We are again at James Mill's point of view.Conduct is determined by pain and pleasure.An action supposes an end,and that 'end'must be a pleasure.If we ask,pleasure to whom?the answer must be,pleasure to the agent.All conduct,it would seem,must be directly or indirectly self-regarding,for the 'end 'must always be my own pleasure.Mill maintains that 'virtue'may,for the Utilitarian as well as for others,be a 'thing desirable in itself.'(83)That is a 'psychological fact,'independently of the explanation.But at this point he lapses into the old doctrine.Virtue,he admits,is not 'naturally and originally part of the end.'Virtue was once-desired simply 'for its conduciveness to pleasure'and especially 'to protection from pain.'It becomes a good in itself.This is enforced by the familiar illustration of the 'love of money'and of the love of power or fame.Each passion aimed originally at a further end,which has dropped out while the desire for means has become original.The moral feelings,as he says in answer to Whewell,(84)are 'eminently artificial and the product of culture.'We may grow corn,or we may as easily grow hemlocks or thistles.Yet,as he declares in the Utilitarianism,(85)'moral feelings'are not 'the less natural'because 'acquired.'The 'moral faculty'is a 'natural outgrowth'of our nature.The antithesis of 'natural'and 'artificial'is generally ambiguous;but Mill's view is clear enough upon the main point.Virtue is the product of the great force 'indissoluble association.'Now 'artificial associations'are dissolved 'as intellectual culture goes on.'But the association between virtue and utility is indissoluble,because there is a 'natural basis of sentiment'which strengthens it --that basis being 'our desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures.'(86)One further corollary deserves notice.To become virtuous,it is necessary to acquire virtuous habits.We 'will'at first simply because we desire.
Afterwards we come to desire a thing because we will it.'Will is the child of desire,and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit.'(87)Thus,as he had said in the Logic,(88)we learn to will a thing 'without reference to its being pleasurable'--a fact illustrated by the habit of 'hurtful excess'and equally by moral heroism.It would surely be more consistent to say that habit is a modification of character which alters our pains and pleasures but does not enable us to act against our judgment of pains and pleasures.He is trying to escape from an awkward consequence;but the mode of evasion will hardly bear inspection.
Mill's arguments imply his thorough adherence to the 'association psychology.'They really indicate,I think,an attempt to reach a right conclusion from defective premises.The error is implied in the analysis of 'ends'of action.When a man acts with a view to an 'end'the true account is that his immediate action is affected by all the consequences which he foresees.This or that motive conquers because it includes a perception of more or less remote results.But what determines conduct is not a calculation of some future pains or pleasures,but the actual painfulness or pleasurableness of the whole action at the moment.I shrink from the pain of a wound or from the pain of giving a wound to another person.Both are equally my immediate feelings;and it is an error to analyse the sympathetic pain into two different factors,one the immediate action and the other the anticipated reaction.It is one indissoluble motive,just as natural or original as the dislike to the unpleasant sensation of my own wound.To distinguish it into two facts and make one subordinate and a product of association is a fallacy.
We can hardy believe that 'association'accounts even for 'love of money'or 'fame.'Avarice and vanity mean an exaggerated fear of poverty or regard to other people's opinions.They do not imply any forgetfulness of end for means,but an erroneous estimate of the proportion of means to ends.The really noticeable point,again,has already met us in James Mill's ethics.When Mill speaks of 'virtue'as 'artificial'or derivative,he is asserting a truth not to be denied by an evolutionist.Undoubtedly the social sentiments have been slowly developed;and undoubtedy they have grown up under the protection of external 'sanctions.'The primitive society did not distinguish between law and morality;the pressure of external circumstances upon character and the influence of the character itself upon the society.A difficulty arises from the defective view which forces Mill to regard the whole process as taking place within the life of the individual.The unit is then a being without moral instincts at all,and they have to be inserted by the help of the association machinery.Sympathy is not an intrinsic part of human nature in its more advanced stages,but something artificial stuck on by indissoluble association.Mill,himself,when discussing the virtue of justice in his last chapter,substantially adopts a line of argument which,if not satisfactory in details,sufficiently recognises this point of view.And,if he still fails to explain morality sufficiently,it is in the main because he never freed himself from the unsatisfactory assumptions of the old psychology.Here,as in so many other cases,he sees the inadequacy of the old conclusions,but persuades himself that a better result can be reached without the thorough revision which was really necessary.
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