Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/832

 814 MORAL PHILOSOPHY aries of Du Bois-Reymond on the electro-mag- netic nature of sensations and volitions, those of Darwin on organic adaptation and heredity in the animal world, and Haeckel's ever in- creasing organic perfectibility. The writings of Moleschott, Karl Vogt, Biichner, and Strauss exhibit a similar tendency when treating ethical questions. Eduard von Hartmann's Philoso- phic dea Uribewwsten (1869), though more meta- physical, keeps also in unison with the last dicta of experimental science. A further develop- ment of this system is Venetianer's DerAllgeist: Grundzuge des PanpsycJiismus (Berlin, 1874). Against the doctrines of a moral sense and of disinterested benevolence which had chiefly prevailed in English ethical philosophy from the time of Hutcheson and Butler, and which were zealously defended by Dugald Stewart, a utilitarian tendency was manifested which culminated in Jeremy Bentham. Previous to him Tucker had developed a system akin to the selfish theory, founded on Hartley's prin- ciples of association ; and Paley had declared the motive to virtue to be everlasting happi- ness, and had resolved the art of life into that of rightly settling our habits. Bentham gave to his moral theory the name of "the greatest happiness principle," and represented the prac- tice of virtue as the art of maximizing happi- ness. All moral action proceeds, according to him, from the calculation of pains and plea- sures, estimated by their magnitude and their extent. In the proper balancing of these all morality consists, and virtue and vice are abso- lutely nothing, merely fictitious entities, when separated from happiness and misery. His aim was to expel from ethical science the word " ought," which was claimed by Mackin- tosh as the simplest and most universal expres- sion of the moral sense. " The talisman of arrogance, indolence, and ignorance," says he, " is to be found in a single word, an authori- tative imposture, which in these pages it will be frequently necessary to unveil. It is the word ' ought.' If the use of the word be ad- missible at all, it ' ought ' to be banished from the vocabulary of morals." Till this is done he proposes to neutralize its effect by the use of another potent word u why?" Yet Whew- ell has remarked that it is a mere assump- tion to prescribe that the answer to this query must be in the language of the utilitarian theory. Bentham urged the formation of gen- eral rules of conduct, and strict conformity to them, in order to avoid the temptations of our frailty and passions; and if a rever- ence for virtuous maxims and precepts thus takes the place in the mind of the utilitari- an of the direct application of his principle, there will be little difference between him and the believer in immutable morality, since the practical rules of both will coincide. The la- ter writings on moral philosophy in England seem to have settled down upon the doctrines : 1, that the aim of morality should be the striving after an ideal standard of human ex- cellence ; those most religiously inclined be- ing disposed to take Christ as the ideal stan- dard ; others, looking to a model which they have formed for themselves, considering man, his nature and his relations ; 2, that there are certain self-evident truths or fundamental axioms in morals as in mathematics, to which assent is given by all minds as soon as their meaning is fully comprehended ; 3, that the character of all acts is to be determined by reasoning upon their natural tendency, differ- ing in this from Paley's system and the systems of expediency in general, in teaching that the character of acts is to be determined rather by their general features than by the peculiar circumstances of each particular case, and that thus a system of moral philosophy can be built up by reasoning concerning classes of acts, as truthfulness, benevolence, fraud, &c., just as we build up a system of mathematics by reason- ing concerning lines, surfaces, solids, &c. ; the reasoning being based in both cases alike upon certain self-evident axioms and certain defi- nitions of classes of acts. John Stuart Mill, who acknowledges the influence of both Ben- tham and Comte, in the latter portion of his work on " Logic " proposes and discusses the inquiry whether ethics may not be reduced to a certain science, and principles be as definitely established in the art of life as the indisputable laws of physics. He develops the subject no further than to state that happiness, in the full meaning of the word, must be the recognized goal of existence and aim of action. Herbert Spencer, without treating moral science in a special work, includes an ethical theory in his general doctrine of evolution. He holds that the science of right conduct determines how and why certain modes of conduct are detri- mental and others beneficial. These deductions are to be taken as laws of conduct, and to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery. There have been and still are developing in the race certain funda- mental moral intuitions, which are the results of accumulated experiences of utility gradually organized and inherited, which have come to be q"uite independent of conscious experience ; and these moral intuitions will respond to the de- monstrations of moral science, and will have their rough conclusions verified by them. Hap- piness is the end, and the conduct which tends to happiness is right for that reason ; yet be- cause the laws of life are fixed, the course of conduct which will secure the greatest happi- ness will necessarily restrict many individuals. The principles by which individuals are restrict- ed for the sake of the whole are the principles of absolute morality ; while the absolutely moral man is not one who conforms to these principles from external coercion or self-coer- cion, but who acts them out spontaneously. Alexander Bain identifies conscience with edu- cation under authority. He holds that self- approval and disapproval are transferred, by constant association, from the experience of