Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/628

606 (1785), the link between general pleasure (the standard) and private pleasure or pain (the motive) is supplied by the conception of divine legislation. To be " obliged " is to be " urged by a violent motive resulting from the com mand of another ; " in the case of moral obligation, the com mand proceeds from God, and the motive lies in the expec tation of being rewarded and punished after this life. The commands of God are to be ascertained " from scripture and the light of nature combined." Paley, however, holds that scripture is given less to teach morality than to illustrate it by example and enforce it by new sanctions and greater sertainty, and that the light of nature makes it clear that God wills the happiness of his creatures. Hence, his method in deciding moral questions is chiefly that of esti mating the tendency of actions to promote or diminish the general happiness. To meet the obvious objections to this method, based on the immediate happiness caused by admitted crimes (such as " knocking a rich villain on the Lead"), he lays stress on the necessity of general rules in any kind of legislation ; x while, by urging the importance of forming and maintaining good habits, he partly evades the difficulty of calculating the consequences of particular actions. In this way the utilitarian method is freed from the subversive tendencies which Butler and others had dis cerned in it ; as used by Paley, it merely explains the current moral and jural distinctions, exhibits the obvious basis of expediency which supports most of the received rules of law and morality, and furnishes a simple solution, in harmony with common sense, of some perplexing casuistical questions. Thus (e.g.] "natural rights become rights of which the general observance would be useful apart from the institution of civil government ; as distinguished from the no less binding " adventitious rights," the utility of which depends upon this institution. Private property is in this sense "natural," from its obvious advantages in encouraging labour, skill, preservative care ; though actual rights of property depend on the general utility of con forming to the law of the land by which they are deter mined. So, again, many perplexities respecting the duties of veracity and good faith are solved, so as to avoid Jesuitical laxities no less than superstitious scruples, by basing their obligation on the utilities general and particular of satisfying expectations deliberately produced. So, too, the general utilitarian basis of the established sexual morality is effectively expounded. We observe, however, that Paley s method is often mixed with reasonings that belong to an alien and older manner of thought ; as when he supports the claim of the poor to charity by referring to the intention of mankind " when they agreed to a separa tion of the common fund," or when he infers that monogamy is a part of the divine design from the equal numbers of males and females born. In other cases his statement of utilitarian considerations is fragmentary and unmethodical, and tends to degenerate into loose exhortation on rather trite topics. Bentham In unity, consistency, and thoroughness of method, and his Bentham s utilitarianism has a decided superiority over Paley s. He throughout considers actions solely in respect of their pleasurable and painful consequences, expected or actual ; and he fully recognizes the need of making an exhaustive and systematic register of these consequences, free from the influences of common moral opinion, as expressed in the " eulogistic " and " dyslogistic " terms in ordinary use. Further, the effects that he estimates are all of a definite, palpable, empirically ascertainable quality : they are such pleasures and pains as most men feel and all school. 1 It must be allowed that Paley s application of this argument is somewhat loosely reasoned, and does not sufficiently distinguish the consequences of a single act of benefcent manslaughter from the consequences of a general permission to commit such acts. can observe to be felt, so that all political or moral infer ences drawn by Beuthani s method lie open at every point to the test of practical experience. Every one, it would seem, can tell what value he sets on the pleasures of ali mentation, sex, the senses generally, wealth, power, curiosity, sympathy, antipathy (malevolence), the goodwill of individuals or of society at large, and on the correspond ing pains, as well as the pains of labour and organic disorders f and can pretty well guess the rate at which they are valued by others ; therefore if it be once granted that all actions are determined by pleasures and pains, and are to be tried by the same standard, the art both of legislation and of private conduct is apparently placed on a broad, simple, and clear empirical basis. Bentham, no doubt, seems to go beyond the limits of mundane experi ence in recognizing "religious" pains and pleasures in his fourfold division of sanctions, side by side with the physical," "political," and "moral "or " social ;" but the truth is that he does not seriously take account of them, except iu so far as religious hopes and fears are motives actually operating, which therefore admit of being observed and measured as much as any other motives. He does not himself use the will of an omnipotent and benevolent being as a means of logically connecting individual and general happiness. He thus undoubtedly simplifies his system, and avoids the doubtful inferences from nature and Scripture in which Paley s position is involved ; but this gain is dearly purchased. For in answer to the question that immediately arises. How then is the maximum happiness of any individual shown to be always conjoined with the maximum general happiness, he is obliged to admit that " the only interests which a man is at all times sure to find adequate motives for consulting are his own." Indeed, in many parts of his vast work, in the department of legislative and constitutional theory, it is rather assumed that the interests of some men will continually conflict with those of their fellows, unless we alter the balance of prudential calculation by a careful readjustment of penal ties. But on this assumption a satisfactory system of private conduct on utilitarian principles cannot be con structed until legislative and constitutional reform has been perfected. And, in fact, " private ethics," as conceived by Bentham, does not exactly expound such a system ; but rather exhibits the coincidence, sofa) as it extends, between private and general happiness, in that part of each man s conduct that lies beyond the range of useful legislation. It was not his place, as a practical philanthropist, to dwell on the defects in this coincidence f and since what men generally expect from a moralist is a completely reasoned account of what they ought to do, it is not surpris ing that some of Bentham s disciples should have either ignored or endeavoured to supply the gap in his system. One section of the school even maintained it to be a cardinal doctrine of utilitarianism that a man always gains his own greatest happiness by promoting that of others ; another section, represented by John Austin, apparently returned to Paley s position, and treated utilitarian morality 4 as a code of divine legislation; others, with Grote, are content to abate the severity of the claims made by 2 This list gives twelve out of the fourteen classes in which Bentham arranges the springs of action, omitting the religious sanction (men tioned afterwards), and the pleasures and pains of self-interest, which include all the other classes except sympathy and antipathy. 3 In the Deontology published by Bowring from MSS. left after Beutham s death, the coincidence is asserted to be complete; but it seems doubtful whether this can be accepted as Bentham s real doctrine, even in his later days. 4 It should be observed that Austin, after Bentham, more frequently uses the term " moral " to connote what he more distinctly calls " posi tive morality," tlie code of rules supported by common opinion in any

society.