Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/98

84 result thus far achieved is the vindication of life as a whole as the field and subject of ethics." The question is now raised, "Can we completely determine our judgments of right and wrong by what we know or anticipate of consequences, or must we also have recourse to some inner standard by which consequences must be judged?" (p. 81.) Consequences, of course, may be estimated for the individual or for society. Egoism is first examined, and naturally is found wanting. The author next considers utilitarianism. "If we retain the selfish theory of desire," he says on page 88, "there is no getting on; but we are not much better off if we give it up. For in that case we set up the general well-being as an end, and leave the obligation to seek it very obscure." Of course the end of action itself must be assumed by what Professor Bowne is pleased to call the "calculating ethics," but in this respect the theory is in no worse plight than one which should make perfection, self-realization, or anything else, the end of action. From the very nature of the case ultimates cannot be derived from anything else. But if we set up the general well-being as an end, the obligation to follow it would seem to be a necessary consequence. The author's objections to the practical working of utilitarianism seem decidedly weak. For instance, he says: "The guardian or the trusted clerk might well reflect whether the silly ward, or the old hunks of a master, could ever make such rare ontributions to the sum of happiness as he himself could do, with his more aesthetic and gifted nature. ... If one cared to do it, a good word might be said even for murder and cannibalism, while adultery lends itself rarely well to such treatment" (p. 90). If a man should seriously believe that utter faithlessness in financial matters, yes, and adultery, murder, and cannibalism, were likely to increase the total amount of happiness in the world, and should act upon this belief, his condition would certainly be pathological; he would belong, not in prison but in a lunatic asylum. It is to be remembered, moreover, that such speculations with regard to 'the sum of happiness' do not represent utilitarianism as it is understood by its advocates. That much abused theory has quite as much to say about the distribution of happiness as about the amount of the same, as is sufficiently indicated by its classic formula, "The greatest happiness of the greatest number."

The result of the chapter may be summed up in the author's own words, as found on page 97: "The duty ethics leads to the goods ethics, unless we are content to rest in a barren doctrine of good intentions; and the goods ethics leads back to the duty ethics, unless we are content to abandon ethical philosophy altogether. The true ethical aim is to realize the common good; but the contents of this good have to be determined in accordance with an inborn ideal of human worth