Moral Science, Alexander Bain [top non fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

be deemed pernicious principles. Punishment is needless here, because the end can be served by reply and exposure.

The first part of Chapter XVII. is entitled the 'Limits between Private Ethics and the Art of Legislation;' and a short account of it will complete the view of the author's Ethical Theory.

Ethics at large, is defined the art of directing men's actions to the production of the greatest possible quantity of happiness, on the part of those whose interest is in view, Now, these actions may be a man's own actions, in which case they are styled the _art of self-government_, or _private ethics_. Or they may be the actions of other agents, namely, (1) Other human beings, and (2) Other Animals, whose interests Bentham considers to have been disgracefully overlooked by jurists as well as by mankind generally.

In so far as a man's happiness depends on his own conduct, he may be said to _owe a duty to himself_; the quality manifested in discharge of this branch of duty (if duty it is to be called) is PRUDENCE. In so far as he affects by his conduct the interests of those about him, he is under _a duty to others_. The happiness of others may be consulted in two ways. First, negatively, by forbearing to diminish it; this is called PROBITY. Secondly, in a positive way, by studying to increase it; which is expressed by BENEFICENCE.

But now the question occurs, how is it that under Private Ethics (or apart from legislation and religion) a man can be tinder a motive to consult other people's happiness? By what obligations can he be bound to _probity_ and _beneficence_? A man can have no _adequate_ motives for consulting any interests but his own. Still there are motives for making us consult the happiness of others, namely, the purely social motive of Sympathy or Benevolence, and the semi-social motives of Love of Amity and Love of Reputation. [He does not say here whether Sympathy is a motive grounded on the pleasure it brings, or a motive irrespective of the pleasure; although from other places we may infer that he inclines to the first view.]

Private Ethics and Legislation can have but the same end, happiness. Their means, the actions prompted, must be nearly the same. Still they are different. There is no case where a man ought not to be guided by his own, or his fellow-creatures', happiness; but there are many cases where the legislature should not compel a man to perform such actions. The reason is that the Legislature works solely by Punishment (reward is seldom applied, and is not properly an act of legislation). Now, there are cases where the punishment of the political sanction ought not to be used; and if, in any of these cases, there is a propriety of using the punishments of private ethics (the moral or social sanction), this circumstance would indicate the line of division.

First, then, as to the cases where punishment would be _groundless_. In such cases, neither legislation nor private ethics should interfere.

Secondly. As to cases where it would be _inefficacious_, where punishment has no deterring motive power,--as in Infancy, Insanity, overwhelming danger, &c.,--the public and the private sanctions are also alike excluded.

Thirdly. It is in the cases where Legislative punishment would be _unprofitable_, that we have the great field of Private Ethics. Punishment is unprofitable in two ways. First, when the danger of detection is so small, that nothing but enormous severity, on detection, would be of avail, as in the illicit commerce of the sexes, which has generally gone unpunished by law. Secondly, when there is danger of involving the innocent with the guilty, from inability to define the crime in precise language. Hence it is that rude behaviour, treachery, and ingratitude are not punished by law; and that in countries where the voice of the people controls the hand of the legislature, there is a great dread of making _defamation_, especially of the government, an offence at law.

Private Ethics is not liable to the same difficulties as Legislation in dealing with such offences.

Of the three departments of Moral Duty--Prudence, Probity, and Beneficence--the one that least requires and admits of being enforced by legislative punishment is the first--_Prudence_. It can only be through some defect of the understanding, if people are wanting in duty to themselves. Now, although a man may know little of himself, is it certain the legislator knows more? Would it be possible to extirpate drunkenness or fornication by legal punishment? All that can be done in this field is to subject the offences, in cases of notoriety, to a slight censure, so as to cover them with a slight shade of artificial disrepute, and thus give strength and influence to the moral sanction.

Legislators have, in general, carried their interference too far in this class of duties; and the mischief has been most conspicuous in religion. Men, it is supposed, are liable to errors of judgment; and for these it is the determination of a Being of infinite benevolence to punish them with an infinity of torments. The legislator, having by his side men perfectly enlightened, unfettered, and unbiassed, presumes that he has attained by their means the exact truth; and so, when he sees his people ready to plunge headlong into an abyss of fire, shall he not stretch forth his hand to save them?

The second class of duties--the rules of _Probity_, stand most in need of the assistance of the legislator. There are few cases where it _would_ be expedient to punish a man for hurting himself, and few where it _would not_ be expedient to punish a man for hurting his neighbour. As regards offences against property, private ethics presupposes legislation, which alone can determine what things are to be regarded as each man's property. If private ethics takes a different view from the legislature, it must of course act on its own views.

The third class of duties--_Beneficence_--must be abandoned to the jurisdiction of private ethics. In many cases the beneficial quality of an act depends upon the disposition of the agent, or the possession by him of the extra-regarding motives--sympathy, amity, and reputation; whereas political action can work only through the self-regarding motives. In a word these duties must be _free_ or _voluntary_. Still, the limits of law on this head might be somewhat extended; in particular, where a man's person is in danger, it might be made the duty of every one to save him from mischief, no less than to abstain from bringing it on him.

To resume the Ethics of Bentham. I.--The Standard or End of Morality is the production of Happiness, or Utility.

Bentham is thus at one in his first principle with Hume and with Paley; his peculiarity is to make it fruitful in numerous applications both to legislation and to morals. He carries out the principle with an unflinching rigour, and a logical force peculiarly his own.

II.--His Psychological Analysis is also studied and thorough-going.

He is the first person to provide a classification of pleasures and pains, as an indispensable preliminary alike to morals and to legislation. The ethical applications of these are of less importance than the legislative; they have a direct and practical bearing upon the theory of Punishment.

He lays down, as the constituents of the Moral Faculty, Good-will or Benevolence, the love of Amity, the love of Reputation, and the dictates of Religion--with a view to the Happiness of others; and Prudence--with a view to our own happiness. He gives no special account of the acquired sentiment of Obligation or Authority--the characteristic of Conscience, as distinguished from other impulses having a tendency to the good of others or of self. And yet it is the peculiarity of his system to identify morality with law; so that there is only one step to connecting conscience with our education under the different sanctions--legal and ethical.

He would of course give a large place to the Intellect or Reason in making up the Moral Faculty, seeing that the consequences of actions have to be estimated or judged; but he would regard this as merely co-operating with our sensibilities to pleasure and pain.

The Disinterested Sentiment is not regarded by Bentham. as arising from any disposition to pure self-sacrifice. He recognizes _Pleasures_ of Benevolence and _Pains_ of Benevolence; thus constituting a purely interested motive for doing good to others. He describes certain pleasures of Imagination or Sympathy arising through Association--the idea of plenty, the idea of the happiness of animals, the idea of health, the idea of gratitude. Under the head of Circumstances influencing Sensibility, he adverts to Sympathetic Sensibility, as being the propensity to derive _pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the unhappiness, of other sensitive beings_. It cannot but be admitted, he says, that the only interest that a man at all times, and on all occasions, is sure to find _adequate_ motives for consulting, is his own. He has no metaphysics of the Will. He uses the terms _free_ and _voluntary_ only with reference to spontaneous beneficence, as opposed to the compulsion of the law.

III.--As regards Happiness, or the Summum Bonum, he presents his scientific classification of Pleasures and Pains, without, however, indicating any plan of life, for attaining the one and avoiding the other in the best manner. He makes no distinction among pleasures and pains excepting what strictly concerns their value as such--intensity, duration, certainty, and nearness. He makes happiness to mean only the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. The renunciation of pleasure for any other motive than to procure a greater pleasure, or avoid a greater pain, he, disapprovingly, terms asceticism.

IV.--It being the essence of his system to consider Ethics as a Code of Laws directed by Utility, and he being himself a law reformer on the greatest scale, we might expect from him suggestions for the improvement of Ethics, as well as for Legislation and Jurisprudence. His inclusion of the interests of the lower animals has been mentioned. He also contends for the partly legislative and partly ethical innovation of Freedom of Divorce.

The inducements to morality are the motives assigned as working in its favour.

V.--The connexions of Ethics with Politics, the points of agreement and the points of difference of the two departments, are signified with unprecedented care and precision (Chap. XVII.)

VI.--As regards the connexions with Theology, he gives no uncertain sound. It is on this point that he stands in marked contrast to Paley, who also professes Utility as his ethical foundation.

He recognizes religion as furnishing one of the Sanctions of morality, although often perverted into the enemy of utility. He considers that the state may regard as offences any acts that tend to diminish or misapply the influence of religion as a motive to civil obedience.

While Paley makes a conjoined reference to Scripture and to Utility in ascertaining moral rules, Bentham insists on Utility alone as the final appeal. He does not doubt that if we had a clear unambiguous statement of the divine will, we should have a revelation of what is for human happiness; but he distrusts all interpretations of scripture, unless they coincide with a perfectly independent scientific investigation of the consequences of actions.


SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. [1765-1832.]

In the 'Dissertation on the progress of Ethical Philosophy chiefly during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,' Mackintosh advocates a distinct Ethical theory. His views and arguments occur partly in the course of his criticism of the other moralists, and partly in his concluding General Remarks (Section VII.).

In Section I., entitled PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS, he remarks on the universality of the distinction between Right and Wrong. On no subject do men, in all ages, coincide