Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/339

 338 s. COIT : with right activity as the controlling end of conduct is the special purpose of our immediate investigation. The possibility of the inner sanction as the final aim might be again brought into question by those psychologists who trace all motives back to self-love. They might offer the objection that not every man would find in the moral sanc- tion his own greatest possible happiness, and that for such men it would be a psychologically impossible aim. But their theory of human volition is at fault. They do not distinguish between a man's always following his strongest motive and his aiming consciously at his own greatest happi- ness for the moment or on the whole throughout life. The theory that all motives are forms of self-love we cannot refute here. We can only refer those who hold it to the arguments of Hume and Sidgwick against it, and to the analyses of the emotions in Aristotle and Butler, who con- tinually recognise extra-regarding motives. If the inner moral sanction be made the final aim of con- duct, the ultimate rule of right becomes : Let thy final aim in life be thine own peace of mind in doing what in thy best judgment tends toward universal Jiappiness. If right activity be made the end, the rule becomes : Let thine aim 'be neither inward peace nor the outward results of thy conduct but the conduct itself, the deeds which in tlieir nature tend toward universal happiness. These two aims are alike in that they both are immediately and unconditionally attainable. They are unlike in that the latter implies an absolute worth in right activity, while the former attributes to it only a relative worth ; the latter is objective, while the former would induce a subjective turn of thought ; and the latter is practically less well adapted than the former as an exciting motive to action to beings of an imperfect moral nature. If a man must set the final wish of his heart upon right activity itself, it must be because such activity has worth out of all relation to human consciousness, an absolute worth. And indeed it was exactly upon this notion that Kant constructed his theory that deeds must be done with- out regard either to external results or inner satisfaction. Now in no other sphere of human experience is any form of human activity made an end out of relation to its effects upon human consciousness. If right activity then be the final aim, morality becomes an anomaly in life, becomes something mysterious ; and to explain it resort must be made again to an extra-experimental hypothesis. The ex- pression " absolute worth " is a contradictio in adjecto. To avoid this contradiction and still hold to the notion that