Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/53

 42 W. MITCHELL : overcome till Mill's question ' Why should I promote the general happiness ? ' receives the answer Because it is when and only when I promote the general happiness that I increase my own ; in short, till there is no opposition between my own and my neighbour's good till Egoism becomes Altruism and Altruism Egoism ; till, that is, the collapse of Obligation or Ethics itself.' In such a hopeless condition Utilitarianism was bound to lie till it somehow should get out of itself and criticise the absolute value of its own end. Now this has been done in two opposite directions by the Rational or Universalistic Utilitarianism, and by the Ethics of Physical Evolution. We concern ourselves with these theories only in respect of their attitude to the necessary postulate of Ethics. The end we found must be such as to conserve the rights equally of the subject and of the object. Now it is to this condition that Utilitarianism has, in its two developments, sought however unconsciously to conform. They are both prompted by Mill's introduction of quality as the distinguishing feature in hedonical calculations ; for that was really to oust happiness as such from being the determining end. Utili- tarianism was forced, as Socrates had been, to apply the calculus, the ' measuring art,' with the purpose not merely of measuring pleasure but of constituting or determining its absolute value. And since the value of the pleasure which an object produces differs with the attitude of the individual towards it, it is the best attitude which becomes the end ; in other words, it is the harmony of the subject and the object. But now, what is required is not a mere assertion of the harmony but the ratinnub' of it. This the Ethics of Phy- sical Evolution lias seen and seeks to give. But the Uni- versalistic and Bational Utilitarianism really presents no end, but only an ideal fusion of the rights of the subject and the object, without discovering the ground or determiner, rather only the consequence, of the fusion. It begins vith what was the common conclusion of the Stoics and Kpicureans, and amalgamates without unifying the reasoning of hoi! justified by the presnppositioD of the conclusion. It gives no T ,,nih>, of the connexion between Happiness as such the right of the subject, and Virtue as such the right of the object. Whether happiness > irtue or virtue happii remains still the antinomy of practical reason. Nor is Kant's banvn conjecture further advanced. " It is not impossible," he says, "that morality of mind should ha connexion as cause with happiness ias an effect in the sensible world), if not immediate yet mediate, /.<., through an intelligent Author of nature."