Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/275

* ETHICS. 243 ETHICS. not force it on them. It would occupy h posi- tion similar to the science of telegraphy. When it was discovered that it was possible to send a message over long distances with great rapidity, this hit hi' scientific knowledge did no! prescribe to men the adoption of the means of transmission. It was only human needs that imposed the ob- ligation to adopt telegraphy. This inability of science to impose new ends constitutes part of the tragedy of scientific inventions. Many a man has devoted his life to making possible the attain- ment of a new end, only to find when his labors were done that the end was not desired by man- kind at large. In a sense it can perhaps be said that ethics has discovered a multiplicity of ends among men. As we have seen, sometimes it is social welfare, sometimes it is individual welfare that men make their supreme end. Again, both social and individual welfare are very differently con- ceived in different times and places. Sometimes social welfare is thought to consist in military strength; sometimes in economic conditions; sometimes in artistic productiveness, and so forth. So also individual welfare is sometimes thought to consist in the possession of abundance of means of sensual enjoyment, or in physical prowess, or in intellectual power, or in social prestige, or in religious zeal, or what not. With regard to all these various ends, ethics can dis- cover or attempt to discover, with the help of other sciences, whether when attained they have given permanent satisfaction; whether rather the attainment of many of these ends has not as a rule involved moral agents in misery which could have been avoided had the ends not been sought; whether such disappointment was due to accidental circumstances, or whether, human na- ture and human environment being what they are. such disappointment was inevitable ; whether. if the latter alternative be true, any other end could have been pursued with reasonable chances of better success. But suppose all these ques- tions answered and an end discovered which promises, when attained, to give satisfac- tion. Even then it would be only the desire of men for such an end that could impose upon them the obligation to adopt the course of action necessary to attain it. Again, suppose such an end were a social end, and could not be realized within the lifetime of any now living, but could be attained in, say, five hundred years. Whether the pursuit of that end would be undertaken or not would depend upon the relative strength of the desire for that future consummation and the desire for other objects that would necessarily be sacrificed in order to work for that consumma- tion. There is, however, another question that must be answered here: Is there no difference between what is actually desired and what is really de- sirable? Take the last case supposed. Granting that, mankind at large did. when such an end was presented to it, reject it as too remote and too quixotically altruistic, and did set about to realize some other end, could it not be said that in spite of the fact that the end is not desired, it is desirable? Or shall we have to say. with J. S. Mill, that "the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people actually desire it"? In answer it must be said that desired and desirable are different concep- tions; that people often actually do desire what is undesirable : so that Mill's Btati men! be aceepted as it stands. But there i- a profound truth which the statement perhaps attempts, but fails tn express. The statement must lie amended. Nothing is desirable that is not desired, or would not be desired if adequately known. Thus I may desire .1 certain fruit I see for the first time. Its color is tempting, its whole appearance makes a strong appeal to me to pluck it and cat it. But in Bpite of this the fruit may not be desirable. It in:i he deadly, or ii may be extremely sour or astringent; or it may have a nauseating smell, which as yet 1 have not perceived. If would be desirable if I knew all about it and still desired it. It is a common experience that, things eagerly desired arc found afterwards to be undesirable, and are then judged to have been undesirable all the time we were longing and striving for them. Thus the measure of desirability is not the strength of the actual desire which persons have, but the desire they would have if they only knew the real hearing of these desires upon their hap- piness. Among the things that should be adequately known are the character and tendency of our l'u ture desires. Just now, being blind, I may have no desire for fine paintings in my room. But if I knew that within a few years my blindness would be cured, and that then I should crave beautiful objects of sight, the knowledge would tend to make me now desire to have the pictures. Now apply this answer to the supposed ease that called forth the question. The welfare of society five hundred years hence would have no value to men who were not genuinely unselfish: that is, who desired only their own pleasures. But men do actually desire other things than pleasure, even when they know that these things cannot possibly bring them pleasure in the future. Many a disbeliever in immortality has earnestly desired and worked for some end which he knew could not be accomplished until long after his death. It is true that he would not have so worked for it if he had not taken pleasure at the time in the end ; but he did not work for the sake of a future pleasure to come from a future realization of his plan. If the welfare of humanity five hun- dred years hence, when the idea of that welfare is clearly presented to men with all its bearings upon all their desires, did not arouse a desire to realize it, that welfare would not be desirable for these men. This difference thus described be- tween the desired and the desirable also holds good between the preferred and the preferable. The preferable for any man is what he would prefer if he actually had all the information that was necessary for an intelligent preference. So also, finally, the supreme end, or sunimum bonum, for any man is that end which is preferable to any other. The nature of all his desires in their true interrelation and in their relation to the actual world in which he lives, determines the summum bowatn, but he may not know what that sunimum bonum is. because he may not understand thor- oughly either the world in its relations to the system of his desires, or the interrelation of his desires. In the sense that a science of ethics may. conceivably at least, throw light upon these ques- tions, it may discover the summum bonum ; but it cannot impose upon any man a summum bonum which is irrespective of bis actual nature as a being with quite definite desires. If the question is now asked whether ethicists