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Rh relied in those attacks upon legal and political abuses. From Bentham the leadership in utilitarianism passed to James Mill, who made no characteristic addition to its doctrine, and from him to John Stuart Mill. John Mill wrote no elaborate treatise on the subject. But he did something better than this. His essay Utilitarianism (pub. in 1863) sums up in brief and perfect form the essential principles of his doctrine, and is a little masterpiece worthy to be set beside Kant's Metaphysic of Morals as an authoritative statement of one of the two main forms of modern ethical speculation. Though in its abstract statement John Mill's doctrine may not differ very greatly from that of his predecessors, actually there is a vast change. To say that pleasure is the moral end is a merely formal statement: it makes all the difference what experiences you regard as pleasant and which pleasures you regard as the most important. Mill belonged to a generation in which the most remarkable feature was the growth of sympathy. He puts far greater stress than his predecessors upon the sympathetic pleasures, and thus quite avoids that appearance of mean prudential selfishness that is such a depressing feature in Paley and Bentham. Moreover, it is in sympathy that he finds the obligation and sanction of morality. " Morality," he says, " consists in conscientious shrinking from the violation of moral rules; and the basis of this conscientious sentiment is the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger from the influences of advancing civilization." Such passages in Mill have their full significance only when we take them in connexion with that rising tide of humanitarian sentiment which made itself felt in all the literature and in all the practical activity of his time. The other notable feature of John Mill's doctrine is his distinction of value between pleasures: some pleasures, those of the mind, are higher and more valuable than others, those of the body. It is commonly said that in making this distinction Mill has practically given up utilitarianism, because he has applied to pleasure (alleged to be the supreme criterion) a further criterion which is not pleasure. But the validity of this criticism may fairly be questioned. Pleasure is nothing objective and objectively measurable: it is simply feeling pleased. The merest pleasurelover may consistently say that he prefers a single glass of good champagne to several bottles of cooking-sherry; the slight but delicate experience of the single glass of good wine may fairly be regarded as preferable to the more massive but coarser experience of the large quantity of bad wine. So also Mill is justified in preferring a scene of Shakespeare or an hour's conversation with a friend to a great mass of lower pleasure. The last writer who, though not a political utilitarian, may be regarded as belonging to the school of Mill is Henry Sidgwick, whose elaborate Methods of Ethics (1874) may be regarded as closing this line of thought. His theory is a sort of reconciliation of utilitarianism with intuitionism, a position which he reached by studying Mill in combination with Kant and Butler. His reconciliation amounts to this, that the rule of conduct is to aim at universal happiness, but that we recognize the reasonableness of this rule by an intuition which cannot be further explained.

Even before the appearance of Sidgwick's book utilitarianism had entered upon its third or evolutional phase, in which principles borrowed from biological science make their entrance into moral philosophy. The main doctrine of evolutional or biological ethics is stated with admirable clearness in the third chapter of Darwin's Descent of Man (pub. in 1871). The novelty of his treatment, as he says, consists in the fact that, unlike any previous moralist, he approached the subject " exclusively from the side of natural history." Theological and political utilitarianism alike had been individualistic. But Darwin shows how the moral sense or conscience may be regarded as derived from the social instincts, which are common to men and animals. To understand the genesis of human morality we must study the ways of sociable animals such as horses and monkeys, which give each other assistance in trouble, feel mutual affection and sympathy, and experience pleasure in doing actions that benefit the society to which they belong. Both in animals and in human societies individuals of this character, being conducive to social welfare, are encouraged by natural selection: they and their society tend to flourish, while unsociable individuals tend to disappear and to destroy the society to which they belong. Thus, in man, do sentiments of love and mutual sympathy become instinctive and, when transmitted by inheritance, innate. When man has advanced so far as to be sensitive to the opinions of his fellow-men, their approbation and disapprobation reinforce the influence of natural selection. When he has reached the stage of reflection there arises what we know as conscience. He will approve or disapprove of himself according as his conduct has fulfilled the conditions of social welfare. " Thus the imperious word ought seems merely to imply the consciousness of a persistent instinct, either innate or partly acquired, serving as a guide, though liable to be disobeyed." The most famous of the systematic exponents of evolutional utilitarianism is, of course, Herbert Spencer, in whose Data of Ethics (1819) the facts of morality are viewed in relation with his vast conception of the total process of cosmic evolution. He shows how morality can be viewed physically, as evolving from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; biologically, as evolving from a less to a more complete performance of vital functions, so that the perfectly moral man is one whose life is physiologically perfect and therefore perfectly pleasant; psychologically, as evolving from a. state in which sensations are more potent than ideas (so that the future is sacrificed to the present) to a state in which ideas are more potent than sensations (so that a greater but distant pleasure is preferred to a less but present pleasure); sociologically, as evolving from approval of war and warlike sentiments. to approval of the sentiments appropriate to international peace and to an industrial organization of society. The sentiment of obligation Spencer regards as essentially transitory; when a man reaches a condition of perfect adjustment, he will always do what is right without any sense of being obliged to it. The best feature of the Data of Ethics is its anti-ascetic vindication of pleasure as man's natural guide to what is physiologically healthy and morally good. For the rest, Spencer's doctrine is valuable more as stimulating to thought by its originality and width of view than as offering direct solutions of ethical problems. Following up the same line of thought, Leslie Stephen with less brilliance but more attention to scientific method has worked out in his Science of Ethics (1882) the conception of morality as a function of the social organism: while Professor S. Alexander in his Moral Order and Progress (pub. in 1889) has applied the principles of natural competition and natural selection to explain the struggle of ideals against each other within society: moral evil, says Professor Alexander, is in great part a defeated variety of moral ideal. There is no doubt that much remains still to be done in illustrating human morality by the facts and principles of biology and natural history. A. Sutherland's Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct (pub. in T898) is a capable piece of work in this direction. Professor L. T. Hobhouse's Morals in Evolution and Professor Westermarck's Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (both published in 1906) deal with the matter from the side of anthropology.

(Author:Henry Sturt)

UTMAN KHEL, a Pathan tribe who occupy the hills to the north of Peshawar in the North-West Frontier Province of India. Their country lies between the Mohmands and the Ranizais of Swat, to the west and south-west of the junction of the Swat and Panjkora rivers. They claim to be descendants of Baba Utman, who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni in his expedition into India in 997. The Utman Khel are a tall,