Alexander Bain

“ Walking in the country in spring, our mind is occupied with the foliage, the bloom, and the grassy meads, all purely objective things; we are suddenly and strongly arrested by the odor of the May-blossom; we give way for a moment to the sensation of sweetness: for that moment the objective regards cease; we think of nothing extended; we are in a state where extension has no footing; there is, to us, place no longer. ”

“ In the arts, we call a work perfect, when anything either added or taken away would spoil it. Now, virtue, which, like Nature, is better and more exact than any art, has for its subject-matter, passions and actions; all which are wrong either in defect or in excess. Virtue aims at the mean between them, or the maximum of Good: which implies a correct estimation of all the circumstances of the act,—when we ought to do it—under what conditions—towards whom—for what purpose—in what manner, &c. This is the praise-worthy mean, which virtue aspires to. ”

“ What we obtain by our various sensibilities to the world about us, and by our self-consciousness, are the foundation, the ABC of everything that we are capable of knowing. We know colours, and we know sound; we know pleasure and pain, and the various emotions of wonder, fear, love, anger. If there be any being endowed with senses different from ours, with that being we can have no communion. If there be any phenomena that escape our limited sensibilities, they transcend the possibility of our knowledge. ”

“ This is no mere passing sentiment, but includes a two-fold judgment, pronounced then and ever after; that the action is in itself bad, and that it ought not to be committed. Still farther, our anger implies that the object of it is conscious of the evil and the obligation, and is therefore responsible; wherein again is implied that he is a free agent. And, finally, demanding as we do that he should be punished, we pass what has been called a judgment of merit and demerit, which is built upon an idea in our minds of a supreme law, joining happiness to virtue and misfortune to crime. ”

“ For letting down the strain of the faculties, it is sometimes better to take up a light occupation for a time than to be totally idle.
The exchange of study for sport has the twofold advantage of muscular exercise and agreeable play. To pass from anything that is simply laborious to the indulgence of a taste or liking, is the fruition of life. To emerge from constraint to liberty, from the dark to the light, from monotony to variety, from giving to receiving, is the exchanging of pain for pleasure. ”

“ Less cynical moralists than Mandeville have looked with suspicion on posthumous fame; 'so silly a creature is man, as that, intoxicated with the fumes of vanity, he can feast on the thought of the praises that shall be paid his memory in future ages, with so much ecstasy as to neglect his present life, nay court and covet death, if he but imagines that it will add to the glory he had acquired before.' But the most notable institution of pride is the love of honour. ”

“ That love and benevolence are productive of great happiness is beyond question; but then the feeling must be mutual, it must be reciprocated. One-sided love or benevolence is a virtue, which is as much as to say it is not a pleasure. The delights of benevolence are the delights of reciprocated benevolence; until reciprocated, in some form, the benevolent man has, strictly speaking, the sacrifice and nothing more. There is a great reluctance to encounter this simple naked truth; to state it in theory, at least, for it is fully admitted in practice. ”

“ It will not be denied, as a matter of fact, that the perennial mode of insuring the moral conduct of mankind has been punishment and reward—pain and pleasure. This method has been found, generally speaking, to answer the purpose; it has reached the springs of action of human beings of every hue. No special endowment has been needed to make man dread the pains of the civil authority. ”

“ We must not look at the side of indignation to the wrong-doer. We are angry at those who disappoint our wish for the happiness of others; we make their resentment our own. We hence approve of the actions and dispositions for punishing such offenders; while we so far sympathize with the culprit as to disapprove of excess of punishment. Such moderated anger is the sense of Justice, and is a new element of Conscience. Of all the virtues, this is the one most directly aided by a conviction of general interest or utility. All laws profess it as their end. ”

“ Tracing agreement among the multifarious appearances of things, we can comprehend in one statement a vast number of details. The single law of gravity expresses the fall of a stone, the flow of rivers, the retention of the moon in her circuit round the earth. Now, this generalising sweep is a real advance in our knowledge, an ascent in the matter of intelligence, a step towards centralising the empire of science. What is more, this is the only real meaning of EXPLANATION. A difficulty is solved, a mystery unriddled; when it can be shown to resemble something else ”

“ Knowledge has such a wide compass, embraces such various ingredients, that, until we discriminate the kinds of it, we cannot speak precisely either of its charms or of its absence of charm. Some sorts of knowledge are interesting to everybody; some interest only a few. The serious part of the case is, that the most valuable kinds of knowledge are often the least interesting.
The important distinction to be drawn here is between individual or concrete knowledge and general or abstract knowledge. As a rule, particulars are interesting as well as easy; generals uninteresting and hard. ”

“ The principle of utility does not demand that we shall always or habitually attend to the general good; although it does demand that we shall not pursue our own particular good by means that are inconsistent with that paramount object. It permits the pursuit of our own pleasures as pleasure. Even as regards the good of others, it commonly requires us to be governed by partial, rather than by general benevolence; by the narrower circle of family and friends rather than by the larger humanity that embraces mankind. It requires us to act where we act with the utmost effect ”

“ I do not denounce the ancient languages and classical literature on their own account, or desire to see them cast into utter oblivion. I admit them to be refined studies, and think that there are individuals who, having a natural turn for them, learn them easily and enjoy them much. They ought, therefore, to be cultivated by all such persons. My objection is solely to the practice of rendering them the main substance of the education bestowed on young men who have no taste or talent for them, and whose pursuits in life will not render them a valuable acquisition. ”

“ Constituted as we are to flee all sorts of pain, we are necessarily urged to avoid pain when it comes as punishment. Education is not essential to this effect any more than it is essential to our avoiding the pains of hunger, cold, or fatigue.
Those who demur to the existence of a special faculty, different from all the other recognized constituents of mind—feeling, will, or intellect—are not to be held as declaring that conscience is entirely a matter of education; for, without any education at all, man may be, to all intents and purposes, moral. ”

“ The first chapter, entitled 'THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY,' begins thus:—'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong; on the other, the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. ”

“ But as conceived by others, metaphysics is philosophy and poetry in one, to which I can never agree. The combination of the two, as hitherto exhibited, has been made at the expense of both. The leading terms of philosophy—reason, spirit, soul, the ideal, the infinite, the absolute, phenomenal truth, being, consciousness—are lubricated with emotion, and thrown together in ways that defy the understanding. The unintelligible, which ought to be the shame of philosophy, is made its glory. ”

“ Have we any difficulty to comprehend the force of humanity or benevolence? Or to conceive that the very aspect of happiness, joy, prosperity, gives pleasure; while pain, suffering, sorrow, communicate uneasiness? Here we have an unmistakeable, powerful, universal sentiment of human nature to build upon. ”

“ We, the English people, would not change places with them, notwithstanding: our ideal is industry with abundance; but then our industry sobers our temperament, and inclines us to the dulness that Helps regrets. Possibly, we may one day hit a happier mean; but to the human mind extremes have generally been found easiest.
Once more: the light-hearted races trouble themselves little about their political constitution, about despotism or liberty; they enjoy the passing moments of a despot's smiles, and if he turns round and crushes them, they quietly submit. We live in dread of tyranny. ”

“ What intellect can be, without strong feeling, we have in Bacon; what intellect is, with strong feeling, we have in Shelley. The feeling gives the tone to the thoughts; sets the intellect at work to find language having its own intensity, to pile up lofty and impressive circumstances; and then we have the poet, the orator, the thoughts that breathe, and the words that burn. Bacon wrote on many impressive themes—on Truth, on Love, on Religion, on Death, and on the Virtues in detail ”

“ The youth learns, as he grows up, to value bodily accomplishments, mental cognitions and judgments, good conduct towards those around him,—as powerful aids towards keeping up the state of nature. When his experience is so far enlarged as to make him aware of the order and harmony of nature and human society, and to impress upon him the comprehension of this great ideal, his emotions as well as his reason become absorbed by it. He recognizes this as the only true Bonum or Honestum, to which all other desirable things are referable,—as the only thing desirable for itself and in its own nature. ”

“ I have never regarded myself as an Anti-utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly understood, concerns not the object to be reached by men, but the method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end. The Expediency-Philosophy having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations. ”

“ It is unquestionably possible to do without happiness. This is the lot of the greater part of mankind, and is often voluntarily chosen by the hero or the martyr. But self-sacrifice is not its own end; it must be made to earn for others immunity from sacrifice. It must be a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that requires any one to serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of their own; yet undoubtedly while the world is in that imperfect state, the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue that can be found in man. ”

“ III.—-His Summum Bonum, or Theory of Happiness, is contained in his much iterated doctrine of the deliciousness of virtuous conduct, by which he proposes to effect the reconciliation of our own good with the good of others—prudence with virtue. Virtue is 'an inward fountain of pure delight;' the pleasure of benevolence, 'if it could become lasting and intense, would convert the heart into a heaven;' they alone are happy, or truly virtuous, that do not need the motive of a regard to outward consequences. ”

“ Another spring of our constitution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is Love of Fame. The pursuit of a character, name, and reputation in the world, leads to a habit of surveying our own actions, begets a reverence for self as well as others, and is thus the guardian of every virtue. Humanity and Love of Reputation combine to form the highest type of morality yet conceived. ”

“ All supreme principles of morality, that are genuine, must rest on pure Reason solely; and the mistake of the popular practical philosophies in vogue, one and all—whether advancing as their principle a special determination of human nature, or Perfection, or Happiness, or Moral Feeling, or Fear of God, or a little of this and a little of that—is that there has been no previous consideration whether the principles of morality are to be sought for in our empirical knowledge of human nature at all. ”

“ The fountain of all virtue is manifestly the life according to nature; as being the life of subordination of self to more general interests—to family, country, mankind, the whole universe. If a man is prepared to consider himself absolutely nothing in comparison with the universal interest, and to regard it as the sole end of life, he has embraced an ideal of virtue of the loftiest order. ”