Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/263

208 acts of injustice, doing so, not because they conceive injustice to be bad when they actively inflict it, but because they conceive it to be bad when they passively endure it. The pain which they feel when they suffer from injustice outweighs, for the most part, the pleasure which they feel when they commit it; and hence injustice comes to be stamped with general reprobation, and its opposite with general applause. Such an explanation represents self-interest in its most undisguised form as the ground of moral obligation. Others, again, would argue that the advantage and wellbeing of the community, of which each man was a member, was promoted by the observance of these moral rules; and hence the promotion of this welfare was a sufficient reason why these rules should be observed. The promotion and maintenance of the wellbeing of society was thus set forth as the ground of moral obligation. This is no other than the modern doctrine of Utilitarianism.

28. These solutions, however, were felt to be inadequate and unsatisfactory. It was felt, in particular, that no true conciliation was effected by such explanations between what we have called the natural ethics of the individual and the conventional ethics of the citizen. The question still remained unanswered, Why, when a man could commit injustice with the certainty of impunity both in the present and in the future, he should not commit it? On what ground, and for what reason, it might still be