Henry Sidgwick

“ On the great theatre of public life, especially in periods of great convulsions where passions are fiercely roused, it is neither the man of delicate scrupulosity and sincere impartiality, nor yet the single-minded religious enthusiast, incapable of dissimulation or procrastination, who confers most benefit on the world. It is much rather the astute statesman, earnest about his ends, but unscrupulous about his means, equally free from the trammels of conscience and from the blindness of zeal, who governs because he partly yields to the passions and the prejudices of his time. ”

“ But it does not seem that these habits of virtue can ever become so strong as to gain irresistible control over a sane and reasonable will. When the occasion comes on which virtue demands from such a man an extreme sacrifice—the imprudence of which must force itself upon his notice, however little he may be in the habit of weighing his own pleasures and pains—he must always be able to deliberate afresh, and to act (as far as the control of his will extends) without reference to his past actions. ”

“ I take it to be the business of Philosophy—in Mr. Spencer’s words—to “unify” or systematise as completely as possible our common thought, which it finds partially systematised in a number of different sciences and studies. Now before attempting this unification, we must wish to be somehow assured that the thoughts or beliefs which we seek to systematise completely are true and valid. This is obvious; no rational being with his eyes open would try to work up a mixture of truth and error into a coherent system, without some attempt to eliminate the error. ”

“ On the Determinist view, then, it would seem to be ideally just (if anything is so) that all men should enjoy equal amounts of happiness: for there seems to be no justice in making A happier than B, merely because circumstances beyond his own control have first made him better. But why should we not, instead of ‘all men,’ say ‘all sentient beings’? for why should men have more happiness than any other animal? But thus the pursuit of ideal justice seems to conduct us to such a precipice of paradox that Common Sense is likely to abandon it. ”

“ I think it impossible to establish the general truths of the accepted sciences by processes of cogent inference on the basis of merely particular premises; and I think the chief service that J. S. Mill rendered to philosophy, by his elaborate attempt to perform this task, was to make this impossibility as clear as day. But I wish now to avoid this controversy; and, in order to avoid it, I shall take the Empirical criterion as relating only to particular cognitions; leaving open the question how far we also require universal premises in the construction of science. ”

“ If a man’s actions are mere links in a chain of causation which, as we trace it back, ultimately carries us to events anterior to his personal existence, he cannot, it is said, really have either merit or demerit; and if he has not merit or demerit, it is repugnant to the common moral sense of mankind to reward or punish—even to praise or blame—him. In considering this argument, it will be convenient—for clearness of discussion—to assume in the first instance that there is no doubt or conflict in our view of what it is right to do, except such as may be caused by the present question. ”

“ I, at least, do not know how to impart the notion of moral obligation to any one who is entirely devoid of it. I think, however, that many of those who give this denial only mean to deny that they have any consciousness of moral obligation to actions without reference to their consequences; and would not really deny that they recognise some universal end or ends—whether it be the general happiness, or well-being otherwise understood—as that at which it is ultimately reasonable to aim, subordinating to its attainment the gratification of any personal desires that may conflict with this aim. ”

“ And so, again, when the sacrifice is made for some ideal end, as Truth, or Freedom, or Religion: it may be a real sacrifice of the individual’s happiness, and not merely the preference of one highly refined pleasure (or of the absence of one special pain) to all the other elements of happiness. No doubt this preference is possible; a man may feel that the high and severe delight of serving his ideal is a “pearl of great price” outweighing in value all other pleasures. But he may also feel that the sacrifice will not repay him, and yet determine that it shall be made. ”

“ So again, in judging a motive to be good or bad, we may either consider it simply in itself, or in connexion with other balancing and controlling motives—either actually present along with it, or absent when they ought to be present. Thus in the above case we do not commonly think the desire for wealth or rank bad in itself; but we think it bad as the sole motive of a statesman’s public career. It is easy to see that one or other of these different distinctions is apt to blend with and confuse the simple distinction between intention and motive. ”

“ For the ideal distinction taken in common thought between legal and merely moral rules seems to lie in just this connexion of the former but not the latter with punishment: we think that there are some things which a man ought to be compelled to do, or forbear, and others which he ought to do or forbear without compulsion, and that the former alone fall properly within the sphere of law. No doubt we also think that in many cases where the compulsion of law is undesirable, the fear of moral censure and its consequences supplies a normally useful constraint on the will of any individual. ”

“ On the contrary, I think it has much support in men’s natural expression of ordinary moral experience in discourse. In the conflict that is continually going on in all of us, between non-rational impulses and what we recognise as dictates of practical reason, we are in the habit of identifying ourselves with the latter rather than with the former: as Whewell says, “we speak of Desire, Love, Anger, as mastering us, and of ourselves as controlling them”—we continually call men “slaves” of appetite or passion, whereas no one was ever called a slave of reason. ”

“ I do not, therefore, object on the score of usage to this application of the term “free” to denote voluntary actions in which the seductive solicitations of appetite or passion are successfully resisted: and I am sensible of the gain in effectiveness of moral persuasion which is obtained by thus enlisting the powerful sentiment of Liberty on the side of Reason and Morality. But it is clear that if we say that a man is a “free” agent in so far as he acts rationally, we cannot also say—in the same sense—that it is by his own “free” choice that he acts irrationally, when he does so act ”

“ For instance, nothing that I have said is inconsistent with the view that Truthspeaking is only valuable as a means to the preservation of society: only if it be admitted that it is valuable on this ground I should say that it is implied that the preservation of society—or some further end to which this preservation, again, [36] is a means—must be valuable per se, and therefore something at which a rational being, as such, ought to aim. ”

“ Indeed in some cases I think it clear that we commonly attribute virtue to conduct where regard for duty or virtue is not consciously present at all: as in the case of a heroic act of courage—let us say, in saving a fellow-creature from death—under an impulse of spontaneous sympathy. So again, when we praise a man as “genuinely humble” we certainly do not imply that he is conscious of fulfilling a duty—still less that he is conscious of exhibiting a virtue—by being humble. ”

“ I admit that so far as the sentiment of remorse implies self-blame irremovably fixed on the self blamed, it must tend to vanish from the mind of a convinced Determinist. Still I do not see why the imagination of a Determinist should not be as vivid, his sympathy as keen, his love of goodness as strong as a Libertarian’s: and I therefore see no reason why dislike for his own shortcomings and for the mischievous qualities of his character which have caused bad actions in the past should not be as effective a spring of moral improvement as the sentiment of remorse would be. ”

“ It is true that the mutual implication of the two kinds of study—the positive and the practical—is, on any theory, very close and complete. On any theory, our view of what ought to be must be largely derived, in details, from our apprehension of what is; the means of realising our ideal can only be thoroughly learnt by a careful study of actual phenomena; and to any individual asking himself ‘What ought I to do or aim at?’ it is important to examine the answers which his fellow-men have actually given to similar questions. ”

“ I noticed that there is an ambiguity in the common terms ‘honourable’ and ‘dishonourable’; which are no doubt sometimes used, like ethical terms, as implying an absolute standard. Still, when we speak of the Code of Honour we seem to mean rules of which the exact nature is to be finally determined by an appeal to the general opinion of well-bred persons: we admit that a man is in a sense ‘dishonoured’ when this opinion condemns him, even though we may think his conduct unobjectionable or even intrinsically admirable. ”

“ It has been thought that we can avoid this difficulty by constituting the supreme organ of government so that any law laid down by it will always be a law to which every person called on to obey it will have consented personally or by his representatives: and that a government so constituted, in which—to adopt Rousseau’s phrase—every one “obeys himself alone,” will completely reconcile freedom and order. ”

“ And perhaps if our knowledge of the Universe were complete, we might discern the quantum of happiness ultimately attained in it to be as great as could be attained without the accomplishment of what we should then see to be just as inconceivable and absurd as changing the past. ”

“ But if we dismiss the identification of Freedom and Rationality, and accept definitely and singly Kant’s other notion of Freedom as expressing the relation of the human thing-in-itself to its phenomenon, I am afraid that this spirit-stirring appeal to the sentiment of Liberty must be dismissed as idle rhetoric. ”

“ Indeed, this latter circle is given by the Stoics more neatly and perfectly: for with Plato and Aristotle Virtue was not the sole, but only the chief content of the notion Good, in its application to human life: but in the view of Stoicism the two notions are absolutely coincident. The result, then, is that Virtue is knowledge of what is good and ought to be sought or chosen, and of what is bad and ought to be shunned or rejected: while at the same time there is nothing good or properly choice-worthy, nothing bad or truly formidable, except Virtue and Vice respectively. ”