The problem must be left to posterity.Mill's doctrine,if Iam right,is vitiated rather by an excessive emphasis upon one aspect of facts than by positive error.He seems often to be struggling to express half-recognised truths,and to be hampered by an inadequate dialect.I have already touched upon the morality more or less involved in his political and economic views.His ethical doctrine shows the source of some of his perplexities and apparent inconsistencies.His position is given in the little book upon Utilitarianism,which is scarcely more,however,than an occasional utterance.(64)In a more systematic treatise some difficulties would have been more carefully treated,and assumptions more explicitly justified.The main lines,however,of Mill's Utilitarianism are plain enough.The book is substantially a protest against the assertion that Utilitarian morality is inferior to its rivals.'Utilitarians,'he says,'should never cease to claim the morality of self-devotion as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them as to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist.'(65)The Utilitarian standard is 'not the agent's own happiness,but the happiness of all concerned.'The Utilitarian must be 'as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator'in determining his course of action.The spirit of his ethics is expressed in 'the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth.'Mill insists as strongly as possible upon the paramount importance of the social aspect of morality.Society must be founded throughout upon justice and sympathy.Every step in civilisation generates in each individual 'a feeling of unity with all the rest.'(66)Characteristically he refers to Comte's Politique Positive in illustration.Though he has the 'strongest objections'to the system of morals and politics there set forth,he thinks that Comte has 'superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of humanity,even without the aid of belief in a Providence,both the psychical power and the social efficacy of a religion.'Nay,it may 'colour all thought,feeling,and action,in a manner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised by any religion may be but a type or foretaste.'The danger is that the ascendency may be so marked as to suppress 'human freedom and individuality.'The love of the right is to become an all-absorbing passion,and selfish motives admitted only so far as subordinated to desire for the welfare of the social body.
Clearly this is a loftier line than Bentham's attempt to evade the difficulty by ignoring the possibility of a conflict between private and public interest.The only question,then,is as to the logic.Can Mill's conclusions be deduced from his premises?
We must first observe that Mill's argument is governed by his antipathy to the 'intuitionist.'The intuitionist was partly represented by his old antagonist Whewell,who in a ponderous treatise had set forth a theory of morality intended not only to give first principles but to elaborate a complete moral code.
Mill attacked him with unusual severity in an article in the Westminster Review.(67)Whewell,in truth,appears at one time to be founding morality upon positive law --a doctrine which is at best a strange perversion of a theory of experience;and yet he denounces Utilitarians by the old arguments,and brings in such an 'intuitionism'as always roused Mill's combative propensities.Mill defends Bentham against Whewell,and his Utilitarianism starts essentially from Bentham's famous saying,'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,pain and pleasure.'Happiness,says Mill,is the 'sole end of human action';to 'desire'is to find a thing pleasant;to be averse from a thing is to think of it as painful;and,as happiness gives the criterion of all conduct,it must give 'the standard of morality.'(68)To 'prove'the first principle may be impossible;one can only appeal to self-consciousness in general;but it seems to him so obvious that it will 'hardly be disputed.'(69)It still requires explicate statement in order to exclude a doctrine held by many philosophers.Mill (70)refers to Kant,whose formula that you are to act so that the rule on which you act may be law for all rational beings,is the most famous version of the doctrine which would deduce morality from reason.It really proves at most,as Mill says,the formal truth that laws must be consistent,but it fails 'almost grotesquely'in showing which consistent laws are right.Absolute selfishness or absolute benevolence would equally satisfy the formula.For Mill,then,all conduct depends on pain and pleasure;every theory of conduct must therefore be based upon psychology,or consequently upon experience,not upon abstract logic.Every attempt to twist morality out of pure reason is foredoomed to failure;logical contradiction corresponds to the impossible,not to the immoral,which is only too possible.That is a first principle,which seems to me,I confess,to be unassailable.
