiality, and of which sinister
interest is one only.
Justice as integrity or honesty is, speaking generally, im- Honesty,
partiality between ourselves and others, in so far as the word (3).'impartiality,' in this acceptation, has meaning. It assumes
that we pursue our interest, and others pursue theirs: and
what it consists in is, that in the course of this, we should
take no undue advantage of them.
There are many analogies between the honesty of business Honesty
and the honour which belongs to a very different set of asso- compared
with honciations, and is counted rather an aristocratic and military our as a
sentiment. Trustworthiness is the prominent character in help to
virtuous
both. It suited both Paley's particular temperament and conduct.
the feeling of the age in which he wrote to depreciate the
latter, as what was very much a matter of convention, and
scarcely more likely to lead to virtuous conduct than to
vicious. Remembering the duels and gambling of those
days, one shojuld not be too severe on Paley for this. But




266       ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.
we must remember, that the matter-of-fact sentiment of
justice, as integrity or uprightness, is itself a very insufficient
guide to virtuous conduct, resembling the sentiment of
honour in this point of view as in many others. It is consistent with much of harshness and cruelty: nay, the tempers associated with it seem sometimes even productive of
such; the same strictness and severity which the man enforces
on himself being exhibited in his requirements from others.
Nor again is it inconsistent with covetousness: it does nothing to preclude the taking the most cruel advantage of
others in dealings (of their necessities, for instance), provided
only that there is nothing in these which is actually dishonest. And what is or is not dishonesty has to be settled,
in respect of many particulars, by usage and convention, for
it could not be otherwise.
With all these disadvantages, so far as we expect it to
lead to perfect virtue, it has, like honour, singular advantages
as urging to virtue: it takes continually the form not of a
mere restraint, but of a passion, and developes a sensibility
in respect of commercial honour, as keen as can be developed
in respect of honour of any other kind; so that commercial
credit, character, good name, is counted as dear as life itself.
The degree of mutual confidence which must exist, and
does exist, in order to the carrying on of complicated commercial transactions, might well astonish the unprepared
spectator. This mutual confidence, and mutual justifying of
such confidence, is in fact the basis of all civilization: society
is founded on mutual truth.
Honesty    Justice, as honesty or integrity, has relation to that part of
cerened   law which concerns contracts, and to such usages and circumwithcon.  stances as bear more or less a resemblance to this.  In
tracts.
respect to justice of this kind also we have to remember
what I said a short time since as to the usefulness of actions,
and that justice is only a virtue in so far as, along with it, we
keep in mind this. We are servants, not slaves, to our word:
that is, in keeping it, we must go by reason, and take to our
aid intelligence.
An engagement, which binds us to the benefit of the
person with whom it is made, does not bind us to his prejudice.




ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.                267
There is of course a good deal of difficulty about all this, Difficulty
arising chiefly from  two sources: the one, the value, as we frinL the
may express it, of our own word; the other, the possibility of applicadifference of opinion between the other party and ourselves titote itdes
as to what is for his benefit.                              of utility.
I have before spoken of what we may call the passion for Particuspeaking truth, the love of truth for truth's sake, and the larly as
almost impossibility felt by a high and generous nature, of the sense
doing otherwise.  Conscientiousness, as I described, has a of selftdouble aspect, outwards and inwards, Speaking the truth, attaching
in the former aspect, is the transferring something external olto lthto our neighbour for his benefit: in the latter, it is the
transferring to him something as our sentiment, a part, as it
were, of ourselves.  Now, however much the rule I mentioned just now as to action being useful applies to the conscientiousness of truth in the former aspect, we find it hard
to apply it in the other. The setting something before others
as our thought, which is not our thought, is not simply misleading others and betraying their confidence, which for
benefit to them we might possibly be led to, but it is the
doing this through the way of a sort of abuse, prostitution,
degradation, of ou2rselves; it is our own sentiment which
has to be falsified for this benefit to them.  There is the
difficulty.
It is from a generalization of this feeling that there Danger of
arises in men or bodies of men that noble value for their superword which sometimes degenerates, as among the ancient reverence
Romans, into a sort of superstition.  The feeling of the for the
letter of
Romans in this matter was a compound of the highest engagehonourableness with the driest technicality.  They wor- ments.
shipped words and formulahe, and considered sacredness to be
in them, instead of in the meanings of which these might be
made the vehicle. Now in reality, both language is imperfect, so that it is almost impossible for a man to say what he
does mean without being in danger of saying more than it;
and thought itself is complicated, so that it is difficult for a
man to be sure of saying all that he does mean. This being
so, it is very important that the worship (so to call it) paid
to the language of our word should be intelligent, not superstitious, and that the inward feeling which I described before
should not be merely externalized (losing constantly in this




268       ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.
way a vast deal of its value) into a verbal particularity.
Truth is not in the words, but in what the words mean.
The value for the truth, and the value for the words which
contain the truth, are two entirely different feelings.
The obli-   This kind of reverence for the mere thing which has
gation to been resolved, or uttered, or denounced, without thought of
execute
threats of the interest of any, leads vaguely to a good deal of unwise
evil is not
the same thought in men's minds. In this view, threats and denunas that to ciations are equally binding with promises. There arises
of good. from it a notion of obligation being simply absolute, without
a second party at all, even a divine or ideal one. Supposing
the word given by a king of the AMedes and Persians of
former time to have been more than usually foolish, and
absolutely unproductive of benefit or pleasure to anyone, it
puzzles one to know to whom he would have been supposed
under obligation to perform it, or whose business it was to
enforce it. Even in regard to religion, there is sometimes, I
think, a tendency in people to forget the immeasurable
difference between this kind of keeping one's word and the
faithfulness which really belongs to our idea of God: hence
they speak as if they thought that past denunciations had
laid God Himself under a force or stress rendering it difficult
or impossible for Him to forgive, instead of the past denunciations and the present difficulty both arising from the
same continuing cause, the hatred which God feels for sin,
in spite of His love for sinners. And among ourselves, this
wrong regard for what has been once said is not unfrequently
a perpetuator of the worst and most unforgiving passions:
people may have every disposition now to better conduct,
but what they have once said they seem to think they are
wrong in departing from, even for confessed benefit to all
parties.
It is not obligatory on any to continue to mean the same,
in whatever manner he may have declared it, unless the
interests of some one else are involved in his meaning.
There is no signification in a man binding himself to himself. Religious vows are made to God, and He, as supreme
sovereign, is supposed concerned in the keeping them. And
in respect to His continuing to mean the same-that He
always does: and yet always differently according to changed
circumstances, as change of disposition and needs in those




ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.              269
with whom He is dealing: His meanings at any time are
wider than we can follow, and no revelation, by means of
any denunciation, of His justice, can preclude the exercise of
His mercy.
An engagement binds us to the benefit of the other party, Difficulty
not to his prejudice. If then we find out, to our own satis- of.deterfaction, that a thing which we have promised to another whether
would really be a disadvantage to him, are we free from our ing f eppromise?                                                promise
In all conduct, to a certain extent there must be the thlle fornsupposition, that every man is the proper judge of his own tage of the
interests. Where there is an engagement, this is in a much pother
higher degree the case. The duty of not keeping an engagement claimed by the other party because the fulfilment of it
would be to the injury, not the benefit, of the other party, can
only arise when we are in that sort of superior position, as to
knowledge, in reference to the other party, which destroys
his independence against us, and puts him under something
like tutelage.
Advantage must be taken at his estimate, not at ours, As a rule
except in extreme cases where he is plainly not a proper his estimate of
judge, as in the case often supposed by the old moralists, of advantage
the promise of a sword to a man, who afterwards becomes must be
taken.
mad.
Perhaps the rule ought to be extended beyond such
extreme cases as this, and certainly should be extended very
much further, if it were not for one consideration in regard
of all promises, which is, that we have no right, speaking
generally, to give the management of our action out of our
own hands, and yet we are not, and cannot be, fit judges in a
cause in which we are ourselves concerned with another.
Promise of any kind therefore embarrasses action, and often
embarrasses it hopelessly.  Moralists and casuists have, like
lawyers, to reason on the supposition of there being, if it
could but be found, a clear way out of a difficulty, whereas
often there is none.
When it is said that a promise is not binding, the language Ambiguity
is sometimes misleading. The phrase is a confused expres- of the
sion'for we must not perform it,' and'we may perform it, promise
but need not,' which are quite different things. What it is not
suggests, is the latter of these. And, owing partly to this




270       ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.
association, there is a constant jealousy of any discussion,
about promises, as if the saying that any one was unlawful
(after it had been made) was always something in the interest
of the promiser, something which he would have wished.
It may     The putting the question about promises in this form,
be our
bounden  whether they are or are not binding, constantly suggests to
duty not people that there need not be so much discussion on the
to keep a matter, for people might always settle it by giving the verdict against themselves. Binding or not, if people have promised a thing they had better perform it, we shall readily be
told: and with reason, provided only there has been no
flagrantly unfair advantage taken in the procuring the promise, and provided it is not more wrong to perform than
it would be to fail.
Case of    The case of promises procured by deceit or compulsion is
promiSee  one of moral difficulty. The law would declare them invalid,
by force  and not only this, but would use its utmost efforts to make
or fraud.
o individuals treat them as invalid: for faith kept with crime
or among criminals is a strength to crime, and in this way
a disadvantage to society. On this view, a promise made
under compulsion, for instance, with the deliberate intention
of violating it, would have nothing in it wrong. Rather, the
keeping such a promise afterwards would be wrong. On the
other hand, if the individual is a man of honour and of his
word, all this must be very painful to him. The limit between outwitting and deceit, between urgency and compulsion, is not easy to draw, and even if it is quite distinct, a
man might say he would rather abide the worst consequences
of his own foolishness or weakness than break his plighted
word. The highest honour has consisted in a man's attributing the same value to his word under all circumstances,
whether uttered under compulsion or not, and refusing to
say anything which he did not think and mean, and was
not prepared to execute.
No rule    I do not see therefore how it is possible to lay down
can be   any moral rule about the performance of a promise made
made 
where   under compulsion when it affects a man's own interest alone.
trer own  The making such a promise and failing to perform it is
interest
only is  equivalent to the telling a lie. If the promise is made
concerned. with the intention of the breach of it, that is a lie already;
in any case the whole process amounts to one. A lie under




ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.           271
compulsion is pardonable to the same extent to which a
promise under compulsion is invalid.
When promises affect the interests of others besides wemay
ourselves and the party to whom they are made, care needs ptot keep a
to be taken about the word'binding,' in the manner to the injury
which I have alluded. A thing which is wrong for us to do, of others
in any manner, is not made the more right by there having
been a promise made to any, on our part, to do it. We
can only give what is ours to give: and this is a second rule
about promises, besides their being for the benefit of the
second party, that they can only be taken to apply to what
is lawful, and what is fairly in our power. Of a promise of
what is not ours to give, it is more correct to say it is no
promise, than that it is not binding and should be broken.
Instead of saying we should break an unlawful promise, it is
more correct to say we have no right to do wrong because we
have promised it. If we have gained anything by such a
promise, we have gained it by false pretences, and nothing
now can help that. If we must injure one of two persons,
either by wronging one or breaking our word to the other,
the latter is the alternative which we must choose.
The all-importance, for society and civilization, of mutual Perjury.
confidence, has been the reason why the sacredness of
obligations has always, in the early mind of men, formed a
department, and a principal department, of religion. Oaths
are promises (or declarations) with express reference to this
sacredness. The notion goes back beyond the supposition
of actual divine personality to the conditions of such. The
gods themselves are not free from this bond. It is the
subjective feeling which I have spoken of, of untruth and
unfaithfulness being with the honourable man something
impossible, embodied in the supposition of a sort of material
or fatal impossibility. It is a superstition thus, in which the
purpose and meaning of the engagement are lost in attention to its form. The gods are themselves slaves of their
promise, and their fiercest vengeance is reserved for breach
of faith in men. The lowest circles of hell are for treachery.
Both treason and felony, the two names in our law, feudally
derived, for capital crimes, have for meaning'breach of
faith.' Perjury is breach of faith expressly plighted in
a religious form, breach of oath.




27'2      ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.
Lawful-    The relation of oaths to promises is simply the relation
ness of  of religion to common life, and thus our rules with regard
to the use of oaths must depend upon what we think,
in these points, as to religion.  If common life were
what, ideally, it should be, religion would lose its separate
significance by being all-pervading: correspondingly, every
promise would be more or less an oath, because we should
be always acting in reference to God. As common life is,
it is felt to be a gain that religion should preserve a certain
character of solemnity, except so far as, pervading common
life, it can elevate it also; the tendency of things of themselves being to spread religious notions through common life
and language, in a lowered form, as matter of universal
recognition; a consequence of which is that the former
lose their force and meaning without elevating the latter.
This takes place, in regard of oaths, when they are applied
to trivial declarations or engagements, and also when the
language of oaths is used as a simple strengthening of common language-a thing which (according to the laws which
govern the changes of meaning in words).it soon ceases to
be, frequently losing at the same time all outward sign of
its origin.
Besides, then, that there should not be misuse of the
language of oaths, there should not be too great frequency in
their use: but should they be used at all?
Scriptural   Our Lord forbids swearing, and requires the use of
argument. simple language unstrengthened  by religious references,
in the same manner as He forbids the resistance to
evil, and requires the turning of the second cheek to the
smiter, the giving to him that asketh of us, and the lending
to those who would borrow. There has always been difference of opinion among Christians as to how these precepts
should be interpreted. A test of the propriety of the
interpretation of a particular part, is of course, the applicability of the same manner of interpretation to the whole.
The precept about swearing, however, being rather on the
surface, and not, speaking generally, very difficult of observance, has been considered by some bodies of Christians as
what ought to be obeyed literally (as it is called), while the
Moral   others are not to be obeyed to the same extent.
argument.  Independently of this, it has been considered by some




ON JUSTICE AND TRUTHFULNESS.             273
that the practice of occasionally strengthening our engagements and declarations by a religious reference is really not
of advantage to morals, as tending to give an idea of two
sorts of such engagements, one more binding than the
other, whereas the bindingness is complete, and as great as it
can be, in either. That an effect of this kind is produced
in some ignorant minds, cannot, I think, be doubted. The
whole matter, however, is a case of the general relation
between religion and morality. Religion and morality,
with misjudging minds, sometimes injure each other instead
of benefiting, and the thought is mistakenly suggested that
either would be better if the other were away. An oath is
usually in form a solemn prayer, and, in ordinary suggestion,
it is an acknowledgment of dread of the divine -vengeance
(with us, punishment) in case of breach of the engagement.
The more distinct the engagement is made by these additions-the more, that is, the other party is likely to be induced
by it to rely upon it-the more is this punishment, in case of
breach, to be dreaded. There is nothing in this to suggest
that truthfulness in other cases is a matter of slight importance: on the contrary, the suggestion is that truth, more
than any thing else, is under the special sanction of religion,
and that we give prominence to this sanction where it is
of more than usual importance that the truth should be
accurately stated.
The rule for the understanding of promises or engage- In what
ments is given clearly by Paley: they are binding in the sense
promises
sense in which the promiser understands the second party are to be
to have understood them. The ground of this is simply: underthepromise is the common understanding. Words used as
vehicles of a promise (or declaration) must have one meaning, in the same way as they must in l gic for an unfallacious conclusion. The words mean what the two parties
agree in meaning by them: if they do not mean the same
by them, no intelligent promise has been passed: if the
promiser has two meanings, one his own, which he means
to keep, and another, which he is aware is held by the
person to whom the promise is made, there is equivocation;
and this, which in logic is bad reasoning, is in morals bad
faith. And as it is the promiser who has to act on the
promise, the performance of it has to be guided by the best
G.                                        18




'274       ON JUSTICE ~AND TRUTHFULNESS.
supposition which he can make of what was the common
understanding between the parties.
The rule is not free from difficulties, chiefly arising from
this, that the words, like language in general, have a
meaning of their own in common use, distinct (in the notion
of it) from the meaning which either party may attribute to
them at the time. Appeal, on the part of the promiser, to
individual construction of the words of the promise as opposed to usual construction of them, is the fountain of abundant bad faith. It is true, he cannot generally in such a
case say, with any face, that he thought at the time that the
opposite party interpreted the words as he did; but still
there is difficulty.
Justice as    Not to dwell longer on justice as integrity, there are
candour, various other forms of justice; one is justice as candour,
readiness to make allowances.
This is not far different from justice as equity, or fairness of mind, in that sense in which the notion approaches to
that of good nature, easiness, facility. The Greek  &relEIKELa
has the same sort of variety of application. It will be better,
however, to speak rather of this at another time as a temper..




CHAPTER XII.
ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
IN this and the following chapter I shall speak of Three
kinds of
what I have called eudcmenonics: and I shall treat pleasure
first of that which may be considered a subordinate a pain.
branch of it, hedonics, or the philosophy of pleasure
and pain.
For my present purpose I shall divide pleasure
and pain into three kinds or portions, as follows:
The first kind of pleasure is that which, after the Feelings
of cornsuggestion of such terms as well-being, welfare, &c., parative
we might call well-feeling, and I think this name nce (1).
will make my meaning clearer than any description.
I will not pretend to say how far it can be considered
to be pleasure at all: that depends upon how we
use the word'pleasure': but I mean by it the feeling,
so far as there is a feeling, which accompanies a
normal and healthy state of mind; a feeling expressly
not attended to as a subject of distinct consciousness, because the attention is supposed to be given to
whatever we are interested in, or employed about;
but a feeling which accompanies this interest and
employment, or, if we prefer the language, which is
itself a portion of the interest, coming into distinct
consciousness, as self-enjoyment, only slightly or
occasionally; otherwise we should have to recognize
it as a different kind of pleasure.
18-2




276         ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
well-feel-    Corresponding to this pleasure there is pain
ing opposed to which we must not call ill-feeling, that expression
fort.m   existing already in a different application. The term'ill', though vaguely opposite to'well', has been
much less used than'well' in un-moral application,
and we do not talk of ill-being and ill-fare, as we do
of well-being and welfare. The kind of pain I am
speaking of now is the feeling which we may suppose
to accompany an imperfect performance of function,
not distinct or violent, but vague and general: we
might call it discomfort. The essential character
about it is that, as in the case of the pleasure, there
is no local consciousness of it, or attention, other
than slight or occasional, to the painfulness of feeling.
Different    I expressed a doubt as to the propriety of giving
toewhss  the name of pleasure to that which I described in
pleasure- the previous paragraph: there is not so much doubt
of such  as to the propriety of giving the name of pain to what
ing.    I have now described.  We may suppose that, midway between them, there is a neutral point of entire
undisturbance, and that the first feeling represents
a slight though general disturbance in the direction
of pleasure, the second, a slight though general disturbance in the direction of pain. People will probably express themselves differently on this matter
according to their own feelings. One will say, the
supposed pleasure of health is nothing more than
undisturbance, or unconsciousness in this particular;
it is no pleasure at all: distinct consciousness of any
kind is with few exceptions a disturbance in the
direction of pain: the supposed well-feeling is only
neutrality, the second feeling is real pain. Another
will say, so far from the pleasure of health and mere
life being no pleasure, it is the intensest of all pleasures; a pleasure in comparison with which any
pleasure of disturbance is nothing. It will be ob



ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.             277
served that, in the first of these views, pain is much
more a reality or a fact in the world than pleasure
is. The second view is more suggested to people, I
think, by the sight of the pleasures of other people
or other creatures than by their own experience; the
reason being that, for an observation of this kind
in a person's self, there is required a distinctness of
consciousness or attention which is rather inconsistent
with the absorption of attention in the employment,
or the play, or whatever it is, which is supposed to
cause the intenseness of the pleasure.
Pleasure and pain of this first kind is pleasure or
pain of undisturbance.  As I have mentioned, this
term  may not be strictly accurate, and I use it subject to an abundance of discussion like the preceding.
In any case the disturbance either way, or in whatever way, is slight, vague, and general.
The second kind of pleasure and pain (for here Feelings
-1~~~~~~~~ o *.of disturbwe may speak of them  as a true pair or couple), is ance (2).
pleasure and pain of disturbance where the disturbance from a normal state is marked and distinct.
What I mean will appear as I proceed.
Distinct corporeal pain is a particular state necessarily involving consciousness or attention of the
whole sensitive being, a state coexistent with, associated with, or belonging to, a particular physical
modification of some one or more of the nerves
which are capable of such modification. Distinct corporeal pleasure may be defined in the same manner.
The Jfct distinguishing the one from the other, whatever it is, is simple and ultimate, incapable of definition. The result of the fact is, that the one we like,
the other we dread.
There is disturbance of the normal feeling in
this, coincident with local disturbance of the nerves.
Pain or pleasure of disturbance, more generally,




2 7 8           ON- PLEASURE AND  PAIN.
is a state of the sensitive being similar, as to the
simple undefinable fact which constitutes it, with its
results, to the above described, but not necessarily
accompanied by any local nervous disturbance.
The pleasures and pains which may be called
mental rather than bodily are those which are
connected with imagination in the same way as
the others are with direct sensation.  It is of course
to be remembered that both sorts affect the whole
man.  Pain is properly of the mind, though caused
(in the first sort) by something distinct and definite
in the body; and in the second, or imaginational,
pleasures and pains the body is constantly affected,
and that sometimes in a very strong degree. Tears
and laughter, blush and paleness, shiver and glow,
trembling and stupor, are the results among others
of such affection. These, in the old language, are
various forms- of the passion, or changing corporeal
state, of which  the  cffection, or changing  mental
state, was the mistress and occasion.
I shall take the liberty in the present chapter of
Enjoy-                                       t
ment op- appropriating the word enjoyment to signify what I
posed to
suffering. call pleasure of disturbance, and the word suyffering to
signify what I call pain of disturbance.
As'regards    Enjoyment and suffering arise from  our having,
the body, in our mental and corporeal organization, distinctly
there is a
greater   provided susceptibilities or capacities for them.
capacity
for suffer-  So far as the body goes, there is much more sufing than  fering  possible  than   enjoyment.  1For,  speaking
for enjoymelnt.
1 Paley's argument on this point in his Ncatutral Theology is entirely
fallacious. The body is in no sense a magazine of possible pleasure to
us, as'unhappily it is a magazine of possible pains. If the organisma
does its work, there is pleasure for us in the work done: if it does not
do its work, there is want of pleasure, or pain, in the work not being
done: but independently of this, there is a possibility of pain for us in the
organism with its sensations, which is not balanced by any possibility of
pleaslure. If our teeth do their work of eating, we shall have pleasure;
if they do not, perhaps because they can get nothing to eat, we shall




ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.                   279
loosely, each sensor nerve or nerve of sensation is a
special or separate capacity for pain: in fact, such
capacities in the body are infinite; wherever there is
disturbance of the normal state in the wrong way
(and there may be any where), there is, probably, pain.
Whereas it is only in the case of a very few of the
sensitive nerves that there can be disturbance in the
direction of pleasure. Every sensitive nerve is a
nerve of possible distinct pain; the nerves of possible
distinct pleasure (in  the palate, alimentary  canal,
&c.) are limited.
I am speaking now, it is to be remembered, of Use of
this capaeudsemonics' or hedonics, and the view which I am city for
taking, like each view which I have taken, is a par- suffering.
ticular abstraction, or partial view.  I leave out of
account, as much as I can do so, man's having an
active nature, though it is in relation with that that
all this possibility of pain stands, and that it has its
value in the universe, a value far greater than that of
enjoyment.  What I have called enjoyment might be
very greatly diminished, without the state of things
in the universe differing much from that which exists
at present: there would still exist the kind of pleasure
of which.I have spoken already and that of which I
am  going to speak,: but, so long as there exists the
possibility of anything going wrong in the universe,
pain, or thefeeling of this going wrong or disturbance,
is a matter of vital necessity, and the universe could
not do at all without it.
have pain: so far there is a balance of counter-possibilities. But independently of this, if they ache we shall have pain: unhappily there is
no sensation of counter-ache or possibility of pleasure in them outside
of their work: the alternative is only between non-sensation and pain.
There is no doubt that any argument in reference to Natural Theology,
which is based on a consideration of the organism alone, will go the
other way from Paley's. The argument is in fact a painful difficulty
coming home to the feelings of all, and Paley's smart conclusiunculae
are quite unavailing against it.




280          ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
The men-    Though, so far as the body is concerned, there is
tal capacity is as far more possibility of suffering or pain of disturbance,
gjeat fen  than of pleasure of disturbance or enjoyment, this is
as for   not the case with imaginative pleasures and pains.
Here the capacity both ways is very great, and the
capacity of enjoyment probably greater than that of
suffering. On this, however, I will not dwell now.
Feelings   The third kind of pleasure is of the nature of disfand satis turbance, as enjoyment is, but it differs from enjoyfaction (3). ment in that it always implies a preceding want
either real or supposed. It is the feeling which accompanies the satisfaction of such want. I will call
it by the name of gratification.
Desire and    The word'want' I use here, as I have done before 1,
tfifica  to express a fact: the want may exist, felt or unfelt:
the feeling of this want as a want, is what we call'desire' (though there may also be desire without the
real fact of want, owing to our power of imagination):
upon the want follows, if it does follow, another fact,
satisfaction of it (or imagined satisfaction, if the
want is oeny imnagined): the feeling accompanying the
satisfaction (or imagined satisfaction) of the want,
is what I cl1 gratification.  Gratification is to the
desire what satisfaction is to the want.
Desire is pain in so far as itis consciousness of
want. Gratification is the replacing of this pain by
pleasure. But desire may be also itself pleasurable
through the anticipated possession or attainment of the
obj ect desired; and if it is followed by effort to attain
it, there is a further pleasure in this, as in all action for
a purpose which is free, i. e. which is not attended by
an opposite feeling of fatigue, or of wish to be engaged
in something else. Some of the ancient philosophers
considered that gratification was nothing more than
the restoration of an equilibrium. They compared
i Cf. Appendix on Wanclt, p. 27.




ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.             281
desire and gratification to the filling up of a vessel
with holes, or (we are not more plain-spoken than
Plato) to itching and scratching, leaving no result in
the way of surplus pleasure.  In this they confine
their attention too much to the moment of gratification, though even as regards that, there is no meaning
in speaking of equal amounts of pleasure and pain.
But I shall have more to say on this further on.
A ready illustration of the difference between Distinc:
enjoyment and gratification may be taken from our tween
feelings in respect of food.                       gratificaWhen the bodily system needs support, the want enjoyment
makes itself felt in corresponding desire of food: and case of
the gratification of this desire by the satisfaction offoo~~.
the want is a pleasure perhaps of a very intense kind.
Besides this, the nerves of the tongue and palate are
so constructed, that they give at the same time a
local pleasure quite distinct from the other, though
associated with it by nature, for various useful purposes. But either may exist without the other, and
constantly does; there may be keen pleasure in eating
an old shoe if one is starving, or on the other hand
in tasting an exquisite wine, though there may not be
the smallest degree of thirst or previous desire for it.
We are then, it will be seen, capable of pleasure, as
distinct from simple well-feeling, in two ways: the
one to the extent of our susceptibilities of pleasure,
or we might say, our voluptuary senses, amplified by
imagination, so far as we may consider the imagination of a being without faculties for action: the other,
when to these are superadded our activity, and our
imagination as connected with  this, and correspondingly, want also, as a fact in our nature or the
universe.
The difference between enjoyment and gratification Though in
will I think be best understood by our making the bined, the




282          ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
two are  two suppositions, so far as we can, first of our -being
noari con- without the possibility of the one, then of our being
nected.  without the possibility of the other.  I say so far as
we can, for our nature is one, and the different portions of it all fit, or belong to, each other: and the
making these abstractions, or taking these partial
views, is only to a certain extent possible: i. e. when
we suppose the absence of any element, our real
supposition is the existence of only just so much of it
as is necessary to keep our nature barely going.
Enjoy-     The first supposition then will be of our possessment
belongs to ing great and various susceptibility to pleasure withoti sen- out any desire or feeling of want, i. e. without any
ture, and independent, or spontaneous, feeling of pain at the
is not preceded by a absence of it. I mean by' independent or sponsense of
waut.  taneous,' this.  We may suppose, to a certain extent,
memory of a past consciousness of pleasure, contemplation, itself accompanied with pleasure, of the
possibility of our repeating the consciousness, and
effort on our part to reproduce it.  But the supposition which we must exclude is, that of a pain
at the absence of the pleasure, going along with the
susceptibility to it, when such susceptibility is not
in exercise: except so far as we may call an imagination of the agreeableness of the presence of the thing
a pain at the absence of it.  We have by means of
the nerves of the palate and tongue, an intense
susceptibility of the pleasure which we call taste:
but this susceptibility implies no want or pain
when that which would give pleasure is absent: our
palate does not feel in pain at the absence of nice
savours, as it feels in pleasure at the presence of them.
This perhaps may be understood best by the case of
smell, because there the confusion caused by the
feeling of hunger will be avoided. It is the same.with the ear and music.




ON PLEASUIRE AND PAIN.            283
All these are pleasures of our simply sentient
nature, in the service of which, indeed, our active
nature may be by imagination engaged, but to which
it is not at all essential.  The circumstances of such
pleasure and pain are that there is a condition of
neutrality or undisturbance, during which (except
for memory) there exists no consciousness of such
susceptibility to pleasure and pain, nor (except for
memory) any knowledge of the existence of such:
this neutrality may be disturbed'either way.  It is
quite easy to imagine our nature infinitely richer
than it is in susceptibilities of this kind.  Add more
nerves and intensify the memory, and we might not
only sympathize acutely with every chemical process
going on in outward nature, but putting these feelings together, might have a knowledge of it in comparison with which our present coarse' and rude
acquaintance is nothing. Only we could not multiply pleasures of this kind without multiplying
possible pains.  And, on the other hand, we might
diminish these susceptibilities very —much, without
making much difference as to our happiness.  Many
people get on very well without any sense of smell,
and others without any feeling of music.
The pain and pleasure concerned with the facts Our active
of want and satisfaction, are of different nature.  We latue is
might suppose some local cause entirely to destroy in grtiour power of special taste, and that there only which is
remained tlhe knowledge that some things were good by seede
to satisfy our hunger, others were not: hunger, of wa.t
i. e. a want and the feeling of a want, might still
subsist in all its force; there might still be intense
pain in the feeling of the want, if it were great, and
intense pleasure in the gratification, or feeling of
satisfaction of the wvant, even if there were no
pleasures of taste at all.




284          ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
The two sorts of pleasure or pain are constantly
in fact mixed or superadded the one to the other:
but there seems to me little difficulty in perceiving
their difference. There are two conceivable, quite
different, ways of multiplying possible pleasures: the
one by multiplying susceptibilities of pleasure, which
may be titillated or set in action, the other by multiplying desires which may be gratified, and correspondingly wants satisfied. In both cases, we multiply pains or possible pains along with pleasures.
These two kinds of pleasure may or may not go
together. As on the one side the pleasure of taste
will go very well with the satisfaction of hunger, so
on the other side the feeling of hunger is very likely
to be accompanied with imaginative pictures of this
or that manner of satisfying it.. But this imagination
is not the hunger, any more than the nervous
pleasure of taste in the palate is the satisfaction
of it. If the hunger is very intense, it will destroy,
by overwhelming, this latter, leaving no possibility
of distinct attention to it.
Butler as-    The exclusive supposition of one or other of these
thedll  two kinds of pleasures and pains, is what is in subpleasure. stance done by a certain set of moralists, more or less
was grati- 
fication, called selfish, on the one side, and by Butler on the
his opponents that other: the former suppose only pleasures and pains
all plea- of enjoyment, Butler only pleasures and pains of
enjoy-   gratification.
According  to the latter view, the  object of
desire is the thing of which we are in want, and such
pleasure as arises is from the gratification of the
desire by the attainment of the thing. According to
the former view, such desire as there is, is for the
pleasure which we picture to ourselves in the attainment of the thing, and the desire for the thing is
only in order to this.  The word'pleasure,' in strict



ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.             285
ness belongs to the former view, the word'desire,'
in strictness belongs to the latter. The first set
of philosophers, insufficiently, define desire to be the
feeling which prompts and accompanies our effort
after pleasure: the effort, in the mass of cases, is
not after pleasure, but after some thing. Butler,
insufficiently, defines pleasure to be the feeling of
gratified desire: there may be pleasure without any
want or desire. But Butler is the nearer the truth,
in fact more confused than wrong, joining desires (or
wants) and susceptibilities under the common name
of faculties.
I will just mention by the way that, for the par- Butler was
ticular purpose for which Butler discusses this mat-'wong in
ter, he seems to me to overshoot his mark on the one thataction
might be
side as much as he convicts his antagonists of over- simply
with a
shooting theirs on the other; or at least not quite to view to
keep in view what I suppose his point.  Putting the ttain
thing roughly, his adversaries say All our conduct,
even what we call benevolence, is selfish and interested: it is all done in view of the pleasure which
will redound to ourselves. He answers: None of
our conduct is selfish or interested; it is all done
in view of the gaining certain special objects, whatever they'are, the gaining of which will indeed give
us pleasure, but what we desire is the object, not the
pleasure. In one point of view, which we shall
see directly, the taking up ground, as Butler does
here, exactly opposite to that of his opponents, is of
great importance. But the doing it thus roundly
tends to obscure two important distinctions.  The
first is, that we have both these ways of action: at
one time the imagined pleasure, at another time the
thing, is the direct object of desire; only that this
latter is much the more important part of our action.
The second is the distinction, all-important as to




286          ON PLEASURE AND- PAIN.
morals, between conduct which is self-regarding and
conduct which is outward-going or public-spirited:
this distinction may exist with regard to both parts of
our conduct, both that which is for an object and that
which is for imagined pleasure: the object may go no
further than ourselves, the imagined pleasure (of our
own) may be the giving pleasure to others. It may
indeed be a question what is really to be thought of
the latter conduct (the benevolence of the selfish philosophers): on that there is much to say, which I will
not say now.
His oppo-    Butler's opponents however are far more wrong
nents were
more   than he is. There is no statement more thoroughly
wrong in untrue and misleading than the constantly repeated
that action one, that what people, as regards the mass of their life
might be
with a   or the sum of their thought, are wishing for and acting
view to
attain  towards, is pleasure, or happiness as a function and
some ob- derivative of pleasure.  They are expecting pleasure
ject indepenident of in the attainment of their various objects: but what
~piaie. is before their imagination, the object of their action,
what they are desiring, is all sorts of things, and the
mass of action in pursuit of these things is what we
call life. I do not deny that a part of our action is
for distinctly imagined pleasure: but we desire many.things in virtue of our nature and not as a practical
conclusion from having found them enjoyable; and
all the most important desires are of this latter
nature; that is, the parent of these more important
desires is spontaneous impulse, a faculty seeking its
object, in Butler's language, not the remembrance of
past enjoyment. It is not correct therefore to describe pleasure, the enjoyment and the remembrance
of it, as the spring of action: it is but very slightly
so. No catalogue of pleasures, however complete,
would at all represent the actual happiness of life.
Columbus's desire to discover America, and Newton's




ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.            287
desire to discover the secret of the heavens, the gratification of which desires we must conceive to have
given to them the intensest pleasure, we cannot
suppose to have been excited by -the remembrance
of the pleasure which a small exploration will have
given the former, or the solution of a problem the
latter: they had their rise in the nature of each, and
supposing Columbus and Newton had never felt
pleasure in their lives, and did not know what itwas,
so as to desire it, they would have been as likely to
desire these things which they did desire, the impulse
to which was a part of their nature.
Of all professions, those  to practicalness areEven if we
combine
generally the most empty, and never was any philo-love of
sophy less practical than that which would make Pleasure
pleasure the universal object of desire and action. It action,
this does
is convicted of unpracticalness by the ordinary non- not give
a complete
philosophical view, simply expressing itself: men account of
plainly see the love of pleasure will not account for human
motives.
life: if we are to have it, we must at least add to it
the love of action.  But neither pleasure hor action
express the real direction or pointing of our desire,
though we may resolve this, in a manner, into them,
as into two co-ordinate lines. Our nature, bodily and
-mental, has various wants, which wants are indicated
to our consciousness by the feeling of them, or desire,
and are indefinitely multiplied by imagination: these
wants are of things, to speak roughly: before the
attainment of the thing, there will have to be action
in the pursuit of it; after the attainment, will come,
if it does come, the tasting or enjoyment of it: but
it is neither the pursuit nor the enjoyment which we
want, but the thing.  Our imaginations indeed are
likely enough to picture to themselves as well both
the excitement of the pursuit and the pleasure of the
possession: but the moving force is neither love of




288          ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
pleasure in general, nor love of action in general, but
particularly determined desire.
Hedoetry-    No doubt the utilitarians are justified in saying
nometry.
that, in the laying out of life or the determining of
action, there is and must be a great deal of comparison,
in the imagination of different pleasures or kinds
of pleasure: the doing of this well may be of the
greatest importance. Of two pleasures choose the
greatest (supposing there is nothing else to be considered) is a very natural pendant to the rule, Of two
evils choose the least.
But how far is this comparative hedonometry, so
to call it, possible, in the first instance, and desirable
if possible? I am inclined to think that the various
assertions which have been made as to pleasures differing only in intensity and duration, have been the
result, partly of want of sensibility, partly of want of
elevation of view, partly of a desire to give a slight
shock, as paradox does, and partly of that pleasure in
depreciating the higher parts of human nature which
arises, not surprisingly, from the foolishness which is
occasionally talked about them.
Those utilitarians who have looked a little deeper
than Paley or Bentham cared to do, have been obliged
to admit a third difference in pleasures and pains, in
addition to those of intensity and duration.
Those who   They have said that we must take account of
admit difference of quality as well as of quantity. But it is evident that
lealsure in doing this they must give up the direct hedonometry
must   which Paley and Bentham  contemplated, for it is
abandon
the exact quantity, not quality, which admits of being gauged
comparison of  or measured: they must even give up, as generally
pleasures. applicable, the very moderate measurement implied
in such a phrase as that'of two pleasures choose the
greatest': to which they will have to add, Look at
your kind of pleasure, as well as at your magnitude.




ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.            289
But in thus giving up the notion of directly measuring pleasures one with another, do they not give
up all that recommendation of utilitarianism which
arises from its being a good definite and practical
guide of action? Is it a more real and easy thing,
in this way, to compare pleasures than to compare
virtues?
They say it is, because it is matter of experience. Fallacy of
experiWe can estimate, they say, the. pleasingness'of plea- encl.
sure in the only way in which we can estimate anything, by experience: we can find out how much it
does please: i. e. how much one kind of it pleases as
compared with another: and we may do this by
finding how much it has pleased: we must for this
interrogate our own past experience, and the experience of others, who are competent judges.
I would just -call attention in passing, to the
point where we make the false step, or where, in its
usual noiseless way, the universal fallacy of experience, as I will call it, comes in; where we step, in an
instant and unperceivingly, over a chasm of infinite
depth.  It is there where'w.e conclude the degree in
which pleasure does please, from the degree in whichit has pleased.  For by' does please', we really
mean, no't that, as. a fact, it pleases now, or at such
a time, or any number of times, but that'it is its
nature to please:' the universality of the proposition
is something not given by experience. And in this
case it will appear, that the universal proposition is
not only illogically concluded, but is wrongly.coneluded in fact.
No doubt pleasure is a thing about which we may, Pleasure is
and must, if we are wise, ask advice of others.and of offun-ti
our former selves, but we shall not therefore consider Vidual
ourselves necessarily bound to follow it.  They are
-not we (on the individuality of pleasure I shall
G.                                    19




290         ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
shortly have something more to say): and we are
not -what we were: what we found pleasant formerly may not be pleasant to us now. All this is so
trite and evident, that we only wonder that this comparative tasting of pleasures by people's experience
can ever have been seriously brought forward as a
doctrine which was to solve all moral difficulties and
give us a universal guide to action. Our palates have
the same sort of nerves: and consequently, in the
rough practical way which I above mentioned, if there
is a new dish, and the larger number of the company
like it, I say, I shall very. probably like it too': but'de gustibus non est disputandum,' in matters of
pleasure there is no authority, different people like
different things, we like different things from what
we liked twenty -years ago, people in general now
like different things' from those.which people in
general liked a hundred years ago;. and if we say
there are some things which are worth liking, which
people should like, we are adding a new element not
belonging to experience, but implying an'ideal, and
really borrowed from that other part of moral philosophy which I have called' aretaics'.




CHAPTER  XIII.
ON  HAPPINESS.
FOR the consideration of happiness, the proper To get an
point of departure is well-feeling, not that distinct dppaess
pleasure which I have called enjoyment.  The op-fronmpleasure, we
posite proceeding is what may be called an error of must start
from wellutilitarianism, in'this way. To utilitarianism, asfeeling,
simply makihg much of happiness, happiness of one neotfrom
kind is the same as happiness of another kind: but ment.
to utilitarianism, as considering happiness describable
and measurable, and professing itself, on this account,
more, susceptible of accuracy, as a moral system, than
other moral systems, it'is important to start, in considering happiness, from the notion of distinct'pleasure;. because then happiness is considered as.a
mass of pleasures, or a quantity of pleasure, which it
could not be if we began in our consideration of it
from  well-feeling.  No~ one would conceive that this
could lend itself to -anything of measurement, or that
we could in any way compare the degree of it felt by
one with.the degree of it felt by another. It is
the accompaniment of a state, which state may be
analysed as to its constituent parts, but happiness
itself, the accompaniment, is something incapable of
analysis.  In this view  of the matter we cannot
possibly imagine the happiness to be the principal
thing, so that the state exists in order to the feeling
of it.  Our feeling happiness, may be a test of the
-state being the right and proper state; but to produce the happiness, we must produce the state.
The error of modern utilitarians as to happi- Happinss
ness, seems to me to arise from an imperfect notion according
19- --




292               ON HAPPINESS,
to Paley of the manner in which any happiness, deserving to
tham.   be called such, belongs to life in general.  Had they
understood this more truly, they would have seen
that it is as hard to describe happiness as it is to
describe right, and that any notion of making morals
more simple by building them  on the basis of pleasure or happiness is chimerical: while in the attempt
to do this all real notion of happiness is destroyed.
Of utilitarian conceptions of happiness, Paley's is
probably the truest to the ancient Epicureanism;
which, to the depth to which it went, had its truth,
and was susceptible of very various form according to
the mind of the conceiver; but which nevertheless
always seems to me to have had a kind of untruthfulness like that of pastoral poetry, to have' taken
little account of the real movers of action, and the
most important feelings.  Bentham's conception was
of a sort of legal happiness; a mapping out of infinitely varied feeling into forms in which it' ought
to arrange itself, French departments'or American
counties; a process excellent in many respects for
the purpose for which. he used it, but not at all a
Economi- real account of man.  At present, it seems to me
al view, of that, in the desire to create a positive or inductive
happiness
as consist- science of morals, there is a disposition, suggested
ing in the
posses- by political economy, to describe the materials of'sion of
materials happiness as happiness itself, and to think that
enjoy- so
enjtOY   some observation, or positive research, will give the
manner in which they ought to be distributed. On
this I will say a few words.
Wealth, I suppose, may be defined as the mass of
the commodities which man more or less urgently
requires, and in using enjoys, with the exclusion of
some,  scarcely indeed to be called commodities, which
are common to all.  We may thus readily analyse it,
and we find the various kinds of it satisfying various




ON HAPPINESS..293
requirements, and giving various kinds of enjoyment.
We may classify the kinds: and we thus have a
catalogue or arrangement. of enjoyments at once
suggesting itself to us. Wealth is most unequally
distributed; some have none, some have much.
Here then we find a ready means for increasing man's
enjoyment; here we have good action suggested to
us, and suggested to us simply as the production of
enjoyment.
Again, according to Political Economy, labour is Action is
looked upon merely as the means to the attainment not mensey
of the one thing in itself needful, wealth. Did wealth enjoyment, as
exist without labour, labour would be folly. In like labour is
manner it seems to be assumed by some moralists
that all the happiness of life consists in the play of
it, so to speak, and none in the work.
It will be remembered that I noticed as the
cardinal point of my difference with utilitarianism
in the beginning, that it looks upon man as fruitive,
or enjoying, in the first instance, and active only in
the second instance, because without acting he cannot procure enjoyment;  Man, I said, is active and
fruitive..both in conjunction: and the happiness or
successfulness of his nature is in this, that there
exists pleasure, his own and that of others, which
may serve as.an end for his action, and that he has
powers of action by means of which he can procure
his own and others' pleasure.
It is the alternation or conjunction of actionThere is
enjoyment
and enjoyment which constitutes life: and happiness involved
is in life, not in the fruitive portion of life only, the in action.
enjoyment. Man's active powers are as much a part
of him as his susceptibilities of enjoyment. The
enjoyment involved in the exercise of the former is as
important as the enjoyment which theyare exercised
to procure. He would in this way be unhappier if




2294             ON HAPPINESS.
-he were happier: his happiness would be further off
if it were nearer.
Even eco-   It is all this which makes the complicated chanomicai
progress racter and, at the same time, the interest of human
ovueofto    happiness, and which makes it constantly impossible
action as for a man to say what is his enjoyment,. and what is
much as'
to love of his trouble.  And man's economic circumstances
wealth.
thenmselves in reality rest upon this, though in considering them we make for convenience an abstraction; and suppose that wealth is enjoyment, and that
labour is (so far as it goes) a pain or evil undergone
for the sake of it. It is this complication of human
happiness which makes the substantial folly of all
satires on the Vanity of Human Wishes, or in fact, on
the suppased folly of men. - It causes a perpetual
circular reasoning in all our attempts to estimate
pleasure given: we say, it is evident that this thing
gives great pleasure, or else men would not take so
much trouble to get it; and then again, they take
all this trouble to get it because it gives so much
pleasure. It seems to me, that if we oppose the total
action-of men on the one side, to their total enjoyment
on the other (not, taking into account the fact that
often the labour falls to one, and the enjoyment to
another), and if we suppose that men then really
could and did beforehand estimate the value of pleasure against the labour it would cost, estimating this
latter all along as an evil, it is a question whether
states of high economical civilization would ever exist.
They exist, because along with the love of enjoyment,
the sole utilitarian motive, there exists in man an
impulse to the exercise of his faculties, or so far to
lcabouor, as well as to- enjoyment, and a capability of
rational improvement -which suggests to him that it
is better to exercise these faculties in the'production
of what will be useful and enjoyed than in savage




ON HAPPINESS.                295
pursuits like war, And so men get on to high civilization and to luxury.
As there is one line of moral philosophy thus Jural view
connectconnected with the study of political economy, anding nhappisuggesting to us human enjoyment as what we should ness with
start with or make our first consideration: so there
is another line of moral philosophy which is associated
with jurisprudence or law, and which starts with the
consideration of human action.  Bentham attempted
to reform law by bringing it into the sphere of direct
considerations of human pleasure and happiness, so
far as I understand, with great profit. But there
exists exactly the same necessity for our bringing -our
views of human happiness into the sphere of jurisprudence, or the science of the principles upon which,
as a matter of fact, men have regulated their action.
For there we see human life: we see how men understand their own requirements, the purpose of
their action, the proper direction and proper restraint
of it: a theory of human happiness out of relation
with this would be as unsatisfactory as a system of
law out of relation with human happiness.
A.nd -human life, as a whole, consists more in Life is
action than in enjoyment. To describe man we must idely of
describe his habits of life, the things that he does: actions
his important pleasures are closely involved with slightly of
distinct
these, and hardly describable independently; or., enjoywvhere they are so, are endlessly associated with other ment.
feelings: the more distinctly describable and separable.a pleasure is, the less it is important.  The
distinct pleasures are like an animal's fondness
for salt or any speciality of that kind, as compared
with the.pleasures, involved with other feelings and
with pain, in its exercise of. its faculties to secure its
food and gratify its appetite, according to its constantly present'impulses.




296              ON HAPPINESS.
Aristote-    It is not'the abundance of the things which he,v&arpa. possesseth' which makes a man's life, but it is his living, his exercising his faculties; his happiness is his
Evwpatia, that word which the Greek moral instinct
may almost be said to have made for the Aristotelic
philosophy, in which feeling and action are joined in
a single.notion as they are joined in consciousness,
the life being in this union of action and feeling:
living rightly is the doing what we should, in which:doing we feel as we should; and this is the important.
or fundamental happiness,. to which the various
separate describable pleasures are desirable, but not
necessary, appendages.  The Aristotelic philosophy
was true to reality in the way in which it looked at
these pleasures, and in the way in which it dealt
with  the materials of happiness.  Its Ev;SaLxovl, a
or happiness, was not a' function or development of
j8ov4, pleasure; but, as I have described it above, a
something more general and deeper, to. which this.
other might be added: not a mere product of the
xopr?7ya or materials of happiness, but the right use
of the latter, with full individual action.
Improved    Happiness then consists, firstly, in. living, feeling,
of happi- thinking, as it, is the nature, of man to live, feel, and
MeIS.   think, especially as it is the best or ideal nature of
man to live, feel, and think; secondly, in the pursuit
of purposes worth pursuing, especially in the successful pursuit of them., giving rise to gratification; and,
finally, in more of distinct and separable pleasure,.
or enjoyment; or perhaps, which comes to the same
thing, in less of distinct pain, the counterpart of enjoyment, and in the lives. of many much the readier
at hand; in so much that, in such a case, the entire
absence of the one would be cheaply purchased with
the entire. absence of the other.
In man's nature, as I have described, sociality is




ON HAPPINESS.                297
not a quasi-accident, but of the essence of it: each
feeling bears its imprint. Thus the living, feeling,
thinking, as man should, has' reference not to the
man's self alone, but to his; place with others, and his
relation to them; and into his purposes they, as
well as himself, must enter.
From the above remarks about happiness the
following may appear.
Moral psychology endeavours to co-ordinate indi- Difficulty
vidual experiences; a thing which is, in all respects, a gernernl
difficult, and at least as difficult in regard of happi- conc lu
sions with
ness as in regard of any moral sentiment. When we regard to
the experiare speaking about' moral sentiment, of course a man ence of
may reply to us,'I feel no such sentiment': but pleasures
quite to the same degree, as it seems to me, when
we are speaking of any pleasure, he might answer,'It
does not please me.' - And when we say, that men
are educated morally to think in this or that manner,
and that it is in this way that it is determined. what
their moral sentiments shall be, I cannot see at all
why it may not be said to the! same extent that they
are educated to enjoy this or that, and.that thus it
is determined by education what their pleasure shall
be. When therefore an appeal is made to experience
as to what is pleasing, and we are told, Here is real
matter of experience, Here is something to found a
positive science upon, I am quite unable to see how
an appeal can be made to experience as to what is
pleasant more than as to. what is right.  Men seem
to me to vary and differ at least as. much in their
enjoyments as in  their moral sentiments; and
therefore, besides the consideration that moral
science is concerned primarily with an ideal and
only with positive science as, subordinate to such, I
do not see that pleasure offers -us a firmer ground for
a positive science than moral sentiment does.




298              ON HAPPINESS.
Writers who have not had a theory to serve, the
simple surveyors of human nature, like Herodotus or
Montaigne, have dwelt on the variety and uncertainty of human enjoymrent just in the same manner
as the utilitarians have dwelt on the variety and uncertainty of moral sentiment and reason among men:
moral sentiment is as much fixed in man as anything
is. That is, both his moral. sentiments, and his
views of pleasure and happiness, are developments
and exhibitions of his wide. and varied nature.
Human pleasure and happiness thus eludes the
attempt at exact description and classification of it:
and there is danger of mistake -and immorality in
such attempt, in the manner which I will shew.
Danger of   It is scarcely possible to attempt to analyze hapii,isg. piness into particular distinct pleasures, without
perilnc: of giving a greater apparent importance than  they
oleasures.
really have, in proportion with the'mass of happiness in life, to the distinctly.describable pleasures,
such as are many physical ones.  To give a coarse
instance: a man sees put down among pleasures
the very distinct physical pleasure of intoxication,
and hears it said that it is very intense. He says to
himself,'To think that I should have lived so many
years without once experiencing this pleasure! here
is one ingredient of happiness wbich I have quite
neglected.' He is told perhaps,'You will have to
pay for:the pleasure with pains, with head-ache afterwards, with the danger of falling into a habit which
wvill be your misery.' He says,'I will try if I cannot,
managing the thing wisely, secure the pleasure and
guard against the pains, —I think I can.' The real
thing to be said to him is, Your truest lappiness will
be that which will flow from your life itself, and your
wisest, plan will be to try to make your life such as
will furnish such happiness. The pleasure of dis



oN HAPPINESS.               299
-tinctly conceivable and describable' enjoyment, the
old'8ov4  or voluptcas, is something which life might
be perfectly happy. without, there being quite enough
pleasure for happiness involved, so to speak, in living,
in the moral respiration of desire and gratification,
pursuit. and attainnent, affection and response, which
we cannot live for a day without.; so that we need
not go out of our way to say with regret (except it
be in the point of view of curiosity), there is this or
that distinct.pleasure which I have gone through
life withQout tasting. We have not enough enjoying
power to taste every possible pleasure, and the
pleasures involved in life are the most fundamental
-and the best.
It is because of happiness having its groundwork
thus in the individual life or mind, that it so
thoroughly flies all description, and tha't we do not,
in enumerating particular pleasures, even approach
towards a description of it. And it is for the.same
reason that the experience of one person and another
about it cannot be really compared. To a being
capable of reading human -hearts -the world must
present a curious picture of people mutually pitying
each other, each thinking the other unhappy, and of
people mutually envying each other, each thinking
the other happy. Even the comparative amount of
enjoyment, to different individuals, of the distinctly
separable pleasures, cannot. be estimated: no man
can tell whether different individuals derive the
same pleasure from intoxication  no man can tell
whether the rich man's champagne gives to him the
same pleasure that the poor man's beer gives to,him,
or whether it gives himna greater pleasure in proportion to the superiority of the liquor: so utterly
empty is all the talk -about measuring the intensity
of pleasures.




300               ON HAPPINESS.
Con-       The first condition of happiness is then, if I may
ditions of
happiness, so speak, to -have -good faculties for it and, to the
internal best of our power, to keep or make them  such.
and external.  These faculties are in fact the ordinary faculties of
inward or moral life in their subjective or conscious
aspect: and -to have them good in the point of view
of happiness is to have them what they should'be in
themselves, and then to take the pleasure which
springs from the exercise of them as it comes.  This
is that great principle of happiness, —that it is not
anything which can be gained. by seeking it, that it
is. not what-will bear being looked at in the face.
Secondary to this groundwork of happiness (the
happiness of well-feeling, of life, of enjoyed and fruitful thought, emotion, and action), is such happiness
as may arise from  distinct and exhibitable pleasures: and then, as a pre-condition, more or less, for
the substantial happiness, though  in no respect
constituting it, are necessary what I have called the
materials of it.
Examina-    The common maxims about happiness belong for
maxims  the most part to the region of what I will venture to
hpptness: call am philogy: that is, they are true, but an opposite
statement might be made with equal truth: their
truth is partial, and implies such -conditions and such
an understanding of the terms as does not exclude
the opposite statement.
that hap-    Of this kind is the saying, that happiness consists
piness
consists in in contentment.
content.   This, as we should mean it now, is not exactly
Relation either a Stoic. or an Epicurean view, but a sort of
of this
maxim to dilution of either of them, or balance of'the two, to
Etpicurean suit the common run of the world: it is what they
views.  have come to in the currency of ordinary life.  With
the Stoic the maxim would only be properly true
on the supposition of contentment meaning, as it




ON HAPPINESS.               301
etymologically does, active self-restraint, amounting
possibly even to self-denial.  With the Epicurean
it would not be properly true, because he says that
life is to be-continually, though not an anxious, yet
a real, search after pleasure. Our present meaning
for the maxim, viz.'You have so much material
for happiness, be satisfied with that and make yourself happy with it,' would suit neither.  The Stoic
would say, Do not be resting in and thinking of
that: the Epicurean would say, Get more.  Nor is
human nature, in *practice, more satisfied with it
than they. There seems to be no alternative between
not thinking of happiness, and trying to get more.
No man will be. content, if he begins thinking
whether he is happy or not. Contentment is a
passive, not an active, resting in our lot.
Whatever may be natural to man, contentment
is not. A-cturience or desire of action, in one form or
another, whether as restlessness, ennui, dissatisfaction, or the imagination of something desirable, is
quite as much a fact of human nature as any kind of
want or need. Were all appetites and desires satisfied, this. would remain.  Man wants an object for
his activity quite as much as he wants his activity
for the support of his life.'Having food and raiment, let us therewith be It is not
content': but neither the Apostle nor the political aneowi-th
economist recommend content simply; for it is dis-rti
satisfaction and not satisfaction, which is the parent anity or
of all idealism, energy, and progress.  The political Economy.
economist has to urge men not to be content short
of food and raiment, and that' good and substantial,
and even not to be content with these: it is the'business of the pioneers of commerce to make men feel
new wants, that is, to put'an end to their contentment: content is stagnation.  The Apostle bids




302'            ON HAPPINESS.
people be content with food and raiment, not in
order that, having provided these, they may rest and
be idle, but because he has worthier work to set
before them than the labouring to supply themselves
with more of food and raiment, and things like these.
It is not the being satisfied or content that he
praises, but the knowing when we have got enough
of the less worthy good things of life in order that
we may expend our efforts on the more worthy.
Does not    The praise which has been given to contentment
human i belongs, I am disposed to think, to a sort of language
perienee. which does not represent anything very real among
men: it is a neutral state, not to any great extent
existent, nor particularly desirable to exist. If a
man's thoughts are employed about his condition, he
either enjoys his circumstances and employment, and
this it is which is such a main element of happiness,
or else he dislikes it: if, on the contrary, his thoughts
are not so employed, this' may be either because he
is simply stagnant-minded, or because, as in the case
of the Apostle above, there is something else which
employs them. None of these states of mind, I
think, represent the contentment of moralists, which
seems to me to belong rather to the sphere of shepherds and hermits than to man as he is..If St Paul
had not had something better to do, there would
have been no merit in his being satisfied with food
and raiment, and certainly no happiness: he would
have been happier in providing himself more of them
and things like them; whether he wanted them or
not, than in idly meditating on his having enough of
them.
The Con-    The truth on this subject of contentment and hapverse is
true: dis piness really lies just the inverse way:. it may be
co neiis truly said that discontent is of all the feelings which:
nessJ  are not bodily pain, the most essential and evident




ON HAPPINESS.                303
unhappiness.  By discontent we mean commonly
sterile and repining dissatisfaction.  This is quite
a different thing from'active and energetic dissatisfaction.  And it is the poison of all happiness;
as envy, which it resembles, is the poison of all
benevolence. It is the positive or affirmative feeling,
and ought to- have had the positive term.  The
colourless contentment which we spoke of, simply
means the. absence of it, and should have had the
negative term.  In a general way, where there is
absence of discontent, there is more or less enjoyment
of condition, the mind is alive one way or the other:
and generally where there is enjoyment there is
activity, work is being done: discontent is a kind of
mental fermentation or turning sour, without result.
either in the present or the future.
The old Stoic view was, in substance, If you have Theo
sufficient strength of mind you can enjoy anything:t  beit
and this, though exaggerated, is truer to reality than only one
side of the
the notion of neutral contfentment.' So far as, bytruth.
saying that happiness is in contentment,' we mean
that happiness is to a great degree our own work,
we are undoubtedly right.  According to circumstances, our best happiness will be either in resting
satisfied with, and doing what we can to enjoy, what
we'have and are, or in exerting ourselves to gain
more and be different.  Or, most commonly, our happiness will be found in being satisfied in some particulars, restless, stirring, energetic, in others. Accordingly, with exactly the same truth with which we
say, Happiness is in contentment, in restrcaining
desire, we may say, Happiness is in hope, effort,
energy, in encouraging desire.
The moral philosopher is in' fact as much concerned to encourage desires and aspirations, as the
political economist to encourage wants. The help



304.             ON HAPPINESS.
lessness, listlessness, undesiringness, which characterizes the moral. being of so many, is exactly
analogous to the economical condition of well-satisfled, unwanting barbarians. Few people desire any-.
thing. of themselves: they copy their neighbours,
desire something, wealth for instance, simply because
everybody else does.
Contentment is opposed, in a manner, to ambition
and to covetousness.
Content-    Ambition is a term which we use now to express
ment as
opposed to the desire, on the part of individuals, to rise and to
ambition: distinguish themselves, and the desire on the part
of states, to gain glory and to extend their dominion.
Between what is commonly understood as ambi-.tion, in individuals, and contentment, the question,
both as to duty and happiness, is mainly one of
temperament: some are called one way and some
another.  But giving a wider meaning to the word
ambition, all are called to ambition, to aspiration, to
effort upwards,'to raise themselves higher, to make
themselves better: there is no true living, and
therefore no real happiness, without it: the contentment which is opposed to this is ignavia,, sloth.
as opposed   Covetousness means with us now  rather the
tosCnoess indisposition to part with money than the eagerness
to gain it. It is in this latter character however,
as the 7rXEovPe:a or- LXapyvpta of the New Testament,
that it is opposed to contentment.  In a commercial country, the quality of mind which makes a man
an energetic trader is a kind of ambition, a trader's
ambition: and as against contentment, it stands on
the same footing as that.  There is no principle upon
which we can fix any point as the point of reasonable
contentment. The same reasons which may make aman, after having made twenty thousand pounds,
go on to a hundred, may act to make him go on still
further.




ON HAPPINESS.                305
Perhaps I may as well here, as anywhere, say a
word or two on the relation of patience and of hope
to happiness.
The state of our mind in regard of pleasure, and
the fact whether we have much or little of what can
be distinctly described as pleasure, is of comparatively
little consequence as regards our general happiness,
this depending far more upon our disposition of mind
as to pain, and upon our disposition of mind as to the
future.
By patience, as we use the word in English, we Patience
under
mean two very distinct things; one, a manner of suffering
endurance of present pain; the other, a manner of c~ntri
habupes to
looking to something expected.                    happiness
In respect of the former of these, supposing as it impatience to be a bare self-resignation, and impatience priciple
a struggle, it is a question which of the two is a of faith.
better bearing of pain, and so far as either of them
can be said to diminish pain, which does so most.
The real reason why, in pains of a serious nature,
_patience is the better of the two, is because of the
mixture of moral (or religious) elements in it with the
bare self-resignation. Both the old Stoic endurance
and the Christian patience arise from a principle which
may be called faith: and the Stoic notion, that its
being hard to be borne by the individual did not make
it in itself an evil, is the same principle which, more
rightly informed and made to refer to a divine ruling
will, becomes Christian patience. It is the union
of self-resignation with faith in something, or far
better, with faith and love resting in some One
deemed better and wiser than ourselves, which
makes patience, as compared with struggle, the side
of less unhappiness.
Patience,- as a manner of thinking about thePatience
as to the
future, might more properly  be called  non-im-futureis a
G.                                    20




306                ON HAPPINESS.
mean be- patience, impatience being rather the affirmative
tween.
hopeful- feeling, and patience the negation of it.
fearful-    Patience in regard of the future is something
ness.   like  contentment in regard  of our circumstances,
and is of a very doubtful character, either as a
virtue or as a part of happiness.
Imagination, applied to the future, generates
in us two feelings, sanguineness or hopefulness on
the one side; fearfulness on the other, and so far as
constitution determines our after happiness, it is a
trite matter that our disposition to the former of
these is a main constituent of it.
Patience, as a temper for action, like an Aristotelic mean, moderates sanguineness at the same
time that it supplies encouragement and constancy
to fearfulness or distrustfulness: it is a kind of
fly-wheel to energy. Impatience is a sign, according
to the temperament, either of ill-regulated sanguineness or of fearfulness and distrust.
The happi-   It is however in the point of view  of happiness
ness of life
depends that I have to do with these feelings now: and the
greatly on
the feel- position of the mind, as to pleasure, in its prospective
ings which feelings, is a matter of great interest.
accompany de-   Pleasure and pain are in the greater part of life
sire and
pursuit.  mixed together in a manner such that we cannot
separate them. One genus of pleasure is, as I have
described, gratification or the satisfaction of desire:
as in contrast with this satisfaction, the desire is
pain: but the desire and pursuit is a development
of life in us, an exercise of a faculty: as such, it
involves the concomitant pleasure of such life and
action, the well-feeling as I have called it, and this
may be so great, that the desire and pursuit may be,
in its way, as pleasurable as the gratification.
The great mass of life is desire and pursuit, for
gratification is from the nature of it short-lived as




ON HAPPINESS.                30 7
compared with that: and hence the happiness of life,
in one or another, to a large degree depends upon
the proportions in which, according to the constitution, desire and pursuit are painful or pleasurable.
Speaking generally, a hopeful or sanguine tem-The itermixture of
perament is in this point of view the life of life; but fear with
hope adds
this is only speaking quite generally, for when we intest to
come to particulars, much presents itself besides. life.
Where there is hopefulness, there is a half-enjoyment, by anticipative imagination, all along  the
pursuit; but, if the mixture of fearfulness tempers
this half-enjoyment, it adds to it certain elements,
which must be called pleasure, though of a different
kind.  The life of' each one of us, wlich, while we
read with interest the depicturement of the lives
of others, seems prosaic to us because it is ours,
just as the present seems prosaic because it is not.the past, is an epic of continually varied interest
as to the feelings which it involves; and a course of
uniform  hopefulness would not be the most interesting, nor all things considered, I think, the most
happy.
Childhood and youth are the time of most hope- cause of
fulness, and are probably in themasnthe mass of men thhe happi~ulness, and are probably in the mass of men thesse, of
happiest time, and this because of the prevalence of childhood.
such hopefulness: but we are hardly able to say for
certain that they are the happiest, for it is as
difficult to compare, as to pleasure, the experience
of one time of life with another, as it is to compare,
as to pleasure, the experience of one man with that
of another: and supposing they are so, we can hardly
tell whether this does not arise from the unnecessary
degree in which our imagination, and consequently
the vividness of our moral perceptions, stagnates as
we become older.'When I became a man, I put
away childish things:' so I suppose it must be with
20-2




308               ON HAPPINESS.
us: but there are some childish things which I think
we might keep with us always, at least more than
we do.
Maxim      The saying that happiness is in distraction is not
ihathasp  more true than the saying which we have been conconsists in sidering, that it is in contentment.  Neither of them
distraetion.    do justice to human life.
The latter saying gives the idea that life is so
unhappy and so dreadful that it will not bear to be
looked at; that we can only be happy when our
attention is in some way diverted from it; that, left
to our own selves and our own thoughts, we must be
unhappy; that happiness is in amusement, labour
being one form of such amusement.
This very likely represents the state of mind of a
good many, and it has a side of truth in application
to all; but it seems to me that the truth which it
involves is very limited, and that the state of mind
which it represents is one which our happiness rather
consists in avoiding.  There is a pleasure in distraction, dissipation, amusement of mind; but there is a
higher and worthier happiness, where it can be had,
in self-collectedness.  There is pleasure, of course, of
the highest kind, in employment, as distinguished
from vacancy of mind: but it is not dealing fairly
with this employment of mind to describe it as distraction, and set its value in that character of it.
The fact is that the nature of the mind is to be
active, and that it is unhappy if it is not active; but
its activity is for a purpose, and part of the pleasure
is in the fact that it is so.  It is not merely passtime or killing of time.
Pleasure   The relation of consciousnzess to pleasure is one of
is inom-  the most difficult of psychological problems.  Withpatible
alikewith out consciousness, we can hardly be said to enjoy:
perfect
conscious- but no enjoyment will stand full consciousness or




ON HAPPINESS.               309
direct attention to it.  Entire unconsciousness is, SO ness and
far as feeling is concerned, non-existence: in full perfect t um.
consciousness the intellect is in operation to such a ness.
degree as to spoil or vitiate the pleasure. Pleasure,
unattended to, passes by us: if it is attended to, we
find ourselves examining and analysing instead of
enjoying. The greatest and most important pleasures cannot be fixed or attended to: they are, as I
have several times expressed it, involved, they are
un-analysable constituents of a general state of temporary happiness.
The pleasure of success or attainment, gratification
of a desire, as I have called it, is one that can hardly
be attended to: we cannot say what it is. It is, I
think, from this that arises the complaint which is so
frequent in men's minds of the disappointing character of all earthly success, while nevertheless it is
perfectly plain that they do and have enjoyed it.
They ask themselves every now and then what their
enjoyment has consisted in, and they cannot tell:
yet it has existed.  The gratification is passed by,
they say, in a moment, then they go to some other
pursuit: but in spite of the complaint of disappointment, they know they would not do otherwise were
the thing to do again, and they feel the gratification
was worth the pursuit.
Consciousness, in its application to pleasure, is of
various kinds: perhaps the  principal distinction
about it is} that sometimes it is rather attention
to the particular pleasure, sometimes it is rather
general self-collectedness, tasting the pleasurable
state, with mental comparison of other states. One
question of hedonics is as to the concurrence of
pleasures, similar to the painter's question of the
relation of colours: what pleasures heighten, what
kill, neighbour or concurrent pleasures. But every




310                ON HAPPINESS.
question of hedonics is at the same time a question
of the relation of individual natures to pleasure, or
of individual dispositions in  regard  of pleasure.
What is true for one man is not true for another.
close con-    The consideration of the relation of consciousness
nexion
between  to pleasure brings strongly before us the fact, how
pleasure  near all pleasure is to pain.  It is this which has
made people so strongly inclined to put pleasure in
distraction, or in that strong form  of distraction,
which is called transport, amounting to entire selfforgetfulness. Yet this transport also has its evident side of pain; it is minor insania: the'rmens
sana,' though it may allow itself'desipere in loco,'
is before all things self-collectedness. But selfcollectedness is what not all pleasures, perhaps not
any, can thoroughly bear.  Wherever we put our
pleasure, the casting on it the full light of attention
throws out its shadow  of pain: everything in our
inward experience is mixed.
The plea-    Not only have the lower and more manifest
the imagi- pleasures their twang of pain, but in regard of the
nation and higher and more refined pleasures it is constantly
affections
are con- impossible to distinguish pleasure from pain.  And
stantly
mixed   yet that in regard to which we cannot make this
with ain, distinction is nothing neutral, it is eminently pleasure or pain, and felt as one or the other, though
sometimes we cannot tell which. This is a good
deal the case with the emotions of desire, hope,
pursuit: but it is most markedly the case in all
pleasures concerned with the affections.  The yXvKVITL~KpOv, the 3aKpvo'Ev yeXao-a, the joy in grief-this
mixture runs throughout the affections, and in fact
belongs more or less to most pleasure which is worth
having: there are pleasures, so to  speak, whose
intensity is in their nature, not in the degree of
them,' and this intensity is.what we may feel as




ON HAPPINESS.                311
a pain. Farther than this, the character of mixed
or undistinguishable pain and pleasure belongs to
every thing connected with the imagination: the
thought of the past or the distant, with which affection is associated, is constantly, I should think, such,
that whether it is pleasure or pain cannot be staid,
and that for the very intensity of the sensation.
What is the character, in this view, of the anti- Pleasures
of malevopathetic feelings like revengefulness?  Moralists tell lence.
us not unfrequently that all such feelings are in
their nature painful, and the sympathetic pleasurable.
But in this they are clearly doing what in moral
science is very difficult to avoid, i. e. letting a view
of what should be anticipate in their minds the
observation of what is.  Even with regard to the
feelings of this kind which seem least of all to have
the character of pleasure, such as envy, we talk, and
with full meaning, of incdulging them, implying of
course that there is pleasure taken in them: and
how shall one of us judge of this pleasure in another,
and prove that the pleasure of conquering the feeling,
and feeling kindly, would be greater?
We cannot then say with justice to any one, The habit
straightforwardly, Cultivate the benevolent and sub- beoe candue the malevolent feelings, for that is the way to not be
enjoy in yourself mental. pleasure.  If he should say built on
the desire
to us,'I know that with me the indulging in the to obtain
feelings which  you  call malevolent, if there  is pleasite
occasion for them, i.e. if circumstances arouse them
and seem to me to justify them, will be a pleasure,'
we have nothing to answer. But we may say,
Cultivate  the benevolent and subdue the  malevolent feelings, for that is the right thing for you
to do and, being right, it is what will give you
pleasure: and saying this, we are on surer ground.
This does not mean that the doing the thing as




312              ON HAPPINESS.
right is the only source of the pleasure, benevolence
being supposed not more such a source than malevolence: benevolence is such a source of pleasure,
while malevolence is not; and it is so, because it is
the right thing for us to do, quite independently of
whether we think of it as right or not: but benevolence is not genuine benevolence if it is done with an
arriere pensee or ulterior view of causing happiness
to ourselves. And thus, if one should say to us,'I
feel no preference, as between benevolence and malevolence, for the one over the other, but will do
whichever of the two will cause me most pleasure:
tell me which it shall be,' we can hardly perhaps be
certain that, in this view, benevolence is what will
cause most pleasure: in fact, an action so done would
not really be benevolence. We should have to say
to him, Certainly benevolence is what you should
choose, but do choose it, if you can, because it is
benevolence, or else because it is right; either i.e.
because it will give so much pleasure and do so much
good to others (forgetting yourself), or because it is
the course of action belonging to you, intended for
you, dictated by your nature, expected from you by
other intelligent beings (all which are forms or circumstances of the idea of rightness): and that it will
be for your happiness you may conclude. No doubt
we might say to him also (and it would probably be
the best thing we could), Enter upon a course of
benevolence any how, with whatever motive, and it
will soon commend itself to you for itself, and chase
a"way the arritere pensee or selfishness with which you
first entered upon it.
Philan-   This latter, with many moralists, is the entire
thropy can course of morality, which consists in their view in the
only grow
out of transmutation of selfishness (by society and education)
selfishness
by virtue into benevolence the birth from selfish feeling and




ON HAPPINESS.               313
selfish purpose of an unexpected progeny, philan- of some
thropy or, virtue. That this process is a fact, there transmut.
is no doubt; but it is an involved and continuous ing prinfact, a part only of what belongs to morality, in no
respect the explanation or the sum of it. We may
allow human goodness to be transmuted selfishness,
if we take account of a transmuting principle: but
selfishness has in itself no such self-transmuting
or self-elevating power, no germ of such a noble
growth.  The setting  before ourselves our own
happiness is not only (as we have seen) a mistake in
fact, on account of its not being' realizable by us sufficiently to allow of being so exhibited; but besides
this, so far as it exists, it vitiates the character of
the conduct done for the purpose of it, and prevents
it from being what it professes to be. It imparts a
character of sordidness to the desire of doing right,
and of non-benevolence to benevolence. How shall
the stream rise above its source? Morally indeed,
as we have seen, it often does so rise, but by a
power not belonging to it: and it is the power which
does raise it which is the principle of morality, not
the selfishness so transmuted. It is a part of the
fact that all things belong to all and are fitted to
each other; or, if we speak in religious language, it is
a merciful provision of the Author of our nature,
that benevolence is in this way often developed
from selfishness.  When moralists use this fact to
prove from it that selfishness is a sort of moral principle, they are themselves forgetting, and teaching
others to forget, that it is only as selfishness
vanishes that morality supervenes; and that, the
selfishness not vanishing, the dispositions built upon
it remain in their first. state of non-genuineness.
The world they picture is a world with no free
impulse and no absorbing purpose, but all, feeling




314                    ON  HAPPINESS.
and action alike, overmastered  by self-interest: the
world of satirists, not of life.
Malevo-       The bad passions are often more absorbing, and
perverted in  this  way  may  conceivably  be vehicles  of more
jfeling of intense pleasure (if pleasure it is to be called) than
giving risethe  good.   They  are  proofs  that, as  goodness  in
to a morbid plea-  human  nature (in the  manner which  we have just
sure.
seen) is not merely modified  self-interestedness, so
neither  is  badness;  self-interestedness  being, as
against this, a good principle, and tempering it, as
it vitiates goodness. Badness is, not mistaken, but
perverted goodness: so far as we can see, hatred
never exists without some reason (mistaken or otherwise) for it; but it may overrun and leave behind
its first reason or occasion, and become a feeling  as
unmixed, on the side of malevolence, as there may
exist unmixed feeling on the good side. No doubt
feeling of this kind is to be considered morally
morbid. Not unfrequently it comes near what we
should consider insanity1. But the fact that bad1 The. consideration of wrong feeling as a moral disease is one which
more especially belongs to religion, as it is religion which provides the
remedy for it. But observing it as a simple matter of fact, we shall
find many striking resemblances between different forms of bad feeling
and actual mental disease. Such are the absorbing and almost irresistible force of several malignant passions, which may be described as a
real madness, and that not by any means of only a short duration: still
more the very marked resemblance between the obscure smouldering
feelings -which are the root of pure malignancy, such as jealousy and
envy, on the one side, and on the other that diseased consciousness
which leads the insane to think everyone is looking at them, and to
suspect everyone of hostility towards them: similarly the manner in
which self-interested dread of the future tends, with the weakening of
the mind, to become actual disease, inducing sometimes, in advancing
years, a dread of poverty even in the richest: these with many other
like considerations tend to show the near alliance- between moral badness and mental disease. No doubt something of the same kind' may
be observed in some forms of mistaken goodness: feelings akin to conscientiousness are capable of a morbid excitement; but on the whole
the'mens sana' is goodness. There are various feelings which might
be roused in us by the thought of this resemblance of viciousness to




ON HAPPINESS.                     315
ness is perhaps a fearful disease of moral intelligence,
does not alter the fact of its reality. It may, if we
talk of demerit and responsibility in such extreme
cases, alter our opinion as to that: but still badness
is not miscalculating, it is mnisbeing. And the
pleasure which it gives will be  perverted  accordingly.  Springing from diseased feeling it will itself
be wild and inconsistent, in ways which no sober
analysis can follow.  "Evil, be thou my good."  The
reason probably why attempts like that of Milton's
to exhibit perfect badness have usually failed, is that
there has been generally an attempt to show  with
the badness too much of consistency, reason, wisdom.
These however belong to goodness only.
Happiness has been described as consisting, the Maxim
main part of it, in the pleasures which are simpler happitess
and nearer at hand to all, rather than in those which consists
in the
are more recondite and greater.                             simpler
pleasures.
This statement is partly open to  the  objection  ostlives
must find
which was spoken of before as to the impossibility their hapof comparing pleasures together.  Whether a man piness in
who has had one great pleasure in life but a great pleasures.
many small troubles is to be considered to have had a
happier life than a man who has had few troubles
but no great pleasure, is a question  as indeterminable as that raised by Solon and Aristotle, whether
a. man  can  be  called  happy before  he  is  dead.
Still, as great pleasures must of course be excepinsanity. We must of course take care that the association of the two
does not lead us to judge harshly of the latter, but rather to pity the
former. At the same time our pity must not degenerate into indulgence or excuse, as though moral responsibility were done away with.
The absence of self-mastery which shows itself in the early stages of
vicious passion must be met by every existing means of influence and
deterrenee, and all the more from our knowledge of the impending
danger both to society and to the individual himself of entire subjugation and possession.




316               ON HAPPINESS.
tional, a happy life must on the whole be made up
of small and simple pleasures. And there is a further
and more important truth in the statement, one
however which opens a rather difficult question.
Ambiguity   The word'simple' is very vague, and the putting
of the
maxim. happiness in simple pleasures may either mean a
lively appreciation of the coarser common pleasures,
as of eating and drinking, or a sensitive and imaginative openness of the mind to such pleasure as may
be drawn at each moment from the circumstances
around.
The enjoy- I do not know that it is much worth while to
cot of consider about the former of these. These coarser
pleasures pleasures are eminently natural, and insensibility to
creased by them, except on account of the mind being occupied
luxury.
by something better, is no more a merit than,
except for the same reason, contentment or undesiringness is. But, for the very reason that they are
thus natural, the pleasingness of them is probably
very little increased by any attempts at refining and
artificializing them.  It is not really possible to
compare experiences of pleasure; but it is probable,
I think, that luxury in the pleasures of the table
makes no addition to the actual amount of pleasure
enjoyed, but merely dresses this up in a manner
supposed to be accordant with wealth, civilization,
and refinement. If we say then that happiness is in
the simpler pleasures, meaning by the simpler the
coarser, there is this truth in it, that for the rich
man to enjoy his dinner, he must be able to enjoy
it as the poor man does his, and that the poor man
has in his simple dinner all the important part of
the pleasures which the rich has in his luxurious
one, if he is wise enough rather to enjoy that, than
to envy the other.
Luxury    Luxury is a word of vague meaning in English,




ON HAPPINESS.              317
and sometimes means mere self-indulgence.  In its naturally
ordinary meaning however, in which it unites to- growseup
gether the two notions of mere enjoyment and of wealth
superfluity, it seems to me that it is in the main without
something' which comes upon a state of high civiliza- ment.
tion of itself, as it were, and more from human helplessness than of human intention. Advanced economical civilization should go on to what I will call
refinement: the superfluity of production and enjoyment, which there is upon the whole, should flower
into the higher pleasures of literature and art, of
taste and beauty, not merely as something to be
admired and talked about, but as something entering
into the thoughts and lives of men.
Luxury, as I understand it, seems to me something which comes in the default of these. Nobody
particularly wants it or cares much for it: but
for the refinement of which I have spoken there
are needed much effort and power of mind, which
do not exist, and in the mean time money has to be
spent, labour to be employed, enjoyment to be had:
and so fashion fixes itself upon fine furniture, magnificent dresses, rich tables: these become necessities
of a certain rank: they are the same kind of thing
as badges or uniforms: there is no reason they should
not exist, except that there might be something
better: failing that, they are in a manner right: the
wrong of them is, that a good deal of them represents labour which produces no enjoyment (for nobody looks at the fine chairs or tables, though they
would look if they were not there); but then the
question is, what labour, at that economical stage,
would produce enjoyment: on that I will not enter
now.
The literature of luxury is rather considerable, Unreality
and how little reality of pleasure (I mean of addi-an-ttd 




318              ON HAPPINESS.
the litera- tional pleasure for the luxury) there is underlying
ture of
luxury.  the luxury, may be judged in some measure from
the observation, in how small a degree the luxury
of one time suits another. About luxury, it is very
hard to get hold in any way of the real feeling, on
account of the affectation and falsehood of thought
which constantlyappear on both sides in the treatment
of it. The literature of luxury, say of goturnmcnctise,
descants upon enjoyments which, it is evident from
a moment's consideration, cannot be real, but must
be talk alone: it is quite evident that, while what
is wanted for enjoyment is the increase of sensitiveness (appetite, but not in too strong a degree, being
supposed), the senseless adding together and crowding stimulant on stimulant must entirely destroy
any real sensitiveness; and yet, under these circumstances, the most delicate discrimination is talked
of- talked of, that is, in one age to be laughed
at in another, as the dinner of Nasidienus would
be no luxury to us, and the endlessly varying tastes
of different fish in Athenaeus we should not care for.
This affectation on the side of luxury is met generally
in literature by a corresponding affectation on the
other side. There is an essential unreality in both the
tones which appear commonly in literature in antagonism with it, which I may call the idyllic and
the satirical, in spite of the charm  attaching to
the former: and people feeling this unreality on
the other side are disposed to attribute more reality
than they should to the pleasure of luxury.  There
is a feeble, self-apologetic, tone in the idyllism and a
condemnatory tone in the satire, neither of which
are warranted. But it is a pity, while the regions
of art and possible civilization are unvisited and un-,explored to the extent to which they still are, that
refinement and thought should be appropriated to




ON HAPPINESS.               319
subjects unworthy of them, and in which they can
only appear under circumstances of what I have
called falsehood and affectation: luxury in itself may
be considered simply an incident of high civilization,
but we cannot but grieve when it takes possession
of literature.
It is andelement then, generally,'of happiness,
because it is a natural part of life, to preserve a
simple, I will not say coarse, but unluxurious disposition: and this is one point which makes the
happiness of the rich and the poor in substance the
same.
If however by simple pleasures we mean plea- Isincrease
of refined
sures derived from sources at all times at every sensibility
body's command, it is evident that what is here,ppi-e of
wanted is the mind -and the sensibility.  And here ness?
the question arises, Is it best that our sensitiveness
to enjoyment in general should be keen, or not so?
Because of course sensitiveness to pleasure is sensitiveness to pain: refining our nature in any way
adds pains to our life, as well as pleasures.
There is no more practical question than this,
both as to our own lives, as to education, and as to
our estimate of the different conditions of men. We
may be sometimes inclined to think that there is
no reason why our whole life, with the exception
of that, unhappily perhaps, large portion of it which
is a season of actual pain, should not be pleasurable;
for, saving quite exceptional positions, there is always
something which may set in action our imagination
or our affections. But then, can we have the imagination and the affections thus alive, without introducing into life as much pain as pleasure, or more?
Could we have the labourer alive to the beauty of
the sunshine and the scene in which he works, and
have him  at the same time contented with his




320               ON HAPPINESS.
wretched cottage, and willing, if necessary, to work
in a coal-pit? To put the thing coarsely, can we
do without coarseness? Is a life of imaginative
sensitiveness or a life with a good deal of roughish
insensibility, not to say the more useful-which we
are not speaking of now,-but the happier?
It is good    For happiness, it seems to me that; beyond that
as height- substance of it which concerns life as action, it is
ening the
ifeling of of great importance to multiply susceptibilities of
joined to pleasure, and that, in spite of the corresponding
the affections is increase of susceptibility to pain: a man has so
the natural supple- much mlore of life as well as of pleasure.
actient of  It will be said that cultivated sensibilities and the
active life.
pleasure arising from  them  belong to leisure: but
in this sense, there is a vast amount of leisure with
almost all men and in all classes; that is, there is a
very large amount of mere inanity and vacancy. The
conscious, uninvolved, happiness of life very nluch
depends upon the fillings up of it. It is here that
comes in the obnoxious C8ovr, voluptuousness, the
indulgence of the coarser and lower sensibilities: the
higher sensibilities, as of art and literature, are
what, it would appear, should work against them,
and they much need to do so in all classes. They
are also most naturally associated with that other
natural filling up of life, the indulgence of the affections.
The recommendation of simple pleasures for happiness, if by this is understood the cultivation of
the sensibilities, is in fact recommending cultivation
of mind, and quiet pleasures connected with it,
as against pleasures of excitement and transport.
There is fallacy sometimes about this, and the latter
are supposed to have a more manly and active
character, while the former are despised. But in
this, there is not a true taste for pleasure.  There




ON HAPPINESS.                 321
is intellectual mistake or delusion; of which, in
regard to pleasure, there is abundance.
The question which was raised before, as to the
relation of pleasure to consciousness, will come in also
in reference to these simple pleasures.  Supposing
a man shut up suddenly in solitary confinement, it
is doubtful whether he will say to himself, How
happy I was when I was free, or whether he will
say, What a fool I was not to enjoy the air and
society more while I had them: and whichever he
said, the meaning would probably be in substance
the same, and he would not mean to represent his
past feeling as different in the two cases.
"0 fortunatos nimnium!"
"0 knew he but his happiness!"
Can a man be happy without knowing himself Difficulty
of proso?  Does his knowing himself so and meditating on nouncing
his happiness, increase his happiness?  Or does it nanyr
spoil it? These are questions which cannot be an- case
swered, because, as I have said, we cannot, except such pleasures are
in comparatively unimportant cases, look happiness enjoyed.
or pleasure in the face.
But though we cannot, in regard of any person, Freslhness
of feeling
tell whether he really derives pleasure from the is an unsources which are open to all, except to those inrelement
pain; because, for all that we know, he cnay, though ihppihe gives no sign of it or perhaps, by grumbling,
gives sign of the contrary: yet it is important for
ourselves to be, aware, that in regard of the current
pleasure of life, it is here that it is to be got. It
has always been a famous rule of morals'Live this
day as if thy last.' It has been given also as a rule
of happinessl: in which character it is perhaps more
questionable.  The feeling of the last day in any
1Ior. Epist. i. 4. 13.
G.                                       21




322              ON HAPPINESS.
place we are attached to has peculiar elements of
sensitiveness, attention, consciousness, tenderness,
but is hardly on the whole one of happiness. The
real point of happiness is in the'Grata superveniet
quae non sperabitur hora.' The having looked upon
yesterday as a last day makes to-day to be looked
upon as a first one-as a new beginning of existence.
If we really did look upon life each day with fresh
eyes, no doubt the sensitiveness, and therefore the
pleasure in the look, would be increased tenfold.
This would be the re'al fountain of youth, supposing,
of course, there were energy to maintain the perpetual
aliveness. As it is, the ordinary sources of enjoyment which I have spoken of only nmark themselves
as sources of enjoyment when circumstances give
them novelty and distinct relief. And it is hence
that arises the universal fallacy in our judging of
the condition of others. We only perceive distinctions. We are fatigued with something which,
whether we like it or not, we at least think
we have too much of, and whatever we make our
escape to, whatever is different from this, seems as
if it must be all happiness. Hence townsmen's
praises of the country and countrymen's of the
town. Hence too it is impossible for us to form
a single idea of life in the point of view of. happiness. Man, as he is known to us, if he were not
sometimes unhappy, could never be happy in the
sense of testing happiness.  Supposing, the best we
can suppose, life to be a sort of alternation of pleasures setting off each other, as lively pursuit followed
by rest or gratification, and so forth; there must be
a character of pain in the pursuit to give the necessary alternation to the gratification: this is part of
the universal mixture of pleasure and pain, which I
have spoken of.




ON HAPPINESS.               323.
However, for ourselves, what is needed is to be The chief
sources of
aware that there are always sources. of pleasure at pleasure
hand, in the main the same for the rich as the poor: toe pen
and in this consists such truth as there is in the
statement which is often made with a good deal of
hard-heartedness, that all conditions are alike for
happiness. I have observed before, what a ridiculous
prospect people's mutual envies must present to any
being who could read the hearts of all. The poor
man envies the rich, and no doubt with some reason,
if we could suppose envy to be right at all. He
envies him because of.his rich rooms and furniture
and his luxurious dinner, whereas it is exceedingly
likely that the rich man derives less pleasure from
these than he does from  a walk in the sunshine,
which the poor man might enjoy as well as he; and
that he finds his main happiness in some reading, or
study, or pursuit, which, by the poor man would
be felt to be more irksome than his own most laborious toil.
One direction which has been given for happiness Maxim,
that we
is that we should not raise our expectations high: shouldnot
and similar in some measure to this is the direction expect
that we should pitch the scale of our living and our life.
enjoyments low; because then any change will be
for the better.
Directions of this kind represent different man- It is true
that we
ners of thought.  Sometimes they represent that are not so
mild view of things, recommended, but not expected expct, as
to produce much effect, to which belong also theto accept
notions of happiness being in contentment and dis- happiness.
traction.  Or else.they perhaps represent what I
will for a moment call Stoico-Epicureanism, I mean
Epicureanism developing into a kind of semi-Stoical
self-discipline and moderation, which probably was
21  2




324               ON HAPPINESS.
rather the character of the early Epicureanism. The
view  is partly true, partly false, and partly true
for some but not for others.
Its truth lies in its being in some respects an
exhibition of the undoubted fact, that happiness
is not to be sought for, but to be taken.  If we are
to have it at all, which only very partially depends
upon ourselves, it will come to us as we live: and by
living I mean doing our duty in the state to which
it shall please God to call us, trying to do what we
should do and be what we should be, trying to do
our part, large or small, towards advancing the progress of our kind towards its ideal, helping those
who are worse off, as to the materials of happiness,
than we are, trying to have a clear inward sight and
a just and true social feeling.  The ground-work or
stock of happiness is something which will come of
itself so far as we are able thus to live: for the
branches or fillings up, our course is, as we can, to
cultivate our sensibilities, to increase our interests,
or as we frequently speak, our resources. And the
absence of thought about happiness, or in this meaning, of expectations of it, is a cardinal rule.  Otherwise, whatever our lot in life, we can hardly but
be disappointed, and with a self-made disappointment: we are preparing ourselves to be pleased with
nothing that comes to us.
But the    But the view is false in so far as it bids us
more we
expect  moderate, not only expectations of happiness, beindepen- cause happiness is a thing which we must not thus
dently of look at, but expectation in itself. Instead of our
thoughts
of our own saying, Do not expect too much from life, what we
happiness,
the better. should rather say is, Expect what you like and all
that you possibly can from it, only do not-let your
first thought be about your own  happiness.  It
seems very strange that it should ever have been




ON HAPPINESS.              325
thought happiness would be increased by the damping the great spring of it, hopefulness.  Rather say,
Expect and still expect: do not be afraid of disappointment. I have taken, as has been seen, as the
starting point for happiness the feeling which we
see most in youth, that well-feeling which is independent of special pleasures, which is the feeling of life,
prompting action and pursuit, and accompanied by
continually renewed gratification.  Of course the
energy of youth cannot last: but so far as the substance of that feeling can last, so far there is the
substance of happiness: the living so much in an
anticipated future is not a weakness to be discarded
as we get wiser: it is the proper mental condition of
active beings, for all action has regard to the future.
The view that we should not expect much from The spvr
life is true for some and not.for others, in accordance needed
with the great variety of constitution among men tha tthe
as to their anticipations of the future. There is
Aio harm, as I have just said, even in the utmost
amount of hopefulness and imagination: unhopefulness is far less reasonable than any hopefulness;
only that, for sober and fruitful action, we want
reasonable views. Upon the whole, I think that,
for useful action and resulting happiness, the spur
is more needed than the curb: the hopefulness,
and even capricious arrogance and self-conceit, of
youth, is constantly mixed with an unsteadiness and
lurking self-distrustfulness which causes the want
to be rather of animating and encouraging than of
cooling and checking. For some, I am inclined to
think for the larger number, the direction for happiness should rather be, Increase your expectations:
you will not be really disappointed.             Maxim,
The direction to pitch happiness low, or in other to pitch
words, not to strain or stretch our resources for it, low:




326              oN HAPPINESS.
to leave untouched some things which we possibly
might enjoy, to allow room for increase of happiness
and addition to it-all these seem to me to be particularizations of the general notion, not to be anxious
about it.
If the advice implies any definite rule or theory
of life, it is that Stoico-Epicureanism which I spoke
of, and it is not easy to draw the limit between this
and a sort of moderate asceticism. The not being as
happy as we might be, in order that we may really
be the happier, is in fact asceticism; though the
ascetic might express the purpose differently, as that
we should refrain from happiness in order that we
may be doing what we should do (however expressed)
one result of which will be our being really the
happier.
is Un-    But in reality, it is impossible properly to speak
except  about this sort of self-denial, which consists in pitchwith a  ing our happiness low, and limiting our expectations
to re-  as to happiness, without thinking of religion, for it
is only in reference to that that maxims of this kind
can have their full meaning.
Except in view of religion, pitching our happiness
low is a kind of trifling with happiness.




APPENDIX ON THE UNHAPPINESS OF HUMAN
NATURE 1
WHEREVER happiness has been made an end, self-discipline Self-disciand self-control have had to be inculcated, not simply for line isfr
the purpose of gaining it, but even for the possibility of happiness,
enjoying it: so that the so-called Epicurean life has often buture
been not far different from the Stoic. Self-discipline and grudges it
for such,
self-control for whatever purpose are good: but how does it an end.
answer to facts to consider that in human life they are, or
should be, subordinated to the idea of pleasure or happiness?
Mlan's natural view of happiness is of something, not necessarily contrary to, but still independent of, self-control; something which is the better, and the more worthy of the name
of happiness, in proportion as it is freer and more spontaneous. And similarly man's natural view of self-discipline
and self-control is that, if he is to employ them, which he is
perhaps very ready to do, he would rather it was for something different from, and better than, his own happiness.
Man's natural view as to life is that there is something to
be done in it (whatever it may be) which requires selfcontrol, and of which the result, he hopes, may be his happiness.  This is a very different thing from  the supposition
that his life's task is to be the making himself happy, and
that his duty is self-control as the means for this.
The fact that man is ever unsatisfied in happiness, that Man is
he'never is, but always to be blest,' has been often dwelt "e ecl
upon for the purpose of making it appear that life is not so with hapdesirable a thing as some would suppose. This however is piness.
in some respects more than the fact bears out. WVhat is
made out in this way is, not that happiness is what cannot,
or is not likely to exist, but that it can not be fixed by the
1 This and the following Appendix are taken from the MS. marked
Series 3. ED.




328              ON THE UNHAPPINISS
mind or contemplated, so as to be made itself a particular
object of pursuit or end of life.  There is a pleasure in effort
and in pursuit, which arises from the fact that man is an
active being as well as one conscious of pleasure and pain,
from volition being as intimate a part of his personality as
sentience; just as, corporeally, he has nerves of motion as
well as of sensation. Human nature (but in fact every
intelligent nature must be the same, so far as we can distinctly conceive it) is in this respect in a continual contradiction, so to call it, with itself.  To the state of effort
happiness, as looked at, appears to consist in rest: to the
state of rest it appears to consist in the pursuit of something,
or' in effort: in the mean time in each state much of
pleasure is actually being enjoyed, except so far as this
dissatisfaction or looking after the opposite state prevents
it. The only apparent way for happiness and activity of
nature to go togetherl, is for man, while more or less in a
state of happiness, to have but imperfect power of realizing
that it is so, so that there is always something to'prevent his
resting in the present.
This rest-    This restlessness of man's nature has often been dwelt
lessiess is upon as a thing sad and pitiable in it.  But why is it so?
the imper- except so far as it shows man's nature to be imperfect: and
fehition of who thinks it perfect? That man finds pleasure in labour as
well as in' rest and satisfaction, which is what makes him
restless, is the spring of'all his improvement. True, it
makes him  seem to be always hunting shadows: it leaves
him in a sort of continual delusion as to his own life: he
imaginatively places happiness in a rest and'satisfaction,
which seems ever denied him, so that according to his own
supposition in this respect he should be always unhappy: but
in the mean time it is not so: the happiness for which he
looked far off, in the gaining of the end, comes to him quietly
and unobserved in the pursuit.  There is nothing sad in
this, and nothing pitiable, except so far as man may not
like being thus, as it were, an infant, carried onward in a
delusion which his reason may feel ashamed of. But such
shame is only felt imperfection: and the feeling and shame
of imperfection is in reality the noblest of feelings, for it is
the comparison of self with something higher and better;
and what is thus thought of may in time be attained.




OF HUMAN NATURE.                     329
-I have said that human happiness cannot exist without Epicurean
self-rea great deal of self-discipline and self-restraint, not simply strlinr is
for the attainment, but even in the enjoyment of it.  And'o easier
than
if this self-discipline is to exist, the same expenditure of it Stoic.
might have enabled the mind to be happy under almost
any circumstances. Partial self-denial in anything is con-:stantly quite as great an effort as total.  There are many
circumstances.under which the absence of a thing from the
thoughts is more for pleasure than the restrained enjoyment
of it. Stoic or ascetic self-abnegation is often, as a matter of
fact, less painful than Epicurean self-control.
Human nature is capable of such various training, that a There is a
man may accustom himself to take pleasure almost in any- cbhance of
thing. And if he is distinctly to work for his own happiness, happiness
it is in this way he will have the most result.  Otherwise in adapthe has to take the idea of what is for happiness from the selves to
opinions of others, and then, when the end is gained, he circumfinds it is no happiness for him. It is not what he can give than in
himself up to: he has not come to a stage of rest: the changing
enjoying and maintaining of it is productive of as much stances to
trouble as the first acquisition. After all the pains he has our fancy.
taken, he finds he has still to adapt himself to the supposed
happiness. But if he had begun this process before, the
same amount of trouble would have enabled him to adapt
himself to, and to find happiness in, many other states,
involving no such trouble and pain in the acquisition.
A complaint has been made from  two different quarters Comas to the unhappiness of human nature.                      plaints of
human
There is first the voice of querulousness nearly allied to misery
satire and misanthropy and mingled probably with bitter- may proceed either
ness. Whatever may be said about man's lot on the whole, from a
there is no doubt it is one in which the average amount of querulous
disposiendurance has to be considerable. -Even to face the fair tion:
chances of life requires nerving up the energies: that man is Or from a
doomed to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow may suffice high ideal
of human
to provoke the murmurings of weakness.                      nature,
But the same complaint is echoed by a nobler voice, and andI a
in a tone which is not out of harmony with the utterances of the distance.bereligion in such passages as the following:                 tween this' Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to and man's
actual
live and is full of misery.'                                state.,.




330            ON THE UNHAPPINESS'The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in
pain ~until now. And not only they, but we ourselves also,
which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves
groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of our body.'
This is the voice of men who can not only feel the vast
amount of the misery which there is, but are able also to
picture to themselves a higher and better state, the attainment of which is the object of their keenest longings.
Man's degradation in various ways, the meanness of so
many of his occupations and enjoyments, his vice, ill-will and
selfishness, press upon such minds more heavily than their
own physical privations upon lower natures. Such minds
are likely also not only to see through, but to feel a strong
revulsion against, much well meant but superficial attempt
to describe the world as happy, and determination to see
nothing in God, as the governor of it, but a sort of easy and
shallow goodness. They will be incapable of being satisfied
thus: they will have a complaining within them, not suggested by what they themselves have to bear, not even by
what any have to bear (for they can fancy happiness even in
enduring), but suggested by something which there appears
to be in man's lot contradictory and discordant. Such complaining is in other words a sort of wonder and disappointment that man's reason should be able to do no more to
make him  happy, and that God should allow so many
chances to him of grief and misery.
Religion    In some form or other, religion, which has some share in
deepens  producing the better forms of this state of mind is the only
the sense
of human remedy against what is mistaken and wrong in them. What
imperfeut religion aims to produce is a deep feeling of man's wants
joins with and imperfection with an equal corresponding feeling of
this a co- God's friendliness towards men.  Those whom  we have
fidence in
God's lov- been mentioning stop short at the former of these: and that
ing care. partly, as was said, from revulsion at the hasty and superficial
manner in which perhaps some, whose minds are little
capable of entering into the former, hastily assume and
suppose the latter. The latter must be arrived at through
the former. It is not merely a good God that is to be
supposed, but a God sympathizing with man, and in some
way which nothing but revelation can tell us fully about,




OF HUMAN NATURE.                  331
making man's misery and imperfection the way to something
better for him. The too intense and uncorrected feeling of
man's misery and imperfection generates what is called
asceticism, and may very well degenerate into a meaner
thing than itself, viz., superstition proper, or the religion
which is mainly of fear.
Tendencies to asceticism often betoken a nobler temper
than does the disposition to be easily satisfied and thoughtlessly thankful; but they very soon lead wrong, perhaps
actually produce another form of degradation of human
nature, and in any case distort the view of truth, and
estrange man from God, instead of bringing him nearer to
Him. It is only when something nobler than they masters
them, that they are in their place. The noblest temper of
human nature is a real confidence in God, tried by the sight
of what the world is, but standing the trial; —confidence in
the fact of His goodness, in its persistency, and ultimate
triumph, or vindication to mankind and to us. Knowledge
of man is enough to tell us, that confidence of this kind is
the worthiest bond between those in whom it exists, the
most ennobling to the giver, the most delightful to the
receiver. Such should be the relation in feeling between
man and God. Confidence of this kind, as it arises among
men, has its merit and its charm, in its overstepping the
point at which, in so many words, it can be justified, and
thus venturing beyond actual knowledge in the strength of
something which appears to be like a superior kind of knowledge, composed of sympathy, of a generous readiness to
risk something, and forget one's own interests, of a going
forth of a disposition to love which catches on something
answering to it. As felt by man towards God, it involves a
higher thankfulness than arises from a mere absence of
seeing what there is to sadden us in life. The. latter is
thankful for man being what he is: the former is thankful
not only for this, but for all the promise and hope which
there is of man's being something better.




APPENDIX ON THE PROMOTION OF THE
HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.
It is a    So much for notions of our own happiness.
rsimple t  But what is to be said of the happiness of others? Can.
we must we not get an idea of that?  If we cannot, what is benevovants thef lence or philanthropy 
others.    We can form a very distinct idea, as to ourselves, of certain materials, or a certain framework which speaking generally is necessary for happiness, though happiness is more
than it. This we may call the support or maintenance of
life. With some, this is unhappily so difficult for themselves
that it is all they can hope for. Happiness with. them, is
support or life, and is distinct enough in the idea.
The condition of man is such upon earth that there are
always many in these circumstances; the support of the race,
we may say, is difficult. There is wide scope therefore for
philanthropy simply in reference to the support or life of
others. If we have no material or corporeal wants for ourselves, requiring our necessary exertion, we have but to
raise our eyes, and we see abundance of them around us in
others.
Beyond     The relieving of the wants of others is thus a notion
this, it is
difficult to tolerably distinct. But the making others happy is not so.
know how It is difficult to form the idea of happiness; and their idea
we are to
promote  may very likely be different from outrs. As soon as we have
their hap- passed the relieving of want, the distinction of earnest phipness. lanthropy from love of power and many other human impulses becomes very difficult. Who shall say what is useful
for men, what is for their true happiness? If a man determines from his own feeling and conviction, what is this but
claiming a mental dominion over others and assuming himself as superior to them? If he takes theirs against his
own, can he believe that he is making them really happy?




OF THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.              333
while if he takes the feeling which there is common to himself and mankind in general, it is but a vague outline and
framework that it will give him.
In respect then of a scheme of happiness on which to
found philanthropy we must find out as far as we can what
is natural, and for this we must go to physical fact and to
history. Nor is it anything but what is very general and
widely variable that we can thus gain. We cannot make a
scheme of human happiness to act upon. The infliction of
such theoretical happiness on others is no real benevolence.
The relieving of wants thus remains the main province of Utility is
-a mere
philanthropy: it is the useful. Us-efulness implies, in the relative
idea, a sort of subservience: implies the tone or the purpose word, and
coming from  without.  The utile, that which is useful, no rule.
means what can be used, or what practically serves to
effect an end we want. Usefulness is the lending ourselves,
so to speak, to the wants of others: and though acting
freely and of ourselves, yet having the impulse and suggestion coming from them. It cannot be part of any system,
but depends on circumstance.
But beyond the relieving of wants, there is the giving We cannot
pleasure. And what is to be observed about this is, that it, lay down a
scheme for
more than all besides, repudiates system and direction. giving
Like everything connected with sympathy it is complicated. pleasure.
The pleasure given is in some respects the greater for the
understood intention, and in some respects the less. In the
one case the goodwill of the giver is sympathized with by
the receiver, in the other the similarity of feeling. On the
whole, there is more pleasure given inadvertently, as to the
occasion, from general kindness and sympathy of feeling,
than there is from special attention and intention.
This latter, unless there is much of mutual understanding
is constantly mistaken, and the pleasure which it does give
arises only from gratitude for the intention. The helplessness of mere good will is not to be remedied by any
scheme or system of what will please others, which we may
study and act by. It can only be remedied by the cultivation of sympathy, by habituating ourselves to go out of ourselves so as to be affected by, and interested in, the feelings
of others.




334              ON THE PROMOTION
We should   But again, beyond the giving of pleasure, there is the doing
thaim eal real good. And- this can only be according to our idea of what
good, but real good is. While therefore we cannot but feel that the
ourview  relieving of want and the giving of pleasure are of slight
may be  importance in comparison with the effecting of this real
or carried good, still we must bear in mind that our own view of the
out in a  way in which such good is to be effected is liable to all the
1pitOY1   possibilities of mistake which arise from our fallibility, and
that it is therefore our duty so to master ourselves as to
postpone it in some degree, certainly to the relieving of
want, possibly even to the giving of pleasure. There is no
doubt but that little of the higher good can be done, as e.g.
the mind elevated, except more or less after the formerof
them, and through the second. If a man, by want of sympathy seems to shew that he has but little care for those
whom he is attempting to improve, the conclusion on their
part will probably be, that his wish is more connected with a
love of power, or a mere desire for action, than with a love of
themselves. It is a weakness when desire of pleasing takes
place of aim at the real good: but it is a sign of something
wrong when it is absent.
Philanthropy then has its first reference to the actual
state of man, and its second to the possibility of elevating
and improving him. The first tone of our benevolence we
must take from wants and things as they are: the second
from our idea how we may improve and elevate them.
Indetermi-   The idea of happiness is thus scarcely to be made more
fateness distinct for the race than for the individual; and the idea of
of the
idea of  usefulness, if it is to be a wide idea, coextensive with happihappiness. ness, must remain similarly undetermined. It is a strange
thing that any should have considered that the idea of
utility, thus widely taken, is one upon which men would be
agreed, and which could be established on principles of
reason which would command the assent of all: and that
thus the morality of utility would be something exact, while
that of sentiment, conscience, moral sense, would be something vague and arbitrary. If utility means what is conducive to happiness, the one is altogether as vague as the
other. Each man's feeling about happiness is at least as individual and arbitrary as his feeling about right and duty.
To analyze human sentiment for the purpose of finding out




OF THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.              335
what men consider to be for their happiness is at least as
hard as to analyze it in order to find out what they think it
right to do. If indeed we limit utility to the things necessary for the support of life, then, no doubt, we shall have
more agreement: but in that case we must give up all speaking about happiness; for happiness goes far wider than this.
The real way in which we should speak of human life
and of e8aL/uo[la or happiness in regard of morality, is the
following:
We may say that the good of human life is the purpose The hapor end of human action; but we must not interpret this to piness of
many is
mean, that the good of his own life is the purpose or end of more
the action of the individual.  Life is lived by  men in con- easily realized than
junction: society is a part of human nature. Rational per- the happisonality makes each individual independent, so far as self- ness of
determination and responsibility go; but want and the
power of mutual help bind them together: and answering to
this objective fact is the subjective fact of sympathy. The
general evtattordla is in truth a far more realizable idea than
that of the individual. The happiness of each one so much
depends on others, that it is more easy to imagine a number
of individuals making each other and the whole of them
happy, than one of them  making his particular self so.
When therefore we say that human action should be directed to the service of human life, it is this united life
which we should mean, and it is to the service of this that,
so far as possible, individual action should go: and when we
say that happiness should be sought for, we should mean a
happiness shared with others.
Practically this is the way in which life is lived. Self is Inll common life
a word, as to actual fact, difficult to define and limit.  Does the happiit include family or not? A good deal of selfishness is what ness of
the individual himself neither derives, nor thinks to derive, tidualC i
benefit from: it is for the exaltation e.g. of his family by merged in.
that of
means of labour and endurance on his own part.  Selfish-others.
ness, as it exists, is one of the most imaginative things
possible. What the man works for is only associated with
his individual being by an imaginative power, which if it
took another direction might just as well associate with it
almost any other conceivable thing. And so he lives from
the first in community, and has in reality no independence




336              ON THE PROMOTION
in his happiness, which, do what he will, is at the mercy of
others. If happiness is to be, it will be by their making him
happy and his making them so: this mutuality spreads out,
becoming of course fainter and fainter, but so far as it goes,
there is what we may call a common life.
Even       It is human life as thus understood, not human indiviatied at dual life, which should absorb the action of the individual.
selfish   It will do this more or less consciously.  Sometimes all that
contri-e  he can apparently do is to take care of himself: the doing as
butes in  much as this taxes all his powers. In a civilized community
the main
to the   the only way, in general, in which he can do this is by
happiness securing a place in the general system of mutual help: he
of others.
must find something he may do for others in order to get
bread for himself. In doing this he is, in the words of the
son of Sirach, contributing to maintain the state of the world:
but he does this in the main unconsciously, having to think
of himself. But supposing a man is not obliged to think so
much of his mere support: in that case, what is his superfluous power to go to? Beyond a certain extent, he cannot
make it contribute to his own happiness. He may very
likely go on working, if we may call it so, for his support
upon a larger scale, making a fortune for his family instead
of merely providing for them a maintenance: and this with
various motives; because it is only a continuance of the process of getting his bread, which he knows is his duty; because
others do it; because he must do something; because it
increases his importance and that of his family. Whatever
may be his motive, what he succeeds in effecting in this
course is perhaps gaining happiness for himself and his
family; that may be or may not; but anyhow in increasing
in one way the materials for happiness of the whole community. It is better to labour for himself, which does them
good too, than to cease from labouring. The common life is
thus the better for all the self-interested industry and talent
which makes the fortune of individuals: the individuals are
honourable so far as they have any feeling of the common
happiness in what they do, and the public is fortunate so far
as self-interest in this manner does not swallow up all the
industry and talent. For the common life wants more than
what the self-interest of individuals thus exercised will
supply it with.




OF THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.                337
The cultivation of intelligence and mental power in indi- All are the
viduals has the same relation to the common life as the better for
the inincrease of individual wealth has.  Whatever the motive of crearo of
it, all are the better for it.  But in this as in wealth, there wealth or
is every degree of honourableness as to the use which may gence in
be made of it. In civilized society there is a vast amount of indi
viduals.
wealth and power, and a vast amount of want and need over But socieagainst them: and these two sides do not as they should ty fails in
not fitting
correspond and fit each other: the happiness of the society is together 
measured-by the degree in which they do so. There is on the power
one side wealth perhaps helplessly possessed and unenjoyed; need.
and on the other, want which this'wealth would relieve,
thereby causing a double happiness. Wisdom and ignorance
perhaps stand side by side, the one with no feeling of the
good it might do, the other with no feeling of the benefit
which it might receive. The remedy to all this is more of
public feeling, of the feeling of the general interdependence,
of the feeling that the public happiness is a more real and
higher end than the happiness of the individual.
Life is therefore in the first instance livelihood, support of Reason of
civilized
life: in the second, it is this with, added to it, something to scietyd
live for, interest in right and truth, self-cultivation, care for
others.  As soon as we have come to this, we have got out
of the sphere where we have only ourselves to think of, and
where individual happiness can. be our end. Life then becomes no longer individual but common. And of life thus
understood it is the fact, that human life wants all human
power to support it and to make the most of it. The reason
of civilized society, so far as it is to have a reason, must be
that, imperfect as it may be, it is the best organization of
human power for this purpose. And the essence of morality
consists to a great extent, in our being able, in such of our
actions as can be free, to take it from ourselves and to give it
fo others.
There are thus three great forms of duty,
(1)  The first, the nearest, homeliest, lowest, but which Fourforms
must in a manner precede the others, viz. to take care of our- of cuty.
selves.
(2)  The second, the definite and plain, but still not
exalted one, to do no wrong.
G.                    I22




338        OF THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.
(3)  The third, the indefinite and higher one, to do all
the good that we can.
Besides these there is a fourth, a secondary one, necessary
and subsidiary to the performance of the others, which may
be regarded as another form of the first, to take care of our
moral selves, to cultivate virtuous dispositions and sympathy.
The first of these, it is to be observed, is not a duty to
ourselves (an expression with little meaning, and not desirable to be used) but a duty to others.  Care for ourselves
to a certain extent-is necessary for being able to do anything
for others. Want of care for ourselves is simply laying upon
others the burden of caring for us. Care. for ourselves, or
what is apparently so, is often, as we have seen, indirectly, a
care and provision for others. But care for ourselves to the
prejudice of care for others is selfishness, one great root, as we
have seen, of immorality and evil.
Care for family lies between (1) and (2). They are as a
part of ourselves, and the not caring for them as such is the
doing them wrong.
The: idea of wrong belongs to law, and wrong is defined
for us by an imagined law of which the actual law of our
country is a partial representative.  We learn this law (and
therefore what is wrong) not from  a code before us, but
from our education, the opinions of the society we live in,
and our sympathies. The idea of it within us is our conscience.
The idea of doing good to others is suggested to us by the
view of the wants of others, and by the feeling of our own
wants, sympathetically attributed to them. And so we give
them pleasure, or make them happy.




CHAPTER XIV.
ON MORAL ELEVATION.
THE subject which I am going to speak about in this Moral elechapter is one which I have two oi three times been implied in
led to touch, reserving the more full consideration of much of
it for a separate chapteL.                         ing'discusI described the first ideal, or that which we should
do, as taking two forms according to the degree and
the nature of the freedom which we suppose in our
action, the forms which I discussed under the names
of duty and virtue.  Duty is something incumbent
upon us, a restraint which presses us down, and
keeps us in our place: virtue is, in this respect, the
opposite: it is an elevation or expansion.
Hence virtue is the more really ideal, or, if we in the aspiringness
like so to. express it, it is ideal in a double. way, in of virtue:
two degrees: in duty we imagine the restraining
law, but then submit ourselves: in virtue we imagine
the pattern towards which we work or strive; all is
still upwards and outwards; there is no restraint or
submission.
I described also in another chapter, one part, and the value
morally the most important part, of the value of of actions:
actions, as consisting in what I then called the
self-sacrifice involved in them.  This value or merit
could only have been brought under the head of
urtility by including under useful actions, not only
those productive of, or tending to, good result, and
those of a kind generally or often productive of good
22 2




340           ON MORAL ELEVATION.
result, but also those prompted by feelings without
the existence of which, independently of any thought
of result, much of good result would not be possible.
the esti-  I described again, in another chapter', the imcharacter: portance of what I there called self-nzicntenance, -by
which term  I expressed care for our moral self as
distinguished from care for our interests; care for
our character, I said we might call it, but we must
mean then by character not estimation, but that to
which the estimation is supposed to apply, or which
is considered by others to exist in us as the ground
of it.
the worth- Still again, in another chapter, I had occasion to
iesf  speak of the quality of pleasure, as it is called by
pleasure.
some philosophers.  By quality is here meant, comparative preferableness of pleasures on some other
ground than that of amount or magnitude or quantity
of pleasure or pleasingness in them, so far as we can
estimate this. A comparative preferability among
pleasures other than by reason of quantity, introduces into eudsemonics the first i'deal, as I called it,
or the notion of something as what should or ought
to be in preference to something else: some pleasures
are better or worse than others.
All these four different things, or different forms
of the same thing, meeting us whichever line of
ethical consideration we take,-the aspiringness of
virtue, the merit of actions, the estimableness of
character, the worthiness of pleasures,-suggest for
their expression a metaphor (if we call by the name
of'metaphor' this inevitable practice of language),
one which, till this chapter, I have used as little as
I could, though it is almost impossible to put two
or three sentences on morals together without using
it,-the metaphor of height or elevation.  I purpose
1( Che Ix. p. 160.




ON MORAL ELEVATION.               341
in this chapter to use it fully, and to explain, so far
as I can, the various applications of it just now
mentioned, and others which I will mention.
Amongst these others is what I said in a fokmer
chapter about the love of excelling or of excellence,
how large a contribuent to virtue that was: and in
the last chapter on the importance, if we desire
happiness, of aiming not at happiness itself, but at
that which is good for us, of the attainment of which
happiness will be an accompaniment.
I do not know whether it is possible or likely.to Elevation
be useful to trace thoroughly the meaning and appli- hor incation of such expressions as  high' in reference to volivng
morals.  Upwards, away from earth, is the direction things:
leading towards regions in which our imaginations
expatiate, but demanding effort in those who would
seek to follow it: it is the direction also away from
limitation, so that in speaking of measurement to
which we suppose an inferior limit or origin, but not
a superior limit, we naturally use the terms'high'
and'low','rising' and'falling.  It is in regard of
this last view that we express comparison of any sort
by a scale of high and low: it is by the addition to
this of the two former views, that we find an'expression for moral comparison.   There are other
metaphors for moral comparison, as when we speak
of a great mind, or a great man; but this is the most
frequent and significant.
It is on account thus of the reference, in morals, idealism,
to an unseen, on account of the effort of the will effort, roagainst difficulty, and on account of the cofitinued
comparison, whether of one moral state in time with
another, which is progress or decidencel, or of one
1 The word is written'decadence,' but I have ventured to change
this barbarous Gallicism for the true English form, in accordance with
the Author's spelling of the same word in another MS. ED.




342           ON MORAL ELEVATION.
moral being with another, which is a moral scale of
the universe or of creation-it is on these three
accounts, in the main, that we may consider men to
use the expressions'high' or'low', and similar ones,
in speaking of morals.
No doubt different schools of morality proceed
very differently in their use of these terms-that I
will return to: but all use them: and no wonder:
for whatever misapplication or abuse may be made
of the notions, morality must be ideal, must be an
effort, must be a progress; and all these features of it
are well expressed, as I have said, by the metaphor
before us.
In speaking of the unseen, I do not want to
imply, as yet or necessarily, any religious notion:
the unseen may be looked upon as matter of belief,
which is the way by which morality passes into
religion, or it may be looked upon as simply matter
of imagination, in which case it is no more than an
ideal: on this I say no more now.
It must be   It must not be forgotten that here, as in each
supple- other    case, we have before us an abstraction or
mented byother case, we have before us an abstraction or
other con- partial view, which has a pendant to it, and which
-siderations.   of itself may be exaggerated into falsehood.  The
pendant to the notion of the first ideal, or that
which should be done, as virtue, is the notion of it
as duty: in other words, virtue is not simply the
aspiration towards an ideal; it is the submission also
to something as incumbent on us. Again, the pendant
to the notion of virtue as good principle is the notion
of it as good impulse: in other words, virtue is not
simply effort, struggle, conquest of difficulty; it is
feeling also, spontaneous, natural, entirely unconstrained.  And so there are various' notions which
we shall see more fully as we go on, naturally
suggesting themselves as pendants to all notions of




ON. MORAL ELEVATION.               343'
moral comparison, rivalry, ambition, advance  or
progress.
One of the most remarkable applications of the In our
metaphor of'high' and'low' has been to the faculties, organiza
dispositions, and emotions of the mind, and the con- tad low'
sequent arrangement of these, in a scale some above may have
reference
others, as they exist, or may exist, in our moral toauthority or to
organization. The notion of height is applicable in worth.
different ways to this scale or hierarchy, principally
in two ways.
These two different kinds of height or superiority
we may call the superiority of authority and the
superiority of comparative worthiness, which are not
exactly the same thing.
Nobility or aristocracy, and governing or admin- Plato reistrative power, do not necessarily go together in both kinds
politics.  We shall probably be right in saying that of superiority,
Plato  recognized  both  kinds of superiority.  The Butler
neglects
inferior mass of desire or impulse had over it two the latter.
orders; reason or the governing power, and spiritedness, which, while resembling desire in kind, as being
itself of the nature of impulse, was understood to
differ from it as being superior and nobler.'Butler
carefully defines the important superiority to be
that of authority existing  in conscience.  On the
superiority, of a different kind, existing in what he
calls the public affections over the private, he says
less than he should have done: consequently, on the
superiority of conscience to what he calls self-love he
gives us no light. This notion of superiority as a
simply regulating power. converts the notion of a
society into that of a system'.
If we are to describe what virtue is by reference Thio belto our internal organization, we must describe it as tween the
superiority
consisting in the double fact, that there exists in ofprinci-,ple and of
vigorous-operation, principle, and that there exists a impulse.




344            ON MORAL ELEVATION.
preponderance of higher impulse over lower impulse:
and since we must suppose the two portions of this
double fact in harmony together, we must consider
principle as. approving or recommending the higher
impulse rather than the lower, and we must consider
the higher impulse as restrained and directed, more
or less, by principle.
Ancient    Virtue, as presented in the Platonic and Aristowas defec- telian systems, has too exclusively the aspect of selftivewoits control or self-command.  This arises from  two
dimpuse, things: first, from  the separation, by Plato and
resultsof Aristotle, of the -benevolent affections, as modern
virtuous
action.  philosophers call them, from the -main consideration
of virtue, though they come in for notice subordinately, as in Aristotle's discussion about ktXac; and
secondly, from their almost entire omission to mention the outward: useful results of virtuous action.
Hence in Plato, for instance, we have 3&KatLO-mr,. roqpoo-vvq and  pdv&rzsq, all representing, in different views, what I have called principle, and we have
av8pECa representing an important portion of the
higher impulse: while we have 7rr't7vpLLa representing
the mass of lower impulse which has only to be subjugated, and has no properly corresponding virtue.
Thus not only is the higher impulse imperfectly represented, but of all, impulse and principle alike, we
have only the introspective view given, or the relation to oneself: virtue therefore in this view is all
self-engrossed or un-self-transcending; it is too much
identified with simple self-control; has too much of
principle, too little of impulse. It is the same with
Butler is Butler: that is, though he, uniting the view of Chrisdefective tian theology with the ancient view, recognizes thein the
same way. outgoingness of virtue, and the importance of benevolence or the love of our neighbour, he still keeps
to the ancient view in making virtue consist, to a




ON MORtAL ELEVATION.            345
great extent, in a conscientiousness whose claim to
obedience resides,'not in the character of the things
which it prescribes, but in its own authority, as a
faculty of a superior kind, to prescribe them: and
how  or why it so happens that the things which
conscience prescribes are benevolence and conduct
similar to it, rather than selfishness and conduct similar to it, he does not tell us. This is doing what the
ancients did; making virtue consist too exclusively
in the fact of self-control or a life upon principle; but
this is not enough. The view is on all hands incom-.ple'te. It does not represent completely the internal
fact of virtue: still less does it represent what virtue
is in our action towards others, for them, in rivalry
with them, against them.
The impatience, on the part of utilitarians, of aDissatisgreat deal of what is called moral philosophy, has a with this
certain amount of justification, when we consider to viewaosnot
what a very great extent such philosophy has occu-.ficientprominence to'
pied itself with-balancing and distinguishing our the utility
of virtue:
various faculties and feelings, with a view to discover what, in this view, virtuous feeling is: and
then, when the question suggests itself, what is it all
for? what good does this virtue do in the world?
what use does it make of itself? how little attention
comparatively has been given to the answering it!
Why should we take all these pains with ourselves,
they will say, if nothing is' to come of it? what does
it matter in the universe whether we are virtuous or
not, if this is all of virtue?  It may matter very
much in the universe what we do, for there is need
of a vast deal of useful action in it; but what is the
need of spending so much thought on what we are, as not
if that is all..bringing
ott its un.
The utilitarian then may be pardoned some im- selfish
patience as he looks on at this long and laborious tyeeros




346            ON MORAL ELEVATION.
imaginative construction of the moral man, while he
is anxious that he should be got into action, and
that it should be seen how.he performs the work in
the world which all this moral nature is wanted for.
But, independently of utilitarianism, any one may
well have the same feeling in regard of himself.  The
notion of our living to ourselves alone is not at all a
natural notion with us: if we were sentient beings
only, perhaps it would be: but we are active beings,
with powers and faculties: the question, What shall
we do with ourselves 2 is as natural as the question,
How shall we be happy? *To be told that our work
and mission in the world is simply to control and
command ourselves, is not altogether satisfactory.
We say, I can understand self-control and self-command for a reason or object; but for its own sake I
cannot quite: I do not want to be in this way allimportant to myself: I am  not satisfied with life
being an end in itself, its own end: I want to live
for something.
Neither this latter view nor that of the utilitarian
is altogether a correct one, or at least they are both
liable to be exaggerated and misused.  I will endeavour to give what seems to me the.real truth.
Let us first for a minute or two forget as far
as we can that there is any one else in the world
except ourself.
The corn-    With respect to our own pleasure, we may be
binationof
principle either self-indulgent or self-interested.  By which
pulseis  I mean, we may either yield in all cases to the
as itipor- impulses to  enjoyment. which successively  make
tant in relation to themselves felt; or we may restrain and manage them,
the virtue,'
as in rela- with.foresight and prudence, in such a way as to secure
tion to the
happiness, to ourselves, so far as we can, a life of what we
of theindi- then call happiness.  This latter process is what,
vihe  it is ual.e of moral philosophy.
when it is considered the whole of moral philosophy,




ON MORAL ELEVATION.              347
is called Epicureanism. A part of moral philosophy
it must be on every system; in utilitarian systems,
a large part: for our own happiness and that of
others, though very different things to our view,
yet are the same thing to a general or indifferent
view; and knowing the one is knowing the other.
With respect to our virtue, we may be either
impulsive or conscientious, or we may, as we ought,
be both together.  In the  same way as foresight
must not universally preclude. indulgence, or there
would be no pleasure; so here, we may let some
impulses have their way, and others we may
variously restrain and manage, so as to convert
them, as far as we can, into a life of virtue, virtuous
impulses and virtuous habits.
Now what I want to say is this, that the various
impulses and the nature of the restraint and government which they should be under, are as worthy
and as important an object of study in the point
of view of goodness or virtue, as in the point of view
of happiness.  We are not indeed in either case
(as we are looking at the things now) going out
of ourselves: we are dealing, so to speak, with' two
selves, with an enjoying or sentient self, and with
a moral self: the ancient self-engrossed views of
virtue may be considered as a sort of counter-view
or pendant to the ancient Epicureanism: whether
or not there is reason to prefer the one to the
other, there is no reason to be impatient with the
one more than with the other.                      In view of
Let us now bring these two views, or imaginative thegeneral
happiness,
constructions, of our two selves out into life, and the psychology of
suppose existing around us, as it does exist, the virtue is
world of beings with respect to whom  our action t as ip the
is to be.                                          psychologyen a  that portion  of
Then all that portion of' moral  philosophy which happiness




348           -ON MORAL ELEVATION.
treats of our own happiness comes to be of importance, as showing us how we may promote the
happiness of others. as well as our own: but that
portion which treats of virtue is not less important,
for it is the cultivation of the virtuous disposition in
ourselves which is' the way to the promotion of the
happiness of others: and in the same manner, it
is the cultivation of virtuous habits by others (a
thing which we may encourage in them), which leads
them to the promotion of each other's happiness as
well as of their own, however much it may tend to
this besides.
The psychology of virtue is thus important in
the same way as the psychology of happiness; not
merely because virtue is the way to the happinessof the virtuous, supposing it to be so, but because
virtue is in itself as important as'happiness to each
one; and also because, if we consider virtue in its
relation to happiness, the way for the mass of men,
as sentient beings, to have the greatest amount
of happiness, is for them, as individual active beings,
to have virtue. The thing wanted in the active
universe for general happiness is not the simple disposition to act for happiness, but the disposition to
act for other's happiness, which is virtue.  Hence we
have the two lines of psychologic investigation in
moral philosophy: the one that of our feelings of
happiness; the other that of those peculiar feelings
which lead us to transcend self and care for other's
happiness. This latter is virtue.
Still this    The' psychology of virtue, that is,'the portion of
psyoho- moral philosophy which treats of our internal organilogy of virtue must zation from the point of view of virtue, not from the
not be
taken for point of view of pleasure, is not the whole of moral
tohworal philosophy, for there is besides to be considered the
philoso-  moral world, or life,'in which virtue is to be applied.
phy.




ON'MORAL ELEVATION.           349
But it is as.practical and at least as important as the
utilitarian consideration of our internal organization
from the point of view of pleasure: and, unless it is
misconceived by being looked upon as the whole of
moral philosophy, it is not really self-engrossed and
self-regarding only.
The former of these points I have perhaps sufficiently treated both now and previously: the latter,
which I have touched upon previously, requires a
word still here.
There is a kind of unconscious error exceedingly Mistaken
likely to cling to the noblest natures, and almost to riegwar fo
them alone, in this matter. We have as it were two our own
moral chaselves, our active or moral self, and our- sentient, racterisa
kind of
gratifiable, pleasure-capable, self: let us take theselfish
word'self-carefulness' as applicable to both: then nes.
it may be considered a moral axiom, that so far from
the two kinds of self-carefulness having anything in
common, they stand exactly at opposite poles from
each other. I do not mean that they are inconsistent
with each other and cannot co-exist: quite the reverse: we may care for our moral being and care for
our happiness or interest also: but I mean, we must
not mistake the doing the one for the other. And
when 1 say that the noblest natures are likely to get
into error in this respect, I mean, there is danger of
their considering, that all this care for themselves,
whether they do right or wrong, is what they themselves are not worth; that whether they, single
individuals in an infinite universe, produce or fail to
produce some little happiness (the best they can
hope), may be a matter of some little consequence,
but that whether they do right or wrong can be a
matter of no consequence, except to their own particular- interest, which, being what in the universe
they are, they are quite willing to dismiss the




350             ON MORAL ELEVATION.
thought of.  Why  then, they  say, all this self'attention? and the unconscious error that I spoke
of is, that they think such self-carefulness is akin to
self-interest, a sort of higher kind of selfishness.
Antithesis    I mentioned that self-forgetfulness, self-postponeof the two
selves, the ment, or self-sacrifice, had a moral value parallel
active andwith, but independent of, the value of usefulness
the enjoy- wi                         th  value of
ing.    in action.  But what is to be observed is, that all
these feelings, which bear the above names in reference to our interested self, would bear, in reference
to our active self, exactly opposite ones.: they are
self-remembrance, self-exertion, self-maintenance (as.
I used the term before). In the one self, we are
absorbers. of felicific action, in the other, we are outgivers of it: the two are inverse the one to the other:
in the one we are sources of good, in the other consumers of it.  And to this still is to be added, that
there needs self-carefulness, as I used the term, in
regard to the one self as in regard of the other,
though they are thus mutually polar or antithetic.
As regards each self, what stands opposed to self-.carefulness is self-indulgence. Self-carefulness in
regard of our-self of happiness, is self-interestedness
or simple prudence: self-carefulness in regard of our
other self is that self-maintenance which precludes
the acting  wrong, the violation of our duty, the
betraying of our trust, the sullying of our character,
even under the strongest moral temptation, if I may
so express it.  It will be remembered how I mean
by character. not estimation, but what estimation
supposes.
The in-    Of course all general statements such as I have
crease of just now  made are full of difficulties in the appliconscien1tiousness cation, some of which I may afterwards treat of:
is the increase of my present concern is with any notion that moral
active be-        
nevolence. carefulness or conscientiousness is a sort of elevated




ON MORAL ELEVATION.             351
selfishness, to be postponed to earnest enthusiasm
for the results, as to usefulness, of what we do. To
which I say, that in this view, we are putting into
unnatural opposition to each other, with consequent
distortion of both, two things which are most powerful
mutual aids, but the better aids in proportion as they
are kept genuine and independent.  To the extent
to.which w'e weaken conscientiousness, by making it
appear uncalled for self-engrossment, what we really
strengthen is our own self-regard, not the regard for
others' interests, so that evejn in view of results
to others, viblations of conscientiousness would be
wrong.
It is not then a waste of time to dwell upon our The terms'high' and
imagined moral being, with its host of feelings stand-, low' exing to each other, in two quite different ways, in the press the
relation of preeminence and subordination; some ty of what
is human
having their preeminence in virtue. of their intel- to what is
lectual and therefore naturally directive character, animal
and forming together what I have called 2principle;
others having their preeminence in virtue of their
being, as simple feeling or impulse, of a higher
quality and nobler character than the rest.  This'higher' and'nobler' we must a little investigate.
The notions which these terms indicate, (setting
aside now whatever of metaphor the terms convey,
on which I have spoken,) are compounded of a certain
admiration on the part of the persons using them,
and a very vaguely recognized quality supposed to
deserve the admiration. Setting aside the admiration,
we will endeavour to get hold, so far as we can, of
the quality: and I will first try to do so by saying,
that these higher impulses are the less animal ones.
When the word'animal' is used in this manner,
it is best to take it as implying a rough comparison
between man and the inferior animals, and an obser



.352          ON MORAL ELEVATION.
vation of those parts of his nature which he shares
with them.
in respect   Speaking roughly, they have not imagination.
of imagination; and They do not apparently, as man does, combine past
cquety, perceptions with-present ones so as to form general
ideas and an internal world of thought, which may
influence or direct what they do.  They are therefore,, more or less, the slaves of the present, of
present perception, present feeling, present impulse.
Man on the' other hand conceives in his mind
something which he may be different from what he is,
something which he may do beyond what this or
that felt want immediately suggests to him. This
is what I have called forming ideals: and the feelings
connected with these are the first which we may
assign as standing in preeminence above others, as
belonging to our height in the scale of creation, not
to lower heights.
in respect Again, they have not imaginative affections. All
tione   affection, as we conceive it, is more or less imaginative, so that we might say -they have not affections in
our sense of the word at all (this all requires a good
deal of qualification): what we mean when we speak
of these affections as instinct, is that it is strong even
to uncontrollableness, but that it is very particular,
that it requires presence, that it is connected with
merely corporeal sensations, that it-is produced by
simple familiarity or custom.
Man's affection is imaginative sympathy engrafted on the simply animal or instinctive feeling:
and the vividness of the imagination gives an intenseness to the affection different in kind from  the
intenseness arising from the simple instinct. And
hence it is that human benevolence is a high and
worthy feeling.
It is again a part of the same want of imagination




ON MORAL ELEVATION.            353
in the animals that, except under peculiar.circunmstances, (in which, without apparent imagination, the
very -strongest feelings of self-forgetfulness and selfdevotion are closely associated with simply animal
feelings, as in the case of affection for offspring)
mere self-regard is, we may say, a necessary part of
their nature.
Man is capable, by his nature, of entering into
the feelings and interests of others as well as of
understanding his own: and that same self-forgetfulness, which exists in  the  animals under the
peculiar circumstances which I have mentioned, may
exist in man, and is prompted and stirred in him,
from the view of the want, not his own, which
exists around him, and the imaginative view of the
happiness which he may produce.  And unselfishness
of this nature is one of the kinds of feeling which we
think high and worthy.
In the absence of imagination, the capability of in respect
pleasure existing~ in the animals must be but limited.of pleapleasure exsting in the animals must be but limitedsure:
The merely corporeal or nervous pleasure of course'they may enjoy, as far as we -know, to as great an
extent as we do: but remembrance and recombination, thought of the absent and the future, imaginative or ideal construction, multiply our being, and
produce an infinite additional amount of susceptibility of pleasure and pain of which the animals
can know  nothing. Pleasures of this kind, as
compared with the coarse or corporeal: pleasures.
which the animals are capable of. as well as we,
are what we call'refined' pleasures: and in virtue
of this their refinement, we consider them  higher
and worthier than others.
Lastly, by reason of his imagination, man has a in respect
of will:
different kind. of will from that which we may say
any animal can have: the mental state which immeG. -                                  23




354           ON.MORAL ELEVATION.
diately precedes his action is, or may be, of a fulness
and complication to which, with them, there can
be no parallel.  Choice belongs to him, and cannot
to unimaginative creatures. And so there belongs to
him also that which we might call wilfulness,. using
the term not in the ordinary sense, but meaning by
it a concentration of will, a superiority to the
changing gusts of momentary impulse, -a choice
determined by a view extending beyond the immediate and present, and a resolution  following
on this choice. And thus human will has a special
worthiness in that it forms the transition or bond of
union between the higher impulse, and principle.
It is principle itself in the form of a higher impulse.
It is the real union of the intellectual and moral.
in respect   Connected with this is one consideration, which
of the
power of will come more under our notice in another chapter;
self-improve-  that man, owing still to his imagination, has much
melt.s  less fixity of nature than the inferior creatures;
what he will be, either as a kind, or as an individual,
is much less determined  for him  by previously
existing circumstances; he is, in kind and individually, much more his own master.  They, the
animals, are many of them, each kind in its peculiar
way, specially trainable by man; but, independently
of man, each species goes through its necessary and
generic course of training, whatever it is, the same
for each individual, so that there is no distinctive
individuality, no individual progress, and  consequently no'generic progress. Man is educable, and
more than this, self-educative; and consequently
1ji ogiressive. And self-education implies imagination
and an ideal; the thought of something better,
higher, worthier, to which we educate ourselves.
The terms   So far I have been considering the terms'higher'
igh'd           er in           to a compaison'lowv' may and'lower'  mreerence to a comparison between




ON MORAL ELEVATION.               355 
ourselves and other animals, the higher impulses also be
are the less animal ones.  They may also be  con-sree-no
sidered in another light, as the more spiritual and a comparid{vine.  I will explain how this is so.             tweenmran
In illustrating what I said last, I did not indeed pnd(o)sU
enter into detail as to the difference between the spiritual
inferior animals and ourselves, but still I did keep
rather close to that difference.  We may, however,
regard the non-animal portion of our nature in somewhat of a different manner. We may look more at
ourselves, and less at the animals.
We are not creatures of intellect- alone, and The nonanimal
morality therefore is not acting simply by reason or part of
on principle.  If it was, it would be matter of man is not
exclusivesimpler consideration.  It is not perhaps difficult for-ly itelleeus to imagine what a being intellectual only, a
vov7rpaKTr.Y, would be: but'we are not such.
Henee there is no meaning or importance, really,.
in the saying as the ancients did, that man's specialty or differentia in comparison with other animals
is his being rational, and that his special excellence
therefore or virtue must consist in the excellence
and the predominance of his reason.  If, in this, by'
reason we mean anything definite, as intellect, it is
not true; if we mean by reason all the higher or
non-animal portions of man's nature, it is insignificant, and says nothing.
The non-animal portion of our nature, supposing
the expression to have meaning, we may call for
convenience the spiritual portion: it consists of our
human intellect, or reason, for one part; and, along
with this, of a great deal of impulse or emotion of
different kinds, of which, from the various things.
which I have just now said about it, we may to
a certain degree see the character. I -have dwelt
already on the importance, in our constitution, of
23 —2




356          ON MORAL ELEVATION.
imagination, and on the various applications of it.
Now we ourselves are the highest and worthiest
kind of beings that we know of. It may be difficult,
if I am asked to say what highest and worthiest
means here, to say it: but I think the proposition
is one which every one, whatever his views, would
allow in some sense: allowed in this way, the proposition is in a manner a definition of what is meant
by high and worthy. This is expressing in other
words the same thing which I have said already.
Oneaspect   But although we are the highest kind of being
of virtue is that we know of, we are by no means the highest
that it is
an aspira- that we can imagine: and in fact, all morality is,
tion after
ahigher more or less, the imagination of higher. Virtue is
than human life. the acting in the manner in which, so far as we can
conceive, imagined beings higher and worthier than
we ordinarily are, would act. It is in this way what
we may call a stretching upwards to a higher nature.
This ideal of a higher or worthier nature towards
which, in whatever way, we aspire, is one which we
have not touched upon yet, and it is one which takes
many forms: it is itself a form, so to speak, of the
first ideal, or what we should do.
This may    The imagination of, and aspiration towards, a
fa thfre- higher nature is what more than anything else gives
ligion, r life and interest to the view of human action, aniin pro-  mates human.effort, and brings out human characgress. ter. This is, in fact, the form which the idealizing
energy in men mainly takes; for we look with more
interest at the combined and concrete, than at the
abstract. We may imagine aspiration after a higher
nature than our own, roughly speaking, in two man.
ners: we may suppose other natures existing now,
independent of ours, but which are or may become
known to us, which we may imitate, which may perhaps influence us, towards which we may approxi



ON MORAL ELEVATION.            357
mate: or, aware as we are of what I have called the
unfixedness and educability of our nature, we may
imagine other and superior states of it, or states into
which it may change: the first of these is religion,
the second is belief in the progress and improvement
of the human race.
We call Good'good,' so far as moral suggestion Virtue is
prompts us to do so, for the simple reason that we enea bt
conceive, as fixed and realized in His character, the bte right
ideal perfection of worthiness of being, which worthi- the existence of
ness our own generic superiority to inferior beings, beings suand the comparative superiority of some among us erihoro
to others, suggests to us. And then, fixing in Him he may
seek to
this ideal perfection, we conceive our own worthiness resemble.
or virtue, -and there is no better or more practical
way of conceiving it,-as consisting in our being like
Him. But it will be said, in this way we mean by
the pierfect Divine character no more than an imagination of a perfect human character, which we might
as well make without any thought of God. Not so:
the supposition, which so. naturally suggests itself,
of the actual existence of a nature superior to ours,
makes the thought more vivid than if what we conceived was only an ideal of what we might be: and
morality is not the sole, or even the most important
suggestive of God to us, as existing, but does its
part, and fastens its character upon what it finds,
aiding both itself and the consideration of that
which it thus recognizes.
I am. not however now going to consider what
morality or virtue may have to do with real existence. So far as I deal now with the relation between
morality and religion, I mean religious imagination
and religious sentiment very widely considered indeed.'When Plato condemned the immoral tendency
of the popular religion of his times, he condemned it




358           ON MORAL ELEVATION.
as a falsification and abuse of that which, even as he
could understand it, ought. to be, and might be, a
most powerful moral agent: it is with this general
moral bearing of it that I am now concerned.
Such re.    Virtue is thus the acting in a manner superior to
semblance,1,
may be at- ourselves; the doing an act, or feeling a feeling, not.taineed in belonging to what, in past times perhaps and in
the way of
principle lower or worse moments, has been or is our nature,
pulse.  but belonging to a better nature, and brought into.ours; now perhaps fully ours, because the result of
a moral habit; but still, as ours, belonging to a
better or higher.part of us, which stands in contrast
with a lower or worse part.  Such an act may be
with effort, or may be without: it may be the result
of principle, and be attended with very great effort:
it may be the result of the higher impulses, and be
quite without effort, apparently merely spontaneons:
and in the two cases it may possibly have equal merit
of opposite kind. For in any nature morally superior
to ours we must suppose higher intelligence than
ouirs, and nobler impulse than ours, to go together:.and in our imperfect struggles it may be the one of
these, or the other, that we may most be animated
by, or most succeed in attaining to.
In attain-    The distinction which I made above between our
higher self two selves is here to be kept in mind: the most
triumphs virtuous action, as I have just described it, is that
over the            -
lower,  which is least our own; that is, least belonging to
our lower, gratifiable, interested self; but just in
proportion as it is this, it is most our own, in reference
to our higher and active self: it is, more than lower
action, our deliberate choice if it is on principle,
and, more than lower action, an absorbing and transporting impulse, if it is on impulse.
That admiration which we give to men about us
whom we see act worthily, becomes, when we.imagine




ON MORAL ELEVATION.'            359
natures superior to ours, the reverence belonging to
religion: and we look with something of this feeling
of reverence on acts of real nobleness in our fellowcreatures, and still more when we think of them in
remembrance, or think of the great ones of our kind
who have passed away. In these various ways the
imagination of superior natures affects us in ways
akin to religion.
The belief in human progress has been, in many
cases, a religion, and a most energetic one, with many
who have had no other: and to many, who have had
much besides, it has been an ennobling belief, confirming their religion, and confirmed by it.
I shall not speak just now about this historically, Virtue
or about various erroneous views which have been lYb
also be
held on the subject.  It only belongs to our subject strengthened by
now, and is only ennobling, in so far as it supposes the right
the possibility of man's becoming, by the continued prlgress.
effort of successive generations, in kind a higher and
worthier being, a higher animal, if we like so to use
the term; and in so far as it combines with this a
belief, that man does, as matter of fact, in some
respect become such, a hope'that he may become so
in larger measure in the future, an effort to find' out
how he may become so, and to aid the progress.  It
is clear that, where the belief in progress is of this
nature, there is formed in the mind an imagination
or ideal of what man would be if he were better;
in other words, an idea of what being'better' means.
Nori can this ideal well exist in the mind without
-being, not only a bright dream for the future, but in
some degree a guide for action in the present.




CHAPTER XV.
ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS TO HIGHER AND
LOWER FACT.
The moral IN all that I have written hitherto, I have not been
imagina-  solicitous by what name I should call the mental
tions:   process, the result of which is the existence in our
minds,.or - presentation before our minds, of the
moral ideals which I have described.
I have generally called. it,'imagination', as a very
vague. term: it. is at least that, whatever else it is.
Imagination, in this use of it, is simply a mental
process, similar to sensible perception in so far as it
has a supposed object, but different from it in so far
as that we do not attribute, to the object of imagination the same kind of reality which we attribute
to the objects of sensible perception.
to which   For convenience we may assume four degrees of
gaerisofde-reality or non-reality in the moral ideals'; four difreality ana ferent processes of mind, we may say,,.in or by which
of impera-               mi..      b
tiveness  We may present or represent them  to ourselves.
may be ascribed.  They may be looked upon as dreams.; or as valuable
imaginations; or as beliefs; or as inward perceptions.
*Similarly we may classify them  according to the
degree of force which they exert upon our action.
We may think of them as something imperative or
incumbent upon us; as: something fit for us or
adapted to our nature; as something desirable or
useful; or as something worthy of us and to be aspired
after. I have put the ideals here in a different order




ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS, &c.   361
from before, in order to have them in a sort of scale,
which we may call that of incumbency or (taking
it the other way) of freedom.
Now when we use.the word'right', we mean to Moralphi.
express, as against lower fact (by which I mean such hlsoelafact as is cognizable by means of, or as a result of, tio both
the exercise of our sensive powers), an ideal or imagi- and lower
fact.
nation; but at the same time we mean to express,
as against mere vague imagination, visionariness, or
dream, a reference to fact of some kind.  What is
the difference between moral philosophy and a simple
dreaming about one- thing and another as desirable
or good?
The difference, or the reference to fact, is -double:
along with the reference to lower fact, there is a
recognition, or suggestion, of higher fact of some
kind. Both kinds of reference to fact involve the
greatest difficulties.
Without the reference to lower fact, i. e. to the Difficulties in renature and condition of man upon earth, as what is gard to
commonly called experience shows it to Us, moralboth.
philosophy is all in the air, and no useful application
can be made of it: which is the same thing as saying'it is nothing; for human action and human life are
what it is intended to be the art and rationale of.
But what is man for this purpose, and what human
nature?  Is it savage man, or civilized man?' man
as the subject merely of physical and psychological
dissection, or man (as we always find him) with his
self-made array of customs, social habits, and elementary jurisprudence? How are we to'distinguish
between the fact which is to govern our criticism or
our ideal, and the fact which is to be the subject of
the former, and the contrast, or matter. for improvement, to the latter?
Again, without reference to higher fact of some




362     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
kind, we have really nothing to answer to the man
who says to us, Eat, drink, enjoy yourself, the rest
is dream; dream, he may continue, which I have
myself no objection to indulge in, in so far as it is
likely to contribute to that one undoubted reality,
my own palpable, tangible, pleasure; but which,
beyond this, you must allow me not to trouble
myself about, while there is this to be attended to
and worked for.  But then, assuming that there is
such a thing as higher fact, what is its nature, and
what assurance are we to get of it?  Is it fact of
mann's nature, of this kind, that a high and worthy
part of this nature is to. form ideals for his action,
and to care for the happiness of others, which he can
only imagine, as well as for his own, which he can
feel?  Or is it fact of man's nature of another kind,
viz. that he has thoughts, convictions, beliefs, within
him, not suggested by anything which he merely
feels as sensation?  Or is it fact beyond himself,
a perception, or what he thinks so, of a moral world,
akin in some degree to that perception which he has,
or thinks he has, of the material.world in which he
physically lives?
I have here, it will be seen, noted the four processes of mind which'I described above, the first of
which negatives reality, or higher fact, corresppnding
to the ideals, while the three others suppose it of
some kind.
Fact and    The notion of'the right', or that which should
imagiast be done, and other kindred notions, belong to, and
be corn- imply, a middle region between fact of observation
bined for
action.  or experience on the one side, and poetry, sentimentalism, the region of beauty and sublimity, on the
other side. Is there any such region? what can we,
in our minds, make out about it?
It is no use to go on reforming moral philosophy,




TO HIGHER AND LOWER- FACT.        363
as has continually been done, by flying successively,
disgusted with the vagueness of zicaqincationalisma, to
positivism or fact, and then, the next generation,.back again, disgusted with the barrenness of fact, to
imaginationalism or idealism. Unless we conjoin the
two things together, there is no moral philosophy.
We must add to our observational knowledge of
what is, the notion of something as what should be.
Fact of itself suggests nothing for us to do except
the getting rid of actually pressing uneasiness. It
is our nature that, along with our sensation of what
ts, we should imagine or conceive what'zight be, and
this is what suggests the mass of our action. But
this imagination or conception might be altogether
wild: we must correct or direct it by itself, i.e. by a
-study of our own and of the general human consciousness, so far as these' expressions have meaning
and signify something possible: and we must correct
or direct it by the actual facts of human nature to
which it is, in action, to be applied. If this cannot
be done, there is no such thing as moral philosophy.
But there is such a thing as moral philosophy, beca.use, whether we have a book-science of this name.or not, men in life do and must guide their life by
views of this' kind: they not only look at what is
the fact, which would suggest no action, but they
think what would be well, or what they want: they
not only think what would be well or what they
want, which by itself might be vain castle-building,
but they consider whether their ideal is reasonable,
and, considering actual fact, is practicable. Moral
philosophy is the rationale of this: and surely the
consideration of the principle of that which we must
do is a reasonable and practical line of thought.
We may look upon the right as a sort of half-way
house between positive fact and the vaguely ideal:




364     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
and again, in another view of the same thing, we
may look upon imagination, or the forming of ideals;
as a mental process which connects, or brings into
relation, two sorts of fact, the lower and the higher,
physical or observational, and moral or intuitive.
Feelings of   Our feelings of want and duty, and our imagining
want and.
of duty are this or that as what we want or what we should do,
attsive d in accordance with these feelings,. re of themselves
factsbe- fact in'our nature, and, like all other fact, are inyondthem.
dicative of fact beyond them.  As I said on a former
occasion, our feelings of desire are more or less indicative of the fact of want: our feelings of duty are
more or less indicative of the fact.of a task or work
appropriate to us and belonging to us. To find what
is the want we must examine our feelings of desire,
which are irregular, shifting, capricious, but in respect of which, by comparison of different times, of
corresponding feelings of others,- &c., we can approximate to something fixed and stable. To find
what is the work or task, we must examine in the
samne manner our feelings of duty: like the want,
they are vague and irregular; but not all chance, not
all caprice.
Thesefeel-   The examination of our feelings of want and of
ings are recorded in duty, and the examination of human nature, or the
the institutions of experience of human nature, are to a certain extent
society.  the same thing.  Men, as they have come together
in society, have expressed their common feelings of
want and of duty in the customs which have established themselves, and the earlier and simpler laws
which have been formed, previous to the existence
of what we might call a legislative consciousness,
or a distinct and deliberate thought of the general
advantage. When we speak of'the facts of human
nature', we must at least imply all this. By'man'
we must at least mean not savage man, but man in




TO HIGYHER AND LOWER FACT.          365
society.  How far, by'man', we should mean what
we call highly civilized man, as distinct from man in
simpler society, we will. see another time.
Imagination transcends lower fact, and presents
to us the good and right as what should be, without
however losing sight of lower fact: the conception of
higher fact controls and fixes- imagination, and gives
us the notion of the right and fit, as distinguished
from the vaguely and generally good.
We should not have formed ideals for our action The dispo.
sition to
at all'unless it had -been our nature (in this respect formideals
differing from the nature of the inferior animals) to is a fact of
do so: and our nature thus is a part of the generalture,asthe
superiorinature in virtue of which the ideals present them- ty of one
selves to us as something good and desirable.  If all tio to ano
were hap-hazard, neither should we have a nature to thefis a
=  -                               fact of
think one thing better than another to be done, nor universal
nature.
would in fact any one thing be better than another.
The formation then of moral ideals, is the putting Informing
together observed lower fact with supposed higher ideas we
fact in some kind of way. The way may be very  ute tovarious.  And the fact on each side.may be very higherand
lower fact.
various also; onr the one side there may be scarcely
anything, on the other side there may be very much:
on this depends the relative amount, in the view
taken, of positivism and idealism: but if it is in any
way practical, i. e. applicable to action and suggestive
of it, it must really involve both.
The state of mind also in regard of the supposed This is
higher fact may be various, in the manner which I rioeus
have indicated: it may be something which we PoorPby
imagine only (without thinking it therefore to be different
despised), it may be something which we may be- ytems.
lieve, it may be something which we think we
perceive with the inner eye, an actually objective,
though. unseen, universe.




366     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
This will be best understood by our comparing
together the most complete form of positivism, and
the most complete form of idealism or anti-positivism,
as we know them in actual human thought.
Positivism    M. Comte, in calling his system positivism, has
takes the.
lowerfact evidently intended to exclude, in the most complete
and converts that manner possible, all consideration of anything as
into its  what mnight be. Experience, past and present, shows
ideal.                           p
us what has been and is. We have now, as to human
nature, gone through a tolerably long period of this
experience: the sum of it may be expressed thus,
that as time advances, man increases his material
comforts, enlarges his physical knowledge, and changes
his manner of thinking: M. Comte considers that he
has himself discovered the law of these changes; and
also that he has found that mall, in some portions of
the earth, has come in substance to the end of the
series of change, or to a permanent state.  Here
then, he says, in this final manner of human thinking, we have given to us, in the first place, a fact of
observation (what I have called the lower fact): this
is what we are, what man is, what takes place, what
we do and cannot help doing: it is the actual or
positive. And- then, in the second place, we can
have no other idea of anything as what we should
be, what man should be, what should take place,
what we should do, as beings who direct our own
action, not mere natural agents who cannot help
doing what they do,-than this idea of what we, the
longest-experienced among mankind, are.  Consequently, this which we are, is what we should with
the greatest urgency try to be: we should invest this
actual with the characters of the ideal: -what we do
and must do, think and must think, we should do as
what wve should do, think as what we should think:
keep the notion of right, but invest the fact with it.




TO HIGHER AND LOWEPR FACT.         367
Here we have, first, an amplification to the utmost
extent possible, of the lower or observational fact,
the assumption that'human nature,' or man in the'abstract, is nothing more than the man of our present experience; and, next, a hesitating admission of
higher fact to a limited extent, allowing, for instance,
that there is a way in which individuals ought (for
whatever reason) to be educated or to think, or,
again, that the course which collective man in his
experience does take is the course which, for whatever reason, he ought to have taken; and then giving
back to us civilized human nature, with its supposed
positivist manner of thinking, as an ideal to which
we should. conform ourselves.
Exactly of an opposite nature to this are the Idealism
subordivarious highly developed idealisms, whether they nates the
are religious or simply moral.                  lower fact.
They may be, as I have said, of imagination, belief, or supposed internal, but actual, perception.
The first of these are the pure, or commonly
understood, idealisms; as that of Rousseau, who
considered that ever since man had left a primoeval
savage state he had been, not advancing, but drifting;
not developing, but misgrowing; that he ought indeed in the beginning to have formed for himself
an ideal of improvement, as we may form one now,
but an ideal which should have preserved and developed, instead of destroying, his- noble earlier
virtues.
The man who thinks thus may be said to see, or In idealist
think he sees, in the lower fact of the observed ~"neep- 
savage state, higher fact in the form of what he con- ohegressl
siders possibilities of improvement and tendencies to has the
development.  His idealism consists in considering imaginathat these are the parts of human nature whichtion.
ought to be cultivated and developed, human nature




3.68    ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
of itself being very liable to misdevelopment. And
with him lit is the higher fact, the imagined or
half-seen, vague as it is, which is the fact of real
importance.
Or, again, there is the idealism of those, who,
feeling strongly how little man, civilized and advanced in knowledge as he is, can be taken to represent or be a type of what man ought to be, yet
recognize in it an advance on barbarism, and a step,
or many steps, towards an ideal, but possible, perfection. This imagined perfection is more or less
suggested by what man has done for himself: in so
far as there is such suggestion, lower or observed
fact is assumed under higher. Between views of
this kind and the last, there may be an infinite gradation; and there may be any degree of relation
between views of this kind and religious views.
The state of mind which I have last alluded to is
that in which, while we are aware that we are only
imagining what might be, we still feel that, in doing
this, we are not idly dreaming, but that we and
others might so act that our imaginations might be
realized, and that it would be a glorious thing if
they were so.
In regard    The next state of mind is that which I have called
theo dU,'belief.' It is soberer, but firmer than the preceding,
forthof lying nearer to our will and active powers.  It is
belief.  imagination with very. little of picture, very little of
distinct conception, but with a persuasion and conviction, less animating and stimulating than the
other, but more firm and steadily operative.
As an example of what I mean by belief we may
take duty. Duty is an ideal which we do. not
imaginatively luxuriate in, as in thoughts of the
perfection of human nature, bult in which we believe.
It supposes a fact, but not necessarily an even




TO HIGHER AND LOWTER FACT.            369
internally perceivable fact.  The feeling of duty, in
reference to our action, corresponds to the thought,
in reference to our intellect, which makes us really
reasonable beings; it is, in a manner, our moral consciousness.
I will stop here for a moment, to point out the Application of the
intellectual reference with which I use the words terms be-'imagination,''belief,' and the others.              imaginOur knowledgel is of two kinds: acquaintance tio ie cthe
intellecwith things; and knowledge about them, or of their tual
properties.  The  former arises  from  the  super- Two ekin
addition of consciousness to a commtinication, Ofof knowledge, by
whatever sort, between our frame and the things; communication and
this  is  cognoscentia,  connaissance.  The latter is by
thought about the things, with the superaddition, thought.
whencesoever derived, of the notion that the thought
is right: this is scientia, suaotri.
The fact of the communication between our frame Manner in
which
and what we call external nature, the fact, i.e. of ex- commUniperience, becomes knowledge in virtue of attention atio progiven by us to it; consciousness means the capacity,l:ow.
of such attention.  For the stone which we touch to
touch us in the sarme sense in which we touch it,
there is required in it fibres, sensitive of pleasure
and pain in the contact, like our nerves, and a
reacting will. For the tree which we see to see the
sun, from  which it receives the light, in the same
way as we, to whom it transmits the light, see it,
there would be required a high concentration of the
(already in some degree existent)  expansive and
shrinking sensitiveness to internal chemical change
produced.by light, together with the rudiments of
a will which might fix attention on it, and also
1 Cf. ch. v. and Exploratio, p. 60.
G.                                   -   24




370     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
some relation between the movements produced and
the spatial circumstances of the sun. I have just
made this passing allusion to indicate roughly the
relation between thefact of experience as communication, and the result of experience with attention to
it in our perceptional knowledge.
Concurrently with the communication between
our frame and the external world, there is going on
thought in our spiritual, unspatial, being; time being
the link of union between the two. We may follow
knowledge, as I have said, along either of the paths,
only that we cannot blend them.  But we do know
in the two ways; some things especially in the one
way, some in the other.
Belief is    The word'believe' is a word transferred in the
originally
a moral first instance from a moral to an intellectual applitermtrans- cation: it signifies to give credit to the word of a
ferred to
the iel. person, to yield our judgment to his, or make our
lectual  p                              h
sphere. judgment follow his. Belief is knowledge, which as
knowledge, is illegitimate; though it may be accompanied by conviction as strong, and lead to action as
vigorous as if it were legitimate.
It denotes   The completeness of the knowledge of experience
incompletescien- or perception depends upon the completeness, and
agination more especially upon the variety, of the communidenotesin. cation, in order that possible illusion in one manner
complete
cognoscen- may be corrected in another.  Where the communication is imperfect, it is impossible for us to be
certain between perception and imagination.  A
knowledge in the way of scientia, or knowing about
things, if it be more or less incomplete in a manner
analogical to the above, is what I call a belief. So
long as the word'belief' retains any signification
separate from that of knowledge, then, though the
certainty may be complete, the mind is always
more or less in an expectant or prospective position.




TO HIGEHER AND LOWER FACT.           371
We have got in a short, compendious, cross-cut way,
knowledge to which properly belonged a different way.
As I am using the term'belief' in the present In this
chapter it is re-applied from intellectual relations to h teerrms
moral ones.  I mean it to apply to judgtentts which,,ie-Opwe are persuaded we make with grounds, and which moral
judgments
we act upon, though they are not of a nature to be and condemonstrated; in the same way as by'imagination' ceptious.
(in the narrower sense as distinguished from belief)
I mean conceptions which we are persuaded are not
idle and worthless, though they are not matters of
our experience. The mass of our conduct which is
determined by what I have called'principle' is based
upon such belief.
In- reality, our two manners of knowledge each Either
kind of
stand in a relation of illegitimacy, or cross-cut way, knowledge
to the other.  Demonstrative proof is the jumnping      a tisi  factory by
over an infinite mass of possible experience: ex- itself.
hibitory or experimental proof is the supersession of
argument by interrogation of nature.
In either case, according to the frame of ourEither inmind, we are more or less disposed to say for our-other as itse
selves, Well, I grant it is so, but still, I want to ow, foun~ dation.
know how it comes to pass that it is so.  This we
may say equally in regard of our belief of the fortyseventh proposition of Euclid's first book, and in
regard of our belief that acids will turn certain
liquids red, and alkalies blue. In fact, though we
can conceive knowledge in one only of its two.
manners at a timnte, yet, whichever way we conceive
it, the other kind of knowledge lies at the base of
that which is present to our minds, as a great
co-foundation stone, and a necessary condition;
~though on the view we then take, insoluble and
undevelopable.
If we take the view, e. g. that all actual know24-2




372     ON THE IRELATION OF THE IDEALS
Thus sci- ledge is experience, i. e. that past and existing
entiaef, as human knowledge is the sum  (variously shortened
involvedin for convenient expression) of all the noted (or atcognoscen-                                          (
tia;cog- tended-to) communication  which  has ever taken
noscentia,
as inward place between  the human organization  and  the
sight, in external universe, then the other view of knowledge
scientia.
as thought, will lie as a co-foundation at the base of
this in the shape of belief in the universe, or a notion
of the unity of things, which is what causes the
co-ordination of our fragmentary experiences, and
what leads, in fact, to the noting of them., If, on the
other hand, we take the view that knowledge is
correct thought, there lies at the base of it, in a
osimilar manner, what I have called'inward perception.'  Knowledge, as correct thought, is all
expressible in propositions: the propositions (i.e.
their meaning) being the same for all persons, it
is transferable from one to another, and might exist
in the propositions, as the plant in the seed, during
an interval in which all consciousness or knowingness
might conceivably cease and be non-existent. In this
way of viewing knowledge, the (logical) subject of'knowledge is a supposition only, and all the matter
of knowledge is the amount of the different things
which may be thought about it.  But as experience
iin the former case requires belief as its co-foundation
or condition, so in this case does thought require as
its co-foundation or condition, what I have called
inward sight.  We do not individually know  the
proposition in question till we have an inward sight
of it; just as, in the other ease, the particular experience becomes to us knowledge by being accepted
as a part of the great universe, in which we believe,
and distinguished from the rest of it.
tAnlogous  All  this  is  intellectual.  That  which  corto these
are the be- responds, in our thought of the moral universe, to




TO IIGHER AND LOWER FACT.          373
the two above kinds of fundamental consciousness lief in the
moral law,
in our thought of the intellectual, is belief or inward the inward
sight according to the nature of it. The belief that highl of
law or order, as opposed to chaos and randomness, Govermust apply not only to the particulars of things, as
we see it does, but to the entire of being, in which
case it becomes meaning and reason, as distinguished
from insignificance and purposelessness,-this belief
seems to me to play the same part in the fragmentary
and incohesive mass of circumstance or occasion for
action, which we call life or the moral universe, as it
does in the intellectual universe.  No experience
could give us this belief, but it seems to me that,
intellectually, we could not think for a moment,
without it: all our actual knowledge might be
considered as the development of our one first
view, which could not have been what it was unless everything had been what it was, the universe
on its side and we on ours,'and from which, therefore,
everything afterwards known was, in its nature, deducible: everything was given in that. In the same
way, moral consciousness, conscience, or duty, is the
imaginative feeling of ourselves as belonging to a
moral universe or entirety, with its constitution,
reason, and purpose: it is a self-divided feeling of
greatness and littleness, the feeling of a contrast
between the universe, which we can think of and
act as belonging to, and a special individuality and
frame which bounds our power. It is imagination,
as quite beyond experience: it is belief, as not of
itself expatiative, not a separate object of contemplation, but involved in consciousness, and going
directly to action. If we endure, or act, as seeing
an Invisible Being, then belief passes into what I
have called inward sight: if we act upon an abstract
law, with a thorough conviction that what we are




37.4    ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
doing is reasonable, there is nothing of course to see,
even inwardly or imaginatively, but that which moves
the will under these circumstances is what I mean
by belief, as distinguished from the inward vision.
Imagina-    The application of the unseen, believed in or
tion leads
to belief, supposed to be inwardly seen, to the actually seen
belinwaef of life, is morality, often undistinguishable from
Vision.  religion, as in its first entrance into literature in the
Hebrew Scriptures, and again, in a more philosophical
form, in Plato and the Stoics.  I shall at times use
the term'belief' in reference to all the unseen; belief
being in this case the more general term, and the
inwardly seen being believed in as well. And both
the inwardly seen and the believed are imagined' as
well: we should not be religious without an imagination; but religion is imagination justifying itself
and leading on to belief, and belief justifying itself
and leading on to inward vision.
Difference  Different idealists, whether philosophers or remoligtsas ligious teachers, even under the same nominal system
to ete  e- of morals or religion, have differed greatly in the
whichthey degree in which they have accepted more or less of
ceptedlow-the actual development of human society, and core fact.  respondingly have attempted less or more to apply
the unseen or ideal to the correction and elevation
of it.
I question whether the different ways in which
different teachers and reformers have endeavoured
to put together the actual and the ideal (or, which
is the same thing, to form the true ideal for action
by putting together the observed and the felt or
believed) have ever been estimated in fair comparison,
or indeed whether they ever can be.
Religious teachers differ from moral philosophers
in considering that they have given to them  in a
special way, viz. by revelation, the particulars of the




TO HIGHER AND LOWER FACT.           375
ideal which is to be the aim, or rule, of action.
They thus speak with assumed authority; rightly
assumed, in so far as the foundations upon which
the religion or revelation rests commend themselves
as valid.
Independently of religious authority, the ideal
by which moral philosophy must endeavour to direct,
correct, improve, elevate,' and reform the actual, must
be derived from human feeling.  This feeling exists
to some degree in all; to a great degree in some.
The words of the idealist ever are, If all were what
some are, what would the, world be! And why
should they not be? To which the actualist ever
answers, The moral world, in substance, is given by
human constitution and circumstance: granted that
the good are the aristocracy of the universe, you
could not have a world all aristocracy; badness or
inferiority on the part of some is a condition of goodness or superiority on the part of others;; as the
world is, there is unhappily work for the bad in it
as well as for the good; or, not to put the matter
coarsely and exaggeratedly, the exigencies and temptations of actual life are such that we must be satisfied, morally, with little.
The history, thus, of moral effort to elevate and Idealists
have not
improve human life has always presented a mass of alwayssuf.
noble inconsistency, not unfrequently lending itself fi tlyd
as an object to satire and ridicule.              the goodThe good feeling has always- been more or less at bodied in
the actual
work even in what man, independent of special effort, state of
has done for himself; and constantly this simpler society.
and more general human improvement has justified
itself, and with reason, against the more special
efforts of moral reformers.  Duty has made itself
felt in its general character of the notion of restraint
of our passion and wilfulness, of a something incum



376     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
bent upon us to do or to avoid, and in its particular
character of the notion of services to be rendered to
particular persons concerned in life with us.  Societies have been formed with these feelings strongly
predominant, tempering, but yet leaving still in
vigorous energy, man's natural activity and enterprise, his feeling of want and power, and the impulse
to supply the one and to exercise the other. Then
comes in the moral idealist, and mourns, as well he
may, that there is so little of elevated motive, so
much of effort after what is not worth effort, so little
thought of what is most worth thinking of.  But
after all, when we are thinking what men might be
in the one direction, it is but fair to think what they
might be in the other.  The present ordinary condition of civilized hluman nature represents what, from
the point of view of a savage, must be a very lofty
ideal. In almost all crises of effort after moral reform,
certain portions of good in the actual have had
to stand, or try to stand, against certain portions of
bad, mistaken for good, in the ideal. And not unfirequently one result of such contests or crises has
been to give a momentary glimpse of the possible
depths of evil into which man may plunge, when the
web he had spun for himself of custom and law has
been temporarily broken.
The more   In a general way, a moral system, to have really
siyflumnti practical influence, must take a great deal both of
haveusu- the lower fact and of the higher to put together,
ally cornbined   and, as a rule, the more it takes of the one, the more
value for
actual  it will attempt to take of the other.
good thi  The systems which try to supersede the higher
enthusiasmfor fact, or the ideal, by the lower fact, or experience,
ideal.
are the various forms of what I have called positivism. On these what I shall say now is only this,
that they cannot be really true to themselves or to




TO HIGHER AND LOWER FACT.         377
experience.  They either, misrepresent experience
and the real fact, or they unconsciously and unauthorizedly introduce the ideal, while in profession
disclaiming it.  The former of these is the proceeding of the Epicurean positivism, the latter of
the Comtian: though in fact, each of them  does
both.
The systems which make no account of the lower
fact, except to condemn it, in their zeal for the
higher, are the various forms of highly idealist, ascetic and mystical morality, involved very frequently
in systems of religion. On these also I will say
nothing just now.
But in general, as I have said, the more influential systems of morality and religion have sought to
unite the proper attention to both kinds of fact. In
the Stoic.system there was very much of exaggeration and mistake, and so there has been in various
developments of the Christian: but the Stoic system
in the old times, and the Christian in later, while
they gave greater prominence than other systems to
the ideal or unseen,. did also more than any others to
inspire interest in and regard for actual human
society.  Side by side with the lofty and often
exaggerated morality of the Stoic wise mnan, and
with the Christian denunciations of the world, there
were combined, in the one case, reverence for law,
respect for active and public life, value for sociality,
and in the other case, most detailed and careful
recommendation of common duties, without any
notion of these being superseded by something
higher.                                          The ideal
I will now  proceed to  look at the relation isieOtn
between moral imagination and fact from a different link betweenlow.
point of view, and to explain what I meant some er and
time since by Saying, thigher
time since by saying, that the moral imagination fact.




378     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
is a medium to us between the lower and higher
fact.
There are three elements of moral consideration:
the faciendum  or ideal; the lower fact, or human
condition and human feeling; and the higher fact,
(assuming there to be such) i.e. the wider state of
things which is the basis of the relation between the
first of these elements and the second, or, in other
words, which under the circumstances of the second,
makes the first what it is, the thing to be done.
Thehigher   In practical moral philosophy the object aimed
fact is a
fdactista  at is the finding out of the particulars of the first of
object of these from the general notion which we form of it
speculativeethics, united with an examination of the second.  In this
but of
practical general notion is involved to a certain extent the
frlYsitso third element, the recognition of the higher fact;
involved but this higher speculation is not what, in practical
in the
ideal.   moral philosophy, we follow out.  We look at the
ideal in regard of its appllication. And, in connexion
with this application, we enter into as detailed an
~examination as we please of the condition and feelings of man; examine what makes his happiness,
what are his natural feelings about virtue or the
ideal, how he himself, in his institutions, follows out
the notion of ideal duty, and much besides.
How this    Moral philosophy has been divided by some into
bheariin two portions, the theory of moral sentiments, and
sion of  the criterion of morality: the division is hardly
ethics into
theory of sufficient for the full extent of the subject.  The
sentiments,  former, or moral psychology, is the examination of
rind ortef an important portion of feeling: the second is one
morality. way of expressing what I have called the purpose of
practical moral philosophy. We might in any case
add to these two a third portion, the theory of moral
obligation: this would be really, an examination of
the relation of the first of the elements to the third,




TO HIGHER AND LOWER FACT.           379
or more accurately, considering how I described
the third element, an examination of that element
itself.
In whatever way we put it, we cannot study
moral philosophy without having suggested to us
not only its practical, but its speculative interest, in
regard of what I have called the higher fact, i. e. the
(supposed) moral position of man in reference to the
unseen.
Is it because there is something which we ought
to do that we imagine, believe, or think we see, that
there is; and if so, what is there, beyond our own
being and experience, which makes it thus proper
for us or incumbent upon us?  Do we owe it to
anybody?
The consideration of this higher fact belongs to
speculative philosophy, if we consider it only speculatively; to a sort of transcendental moral philosophy,
if we consider it practically; and it constitutes
natural religion if, in our practical consideration it
brings, or seems to bring us into association with
higher moral beings, or one such being.
I mentioned the distinction between those who Different
would consider moral imaginations only dreams, and thw possi-to
those who would consider them  at least valuable bility of
knowing
imaginations. To the former of course, all that I the higher
have called'higher fact'is simply chimerical.  The
state of mind of the latter I have described as either
imagination (with value), or belief, or supposed perception,-intuition.
Using the word imagination for all these latter
states, we may have the following views about the
facts imagined: that they indicate a reality, but that
this reality is either unseizable, or is very limited, or
has mingled with it an element of deceptiveness and
mnisleadingness.




380      ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
And of this higher fact in relation to the lower
fact we may have the following views; that it is less
true to us than knowledge of experience; that it is
more true to us; that it is equally and similarly
true to  us; that it is equally and similarly  untrue.
Of the three views in the former paragraph I
consider the correct one to be a mixture of the first
and the second: of the four views in the latter paragraph, a mixture.(if we can suppose such a mixture)
of the second and the third.
WVhat I mean by this will perhaps appear as I
proceed to explain how, as it seems to me, our knowledge of the higher fact is homogeneous with our
knowledge of the lower, though it is small in quantity, and very vague.  Though suchfact as is known
may have, and must have, a wide margin of imagination; still it is not self-contradictory, and not of
such a kind that from  the nature of it, we shall
be wrong in exercising any judgment about itl.
Philoso-    I am  here upon a very different philosophical
phical   question, which I shall only just touch, but which I
regard to do not like to avoid, as a part of it concerns moral
the Absolute and  philosophy.  I shall put it most simply perhaps by
them- i stating what appears to me an error; viz. the supposelves. sition that there is any sense or meaning in speaking,
or even thinking, of'things in themselves' which
either, owing to the nature of our understanding,
appear to us as things other than this, or as to
which, what becomes known to us is only their
relation with other things, equally unknown also.
This is the general philosophical error: the moral
case of it is, the supposition that there is any
I Compare with what follows, the fuller discussion in the Exploratio,
pp. 60-67, and generally the chapters on Sir -W. -Hamlilton; also the
Appendix on Relativism and Regulativism at the end of this volume. ED,




TO HIGHER AND LOWER FACT.         381
meaning in speaking of an absolute morality, for
which we men, in virtue of -our particular constitution, are obliged to take as morality something other
and different.
What I consider to be the error may be put in
other words thus: those philosophers, from  Kant
downwards, who have most strongly taught that we
cannot see things in themsel.ves, or know absolute
morality, have been at the same time the philosophers who have most strongly given the impression
that there is meaning in such an expression as'things in thenmselves,' and again that there is, or
might be, a so-called absolute to be known,  They
have given an altogether false force to the notion of
our knowledge as relative. The consequence is, that.
they have led to a confusion in the minds of many
between the notions of the.absolute and the trzue.
More or less unconsciously, they have taken a pleasure in tantalizing or rebuffing the human intelligence: they have talked so much about the absolute
as to fill our minds with the notion that it is
something which might be, something which is
-worth knowing, and then they tell us that we can
never know it.
What appears to me is, that the speaking in this The assermanner of the things in themselves or the absolute, ticiahot
as if they represented the highest truth, the Platonic k     in
To OvTcoW o', that after which is all the yearn- thelvs-,
ing of our intelligence,-is an entire philosophical eithernonsensical or
misconception.  To say that we cannot know things untrue:
in themselves or the absolute, seems to me either
false, or else to be like saying that we cannot know
something entirely in alio genere from knowledge,
like the saying we cannot see a sound, or hear a
colour. But the.feeling of the people who are told
that they cannot know the absolute is that the




382     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
highest knowledge, that which their minds yearn
after, is thus denied to them; as if there were something in their nature forbidding them, in generle, to
attain to the highest and worthiest truth.  And so
by thorough misapplication, we are told that this is
humbling to our nature.
I have here given the impression produced: what
the philosophers themselves have thought about it is
another thing, for almost every utterance of a philosopher who has tried to pierce deep into things, and
give conscientiously all he thinks, has been a text the
meaning of which has afterwards to be fought about.
Kant, and others after him, may have meant in
substance what I have said here; but the effect of
Kant's proclamation of the unattainability of transcendental knowledge was to excite an effort after the
attainment of it such as there has not perhaps been
since Plato. Nobody would have made this effort
if they had  not understood by what was thus
denied to them, not some mere illogical and contradictory notion, but the real yiew of things, the
crowning satisfaction of the thirst of knowledge.
I will very briefly explain the two senses which
I said might be given to the assertion that'things
in themselves are unknowable'; in one of which
senses I said that the assertion was untrue, in the
other that it was nonsensical. I will speak of the
latter first.
nonsensi-   The thing-in-itself may be identified with the
theingifth logical subject of a proposition: in this case it is
sef ils a  merely an unmeaning notion to which we are led by
cal entity: our terms, a metaphysical surd or impossible quantity.  If we define or describe knowledge to be
knowledge about things, of their properties or predicates, as is done in logic, then of course in talking
of knowledge of the things, as distinguished from




TO HIGHER AND LOWER FACT.         383
knowledge of their properties, we are using terms
simply without meaning: in knowing all the properties of things we have exhausted the contents of the
notion'knowledge': there are no things to know
further:'thing' is only a word we use for convenience: thing and property counter-define each
other: a thing is what has properties, as a property
is what belongs to a thing. We might as well talk
of knowing properties in themselves without things,
as things in themselves without properties; of predicating without a subject, as of knowing a subject
without a predicate.
Our inability to know things in this sense, as untrue, if
contrasted with their properties, is quite distinct it meaS,
from our inability to know things in the second toialeture
sense to which I alluded, our inability, that is, to thing.
know them in their reality, in that which most
makes them what they are. The former is a logical
deception of view: the latter is the ultimate object
of all learning, though it is an object which we can
but very imperfectly attain. It is this latter in
regard of which I said it was untrue that we could
not know things in themselves. This will perhaps
appear from the following.
There are three elements, or pa~rties, if I might Thirdventure to call them so, which may enter into our pretyoor
consideration when we are thinking what know- nal, view
of knowledge is: there is the universe or object of know-ledge.
ledge: there is ourself as knowing, the subject of
knowledge: and there is ourself as knowing that we
know, or observing the phenomenon of knowledge,
of which phenomenon we, the subject, make one
constituent part, and the object the other. We, in
our second or observing self, watch ourselves knowing
exactly in the same way as we might, supposing we
had power of observing, as to some degree we have,




384     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
study the chemical properties of the universe which
come into communication with our senses. In looking
therefore at knowledge as a fact or phenomenon, the
best supposition which we can make is that of a third
party, or spectator, capable of piercing into all our
consciousness, at the same time that he is capable
also of piercing into every thing in the object which
call possibly come into relation with our consciousness.  Knowledge is before his sight or intelligence
as a fact or phenomenon, a relation between a subject
and an object.
It is only    And what is knowledge as such a phenomenon?
on this
view that   It is a communication or, more correctly, several:wecan re- concurrent communications between certain things
communi- on the one side and certain things on the other: a
cation between   communication which may possibly be spatial and
things on
one side, mechanical, but which we will call chemical, between
thein other certain pleasure-and-pain-feeling nerves of our body,
and certain properties of what is beyond our body,
the result of which communication we call, on our
part, taste, smell, perception of colour, &c.: a communication, measurably spatial and mechanical, between our will, setting in action certain moving nerves
of our body, and certain other properties of our body
and of what is beyond our body, which properties we
describe as resistance, figure, distance, &c.: and
finally a communication between somethzing, whatever
it is,. in the object which in other particulars communicates with us as above, and our intelligence; the
result of which communication is that we talk of the
object as. a thing, with a unity of its own, in the
same way as we are aware of a unity of our own, and
that knowledge, as a phenomenon, is not a disorderly
hotch-potch of tastes, colours, pleasures, pains, efforts,
resistances, all wildly jumbled together. To what
extent the observer, piercing to the depth of our




TO HIGHER AND LOWER FACT.         3 8 5
consciousness on the one side, and understanding
everything which is to be understood about the
reality of the things on the other side, would be
able to follow, and to pronounce as real, the communication between the fragrant, coloured, figured,
distant thing, and our intellect with its apparatus of
nostrils, retina, eye-muscles and limbs, I will not
any further consider just now.
Such is knowledge looked at as a phenomenon
by a supposed third party, or by ourselves as such a
third party, scrutinizing our knowing selves.
But things on the one side, mind on the other,
belong entirely to this phenomenal or third-party
view: and I think it will be found that all the
confusion about there being, or possibly being, things
in themselves which we do not see, arises from our
confusing together in our minds two views which
are logically incoherent, that of ourselves as knowing,
and that of ourselves (or a third party) looking at
knowledge.
If we remove the the supposition of the third party,
or of ourselves as a third party, and consider ourselves as single beings, as only knowing, we come to
those two views of knowledge which I have mentioned before, of which we may take either, but
cannot at the same time take both: either of which
leaves indeed something insoluble, but of a different
nature from that which I am here speaking of.
In the phenomenal or third-party view, the thing The highis whatever on the objective side communicates with est Partof
what there is on the subjective: we may, if we like of. coniomuit, describe the supposed substance, or nucleus, of maybe
the thing as that of which I spoke last, that which to'constid
communicates with the intelligence; what some phi- tte theo
essence of
losophers would have called the idea or the form ofthething.
it; that which, if we had had to make the thing,
G.                                   25




386     ON THE RELATION OF THE IDEALS
would have been first and principally in our mind
about it; its meaning, reason, purpose, in relation to
other things. This we should consider as, in a manner, generative of the other parts of the thing, i.e. of
its qualities, in so far as these latter are determined
to be what they are by this being what it is: at the
same time these qualities are of a different nature
from that which thus causes them: they communicate with us, we know them, in a different manner.
We know them by what the third party could
distinctly make out as a special organization, similar in many respects to themselves, adapted to the
communication with them, viz. our moveable and
sensitive body.
Now this supposed soul of the thing, as I will for
a moment call it, which we communicate with by
our intelligence, this which makes it a thing, or one,
might very fairly be called the thing in itself, the
absolute or real thing, if we like to use that expression: and if we do call it thus, there is much reason
in saying that we do not really know it, and with
our present intelligence cannot know it; though it is
what all our intellectual yearning, all our desire
after knowledge, aims at knowing; but our knowledge still stops short of this: we feel and handle by
our sensive powers of different kinds the qualities of
the thing, but the thing itself is only something
which our mind leads us to imagine or suppose: we
come to know all sorts of relations between the
thing and other things, and between the thing and
ourselves, but we cannot, from comparison of these
relations, get at the thing absolutely and singly.
[Let it be kept in mind that in all this there are two
we's, the knowing and the observing self.]
w\e cannot   This, I suppose, is the notion of the knowledge
get "t Com- of the reality or absolute being of things as a higher




TO HIGHER AND LOWER FACT.          387
knowledge, as the knowledge of the real truth, or knowthat which our minds thirst after.  The real know-t  ge of
ledge, in this view, is the communication of our
mind, or pure intelligence, with that in the things
with which our mind as such can communicate,
viz. the mind embodied in them, their meaning,
reason, purpose: to know things, in this view, is to
be able, so far as the mind itself is concerned,
synthetically to construct them; and in order to
this we must begin with what they are for, the
scheme, plan, design of them., the old Platonic $eE',
which, as the last thing which we get to in analysis,
the first which in construction we start with, may
fairly be called the thing in itself or the thing absolutely. When man is spoken of as a speculative
being, it is constantly forgotten that his speculativeness goes hand in hand with his constructiveness.
This communication of subjective mind with But we
mind objective, or mind in things, which is the real lyan
knowledge, is something, in Aristotle's phrase, rather imate towards it by
EVKTOV, to be wished for or yearned after, than some- every increase of
thing which can be attained; but there is nothing in knowthe nature of things to hinder its attainment: it is ledge
about the
what we may conceive a continual approximation thing.
towards: it is something which the communication
between our motive and sensive powers and the
qualities of things leads us towards, not something
which it diverts us from: nor is there any reason
why we should hesitate to admit the suggestions of
such communication except where it is misapplied
and taken for what it is not.
25 —2




CHAPTER  XVI.
ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.
MORAL philosophy is the exhibiting by human
nature to itself of the ideal of what it ought to be
and do, with the view of men's raising their own
minds towards this, and also of the better among
them acting upon the worse.
Practical religion is the exhibiting the above
ideal to human nature from some authoritative external source, accompanied by such additional stimulus as may arise from whatever is revealed as to
the facts of the moral universe to which we belong.
Man       In one point of view it might be said, that the
own nake s nature of man is to have no nature; the same thing
ture.   might be variously expressed in other words, less
pointedly or rudely, by saying, that man makes his.own nature, or makes himself what he pleases, or
that his nature is to be educable or trainable, and
in other ways.
A view of this kind is assumed, to a certain
extent, whenever we talk of man, as most philosophers have done, as a moral being; or when, as I
have done, we speak in a general way of his forming
ideals of what he will be and do, &c.: his doing this
would be of no consequence to himself or to any one,
unless he was, more or less, master of himself as to
what he would be and do, not having his future life
and action given him in his nature.




ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.   389
When Aristotle says that man, as man, has a criticism
special JcperT5 or excellence, as each animal has his toftAisexcellence, a horse for instance, swiftness; and then count of
the gpyov
that, man's speciality or differentia being reason, of man.
man's special excellence or cperr' must consist in the
exercise of his reason, he says, in fact, this: for
reason  as such is of no particular nature.  In
comparing however, the nature of man with the
nature of animals, there is this difference to be
observed: the horse confines himself to his special
excellence of swiftness, because, being destitute of
reason, he has no notion of any other excellence; in
fact, the cause of his special excellence is the absence
of concentrated consciousness or reason; whereas man
has the prerogative or misfortune to be able and to
be self-impelled to think and choose what he will be
and do. Man, therefore, unlike the animals, has two
alternative courses before him in the exercise of his
special faculty of reason.' He may either, in spite of
Aristotle, make himself something quite different from
his neighbours, and from the mass of men, and from
what his more immediate impulses suggest to him:
or, if he chooses to examine himself as an animal
living on earth, in order to judge by this examination what he can do well (as a horse, if he had
momentary reason, might know by his form that he
would run well), and then to do this as his special
excellence,-he will be making what he considers his
actual nature his rule and choice in a deliberate
manner, peculiar to himself.                       Our ideal
No doubt with regard to a large part of ourof human
nature
action, it is foolish to talk of not acting according to must be
this our actual nature, because as a matter of course by a know.
we must and do act so.  But when we act reflect- ledge of
the actual
ively and criticize our actions then comes in the developdoubleness which I have spokent of
doubleness which I have Spoken of. We are in the, m.




390   ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.
position, in regard to our own generic nature, both
of the horse and the horse's master at once. We
want something, and we use the horse for it. We
do not ride and drive the horse in the first instance
because it is his nature to gallop and draw, but
because we want something, and we mix our thought
of this want with a knowledge of his nature, and proceed to the satisfaction of our want by the way of his
nature and powers. Let us suppose ourselves in an
entirely savage condition, without the slightest knowledge of the actual present development of human
nature, but that it was given us to be exceptionally
minded, to form (on view of the miseries of our condition) an ideal, utopian but moral and reasonable,
of what man might be and how he might live: knowledge then of the manner in which man, as a fact,
has developed himself, would be to us like the knowledge of the nature of the horse to its'rider: we
should still retain our ideal as he would retain his
want, but we should modify the ideal, as he would
modify his want, by observation of the means of
attaining it; the ideal would still be the main incentive to action, the fact would be subordinate or incentive to the manner only. But in us reflective creaDifficul- tures, being and thinking, fact (or givenness) and
tiearisieng self-formation (or self-improvement), impulse (or disomplictae position) and principle (or self-criticism) are mingled
actual together in a complicated doubleness making it easy
with the
ideal.  for the unthinking to say about human nature anything that they please, and making it difficult, with
any amount of thought, to say anything about it
satisfactory. And there is added the difficult relation between individual, and what we may call
collective thought, or common judgment and custom.
It may be said that this complication is only
because we have not got the key or the clue, and




ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.  391
that the moment we have, all will simplify itself; as
Newton's thought of gravitation and a central force
put an end to the endless confusion of cycle and
epicycle, orb in orb in astronomy: and one key after
another has been proposed, the latest being the
principle of greatest happiness.
If, instead of the change from the Ptolemaic to Simplicity
the Newtonian system, the illustration had been s not ay
taken from the change from  the Linnean to' the characteristic of a
Natural system in botany, this might have suggested true
that simplicity is not the only consideration which theory.
should determine our preference for a theory professing to account for a complicated state of facts.
Superior to simplicity, as a presumption in favour of
any theory, is its application, without straining, to
all the facts, and the absence of any tendency in it
to restrict the view, or to cause the eyes to be shut
to any of them. Unless it has this element of value,
such a theory is merely artificial, and useful as it
may be for many purposes, still if considered to represent the entire of knowledge, or the most important knowledge about them, it degenerates into a
sort of quackery. In the advance of science of any
kind, such theories are not uncommon: and one important part of the advance of science consists often
in the return from them to the apparent complication,
as has been in a measure the case in regard of the
Linnsean system. A third element of value is, that in
the true theory, when we come to look at the apparent
simplification, we find it rather a shifting of the
complication: for nature, which to the animal view
consists simply of the things which are to be eaten,
drunk and avoided, and, to the thoughtless and uneducated view, of the things which concern employment, pleasures, and pains, becomes ever to the
more widely opened eye fuller and more complicated,




392   ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.
not morehomogeneous and simple. The wirrwairr of
the Newtonian or true view of the material universe,
without, so far as we know, a single fixed point,
everything turning round everything else, and the
connexion of this universal motion with chemical,
magnetic and other relations;-all this is a complication probably as fertile in knowledge and in truth, as
the mnost vaunted simplifications are sterile. And
much the same complication, it seems to me, must
be found in any true theory of human nature: such
a system as utilitarianism represents, in my view, a
merely artificial simplification, a shutting the eyes to
No moral all considerations except one; whereas what man is
system
can betrue forms only one side of a picture, of which what man
which fails       mgtb
to exhibit thinks he might be, and tries to be, forms the
thedouble- opposite side.
ness of
human     Whatever else we consider about man, we must
nature.
add to this-what constitutes indeed the practical
significance of our calling him a rational animal-that
he is an ideal-forming animal. Ideal-forming implies
a certain amount of dissatisfaction with, or non-acquiescence in, his actual nature: this of course must
go with a certain amount of acquiescence in it, or no
action could arise: for man to live simply as though
he were something which he is not, would be a
merely abortive existence.
The actual   If therefore we are looking at man as moral, if
moufstboea we mean at all to use such expressions as,'it is betto the  ter to do this than that,''this is what is right,' or
ideal as               d
well as the what should be done,' man is'progressive,''better
ideal tothe now than he was,' &c., we must look at the pre-suppositions which he makes, and the ideals which he
forms, as quite as important elements on one side of
what we are viewing, as the facts of man's actual
nature and history are on the other. We must not
say, the former are to be conformed to the latter:



ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.  393
so they are; but not so much as the latter are to be
conformed to the former. The conforming of the
ideals to the actual state in which they are to be
applied is a discipline or restraint of our imagination,
to keep it from mere dreaming or castle-building:
the conforming of the actual state to the ideal is the
very purpose of the practical philosophy or art.
The business of moral philosophy, as distinguished Moral phifrom religion which speaks with authority, is in the losoryp
first place to grasp with the inward hold, to view in both
-  5      ways.
with the inward eye, the ideal which we form of
something as what we ought to do, or ought to wish
for. At this stage of thought what we mean by
right, worthy, good is very vague to us, but still
the words mean something. The next stage is the
passing from this ideal to the actual; to the study
both of human condition and of human feeling, to
see from the former how the ideal may be applied,
to see from the latter, how others, like-constituted
with ourselves, look upon it. And as, if we want
to study a plant, we must examine it when fullgrown; so, if we want to study human nature, (so
to call human condition and feeling together,) we
must look at it developed, that is, in civilized society,
with an eye nevertheless to the history of the manner in which it has developed, because misdevelopment is possible, the particular plant which we are
studying might be a monster. The consideration of
the relations of men, that is, of their simplest interrelations, as of strength and weakness, previous
benefit or previous promise and its consequent indebtedness, and others similar, as well as of those relations which law or custom has instituted, but which
we could hardly imagine its failing to institute, as
family and property,-this consideration fills up the
outline of our ideal duty, and gives us the particulars




394   ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.
of it. The consideration also of human feeling, the
observation of the judgment of men in general as
to duty and the comparison of this with our own,
fixes and completes our notion of duty in the same
manner, as our observation that others see and hear
as we do helps to fix our intellectual notion of the
true and real. And the work of moral philosophy,
as a practical science, is then to aid the improvement
of human nature, individual and collective, by the
bringing into relief, and encouraging the action of,
this which is the good part, or ameliorative element,
of that nature. According as we choose to use
language, we may say that moral philosophy in some
form always exists, or we may say that moral philosophy is only an attempt to think systematically
about what man is always thinking of.
The ideal   Whatever stage of human development we take
is to a certain extent as best representing actual human nature, we cannot
embodied be entirely free from difficulty. We have no busiin the
actual  ness to assume that actual human -development
state*of
civilized carries, so to speak, its rightness and justification in
Society. itself, even supposing we have a sufficiently marked
single development to make our words significant.
But what we do is this. We, in view of our moral
philosophy, are thinking what human improvement
consists in, and how men may live in the best manner: and in this we are doing (i.e. thinking) the
same which, in the actual course of human development, the intelligent minds which have suggested,
animated, forwarded that development, have been
doing. For man's growth, as we are now speaking
of it, is not the unconscious growth of a plant: it
is a continuous self-improvement: and this is produced, with regard to the race, by the action of the
more thoughtful and better portion of it.
These minds may have been mistaken, and so may




ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.  395
we be; but when we are thinking out in particular
what it is best man should become, we may reasonably, to a certain extent, associate our judgment with
theirs, and conclude that, to this extent, what man
has become represents what it was best he should
become and what it was in his ideal nature to become.
In looking back thus on the past development of There is a
man we see that the ideally good does, to a certain genel o
extent, produce itself in the actual or existing. One Civilized
society is better than another in constitution and
laws, and in each society some people are better than
others: but there is a kind of general goodness in all
societies from which no one society must cast itself
quite loose, and there is a general goodness more or
less pervading the society, which no individual in it,
whatever the height of his aspirations, must despise.
The world has now lasted for so many years within human remembrance, and a great number of
different societies have been formed in it. Looking
on these we may perhaps say, that there seems a
sort of general level to which man in society attains,
and which collective man does not seem to tend to
rise above, but which, in some societies and considering what man might be, is a high level. And
this general level furnishes a base from which individual virtue may rise up to any extent.
This ordinary type of civilized man is what we to which,
commonly call human nature, and what indeed for a aseto a
mean
great many purposes is human nature to us. If we standard
are led to suppose that there is an absence of tendency vice are
to rise above it, this must not be because man has
not so risen, (for from what he has done we can only
very imperfectly judge what he will do,) but because
the weak and the strong, the bad and the good,
elements of it are closely blended together. Many




396   ACTUAL AND IDEAL HtUMAN NATURE.
of the motives which raise man a certain height
seem to have no tendency to raise him higher, but
rather to discourage such progress. And many of
the motives which will indefinitely raise individual
character, are not susceptible of collective application.
This is   - Between badness then and distinguished virtue
oftela. there runs the general level of himan society, and
the particular level, not materially different from
this, of our own particular society: badness is understood as deflexion, in one direction from this: respectability or good character is it: any virtuousness which
would be mentioned as such is something, it may
be little or it may be much, above it. This is the
standard of our country and age.' Our law, as practically obeyed and in operation, is at the level of it.
There are many reasons why it should be difficult
for us to appreciate civilized society, as a moral
spectacle.  As a rule, I think, we underrate the
amount of virtue, self-restraint and self-sacrifice,
which goes to it. One reason of our difficulty is the
difficulty of morally valuing habit or custom. Another
form of the same difficulty is the question of education, on which I hope to speak another time. We
may be educated, some will tell us, to anything.
Whatever we may think of this and kindred subjects,
whatever amount there may be in human society, as
there certainly is much, of low  feeling and low
motive, it appears to me that human civilized society
presents in many respects a noble spectacle. The
present mean level of human civilized morality, or
ordinary respectability, represents a very high
standard of moral attainment to the individual who
instead of having been subjected to its discipline and
education has been subjected to influences all the
other way. There is one point especially in regard of
which we hardly allow sufficient merit to our present




ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.   397
civilization: I mean, not so much in regard of the
material results it secures, or in regard of the higher
feelings and tastes which it renders possible and
encourages in its more educated classes; as in regard
of the self-restraint and generous, uncomplaining,
straightforwardness with which the mass in humble.position set themselves to the work before them, able,
with all their imperfections, to see —what it requires
some elevation of mind to see —that the benefit of
the social existence to them and to all is something
of far more importance than its prihcna facie injustice
to themselves in particular.
In human society, we can both see its goodness, We must
such as it is, and we can see, to some extent, the hdaelan
principles which make it good, which tend to pre- itrightly
serve and elevate it. But moral philosophy is more
than sociology, or the study of human society in any
way. For we could not speak with any reason of its
being good, or of there being good principles in it,
except upon an assumed ideal. It is with the thought
of this ideal that moral philosophy begins: we must
bring our vague ideal into connexion with the facts
of human nature.or society: the consideration of the
latter, though important, is not the leading line of
thought.
We might call by the name of sociality the What is
general virtuousness, or general character which be- ineluled
longs to or fits civilized society, without rising very vscial
greatly above the requirements or standard of it.
The particulars of this sociality will be obedience to the laws, interest in the support and vindication of them, moderate, not revolutionary, effort at
the improvement of them; together with a constant
feeling how much the best system of law and custom
must leave to be done by individual principle; and
in this view, watchfulness to supplement laws by




398    ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.
respect to claims of all kinds; active benevolence to
redress in some measure the inequalities of condition
which law could not prevent, even if it aimed at
doing so, and which it sometimes even increases; and
to meet the vicissitudes, troubles, and difficulties of
the less fortunate. The doing these things, more
or less, is what is expected by the general feeling from those whom it approves and thinks well of;
it constitutes a sort of social law or moral standard.
All this is social virtue: but to social character there
goes something besides, which is the first, if not the
chief, good element of it, though the manner in which
it exists in the individual mind is very various, and
sometimes it has features about it not at all those of
virtue. This I will roughly describe as industry.
Morality, as I have said, begins when others are
supposed to exist as well as ourselves, whom our
action may possibly concern, the simple looking after
ourselves having no moral character either way.
Acting for happiness, or working for support, is a
precondition of virtue, but is not virtue. And much
industry may be, so far as the consciousness of the
exercise of it is concerned, mere selfishness. Still
there can be no common life of men at all, and a
fortiori no worthy common life, or civilization, without
support and, more than support, wealth: and the
labour for this is thus the first or underlying social
duty: the labourer may be an unconscious, or even
vicious, concurrent in a worthy work, but still his
work is worthy.
Practical    It is very important, in all practical moral philoehusttake sophy, that whether it is special virtue on the one
it as a   side, or wrong-doing on the other, that we are constarting- 
point.  sidering, we should take as our starting-point, for
proceeding in one direction or the other, this middle
ground or level of ordinary human good character.




ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.  39.9
This is what is due from a man; this is what society
has a right to expect from him. For deflexions
from this in the bad direction, if they are great, it
will, in virtue of laws which it has made, (which in
fact are so many proclamations of penalty,) punish
him: if they are less, it will disapprove, and mark
its disapproval. Risings above this will be variously
treated. Some will be honoured and admired, some
will be not understood, some will be condemned;
which latter fact may possibly add to the merit,
because to the difficulty of them.
This mediunz is not an Aristotelic medium  of It isa
virtue between two vices, but it is one kind oftween ic
virtue standing between vice and another kind of and higher
virtue, but
virtue: and there are merits of its own belonging to maynotbe
disregardthis lower or medium virtue. It is a sort of general ed by the
expression for a great deal of exceedingly mixedlt.e
character, which upon the whole is virtue: it is
virtue in some degree shorn of its individual loftiness and free outgrowth, but in some respects compensated for this by the manner in which the
mutual rub and interaction of men draws out one
feature and another of it, and keeps in excrescence
and exaggeration.
Though, therefore, still cherishing our ideal, and
wishing that our civilization should improve into
something better, and that there should be as many
individuals in it as possible who are more than
respectable, who are of distinguished virtue, we
maintain our middle point not only against what is
below it, but, in one point of view, against what is
above it, in so far, that is, as it is tried, as it
represents something which we understand, and a
point at which we may reasonably expect to attend
to all our duties, not sacrificing the less interesting
to the more.




400    ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.
Respectfor    The good citizen is the man who, in  Scriptural
tue isir language,'renders their dues to all,' in jural lanroec~Ofi- guagel,'neminem laedit, suum  cuique tribuit'; and
higher.  this, with a wide construction  of the dues or the'suum,' taking in a very large margin of moral dues
beyond  the  legal ones.  But still, this  is but a
medium  level; we must recognize an expansive element besides in  virtue, as there  is in  the jural'honeste vivere,' in the Scriptural'beyond more
definite dues, still hold yourselves bound to love one
another.' Only we have got in this middle ground
something comparatively firm to stand on. No
doubt, it is a ground which is often clung to in an
unworthy manner; perhaps more so, where the society
is more civilized. but still, the greater part of the
practical immorality  in  literature  consists in  the
neglect of it.  Characters with exaggerated virtues
brought into relief by exaggerated vices will always
have the most of dramatic interest and therefore be
tempting in literature. But, with almost all, respect
for the ordinary level of virtue is the precondition of
higher virtue: our highest mountains will rise from
a high table-land, not from a low sea-shore.
Social vir-    Justice, when it is described as a virtue, means,
tuehas like rightness, a variety of things according to the
much in
common  application.  Of the notions it involves, what we may
justice.   have most in view  at any given  time may be its
mutuality  or Tnteerhominalism, its  exactness  and
definiteness, its generality and universality, or its
1 "Juris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere,
suum cuique tribuere." Ulpian in Dig. I. 1. 10. It would be interesting
to know the history of these three primary rules of right, but the
tantalizing fragmentary character of the Digest gives them only thus
barely. In making "honeste vivere" a part of jus, we may conclude
that Ulpian and the Ronman lawyers considered that law was not to be
confined to that part of a man's conduct which had direct relation to
others, and that it was competent to do more than simply prohibit doing
them a direct wrong.




ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN NATURE.   401
relation  to quantity, measurement, balance.  Of
these four notions involved in justice, the three first
are prominent features of that social virtue which I
have spoken of; the last is a feature of it in a way
which I shall shew.  But mutual, definite, general,
regulation of the concerns of a number of men together is the business of the custom and law which
make society, and the man whose individual' feeling
and conduct are in harmony with this, is the man
who, in these main particulars, is the just man.
His justice will indeed have another employment
besides that of falling in with the institutions of the
society in which he lives; that namely of judging
of them. For justice is fairness;'it is concerned, as
I said, with quantity, measurement, balance.  The
units and elements required for this are given in
laws; but our feelings of justice judge of these as
well as according to them; what has nature, in the
first instance, given or instituted?
The man of social virtue is not the mere creature It attriof the society in which he lives.  His possession of value to
the social virtue is in fact this, that he makes the general
society in which he lives give to him, to a certain but need
not weakextent, the ideal of his duty.  He more or less en incibelieves in it, more or less thinks it good. But men viduality
have made its institutions, laws anrd customs; anid
in taking his duty partly from them, he does not
abdicate his prerogative of judging them by his ideal'
of what they should be.
Nor is he the creature of opinion: it is not the
fact of the approval of what he does by the society
in which he lives which makes what he does virtue
to him, but. it is his own approval of it, and his
recognizing the reasons of it, which makes it so.
He neither despises others' opinion, nor blindly follows it.
26




402    ACTUAL AND IDEAL HUMAN. NATURE.
Society   We have thus, in human society and men's exmust be
itself cor- pectations from us according to it, our ideal duty to
rected in a certain degree embodied and localized.  We have
ante with claim and want presenting themselves to us for satisthe ideal
which it faction and supply; a common conscience stimulating
helps to and keeping alive our individual one.  Since the
actual thus involves in itself a certain amount of the
ideal, we do not degrade the ideal nor distort the
actual by associating the two together: while recognizing the actual, or positive, we may also recognize in it the ideal, or that which should be.
It is true indeed that we have duties towarcds
the society as well as suggested by it; to judge, it
may be, to try to revolutionize it: so far as this is
so, we do not recognize it as a result of the ideal
human nature, as what should have been; which it
certainly is not entirely, perhaps, in the particular
case, may not be at all.  This belongs to another
consideration.




CHAPTER XVII.
ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
IN studying the nature of an animal, what wecustom i,
men corstudy is, its anatomy (in which I include appearanceresponds
&c.), and what we call its habits.  These two things to habit in
are adapted together, so that to a certain extent we
may conclude the one from the other; as is done in the
case of fossil creatures where the anatomy alone is
directly open to observation. And both are fitted to
a third thing which again we can only study indirectly, and which I will call an inward nature. Each
creature knows and does what is necessary to keep it
alive. If a lion had the impulses or instincts of a cow,
it would die.
As we talk of habits of animals, let us talk Of Three
customs of human nature (I use the word quite kins om
generally, not meaning to draw any conclusions from instin~it). Let us divide these customs into three kinds: moral,
legal.
(1) necessary and universal. customs, entirely of
the nature of animal habits, as of eating, drinking,
sleeping: (2) customs which we may call universal,
but of rather a higher kind than the last, or, if we so
please to express it, the first kind applied to the
wider view and higher instincts of human nature; I
mean such customs as speaking the truth, gratitude,
being kind to others, &c.: (3) possible or partial customs, about which there is or may be discussion
among men, whether they are good or bad, desirable
26-2




404       ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
or undesirable.  Laws and institutions (whatever
they may be besides) are a definite and exact
form of these last customs.
The relation of individuals to the customs in
these different cases is as follows. The first set,
analogous to the habits of animals, are followed
instinctively by all individuals, saving exceptions
and particular circumstances, as may be the case with
animals: many of them indeed, such as eating and
drinking, must in any case be followed, though not
necessarily all.
Customs of the second and third kind, individuals
may follow or not as they please, subject to whatever
consequences their conduct may entail upon them.
The second kind however being universal customs, it
may be considered that there must be some strong
recommendation of them to each individual (saving
exceptions), which is the only way in which we can
conceive their becoming thus universal.
What I have here called customs, might also be
called manners of thought, feeling and action, which
are to some extent general, those of the third kind
being general in only a-limited degree.
Morality  Now morality is concerned with the character of
is cocer- the individual, with the relation of the individual
ed with
individual character and feeling to the customs, and with the
charaeter.  -
with rela: goodness of the customs.  We want morality to tell
tion of individualto us, first, independently of any customs, supposing
cstgom, for instance there were no such things as general ways
ness of  of thinking. in the world and no possibility of them,
what sort of moral- mind the individual, as an individual, should have, and what sort of action he should
choose. We want it again to tell us how the individual should stand affected to action by general
rules or according to general ways of acting; to what
extent he should be independent of themn and act




ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.       405
upon his own judgment and upon the particular
circumstances of each case, or the opposite. And we
want it still again to tell us, with regard to general
manners of thinking and judgment, whether they
are good or bad.
To put the matter in another way, proceeding in
a reverse direction, what is morally to be desired
in a country is, that the general ways of thinking,
judging and acting, the general. arrangements, the
institutions, all the things which the people, in
Herodotus' phrase, vo/iu'ovot, should be good, and not
bad: and by a good moral philosophy, in this view,
we mean a good rationale of the manner of judging
about them. But there might' be the best customs
conceivable in a country: and yet, if the people were
merely slaves or machines acting according to them,
doing only what everybody else did; or if, on the
other hand, many important individuals  stood
entirely aloof from the customs and were unaffected
by them; then, with good customs, we should yet
have a bad state of things. We want the general
manners of thought properly to affect the individuals, not too much, or too little: and by moral
philosophy in this view we mean a good theory of the
action of individual conscience in these respects, and
of education. But still again, quite beyond anything
which: can be general and customary, we want to
have feeling of a right kind in individual men: and
moral philosophy in this view is the consideration of
the moral ideals, the effort to see or form them as
distinctly as we can, to compare them, as best we can,
with fact, to find out the way of raising our action,
our individual and the general action, in the direction which they indicate: this is the leaven, the sap,
the life, which sets human nature at work to elevate
and improve itself.




406      ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
Instinc-   Looking at human nature over the globe, and
tom iS  neglecting customs of the first kind as not in themmorally  selves morally important, we find a good deal of
rent:   custom or general feelingof the second kind, which,
there is a
general a- as I said, is universal. This kind of general feeling,
greement
as to moral which however at the best is exceedingly.vague,
custom. has often formed the subject of moral discussion,
not so -much in the view of testing its goodness,
supposing it to exist, as of arguing from its existence
that morality is natural to man. It is difficult, in
these discussions, to keep in view the exact point at
issue.  The important fact about the customs is not
that men ordinarily do speak the truth and shew
gratitude or kindness; for I do not see how we
could argue from this as to what individuals should
do: a man might say, I do not care to conform to
human custom  in these respects, nor see why I
should. The important fact is, that men, while constantly doing the opposite of these, yet have a custom
of approving action of these kinds, of liking the
people who do it, of wishing themselves to do it,
except for special temptation drawing them the other
way. That is to say, alongside of their action they
have an ideal: they are two-natured beings, which
is the same as saying that they are moral beings:
they have conscience or reflexion, a nature judging
a nature: they have their nature of fact, and along
with it a moral imagination, expanding, elevating
and improving it. Of course it is competent for an
individual to say that we cannot argue from this
any more than from the former, as to what his particular action should be: he may say that he does
not choose to admit any'ought' or'should'; that
granting it to be a human'custom, say weakness, to
imagine *such a call upon us, he thinks it a bad
custom.  Now without pressing the'ought' and




ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.          407'should' (about which, and how far it represents
imperativeness or incumbentness, how far a simple
ideal or desirableness, I have already spoken), I do
not think any man can go so far as to say, that he
really sees no reason at all in the nature of things
for the custom of men's approving gratitude rather
than ingratitude, &c. I do not think it possible that
any man could fail to be himself influenced in some
degree by the feeling which has generated the custom.
Customs of the second kind being accompanied Legal cus.
thus, in some degree, by a feeling' recommending it to~misthat
in all individuals, there is not, in regard to it, so caseif
most diffimuch room for the consideration of the relation be- culty as to
tween individual and customary feeling.  In it they ofthoeling
are to a certain extent united. It is more in regard diVudit4ual
to custom of the third kind that I shall have to
speak about this, and also about testing the goodness
of custom.
Looking again at actual human nature in different
parts of the globe, we find an infinite variety as to
custom or general feeling of the third kind.  And
here is one of the great provinces of moral philosophy. Is there any occasion to test these customs
morally? May it not be well that one nation should
have the institution of slavery, another that of polygamy, another that of a marriage-connexion  only
during the pleasure of the parties, another that of
inheritance by primogeniture, another that of communism, another that of caste, another that of eating
meat, another that of. strict abstinence from destruction of life, another that of suttee, another that of
exposure of infants, and so on: is there any right or
wrong, any better or worse, in all these things? or
is it only a picturesque variety, like the variety of
colour and of language? And if there is a good
and bad, what is the criterion of it?




408       ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
Produc-   In speaking about happiness, I have said, that
tivepess of right conduct must surely be productive of happihappiness  b
is one sign ness to the agent; in a great measure, doubtless,
of good            zn
custom: visibly; altogether believably, on the supposition
that things go in a systematic manner, or that the
universe is good.  Whether therefore or not productiveness of happiness be the constituent of goodness in action, which is what I dispute, I have never
disputed its being ac sign7 of goodness or rightness
in action. But for it to be of any value as a sign
to know goodness or rightness by, we must have
the ground clear before us for the application of
this test of productiveness of happiness: and this
is what, for any important inquiry, we never can
have.  We cannot have a sufficient clearness of view
or agreement as to what happiness consists in, nor
can we have such as to whose happiness it is that
is to be consulted.  In saying this I am not disputing the importance of the productiveness of happiness -as one test or sign of an action being good.
but not an   If we are sufficiently agreed beforehand as to
easy or
satisfac- what we mean by happiness, and as to whose happitorytest. ness we want, then this mark may be the mark of
goodness which is best, because most applicable: but
this, I think, will not often be the case. And certainly it will not, in such a degree as to furnish a
good argument to utilitarians for the correctness of
their system from the readiness, and satisfactoriness,
of this test of goodness.  Productiveness of happiness might conceivably be the constituent of goodness: in that case, so far as it is capable of application, it would be the proper test of goodness. Again,
productiveness of happiness, though only one mark
amongst others of goodness, might conceivably, from
its nature, be a mark so ready and clear of application that it would be the mark. naturally suggesting




ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.         409
itself to test goodness by. This last, if it were so,
would be an argument for men being practically
utilitarians: the argument would not.indeed prove
that utilitarianism was philosophically true, or that
productiveness of happiness was the constituent of
goodness, though utilitarians doubtless would, as
they even now do, use it in that view: but a man
might then reasonably say, Well then, I will look no
further: I want to know what things are good and
right, and if I have a mark of that, I will be satisfied without knowing what makes them good and
right.
I have already disputed productiveness of happi- Exemplifled in the
ness being the constituent of goodness; I will now case of
examine whether it is a satisfactory mark of it.    difficulty
Let us take the institution of slavery, and see ofdetermining
how  we can apply the test of productiveness of whose haphappiness to judge about that.                   piness:
You cannot apply the test at all till you have
settled that preliminary matter which must be settled
before you get to utilitarianism, but in which the whole
of moral philosophy is involved, viz. whose happiness
you mean. Do you mean the happiness of white
men or of black? Utilitarianism, you say, teaches
that the happiness of all men is to be consulted
alike. But in reality, utilitarianism, as such, simply
teaches that it is happiness that is to be- looked
to, happiness, not to say of all emen, but of the
whole sentient creation: it says not a word as to
alike; for it would not venture to apply this'alike'
to each member of the sentient creation, or each
creature capable of happiness. The separating men
from the rest of the sentient creation, and the saying that the happiness of each man is to be consulted
alike, belong to something which is not utilitarianism: we will call it eqTcditarianism: it may be




410      ON THE GO6DNESS OF CUSTOM.
right or it may be wrong: anyhow before we can
begin to say a word about happiness, we have got
to settle this equalitarian business. The Georgian
planter will say, I grant you we are to promote
the happiness of all the sentient creation, and to
distinguish men from the rest of it because there is
a natural distinction; but here I leave you: I recognize another natural distinction, viz. between white
men and black men; and I apply my equality fully
to the former,, but not to the latter. Here then we
have got a question of atulre to decide before we
can settle the equalitarianism; as we have got to
settle the latter before we can begin to talk about
the happiness. I should differ from the Georgian as
much as any utilitarian would; but surely it is plain
that here utilitarianism gives us no help to settle
the question; we cannot apply the consideration of
happiness. The Georgian will say, I am a whiteman-utilitarian, and think that we are to use the
blacks for our benefit, treating them kindly of
course, as you agree we are to use the animals.
In an opposite way the Buddhist is a sentient-creation-utilitarian, and thinks that we are to consult
the happiness of the animals, as we are that of men,
and have no more right to destroy them.  Some
principle of supposed justice or naturalness is needed
to decide between these different forms of utilitarianism, and it is upon this principle that the
application of the principle of happiness must rest.
wv7at kinda   Supposing however, there were no difficulties
fhppi-  like these in the way; supposing that these preliminaries had all been settled to the satisfaction of
the English utilitarian, and that we were now proceeding to the application of the principle of happiness; still in order that we may hope for any result,
the anti-slavery man and the Georgian have got to




ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.        411
agree beforehand what is a negro's happiness. If the
one says that, with care- taken of him, and plenty to
eat and drink to the end of his days, he is happier
than he would be taking a precarious care of himself,
when he would have to work quite as hard with less
certainty of support, what is the other to say? I do
not say that the question of comparative happiness
is not an important one; but I do say, first,.that it
is not one which will settle the question either way
so distinctly as to commend itself for the proper
method in virtue of this its distinctness; and second,
that the more barely we rest the issue upon this, the
more, it seems to me, will the Georgian have to say.
It is he who will take his stand upon the genuine
Epicureanism or utilitarianism, upon tangible pleasure and quantity of happiness, while his opponent
will have to talk in a more shadowy manner about
the charm of being one's own master, the worthiness
of being a free agent. That is to say, the happiness
which the anti-slavery man wants for the negro is
complicated with various other considerations, as
happiness of any value always is in human life; the
happiness which the Georgian thinks it is best the
negro should remain in, is happiness of that merely
corporeal, semi-animal kind which really can be to a
certain extent measured. The anti-slavery man is
right just because, as it seems to me, he is the less
utilitarian of the two. But in any case (what I am
concerned with here) it is evident that utilitarianism
or the consideration of happiness, as such, brings
no valuable help for the distinct settlement of the
question.
Whatever important social question, or fundamental institution, we may thus seek- to test, the
same two difficulties will occur, the one, as to the
clearing of the ground for the application of the




412       ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
test, the other, as to the uncertainty of the test
itself.
Legal cus-   The whole mass of custom  which comes under
vided into thisthird class, may be divided into that which is of
those   moral importance, and that which is not; and the
which are 
or are not, first thing to be done, if it can be done, is to find
of moral
import-  some way of making this division.  That portion of
ance.   it is of moral importance in which is concerned, not
only men's happiness, but also their elevation of
mind either moral or intellectual, their goodness
or their intelligence. The whole.amount of custom is
the fit object of criticism in these respects; but with
regard to a good deal of it we should say it cannot
be called either good or bad absolutely; it does some
good, some harm, not much perhaps of either; this is
what I call not of moral importance; and there is no
merit or advantage in mere uniformity.  But much
is of great moral importance.
Men com-   It is of course most difficult to judge of human
mionl ad- custom from any general point of view  every one
mire their
own us- has been brought up in his own. The ordinary
torus and
despise  feeling is, for each man to despise and misappreciate
those of
others.  all custom but his own; but this, like all ordinary
Phiroso- feeling, creates an opposite feeling in many thinking
tion.   minds; they see the defects of their own, and rather
admire what is not their own; as the noble minds,
whose existence testified to the goodness of Athenian
custom, were disposed often to admire any other
rather than it.  Till the world was known as it is
now, the remote and the ideal might be to a certain
degree blended in thought.  Men might imagine
in Ethiopians, in Egyptian priests, in Brachmans, in
Atlantises, realms of innocence and wisdom, and
~good feeling, and happiness. We, if we are dissatisfied with the European nineteenth century,.and the
Times, and Manchester, are obliged (at least since




ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.         413
the American contest has begun) to confess that it
is human nature and the progress which it has made
that we are dissatisfied with; it is perhaps no great
vanity or Pharisaism to say that we, the civilized
European and American, are the best specimen -of it,
an improvement on Chinese, Mahometans, and Brahmins.
This fact however makes very much more likely, It is easier
and not very much less foolish, the ordinary contempt to f,,
for other custom than our own, which I have spoken gdou to
of, while it diminishes the likelihood of the balancing morality
than in refeeling of admiration for some, at least supposed, gard to
other custom. It by no means follows that because happiuess
we are foremost of the human race, therefore everything about us is what is best in the human race; and
it is quite possible that some of the things which we
most pique ourselves upon may be the opposite of
this. Our contempt of other custom is no proof that
it is contemptible; for we are to the full as much
despised as we despise, perhaps rather more. If it
were possible for us really to meet in any community
of thought with a Brahmin or a Mahometan, he
might admit all our superiority in the arts of life, and
all our political power and wealth and importance
derived from it, and still despise us. If we could
prove to him that we were happier than his people
were, I think, so far as that went, which is only some
way, he would not despise us. But, as I have said
all along about happiness, I do not. think we could
come to any community of thought with him about
this, for, beyond a limited range, we can hardly come
into community of thought, one with another, even
among ourselves. We might tell him that experience,
that is, the verdict of competent judges who have
made the experiment, witnesses that to live actively,
to.drink wine, to eat pork, to study science, to have




414      ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
only one wife, makes a man happier than to live in
his way. He might say, It may be so, but so far as
I can see, my way is the way for happiness. If on
the other hand we bring the question to the test of
comparative wisdom and goodness, I think that
there we shall have more likelihood of finding common
ground. It is true we might care as little for the
subtilties of Arabian grammar and the flowers of
Arabian rhetoric, as he for steam and the electric
telegraph, but still I think we might shew him that
we were wiser than he, and then he would respect us:
and if we could shew him that we were better than
he, then I am sure he would. And I think he would
understand what was meant by being better. I think
the Hindoo, whatever lies he might tell himself, must
in his heart acknowledge us as a superior people on
seeing our truthfulness and mutual confidence. I
think the Mahometan, if we could only make him
understand what pains we take in our courts of
justice to find out the real right or the real person
who has done wrong, and with what integrity we
adjudge and punish, would respect us for that: it is
when we'come most to morals and to goodness that
we shall have the most of mutual understanding.
Thus, though human goodness is in my view a
complicated thing and difficult to understand, still I
think it is to a certain extent possible to compare
the customs of different peoples in reference to it; and
that, in so doing, we need not be merely bringing
their customs to the standard of our own.
There is a medium between foolish prejudice of
this sort and that philosophic indifferentism which is
not unlikely to rise against it in minds of less earnestness and more knowledge of variety of custom. The
world is large and wide, and nineteenth century
civilization is not the only important phase of hu



ON THE GOODNESS OF C USTOM.         415
inanity and human custom which has existed or does
exist. We look upon human thought as expanding
downwards: more correctly we might look upon it in
three divisions; some streams of it have merged into
our present thought; some have dried up without
doing so; some exist still independent of that, full
and abundant, but stagnant.
About any custom then (say the Oriental seclusion The most
important
of women), what we have first to consider is, whether thing to
it is of moral importance; if it is, whether human know
about any
happiness is affected by it, so far as we can judge of custom is
whether
this; and lastly, what is of more importance and in its tendcall probability more within our power to judge of, ecy ing
whether the moral and intellectual elevation of
individuals and  the  human race is benefited or
injured by it.
But there is something else which in most cases Butaprior
question is
we shall have to consider also. To a certain extent, itsnaturalthough not so much with goodness as with happi-ness.
ness, before the test can be applied, or has meaning,
there.wants a clearing of the ground; and this is
in fact, the introducing of the consideration which
I will call naturalness.  Giving it such a name says
very little about its meaning.  What sort of naturalness is right?
In speaking of morality in general, I have said This must
that it consists of the union of fact with ideal as we beideeby
can best unite them; that man has a double nature, sociology.
including, on the one hand, certain things which in a
manner exist of themselves, and, on the other, an
imagination and an activity which enable him, according to an ideal or principle which suggests itself to
him, to make himself in some respects what he pleases.
What he thus tries to make himself is his ideal
nature.  His having this imagination and activity
is what makes him  a moral being.  If we would




416      ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
speak of him as being one nature, and give a single
meaning to the word natural, we must, as I said,
unite the fact and the ideal together; we. must try
to distinguish, in the fact, that part which the ideal
takes up, and that which it changes. In the usage
about women which I spoke of, what lies at the
base is the physical fact, whatever it is, as to the
nature of women in relation to men.. It is of no
use to form an ideal of their active and.intellectual
companionship with men, if they have not a nature
which will admit of such. Are we then to take the
seclusion of women in a considerable portion of the
world as a mark of their physical inferiority which
our ideal about them must recognize, or as a bad
portion of fact which our ideal must correct? In
the former case the custom is what I have called'natural.' And to find whether the former is the
case we must see what women have been and are,
in the world and history. An investigation like this
is sociology, but it differs from M. Comte's in this,
that we know what we are looking for. We have
got an ideal, and in examining fact we do so in order
to modify our ideal, to give it form, and make something practical of it.
What is    The question really at issue in regard of most of
unnatural the great customs of men is their natusaclness, and
iljUrious. there is no other way in which we can distinctly put
it. We have got hands instead of wings, and though
some of us individually might prefer the grand view
of nature, which the former might give us, to all our
constructive power, yet we cannot change. And it is
well we cannot: for the handling and constructive
impulse, which goes with our possession of hands, is
one of the main constituents of our general understanding, and contributes largely to our separating,
distinguishing, and individualizing things as things,




ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.          417
or noticing them  as particular objects.  So it may
be with various human customs. Acquisition and
associating things with ourselves as our own, may
be an impulse of our nature as much as construction is, and if so it -is of' n'o more use to form the
ideal of a society (other than exceptional) in which
no individual property existed, than to wish that we
had wings. So far as we could approximate to such
a society; it would in that case be only to our loss.
To determine what is'natural', in human customs, is
a matter indeed of much'observation and difficulty:
I offer the term as exhibiting the reality, not as an
easy test or method. I have said perhaps enough
about, ideals to justify myself from too great readiness to acquiesce in fact. But we must study human nature as it exists at its best, as well as think
of what we should wish it to be.
Human nature as a whole cannot judge itself as It is diffi
individual man judges himself, it has not a collective tulttoi deconscience or reflective power: but it can, as a what has
whole, improve, and it is this improvement in which ed to imwe seem best to see, for collective man, that double- ntvhet
ness of nature which I have mentioned as consti- past:
tuting morality. We must first ascertain, as we can,
that the historical course of human nature is upon
the whole improvement, and not declension: for by
improvement we must.mean  something' different
from  M. Comte's progress, not, i. e. the fact of a
course or development the -last phase of which, only
because it is the' last, we are to consider as the best.
Then, if we find that there has been real improvement, we must set before ourselves, as well as we
can, the features of that improvement; we must see,
that is, how the ideal applies itself to human nature.
All this is of course difficult.  Thus we may find
that, in this course of improvement, the condition of
27




418       ON THE GOODNESS OF CUSTOM.
women has risen; that the attachment to property has
not diminished. The first of these we might at once
consider an improvement: it is an advance towards.the ideal which suggests itself. On the second, we
can conclude no more than that up to the present
time men have not seen property to be a mistake
and evil: it may be so for all that, only there is a
probability, so far. as history goes; -of its naturalness.
We must look at the moral circumstances which in
the course of history have attended it; whether it
has been associated with things which we recognize
as improvements, and seems to have aided them;
how it stands with relation to human cornmfort, and
human virtue; and much besides.
and still  Difficult as this may be, there is a fresh difficulty
more difficult to  added when we come to apply our. view of improvemoaket re ment in the past to our action for the future.  We
of what
Will aid  have got to judge from the nature of the improveimprovemenlt in  ment, whethear.what is.an improvement so far' as it
the future i
the futureas gone will continue to be an improvement carried
further. We have got to resist''la logique des faits',
and the notion that what is last is, as such,' best: we
have got to understand, when w.e speak of an improvement, why we call it an improvement: and that
will, in some degree, guide us in going on.
Real eriteo'  Human nature then is moral collectively in yirtue
io    I of  of this its continued effort, and more or less success,
custom.
in self-improvement.  Its ideal nature is what it
tries to make itself.  Its naturalness of mere fact is
what men without any ideal effort -or thought do:
its naturalness, if we try to unite ideal and fact into
onenotion,'is what abides the same for it during its
improvement, and this is what we want to find out,
for it is no use to try to alter that.  And therefore a
main thing which we want to find out in -regard to
any human custom is whether it is of this character.




CHAPTER XVTIIIL
RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
I WILL now speak about the relation of individual
conduct to general feeling or custom.
To a certain extent, the notion of right or moral Close conconduct which presents itself to the mind is that it betien
is acting as others do, according to general feeling, the ideas
of the cuscustom, or opinion. The effort of education is always, tomrnry
and the
to a certain extent, to produce.a systematic acting right.
in this way: in an earlier and simpler state of society,
it is so especially.  In the. opinion of many, what
such words as the Greek 8iKq represent is custom,
or recognized usage. However this may be, whether
for instance'the word 38LKy first expressed the'accustomed.,' and then was used to express the'right',
because people really meant by the right no more
than the accustomed; or first meant the right, and
then was'used to express.the accustomed, because
people concluded that nothing but the right could
become the accustomed; in either case it is clear
that the words custom  and rightness were very
closely associated.  Hence too, in a great measure,
the use of the word'mores' to express conduct, with
its derivatives,' morals' and'morality.'           Twoviews:
There are two notions, similar at first sight but that cuireally different, involved in our thinking that the nesssto
right, that
doing the customary is doing' the right.  The cus- itoobnstitules
tomary is the non-individual, and also it is what rigiat.
27  2




420   RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
most people do. That it is this latter implies a presumption that it is the right: the many, it is presumed, are more likely to be right than  the one.
Here the independent existence of -rightness is recognized: custom is considered a guide to the knowledge of it.  But that the customary is the nonindividual, in a certain view  of rightness, makes it
the right: rightness has been understood by some,
simply as the subjugation  of our own particular
individuality  or self-consideration to a something.
ruling it, as well as other individualities, and making
them act similarly.  In the former case custom witnesses to rightness: in the latter it constitutes it. In
the former case rightness is judged by fact and human experience, or what is supposed to be such: in
the latter case rightness is defined by law; and custom
is both a kind of law, and the basis of law, the vo'gos'
of Greek, corresponding to the mnos et- lex of Latin.
This latter is Ilobbism.
Against    Individuality may protest against customariness
the firIstd in reference to either of these notions, or both.: we.
viduality may refuse to believe that opinion either makes, or
denies the.
validity of is a valid witness to, rightness. It is in reference to
its wit-  its witness to rightness that, side by side with the
grave and sententious teaching of early moralism  to
do what other people do, there has always existed a
counter-feeling of contempt for the o'Xo%  and gnomes
like or 1rXEovs KaKo: and in a similar manner, in the
view of earnest religious systems of morality like the.
Christian, custom is the world, the witness to the
wrong, not to the right.
against 
thesecond,   At the same time there has always been more or
it mainttains.tht less of opposition to custom (as constituting right) on
morealityi the ground that morality orrightness is just not in
custom-  the customary or commanded, but in the individual
ary, the
free.    and free.  Determination  from  without and self



RELATION' OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.   421
determination from  within are not the same, but
opposite.  We each make our own rightness: and
although, from the similarity. of our circumstances
and nature, it may be the same in one and another,
or common to many, yet this commonness is just
what we ought to be suspicious of, and most careful
not to be influenced by..
There are thus two sorts of feeling of indi-Inthoe
viduality or of protest -against custom, akin  infcame t i
many respects,' but still different.  The one is the connected
with eonfeeling bf responsibility for one's self, the other is science, in'~                                            the latter
the assertion of freedom.  The former. of these we with selfmay roughly call (I shall qualify as we go on) therespect
belief in rightness, or in independent rightness-; the
latter the belief in one's self. This belief in rightness is a kind of conscientiousness, and when it
degenerates, it becomes crotchetiness and. punctiliousness, an inability to symbolize and associate
with others.  The belief in one's self is a kind of
self-respect, and when it degenerates it becomes
mere.capriciousness and eccentricity, mixed with
more or less of silly or sour vanity.
All education has necessarily a tendency to pro- Education
duce customariness, or to train the individual to tens to
produce
think and. act as others do: in fact this is what customarihess' it
training means: education must do this, or it does should'
nothing.  So certain however is it that it will do aimatin
this, that'in view of almost all who think about couscientiousnebs
education, a main thing to be guarded against is its and freedoing it too much. You are sure to develope a regard
to opinion and custom:'one thing you want is to
make this opinion the genuine wide opinion of the
whole society, not that of a particular set, which
may be a bad one; but another thing you. want
is, to develope both the conscience and.the inde-'
pendence of the individual under education, and in




422   RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
regard of his conscience, to accustom him to use it not
simply for self-judgment in association with the
opinion of others, but. also, with modesty indeed and
diffidence, but still really, for judgment and criticism
of this opinion of others itself. The developing the
independent conscientiousness thus is what education can in a measure do, and what it is specially
bound to do, inasmuch as the doing it is the counteracting a possible evil result of itself. The development of the independence of freedom, or trust in
one's self, is more difficult for any education' or training, if. indeed it is possible; the existence of this
feeling depends very much upon particular character,
and  upon  circumstances perhaps independent of
education.
The con-    To speak however first of conscientiousness, the.scientious   n             r:~an,,, belief in rightness or the feeling. of individual rCerespect- sponsibility; this has nothing of that contempt fbr
ing the.judgment custom and the common opinion wlhich often acof others,
feelsbounc companies the feeling of independence. He who is
to maintaithe  actuated by conscientiousness believes that there is
indepen- something which he ought to do, and something
dence of
his own which other. people ought to do also; he believes
judgrment, that they want to know it more or less as well as he
does; and consequently their judgment on the matter;
expressed in their general opinion and custom, cannot
be. indifferent to him, unless he is merely vain and
foolish.. And, in judging himself, he takes this opinion
constantly into account: the imagination how others
would judge, if they. knew  what he does about
himself, goes with his moral judgment.  But for all
that, his reason is his, own. This general opinion or
judgment, if it is good, has grown so not of itself,
if we may so speak, but by the putting together of
a number of individually conscientious judgments,
-each affecting perhaps and affected by the others,




RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.   423
but each having its own root.  Were opinion of
itself the law, there- could be, if we may say so
again, no opinion: that is to say, opinion would only
express the result of some previous accident or fact,
and would be no result of human thought. And the
person who does not preserve his individuality of
thought against it is a traitor to it; his disposition
to yield to it should be an argument to him against
such yielding, for others have probably had the disposition before, and have yielded to it, and so far as
they have yielded, so far there is want of ground for
the opinion, or chance that it is wrong.
Moral positivism, that is, any kind of moral Systems
which
teaching which tends to weaken men's belief in mke.moindependent rightness, or their thought of there ranty 
product of
being something which should be done, tends to education
withdraw the foundation upon which individual con- weaken
scientiousness rests, and though it need not tend  ~ rl"ainto diminish practical conscientiousness, because this ality.
may be guarded against, yet it tends to diminish
the strength of individual moral character.  Justice
may be a very good thing, and we may unfeignedly
think it so, but if  we regard it as only a. matter of
education, or something which has been taught us;
and if moreover we regard education as a comparatively accidental superinduction of something (and
it is this view of edudation, as a superinduction,
which is the interest of it in the eyes of positivists), giving no value to the consideration, that no,
creature, man or other, can be educated in anything
except what it is their nature to be educated in;then undoubtedly the justice does not lie so deep in
our mind and character, it will not be so helpful in
shaping our moral individuality, as it would be in
the case of one who thought differently about it; it
may be a good working justice, but. there is not so




424    RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
much in it either of interest in the present,. or of
hope for future progress.
Utilita-   Utilitarianism, it is to be observed, is positivist
rianism
takesthis or non-idealist only in certain particulars; and the
view of 
justice,but description of it as a matter of inductive science is
holds the profession only, or it would not be moral philosophy
love of the
general  at all.  The desire of happiness (it being apparently
happiness
to be   indifferent to us whose happiness it is, our own or
innate,  that of others) is considered by utilitarians a spontaneous and untaught sentiment of our nature, a.nd
-the one moral sentiment.  So far utilitarianism  is
not positivist; for this happiness is a grand- and noble
ideal.  But any other so-called moral sentiment, as
of fairness or justice, is matter of education or association, secondary only, in utilitarian view,: it is developed in human society as a result of the institutions
which the really innate sentiment, the desire of
happiness, produces.
There is   The sentiment- of fairness or justice, and the senfnortheodi- timent of the desire of others' happiness certainly
tinetion. deserve to be put into the same class, and both alike
One is no
more the be called either spontaneous and natural, or growths
product of
education of education and society. However, what I am now
than the.              i
other.  concerned with is, that the effort of utilitarianism
calling itself inductive, is first, as a matter of philosophy, to discourage the thinking of anything
besides fact, of. any ideal, or'anything as what should
be done; and then when, untrue to its principle, it
does become a moral philosophy, to discourage the
thinking about some of the moral principles, such as
fairness and justice, as other than creations and
developments of human education and opinion. To
the extent to which men are led to think in this
manner, it'appears to me that they are led, in regard
of some most important portions of morals, to think
of human education and opinion more highly than




RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.  42 5
they should, and that they are. the less likely to assert their own individual judgment and conscience
against this education and opinion. I am not certain
that I shall be understood here, for the matter
is complex, not I think through my fault, but on
account of the exceeding inappropriateness of the
assumption of inductivism. for anything in its way
so idealist as Utilitarianism is. In some points of
morals no doubt it maintains the right of individual
judgment, but we want it everywhere, and want it
intelligent and consistent.
The individuality of freedom is a different.thing Individufrom that of conscientiousness of which I have spoken. freedom.
It is indeed a kind of conscientiousness, for con- Is it right
scientiousness and self- presented individuality, if oneself inthis latter is worth anything, are the same thing. of customBut in the present case the individual asserts his aYYiews?
judgment, not in exception or opposition to the
general judgment,. but independently of it.  He
says, I will deal with rightness by itself, without
the intervention of any general opinion or common
notion, I do not discuss or wish to affect the
views of others, but simply take my own view.
To what extent is this prioper in morality?
Without any disposition to wrong-doing a man
may think that all moral philosophy and moral consideration is something importunate and superfluous,
a mere result of people's readiness to meddle with
others' action and judge about it, whether they have
cause or not. Let there be, for the comnmbn interest,
repression by law of distinct offence which injures
others: for the rest; the way in which people in
society fall into general manners -of judging, the
fashion of general approval or disapproval of kinds of
action, from which arise such notions as the praiseworthy, the honourable, &c., all this is something




426   RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
superfluous, an undesirable attempt to interfere with
the freedom of action: the wise thing is to trouble
oneself about it as little as we can, and the desirable
thing would be that there should be nothing of it.
Custom-    On sober consideration, while some would say
ariness is
on the  that common opinion and judgment mckces' the praisewhole a  worthy and the honourable, all, I suppose, would say
help to
morality. that without that general interest of all in the acts
of each, which is the main source' of customariness,.
the world would fare worse morally.  Still, what.are
the proper limits of that interest; or we may say,
supervision?  And how far should' our free action
maintain itself against it?  Can we arrive at. any
principle as to this?
It makes      In our particular state of society, the disposition
~ferenef  to over-meddling in matters of morals is rather taken
whether as characteristic of an inferior level in that society,
there are
many con- and the highest society, as we call it, is the freest.
temporatneous   And because the tendency of society with us is rather
stoa o    to spread, over the whole of; society upwards and
co~m~.on downwards, the manner of feeling at present characteristic of the middle portions of it, therefore'we
seem to observe the spirit of moral meddling, or the
restraint on.freedom, to be upon the increase in
general, and individual freedom to diminish, yielding
to general opinion, or as we call it, the tyranny of the
majority.  What is really taking place is probably
that various partial and rival forms of general opinion
yield to one overspreading one, and the tyranny of
the general majority is substituted for the tyranny
of the opinion of our own' rank or set.  And the
reason why at a particular moment, as perhaps the
present, the highest society may appear the freest, is
merely because the caste or clique opinion has become
weakened, while the more general common opinion
has not as yet taken its place.  The- restraints




RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.   427
and. mannerisms which aristocratieal opinion carries
with it are very likely to be weakened before the
restraints and mannerisms of bourgeois opinion are
prepared to take their place. The moral result -of
this may be good or may be bad. In the last century
when something of the kin'd occurred in France, the
result was bad: with us in England at this moment
it may be otherwise.
Whether the change from various rival forms of
common opinion to one uniform. and predominating
one is good or bad, depends, in my view, upon the
goodness of this latter opinion: for as to the maintenance of individuality as against the opinion, I think
the circumstances of it are. much the same in the'one
ca;se as in the other. We are not the more individual
for being members, as to opinion, of a small moral
society than of a large one.  -In either case it is
well that we should be on our guard against the
*danger of individuality being swamped in common
opinion.
Morally, besides the constant reference of general In either
case there
opinion or custom to our individual conscience, which 1i ne of
I have spoken of, we' should stand to such opinion aproper
assertion
and custom in a relation of liberal subordination, as of indedistinguished from servility; -if it is on' an. important pedece.
matter, because its being the opinion of many is
one argument, whatever it may.weigh, for its being
right; if it is unimportant, because "then the one
should yield to the many.  But no dofibt, two very
different, but constantly concurring, tendencies of
human nature, shew themselves in this as in other
things.  These are servility and the love of domination.  And the proper assertion of-individual independence is something in opposition to both.  If
we do a thing because we choose it and there is no
reason why we should not do it, we must in reason




428   RELATION OF- INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
forbid ourselves the pleasure of meddling and criticizing others in similar things.
Does de-    Does equalitarianism  (the modern democracy of
mocracy
encourage M. de Tocqueville and others), by which I glean the
diPeu- feeling antagonistic to aristocracy and privilege, the
looking upon men, and th'eir looking upon themselves,
as being all in the same position, with its accompaniments of their using the same sort of language, wearing the same dress, &c., bring out individuality, or
the opposite?
There is a On this, which is in substance the. same as what
danger of
its leading I have been speaking of, it seems to me that the
to simple
grega-  same is to be said: equalitarianism acts both ways;
riousness. you hear a man saying (and there need be no harm
in his saying it, that depends on the facts and the
view), I am  as good a man as that lord or that
scholar: and you hear him the next moment say,
Now is the day of the masses; now we have done
with special interests, special manners of thinking,
special privileges; one common way of thinking
makes us understand each other and act as one man.
This latter is simple giregariousness: what made the
former state sociaolity, and not gregariousness, -was
in a great degree the existence of a variety of ways
of thinking; these abolished, what must now save
us from gregariousness, must be a higher development, leading perhaps to a better sociality; but then
greater individuality is required.  This mwcy be a
result of equalitarianism, but so, as-we have seen,
may gregariousness.  I suppose.it is the part of a
well-wisher to human nature to encourage the former
of these tendencies, and discourage the latter.
This may    I should think men might be encouraged, when
be averted
byimprov- rejoicing in the existence or increase of that equalian dltiVa- tarianism, which seems to be the condition of high
civilization, to take pleasure-not in the thought,




RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.   429
that now. superiority to them'is destroyed, that all
are alike, and that it is a grand thing to be ax, unit
in a force or mass so vast and mighty as a civilized
people-but rather in the thought, that now there is
nothing to hinder their cultivating and developing
their thought and feeling in. the way in which their
nature seems to lead, and pursuing  their ideal,
whatever it may be, if only it is reasonable.  My
saying this will probably excite a smile, when the
mass of the hewers of wood and drawers of water in
society is considered.  But I say it deliberately.
I cannot dwell on the subject now, and no one can
be more aware than I am  of the terrible exigence
of mere life.in regard of a large portion of society.
But self-cultivation and self-detelopment are not in
any class, other than. exceptionally, the business of.
life, and as an accompaniment to the business of
life, they will associate themselves with the work
of the poorer as well as with that of the, richer, if
there is the mind to make them  do so.  Leisure,
in our active time, is what few wish for, or know
what to do with when they have got it, and most
rich people are as much occupied as any. poor. Let
a man be encouraged to be something as a mtan
besides what he is as a wheel of the great industrial
machine.  If the man holding the plough for two
shillings a day can become the merchant. writing.
at his desk and earning a hundred -pounds a day,
let him: in the mean time the energies of both
are engrossed, and it requires an effort for either
to be anything more than his work: good sense, force
of character, imaginative feeling, vigour of mind
seem to me quite as possible for the poor man as for
the.richer, if you can only get him to value theml1
1 For a fuller statement of the author's views on this subject, compare a paper entitled'Tlought versus Learning' in Good WT'ords for
ieccember 1871, and hlis printed sermons; pp. 1.26 fol. ED,




430   RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
What I have just'been speaking of has been the
merging or sinking of our individual feeling in the
general feeling of everybody.  WThat I said before
about the.assertion of individual freedom, was rather
in reference to the interference of the general or
common feeling with our individual feeling.  The
two consideratiofis are cognate: the interference
tends to produce the sinking of individuality: if the
individuality is not cared for there is no repugnance
to the interference.
Is the in-    But about the interference  - s it reasonable and
terference
of society moral in matters as to which, whatever we do, to all
in cases. appearance, no harm  will arise to others; matters
whichonly which, to all appearance, only concern ourselves-?
concern
the indi-    This, in the principle ofit, is the question of.idual?
mnoral philosophy against social' philosophy:  I do
not mean that there is any opposition between the
two.  I have myself rather maintained against the
utilitarians that it is not till sociclity, i.e. the-reconciliation or putting together of different interests,
begins, that the notion of morality begins, whereas
thetir view is that rudimental morality is the love of
happiness, independently of the consideration whose
happiness it is: still by moral philosophy we are
likely to mean something applying more widely and
going more deeply than what we mean by social
philosophy: This however, is a matter of language:
the terms might be looked on as. coextensive, or
either might include the other: in the earlier Greek
philosophy'social', if so' we translate roXr~K0o,, was
the more extensive,'moral,' 71jLK6o, the less so: in
the present day I think we more commonly employ
them the other way.
Sh.old     The three ancient'reulse juris' are, as I have'vikeretbe mentioned,'neminem  ledere, suum  cuique tradere,
amatterf honeste vivere:' some will say the last is only an
publiec a- ir of each man's individ     consideraion.
nlizanceO aflir of each manr's individual consideration.




RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.   431
The question is probably not so much whether
the good character of each member of the society
is of vital importance to the whole society, for few
will deny that it is, but whether the general opinion
of the society, or a large portion of it, can be applied
with advantage, in -the judging of individual character, further than as actions are done which actually
affect the interests of others..But it. does not seem
to me that, in reality, any principle can be maintained
on this subject, further than the very general one,
that each individual will do well- to respect general
opinion, -but must not be afraid to differ from  it,
sometimes, because, in the particular instance, he
thinks it wrong, sometimes, because he thinks it interfering and importunate.  To bring all cases inwhich he thinks nobody is injured but himself under
this last class, seems to me going against the principles upon which we inevitably go in education,'and
in fact in life altogether.  We are each of us properly restraints, to some degree, upon each other,
and I think we shall most of us allow that we'are
the better' sometimes for that restraint. I cannot
conceive how  the line. can be drawn, for moral
guidance, which this opinion supposes. Between what
injures others and what does not, it is hard enough
to draw the line even in regard to what is palpable
and  flagrant, and' in  the (comparatively) rough
way which will do for the legislator and the judge:
if we are supposed to be really conscientious, it seems
to me impossible.  If we want'neminem  ]edere'
we must "honeste vivere,' and we must take others'
opinion in pdrt-judgment as to what is'honeste.'   Society is
Suppose we draw in the opinion a little, and put il our actioHS ans
it in this form, what I amu (morally) is my own con- to a cercern only, nothing but what I do can be yours-will tain extent
it stand then? In this form of it we give up from character.




432   RELATION OF INDIVIDUAL TO CUSTOM.
our own exclusive cognizance not only whatever may
possibly directly injure others (as we think), but
also whatever can possibly be directly known to
others, so as to have any effect, for instance,'in the
way of example.  But even in excepting our
thoughts, feelings and imaginations, we can hardly
do so on the principle that here we arrive at something which cannot affect others: so far as they
constitute our present or future character, which
determines our action, they may affect them. It is
indeed the fact that here we have a kno*ledge unlike
in kind what others can have, and here must be the
root of all self-assertion against conventionalism and
mere custom: *but even here we are not free from
moral respects, and in these we are bound to take
account of other judgments besides our own.
Are men    Let us now for a moment ask a question which
alobeorin cannot really be answered, ]but which is useful to
crowds? think of, and which I will put roughly thus, Are
men better in crowds, or by themselves? Is the root
of goodness in them more their own feeling, or the
common feeling?
It will be judged from what I have said that my
opinion is that goodness, and -also evil, springs from
both and from either, and that it is according to the
circumstances whether one or the other of them is
the case. Crowds will sometimes do what no individual among them would have been bad enough
to do, and individuals will often do what, in a company of others,'they would never. have thought of
proposing. I have been. speaking of custom above
as a good agent: it is constantly a bad' one, people
too often make each other worse instead of better.
As a general rule we expect to find the more marked
good, and'evil too, suggested by individuality: the
more ordinary, by common'opinion.




CHAPTER XIX.
ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
IN  the  last chapter, I spoke  of social habits  or  an, un.
like anicustoms, and ofindividual action or thought only in  als, hasrelation to these.  In this chapter I shall treat ofinaivlluas'
the individual and his own custom.                             social, CUThe customs of human nature are the analogue
to  the  habits  of animals.  Man  differs from   the
animals in the fact that, as compared with them, he
makes  his  own, customs or sdcial habits, whereas
their habits are generic, or made for them.  In their
natural state they have one social habit for the race,
with  but little  of individual habit in  addition  to
this.  When tamed or domesticated, it is true, they
partake, in some slight degree, of men's social circumstances: and individual variety, and individual'character, are generated in them beyond what would
be possible in a wild state'.
Moral philosophy is the  study of duty and of
character combined, though it is from  the latter that
it has received its name.
1 Perhaps there is'a little exaggeration in the contrast here drawn
between wild and tame animals. Of course we have a far better opportunity of observing the latter than the former: but is there any ground
for supposing that, if we were able to watch closely a herd of wild horses,
say, we should not find among them sluggish and spirited, vicious and.
gentle, just as we do in our stables? Sir John Lubbock has, I believe,
discovered traces of idiosyncrasy in ants; and there is certainly a great
difference in the degree of facility with which wild creatures of the same
species may be tamed. ED.
G.'                                    28




434 - ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
By'ethics' we mean the science of clharacter,
os, of which XapaKfrp denotes the distinguishing
feature or characteristic.  The Latins, more poorly,
spoke only of mnores or habits.  We speak vaguely
of habits, dispositions, &c.; but we put them all into
one whole when we speak of a man's character: in
our older language it'would have been called his
temper, perhaps his complexion.
Character   It is of this character that I have now to speak.
and will
in refer-  habits are the features of it; but character is not
once to
these cus- only a list, or the sum, of habits; it involves a relatoms.  tion among them, making it one.  And it involves
another more important relation, which is in many
respects analogous to  the  relation  between  the
action of the individual and the general custom;
I mean the relation of the will to the habits.
Internal    If we may talk'of, comparative wonderfulness -in
nature of
plants.:  the universe, rudimentariness in. its application to
what I will call, the internal nature, or the generic
vital force,; seems to me the most wonderful. The
seed of a particular kind of plant has, say, a certain
definite arrangement of its parts, which we describe
-as its generic character: but the fact that the seed
has this arrangement of parts suggests no reason
why the plant should grow up to the particular
generic habit of its maturity: along with its arrangement of parts it has its own generic vital force, the
source or rudiment of a generic difference which
exists throughout every portion of the plant in its
future growth; so-that there is a vast general difference made up of an infinity of particulars, and
the force generative of this infinity is contained in
the seed.  This I call the internal nature.
of ani.    Animals have more will than plants (if indeed the
mals:  latter -have any, which I do not say they have not),
and consequently they have a more marked internal




ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.  435
nature.. We find in plants a few actions corresponding to the habits of animals, such as might be
called semi-instincti've. But animals have in their
body a most complicated machine which they must
use by effort of will, and which they have got to use
in a particular way if they are to keep themselves
alive by it. Thley always do know how to use it:
this knowledge, or impulse, or instinct, is a fact in
nature as real and as important as the fact of the
particular form of the animal. As it has its external
nature in a system of organs and limbs, so it has its
internal nature in a system of impulses and habits.
This morali frame must have parts of different degrees of refinement and importance. The simple
impulses to use the particular organizations must be
backed by certain natural tempers or habits, or they
would fail to support life.  If we could conceive.a
particular carnivorous animal' born an exception to
the rest of its species, and.destitute, we will say, of
patience, it could not exist. These tempers or habits
give the animal a natural character.
Man has more zwill than tlie inferior animals; of man.
and,.corresponding with this, he has an internal
nature, which1 beginning at firist much more poorly
than theirs, comes in the result to be infinitely
richer. This is on account of the special property
of educability  in it; which  does not exist in
them.
Animals in a wild state are probably born with Small
scarcely any iridividual,i as opposed to generic dif- Capaeity
ference of character: this arises from the absence of tioninani
reals as
individual variety in the parents or Xtheir circum- compared
with man
stances. Human beings are born evidently with, a
vast amount of rudimentary individual difference,
quite independently of anything which education
may afterwards add.  And the more there is of
28-2




436' ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
individual difference in the parents, the more will
there be of variety in the offspring.
In a wild state, animal education, if there is any,
is soon over, and always, it is to be supposed, succeeds.  No failure on the parents' part causes birds
to grow up without learning to fly. But human
character is a most various graft of education and
circumstances on the primary individuality by which
this may be modified to an extent which we can
hardly determine.
Division   I shall speak. about character upon the following
of the sub.
ject.- scheme: 1st, on the elements of character; 2nd, on
formation of character; 3rd, on the criticism or judgment of character; 4th, on will' in character; 5th, ion
will agacinst character, or reformative of character;
6th, on will and action entirely independent of character.
Elements    Character is general and particular; there is a
dual ciha general character,. so to speak, belonging to all men
racter. alike, as there is a general conformation of face.
The examination of. the elements of such general
character is general moral psychology, and in that
view I shall not treat the subject here.  Besides
this, each man has a particular or individual character as he has his own features of face: it is this part
of general human nature,'which is from the beginning different in different individuals, that I shall
speak of now.
Individu-    Setting aside exceptional identifications by pecuperl ia  liar marks, and considering.as unimportant, in comnent li-  parison with. features of the face, what -I may call
tation of                                               call
the gene- features of the body,. length of legs or arms, &c., we
ienature. know  or identify a man by his face and by the
sound of his voice: in each of these there is a portion which we can readily describe, and there is
something which goes beyond our description, which




ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION. 437
is specially individual to' the man, which we generally call expression; in the same vague manner in
which' we talk of instinct. Here the outer passes
into the inner nature; or possibly the connexion
between. the two may be more intimate than this;
it may be the inner nature which determines, or
there may be inner nature  to correspond with,
variety of feature beyond that which we generally
understand as expressive; and the same with the
conformation and size of the brain, and the corresponding shape of the head; these questions of
physiognomy and phrenology I do not touch: But
the individuality of each, which appears outwardly
by feature, and look, and tone of voice, is clearly
something more than such feature, look, and voice,
and this which.it is more is what I call the individual inner nature. Supposing continued life, the
outward part will go through change -on change; but
there will be something about it constituting its
sameness, which something we may describe in
various ways: we may say there is something about
the features which will never change, or the man
will cease to be the same; we may say that whatever the man becomes, outwardly, at a future time,
he becomes by development of, and by a change
from what'he is now, constituting a line of sequence
from this to what he becomes; and there are various
other ways in which we might describe the same
general fact. - Whatever we say thus of the outward
nature we may say of the inward. A man's features
*are one mark of his individuality, and as such they
contain in them, to a certain extent, all that he can.
possibly be to all eternity; they are a prophecy; his
individuality is a limitation which he can never get
over, and his features are the sign of it.
There are two origins thus for his moral thought,




438  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
both independent, and both fixed; the one his ideal
of perfection1, the other his own necessary individuality.  The latter of these, if it is rightly dear
to him, may be no less dear than the former.; it
gives him the universe, or fixes his universe-; if he
is, he must be contented to be himself, and the
moral hope is that each may live so that this may be
not only a subject of contentment, but of gladness,
and in a measure, of pride.  He may be himself,. and
at the same time he may be what man should be,
which two united make what he should be.
Thmee~le-f    The elements of moral character are the feelings,
ments of
moral cha- emotions, or passions (I use the word quite vaguely):
racter are
predispo- in each of these we suppose a general notion applisitions to
particular cable to a large number of minds, though in indipassions. vidual minds it may exhibit special peculiarities
beyond what we can at all follow.  The features, so
to speak, of the native or congenital inward nature
are certain. predispositions for the existence of these
passions, when' the occasion shall arise.
It is. probable that all such predispositions are in.
some way marked in the external organization.  As
examples may he mentioned a tendency, more or
less, to animal appetite, more or less of firmness, or
on the ather hand of softness and yieldingness;
Such pre- more or less of energy and hopefulness. -Such pretdispoi-  dispositions are neither wrong nor right, nor, properly
tions are.....
eidhneorr  speaking, good or bad.  To a certain degree, higher
good in  or lower, perhaps better or worse, may be predicated
themselves.  of them: but they are all, without ceasing to exist,
so alterable by reason and habit, that what might
seem the lowest of them may be made the foundation
of the most noble character.
1 That is, I suppose, the objective ideal of the race; the subjective
ideal is of course continually changing.. ED.




ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION,  439
The nature of- men differs from that of animals
in this respect., that whatever there may be innate
in -him, his actual life is sure very greatly to form
and modify.  Upon the bases of the constitutional
tempers, there are formed, by the admixture of will
and reason, other tempers, more or less like these,
of a more, marked and distinct character, and it is
these of which the terms virtuous and vicious, good
or bad,. right or wrong, honourable or disgraceful, may
be predicated. 
I do not think it is possible to draw any definite It is imline of demarcation between what is congenital and to distinwhat is result of education.  There may be a part ofg tish be
that which is individual to the born human creature what it
which comes from some spiritual source, distinct from and the
equally
the parents: of that I say nothing; in any case we natul recannot'distinguish it.  Aga.in, what comes from the sltQ'io
parents is undistinguishable from what comes from
maternal communication, influence and tenderness,
when all is as yet merely plastic and unformed.
And so the process goes on: where the congenital
individuality ceases, and where education begins, we
cannot say.  Education is not, in the case of men,
a quasi-accident, a thing which might be or might
not be: it is to man what that which we call
instinct is to each kind of animals, viz. what he has.
to depend on for being able to live at all: in failure
of education of any kind, his individuality would
not be the more developed, but the reverse: it
would not be brought out at all.  Man's having
mind or moral nature might almost be said to consist
in this, that in his earliest infant life there goes on
(except in entirely abnormal cases) an actual education to which there is nothing analogous in animals.
As the infant has to be taught, but does learn,
intellectual and practical processes which the ani



440  ON CHARACTER, VILL,  AND EDUCATION.
mals cannot be made to learn, so his feelings become
developed by communication with others; in regard
of which process, we may consider important either
the actual fact that they become so developed, that
he is taught, or the fact of his nature that his
feelings are such as to be thus developed, that itis
his nature to learn.'The former is education,. the
latter nature: how -we ought exactly to speak or
think on the subject, is hard to say; only this infant
education, if it is education, is something infinitely
more important than any education afterwards. The
nature of this importance we shall see more fully
soon, when we consider how subsequent education
modifies individuality.: this earliest education all but
makes it.
Proedispo-    Character consists in the comparative readiness
sitions are
developed with which one and another of the simple feelings
into disposi,  or passions, fear, hope, desire, aversion, love, hatred,
and these anger, gratitude,'and others, are drawn out; their
into ha-, go,
bits and- comparative intensity and duration; the manner in
which they associate themselves with one another
and with the intellectual feelings, especially imagination; so that the circumstances of these intellectual feelings become important circumstances of moral
character.
The congenital predispositions to the indulgence
of one or another of these feelings, being in different
measures checked, encouraged, or in other ways
modified by the.circumstances of early education, are
developed into -dispositions: there is a disposition
to indulge fear, hatred, anger, a disposition to be
deceitful, or, on the other hand, to be frank, open,
perhaps impudent, perhaps bold and violent: this
is character in its simpler form. Then again, as time
goes on, these dispositions are some of them  indulged, some checked, and they become variously




ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.  441
complicated together: there are thus formed dispositions very.complex and individual, hard to follow
in consciousness and observation, and hard to describe, and there are formed besides confirmed habits
and regular ways and customs of feeling, thought
and action'.  This is complete and developed character.
If we want to form a notion of the state of facts, Meaning
we must endeavour to present it to ourselves as much iftheterm
as possible independently of the particular words,
which are used so variously that without continued
definition and re-definition of them, as we employ
them, they are worse than' useless for thought.  The
word'habit' has, we may say, four senses. Properly
and etymologically. it is a translation of Ji*, and
means a state of mind; being synonymous on'the
whole with 8Lc~ta L,, of which the translation is'disposition': and this latter, not habit, is the term
which I mean to employ in this first sense.  In the
next place the word'habit' has been loosely used for'custom' corresponding nearly with W6og: I shall not
use it thus, but shall have, with some care, to
distinguish its moral meaning from this sense.  It
means, thirdly,'confirmed disposition'; a state of mind
more or less strong, permanent, rooted: this is the
sense-in which I used it just now, and may probably
use it again. It means, finally, a confirmed state of
mind as in the last sense, but with this addition, that
it is'viewed as having some resemblance to a mere
custom, secondary and superinduced, and distinguished from states of mind which are suipposed to
belong to the native, congenital individuality, and
are called, in contrast to this habit,'nature'. I shall
generally use'habit' in. this sense; but it is not
possible to keep this use quite separate from that
just mentioned. When we say'habit is second




442  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
nature'", we cannot really distinguish whether the
word habit is used in this or the previous sense.'Nature' and'habit' are both vague.
Growth of   The character then of each man is his habitual
character
through  way of thinking, feeling, and acting; and this is
generated from the immediate, instinctive, impulsive
thinking, feeling, and acting, which life begins with,
by the circumstances of the individual social life; in
other words, by what in a wide sense might-be called
his education, of which any deliberate education of
him is only a small part.
Education in this wide sense is, for the most part,
influence of others in various ways; partly as causing,
without any direct action on the will, a custom of
acting in some particular manner or indulging a particular sort of feelings; partly in directly commanding some sort of action, which so becomes customary;
partly in furnishing example; partly in supplying an
object to aim at and a standard to judge by; and
partly in other ways.  But a portion of it, in -some.
cases large, is direct effort of the individual applied
to himself, in what is called self-education, whether
intellectual. or moral.
The formation of character is the change of feeling into character, or into habit in the wide sense;
the change of consciousness and sensibility, as prompters of action, into an immediate and almost involuntary performance of the action without preparatory
conscioushess: the action gets more and more to do
itself, as we might say.  This is the process of all
practical learning,. e. of all learning the result of
which is action, whether action of the mind or of the
limbs.
Learning   The above consideration is important in various
dulls sen.
sibility.  ways.  First, in all learning we lose something,
though, in all learning which is of value, we gain




ON CHRAIACTER-, WILL, AND EDUCATION; 443
more.  But in all learning some sensibility or sensitiveness is extinguished: familiarity blunts.  This
is the meaning of'a fresh eye' to things: if it were
possible to make learners aware of the bearing of this
fact, it, would give a new interest to their learning,
even though it should in some degree diminish the
rapidity of it. We see each thing for the first time in
a way in which we shall never see it again: and, if
we really valued our own mental processes at their
true worth, we should mark our manner of seeing it,
and see it. with a vividness which would bear fruit in
our mind afterwards.  If the mature knower could
add to his knowledge the sensibility of the ignorant,
thirsty for'knowledge, his knowledge would be more
valuable than it is, because fresher,. keener, livelier.
However it is with morals that I am concerned Similarly
in moral
now. Every one's character has its history: it is a training
tree the shape of whose leaves, and flowers, and fruit the imdepends upon something native, or in the seed, but weakens
with the
whose shape in general, as we look at it, the direction strengthand form of whose boughs and branches depend upon tenlngof
a thousand circumstances in the past. As the tree ticalhabit.
has grown by the conversion of sap and living circumambient bark into strong but comparatively dead
wood; as knowledge has grown by the correction of
suppositions and imaginations and their fixing into
facts and formulas; so character has grown. into
comparatively unconscious habit by the conversion of
ever active feeling and impulse, that is, by a stiffening of our moral being analogous to the stiffening
and strengthening of our corporeal frame from child.
hood to maturity.
What Butler has said in'regard to the manner in
which impressions becomie faint as practical habits
become strong, is in reality no more than this: it has
no special reference to our moral being; and it is of




444  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
great importance that we should not misconceive and
misapply it.'
But this   Though learning, as I have said, is the extinisothat    guishing of some sensibility or some consciousness and
hibtysen- attention, and the conversion of it into practical aptimay take tude; yet this ought to. be always in order to the
the place
of the   development of higher sensibility, to an increased
1ower. consciousness of, and attention to, objects of more
consequence with which the existence of the former
sensibility and consciousness would be incompatible.
The accomplished pianist touches the keys mechanically, in comparison with the beginner who has to
think where he shall put each finger, but the former
has only learnzt this mechanicalness in older to theapplication of his sensibility and attention to the
music with which his imagination is teeming, or the
beauties of composition which his higher sensibility
tastes. We must become used to some things if we
would. freshly taste and enjoy others.
Character,   The question of habit, considered as something
like knowledge, is superinduced, or against nature, was the first quesonly living tion. about habit which presented itself to us: here
while'it is
growing. we have the question of habit against sensibility.
What Butler has said has reference also to another
question which will shortly arise, that of habit against
will, or of fixedness of character.  If this fixedness
arose from increased insensibility, from  diminished
moral consciousness, it would only be a partial moral
advantage. As it is, while the impressions which go
to the formation of moral habits wear out, other moral
sensibilities develope themselves, and higher ones.
Part of the tree is for strength alone, no longer soft
and sensible, but it has still besides its fresh and
living growth.  Character, like knowledge, is only
so far truly alive as it is still further growing. Some
things are unquestioned, fixed, at once acted. upon;




ON CHARACTEIR, WILL, AND EDUCATION.  445
but there is plenty of room  still for moral thought
and moral feeling.  We have not, in virtue of our
habit, become a machine or a law.
Of course, while our moral character is forming,
we are of more interest, whether to others or to ourselves; but even when formed our moral character
ought still to be freshly forming. We must, if we
live, grow old corporeally, perhaps intellectually, but
morally we certainly.need not. And we are sent
into the world, we may suppose, not only to do right
as a result, but to have a moral history in the course
of learning it.
We are now however come to the next thing to Criticism
be considered, which was the criticism or judgment oftharacof character.
Character, as we have hitherto been speaking of Correct
it, should be described as a matter of fact, without tobservpraise or blame.  There may be described in this character
- ~   -                is hinders
manner either the characters of individuals, or certain ed by over
haste to
types of character.  Of the latter kind are the de- criticize.
scriptions by Aristotle and Theophrastus: of the former, historical descriptions of characters, though it
is true that in these praise and. blame are often
mixed with matter of fact.
In a general way, our perception of the actual
facts of character is greatly hindered by our universal tendency to immediate criticism of them, or
attribution of praise and blame. This is, indeed,
only something which takes place in a great many
things besides morals, and something which has its
good side as well as its bad. It is a part of that
general process' of learning, or extinction of sensibility, which I noticed, that, as we advance in generalization and classification  and naming, we  notice
particular facts less: we notice one fact about any




446  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
thing, according to which we refer it to a name, and
then put it aside and have done with it; as if then
we. know everything worth knowing about it, and
the whole use of our senses were to enable us to
ticket things and put them on the shelf. So we
call a man by a general name, and think we have
given his character: if this general name represents
a fact, as if we call him desponding or cautious or
enterprizing, even so it may smother up a good deal
of observation; but if it represents a fact with praise
or blame attached, this is far-more the case. As
the casual observer will pass by the most remarkable
Gothic edifice, or the most peculiar vegetable species,
provided it has got a tower, or stem and leaves, with,'Oh, it's only a church,' or'Oh, it's only a tree,'while
some very ordinary thing. which he cannot quite make
out and give its name to, he will go on spying at; so
as soon as we can say, or think we can say, He was
a. good man, or a bad man, we notice no more, while
we go on noticing much meaner and poorer characters,' if only this seems doubtful.
In Speculating on character, the order we should
proceed in is, What did the man do? Of what tempers or habits of mind are these things which he did
the sign? Are these tempers or habits to be called
good or bad? If we cannot, as we constantly cannot, follow this order, we should yet keep it in our
mind, and be aware of the actual course we are
taking: instead of which we constantly confuse all
together, and are scarcely aware whether at any time
we are concluding from facts to character, or from
supposed character to probable facts.
losoPhy   One of the simplest and clearest views which can
viewedbs be taken about moral philosophyin general is, that
the ration it is the rationale of criticism, or judgment, about
ale of suchre to
cxitieism. character and action. This criticism we are sure to




OON CHIARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION. 447
exercise. A verylarge part of human thought and
conversation is about it. In reality very little pains
is taken by people to have any principle in their
judgments in this matter, or to make the judgments
at all consistently.  The epithets used constantly
involve the two elements of a description of supposed
fact and a judgment about it, of approval or blame:
and constantly it is the latter element only which has
force in the mind of the user of the epithet. The
worst people are quite as fond of using epithets conveying moral blame as the best, though one would
have thought that in their mouths they could convey
no blame: the blame as connected with the action
they show by their own lives they do not mind: it
is blame in general, the conveyance of ill opinion, in
which the force of the epithet, as they use it, resides.
Surely, if it is worth while having principles upon
which to make our judgments in nature and art, it
is equally so as to human character.  There is an
evident analogy, as we have seen already in speaking
of the face and form: we talk of features of character,
painting character, &c: and so, in regard to the
description of character as in regard to art, there are
two kinds of correctness, accuracy as to the facts,
rightness as to the ideal or standard of judgment.
The exhibiting moral philosophy as criticism of this
kind'will doubtless be looked at by some with jealousy. For such criticism seems a human creation,
a matter'of' imagination only. But in reality, this
jealousy is applicable, in a measure, to everything
which I have said about moral philosophy, and also
to that view of it which deals with the To KaXo'v, the
honestum, or with moral taste, or with' high and
low.' What I have said is, that moral philosophy is
imagination; whatever it is besides; and I think it
is a great deal besides.  Even if all that could be




44.8  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
*said was that, as we are sure to judge and talk.about
character, it is desirable that we should do it, if we
can, consistently and reasonably, this would be something: but I think that. we exercise our thoughts
about character, because there is something really to
be known' about it, in the same way as we exercise
our eyes in looking, because there is something
really to be seen;.so that, in exercising our minds
reasonably about character, we are increasing our
knowledge of something real, which I call the moral
universe, in the same way as, in using our eyes
intelligently, we are increasing our knowledge of the
physical universe.  For all that we know, everything may be imagination, as I have said a good
many times; but we have no more reason to conclude
this of the moral universe than of the physical.  It'
is but our own thought which leads us.to either, and
it leads us to both.
The prin-  The principles of excellence of character must
ciples of
moral cri- depend upon those of value of action, and in going
tihS  se through them  I should simply repeat, what I have
as those  said before.  The two main principles would'be
which de.'
termine  utility or serviceableness, and elevation or superiority
the value
of actions. to selfishness.
The science of character is, as I have said,, the
true and original Ethics, as in Aristotle.  It wants,
as a foundation for it, the science of action, which I
have spoken of under the names of aretaics and deonticsl';_ and so far as this science of action has not
been brought out, that of ethics is deficient.
Aristotle's    The Aristotelian theory of virtue is exactly a
Ethics are                    
essentially'th eory of criticism  of character.  It deals with the
criticism, elements or facts of character, which, as I mentioned,
for which
he fails to are feelings; the ideal referred to is really an ideal of
give a satisfactory character, not of action, or of the object of pursuit.
rationale.
1 See p. 102.




ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.  449
The virtue of fortitude,. for instance, is in -this view
the amount of self-confidence, in presence of alarming
objects, which the ideally virtuous man, or the man
whom people consider virtuous, has: more self-confidence than this is rashness, less is, cowardice.  Unfortunately Aristotle does not tell us, nor without
much more upon duty, and the ideal of human action,
and the value and purpose of action, could he tell us,
on what principle we are to ascertain what amount of
self-confidence is desirable. His reference is only to
feeling and character and the general estimation
shown in actual language.
Viewing the Aristotelian Ethics in this light, we
see why they attribute such importance to kerpLdtrrlS,
middleness or moderation.  Extraordinary particular
virtuousness is difficult to deal with according to any
ideal of character.  Ideally good character must exclude not only vice, but extravagance of virtue. Anid
the ideal of character being thus more difficult to
imagine than'the ideal of action or of object, the
criticism of character is correspondingly more difficult.
There is scarcely any one of the simpler feelings What is
which does not lead to good or to bad action, accord- mieantdby
ing to circumstances. Doing good or forbearing from aond sitnt
wrong may.be the result either of boldness or ofcharacter?
cowardice: tbe feeling of fairness may make a man.
grateful or revengeful: kindness may lead to falsehood
or injustice; all this is familiar.  Hence character
is spoken of as'mixed.' -The term implies a certain.confusion of thought, as if the elements of character
were virtues and vices, rather than feelings which ac-'cording to circumstances may lead to virtue and vice:
it is like talking of a face being mixed of beauty. and
ugliness.  There is something of the same confusion
in our speaking of a character as being'inconsistent.'
Ga.                        -' 29




450  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
The phrase is probably used where there is some
strong feeling, which in some cases leads to right,
in others to wrong, and what. we may call naturally
in both cases: it would, in many respects,' be more
properly applicable where the feeling, while acting
freely towards the right, is controlled and prevented
by principle from acting towards the wrong: the inconsistency would then be a merit.  As commonly
used, it either implies an ideal attained in some particulars, unattained in others (which of course describes
all actual character), or it implies a notion formed by
us -of the character, and some action inconsistent with
the notion: the notion is of course so far inadequate.
The extent to which all actual.character is mixed
sometimes comes out in a very startling manner, and
is one of the things which, now and' then, most incline people to doubt about morality altogether. It
ought not to have any effect of this kind, so far as we
think reasonably about it.. It gives always a hold
upon the bad, and it need not make us distrust the
good, though it may fairly make them in some degree
distrust themselves. It will come rather into consi-.
deration in what I amn now going to speak about, the
relation of will to character,
will in   There are three things belonging to character a
character: good deal like each other, but not exactly the same;
which I will call strength, individuality, and abundance.
may be    Strength of character depends upon the degree in
soee in  which will is involved in the habits or character..
strength
of charac- This may be in various ways: the main feature of it
ter,
is resistance to temptation in virtue of habit combined with more or less of living principle or consciousness. If there were not' the habit or usage, it
would be simply strength of will  if there were




ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.  451
nothing but the usage, it would be a sort of strong
stupidity or imperceptiveness;, and we must beware
lest, in speaking of moral conduct as habitual, we
should fall into the error of supposing it to be of this
kind.
Individuality of character is markedness.  It im- individu.
ality of
plies a certain degree of strength of character, because character,
the individuality has to be maintained against a good
deal which tends to make all characters alike and
ordinary.  But individuality of thought and feeling
may coexist with a character which, from want of
energy of-will, is ordinary and unmarked.
Abu'ndance of character implies the. existence of a abundance
good deal of perceptiveness or sensibility to start ter.
with, and then of something between strength and
individuality, or involving both, A character may be.
strong, but yet poor and unint-eresting' by abundance
of character I mean that there is a good deal-of feature in it, as there may be much expressiveness in a
face.
The consideration of. will in character is.of most will
against
consequence in connexion with the consideration of character.
will against character. This latter, as we may readily
see, is the same as will employed in the formation of
character. For from the first of action, there begins
to. be something of habit: so far as habits are formed
as a result of successive exertions of will, these exertions are efforts against some iresistance.  When the
habits are formed there is the will to action-which
the habit involves or produces.  This will, we will
say, is strong according to the strength of the character.' Is it all-powerful? Is all our will or power
involved in the habits, in the same way as much of
our sensibility is extinguished by them, so that our
conduct in the future, when character is formed, is
rendered in a manner necessary?  Or is there room
29 —2




452  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
left still for will, such as that which by its repeated
exercise generated the habits in the first instance?
The force    There is no question in all moral philosophy more
of habit is
of great important than this, in various ways.
moral im-'  *The quasi-necessity of a man's action according to.  the habits which he has formed is looked at by Butler'as a matter of great moral consequence for encouragement, as affording a pledge that the virtuous
will continue virtuous, or be able to stand in his
virtue.
but the   The circumstances of'the vicious are not exactly
power of
the will to the same in this respect as those of the virtuous, for
oaebitis of there is not likely to be effort on a man's part to make
still more himself vicious, as -we may conceive effort to make
importance.   himself, from vicious, virtuous: but still it is clear
that if the habits do become to this extent stiffened
and set, and; the stiffening means:so much, the
vicious also is likely to remain vicious.  And this
consequence Butler contemplates and makes use of
also.
But morals would be insa poor position if we did
not admit, and that to the very utmost, the possibility of reformation in men. There is much complication in all this, and for different moral purposes, men
urge the thing, and with reason, in various ways..We say, By a course of vice you are by degrees producing in yourself vicious habits which will at last be
all-powerful in you. But, if we are speaking to any
in whom vicious habits are formed,.we must not use
this language,'nor would it be true: we must use
the opposite language with all the more vigour because of the tendency in the man himself to believe
he cannot chance, and because'of the tendency of this
belief to produce the thing believed.  And so if, to
believe -in the security of the virtuous, we must believe in the hopelessness of the vicious,.it will be




ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.  453
better for us to give up both beliefs.; The cardinal
point of morality is the belief in the liberty and the
all-powerfulness of the willl': if a man really believes
in that as to himself, no vicious habit can enslave him.
Independent of any moral considerations, theThispower
belief that a man acts necessarily according to his maybe
character is held in a double way, philosophically and denied
~lt~lU  I1Lt~t UOISI w~y~ rnlu~j~p Ll ueither on
simply practically. The former is when we mean by theoreticharacter the sum  of all the circumstances whichtical 
have hitherto influenced the man, which now, in gounds.
conjunctioh with  the circumstances of the present
occasion, will determine his conduct.  This is the
moral syllogism2. The other is when we believe very
strongly in -custom, and not strongly in conscience and
force of will; which is the case with many: we then
say, the man will wish perhaps to do so and so, will
feel a good deal about the matter, but still, in the,
result, he will act as he has been accustomed to do.'
In both these cases it is. supposed that, from  a
man's past we may predict his future, and only not
infallibly, because. of course we avow that our knowledge is doubtful and limited.
As some would predict all a man's future action Some de.
from his character, so others would predict it all, his power of
character included, from  his constitution.  And it ither haseems to me that there is the same reason, and the to over- ~
come th-e- ";
same want of reason, in both these proceedings.  We'original
can predict of course in both cases, but very condi-nature
tionally.  A man is never without character, and his
character is never fully formed. VIHis constitution, as
we call it, is his character to begin with: his character to end with we never see.  Habit is a second
1 That is, of the spiritual principle at work within man. A possible
misunderstanding is guarded against in the parallelpassage in App. A,
p. 462. ED.
2 Aristotle, Eth. vI. 12.




454  ON CHARACTER, WILL, AND EDUCATION.
nature to him; as much as a second nature, but.nomore: and, as it was possible to superinduce a second
nature upon the first, so it is possible, in the same
way, to superinduce a third nature,' more habit, upon
the second, and so on. The believers in habit, or
character, as indefeasible, may fairly be set against
the believers in constitution, or nature, as such. The
latter consider that habit, as against nature, is something utterly weak and superficial, against which nature, when occasion arises,. will always assert itself, as.
the cat-nature asserted itself in. the princess of the
fable, when a mouse came into view. We may fairly
conclude, that what admits at all of being so thought
of, cannot at any rate be so powerful as to determine
all. the man's future:action; when nature was not
powerful enough for this. Will, in fact, holds its
ground against both, not of course absolutely: nature
determines something, as I said in speaking of a
man's inward and outwaard nature and features:
habit goes. on and determines more: but they do not
determine all.
What is   The consideration of mixture of character, which I
called the
mixture  spoke. of a short time since, comes in most harmoniter is.   ously with this.  When we speak of good and bad
fact fa-  habits, we must remember that we are speaking of
vo.urableto
reforma. what I may call realities of the second order: the
tion.
habits are actually of benevolence, of justice, of revengefulness, of whatever it may be, to which we
attach the notions and give the names, and with
reason, of good and bad.  As when we talk of handsome features; the features are, as a fact, of a particular shape, which shape we call, and ought to have
a reason for calling, a handsome shape. ~Thus each
vicious habit, as a fact, has in it various elements
which are not vicious.  These do not make it not
vicious, or not to be condemned as strongly as we




ON CHARACTiER, WILL, AND EDUCATION. 455
please: but they are an argument against our considering it such as to preclude any virtuous action in
the matter which it concerns, or any change for the
better.: for here are the seeds and rudiments of such
virtuous' action already. Character in each person is,
as to the facts of it, something most complicated and
individutl, with dormant. buds, so to speak, all about
it, which may shoot out, under favourable circumstancesj into directions which we never dream of,
good or bad,
There remains. to be discussed what I called the will indeconsideration of will as independent of character. 3rendent of
character.
Have I not been saying too much altogether about
character or habit? Is'it desirable we should be to
so great an extent creatures  of habit,'even moral
habit? Is there much significance in the notion of
moral education?- or much advantage in exercising
and disciplining ourselves to virtue?




APPENDIX A.1
Feelings,   Conscientiousness and kindly feeling, the two springs. of
tions, chavirtue, act not only to direct particular actions, but also to
racter.  lay up a stock or store of force for future good action in the
fact of good or virtuous habit.
It is convenient to make the following distinctions:
starting with feelings, as the most transitory, we go on to
dispositions (which are more or less permanent feelings, or.
conditions of the mind in regard of feelings), and finally to
character or aggregate of dispositions. Dispositions again
may be conveniently distinguished into such as are constitutional; such as-unconsciously become habitual; and such
as more or less consciously are made so. Habit is a word
which, in its own proper meaning, signifies state of mind, or
way in which the mind is or has itself, but which, in the
use of language, has' come very much to signify that unconscious tendency to do things, and facility in doing them,
which is brought about in the case of bodily movements
by practice and repetition: in this respect it has also come
into close resemblance of signification with'custom' or'usage' It is important however, in using the word habit
for ethical purposes, to keep in mind what, in that application, it must mean, and not to follow too immediately the
analogy either of bodily movements or general usage.
Virtuous-    Virtuousness is a disposition made habitual more or less
hebitls  consciously and of purpose. It is this, both because it is, as
disposi-  regards one of its sources, stored up conscientiousness (this.
hton.    latter being in its nature deliberate), and also because this
storing up itself is one of the' things which conscientiousness
1 The lIst chapter ends abruptly, merely introducing the discussion
of'will independent of character'. Appendix A, taken from MS. V,
seems to give an answer to several questions propounded there. B, C,
and D supply further details for the general discussion on habit and
character. ED.




APPENDIX  A.                    457
prompts to. The feeling of conscientiousness moves us to
take care, not only for our immediate action, but for our
prospective action and whole moral life.
I do not think that the view is correct, which considers The origithat it. is impulse only that generates, and that all that naselef
principle (reason, conscience) has to do is to regulate. I virtue,
think that conscientiousness or deliberate'reason is itself an adnd feel
original source of action. The mixture of these two sources ing, are
not extinof action belongs to our conception of moral character from guished by
the first to the last of it.  The notion of the overlaying of habit.
them both by habit, and then of the transformation of them'
both into habit, seems to me a gradual extinction of the
moral personality. The reality of this latter consists in the
liveliness of the sensibilities and the strength of the conscious
principle in conjunction the one with the other: if either of
these entirely superseded the other, there would be no longer
human virtuousness. We might imagine a being acting by
deliberate reason alone for the absolute best; that would not,
be a man: we might imagine a being again swayed always,
without any self-guidance, by inpulse to the best; in such a
case, where there was no self-possession or consciousness, we
could hardly say there was moral life at all.) But the stlpposition of a being moving only by habit, even infallibly to
virtue, would be worse than either of these. Such a being
would be little other than a machine. Virtue in him would
have no meaning, and no interest.
If we speak of moral habits in general, and in relation to
the larger and higher acts of virtue as well as to more frequent and familiar ones, I do not think that the formation of
habits is the obliteration or extinction of the sensibility and
the consciousness which in the first instance led to them.
The virtue which is laid up in the form of habit serves both
to determine of itself, without special attention, -a large mass
of action, and also to furnish a substratum or foundation for'
larger and higher acts of virtue (the smaller ones thus in a,
manner taking care of themselves) which -are done with as
much of deliberate consciousness and lively sensitiveness as
if virtue was not an old thing in the mind, but were at this,moment fresh and young. The same impressions repeated
may get weaker and weaker, but life and action are wide,
and there is ever a possibility of fresh ones: with regard to




4 58                 APPENDIX  A.
much of action, we may have nothing to do but to follow
former precedents of our own conduct- but it is pretty certain.
that new emergencies will arise, which will call for moral
deliberation and resolution, and I think we have no reason to
regret that it is so.
On the     The meaning of describing virtuousness as an habitual
other
hand, feel- dispositioh is this. A good action may be done, and from
ing and  good motives, on principle or feeling regarding that'action
principle
must be-, alone, and not at all made what it is by the state of mind of
comelha- the doer, or even quite in. opposition" to what that state of
bitual.
mind -would lead us to expect. Under certain circumstances,
conduct.of this kind may be the more' virtuous, in the sense
of meritorious, from its inconsistency with the general character. But speaking generally,.the principle and impulse
which are brought to bear upon the question, Is an action to
be done or not?' are an accumulation, and have been made
what they: are by previous determrination and action. Habits
of thought and feeling are always forming, and it is a part of
virtuousness that what is thus formed should be virtuous:
virtuous feeling or resolve on the spur of each separate occasion, though, so far as it exists, to' be acknowledged as true
and valuable, yet, considering what man is, is not complete
or all that is wanted, because in reality there is a continuousness in man's moral being; he is not simply a machine
to produce go'do results.  And in reality the action cannot
be good, except by occasional fits and starts, unless the
manner of thinking and judging, which mark'the habit or
state of mind, are so.
Still good    Ethical philosophy, however, has not unfrequently treated
vaction sluabl  this question as if the value of good actions consisted in the
in itself, fact that good habits were formed by doing them,. and as if
not mere- this were the. main reason for doing them.  The real reason
ductive of'for doing them is first -and foremost objective, on their own
goohbit account, not subjective, on account of any effect they may
have on.us.  No doubt, it is also an. important consideration
that by the repeated resolution to do them we are making
ourselves, in habit or state of mind, better, as by an opposite
proceeding we should be making ourselves worse; but in
regard of primary reason, the habits, are for.the sake of the
actions, not the actions for the sake of the habits.
Virtuousness then, in its best form or as it should be, is a




APPENDIX A.'                    459
taught, learnt, practised, habit, never becoming habitual to
such an extent as to destroy the principle and impulse which
formed the habit, never secure therefore against possibility
of much exceptional action, and never secure against a
change or unlearning the habit again; but still' affording a
very strong probability that the action will be according to'the habit and that the habit will continue.
The question here suggests itself whether virtue is ac- Some have
cepted by the soul as something good and akin to it, or eltduthit
whether it is accepted indeed, it.may be, but as something anunnatualien and, except for habit, disagreeable.  This view of the ral habit
action of habit, as reconciling us (or doing even more than
this) with what is otherwise distasteful, is so far apparent in
Aristotle; as that yvirtue according to him is often a matter
of effort and self-restraint, and that whatever of pain there
may be in these is by habit diminished or removed. Plato
in the first book of the Republic touches on a more inportant -manner in which virtue has been considered distasteful
to the soul, that notion, namely, with which the name of
Hobbes has been most associated in modern times, that the
consulting the interests of others in preference to our own, is
a'thing so repugnant to human nature that, if men do.it, it
must be because they are forced to it, and if they do it with
any apparent willingness or pleasure, the cause inMust be that
training and habit have reconciled them to what, of itself,
they could not like. This, it will be seen, is the exact opposite to the'Stoic view that virtue. is native'to the soul, and
what it really likes the best; the view of Aristotle, that it is
superinduced, but not as it were by force or as something
unpleasant, holding a middle place.
That we do right, if we do it, freely, and yet with a
pressure or urgency of it upon us, is the feeling of moral
obligation; and that some fact or objective reality corresponds
to this latter, is generally a part of the feeling also. It is no
wonder that, in the attempt to explain this almost self-contradictory feeling, one side. or another of it. should be ignored.
The view which I have just been alluding to, is to the effect
that no virtuous action is really done freely; that it is the
result of a force upon us; that whereas a certain part of the
ancient ethics taught that no man ig willingly, or of choice,
evil, the proper teaching would have been that no man is




460                  APPENDIX A.
willingly, or of. choice, good; that we are trained to do good,
to a certain degree, and -to take a sort of pleasure in it, as
many kinds of animals may be trained to do many things
most alien from  anything which we can call their real
nature; that from  dread of each other's wickedness, and
the probable ill consequences of that to ourselves, we are
driven to be in a certain degree virtuous, and to train others'
to be so; that with the view of enforcing fairly upon all this
which all so dislike, we arm, in the law and other'sanctions'
of morality,- certain arbitrary powers, which command and,
on failure of obedience, punish; that we try also to take off
the edge of the dislike itself by habit, and to a certain
extent succeed in doing so.
It is really   The real truth in regard to this is that, though virtue is
a habit
which is matter of habit, yet it is not to its habitualness only that is
essential due the pleasure which we take, if we do take such, in it,
to the full
tdevelop-l  but to itself also. We are trained to be virtuous, but not by
ment of  a training similar in kind to that which, with.some animals,
ture.   is able to make them  do extraordinary feats and things
entirely different from that which they would do in a state
of nature, but by an education, which the natural state
itself requires, in order to bring it out and develope it; an
education such as, even with the inferior animals (for whom
nature, mindful of the difficulties of education with them,
has provided greater facility of learning than for us), is needed
to enable them to fly or perform  any other natural movement. If it is n'ot our nature to be. virtuous, it is our nature
to learn virtue; and to learn virtue ratheri than vice, in the
same way in which (though in fact sight itself is a matter of'
learning just as virtue is) it is our nature to learn to see
things rightly, rather than wrongly and different from what
they.are. I have mentioned before that this is the real
point of the question, whether ideas of virtue and of moral
obligation come, or do not come, as matters of teaching
and education: if they do s6 come, they come as- what,
we may say, was meant to be taught, as something which
we should not be ourselves, should not be men, without;'
not as something accidental and superadded,'taught us
for a purpose, and in regard of which the question might
arise, whether it was alien to our nature or not, whether
it were well for us to learn it or not. The habits \of virtue




APPENDIX  A. -                  461
are needed to complete our nature; they are not something
superadded to it.
There is yet another thing to be noticed.
The supposition of formed habits giving a great security Habit in
against action in opposition to them  is nio doubt to a con- itself is
not more
siderable extent true.  But we must remember that we are favourable
not entitled to make any supposition on the side of virtue in to virtue
than to
this respect, which we are not prepared'also to make upon vice.
the side of vice.  If confirmed virtuous habit is; as habit,
omnipotent and unchangeable, there is reason to fear that we
should have to consider confirmed vicious habit as irreformable. And rather than do this, it seems to me.that it is
better that we should consider the security of confirmed virtuousness to reside, not so much in the habitualness resulting
from. repetition and custom, as in the strength of the principle.- The former acts for virtue and vice alike- and impartially. It is sure to act on the side of vice; it is our duty
to enlist it, for ourselves and others, on the side of virtue.
But what is on the side of virtue and cannot act on the side
of vice, is conscious principle.
The' more we attend to what we do, the-more we are
anxious to justify it to ourselves: the less we act from simple
habit without such attention, the better it is for virtue, and
the worse for vice. And the same in regard of emotions: the
mass of emotion, though irregular and untrustworthy, is
kindly, and acts on the side of virtue rather than on that of.
vice.  If therefore it were the case that habit, as a source of
action, superseded conscious principle and emotional impression to the extent to which some, and I think Butler, consider -it does, mankind would not be more virtuous than
they are, but less so: in the combat between virtue and vice,
habit is neutral: it is *other things superadded to habit,
which -make virtue the stronger. Habit is not therefore a
merciful provision of the Creator on the side of virtue: it is
simply a condition or quality of human nature, which constantly does serve virtue and always may be made "to do' so,
but which serves against virtue also.
And to me, there is something more grievous in the The belief
in the
thought of the bad being irrecoverable than there is pleasing power of
in the thought of the good being secure.  The strong feeling theawill
of the. invincibleness of habit seems to me not to belong to habit is




462:   APPENDIX A.
of great  the Virtuous frame of mind, and not to aid virtue, but the
morralm  opposite.  Anything which weakens our feeling of the force
of human free-will (I am  not speaking now in a  1eligious
view, of human free-will in relation to. any divine influence)
acts, it seems to mie, really on the side of'vice, not on that of
virtue. It is virtue that is the strength, vice that is the
weaknfiess, as the very names denote.  The more therefore
inward' spring and force is supposed to maintain  itself
inextinguishable to the last, against any overpowering influences such as that of habit, the better for virtue.  Habit
is second nature, and this phrase exactly expresses theAristotelic notion of habit of'which I have been speaking:
it is a nature superinduced upon the first: but as it was
superinduced upon the first nature, so may another always
be upon it: and as, under the first nature, the acts were
possible which, being repeated,. formed the habit, so, under
the habit or second nature, acts are always possible which,
repeated, will form a habit different fronm, perhaps contrary
to, the former.
There is no greater aid to vice, in my view, than disbelief in human free-will and moral agency, which in good
men leads to despair, to hard and misanthropic contempt in
those who are not good.  We need not be suspicious about
the virtuous, but we may consider the strength of their
virtue to consist not merely, perhaps not principally, in its
habitualness, but in the goodness of feeling and the enlightenment of principle which produced the virtue first, and
which its increase is only likely to have increased. And
thinking thus, we may always be hopeful about the vicious.
There is always something in them which may be awaked
against the bad habit.
As moral-    I am  inclined to think that,.as moralists have been
iss exg-et  usually disposed to consider the power of habit in human.
good, so  nature as a fact helpful to virtue, so those who are not moraliists eal- ists, but men of the world -and professedly disciples, in pracgerate   tical nworality,'of experience (a race of men little to be loved),
the evil
effect of  a-re disposed to consider it as acting the other way, and as
habit.   rather strengthening vice.  Such men do not seem generally
to have much confidence in virtuous habit, when they see it,
but a very great certainty with regard to vicious habit, when
they see that, that the man under its influence will never do




APPENDIX A.                    463
anything virtuous, and that all attempts to reform him will
be in vain. As I have said, I think both the moralists andthe men of the world are in error: the moralists are not too
confident in the virtue of the virtuous, bu t' rather mistaken
in the ground of their confidence: the opposite party should
give fair measure to both sides, and, as they distrust virtuous
habit, should in all reason put off their heartlessness and
cruelty, and hope in regard of vicious habit..




APPENDIX  B.1
Three       There are, we may say, three shells of the being, one above
shellacef'another: there is the constitutional framework; there is the
original,  actual character of feelings, dispositions, and mental habits
made,'
making.  which our experience has formed round this; and there is
the outer framework still, of practical habits or customary
ways of action which are gradually becoming or producing
new mental habits with us, modifying the old, and changing
our character.
Habit is    Habit is second nature.'With animals, where such a
second na- second nature is superinduced upon the first, it is an inferior
ture, as
change-  one, because the first is complete in itself, and not meant by
thefirst.  nature to be changed and improved, upon. But man has
given to him, not so much an individual nature itself as the
outline -and rudiments of one.  Hence the second nature
which habit superinduces upon him is a superior.one to his
first. It is not an addition of incongruous habits to a nature
not meant for them, but it' is adding to the nature something
it needed to fill it up and complete it.
The fact. Habit is second nature, and as difficult, but not more
that habit difficult, to modify than the first.  The life of man, as we see
is not                  fy
fixed in  it, is of course divided into one period of growth and another
the mind
asin thhe of stability, &c. and it is natural that in the former there
body is an should be more of unfixedness and changeableness: but in
argument
for the   reality, reason and will are elements of continual youth,
greater   growth, and change, and whether we are glad. it should be so
longevity
of the for.. or not, they must continue so.  At a certain period of life
mere.   the character becomes what we call formed, because the
whole organization about that time in a manner settles itself,
and the inward man takes something of a permanent shape
in analogy with the outer, but in no respect to the same
degree, for vast changes of character are made continually
afterwards.  And that there is this moral youth or con1 Taken from MS. marked II. 1. ED.




APPENDIX B.                       465
tinuance of growth is one of the things which may help to
convince us that we cannot judge of the probable duration
of the existence of the mind by the analogy of that of the
body.
The limit between the intermediate and the outer shells
of moral being is vague and indeterminate in consequence
of this continually possible and likely change of character.
Mere' practical habits are contiinually passing into new
mental habits or dispositions. "EOoq, custom, is continually
becoming BOot, character. Actions done for a purpose and
as the result of an effort become more and more done for
themselves and as the result of a growing disposition.
- This' uncertainty of the boundary between these two Habit
spheres of the moral being is the source of a great deal of while still
moral difficulty and of much immoral opinion also, which can making is
necessaonly be met by our facing the fact, that the limits of what is rily awkcharacter, and what is not, but element of future character, ward.
are thus uncertain. It is impossible but that a man must put
on to a certain degree the character which he is aiming at and
wishing was his, and contemplating making more and more
his; and, so'long as this is the case, there will always be
people who will treat what is really effort in him, perhaps
imperfectly succeeded in, as mere affectation and hypocrisy. A man can only escape charges of hypocrisy of this
kind by a conduct really worse and more unworthy than
any conduct which can give occasion to them, viz. by an
clp.,veta' and disguise of his efforts after improvement, which
is untrue and uncandid. Whatever is in a state of change
and improvement is in a state, so far as thaf goes, of awkwardness and incompleteness: that character should miss
of its rotundity and invulnerability for this reason, is no
harm to it.
Custom, then, or use, practical habit, is the immediate Habit is
instom) p                                         produced
agent in producing change of mental habit or disposition: mainly by
but there is always reason superadded. Man, unlike the education
and cornanimals, sees always more or less the manner in which his panionc
character is changing.                                   ship.
Where there is no attempt at definite education, there
goes on in the youthful human being what is in many respects the'same thing, by means of his companionship and
society. Dispositions are produced by this; and very possiG.                                         30




4 6                   APPENDIX  B.
bly good ones: at the same time it is likely that in this
case the goodness of them will be unconscious and of itself
unattended to.  The habit of thinking of them  as right or
otherwise will not exist.  For this, and for the producing of
several good dispositions, there needs in a general way moral
education.
Relationof    In default of our being able to present a portrait of
tharistoes individual character, which should convey a single general
tion.    effect, giving us the distinctive expression of it, various
theories -are made -as to the relation between character and
the particular dispositions.
Ruling'One is, that its unity consists in the strong and almost
besettion exclusive prevalence of, some one disposition called the ruling
sin.    passion, not readily perhaps apparent, but traceable  by
*observati'on, and such that -many of what we call separate
dispositions are really only varieties of it.  Somewhat of the
same kind is the notion of the liability of each person to
some one particular temptation or besetting sin.
Mixture in    Different again from  this is the idea of the mixture of
character. elements in individual character, which is often spoken of as
a subject of wonder.  It is obvious that there is a sort of
inaccuracy in speaking of this mixture, for the elements are
really of our own mental making,. and it is the character that
is the unity.  The importance of this view consists in our
imputing moral qualities to the different elements, and in
the manner in which it thus appears that in every individual character there is good and bad together. The study of
the manner of their mixture is perhaps the most important
part of all practical morality. It is the carrying this latter
idea to an extreme, which leads to the supposition that there
is hardly such a thing as character at all. The knowledge
of a person's character, if it is anything at all, is something
which you can more or less predict his action by: there are
perhaps some who.will say, that human action cannot be
even probably predicted.
In our notions of character it is desirable to keep separate the two ideas, of mixture in character.of good and evil,
and of composition of character out of various qualities and
features.  The consideration.of the second is like the consideration of actual.external portraiture.- There is charm in




APPENDIX  B..467
individuality, and even in imperfection and defect as contributing to this. We are not however to fall into the error
of supposing'that it is in -the preservation of this given individuality that consists the truth of the character and the
best perfection it is capable of.- Faces are given us, and are
not generally mendable. Character is given us in rudiment.
and outline, but is eminently mendable and changeable.
Between mental and external portrait there is therefore
only an analogy: the features of the character are far more
fugitive and less distinct than those of the face. Still" it
is impossible to draw them at all, if the analysis of them is
too immediately associated with separate judgment of them
as good and-evil. They go together in the character, and what
may seem undesirable in one or other of them is. tempered
perhap.s by something in a neighbouring one. The unity is of
the whole: the responsibility is unitary: and the judgment
must be of the whole.
It is probable that the rudimentary or constitutional Variety
character is to a certain extent more varied in different of circumindividuals in circumstances of civilization, owing to the tends to
greater development of character in parents.  But however Produce
this may be, the variety of circumstances of life and com- character.
panionship' into which the infant of civilization is thrown
speedily developes character in one direction or another to
an infinity of its varieties.
It is true, thought and imagination not connected with Character
action does little as to development of character, and a high is dbeelopstate of literature or knowledge.is therefore in this respect not action
important.  There is another respect also in which civiliza-.athaeby
tion may even diminish variety of character.  It generates thought.
a great degree of imitation and fashion, which at first sight
renders the aspect of civilized society, as to individual character, more unvaried and monotonous than we imagine that
of uncivilized to be. This first impression however is superficial in more than one way.  It is not so much thaet variety How far is
of character is really lessened in civilization, but that it is ciov liarendered less conspicuous than it would otherwise be by the vourable
restraint....   -~~. ~to variety
restraint and mannerism which civilization generates in of characmany classes. The idea of civilization also tends to confine our ter?
view to what we should consider the  more specially civilized
classes; in which it often happens that, while thought and
30   2




4688                  APPENDIX B;
imagination are developed, there is less familiarity with the
actual exigencies and circumstances of life, and it is these
which really modify the character. It is not the height to
which civilization draws human thought, but the variety of
views in which it sets the common and actual relations of
life, and the variety of interests in which it invests them,
which varies character.  Ease, leisure and study, setting the
imagination in motion, generate a sort of shadow of variety
of it, and what, in a highly developed. civilization, is called
society, gives a certain degree of substance to the shadow:
but there needs geherally more of.actual reality and call upon
feeling than goes with these, to produce real character.
However, a certain degree of a kind of uncivilizedness in
the midst of civilization is supposed to conduce to the greater
variety and. interest of individual character. Some consider
that there is more variety of character in England than elsewhere; and also more of humour.




APPENDIX  C.1
The habits of the mind are analogous to those of the Mentalhabits are
body, and habit may be called a second nature in both;mo,,,,,re
but there is a considerable difference between the two, easily
changed
according to the nature. of that of which they are habits. than bod..
Habits of the. body take their place in a material organiza- ily
tion which, so far.as it is matter, is out of ourselves and
beyond olar will; and permanent states or conformations are
established, which no power of will can remedy.  Habits
of the mind are always mixed with a certain degree of
estimation, judgment, opinion, which is in its nature alterable, and as such, may lead to alteration bf the habits.
When therefore habits of the mind are considered to constitute a second nature, it must be considered also, that mental
nature can never be counted as immovably and' irremediably
fixed, but that, reason being always capable of adding fresh
knowledge, and feeling being susceptible-of fresh impressions,
the greatest changes may be produced in the nature and
character without destroying the individuality.
But qusere, though in its nature as mind, or as spiritual, Is there
the character may be susceptible thus of change, yet is it not to mlental
perhaps in its nature for a limited period, in this respect fol- change?:lowing, the analogy of the body: i.e. has not the soul or
moral character, like the body, a period of flexibility or
growth, at the end o6f which it becomes fixed and limited,
with no further power of change than in  the  way  of
decline?
This question as to the possible fixation  and  non- Religion
improvability of moral character is, in a practical point of thehopes
view, the most important question of morals. Almost the of morality
in affirm.
greatest service of the many which religion has rendered to ing the
the world, is its having reinforced the side which maintains
1 Taken from an unmarked MS. written some time ago and apparently forming part of the: long series marked I. 1. ED.




470                  APPENDIX  C.
possibility that there is always in the character, however fixed and
provement however educated, a spring and possibility of improvement.
against  This it has done in two ways; both by strongly urging upon
habit.'
a us the enduring and immortal nature of the soul, as contrasted with the growing and declining life of the body; and
next by protesting in behalf of the individual, and in right
of a superior and nobler influence which may be brought to
bear upon him, against the absolute and necessary dominion
over him of any earthly state and habit, which always may
be shattered and broken up by the spiritual force within.
What religion thus distinctly sets before us, morality had
already shadowed forth. There is really more in any of us
than the superficial maxims, necessary and valuable for the
commerce of life, would recognize; and there is also an
inward force of the Spirit deeper and stronger than anything which human agency can breed in us.
Stoic      It was a remarkable practical application of the theory
view that
virtue, be- of the Stoics, (that virtue was according to nature, vice
ingaccord- against it,) that they considered a state of attained virtue
ing to nature, is the one of stable equilibrium, i. e. one not likely, hardly possible,
condition' to be departed from, whereas a state of lapse into vice they
of stable
equili-  considered due of unstable equilibrium, because against
brium: nature. It is curious to compare with this some moral
theories connected with religion in later times, as that e;g.
which assumes the opposite to the maxim of the Stoics in
regard of human nature, viz. that it is bad, and therefore
that its state of stable equilibrium, or natural acquiescence,
w6uld be in vice; a theory nevertheless which, in regard to
the permanence of a state of virtue, is to a certain- extent in
harmony with the Stoic idea, attributing such permanence to
perseverance under a special divine influence.
confirmed    On the other hand, the well-known chapter in Ezekiel'
by Christi- exhibits the possibility of movement either way, in language
looking in some respects as if one way and the other were
equally probable: and, as a fact of pre-Christian morality, it
will, probably be allowed that this view is more in accordance
with human experience than the Stoic idea of a state of virtue
having an element of stability in it beyond what a state -of
vice had. At the same time the Gospel, with its doctrine
of special divine influence, does introduce a new element on
1 Ezek. xiiii. 26, 27.




APPENDIX  C.                    471.the side of yirtue, and under it we may rightly suppose
that permanence which the Stoic supposed wrongly.
Not to dwell on this longer, I will just discuss for a Meaning
moment two famous old Greek questions: the one, whether question
ape67n is.  3aKaTov, i.e. whether virtue is' matter of teaching; whether, p     /r4 is
the other, Mow far it may be said with truth that oUeS E V C apar7o':
KaKo,;, no. man is willingly or purposely bad.
The former question may mean one of two things:
either; is virtue a thing in regard of which teaching is not
applicable? or, is it a thing in regard of which teaching is not
enough? Or, putting it in another form, and taking the three
alternatives, is cpeij 8ML&aKT6V only (1), dacrK~6v only (2) to
be produced i.e. by practice and habit, or is it &UBaCrTOv and
a.o-p7-ov together (3), requiring teaching and practice both?
We should generally say now it was the last of these
three alternatives, and what I have been saying is simply
that it never becomes so absolutely fixed by the da-lcfl-tV, but
that it is possible, at least in the direction of good, to alter it:
by teaching. In a general way, moral schools the essence of
whose teaching is rationalism would maintain the first alternative; those the essence of whos'e teaching is sentimentaclismn
would maintain the second.
The maxim  ovoe6S eL~xV Ica69o is also susceptible of two of the
meanings: it may either mean'no one does wrong but by madxm ovcompulsion,' or'no one does wrong but by mistake.' If it KaKO.S.
be true that no man does wrong willingly, it must be either
that, when he does it, he does'the thing which he does unwillingly, or that, though he does it willingly, it is as something else, not as what it is.
Wrong being simply mistake involves dpeT7, being simply
ctSaIcTrov; and this view in various forms is held, to a certain
degree, by several sorts of moralists. The idea of wrong -
being weakness or- yielding, against a better judgment, is
one which involves rather the idea of dpeTI  being aocrfC-O6v.
The questions' are rather dry as philosophical ones, having Imporbeen thrashed out so much, but as practical ones they are of tance of
these quesintense and perfectly fresh interest, riot only as regards tionsin
individual moral conduct, but. as regards the proper estima- rhe treat
tion of offence or crime and the ways of dealing with it. ment of
Supposing a wrong or crime done by any one, and we arecriminals.




472                 APPENDIX C.
thinking of the temper of mind in which he did it. Did he.
justify himself in doing it, do it, that is, not against his conscience? then some will say, he did not'do it as wrong, but
there is something of the character of error or mistake about
it. Did he not justify himself in.doing it, but do it against
his conscience? was it Video meliora proboque, deteriora
sequor? if so, then some will associate the wil with the
probo, and say, he wanted tQ do good, but evilwas present
with him; they will look on him to a certain degree& as
passive, drifting, acting under compulsion..
Questions about the will frighten practical people
through the idea of their abstruseness; but this, of the
degree to which people in doing wrong do it with selfjustification, is one so important for any moral dealing with
wrong-doers that it must be faced. It is most intimately
connected with the theory of punishment, for where there is
determined self-justification in the mind in regard of what
has been done, there any punishment must seem unjust in
the mind of the punished, and will produce no moral effect,
but an effect only of terror accompanied with a feeling of
reaction against the punishment, which will make the man'worse. Punishment, as regards the mind of the offender,
appeals to the conscience, i. e. to the feeling of failure in selfjustification, which will have involved an expectation of it, or
sense of deserving it.
Punish-    The theory upon which punishment goes then in regard
ment imapliesthe of the mind of the individual. is on the negation of the
negation maxim ov38s' &flcov'calcK, in both its possible senses: i.e. it
of the
seconc   assumes that the man, in doing what he did, knew he was
maxim.  doing wrong, and could have helped doing it. Both these
last suppositions are indeed only true in an imperfect degree,
but still enough so to make punishment applicable and
suitable. The thing done probably presents itself to the
-criminal in a light very different from  that in which it
appears to the judge: and the bearing up against the
temptation to do it will have been something very different
in the criminal's mind fromn what it may seem in the eyes of
the indifferent and untempted. But there has been enough
of will in his mind to make him expect punishment and
think it natural, and there is a prospect therefore that upon
himself as well as on others the effect of it may be good.




APPENDIX  C.                    473
Wrong or crime we may suppose in a general way com- Analysis
mitted in a frame of mind made up more or less of three ele-of theo
state of
ments:. the first, an effort, often for the moment successfiul, at mind in
self-justification; the second, an effort to banish from the mind wfehethse
all thoughts and considerations which might disturb such commitself-justification; the third, a feeling of. yielding or beingte.
overpowered, of the thing being what cannot be helped, of
the man's letting himself go, eyes shut perhaps, to do the
thing.  According to the.degree of strength or weakness
of nature there will be more perhaps or less of any one of
these; but in general I should think something of a mixture
of all of them.
The consideration of the variety of character is' of vast Importance of
importance in morals.  It has been sometimes misused, recognisometimes neglected, in both cases with the result of error ing the
and immorality.  It has been misused to the extent of doing vcharetye 
away with the reality and absoluteness of moral distinctions
altogether, through the consideration of each person having
in a manner a distinct duty according to his character, or
having a sort of duty to his character, for there are various
ways in which we may phrase the thing.  The result of the
opposite proceeding, neglect of it, has been a good deal.of
harsh, foolish, and mistaken judgment, and of abortive effort
in consequence at improvement and reformation.
The reality of moral distinctions -as to action has to be How this
maintained against those who misuse the fact of individuality fact has
been misof character to subvert it, in the same way as it has to be used.
maintained against those who misuse the fact of good being
to a good end, and pervert it into the statement, that
everything which is to a good end is, as such, good.
In a general way what is called knowledge of human Character
nature and correct moral thought are considered to be very ithydisr
different things and even not likely to go together. We may sition a
arrange and catalogue dispositions and feelings, and we may mere abarrange                             straction.
judge whether they are good or bad according to our moral
theory, whatever it is, whether of honourableness, e;g., or
utility: but, for valuable action in respect of morals, there
is usually needed an experimental' and observational element, that is, we must see how these dispositions enter into
character or concur' to form  characters which are the real




474                  APPENDIX  C.
moral units. Virtues, vices, feelings, dispositions, habits, all
these are abstractions; men or characters, i.e. men as concerns
their moral being, are the realities which in ethics we have
to do with.
Characters, like all natural realities, are not definable:
when they are described by their details or features, there
is an effect as to the whole produced by the co-existence
of these details which is no more capable of being fixed in
description than the expression of a face. No congeries of
details, such e.g. as the phrenological classification of qualities
and accounts of the degrees and amounts of them, can produce any conception of a character as it in fact exists:
so far asfthis can be entered into, it must be by a sort
of sympathy, not necessarily of agreement, but at least of
understanding. No putting together of parts will make the
whole, the conception of which whole, however faint and
feeble, must exist in its unity, and the parts must be of the
nature of results or developments of it.
Absence    Every one then may be supposed to have a character, as
of charac- he has a face, more or less distinct and marked.  So far
ter.
as it is not distinct, this is most likely in one of two ways:
either the weakness, yieldingness, and tendency to imitation
is so great that the individual takes almost entirely the character of those he is with; or else the inconsistency and
variability is so great that the dispositions of to-day are not
those of to-morrow, and there is no permanence of character.
The French when they use the expression'un homme de
ccaractere,' mean in the main the opposite to the former of
these, and the poet when he used the line which I never well
understood,' Most women have no character at all,' meant I
suppose to express the latter.
Formation    The formation of character we commonly speak of as
tferharac- what belongs to youth. In using the word'formation' we
mean it probably in its closer etymological and logical sense,
understanding by it a plastic operation upon matter existing.
At the first there is no character but only the materials of it
waiting to receive their form; the animal, intellectual; and
moral being are all, to a certain degree, simultaneously
Man is  trained and developed.
more       We are always however to remember that the intellectual,




APPENDIX  C.                   475
and more especially the moral training of men is distinct.capable of
from the animal, and that it is a part of the special nature of toditnfih
man to preserve throughout his life, to a certain degree, that other aniflexibility, adaptability, and capacity of change which inmals
animals belong only to the period of their youth. Even as
an animal, man is more convertible, as we should say if we
were speaking of soils, than other animals: as he is fit by his
constitution for a greater variety of things; so he can live in
a greater variety of climates, and adapt himself; often to a
very late period of his life, to alteration of circumstances, &C.,
and reason and imagination in man, so far as they exist, are
really almost a spring of continual youth. There is. no need
for the stiffening. and fixing of them, as the limbs and animal
nature stiffen, nor need there be any weakening of the will
-so that it should not be able to carry out what wider range
and altered view would suggest: character therefore as formed
in youth is very far from unmodifiable.




APPENDIX  ).1
Charac-     My lecture to-day will be upoll human character, as mixed,
ter ad   in the same individual.
mixed.
The first question which arises in regard of this is, What
is the meaning of individual character at all?  There is no
doubt each man has a reputation, good or bad, a character
in the eyes of his neighbours: this is an idea or imagination
of him with definite form and outline; but what is there in
himself which can be considered as corresponding to this?
Is he not rather one thing to-day-and another to-morrow? If
there is individual character, what is its relation to personal
responsibility?
Three       Before answering this, I will distinguish between three
sorts of  sorts of moralists, theoretical,.didactic, and a third  class
moralists:
theoretic, whom I will call critical moralists: they are chiefly the
rticacic, makers of maxims, essays, and remarks. The first set in
this triple division might be divided again into two, psychological and ontological, but this does not matter. At present
we are chiefly concerned with the difference between the
didactic and the critical moralists.
Critical'   As a rule there is a tendency on the part of the critical
mor alism  moralists to. think to a certain degree lightly of any uniis analytic
andindis- formity or unity in individual character, whereas didactic
p      Iosegd to moralism  must make a great deal of it.  This arises'from
recognize
unity of the fact that these critical moralists draw their materials
character:
didactic is from  two sources neither of which are very much fitted to
synthetic give them a strong idea of individualism of character: these
pathetie. are examination of themselves, and criticism  of particular
actions in others.' Didactic moralism proceeds always more
or less on something of a' previously formed ideal of what a
man ought to be, and might be, and refers the particular
actions to this rather than dissects them  by themselves.  In
fact, didactic moralism has always a certain degree of sympathy with the individuals wliom it concerns; and this in a
way idealizes them, and gives an idea of unity of character.
-Critical moralism is analytic rather than synthetic, de-uniJies
1 Taken from MS. RI, forming part of series I. 1. ED.




APPENDIX  D.                     47.7
rather than unifies. Similarly the -habit of examination of
one's own motives has a tendency to diminish the idea of the
real unity of individual character. A man's character is like
his writing, which has not usually much individuality to
himself, but seems different from  day to day, whereas to
others it is strongly individual, and marked and recognized.
Besides, a man who looks much at his..own motives sees so
ntuch one way and the other in himself, different from the
character he bears with others, that he gets inclined to think
individual character a chimera.
You see in the critical moralists many maxims with this
tendency. And it appears not in moralists only, but any.
unsympathizing view of others is likely to produce it, sympathy being the key to perception of character, as distinguished from criticism of actions. In those fits of misanthropy which people at certain times of their lives seem
liable to, their fellow-creatures, whom  unhappily for them
they have got to pass their lives with, are. apt to seem to
them like a number of sheep similar and undistinguished,
without individuality and without interest. The development of any character at all in them  is somewhat superciliously set down as impossible.
The assumption of want of individuality of character The critiamong men must be considered to a certain degree an calnegaf
among   must.                           tion of
immoral one, not as implying immorality in the maker of it, character
but as being a view of human nature which it is hard or is imraI moral, no
impossible to adapt to moral relations'.  The supposition of less than
individuality of character must be considered as a medium be- tchlisatitween two erroneous suppositions, the one made commonly by sumption
of low mopracticalists, so to call them, as distinguished from. moralists, tives.
the other made by critical moralists. The first of them is a
sort of vague general assumption of a low tone among men,
So Pope, Essay on Mawn:
"Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
Few in the extreme, but all in the degree.
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;
And even the best, by fits, what they despise."
And Crabbe, The Borough, xvii.:
"In man's erroneous kind
Virtues and frailties mingle in the mind."
Rather differently Akamemnon in Soph, Aj. 1365:
7Cav ojLota 7raZs dv'p a'vrT- 7rovet.




478                   APPENDIX ID.
and-a rough consequent division of them into certain classes,
differently made according to the man who makes them (as
for instance that cleverness and wickedness go together, and
that every one is knave or fool), but all to a certain degree
inconsistent with moral considerations.  This is the prasticalist error; the critical consists in the carrying too far, as all
people fond of analysing actions are sure to be tempted to
do, the idea of evil being always mixed with good, and g~6d
with evil, so as to break down the subjective boundaries of
right and wrong altogether. As, on the one hand, the practicalist with a sort of careless contempt sets men down under
certain great heads on the supposition of their being only
influenced by coarse and palipable motives, so the critical
moralists, on the other hand, by their refinements make one
part of an action or character neutralize another to such
a degree that all colour and shade and distinction is removed; and we  cannot say what is right, what wrong,
what a man is, and what he is not.
Between these two errors the supposition of individuality
of character has. to be maintained; men being of different
characters, some good, some bad, but these' being variously
shaded, related  and mixed, not capable  of being rudely
jumbled together in the practicalist manner.
The cha-    It is a very famous historical observation and. one most
racier of thoroughly true, that in regard of public injury, as in times of
mixed
good and revolution, it is not the vicious character that is most to be
metimes feared, but the wrong-headed and narrow-minded virtuous
more mis- character.  Vice, existing in such extent as to constitute in
hieV~os   any way the character, is weakness; and hence arises the
with less absolute contradictoriness and.inconceivableness of characgood.   iters supposed indefinitely great, both in viciousness and in
strength or wisdom, such as Milton's idea of Satan. The old
mediaeval association of folly with Satanic viciousness (setting
aside the danger of perversion of such an association to the
grotesque and ridiculous) was in other respects truer to the
real idea of vice and evil than the Miltonic association with'
it of wisdom and strength'.
1 Tacitus says indeed: "In turbas et discordias pessimo cuique
plurima vis." Hist. iv. 1, but it wants qualification. Corneille is equally
strong on the opposite side when he says,
"Pour commettre un grand crime il faut de la vertu."




APPENDIX  D.                       479
The consideration of the way in which people whose
characters must on the whole be called virtuous, may be the
authors of results most evil and wicked, is a proceeding which,
though capable of being perverted to immorality, is not in itself
necessarily immoral. It is a consideration of great importance
with respect to the relation of character to action, and against
the supposition that a thing.must be right because a man
of apparently virtuous character does -it, and that the action
of such a man must be for good'.
The mixture of good and evil in character has been much The diswritten about, partly for an immoral, and. partly for a moral covery of
the evil
purpose.  The discovery and exhibition of the bad which in good
there is in actions apparently or upon the whole good, is m alybe
what we may call the staple subject of the critical moralists, either by
La Rochefoucauld, &c.; and with them I think it must be con- way of
mockery
sidered that the purpose for which it is done is not good; for or to ex.
though this purpose is professedly that of counteracting the itoe toer
pride to which' nman is liable in what he does, yet what is nest effort
effected is not so much this, as the depreciation and ob- after good.
scuring of the ideal of good which man is able to form, and
which is really the great resource in the inculcating and
It results from the different nature of vice and virtue, as being respectively weakness and strength, independent of goodness and badness,
that, while as Ben Jonson says of valour and anger.(New Inn iv. 3),
" Virtue is never aided by a vice," yet vice, to produce any bad effects of
consequence is aided by virtue, and only produces them when so aided.
The simply vicious maii is apt to be
"Wicked but in will, of means b'ereft."
Dryden, Absalom and Ach.
But is virtue, as -strength, ever rendered more amiable by vice, as
weakness?
"Is aught then wanted in a man so wise?
Alas! I think he wants infirmities:
He wants the ties that knit us to our kind."
Similarly' Nihil peccat, nisi quod nihil peccat." Plin. Ep. ix. 26.
1 The Stoic magniloquence in relation to the importance of particular character over action often tended towards immorality.
"Catoni ebrietas objecta est: facilius efficiet, quisquis objecerit,
hoc crimen honestum, quam turpem Catonem."
Seneca,.de Tranquill. An.
"Envy, to which the ignoble mind's a slave,
Is emulation in the learn'd and brave."
Pope,. Essay on /[an.




480                  APPENDIX D.
seeking improvement. The same thing has been done with
a religious view, in order to purify and elevate the ideal and
stimulate further effort after it.
The dis-   The opposite mixture, of good with actions which are
the good apparently or upon the whole evil, has, we may say, speaking
in evil is generally, been pointed out only in one view and for one
often done, 1 
with a   purpose, and that a wrong one. There is, I suppose, upon
bad mo-  the whole, more tendency in human nature to think well of
ivaleuablet  evil, than to think badly of good: and this first tendency has
for'the re- shewn itself strongly in the literature of fiction; so strongly
formation
of charac- indeed, as almost,.one might think, to confound the boundater.    ries of right and wrong in many minds1.
It is a pity that not more attempts have been made,
for a good purpose, to analyse and shew  the nature of
the good which so constantly enters into combination with
evil. It is of course a'task requiring very great caution
and a very true and sincere mind, so that nothing which
is evil shall be set down to the side of good, but only
the evil disengaged; and that the good.' found in combination with the evil should in no respect lessen- our
dislike for the evil itself, or make us look with less abhorrence upon the mixture. Christians are, we might almost
say,.to a certain degree committed, as one of their characteristics, to the special notice and recognition, in any who
are evil and guilty, bf whatever tendencies to good there
may be in them. This was one of the most marked features
in the character of- Him whom we profess to follow, and
though we must guard against any possibility in it of immoral
connivance or allowance, or the imputation of such, we must
no more shrink from the thing because of such possibility,
than He did.
The subject is of considerable importance just now, in
reference to the possible.reformation of criminals.
Character    For -practical convenience we may distinguish three
bmay be  kinds of badness: a man may be bad on principle, or bad
principle, through want of principle and strength of passions, or bad
orihmpulse, through habit.
or habit.
I have already mentioned, in regard of Butler's statement
1 You remember Tacitus' remarkable character of Mucianus, the
man "malis bonisque artibus mixtus," which he gives in detail Hist. i. 10.
Such a character we should certainly set down as on the whole bad.




APPENDIX D.'481
that conscience is, in the nature of things, supreme over
passion, that it is in. fact reason or the intellectual nature of
man, which has this supremacy, but that the supremacy of
what thinks and guides over what blindly feels and desires is
in no respect the foundation of morals, reason being quite
conceivably mistaken and wrong reason, and then morality
would be on the side of passion and affection, against it. In.
point of fact, character is quite as often bad from wrongness
and perversion of reason as'it is from weakness or insufficient
power of it: then the character is what we call one of bad
principle.
In all cases of bad principle, iwe are to remember-that
the man in fact justifies to himself his crime, and makes out
to his own satisfaction that it is right. If it is stealing,
he tacitly assumes that the man from whom he takes whatever it is, has no more right to the thing than he himself
has, that there is a sort of war between them, and that any
ideas of society to the contrary are wrong. And if you say
he thinks nothing about all this, just try to put into his
mind what you think about the matter, i.e. the exact contrary of the above, and see -how he receives that; you will
then find out what he does think. To reform him, you have
got to make him see things in a light quite different from
that in which he has seen them before.
Against character bad on principle, there are therefore The first
two ways. of proceeding, both commonly to be pursued in may be
met by
conjunction, the one to improve the principle, or implant a reforming
better principle against it, the other to stir up -and arm, the oPrrby
against the bad principle, any tendency or chance of good.rousing
which may exist in feeling and affection.  So far from its impuagloist
being always desirable that reason, such as it often is in
man, should prevail, it is possible that the only chance of
reformation of a bad character may consist in the conquering
it: where it is impossible to alter it in its own domain,
owing to some fixed perverseness, it may be needful to
depose it from the actual supremacy which it enjoys. Supposing a man to be firmly persuaded that his own gratification is the only thing he need care for, it may be possible
that no argument we could use would give him  in this
respect higher motives; but we might bring him  to the
same point by exciting the emotions of affection, pity and
G.. 31




482                 APPENDIX D.
sympathy; thus the defeat of the man's reason may be the
improvement of his character.
Where the   Positive bad principle then, or perverted moral judgment,
direct at- may be either eradicated or conquered-; i. e. either the reason
tempt to
change   may be convinced and amended, and the positive bad prinprinciple ciple changed for good; or, without a direct attack upon the
by instruction fails, bad principle, other motives of feeling and-action may be
awakened instead of it, which may practically supplant and
neutralize it: Very commonly it is only the second of these
which is possible, and that for two reasons: 1st, because,
when once the understanding is occupied by:a definite set
of ideas or ways of thinking about things, it' is very hard,
even in matters allowing of -clear proof, to change these,
the utmost we -can do being to supersede them; and.2nd, because many questions of morality about which ideas
would have to be changed are not susceptible of this clear
proof. Take the right of property or the obligation of truth,
matters very easily demonstrable perhaps by me to you, who
do. not doubt them, and' who want no more in regard to
the demonstration than the significance and formal correctness of it, but far from easy to demonstrate to one who had
been all his life taught to regard nothing as belonging to
another in such sense as to preclude the trying to rob him of
it, and anything his own which he could without detection
lay his hands on, and anything fair to say which would get
him out of trouble, It is not altogether easy, as Paley and
others have shown, to exhibit clearly the foundations of the
right of property and of the obligation of truth, even to
those who have no interest in denying them; and against
such interest, and habit founded on it, the arms of reason
trying to reform the reason of another are very far from
powerful.
it may     Still of course, direct instruction must be'tried, in every
mtet nbdi way in which it will take hold; where it will not, there we
rectly by must endeavour to call out any part of the moral nature
affetioung which still remains unperverted:. And no doubt, so far is
reason from being more moral than the affections, that they
are in a general way less completely pervertible than it, and
there is hope from them, where from reason there is none.
The'transformation of a bad moral view of things, where
feeling and affection are awakened; the melting'away and




APPENDIX D.                    483
dissolving of the false principles and the gradual rise of true
principles in their place; the manner in which the most iron
resolve of bad reason and will may collapse at the touch of
love, and the hardest determination to look at things in one
way and no other thaw before the warm wind of sympathythese are moral phenomena, remarkable indeed, but by no
means unfrequent. Nor are we to suppose there is anything
wrong in feeling thus conquering reason: it is not true and
simple reason which is thus conquered, for such reason is
accessible only to reasonable opposition and attack; but it is
reason which, not having been convinced while yet reason
and conyinceable, has now very probably passed beyond the
stage of simple reason, the stage of convinceability, has
become ingrained into the character and fixed in the habits,.and is. only accessible to motives acting upon that character
in other and different'ways.
I will now say a word on bad character arising not from Where
bad principle, but from want or weakness of principle and Character
strength of passion. Here the reason is on the side of good, through
but has little power. This is a better character than the tl has to
last, though in one respect we might be inclined to think it be reformworse. Reason is the common referee, talking our first and strength.
simplest way of trying to act upon others for their good; ening.
and therefore we are inclined perhaps at first to think that andPchang.
where reason is wrong, there is more hope of effecting a ing imchange for the better by persuasion and argument; whereas if, pulse
when the reason is right, men' still do wrong, it is not likely
that our talking and convincing them will have much influence. But in truth, reason, in little-thinking and muchacting men, who pass pretty frequently from a youth of utter
instability to a maturity of set stiffness, is by no means the
ever-living, and therefore ever-open and'convinceable. thing
we seem to think. As I have said, it gets often to be the
most immoveable part of a man, and he is young perhaps
and flexible in his affections after he has got old and stiff in
matter of reason. And therefore to have a man's reason
with us is a greater encouragement than discouragement:
discouragement of course it is, that, his reason having perhaps
so often tried to conquer his passions, so little success has
been achieved, and we hardly know how to hope now: still
sight and approval of the good is some way, and a great way.
31-2




484                  APPENDIX D.
With characters of this kind, as with the last, there is a
twofold way of proceeding: as in that case we supposed bad
reason counteracted by affection or by good reason, so here
we have to attack bad affection either by reinforcing the
reason or by arousing good affection.
Vows and    I have not space to dwell here on the various moral continslu.  siderations connected with prcevolition, i.e. with resolutions,
vows, internal or subjective promises as to future action. Of
course the general principle in regard of trying to strengthen
our own reason or ivill or that of others in this way, (I
carefully abstain here from any religious reference), is that
such resolutions should be wisely formed, by which. I mean
that they should refer to something not far off and not too
difficult, something which there is really a hope of.accomplishing. The reasons for this are, first, that every resolution, whatever good effect there may be from it afterwards,
has to a certain degree a bad effect, in the first instance; i.e.
it is a discounting of the action in our conscience; we take
and feel some of the conscientious pleasure belonging to the
doing it without doing it, a pleasure which of course, so
far as it goes, is immoral and wrong: the second is the
simple one that a resolution to do a great thing is more
likely to be broken than one to do a small thing;, and
every broken resolution, though not properly bringing us
under the guilt of promise-breaking, does us much moral
harm, and increases the likelihood of our breaking any future
resolution.
I will conclude this lecture by saying -a few words upon
moral influence.
Moral in-    Influence of this kind is partly involuntary, or what may
fluence de- be so, the effect of character or position: about this I shall
sympathy not say anything. now: it is the Latin auctoritas in a moral
as well as
general  sense, a most important element of society.- The other part
and in-  of influence is purposed or express, that which rests on
knowal  knowledge and is exercised in definite action.
ledge.      The knowledge upon which such influence rests is twofold, partly knowledge of the person under influence, and
partly independent objective knowledge. The knowledge of
the person is likely to be of his past history and of his
mental and physical constitution, with a view to the ascertaining of what hidden springs of action, what tendencies,




APPENDIX D.                   485
and probabilities of desire, lie underneath the motives which
ordinarily actuate him, in such a manner as to be possibly
awakened. The independent moral knowledge is, speaking
generally, that of the nature -of feelings and actions. as
mixed, how what is good is weak and vulnerable through
mixture of evil, and what is evil is unfixed and improvable
through mixture of good. To these two kinds of knowledge
must be added sympathy.
The three qualities mix together in the practical drawing
of others to good, but are in themselves independent. It is
probably because they do not go together more than they do,
that so many efforts in this direction are vain. For instance,
the moral knowledge is-of a nature which is very likely, in
the gaining of it, to denude the soul of that sympathy without which the knowledge will, for this purpose, be useless.
A good deal of critical or analytical moralism is, as we know,
the freezingest of all freezing things, and the rhetoric and
psychology of didactic moralism  is often! not much better.
Sympathy of love without this knowledge will do much
better than the knowledge without it, because such symnpathy carries, by the constitution of.human nature, a certain
amniount of knowledge with it; but yet sympathy without
more knowledge added, often defeats its own object. One of
the most important purposes of sympathy, besides the fact of
the unlikeliness of care and perseverance without it, is as a
means and help towards the understanding of the character
of the person influenced: without sympathy, this is impossible.
The moral knowledge necessary for temptation to good Good mix(if I may use the phrase) is chiefly of the way in which most ed with
evil may
evil characters and actions which are human have something strength.
of good mixed with them, which to a certain degree may butevl, h
weaken the evil, and indicate a breach by which' it is assail- same time
able. I say may, because it is possible that the good may ftormaktio
be of such a nature that it practically strengthens the evil; possible.
and it may possibly become the duty of those who wish well
to good to.try to break down the particular good here mixed
with the evil, and to raise up instead of it an evil feeling
against the other evil. The second evil in this case being on
the side of main or absolute good, though subjectively evil,
is not evil objectively; evil, against evil, like two negatives,




48 6.                  APPENDIX  D..
being supposed resultant good'.  A familiar instance.is what
is popularly called'honour among thieves,' a good principle
mixed with evil, which unhappily it must be the object of
justice and of laws as much as possible'to break up, because
it practically strengthens the evil that it mixes with. Suppose
a crime'done, and we wish to'persuade one whom we believe
an accomplice to turn king's evidence; if we could persuade
him to do so for the sake'of his country and morality, of course
the thing would not only be in itself right, but he would be a
better man than he was before in doing it. Usually however
we have to persuade him by stirring up his cowardice and
selfishness, and promising him  impunity  for himself and
perhaps a reward: if we do thus persuade him, though the
thing itself which he does is right, we do not in our hearts
consider him  the better man for it, but in fact the worse,
however he may escape and the others be punished.
But in a general way, the good mixed with the evil is
that which  makes reformation possible, it is that which
forms the ground for the hope, and should be the study of,
the moral reformer.  We want a La Rochefoucauld of' a converse kind, who would hunt out, not'the root of bitterness in
every good action, but of reason and excusableness in every
bad; a dangerous and immoral task if d6ne for a bad object,
but a task of the noblest morality if for a good.
1 I think it should have been more distinctly stated that this has
reference only to the attainment of some independent good object, e. g.
the safety of society, not to the reformation of the offender. If we aim
at reforming an individual, we may temporarily encourage what we ourselves feel to be inferior motives, provided that, in. his view they will be
better, or less bad, than those by which he is at present actuated. Thus
we might endeavour to replace positive malignity by thoughtless self-indulgence, and this latter by covetousness. In the case supposed of a
conspirator turning'king's evidence,' a father confessor might fairly
appeal to prudential motives to deter him from having any more to do
with conspiracy, he might urge him to use all his influence with others
for the same purpose, and to prevent actual bad consequences by all
means in his power; but he could not urge him to get money by informing against others who were not more guilty.than himself. To do this
would be to destroy the last chance of amendment of character. ED.




CHAPTER XX.
ON DISCUSSION,  CONTROVERSY,  AND WAR.'I MENTIONED, that the considering utilitarianism to Human
be the whole of moral philosophy, or in other words, someless
the considering utility or productiveness of happi- f~frms one
of the
ness to be the single'mot,' key, pass-word, clue, of chief fields
of moral
moral philosophy, seemed to me to imply an insuf-philoficient attention to one point, viz. that the pinch o0fs~ohy
morals arises from diversity of interests. If we had no
conflicting interests, morality, as we understand it,
would not exist at all. I propose then in the present
chapter to consider moral philosophy from this point
of view, as that which should furnish grounds to us
for rightly thinking and judging in reference to the
endless dispute which is going on among men. Justice is impartiality between two contending parties,
the reconciliation of conflicting interests with a view
to peace: virtue consists largely in justice: moral
philosophy, as the science of virtue, has thus for its
subject all.this conflict.
In one respect however, moral philosophy would
seem to be poorly fitted to be a reconciler of conflict,
as there has -scarcely ever been a subject which has
involved more dispute and controversy in itself. I
shall try to present the controversy which has existed
about moral philosophy, and the conflict of interests
which make its main subject, in a single view; in
other words, shortly to anatomize the quarrelsomeness of human nature.




488  ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
It takes   History, whether civil, political, military, comthe form
either of mercial, or literary, is a'Journal des Debats,' a
conflitof record of perpetual conflict.  There are two sources
opinion or        rpta   III.
of conflict of this conflict: it is either conflict of'interest, *or
of interest.
conflict of opinion; and what stimulates this confliet, in each case, to the excess in which it exists,
is a principle of human nature, which, without
either of these matters of conflict, would probably
of itself produce quarrel and dispute, I mean the
feeling of mutual rivalry., or spontaneous opposition.
and combativeness.  This principle is an almost
necessary accompaniment of the activity of human
nature, quite independently of any ill-will.  The
conflict of maturity is the stiff and serious form, belonging to that period, of the active playfulness of
youth.  Action is not action without some resistance
to it, just as there could not be physical movement
without some resistance. Action is a triumph of our
will, and it is in the triumph, and in the amount of
success against what is triumphed' over, that we are
conscious of ourselves, of our liberty and of our
power. This is independent.of the causes which
may give vigour to the conflict, and which are furnished. abundantly by the opposition of opinion and
interest which I have noticed.  Then, from rivalry,
it becomes dispute, contest, war.
Good       Contest once begun, all kinds of heterogeneous.
qualities
ncalld out elements blend in it, and it derives force from  a.
byconAfict. variety of good motives which it incorporates by
the side of its bad ones.  Love, friendship, brotherhood, sociality, all are more or less distinctive; and
the conversion of this distinction. into opposition
fuses more strongly together the love or the sociality.
Instead of individually conflicting men, we have
corporately conflicting parties: we have good and
bad elements generated side by side, apparently




ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.  489.
necessary to each other; until the mind of the. spectator shares in the general bewilderment- of the
scene which he views.
Let us see what can be made out about it.
In all conflict, there. is on each side a certain
amount of reason, and on each side a certain amount
of force.  When we bring the reason. on ~one side
into contact with the reasoh.on the other, it is'what
we call discussion. When we introduce' violence
of any kind, it is what, if the violence is confined to
words, we call dispute or controversy; if the violence.proceeds to deeds, we call it combat and war.
The moral, general; or public interest in theIn conflict
of interest,
decision of conflict is of a different nature accordingthe thitng
as the conflict is of opinion, or of interest.  If it is toird i its
of interest, dispute about it is so much waste ofspteedy
settlehuman power, and -so much development of human ment, just
bad feeling-both of them. loss-with  possibly a if possible
certain amount of development of good feeling, which
would be so far gain.  The moral interest in such
a conflict is that it should be decided-so strife will
cease-and if possible, justly and properly decided,
every possible pains' being taken for this purpose.
Still, in this case, if the decision of the. conflict
properly, i.e. in entire accordance with justice, is
impossible —whether because there really is not a.
right and a wrong in the' matter, or because it is.
impossible to get to.the bottom of it, or for whatever
reason-then the next best thing is that it should
be decided somehow, and strife cease.
The moral interest in a conflict of opinion is not In conflict
of opinion,
exactly the same. There is the same interest that the thing
the conflict should be decided properly and satis-t brede iits
factorily, if possible; but, where such satisfactoriness iust ettleis not possible, there is not the moral interest, aswhether
speedy or
in the other case, that the conflict should be decided otherwise,




490  ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
somehow, but rather that, with whatever disadvantage, it should remain open till it can be decided
satisfactorily.
In civi-   The conciliation of different interests, or,. which
lized communities, is the same thing, the authoritative and forcible
conflict of
interest i decision of conflicts of interest among the members of
settled by a community, is one main reason of civil government,
decisions. and- forms the subject of a large portion of law.
Authority, power, and reason, are the three things
which go to such decision. Authority causes respect
to the decision on the part of the well-disposed; power
causes obedience on the part of all, however disposed;
and reason makes it a decision not only apparently,
but really, satisfactory and just.  If authority and
power are both wanting, their place may be supplied
by the previous and subsequent consent of the
parties, and the decision is then arbitration; but
reason is of the essence of its satisfactoriness.
Discussion, or the conflict of reasonf, is the operation of the mind putting together various conflicting
views with the purpose of ascertaining which of
them is the true. All fertile thought is internal
discussion, what Plato meant by his &8aXEKTLK-?.  In
the decision of an actual question of conflict of interests, such thought must be in.the mind of the
judge, each party suggesting the view on his own
side. In the law of civilized countries, for such a
rough hearing is universally substituted an elaborate
argument, by representatives of the parties, collecting. and marshalling all the views on the one side
and on the other, to furnish the judge's mind for
the decision.  Judicial decision of this kind is the
preventive of what is called'private war,' and where
it is good, is a main element of the'security of
property.'
Were property to remain at the same degree of




ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR. 491
simplicity or complication, the better the decisions
the fewer they would be; because.the. law would be
clearer, and there would be less hope in the minds of
the ill-intentioned of perverting it.  But the relations of men in civilization continually increase and
become more complicated; and though injustice is
less. attempted. where decisions are trusted, yet this
very fact leads to the assertion of rights which might
otherwise have lain dormant; so that the need of
continual decision does not diminish.
Where there is conflict of interest without possi- Between....,.....two such
bility of judicial decision, or with indisposition in communi
the parties to resort to it, there is combat or war. ties, or in
case of
By war we mean mutual violence which is more or conflict of'opinion,
less formal: in our present use indeed the *term this is
is limited to a combat between two individuals,imposwith states for individuals.
Combat or war however, whether between states And war
or individuals, does not arise only from  conflict 6f ensues
interest; and here is a great matter of difficulty as to
the whole of it. It arises also from conflict of opinion.
N.ow there are some cases of private conflicts of interest, in which, with the best law, there is no possibility of judicial decision; and then a party must
forego or fight.  In conflicts of interest between
states, there is never any possibility of judicial decision, except by consent and arbitration: in these
cases then, if there is not agreement, there must be
either foregoing' or war. In conflicts of opinion, whether- private or. public, there cannot be judicial decision, from the nature of the case.  And reference to
the decision of a third party, as arbiter, is a different
thing in conflicts of opinion from what it is in conflicts
of interest.  Our interest we are free to resign to the
decision of another, or to give it up altogether: we are
not free to do. this with our conscientious opinion.




492  ON DISCUSSION,  CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
Here we    The causes of. combat and war, both private and'
are in a
dlemma public, have constantly been such as have involved
oeteof meuch consideration of truth and justice, quite indepeace and pendently Qof any interest.  To put the decision of
justice, these out of our own'hands into the hands of a third'party, is what men hesitate to do; the truth..or
justice being of more importance than the settlement.  Here arises a doiubleness of consideration,
which causes one of the great difficulties of human
action.  In trying to maintain the right by force,
why should. we suppose we- are more likely to succeed than the opposite. party, which (supposedly)
maintains the wrong? And yet, what is the great
purpose of man's action but to maintain the right?
In this dilemma men have fallen back upon notions
of religion with its suggestions of divine aid on the
side of justice.
We cannot   Between peaceableness then on the one side and
broadly
assert hat what we consider truth or justice on the other; it
war is  seem     me               a
nwful, seems to me tha  there is avery complicated quesor that all tion, which cannot at all be settled by any general
disputes
mustbe  principle, such as our saying that war is unlawful,
submitted
to arbitra- or that international disputes ought always to be
tion.   settled by arbitration.  Those who make the former
assertion would have to answer the question, Are we,
as individuals, to help an individual whom we see
being ill-used, and are we not, as states, to help a
state in' the same circumstances?'In reality, all
questions of this kind- depend very much on another,
Quarrel  which is this, How far are the measures which we
involves take at all likely to secure the end which we have
dislike as
well as  in view?
active
hostility.    Quarrel with another involves two elements, one
Th~elter of which we may roughly call dislike, the other active
can only o vhichi   may.         a         the other active,
be justified hostility. The former'may exist in any degree' from
as a means
to an end. bare disapproval to intense hatred: and I suppose




ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND.-WAR. -493
philanthropy requires that it should only exist in
something like'the'former degree, in which, if de-served, it certainly ought to exist.  Supposing the
latter to be justifiable at all, it is at any rate only
justifiable in cases where good result is to be expected
from it.. This is what is meant by the common saying
that the purpose of war is peace. What we call
quarrel is very often a mixture of dislike and hostility, the latter simply generated by the former,
without there being any definite notion that it can
come to any result, or effect any purpose. This is
the old notion of war between nations: it is a state
existing often between individuals. In the present
day war between states is considered to be for a
definite reason and purpose; and the question about
itslawfulness really becohnes the question, How far
do nations, by putting themselves into that position with regard to each other which wb call a state
of war, really effect the purpose which they want?.
Are nations proper units for. a quarrel?  Ought
they to exist as nations for this purpose? And
is there an analogy, in.this particular, between them
and individuals?
The notion of war seems to exist in all languages, Historical
but it is not, as a notion, very distinct and uni- themnmform.  It applies to a multiplicity of different states nertof convarying from  a state of savage, internecine, antipa- war.
thetic quarrel between all the individuals in one
region and all the individuals in another, to a state
in which, according to certain rules, a number of
people on behalf of those in one region meet a number of people on behalf of those in the other, and
combat till one party is taken as defeated. In this
latter case the mass of the inhabitant's in the two
regions are hardly in a state of hostility, they are in
a state of mutual ill-opinion; whilethe actual com



494  ON DISC.USSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
batants are to some degree in the position of the
advocates in a judicial discussion; they are bound,
and pique themselves on' doing it, to use their ut-.
most power against each other in certain definite ways;
but. outside these ways they have very strong, professional sympathies. associating them  together, in
many respects, far more than they are associated
with their own citizens for whom they are fighting.
It is obvious that war at the one end of the above
scale and at the other is an entirely different thing.
Historical It scarcely seems to me that civilization, as such,
changes
in the   has any effect in altering the character of war,
war.  of except in two particulars: Ist, that in it people are
not likely, as in barbarism, to be pleased or satisfied
with being in a permanent state of war; they carry
on war with. a purpose, anca in view of an end; 2nd,
that as manners in general become milder and less
cruel, the usages of war will become so too. But
war, as we have just seen, may mean so many things,
or have so many forms, that civilization, instead of
putting a stop -to it, only seems to give it a new
character.'The course of history, while it advances
civilization on the one hand, on the other introduces
perpetually new subjects of public quarrel.  During
the middle ages, in default of caring for commerce
and learning, men passed their time in fighting for
various chivalric interests, as I will loosely call them.
About the time of the revival of letters and the
discovery of America these had got out of date, and
one might have hoped for peace, when lo, as.by a
fatality, Western Europe, which had hitherto been
of one religion, became on a sudden of two, and the
diversity of opinion thus arising was. the fruitful
source of war for almost two centuries.  When,
weary of fight, men acquiesced at length in the
diversity of'religious opinion, other causes arose,




ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR. 495
balance of power, commercial rivalries &c.: perhaps
they are weary of these now, but I fear there is not
much reason to hope that we have got to the end of
the ever fresh-springing causes of war.
I will make here four observations, with a remark. Question
as to the
or two on each. First, I do not expect any material probabidiminution of war from international arbitration, un- aitm uless we expect also, in conjunction with this, a dimi- tiao ofm
-nution of the independence of nations, and a power arbitrawhich might be oppressive: which I should scarcely tin (1)
wish for.
Second, I do not expect, nor wish for, any great from
diminution of war from men's better knowledge of, derstanland keener look to, their own interest or materi al,ig of
advantage.                                           interThird, I do expect a diminution of war, perhaps from increase of
a great one, from the increase of what I will call a toleramutual tolerance among nations; from their acqui-ti~n(3),
escence with much difference of opinion on the part
of others; and, in this view, from commerce, mutual
intercourse, and advance of knowledge.
Fourth, I do expect a diminution.of war from frome,
people's coming more and more to perceive how little, viction of
~ic~r~~    *        its inutiin many cases, it answers the purposes which they lity (4).
expect of it: how absurd it often is (to say in one
word what I will shortly explain).
1.  The application of any principles of interna- Difficulties
tional law to the main circumstances of war, such as of arbitraits breaking gut, is rendered almost impossible bytio~n, both
as regards
the perpetual novelty of such circumstances, which the parties
seem  to defy all foresight or classification: and in
connexion with this novelty one great difficulty is,
what are the units of this international law: it is
law between nationzs —what are nations?  International law, in this large application, is an attempt to
apply the rules of law between individual parties to




496  ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
parties composed of large bodies of men; but upon
what principles, and by what power, are we, so to
speak, to incorporate these parties?  The most frequent'ground of war- is to settle what are to be
nations; war being commonly the only way in which'
this can be settled, how are we to apply any international considerations to this?'.
ana the.   Supposing an arbitrating tribunal, it seems from
tribunal.
many considerations such as the above that it can
have but little of principle or actual law to go on:
it must have therefore a vast discretion. That is to
say, it is really no decision that it gives; there- are
not grounds for such; the elements for settlement are
the same with it as they are with negotiators of
the parties themselves; all that is in its power to
do, is to try to satisfy both in the best way it can.
But: what.is of most consequence is, -that with
very slight grounds for decision, there is. also very
slight guarantee of impartiality, supposing real power
in the tribunal to enforce its decision..It seems to me then that from arbitration there
is the same hope, and no more, that there is from a
better,' wiser, and more moderate negotiation and
mutual adjustment of relations. The so-called arbitration would be, if not oppression, only'another
manner of negotiation or amicable settlement.
A stronger   2.  There is always likely to be in a country,
sense of
the duty'a good deal of difference of sentiment on the quesof rulers tion whether it is chiefly its own iiterest, or the
mtayhten common interest of nations, help to the oppressed,
to check
war.   and its own honour, which should furnish cause for
its going to war.  A nation is differently circumstanced from an individual in this respect, that it
has very, definitely and -decidedly duties to itself,
i.e. that the ruling power has duties'towards the
subjects or individual members' of the state.  The




ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AN-D WAR. 497
interests of a nation therefore are not something
which it lies with it, at its.choice, to sacrifice and
forego, in the same manner in which it lies with
an individual; with whom  such foregoing is sometimes a duty, almost always a virtue.  It might be
the duty of the ruling power in a nation to put.its honour in its pocket, if I may so say, and to
stifle its indignation against oppression, rather than
incur the loss and damage to its own subjects which
vindication might occasion. With the growth of
the feeling that government exists for. the good of
the governed, this feeling is' in some measure likely
to grow.
At the same time experience seems to show, that But nait is quite impossible for a number of men to unite tional sensitiveness
at all closely in a society even with' a view  toincreases
economical benefit only, without such society binding growth of''   national
them, more or less, in.a common feeling.and making unity.
them, as a society, susceptible of such feelings as
honour, sympathy, indignation, resent.ment, in the
same way.as an individual is. I do not think therefore that the clearer view of the functions of government and the keener sense of the interest and
advantage of the associated, as the one ground of
association, will have any tendency to diminish wars,
except so far as they may tend to make men really
less associated together, and nations less nations.
We have not yet done with'glory.'  Nor am  I
sorry. That is, so long as nations go to war at all,
I would:.rather that they did not go to war only
for their own interest, but were susceptible, as there
is little doubt they will continue to be, to that
various and undefined feeling which is vaguely ex-Ths, i,~pressed by the phrase' love of glory.'             feeling of
national
We come in fact in this again to the large ques- interest
tion of utilitarianism  in general: if there is any toy lard
-G.                                     32




498  ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
national sympathy among the members of a nation,
the feelings which I have above spoken of. will be
stirred, and the indulgence' of them becomes a part
of the national happiness; and a most sensible part.
Under these circumstances the attempt to persuade
them that their happiness is in wealth and in commercial prosperity is equally vain and unreasonable:
they'know what gives them pleasure; and so far as
happiness is to- be judged of by experience, they are
the judges  And I believe them in this case to be
right judges, not simply of happiness, bit of that on
which it depends, good: it is a good thing that men
associated together should be accessible to emotion,
better than if they could bring themselves to be
accessible to commercial interests only.
Associa-    3. Whatever is the occasion of men's associatinig
tion for
any pur- together, their association speedily binds them (as I
pose often           s                   ass.cla l. nj
breed ifl- have said of specially economical association) in a
tolerance numbei of ways quite foreign to that occasion. Natowards
non-asso- tions adopt one manner of civil and religious beceates.
haviour, judging others wrong: philosophers, brought
together by thought, form themselves into a school,
sect, or party, differing speedily from others in many
other respects also, and thinking morally ill of those
not belonging to them. It.is mainly from the fertility of association of any kind in'generating these
adventitious bonds and' repugnances, that the evil
principle of intolerance.has sprung up by the side
of, and as a sort of price for, or shadow of, many
good principles..Whatever binds men together is
an advantage,. because society brings out the individual nature to an extraordinary extent, and man,
both as to intellect and feeling, is altogether made
for it.  It is an advantage also that nations should
think alike, except in so far as it makes them intolerant of others, or hinders their thinking what is




ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR. 499
true. Similarly sectarianism or intellectual partyspirit of any kind is a form of mental brotherhood:
it has brought out many an intelligence, and many
a moral nature; but its dark shadow is occasional
unwillingness to' listen to truth, and almost invariable
intolerance.
We are likely, it is possible, to have less war in'
the world as a part of that process by which we are
likely to have less of that unfruitful controversy which
is little other than an expression of intolerant hostility.
Some wars have had their origin in difference of The
opinion: all wars, in their' carrying on, as felt by gmtl of
people in general, have been much more wars of resect for
mutual dislike or antipathetic feeling than -of rival other'sinterest. W.e must not consider, as a matter Oftionsanad
course, that wars'of difference of opinion are ended:  ssness
such a feeling very mainly contributed to the war boUt
at the beginning of the French Revolution; but new ferences,
tends to
differences are continually springing up; and it is by check war.
no means the case that, as a matter of course, nations,
with advance of civilization, do become more tolerant:
such hope as there'is arises from  this fact, that
there is more opportunity for the efforts of those who
desire to make them tolerant.  Nations will give up
the attempt to convert each other by force, whether
to religious, philosophical, or political doctrines, not
in so far as they cease to value any doctrine themselves, for, in that case, they would only be more inclined to think the conversion of other nations
feasible, if they piqued themselves on' converting
them; but, in so far as they hold'more conscientiously
what they do hold, and understand -more what the
conscientious holding of it is; because then they
will have a truer notion of the'difficulty of conversion. No man who truly believes anything himself
can believe that belief can be forced.
32-2




500  ON- DISCUSSION,   CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
It is probable that there is a.gradual increase of
respect for the conscientious convictions of others,
and of liberality in'judging minor differences of feeling and usage.  As this continues we may hcpe that
there will be a corresponding diminution in that
chronic ill-will from  which, as from  a dunghill,
springs the rank growth of' actual hostility and
quarrel. 
4. War, or quarrel of any kind, is, not only
entirely unfi't for the maintenance of truth, as we
have seen; but it is a very poor method for the maintenance of iright,' though it may sometimes be the
only one.
Dispute    SO long as there is wrong done in the world,
is more 
likelyto be there must be dispute, nor would it be desirable that
abolished         be
by justice moral feeling should keep those accessible to it out
tbnvboy  Of the dispute, while it was not strong enough to inbenevo-'
lence.  fluience all, and prevent the wrong being done. As it
is, there is a considerable force of motive to make
the good quiescent, leaving wrong to its own way.
We must put an end to wrong, and then will come
an end to dispute.
As the. world is constituted, dispute is more
likely to be abolished by justice than by benevolence. No doubt deeply felt benevolence or religious
love would preclude the causes of dispute, by removing to a considerable degree individual or separate'interests; each looking not on his own things,
but also on the things of others.  Even superficial
benevolence may make dispute more unlikely, in so
far as it makes people less likely to take offence;
and in any case it'will make the carrying on of
dispute less savage: but where separate interests are
strongly looked to, as in the present constitution' of
the world they are, and are-likely to be ever in a
greater degree with the advance in civilization and




ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR. 501
commerce,. there nothing can prevent dispute' but
justice, by which I mean the real application of
principle and intellect to the systematizing.of such
interests, and a readiness on th9 part of the interested individuals to yield their individual feeling
to such common understanding'of them.
There are two parts of justice, the ascertainment War is ah
attempt t'o
of it and the enforcement of it.  With the right-,eforce
minded'the ascertainment of it is the enforcement justice.
with the wrong-minded, or in the case where the
* ascertainment is not admitted, it has to be actually
enforced, or force has to be used. This in law is by
penalty.  A  great deal of war (and in fact angry
controversy) is the endeavour of each party to enforce
upon the other what'he regards as ascertained riglt;
each party is, in the view  of the opponent, both
wrong-minded in the refusal to submit to justice,
and mistaken as to what is justice,War, however, or actual combat of any sort,-would So far as
hardly exist if it were not for various other elements iceive eto
entering in, chiefly of two kinds; one the activity fOi of this
of human nature, and the consequent constant mutual far it is
likely to
rivalry.; the other the. ill-will and intolerant feeling fall into:which is more or less the accompaniment, as we
have seen, of association.  All war and quarrel may
thus be said to have the double character of being
an outbreak of a more or less constant feeling, and
of being an attempt to gain some end.  The diminution ~of the feeling which thus breaks out, is, as we
saw just now, one means, or hopeful sign, of the
diminution of dispute and' war.  The other means or
hopeful sign is people's more and more seeing how
very little, in most'cases, any reasonable end of the
war or dispute is likely to be gained.
In this view', the systematization and perfection Improveof t s  en in
of thejus Ueli, or international law as -applicable to thejis




5:02  ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
beli is  a state of war, is likely to be useful in a double
both good
in~its   way.  Of course it must make war, in the carrying
sueiate on, better and more humane.  This has been looked
an indi- -upon by some as a questionable advantage, because
reetly
tends to they say it is the abolition of war that is wanted,
the abolition of  and it is less likely to be abolished if it is civilized
war    and improved till men see no harm in it.'It seerns
to me, however, that the improvement of international law is likely more and more to impress upon
men's minds the absurdity of war, i.e. the small
degree in which it is likely to effect any good object.
The being'friendlily hostile' is likely more and
more to seem to men like the'eum ratione insanire,'
the being reasonably mad, and to make. them think
that if they are to go so far as this they had
better be friendly altogether. War is a.barbarism
which cannot with any principle and reason be -civi-'lized over, and the attempt to do this is likely to
- help forward the civilizing.it away.
The more    At the same time war and dispute- are less evils.it is con-                                t
sidered  than the acquiescence in injustice: the maintenance
eateiona of truth and right is the, all-important thing among
is war felt men, and however evil war may be. it is better that
to be.
war should exist than that they should go unmaintained.  The only question is, what means have we
to prevent or redress the injustice, and will our
manner of dispute or war have any tendency' to do
so? Supposing we say we have no means, of course
we are in a difficult position. We are. inclined to
say, I will be in a state of hostility with the offender
nevertheless. This may either' take the form of nonintercourse, a sort of quarrel not uncommon in private life, or desperation and indignation may even
lead to self-inju~iy, and wild readiness for. self-sacrifice.
But difficult as it may be, still we may keep hold of
the principle that action is for a purpose,'and that we




ON DISCUSSION,   CONTROVERSY, AND WAR. 503
have no business to enter upon a course of action
which will do no good.
Some might say, that a better jus belli is no
more likely to lead'to the abolition of war,- than
juster laws of property to lead to the abolition of
property and. of private and separate interests. There
is a slight but only a slight analogy between the
cases. No doubt it may be said that property and
separate interests"are a part of the hardness of men's
hearts,'as well as their quarrelling is; we had better
abolish them both inistead of trying to regulate- them.
But the systematic doing harm to another party,
which' is what the jus belli takes as its basis, is of a
totally different nature from the simply pursuing individual interest to the comparative neglect of others'
interest; more especially when, as is the fact, we
cannot in most cases promote our own interest without promoting that of some, perhaps many others.
And when this systematic doing harm to another
party, the parties being states, is analysed, so many
difficulties spring up as may make people less inclined, it is to be hoped, to the thing altogether.
There is an analogy also between the'jus bblli'
and the -theory of punishment, and several of the
difficulties attending the former attend the latter:
I will not however dwell any longer on this matter'now.
War is a moral disturbance analogous, in many War de
respects, to the physical disturbances produced bytmoral, as
varieties of temperature in the atmosphere. It is war storm de
which settles first of all what shall be nations: then atmospheric diswhere nations differ widely in civilization, there must turbancL.
either be non-intercourse or almost inevitable quarrel,
resulting generally.in the subjugation, to some extent, of the less civilized: again, there are political.




504  ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
and religious sympathies binding.some in one nation
to some in another, and thus political and religious
fermentations produce all sorts of national quarrels:
lastly, as nations become more. individualized in their
relations with other states, the more do they become,
like individuals, susceptible as- to honour and offence,
alive to commercial and separate interests, suspicious
of each other, so as, to be continually combining
together and scheming against anticipated encroachment-and much. besides, War will not be' got rid
of till very much else is got rid of as well.
In civilized- countries, private -war,'or.debate of
force, is replaced by debate of reason,. by which right
is ascertained: there'exists public force to enforce
the right thus ascertained on any refusing to acquiesee. in it, but unless the mass acquiesced in it as
right, this enforcement would not be possible.
*The re-   The relation to each other of. debate -of reason
debate of and debate of force may be seen well in the ancient
reason to practice of settling the truth or falsehood of a charge
debate of p
force in  by single combat.  Owing to the imperfect views
the ancient trial entertained of evidence, the difficulty of communiof btle. cation,. and much besides, it was in many cases almost, impossible to settle the matter by reason; so
they fought about it, having nothing else' to do,
without much consideration how far fighting would
answer the purpose of maintaining the right, but
partly trusting in an over-ruling providence, partly
feeling that the right and truth must, where necessary, be maintained by force, and.that in default of
better ascertainment, it could only be the asserted
Truth and right which must so be maintained.
be gmain   The maintenance: of right and truth by reason,
tained, as involves the same questions which the ascertainment
ascer-   of them  has involved.   They are continually retained, by
reason.  ascertained and confirmed in the process of main



ON' DISCUSSION,'CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.  50.5
taining them. We cannot be ready to give a reason
for the truth.which is in us without knowing the'reasons which will commend it to those who do not
yet see it to be truth, i.e. the reasons by which it is
ascertained to be truth; and these must commend
themselves to our conscience as valid reasons.
There are many occasions, as the world is now,
in which the'right, or justice, is to be maintained
by force;' there may be some few occasions in which'the truth is; though then it will generally take the
form of right, or justice, as, when one people may.
try to force a change of religion upon another people.
But right in a. great measure, and truth almost entirely, has to be- maintained by the same means by
which each was originally ascertained, viz. by reason:
the maintenance of them should include continual
re-examination: whatever gives itself out as maintainable by reason is ever questionable.
In the controversy of the past, moral, philosophi- Controversy has
cal, political, religious, we have the debate of reason, made the
the thought of the world, that actual dialectic Oftin~re of
human conversation and discussion, which has re- sent, and
is making
sulted in present opinion, and upon which whatever the opinion of the
is accepted anywhere upon these subjects must beif~turhe
conceived to rest. As discussion, it is going on still,.
generating the'opinion of the next age, confirming
or weakening the opinion which prev.ails now.
I. have already spoken of the extent to which controdifference of opinion, and the attempt to put differ- fers from
ent opinions together with a view to progress infeelin gs
truth, has ever been accompanied with other elements whiTh
not only foreign to the matter in hand, but "even themdestructive of the object aimed at.  It might well sevithi;
be laid down as a moral principle, that no person
who is intellectually incapable, as many people seem
-to be, of even conceiving an opinion different from




506  ON DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.
his own, is at liberty to maintain and urge his own;
for as he cannot appreciate the grounds upon which
other people hold their opinions, he is evidently
unable to judge whether they are weak or strong,
and whether, in fact, they may not be stronger than
his own.  Controversy would be likely to have some
good result, if a person, as a condition of attacking
an opinion, were to be required to give, to an impartial and intelligent auditor, a clear account of it.
If this oondition were enforced, a good deal of controversy would never be entered on. But, in general, it is a very different audience which is contemplated, and instead of discussion we have attack,
i.e. more or less of misrepresentation wmith the introduction of much that is beside the point, as of presumable motives, accompaniments, or consequences:
and thus what ought to be a step of the thought of.man advancing towards his intellectual goal-the
truth, is merely a piece of intellectual force wasted
in worthless quarrel, just as life and wealth are
wasted in actual war..
and from  The controversialists themselves are probably not
the uncon.
eientious- more to be blamed for this than kings and consersiaity  querors are to be blamed for wars: they are themboti of  selves sharers, to a certain extent, in the spirit to
disputants
and audi- which they appeal, in the view of which the truth
tors..  iS secon'dary to the combat.  This is a spirit partly
of intellectual unconscientiousness, and partly, if the
term does not seem offensive, of intellectual servility,
by which I mean a disposition to measure the amount
of power by assumption, and the amount of convictionby vehemence.  The two spirits very much go
together: men have little value in their minds for the
truth, and consequently they readily yield themselves
to be overborne; while, instead of. their thinking, in
regard of any controversy, how  far the truth is




ON'DISCUSSION, CONTROVERSY, AND WAR.  507
ascertained or maintained by it, it is either looked
at as a'gladiatorial combat, or one side only is
listened to, and any appreciation of the argument is
neglected.
The fact that this is so, is no doubt one. feature Even good
of human nature.  I have' mentioned how much feeingure
good goes with the evil of actual war, how muchv ontro-y
evil unites itself with the good in all associations of means of
attaining
men.' The. history of human dialectic thought intruth.
controversy is of this mingled character: people are
intellectually unconscientious on account -of certain
developments of their conscientiousness in other directions: they are faithful to their school of thought
or their philosophical or religious brotherhood: they
care for other things about opinions, (e.g. for their
moral character) as well as for their truth.. I wish
all these considerations to be put by the side of what
I have said above.  What I have said is for the
purpose of explaining why controversy is so unsatisfactory as a means of ascertaining or maintaining the
truth.' Since men at least make profession that this
is the result they aim  at in controversy, it is a
matter which deserves their consideration how they
may make it better serve its purpose.




CHAPTER XXI.'
IMPORTTANCE OF PRIGHT BELIEF.
Right be- WHAT is the reason why it is of importance that we
be impor should think and believe rightly?
tant either
as useful   It. may be because knowledge'or right judgment
or as being iS necessary in order to our acting in such a manner
in itself a
duty.    as to bring about the results we wish.
Or it may be because right judgment has something in it of moral excellence; because, to put the
case the other way, wrong belief is in some degree of
the nature of a moral or punishable offence.
According   The importance of religious belief is, viewed, it is
to the
former   probable; in a different light by different people.
view, re-   We wish to attain heaven or to avoid. hell: we
ligious
misbelief must know  the way to effect our purpose, and we
is a mistakewhich must take care not to mistake. the way, or we shall
fatYal one not effect our purpose.  Putting  the  matter more
sequences. generally, we wish to do well, and to be happy, to act
for the best (understanding'to do well' and'the
best' here simply. of prosperity, without reference to
morals): so far as our happiness depends upon ourselves it is only by knowing and thinking the truth
about ourselves and the circumstances in.which we
are placed, that we can hope to attain it.' As far as I can judge, the following was intended to form part of
the present treatise, though it contains no distinct reference to what
precedes, and though, unlike the other chapters, it bears no special title
in tihe MS. In spite of its -fragmentary character, I hope that its
intrinsic interest will be felt to justify its insertion here.- ED.




IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.            509
Unbelief or misbelief is in this point of view  a
fearful and fatal mistake.
If we look at things thus, man is responsible for Such conhis belief, not in thse sense that anybody will call should not
him  to account for it, but in the sense that his bytalled
present believing that to he which is not, or that not ame of
punishto be'which is, may hereafter be a subject to him of ment.
most bitter regret; his future self will most bitterly
reproach his present feeling, if it is wrong..
It would be a great advantage if the notion of
ptunishrzeint were confined within the limits which
properly belong to it, and applied only where there
is moral guilt, in which case only there is real pun*ishment. Where what is intended for punishment
is inflicted in consequence of supposed, but not
actual, moral guilt, there is not punishment, but
(perhaps -by mistake and inadvertently) oppression
and tyranny: where harm is inflicted without moral
offence having gone before, the infliction may be
justifiable, and there may be reasons for it, but it
should not be described.as punishment.
The notion that religion is simply prudence, and This view,
though
that that man attains heaven who is wise enough to sanctioned
find out- and to follow the proper road to it, while by3lutrler,
that man falls into hell who is not wise enough to solves religion into
see in time whither his course of life is carrying him, prudence.
and to choose a different course-this notion is one
more likely to be made use of by defenders of religion than by appliers of it, by apologists than by
religious teachers. The reason. is, that when men
come to look at the whole matter, they cannot be
persuatded that their future is so entirely in their
power as this would imply, or (as perhaps it might
be expressed better) that their future is in their
power in this particular way.  They are so little
able to anticipate, even in the-common circumstances




510       IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.
of life, what is going to happen, that the.saying to
them  that their whole future, with  its. terrible
possibilities, is left to the hazard of. that sort of
speculation upon which they are so much obliged to
act in life, is almost equivalent to telling' them. that
-there is'no such thing as religion, no good God or
superintending Providence. And yet this is the real
meaning of what Butler says, Probability is the guide
of life; it will.do therefore (as he' in effect says) for
our guide in religion.  The interests which belong
simply to this earthly life are not' of infinite importance; probability might perhaps do for our guide
as to them: but each one of us knows how little his
future, even as to this life, is in his own power, how
great is the chance of his.mistaking, and. doing that
which, intended to produce his happiness, may cause
really his loss and ruin: and is it' to be the same
with religion? have'we really got the fearful chances
of an eternal future committed to the speculation on*
probabilities of beings such as we are?
is in-.  The believing that this is so, if any ohe does
edstheof believe it, is not religion, but the reverse of religion;
religion, the very thought, the very danger, from which reand excitesoppo- ligion delivers us.  In a future after this life, like
godn as this life as our senses present life to us, but of vaster
welblas  dimensions and with multiplied or intenser sension bad,
grounds. bilities on our part, whatever.might be the alternative possibilities of happiness, the bravest might
well prefer shutting his eyes in annihilation rather
than.run the chance of the pbssible misery.  It is
terrible enough to -think of all the ha'rm which may
come to us.in life here, through our mistake either
in bringing it upon ourselves or in failing to prevent
it: the extension of such a thought to an unknown
future, is intolerable.
When the issue is so tremendous, there is no




IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.         511
doubt that the only speculation which can be considered reasonable is that which is safe.  There is no
occasion to put the matter as Butler does, on probabilities:" if this issue is what religion deals with,
and if there is a possibility that religion is true, it is
worth while, in view of such a possibility, to do
everything in human life which religion directs, and
the sceptical rationalist who confines himself to' this
view will surely think.so.  In this view the best
argument for religion is the most awful portrait of
the possible horrors to come. And yet we. do not
find that men are of necessity religious with this
religion of fear.  The reasons for this are various,
some better, some worse.  The better are something
of this kind,. that they do not really' believe it to be
religion: the worse are connected with the fact thatthe present has a greater effect upon them, except
now  and  then, than  a prospect apparently  so
distant.
Religion is looked upon by Lucretius as deceitful various
views as to
and alarming; by those who speak or think muchthe alarming or conabout responsibility, like Butler. and Newman, assolinginalarming, but true; by those who take, what some mflienoe of
would call, a more evangelical view of it, as true,. but
comforting and gladdening rather than alarming; by
the -greater number probably of sceptics of our time,
as comforting' and gladdening, but deceitful,'and
nothing more than a vain imagination.
That which opens to us the prospect of a world
beyond the grave may be either religion, or our
imagination independently of religion.  If we suppose the former to be the case, then religion, if it is
to be other thanf a curse to man, must open to us
a prospect either of moral punishmlent, or of hope,
or of both in conjunction. If what suggests to us
life beyond the grave is imagination, not religion,




512       IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.
religion coming in only afterwards to modify our
view, then religion, if it is to be a source of comfort
to man, must be what will make this prospect one
of hope, not of terror.
Lucretius ~ When Lucretius considers that he (or Epicurus)
attacked
religion as s benefitin        showing religion to.be false,
teaching because he thereby destroys the curse of human life,
the doctrine of  the dread of future punishment, he forgets the force
future
misery.  of the word'punishment'.  His notion of what he
was doing might be correct, if what men dreaded
after death'was simply misery, torment.  Even supposing there to be a mere possibility of this, with a
counter-possibility of happiness; still a man might
think he. would.rather not run the risk, and that
annihilation would be better. Nor, perhaps, would
it make much difference, whether the alternative of
happiness depended on a man's own action, supposing
his wisdom and powers as they are now,,or whether
it was independent of it. He might think the chance
of mistake on his part quite as much to be feared as
the chance of misery coming to him independently of
his own action.
The ob-    But.the case is entirely altered supposing that
weakened the prospect held out by natural religion is one
if ljite. in which misery or torment enters, as a possibility,
is punish i  i     i    o
melt:  only in the way of punishment.  None then will
suffer. but those who have deserved it, and none,
we may in the first instance say, need suffer.  And
the value of this dread of future punishment' in
improving human conduct on earth is an ordinary,
almost vulgar, consideration, which of course must
strike all.  All can understand how the removal of
religious terrors, in giving freer sway to violence
and injustice, would be the reverse' of a benefit'to
human life.
But what is.punishment? Is it retribution and




IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.;           513
vengeance, or is it corrective discipline, and attemptprovideda
that we do
-at reformation? Is it something which only looks notidentiback on what is past, or does it look forward also to fyent with
what is to come?  And if it is vengeance, or so far.vengeance.
as it has anything of the character of vengeance,
what are the principles which govern the proportions
of it, according to the offence committed?
If what is dreaded in a future life is punishment
as vengeance, inexorable and irreparable, and if thereis reason to fear that the amount of it, in proportion to what has provoked it, will be very great and
terrible, then since none, however well-intentioned,
could be certain of always acting innocently, the risk
would be so great that the better among mankind
would have cause rather to dread, than to desire the
truth of religion.  The possibilities of misery in the
future would outweigh the advantage of the improvement of human conduct, and therefore of human
condition, here, arising from  the' prospect of such
punishment hereafter.
Experience seems to have confirmed what moral venconsiderations of themselves will to some extent. uch isin.
teach us, that though the dread of punishment is a sufficient
very strong motive, it is not one which acts veryrent in
prospect;
barely and iminediately.  Grant it to be the moving
spring or weight, it produces its effect in combination
with many other motives.  We have ceased now, in
regard of hurmal punishments, to think that simple
terribleness of them.is all that is wanted.
Punishment then, as vengeance or retribution, is while, in --
imperfect as a deterrent, in prospect: it is equallya, ites up
ran ntagimperfect, -in act, as a giving back of pain for pain, ofn.antag'
suffering for suffering.  In fact, of the nature of the which supports.the
suffering of the spirit, as it is in others, or as it may sufferer
be in general, we can any of us form but little idea. againt it.
The fountains of pleasure and pain within us are
G.             -                         33




051-4    -IMPORTANCE.OF RIGHT BELIEF.
so strangely mingled, that often what we think the
one turns out the other, and there are intensities of
the one or the other, we perhaps cannot tell which,
when for a moment we are able to have full
consciousness of them. Man's active and passive nature are two distinct things, and pleasure, if we are
to use the word, belongs to one of.these as well as
the other, and the pleasure, so to call it, of the active
nature is something quite different from the feeling
of pleasure which belongs to the passive or sensible
nature, being such, sometimes, as to be awaked
rather by the opposite feeling.  The most dreadful
instances of vengeance have arisen through a vain
attempt to conquer the spirit, which they have only
stirred up to reaction against them, to firmer selfassertion, to fuller, if frightful, self-consciousness, and,
in this respect, to more, and more real, being. Whatever torment the Miltonic Hell may have been to
the Miltonic Satan, it called himi out as no Heaven
could have done.  Or, to take an instance of an exactly opposite nature, what have most martyrdoms
been'but a mad and frightful struggle to subdue the
human spirit on its strongest ground, the maintenance of the truth; and is there not something in the
standing firm, the resistance, the triumph, the energy
and fulness of divinely aided self-exertion in them,
which puts to shame all mere sehsation of pleasure,
which leaves no leisure, and no care, for thinking of
the pain?
The sug-    Independently of moral and religious consideragestiouof tions we might believe in a future life, but we have
a future               believe    future     but   have
life comes not much ground to do so. ~ Physical analogies sugnot from
nature but gest rather a presumption against it, while at the
from religion.   same time they suggest also their own insufficiency
as analogies. But so far as they do or can suggest
to us the likelihood of anything after this life, it is




IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.          515
not anything at least which we need dread, no hopeless or irreparable misery.
Their non-suggestion however of anything, or
their suggestion of possible  annihilation, is that
which in respect of then, is terrible. And it is
against this non-suggestion or suggestion in the first
instance, that religion comes in the way of comfort.
Natural religion first, revealed religion more fully
afterwards, brings life and immortality to light.
For'natural religion' it might be well in some Thephrase
respects if we used the expression'natural faith'. faith'is
The exact force of the word'natural' in the former less ambiguous.
expression is somewhat ambiguous: the'nature' it than nas,refers to may be physical natures which we refer to giou.'
when we speak of'natural theology'; or it may be the
full nature of man and perhaps of things in general,
which is the sense in which the term is used when
the old philosophers talked'of following nature.
Ncaturacl fait/h is the persuasion, indistinctly felt,
that reality or the universe is, in the whole, good:
it is that trust, in its application to the present, that
hopefulness, in its application to the future, without
which we could not act at all, at least to any purpose, or even, it might be thought, live a day.  It is
faith that we can know, can act; that action, directed
by the proper knowledge, will produce the expected
effect; that1 the conclusions, practical or speculative,
drawn from one kind of real knowledge will not be
at variance with the conclusions drawn froml another
kind.  Were the case otherwise, we could not act at
all, or even have any definite thought. It is by faith
of this kind that we have the notion, that there is
really something which we call the truth.
Truth or reality in the world of physical experience is something as to which we have confidence,
that, if it is good for one of our powers of sense, it is




516       IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.
Distinl-  good for all of them, so far as they can enter into
tion between   relation with it, that again, if it is good for the
Pn l-y   senses and mind of one person, it is good for those
modally  of all persons, so far as they are in circumstances to
natural (or notice and to judge of it. And then again this truth
moral)
faith.   or reality is something as to which we have confidence that it will answer our action; that from
experience of the present, we can, to the extent to
which: ouri knowledge applies, judge of the absent,
and predict the future: it is on this faith that we
act: without it there could be no rational action.
This is natural faith when by'natural' we have
reference to physical nature: natural faith, when by:'nature' we mean human or iomral nature.(in which
case it might be better to call it'moral faith'), is
something analogous, but higher.
The for-   Physicclly natural faith is belief in the oneness,
mer is. a
faith in  consistency, uniformity, orderliness, of the physical
the order
of the   universe, which is what makes knowledge about it,
phycal, and action in it, possible for us.  The particulars of
latter in  this uniformity, orderliness, &c., constitute the par-the order
of the   ticulars of our knowledge: of chaos there would be
verse. Unl   knowledge.  Jlforalc y natural faith is the same
feeling-in reference to the moral universe, so to call
it.  Physically natural faith is confidence in truth or
reality, and action according to it is action that is
advisable: morally natural, or moral, faith, is confidence in good, and action according to it is action
that is r'ight.
It will be denied by some that there is any
meaning in speaking thus of the'moral universe, as
di"stinguished from.the physical.'The.physical universe is that. in which action is'considered as the operation of forces (naturcal forces
we call them), and in which sensation is the operation
or affection of sensal organs, as of sight,'taste, &c.;




IMPORTANCE OF RIGHIT BELIEF.        517
the differences of these making its differences, and
there being differences corresponding to them in.
what we call the qualities of objects.
The moral universe is that in which action is Eachalime
considered as the result of will, and in which sen- isnjyefo
sation is pleasure or pain.                        knowledge
Morally natural, dr moral, faith, is an instinctive tion.
or intuitive confidence that our possible pleasures or
pains stand in an intelligible relation to each other
and to pleasures and pains as they exist in other
conscious beings, in such a manner that action is
possible, aned that knowledge is to be gained upon
which we may act with effect.
In reality, the view of the orderliene'ss of the plysical universe and the view of its goodness (so to
speak) or of the goodness of its Creator, are the same
thing with us under different names.
Good, which, when looked at from the side of
passivity or sensation,'is pleasure or happiness, when
looked at from the side of activity is'end' or'purpose.' The notion of an organization adapted to
produce evil or pain is an entire incongruity or
impossibility in the conception,' serving no other
purpose than to bring into relief before us, through
contrast, the nature of organization and order.
What we want, in order to be able to act morally
in a manner analogous to that in which we act
physically, or to put forth our nature in the most
important choices and  determinations with the
same energy with which we constantly put it forth
in the less important; and what, in fact,. we instinctively and intuitively have, or really we could
not live —.is a faith in the goodness and orderliness
of the  m-~otral world-; of there being, if we so
choose to express it, moral as well as physical laws.;
of the goocl  which suggests itself, as what we




518       IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.
should  act for, being  homogeneous, harmonious,
consistent.
We-could    If our different senses had no relation to each
thet ph si other, but each told us something about —what would
al unith- not then indeed be to us a universe-but something
verse withoultcon  about something; if again different people's intelsistency of
se.sa-  ligences stood in no relation to each other, and their
tions:   different views could not be compared, how could we
act at all? as it is, our actional senses (i. e. that part
of our sensal organization which gives us knowledge
of primary qualities, space, time (perhaps), pressure,
&c.) serve as a bond. of union between such senses as
give us knowledge only of some particular secondary
quality; such senses being apparently capable of
multiplication to any extent without preventing the
putting together of our knowledge.'into'an orderly
whole, representing an orderly universe: and in the
same manner the inward or higher senses, or common
sense, serve as a bond of union between different
intelligences: and that is counted truth, which is
alike for all the senses, and'for all intelligences:
and upon this we know we can act with effect.
nor in the    But if, in the same manner, the different goods,
moral uni-'
versewith- or purposes of action which our intelligence suggests
sistencyf to  us, have no relation to each other: how can we
ideals.  act, with any energy.or effect, in the moral universe?
By action in the physical universe is meant such
action as movement, lifting a weight, going a distance, &c.; action in the moral universe is that more
important putting forth of will to which this other
action is subsidiary, determination to seek this or'that object, to go, for whatever reason, to one or
another place, &c. We have got to choose whether we
will do our own pleasure, or others' pleasure, or God's
pleasure, or the praiseworthy, or the rationally just,
or the apparently natural, each of which tlhings seem




IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT BELIEF.          519
good to be done, but seem  also to lead us different
ways: so far as this is so, there is a moral chaos:
there is absence of reason for acting any one way: it
is much the same as if we thought at one time reality
or truth to be only in sweetness, and considered that
that was the only thing, we had to take notice of, at
another time thought that colour was the only thing
to be noticed, and so disputed.with one another which
was reality, or which was the most real.
Philosophers, in seeking the s.unmum  bonum,
really sought in all this what was the good, what
was to be acted for.
CAMIBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY; M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.








BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Exploratio Philosophica: Rough Notes on Modern
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