Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/387

 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SUMMUM BONUM. 373 tuaster-end with eudaemonia or happiness. For the sake of a short title I shall call the doctrine of the Sunimum Bonum eudaemonism. I shall presently argue that Aristotle's ethical formula is untrue ; but, first of all, it is plainly inadequate. There is a great deal of moral conduct which falls outside it. For it has become a truism that righteousness, like unrighteousness, is an inward not an outward affair. It is the character, the self, the soul, the inner life of the actor that we call virtuous or vicious. And character expresses itself but partially and indistinctly in outward action. This is plain from consider- ing a few cases of ordinary experience. We are constantly praising or blaming, rightly or wrongly, the persons or events of history. Let us imagine ourselves hearing an acquaintance express approval of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the career of Caesar Borgia. Here are moral judgments, exhibitions of character, themselves objects of our moral praise or blame. Where is the good pursued or the evil shunned? But we need not have gone to history for in- stances. We hear a man say savagely, " How I hate my father," and at once condemn him though we do not suspect him of intending to put his hatred into action. Conversely, we approve a man whose appreciations are well-directed. Such cases show that virtue and vice, the objects of our moral approval and disapproval, need not be the pursuit of a good. 4. But Aristotle's formula is not even true as far as it goes. Any formula which suggests that virtue is the pursuit of a highest good gives an entirely false impression of its nature. Our motives of action may be divided into two definitely-marked classes, self-regarding and unselfish. The fault of all eudaemonism is that it describes morality in terms appropriate to self-regarding action. 5. As my whole argument against eudaemonism depends on the validity of this analysis of conduct, it is necessary to pause a moment to justify it. The distinction between selfregarding and unselfish conduct corresponds to a plain distinction in our life, namely, the distinction between our narrower and our wider interests. The former are connected with our bodies and our lower emotions such as vanity and fear. When we are in the self-regarding attitude we are thinking about these, interested in ourselves in this narrow- sense of self, or, if other persons and things do occupy our, minds, we are interested in them only so far as they further those narrow interests of ours. On the other hand, in unselfish conduct we are thinking about other persons and