Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and only end of human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend, and in accordance with this all the virtues, including justice, may be explained. Admitting that men rest for a time in inferior ends, and do not cast their eyes beyond them, these ends are really dependent on the greater end of happiness, and would not be pursued, unless in general they had been found to lead to it. The existence of such an end is proved, as in Aristotle’s time, so in our own, by the universal fact that men desire it. The obligation to promote it is based upon the social nature of man; this sense of duty is shared by all of us in some degree, and is capable of being greatly fostered and strengthened. So far from being inconsistent with religion, the greatest happiness principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For what can be more reasonable than that God should will the happiness of all his creatures? and in working out their happiness we may be said to be “working together with him.” Nor is it inconceivable that a new enthusiasm of the future, far stronger than any old religion, may be based upon such a conception.
But then for the familiar phrase of the “greatest happiness principle,” it seems as if we ought now to read “the noblest happiness principle,” “the happiness of others principle”—the principle not of the greatest, but of the highest pleasure, pursued with no more regard to our own immediate interest than is required by the law of self-preservation. Transfer the thought of happiness to another life, dropping the external circumstances which form so large a part of our idea of happiness in this, and the meaning of the word becomes indistinguishable from holiness, harmony, wisdom, love. By the slight addition “of others,” all the associations of the word are altered; we seem to have passed over from one theory of morals to the opposite. For allowing that the happiness of others is reflected on ourselves, and also that every man must live before he can do good to others, still the last limitation is a very trifling exception, and the happiness of another is very far from compensating for the loss of our own. According to Mr. Mill, he would best carry out the principle of utility who sacrificed his own pleasure most to that of his fellow-men. But if so, Hobbes and Butler, Shaftesbury and Hume, are not so far apart as they and their followers imagine. The thought of self and the thought of others are alike superseded in the more general notion of the happiness of mankind at large. But in this composite good, until society becomes perfected, the friend of man himself has generally the least share, and may be a great sufferer.
And now what objection have we to urge against a system of moral philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same time so practical—so Christian, as we may say without exaggeration—and which has the further advantage of resting morality on a principle intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which Socrates and Plato “grew old in seeking”? Are we not desirous of happiness, at any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all mankind? If, as is natural, we begin by thinking of ourselves first, we are easily led on to think of others; for we cannot help acknowledging that what is right for us is the right and inheritance of others. We feel the advantage of an abstract principle wide enough and strong enough to override all the particularisms of mankind; which acknowledges a universal good, truth, right; which is capable of inspiring men like a passion, and is the symbol of a cause for which they are ready to contend to their life’s end.
And if we test this principle by the lives of its professors, it would certainly appear inferior to none as a rule of action. From the days of Eudoxus (Aristotle Ethics X 2) and Epicurus to our own, the votaries of pleasure have gained belief for their principles by their practice. Two of the noblest and most disinterested men who have lived in this century, Bentham and J. S. Mill, whose lives were a long devotion to the service of their fellows, have been among the most enthusiastic supporters of utility; while among their contemporaries, some who were of a more mystical turn of mind, have ended rather in aspiration than in action, and have been found unequal to the duties of life. Looking back on them now that they are removed from the scene, we feel that mankind has been the better for them. The world was against them while they lived; but this is rather a reason for admiring than for depreciating them. Nor can anyone doubt that the influence of their philosophy on politics—especially on foreign politics, on law, on social life, has been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have justice done to them, for they do not agree either with the better feeling of the multitude or with the idealism of more refined thinkers. Without Bentham, a great word in the history of philosophy would have remained unspoken.
