“The principle of philosophical utilitarianism which has
some value and is important, (viz. that an action is lost or worthless which
does not promote some happiness, and worse than that if it simply diminishes
happiness,) gives us, as I have said, no principle of distribution of our
action for happiness, but of itself would leave it to be supposed that it was
of no consequence whose happiness was promoted. This however will not make a
moral system: there must be some hypothesis as to the distribution: and I
suppose that the charm of equality of distribution to utilitarianism is that in
certain respects it stands nearest to the former supposition; I mean that we
might take it to signify that it was not of special consequence whose happiness
was promoted ; in other words, that the reason why the happiness of all should
be promoted alike was, that there was no reason why the happiness of one should
be promoted more than that of another. In the view of some, probably, this
principle of distribution derives an additional charm from the apparent
association with the political idea of equality: but utilitarians have not I
think necessarily been men of political views of this kind. Doubtless also the idea of justice and of
reason adds a strong support to the proposed principle on the ground of its
seeming impartiality and disinterestedness.
One important view of morality which has entered into very
opposite systems, is that which regards it as effecting a revolution in our
natural judgment of actions, similar to that which took place in astronomical
thought when the Copernican system was substituted for the Ptolemaic. Morality
in this view bids us change our standing-point from ourselves, cease to be
self-centred, and to refer everything to our own happiness, and calls us to put
our standing-points it were in the centre of the universe, and to make
ourselves, as thought of, be no more to ourselves, as thinking, than anybody
else is. Just as, intellectually, reason binds men together, and if we may so
speak, deindividualizes them, truth being common, or what so far assimilates
one mind to another, while error is individual : so morally, the growth of
virtue is a gradual deindividualization of men as to the purpose of their
action also, substituting common purposes for private ones, and carrying sympathy
to such an extent that individual interests will really vanish. Reason is the
same for all, and the application of the principle of reason to morality
abolishes the notion of self. One manner also of the action of religion has
always been in this direction: we are taught to look at things as God sees
them, and to love men as He loves them. But all this must begin with the notion
of ourselves, and of something, whatever it is, which makes us what we are, and with the notion of others as differing among
themselves, and with certain things which make them what they are: when
our point of view is changed these views are altered, but still the first are
the groundwork of those which are formed afterwards. Impartiality and
disinterestedness are negative terms, which have no meaning except on the
supposition of temptation to partiality and of possible interestedness in the
first instance: they are guards and corrections and cannot be given to us as
original principles. They can only mean acting as between two parties according
to the relations which ought to guide
action: not necessarily the giving no
preference, but the giving no undue preference: and we have still then the
meaning of ‘ought’ and ‘due’ to settle. Because a judge is impartial, it does
not follow that he will divide the thing in dispute equally between the
parties. Impartiality between two parties means, the not allowing any
considerations to contribute to the judgment formed which ought not to do so.
The two great moral questions, the one, as between ourselves
and others, the other, as between those to whom we are bound in any way and
those to whom we are not bound, cannot be settled by any anticipatory determination
to make no preferences. It looks of
course well to say, in Mr Mill’s version of our Lord’s words, ‘Love yourself
and your neighbour alike :’ but it does not look well to say, ‘Love your father
and your neighbour, your benefactor and your neighbour, alike ;’ yet this is in
fact what the principle of ‘every body counting for one’ leads to. There are
circumstances, I presume, in which we are to deal with our benefactor the same
as with anybody else, and circumstances in which we are not:
and if we are to have utilitarian morality as a science to
deal with our incitements to action,
we certainly want besides it a morality of justice and duty to deal with these
circumstances. For utilitarianism here, it appears, can only put us off with
the very inapplicable doctrine of ‘no preferences:’ and this adopted not from
any principle in utilitarianism itself, but because something must be adopted,
and this seems least to commit utilitarianism to any principles dangerous to
it.
In some respects, society, whether moral or political, may
be considered an aggregation of similar units; but in far more important
respects it is an organization of dissimilar members. The general happiness, as
a fact, is the sum of the happiness of the individuals; but as an object to be
aimed at, it is not this, but it is to be attained by the acting of each
according to the relations in which he is placed in the society. It is these
different relations, rendering as they do the individuals dissimilar in circumstances, which more truly convert mere juxtaposition
into society than anything of similarity does. This latter is needed in certain
most important respects, not indeed in any form of equality, but in the form of
common understanding and sympathy: but the various need and the power of mutual
benefit which dissimilarity of circumstance produces are as vital to the
society as the other points, and do more to make it necessary and fruitful. By
moral relations and moral society, as distinguished from political, I
understand men as stronger and weaker, benefactors and benefited, trusters and
trusted, or linked together in other moral relations similar to these, besides
the natural relations, as of family, which partially coincide with these;
lastly, supposing there is no other relation, as linked together in any case by
the general relation of human brotherhood. And if we are to answer the
question, whose happiness are we to
promote? we must answer it by saying, not the happiness of all alike, ourselves
taking share with the rest, but the happiness (if we are so to describe it) of
each one with whom we have to do, according to the moral relation in which we
stand to him. The happiness which we are to promote is that of those who are
benefitable by us, who want something of us, or have claim upon us, according
to their wants and claims. The satisfaction of such want and claim is the doing our duty.
And duty binds us, not first in the general (namely, to
promote the general happiness), and in the particular only as a consequence of
this; but first in the particular, duty in general being an expression for the
whole of such particular duty. The particularity of duty and its felt
stringency or urgency go together. Failure in duty is an injury to the person
towards whom we fail, and it is not the diminution of the happiness of society
or of happiness in general, which makes the point of the wrongness of it.
Speaking generally, sympathy follows duty, it being a part
of the right working of human nature that feeling follows fact. Feeling, as for
instance sympathy, involves in it constantly a great mass of indistinct but
true perception ; it is what we may call undeveloped thought, and in cases
(most abundant) where the fixing and expression of thought is difficult and
slippery, feeling is a guide which often indicates fact and duty when thought
and reason may be able hut very imperfectly to exhibit them. The feeling which
accompanies the intellectual perception of particular moral duty is often of
the intensest character. The idea of not failing to repay obligation and
benefit, the idea of answering trust in us by truthfulness and faithfulness on
our part, these and similar ideas are accompanied constantly by feeling, the
intenseness of which arises entirely from the felt particularity of the
relation: any mixture of this feeling with the other feeling, good enough in
itself, that we ought to speak the truth because it is of vast importance to
society that people’s word should be believed, would, so far as it had any
effect, weaken the former. Thus it is that, in a right state of things, feeling
which arises of itself, and reason, which makes us aware of moral fact (as of
relation and of duty), work together.
And the utilitarian maxim, that ‘an action is right in
proportion as it tends to promote happiness ’ is incomplete without having
appended to it such an addition as this, ‘ and not merely happiness in general,
clutde but such happiness in particular as the agent is duty specially bound
and called upon to promote,’ the terms ‘bound ’ and ‘called upon’ being
explained by the ideas of duty and sympathy in the manner which I have just
described. It is so that the question, ‘Whose
happiness?’ is to be answered.”
-- (An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy by John Grote, pp. 93-98)
