Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/389

 REPLY TO MR. MUIRHEAD's CRITICISM. 373 and methods from the standpoints of accuracy as a guide and pro- bable effectiveness as an influence in promoting desirable conduct. Will he then mention the ethical disquisitions, or disquisition, that systematically, or point by point, examine the different solu- tions, or would-be solutions, of the ethical problem in relation to these ends? I am also accused of being heretical in my utilitarianism. In the first place, I have never been at all dismayed by the charge of heresy. To be in no way heretical, may be said to be in no way original. Nevertheless, I do not admit that I differ from the utilitarians referred to J. S. Mill, Mr. Spencer and Professor Sidgwick to the extent, or anything like the extent, averred by Mr. Muirhead. He writes: "J. S. Mill, as everybody knows, was led by his personal experience to maintain that from the point of view of individual happiness it was not desirable to cultivate the habit of considering conduct from the hedonistic point of view ". Will Mr. Muirhead be good enough to specify the passage or passages from Mill that may be held to bear this interpretation ? I may remark that Dr. Bain has criticised this idea in his essay " Common Errors of the Mind " (published in his volume of Practical Essays), but he is replying to what had been argued, not by Mill, but by the present Master of Balliol and by Bishop Butler. Then we are told that, in Mill's opinion, " the best practical results were to be obtained by avoiding the use of the pleasure calculus, and pursuing objective interests as though they had a value on their own account ". In his " Utilitarianism " Mill speaks of health, power, fame, money, etc., as being "desir- able for themselves," but that for the reason that " besides being means they are a part of the end ". And he goes on to say that any object of desire is desired, " either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both reasons united ". This is surely incom- patible with attaching a value to objects of pursuit irrespective of a calculation of pleasure and pain. As to Mr. Spencer and the so-called "paradox of Hedonism," he certainly maintains theoretically that we are to be guided by deductions from laws of life and conditions of existence as to what " necessarily tends to produce happiness and unhappiness," and that these " are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estima- tion of happiness and misery ". Nevertheless, we find throughout his writings, but very especially in his Ethics, direct hedonic calculation. And, indeed, in the preface to the second volume of the Principles of Ethics he frankly admits that the Doctrine of Evolution had not furnished guidance to the extent he had hoped, and that most of the conclusions have been drawn empirically. Moreover, as I pointed out in my July article, by having asserted that the picturing of the effects of conduct, as productive of pain and pleasure to others, is the only moral inducement to avoid wrong and to do right, Mr. Spencer has given such support to the