Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/598

VIII. NOTES AND COKEESPONDENCE. AN ALLEGED GAP IN MILL'S UTILITARIANISM. Professor Sidgwick believes himself to have transcended the antagonism between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, and to have filled up a gap in the expressed argument of Mill, a gap which he thinks Mill must have, con- sciously or unconsciously, filled up in the same manner as he himself has. The gap is there, he says, by reason of the fact that Mill has not shown desire for the general happiness to exist in any individual, while yet requiring for proof that a thing is desirable proof that it is desired. The doctrine by means of which he intends to stop this gap asserts that we have a notion of objective " right," and that one element of this notion is self-evident, that element being afforded us by the self-evident judgment which we make that, if a thing is right for me and not for another, it must be by reason of some difference between us two other than the fact that I am myself. The notion then being completed by the empirical knowledge that the object of our aims must be the greatest happiness, it follows that we must not direct our efforts towards ourselves unless by reason of the probability that so directing them will increase the quantity of happiness which they effect. Whether Mill's theory is in fact incomplete or not, it is very evident that he puts it forward advisedly as a complete theory, and himself feels no gap in it whatever. For he says in his first chapter quite plainly : " 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 ; " and it is in the light of this statement that his fourth chapter is to be read. Bearing this in mind, we must take what Mill says to mean this : ' Were I alone my actions would be directed to my happiness, and necessarily to that alone, for action takes place towards satisfaction of desire, and that is the same as pleasure or relief from pain. Others if alone would also direct their actions to a similar end. If therefore I am to aid others it must be towards that end, namely, what I consider will be their ultimate happiness. There can never be generated in me a desire for others' good apart from their happi- ness.' This is the entire meaning of Mill's statement, that the " general happiness is a good to the aggregate of all persons". There are two assumptions here : (1) that I am to aid others, (2) that I can form no con- ception of good to them, and can have no desire to do anything for them, apart from happiness. In the second of these Mill assumes exactly as much (neither more nor less) as Prof. Sidgwick does in his chapter on the Ultimate Good. It is not to be supposed that Mill meant to say that all do desire the general happiness. It was sufficient for him that each desires his own happiness, that he himself desired the general happiness, that he never knew any one to desire anything other than these two, and that he wished others to desire the latter. For the rest, Mill's whole proof is negative, and can only, after what he has said in his first chapter, be negative. He examines the statements of others that they desire something else, and hopes to convince them that they desire it only as a means to happiness. He says, in fact, that, if there is only one kind of thing which has ever been desired, it must be some variety of that one kind which moves the will in every case, and any question of preference must be between two varieties of that one kind, for example, between my own. happiness and that of others.