Utilitarianism

Chapters 1, 2, excerpt from Chapter 4

John Stuart Mill

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Introduction

In the history of philosophy, there is perhaps no stranger story of a

childhood than that of John Stewart Mill (1806-1873). His father, James Mill
was a scholar, theologian, historian and politician. By all accounts John's
childhood was intensely academic, learning to read Greek and Latin classics
in their original language. When John Mill was a child, his father became close
friends with the founder of modern utilitarianism [The ethical view that
holds that pleasure is the highest good and that the good actions are those
that maximize the good for the majority. The Principle of Utility is at the
core of Utilitarianism and is most often expressed as simply "the greatest
good for the greatest number.], Jeremy Bentham. While still young, John Mill
worked for Bentham, though later becoming highly critical of Bentham's
version. Despite being brilliant and having a first class education, by age 20
John had a severe depression.

Mill's influence in 19th Century England was significant. Further, he provided

significant influence on social policy. He wrote a classic text on civil liberty
(On Liberty, 1859); further, he wrote one of the first important texts on
the place of women in society (The Subjection of Women, 1869).
Nonetheless, his is still primarily known for his treatise on Utilitarianism
(1861). This work can be credited with providing the foundation for the
animal rights movement (though it took over 100 years).

Commentary

The primary account of Utilitarianism is given in chapter II, it consists of

three basic components: 1. Consequentialism, [ The ethical theoretical
tradition that holds that the outcomes or effects or consequences of
actions hold the "good-making" features of the actions. Intentions are
secondary and the proper intention is always to achieve a good outcome.] 2.
Hedonism, [Hedonism - The philosophical tradition that holds that pleasure is
the highest good for human beings.] and 3. Equality. The first, Mill states,
"All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural
to suppose, must take their whole character and colour from the end to
which they are subservient." This is Consequentialism; in our common slang
we would say, "the ends justify the means." What is essential about this
expression is that the word "justifies" (or in Mill's words "character and
color") means morally justify. If then ends are good, then that means the
means of getting that end are, by Utilitarianism, morally justified.

Consequentialism in and of itself does not state what consequence should be

promoted. Both Bentham's and Mill's answer is hedonism: "pleasure, and
freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends." It can hardly be
disputed that pleasure is good; what makes hedonism different is that it
states that pleasure is the only good. For example, Mill states that if
anything is good, it is because of the pleasure it brings (directly or
indirectly).

One can speculate that publishing a book that states promoting pleasure is
the only good, during the Victorian Era in England, may have raised a few
problems. Is Mill promoting that we should all be animals? No. Mill is aware of
the charge and spends a few pages addressing it, which suggests he thought
it worthy a significant and clear answer. Mill draws a distinction between
higher and lower faculty pleasures. By "higher faculty" Mill means those
pleasures involving the mind; lower faculty pleasures are those that animals
can enjoy. So, divide the pleasures into those that animals and people can
enjoy, and those pleasures that only humans can appreciate, the former are
lower and the latter are higher faculty pleasures. This does not mean people
don't or shouldn't choose lower faculty pleasures; rather, this means that
they are higher quality pleasures and should be valued more. Finally, it should
be point out that having a mind is not the same thing as appreciating higher
faculty pleasures. For example, to appreciate literature, one must know how
to read.

The third main component of Mill's view addresses whose pleasures should
be promoted. Mill says, "it is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all
concerned." On the one hand, this means than when promoting the most
pleasure, you must take into account everyone. On the other hand, this does
not mean that one's own pleasure doesn't count. So, the idea is that
everyone's pleasure counts the same, yours, and everyone's.

So, altogether this means that one should promote the most pleasure. As
Mill says, "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness,
wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."

Chapter III addresses the "ultimate sanction," or motivation for promoting

the most pleasure. First, there is the external motive, which is the same as
found in all moral theories. Second, there is the internal motive, which is
grounded in the obvious fact that pleasure feels good and pain feels bad. In
chapter IV Mill proves the "proof" for his view. In one of the more
controversial sections, Mill makes an analogy between seeing, hearing and
desiring as compared to actually seeing, actually hearing and actually
desiring. The proof that promoting pleasure is desirable is that people desire
it.

Reading

CHAPTER I

GENERAL REMARKS

THERE ARE FEW CIRCUMSTANCES among those which make up the present
condition of human knowledge more unlike what might have been expected,
or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most
important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made
in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and
wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum
bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality,
has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied
the most gifted intellects and divided them into sects and schools carrying
on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two
thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged
under the same contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at
large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject than when the youth
Socrates listened to the old Protagoras and asserted (if Plato's dialogue be
grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the
popular morality of the so-called sophist.

It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty and, in some cases, similar
discordance exist respecting the first principles of all the sciences, not
excepting that which is deemed the most certain of them-mathematics,
without much impairing, generally indeed without impairing at all, the
trustworthiness of the conclusions of those sciences. An apparent anomaly,
the explanation of which is that the detailed doctrines of a science are not
usually deduced from, nor depend for their evidence upon, what are called
its first principles. Were it not so, there would be no science more
precarious, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out, than
algebra, which derives none of its certainty from what are commonly taught
to learners as its elements, since these, as laid down by some of its most
eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as English law, and of mysteries as
theology. The truths which are ultimately accepted as the first principles of
a science are really the last results of metaphysical analysis practiced on
the elementary notions with which the science is conversant; and their
relation to the science is not that of foundations to an edifice, but of roots
to a tree, which may perform their office equally well though they be never
dug down to and exposed to light. But though in science the particular truths
precede the general theory, the contrary might be expected to be the case
with a practical art, such as morals or legislation. All action is for the sake
of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take
their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.
When we engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are
pursuing would seem to be the first thing we need, instead of the last we
are to look forward to. A test of right and wrong must be the means, one
would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a consequence
of having already ascertained it.

The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the popular theory of a

natural faculty, a sense of instinct, informing us of right and wrong.
For—besides that the existence of such a moral instinct is itself one of the
matters in dispute—those believers in it who have any pretensions to
philosophy have been obliged to abandon the idea that it discerns what is
right or wrong in the particular case in hand, as our other senses discern
the sight or sound actually present. Our moral faculty, according to all those
of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only
with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason,
not of our sensitive faculty, and must be looked to for the abstract
doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive,
no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics insists on
the necessity of general laws. They both agree that the morality of an
individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the application
of a law to an individual case. They recognize also, to a great extent, the
same moral laws, but differ as to their evidence and the source from which
they derive their authority. According to the one opinion, the principles of
morals are evident a priori, requiring nothing to command assent except
that the meaning of the terms be understood. According to the other
doctrine, right and wrong, as well as truth and falsehood, are questions of
observation and experience. But both hold equally that morality must be
deduced from principles; and the intuitive school affirm as strongly as the
inductive that there is a science of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to
make out a list of the a priori principles which are to serve as the premises
of the science; still more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those
various principles to one first principle or common ground of obligation. They
either assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of a priori authority, or
they lay down as the common groundwork of those maxims some generality
much less obviously authoritative than the maxims themselves, and which
has never succeeded in gaining popular acceptance. Yet to support their
pretensions there ought either to be some one fundamental principle or law
at the root of all morality, or, if there be several, there should be a
determinate order of precedence among them; and the one principle, or the
rule for deciding between the various principles when they conflict, ought to
be self-evident.

To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency have been mitigated in
practice, or to what extent the moral beliefs of mankind have been vitiated
or made uncertain by the absence of any distinct recognition of an ultimate
standard, would imply a complete survey and criticism of past and present
ethical doctrine. It would, however, be easy to show that whatever
steadiness or consistency these moral beliefs have attained has been mainly
due to the tacit influence of a standard not recognized. Although the
nonexistence of an acknowledged first principle has made ethics not so
much a guide as a consecration of men's actual sentiments, still, as men's
sentiments, both of favor and of aversion, are greatly influenced by what
they suppose to be the effects of things upon their happiness, the principle
of utility, or, as Bentham latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle,
has had a large share in forming the moral doctrines even of those who
most scornfully reject its authority. Nor is there any school of thought
which refuses to admit that the influence of actions on happiness is a most
material and even predominant consideration in many of the details of
morals, however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental principle of
morality and the source of moral obligation. I might go much further and say
that to all those a priori moralists who deem it necessary to argue at all,
utilitarian arguments are indispensable. It is not my present purpose to
criticize these thinkers; but I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a
systematic treatise by one of the most illustrious of them, the Metaphysics
of Ethics by Kant. This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long
remain one of the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation,
does, in the treatise in question, lay down a universal first principle as the
origin and ground of moral obligation; it is this: "So act that the rule on
which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational
beings." But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual
duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be
any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the
adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of
conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption
would be such as no one would choose to incur.

On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of the other

theories, attempt to contribute something toward the understanding and
appreciation of the "utilitarian" or "happiness" theory, and toward such
proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the
ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are
not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good must be
so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without
proof. The medical art is proved to be good by its conducing to health; but
how is it possible to prove that health is good? The art of music is good, for
the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it
possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a
comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good,
and that whatever else is good is not so as an end but as a means, the
formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is
commonly understood by proof. We are not, however, to infer that its
acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse or arbitrary choice.
There is a larger meaning of the word "proof," in which this question is as
amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions of philosophy. The
subject is within the cognizance of the rational faculty; and neither does
that faculty deal with it solely in the way of intuition. Considerations may be
presented capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its
assent to the doctrine; and this is equivalent to proof.

We shall examine presently of what nature are these considerations; in what

manner they apply to the case, and what rational grounds, therefore, can be
given for accepting or rejecting the utilitarian formula. But it is a
preliminary condition of rational acceptance or rejection that the formula
should be correctly understood. I believe that the very imperfect notion
ordinarily formed of its meaning is the chief obstacle which impedes its
reception, and that, could it be cleared even from only the grosser
misconceptions, the question would be greatly simplified and a large
proportion of its difficulties removed. Before, therefore, I attempt to enter
into the philosophical grounds which can be given for assenting to the
utilitarian standard, I shall offer some illustrations of the doctrine itself,
with the view of showing more clearly what it is, distinguishing it from what
it is not, and disposing of such of the practical objections to it as either
originate in, or are closely connected with, mistaken interpretations of its
meaning. Having thus prepared the ground, I shall afterwards endeavor to
throw such light as I can call upon the question considered as one of
philosophical theory.

CHAPTER II
WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS

A PASSING REMARK is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of

supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong
use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which utility is
opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the philosophical opponents of
utilitarianism for even the momentary appearance of confounding them with
anyone capable of so absurd a misconception; which is the more
extraordinary, inasmuch as the contrary accusation, of referring everything
to pleasure, and that, too, in its grossest form, is another of the common
charges against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly remarked by an
able writer, the same sort of persons, and often the very same persons,
denounce the theory "as impracticably dry when the word 'utility' precedes
the word 'pleasure,' and as too practicably voluptuous when the word
'pleasure' precedes the word 'utility.''' Those who know anything about the
matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who
maintained the theory of utility meant by it, not something to be
contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with
exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or
the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among
other things. Yet the common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in
newspapers and periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are
perpetually falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the word
"utilitarian," while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they
habitually express by it the rejection or the neglect of pleasure in some of
its forms: of beauty, of ornament, or of amusement. Nor is the term thus
ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, but occasionally in
compliment, as though it implied superiority to frivolity and the mere
pleasures of the moment. And this perverted use is the only one in which
the word is popularly known, and the one from which the new generation are
acquiring their sole notion of its meaning. Those who introduced the word,
but who had for many years discontinued it as a distinctive appellation, may
well feel themselves called upon to resume it if by doing so they can hope to
contribute anything toward rescuing it from this utter degradation.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals "utility" or the

"greatest happiness principle" holds that actions are right in proportion as
they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse
of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by
unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the
moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in
particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure, and to
what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary
explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of
morality is grounded — namely, that pleasure and freedom from pain are
the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as
numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for
pleasure inherent in themselves or as means to the promotion of pleasure
and the prevention of pain.

Now such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of
the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose
that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure — no better
and nobler object of desire and pursuit — they designate as utterly mean
and groveling, as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of
Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern
holders of the doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite
comparisons by its German, French, and English assailants.
When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered that it is not
they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light,
since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures
except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true, the
charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for
if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to
swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough
for the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt
as degrading, precisely because a beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human
being's conceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties more
elevated than the animal appetites and, when once made conscious of them,
do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their
gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any
means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the
utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well
as Christian, elements require to be included. But there is no known
Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the
intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments a
much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be
admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the
superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater
permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former — that is, in their
circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all
these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have
taken the other and, as it may be called, higher ground with entire
consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize
the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable
than others. It would be absurd that, while in estimating all other things
quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should
be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

If I am asked what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what

makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure,
except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two
pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of
both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral
obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two
is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above
the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a
greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of
the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in
ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality so far
outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with
and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both do give a most marked
preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.
Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower
animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no
intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person
would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish
and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or
the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They
would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete
satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they
ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme that to
escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however
undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to
make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly
accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of
these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a
lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this
unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given
indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable
feelings of which mankind are capable; we may refer it to the love of liberty
and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of
the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power or
to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute
to it; but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all
human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no
means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so
essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong that nothing
which conflicts with it could be otherwise than momentarily an object of
desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a
sacrifice of happiness — that the superior being, in anything like equal
circumstances, is not happier than the inferior — confounds the two very
different ideas of happiness and content. It is indisputable that the being
whose capacities of enjoyment are low has the greatest chance of having
them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any
happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect.
But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and
they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the
imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those
imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig
satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the
fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their
own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both
sides.

It may be objected that many who are capable of the higher pleasures
occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone them to the lower.
But this is quite compatible with a full appreciation of the intrinsic
superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity of character, make their
election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable;
and this no less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures than when
it is between bodily and mental. They pursue sensual indulgences to the
injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater good. It
may be further objected that many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for
everything noble, as they advance in years, sink into indolence and
selfishness. But I do not believe that those who undergo this very common
change voluntarily choose the lower description of pleasures in preference
to the higher. I believe that, before they devote themselves exclusively to
the one, they have already become incapable of the other. Capacity for the
nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only
by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority
of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their
position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown
them, are not favorable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose
their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they
have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves
to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but
because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only
ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned
whether anyone who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of
pleasures ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower, though many, in all
ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both.

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no
appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or
which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart
from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those
who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the
majority among them, must be admitted as final. And there needs be the
less hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of pleasures,
since there is no other tribunal to be referred to even on the question of
quantity. What means are there of determining which is the acutest of two
pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the general
suffrage of those who are familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures
are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is
there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the
cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the
experienced? When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the
pleasures derived from the higher faculties to be preferable in kind, apart
from the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature,
disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled on this
subject to the same regard.

I have dwelt on this point as being a necessary part of a perfectly just

conception of utility or happiness considered as the directive rule of human
conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable condition to the acceptance
of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not the agent's own
greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if
it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier
for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier,
and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism,
therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness
of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of
others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer
deduction from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity
as this last renders refutation superfluous.

According to the greatest happiness principle, as above explained, the

ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things
are desirable — whether we are considering our own good or that of other
people — is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as
possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of
quality and the rule for measuring it against quantity being the preference
felt by those who, in their opportunities of experience, to which must be
added their habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best
furnished with the means of comparison. This, being according to the
utilitarian opinion the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard
of morality, which may accordingly be defined "the rules and precepts for
human conduct," by the observance of which an existence such as has been
described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind;
and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the
whole sentient creation.

Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors who say
that happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose of human life
and action; because, in the first place, it is unattainable; and they
contemptuously ask, What right hast thou to be happy? — a question which
Mr. Carlyle clinches by the addition, What right, a short time ago, hadst thou
even to be? Next they say that men can do without happiness; that all noble
human beings have felt this, and could not have become noble but by learning
the lesson of En tsagen, or renunciation; which lesson, thoroughly learned
and submitted to, they affirm to be the beginning and necessary condition
of all virtue.

The first of these objections would go to the root of the matter were it well
founded; for if no happiness is to be had at all by human beings, the
attainment of it cannot be the end of morality or of any rational conduct.
Though, even in that case, something might still be said for the utilitarian
theory, since utility includes not solely the pursuit of happiness, but the
prevention or mitigation of unhappiness; and if the former aim be chimerical,
there will be all the greater scope and more imperative need for the latter,
so long at least as mankind think fit to live and do not take refuge in the
simultaneous act of suicide recommended under certain conditions by
Novalis. When, however, it is thus positively asserted to be impossible that
human life should be happy, the assertion, if not something like a verbal
quibble, is at least an exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a continuity of
highly pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that this is impossible. A
state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments or in some cases, and with
some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of
enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this the philosophers
who have taught that happiness is the end of life were as fully aware as
those who taunt them. The happiness which they meant was not a life of
rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and
transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance
of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole
not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing. A life thus
composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has always
appeared worthy of the name of happiness. And such an existence is even
now the lot of many during some considerable portion of their lives. The
present wretched education and wretched social arrangements are the only
real hindrance to its being attainable by almost all.

The objectors perhaps may doubt whether human beings, if taught to

consider happiness as the end of life, would be satisfied with such a
moderate share of it. But great numbers of mankind have been satisfied
with much less. The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two,
either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose:
tranquillity and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find that they can
be content with very little pleasure; with much excitement, many can
reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain. There is assuredly
no inherent impossibility of enabling even the mass of mankind to unite both,
since the two are so far from being incompatible that they are in natural
alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation for, and exciting a
wish for, the other. It is only those in whom indolence amounts to a vice that
do not desire excitement after an interval of repose; it is only those in
whom the need of excitement is a disease that feel the tranquillity which
follows excitement dull and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct
proportion to the excitement which preceded it. When people who are
tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient
enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is caring for
nobody but themselves. To those who have neither public nor private
affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case
dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must be
terminated by death; while those who leave after them objects of personal
affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with
the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the
eve of death as in the vigor of youth and health. Next to selfishness, the
principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental
cultivation. A cultivated mind — I do not mean that of a philosopher, but any
mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has
been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties — finds
sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it: in the objects of
nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents
of history, the ways of mankind, past and present, and their prospects in
the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all this, and that
too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it, but only when one has
had from the beginning no moral or human interest in these things and has
sought in them only the gratification of curiosity.

Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amount of

mental culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in these objects of
contemplation should not be the inheritance of everyone born in a civilized
country. As little is there an inherent necessity that any human being should
be a selfish egotist, devoid of every feeling or care but those which center
in his own miserable individuality. Something far superior to this is
sufficiently common even now, to give ample earnest of what the human
species may be made. Genuine private affections and a sincere interest in
the public good are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly
brought up human being. In a world in which there is so much to interest, so
much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has
this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an
existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through
bad laws or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the
sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find this enviable
existence, if he escape the positive evils of life, the great sources of
physical and mental suffering — such as indigence, disease, and the
unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection. The
main stress of the problem lies, therefore, in the contest with these
calamities from which it is a rare good fortune entirely to escape; which, as
things now are, cannot be obviated, and often cannot be in any material
degree mitigated. Yet no one whose opinion deserves a moment's
consideration can doubt that most of the great positive evils of the world
are in themselves removable, and will, if human affairs continue to improve,
be in the end reduced within narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying
suffering, may be completely extinguished by the wisdom of society
combined with the good sense and providence of individuals. Even that most
intractable of enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by
good physical and moral education and proper control of noxious influences,
while the progress of science holds out a promise for the future of still
more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And every advance in that
direction relieves us from some, not only of the chances which cut short our
own lives, but, what concerns us still more, which deprive us of those in
whom our happiness is wrapt up. As for vicissitudes of fortune and other
disappointments connected with worldly circumstances, these are principally
the effect either of gross imprudence, of ill-regulated desires, or of bad or
imperfect social institutions. All the grand sources, in short, of human
suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable
by human care and effort; and though their removal is grievously slow —
though a long succession of generations will perish in the breach before the
conquest is completed, and this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge
were not wanting, it might easily be made — yet every mind sufficiently
intelligent and generous to bear a part, however small and inconspicuous, in
the endeavor will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, which he
would not for any bribe in the form of selfish indulgence consent to be
without.

And this leads to the true estimation of what is said by the objectors
concerning the possibility and the obligation of learning to do without
happiness. Unquestionably it is possible to do without happiness; it is done
involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind, even in those parts of our
present world which are least deep in barbarism; and it often has to be done
voluntarily by the hero or the martyr, for the sake of something which he
prizes more than his individual happiness. But this something, what is it,
unless the happiness of others or some of the requisites of happiness? It is
noble to be capable of resigning entirely one's own portion of happiness, or
chances of it; but, after all, this self-sacrifice must be for some end; it is
not its own end; and if we are told that its end is not happiness but virtue,
which is better than happiness, I ask, would the sacrifice be made if the hero
or martyr did not believe that it would earn for others immunity from
similar sacrifices? Would it be made if he thought that his renunciation of
happiness for himself would produce no fruit for any of his fellow creatures,
but to make their lot like his and place them also in the condition of persons
who have renounced happiness? All honor to those who can abnegate for
themselves the personal enjoyment of life when by such renunciation they
contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he
who does it or professes to do it for any other purpose is no more deserving
of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may be an inspiriting
proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an example of what they should.

Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that

anyone can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of
his own, yet, so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully
acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest
virtue which can be found in man. I will add that in this condition of the
world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the conscious ability to do
without happiness gives the best prospect of realizing such happiness as is
attainable. For nothing except that consciousness can raise a person above
the chances of life by making him feel that, let fate and fortune do their
worst, they have not power to subdue him; which, once felt, frees him from
excess of anxiety concerning the evils of life and enables him, like many a
Stoic in the worst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate in tranquillity the
sources of satisfaction accessible to him, without concerning himself about
the uncertainty of their duration any more than about their inevitable end.

Meanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the morality of self-devotion

as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them as either to the
Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The utilitarian morality does recognize in
human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good
of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A
sacrifice which does not increase or tend to increase the sum total of
happiness, it considers as wasted. The only self-renunciation which it
applauds is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the means of
happiness, of others, either of mankind collectively or of individuals within
the limits imposed by the collective interests of mankind.

I must again repeat what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the
justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian
standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness but
that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others,
utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and
benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the
complete spirit of the ethics of utility. "To do as you would be done by," and
"to love your neighbor as yourself," constitute the ideal perfection of
utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this
ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should
place the happiness or (as, speaking practically, it may be called) the
interest of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the
interest of the whole; and, secondly, that education and opinion, which have
so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to
establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between
his own happiness and the good of the whole, especially between his own
happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive,
as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be
unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with
conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to
promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual
motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large
and prominent place in every human being's sentient existence. If the
impugners of the utilitarian morality represented it to their own minds in
this its true character, I know not what recommendation possessed by any
other morality they could possibly affirm to be wanting to it; what more
beautiful or more exalted developments of human nature any other ethical
system can be supposed to foster, or what springs of action, not accessible
to the utilitarian, such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.
The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with representing
it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among them who entertain
anything like a just idea of its disinterested character sometimes find fault
with its standard as being too high for humanity. They say it is exacting too
much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of
promoting the general interests of society. But this is to mistake the very
meaning of a standard of morals and confound the rule of action with the
motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by
what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the
sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary,
ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and
rightly so done if the rule of duty does not condemn them. It is the more
unjust to utilitarianism that this particular misapprehension should be made
a ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists have gone
beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with
the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent. He who
saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally right, whether
his motive be duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble; he who betrays
the friend that trusts him is guilty of a crime, even if his object be to serve
another friend to whom he is under greater obligations. But to speak only of
actions done from the motive of duty, and in direct obedience to principle: it
is a misapprehension of the Utilitarian mode of thought to conceive it as
implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the
world, or society at large. The great majority of good actions are intended
not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the
good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most virtuous man
need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular persons
concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that in
benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate and
authorized expectations, of anyone else. The multiplication of happiness is,
according to the Utilitarian ethics, the object of virtue: the occasions on
which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on
an extended scale — in other words, to be a public benefactor — are but
exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public
utility; in every other case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some
few persons, is all he has to attend to. Those alone the influence of whose
actions extends to society in general need concern themselves habitually
about so large an object. In the case of abstinences indeed — of things
which people forbear to do from moral considerations, though the
consequences in the particular case might be beneficial — it would be
unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware that the action
is of a class which, if practiced generally, would be generally injurious, and
that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it. The amount of
regard for the public interest implied in this recognition is no greater than is
demanded by every system of morals, for they all enjoin to abstain from
whatever is manifestly pernicious to society.
The same considerations dispose of another reproach against the doctrine
of utility, founded on a still grosser misconception of the purpose of a
standard of morality and of the very meaning of the words "right" and
"wrong." It is often affirmed that utilitarianism renders men cold and
unsympathizing; that it chills their moral feelings toward individuals; that it
makes them regard only the dry and hard consideration of the consequences
of actions, not taking into their moral estimate the qualities from which
those actions emanate. If the assertion means that they do not allow their
judgment respecting the rightness or wrongness of an action to be
influenced by their opinion of the qualities of the person who does it, this is
a complaint not against utilitarianism, but against any standard of morality
at all; for certainly no known ethical standard decides an action to be good
or bad because it is done by a good or a bad man, still less because done by
an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man, or the contrary. These
considerations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of
persons; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent with the
fact that there are other things which interest us in persons besides the
rightness and wrongness of their actions. The Stoics, indeed, with the
paradoxical misuse of language which was part of their system, and by which
they strove to raise themselves above all concern about anything but virtue,
were fond of saying that he who has that has everything; that he, and only
he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king. But no claim of this description is made for
the virtuous man by the utilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians are quite aware that
there are other desirable possessions and qualities besides virtue, and are
perfectly willing to allow to all of them their full worth. They are also aware
that a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous character, and
that actions which are blamable often proceed from qualities entitled to
praise. When this is apparent in any particular case, it modifies their
estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the agent. I grant that they are,
notwithstanding, of opinion that in the long run the best proof of a good
character is good actions; and resolutely refuse to consider any mental
disposition as good of which the predominant tendency is to produce bad
conduct. This makes them unpopular with many people, but it is an
unpopularity which they must share with everyone who regards the
distinction between right and wrong in a serious light; and the reproach is
not one which a conscientious utilitarian need be anxious to repel.

If no more be meant by the objection than that many utilitarians look on the
morality of actions, as measured by the utilitarian standards, with too
exclusive a regard, and do not lay sufficient stress upon the other beauties
of character which go toward making a human being lovable or admirable,
this may be admitted. Utilitarians who have cultivated their moral feelings,
but not their sympathies, nor their artistic perceptions, do fall into this
mistake; and so do all other moralists under the same conditions. What can
be said in excuse for other moralists is equally available for them, namely,
that, if there is to be any error, it is better that it should be on that side.
As a matter of fact, we may affirm that among utilitarians, as among
adherents of other systems, there is every imaginable degree of rigidity and
of laxity in the application of their standard; some are even puritanically
rigorous, while others are as indulgent as can possibly be desired by sinner
or by sentimentalist. But on the whole, a doctrine which brings prominently
forward the interest that mankind have in the repression and prevention of
conduct which violates the moral law is likely to be inferior to no other in
turning the sanctions of opinion against such violations. It is true, the
question "What does violate the moral law?" is one on which those who
recognize different standards of morality are likely now and then to differ.
But difference of opinion on moral questions was not first introduced into
the world by utilitarianism, while that doctrine does supply, if not always an
easy, at all events a tangible and intelligible, mode of deciding such
differences.

It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of the common

misapprehensions of utilitarian ethics, even those which are so obvious and
gross that it might appear impossible for any person of candor and
intelligence to fall into them; since persons, even of considerable mental
endowment, often give themselves so little trouble to understand the
bearings of any opinion against which they entertain a prejudice, and men
are in general so little conscious of this voluntary ignorance as a defect
that the vulgarest misunderstandings of ethical doctrines are continually
met with in the deliberate writings of persons of the greatest pretensions
both to high principle and to philosophy. We not uncommonly hear the
doctrine of utility inveighed against as a godless doctrine. If it be necessary
to say anything at all against so mere an assumption, we may say that the
question depends upon what idea we have formed of the moral character of
the Deity. If it be a true belief that God desires, above all things, the
happiness of his creatures, and that this was his purpose in their creation,
utility is not only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than
any other. If it be meant that utilitarianism does not recognize the revealed
will of God as the supreme law of morals, I answer that a utilitarian who
believes in the perfect goodness and wisdom of God necessarily believes
that whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals must
fulfill the requirements of utility in a supreme degree. But others besides
utilitarians have been of opinion that the Christian revelation was intended,
and is fitted, to inform the hearts and minds of mankind with a spirit which
should enable them to find for themselves what is right, and incline them to
do it when found, rather than to tell them, except in a very general way,
what it is; and that we need a doctrine of ethics, carefully followed out, to
interpret to us the will of God. Whether this opinion is correct or not, it is
superfluous here to discuss; since whatever aid religion, either natural or
revealed, can afford to ethical investigation is as open to the utilitarian
moralist as to any other. He can use it as the testimony of God to the
usefulness or hurtfulness of any given course of action by as good a right
as others can use it for the indication of a transcendental law having no
connection with usefulness or with happiness.

Again, utility is often summarily stigmatized as an immoral doctrine by

giving it the name of "expediency," and taking advantage of the popular use
of that term to contrast it with principle. But the expedient, in the sense in
which it is opposed to the right, generally means that which is expedient for
the particular interest of the agent himself; as when a minister sacrifices
the interests of his country to keep himself in place. When it means
anything better than this, it means that which is expedient for some
immediate object, some temporary purpose, but which violates a rule whose
observance is expedient in a much higher degree. The expedient, in this
sense, instead of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the
hurtful. Thus it would often be expedient, for the purpose of getting over
some momentary embarrassment, or attaining some object immediately
useful to ourselves or others, to tell a lie. But inasmuch as the cultivation in
ourselves of a sensitive feeling on the subject of veracity is one of the most
useful, and the enfeeblement of that feeling one of the most hurtful, things
to which our conduct can be instrumental; and inasmuch as any, even
unintentional, deviation from truth does that much toward weakening the
trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principal support
of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of which does more
than anyone thing that can be named to keep back civilization, virtue,
everything on which human happiness on the largest scale depends — we
feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of a rule of such
transcendent expediency is not expedient, and that he who, for the sake of
convenience to himself or to some other individual, does what depends on
him to deprive mankind of the good, and inflict upon them the evil, involved
in the greater or less reliance which they can place in each other's word,
acts the part of one of their worst enemies. Yet that even this rule, sacred
as it is, admits of possible exceptions is acknowledged by all moralists; the
chief of which is when the withholding of some fact (as of information from
a malefactor, or of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would save an
individual (especially an individual other than oneself) from great and
unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But
in order that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may
have the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to
be recognized and, if possible, its limits defined; and, if the principle of
utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing these conflicting
utilities against one another and marking out the region within which one or
the other preponderates.

Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to

such objections as this — that there is not time, previous to action, for
calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general
happiness. This is exactly as if anyone were to say that it is impossible to
guide our conduct by Christianity because there is not time, on every
occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New
Testaments. The answer to the objection is that there has been ample time,
namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time
mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on
which experience all the prudence as well as all the morality of life are
dependent. People talk as if the commencement of this course of
experience had hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment when some
man feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of another, he had to
begin considering for the first time whether murder and theft are injurious
to human happiness. Even then I do not think that he would find the question
very puzzling; but, at all events, the matter is now done to his hand. It is
truly a whimsical supposition that, if mankind were agreed in considering
utility to be the test of morality, they would remain without any agreement
as to what is useful, and would take no measures for having their notions on
the subject taught to the young and enforced by law and opinion. There is no
difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill if we suppose
universal idiocy to be conjoined with it; but on any hypothesis short of that,
mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects
of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come
down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher
until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do
this, even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no
means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to the
effects of actions on the general happiness, I admit or rather earnestly
maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility, like the precepts of
every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement, and, in a progressive
state of the human mind, their improvement is perpetually going on. But to
consider the rules of morality as improvable is one thing; to pass over the
intermediate generalization entirely and endeavor to test each individual
action directly by the first principle is another. It is a strange notion that
the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of
secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate
destination is not to forbid the use of landmarks and direction-posts on the
way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality does not
mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going
thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men
really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which
they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical
concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on
astronomy because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanac.
Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all
rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on
the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far
more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is
a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we
adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate
principles to apply it by; the impossibility of doing without them, being

common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in

particular; but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be
had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain,
without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life
is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical
controversy.

The remainder of the stock arguments against utilitarianism mostly consist

in laying to its charge the common infirmities of human nature, and the
general difficulties which embarrass conscientious persons in shaping their
course through life. We are told that a utilitarian will be apt to make his own
particular case an exception to moral rules, and, when under temptation, will
see a utility in the breach of a rule, greater than he will see in its
observance. But is utility the only creed which is able to furnish us with
excuses for evil-doing and means of cheating our own conscience? They are
afforded in abundance by all doctrines which recognize as a fact in morals
the existence of conflicting considerations, which all doctrines do that have
been believed by sane persons. It is not the fault of any creed, but of the
complicated nature of human affairs, that rules of conduct cannot be so
framed as to require no exceptions, and that hardly any kind of action can
safely be laid down as either always obligatory or always condemnable. There
is no ethical creed which does not temper the rigidity of its laws by giving a
certain latitude, under the moral responsibility of the agent, for
accommodation to peculiarities of circumstances; and under every creed, at
the opening thus made, self-deception and dishonest casuistry get in. There
exists no moral system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of
conflicting obligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both
in the theory of ethics and in the conscientious guidance of personal
conduct. They are overcome practically, with greater or with less success,
according to the intellect and virtue of the individual; but it can hardly be
pretended that anyone will be the less qualified for dealing with them, from
possessing an ultimate standard to which conflicting rights and duties can
be referred. If utility is the ultimate source of moral obligations, utility may
be invoked to decide between them when their demands are incompatible.
Though the application of the standard may be difficult, it is better than
none at all; while in other systems, the moral laws all claiming independent
authority, there is no common umpire entitled to interfere between them;
their claims to precedence one over another rest on little better than
sophistry, and, unless determined, as they generally are, by the
unacknowledged influence of consideration of utility, afford a free scope for
the action of personal desires and partialities. We must remember that only
in these cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that
first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral obligation in
which some secondary principle is not involved; and if only one, there can
seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in the mind of any person by whom
the principle itself is recognized.

CHAPTER IV

OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS SUSCEPTIBLE

IT HAS ALREADY been remarked that questions of ultimate ends do not

admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapable of
proof by reasoning is common to all first principles, to the first premises of
our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the former, being
matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal to the faculties
which judge of fact — namely, our senses and our internal consciousness.
Can an appeal be made to the same faculties on questions of practical ends?
Or by what other faculty is cognizance taken of them?

Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what things are
desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only
thing desirable, as an end; all other things beings only desirable as means to
that end. What ought to be required of this doctrine, what conditions is it
requisite that the doctrine should fulfill — to make good its claim to be
believed?

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people
actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it;
and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend,
the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that
people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes
to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end,
nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be
given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so
far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This,
however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits
of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good, that each
person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out
its title as one of the ends of conduct and, consequently, one of the criteria
of morality.

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

But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or maintain
that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not
only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly,
for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian moralists as to the
original conditions by which virtue is made virtue, however they may believe
(as they do) that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they
promote another end than virtue, yet this being granted, and it having been
decided, from considerations of this description, what is virtuous, they not
only place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to
the ultimate end, but they also recognize as a psychological fact the
possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without looking to
any end beyond it; and hold that the mind is not in a right state, not in a
state conformable to utility, not in the state most conducive to the general
happiness, unless it has already been remarked that questions of ultimate
ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be
incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles, to the first
premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the
former, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal to the
faculties which judge of factónamely, our senses and our internal
consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same faculties on questions of
practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cognizance taken of them?
Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what things are
desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is that happi-ness is desirable, and the
only thing desirable, as an end; all other things beings only desirable as
means to that end. What ought to be required of this doctrine, what
conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should fulfillóto make good its
claim to be believed?
The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that
people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible is that people
hear it; and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I
appre-hend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that any-thing is
desirable is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian
doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged
to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No
reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each
person, so far as he believes it to be attain-able, desires his own happiness.