.C 5 ~5 v, 1-5 7 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/ethicalsignificaOOwrig_O The Ethical Significance of Feeling , Pleasure , and Happiness in Modern Non- Hedonistic Systems WILLIAM KELLEY WRIGHT ’ Ph.V. PHILOSOPHIC STUDIES NUMBER I CHICAGO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 1907 r PHILOSOPHIC STUDIES i. The Ethical Significance of Feeling, Pleasure, and Happiness in Modern Non-Hedonistic Systems. By William Kelley Wright. 96 pp., royal 8vo, paper, net 50 cents; postpaid . . . . . . .54 ‘ _ C^'~* i <4* V*; . ' • - '• ■< 'v; " V. . . *••»; '-"JjCL • v; > ' \ ' - . ■ . . ■■ 1 f> I'lZty- ' T'-'L , - 1 | , • • - _ . * j -V '* . , \ I- ' <• \ \\ • / *: ' ,-J •: ;> - ,v y -v i • r--v ‘ _ “ f V v f Ml ,k % «F r V >■ i PHILOSOPHIC STUDIES OF ^ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO EDITED BY JAMES H. TUFTS EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT The Department of Philosophy in the University of Chicago will issue a series of monographs in philosophy, including ethics, logic and metaphysics, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy. The successive monographs will be numbered consecutively, but will not be arranged as volumes. These studies will be similar to the series of Contribii- tions to Philosophy , but will not, like that series, contain psychologi¬ cal papers, or reprints of articles previously published. Beyond the present initial number, the Department announces as No. 2 The Respective Standpoints of Logic and Psychology , by Matilde Castro, Ph.D. THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FEEL¬ ING, PLEASURE, AND HAPPINESS IN MODERN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS BY WILLIAM KELLEY WRIGHT, Ph.D. CHICAGO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 1907 Copyright 1907 By The University of Chicago Published October 1907 Composed and Printed By The University of Chicago Press Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A. NOTE The writer desires to express his gratitude to Professors Mead, Moore, and Angell, and Dr. Watson, of the University of Chicago, with whom he has had courses in ethics and psychology. His chief obligation, especi¬ ally in the preparation of this essay, is to Professor Tufts, of whose counsel and sympathy he has largely availed himself, both in the definition of the problem and also in specific points of interpretation and criticism. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE I. Introduction . 7 II. The Perfectionists . 9 a. Descartes . 13 b. Malebranche . 17 c. Spinoza . 20 d. Leibniz . 23 e. Wolff . 26 III. The British Non-Hedonists . 30 A. Attempts to Save Morality by Widening the Conception of Pleasure . 33 a. Shaftesbury . 33 b. Hutcheson . 35 c. Hartley . 38 d. Hume . 40 e. Adam Smith . . 42 B. Systems Revealing an Increasing Divergence between Morality and Pleasure, and a Gradual Repudiation of Pleasure as Exclu¬ sive Motive . 43 A. Butler . 43 b. Price . 45 c. Reid . 47 d. Dugald Stewart . 48 e. Thomas Brown . 49 f. Later Intuitionists . 51 IV. Modified Perfectionism . 53 a. Mendelssohn . 53 b. Tetens and Schmidt . 55 V. Kant . 57 a. The Early Rationalistic Period . 57 b. The Period of English Influence . 58 c. From the Inaugural Dissertation to the Critique of Pure Reason . 60 d The Ethical System in its Final Form . 64 5 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE VI. Several Nineteenth-Century Non-Hedonists . 72 a. Fichte and Hegel . 73 b. Schopenhauer . 79 c. Herbart . 81 d. Lotze . 82 e. Green . 85 f. Nietzsche . 89 VII. Conclusion . 92 t I. INTRODUCTION During the Middle Ages such a question as what significance should be attributed to pleasure in a moral system could hardly have arisen. We may distinguish a kind of feeling and happiness in the ecstasy of the Mystics; but pleasure in the modern sense of the term could hardly have been regarded as of much moral value, even if it were not reprobated as indissolubly bound up with the world, the flesh, and the devil. In modern times, however, the situation has been quite different. A considerable proportion of the leading ethical systems have frankly made pleasure the necessary motive to moral action, and many also have gone so far as to make it also the criterion of moral values, and to declare that no action is of moral significance except so far as it furnishes pleasure to a sentient being. In addition to the ethical writers who thus are to be classed as hedonists, there is another large class of writers who, while refusing to make pleasure the standard of morality, nevertheless seem aware that it is too prominent a feature of our conscious life, and too intimately connected with the springs to action, not to possess some sig¬ nificance. It is with this second class of writers that we have to do here, and it will be the effort of this dissertation to show that pleasure — and, as arising out of pleasure and connected with it, feeling and happiness — do serve a position of some importance in their thought, to a much larger degree than perhaps is generally understood. While, naturally enough, most non-hedonistic writers discourse at greater length against pleasure and happiness in the way that they are employed by the hedonists, than they do in the positive employment of them in their own systems, nevertheless they do make use of them in a very explicit way, and to a considerable extent. In other cases one is able to detect a large implicit recognition of feeling and happiness as integral features of moral action. The non-hedonistic writers here to be considered fall into three prin¬ cipal groups: (1) the rationalistic perfectionists; (2) the British moral sense writers, and their intuitionist successors; (3) Kant, and some of the idealists who have followed him. The ethical conceptions of the perfectionist school were derived by its founder, Descartes, largely from ancient sources — Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans all furnishing contributions. These contributions 7 8 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS were not simply stuck together into a crude eclecticism, but molded into an integral system. Self-realization, under the modified form of perfection, became the moral ideal, virtue was the practice of this morality, pleasure was the consciousness of successful progress in its attainment, and happi¬ ness was the final reward associated with its achievement. For a time this combination seemed to work with entire satisfaction; but later a growing sense of a larger moral content, upon the one hand, and the nar¬ rowing of the content which could be included within the conception of perfection, upon the other, forced a divergence that could not be overcome. Pleasure, perfection, and duty no longer could be regarded as coincident. Among the British writers the development was similar, but more rapid. Their observation was not limited to the use of a formal conception and a mathematical method. Shaftesburv laid rather more emphasis upon the feeling side of perfection than Descartes had done; and the greater attention to the feeling side of morality which was given by his successors soon disclosed a serious divergence between its demands and those of duty. At first the attempt was made to overcome this by widen¬ ing the conception of pleasure so as to include the pleasures of the moral sense, and of sympathy; but after Butler the coincidence was usually not regarded as immediate, and arguments were devised to minimize the divergence as much as possible, and postulate an ultimate reconciliation in a future life. Kant inherited from his perfectionist predecessors the desire for a rational principle of morality, while at the same time his predecessors in England awakened him to the prominence of pleasure and feeling in action, and to their worth as moral content. After failing to find a rational principle in pleasure on account of its contingent and empirical nature, he was forced to abandon its employment as a moral criterion, but he continued to allot to it such a part of the ground which it had previously occupied in his thought as more important claims did not preclude. The successors of Kant occupied various attitudes. Fichte, Hegel, and T. H. Green continued to regard pleasure as contingent and empirical, but still as possessing certain functional significance in moral action. Scho¬ penhauer derived pessimistic conclusions from the failure to find ad¬ equate rational principles in pleasure. Schopenhauer, Flerbart, and Lotze discovered a significance for morals in the pleasures of aesthetic contem¬ plation. Last of all, Nietzsche found a certain functional significance in pleasure, as representing a primitive form of moral judgment. II. THE PERFECTIONISTS PLEASURE, FEELING, AND HAPPINESS DEFINED IN TERMS OF PERFECTION The men of the Renaissance were in search of a wider, fuller life. They wished to enjoy all of the good things of this world. Pleasure, of course, seemed to be one of these good things, and so it had to be related in some way to the highest good. They also wished to avail themselves of all the best things in ancient philosophy. Descartes accordingly snatched upon the Aristotelian conception of self-realization, combined with it the Stoic conception of virtue, and made the union of the two, which he called “ perfection,” coincident with Epicurean pleasure and happiness, rightly understood. Malebranche went on to develop more fully the religious side of the doctrine. Thus there was at the outset a tendency to comprehend as much as possible under the conceptions of perfection and happiness. On the other hand, the new method introduced by Descartes finally tended to narrow the bounds of moral activity. Nothing could be moral, which could not be deduced from the concept of perfection. As the mathe¬ matical method became applied more rigidly, the contents of perfection became more limited, and only those pleasures could still be regarded as moral which could be included within these contents. As happiness continued to be identified with perfection, only certain classes of pleasures could be included within it. Furthermore, as the interests of the school were intellectual rather than practical, the cognitive aspects of pleasure received their attention, rather than its real nature as affection. To the whole school, perfection is the summum bonum. Happiness is the reward which leads us to seek perfection, and so is extremely closely connected with it. The general tendency — and it is a strong one — is to define both happiness and pleasure in what seem to us purely cognitive terms. As their psychology did not know our modern tripartite and bipartite divisions, their happiness and pleasure had volitional char¬ acteristics, as well as the affective characteristics which we attribute to them; but their chief interest and attention were almost wholly devoted to ascertaining the function, and determining the value for moral action, of the cognitive elements which they attributed to pleasure. Happiness is “the consciousness of all the perfection of which we are 9 IO PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS capable.”1 It is consciousness of perfection as a whole , and is perma¬ nent. Pleasure is consciousness of a perfection; it is finite , particular , transient.2 In one sense happiness and pleasure do not represent a funda¬ mental opposition in the judgment of the school. Both are endeavors to appraise and evaluate the perfection which one experiences. Pleasure represents a more quickly formed judgment, and is functionally useful because we cannot always stop and deliberate. However, on account of its hastiness, and consequent lack of clear and comprehensive insight, it is liable to error. While both pleasure and happiness are consciousness of perfection, happiness is not a sum of pleasures. It is due to an independent intellectual process, resulting in consciousness of a perfect adjustment of all the fac¬ ulties working under the government of the reason.3 Some of the school regard happiness as a state of absolute , eternal perfection; others, as one of constant progress in the attainment of new and higher perfections; all, as the incitement to, and reward of, moral effort, and to all it is mainly a personal , individualistic acquisition, with little content of a social char¬ acter. The school also differ as regards the extent of pleasure, some recog¬ nizing intellectual pleasure, while others do not seem to do so. This depends largely upon the rigidity with which the mathematical method is employed. All regard the emotional side of our nature as cognitive in character, and as quicker, but less accurate, in its perceptions than the reason. Consequently, those who use the mathematical method most closely have to confine their attention to this cognitive aspect of feeling. Hence Wolff wholly (and Spinoza mainly) limits pleasure to this hasty, and hence confused, cognition of perfection. Spinoza expects pleasure to disappear in clear thought; Wolff recognizes its utility as a good servant kept in subordination to the reason. Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, on the other hand, recognized intellectual pleasure attend¬ ing the operations of the reason itself. For them reason also plays an im¬ portant function in discerning the actual amount of perfection represented by the different forms of pleasure, and directs action so as to obtain the most perfection (and consequently the most pleasure) possible. To Spinoza and Wolff pleasure is confused thought; to Descartes we expe¬ rience, as a result of the action of the passions, a false notion of both 1 Beatitudo, la beatitude, Gliickseligkeity or Seligkeit . 2 Laetitia, la plaisir; with Wolff, voluptas, Lust. 3 This statement does not wholly apply to Spinoza, who has no place for the lower faculties in his beatitudo. THE PERFECTIONISTS 1 1 the pleasure and the perfection experienced; and reason, in leading us to estimate perfection correctly, leads us to estimate pleasure correctly also. To the former pleasure is always confused consciousness of per¬ fection; to the latter it is sometimes clear and distinct consciousness of perfection as well. Malebranche supplements Descartes’ statement by making a clear and distinct perception of perfection and pleasure consist in the recognition of God as efficient cause of the perception; while a confused perception is one in which this causality is not recognized. The perfectionists hit upon three psychological points in respect to pleasure which were of importance in the development of their systems: (i) that novelty is of importance in it; (2) that it is more intense when attended by emotional excitement; (3) that it owes its origin in some way to external stimulation, or to images, or to something that is in some way extrinsic to the pleasure itself. 1. It is very evident to anyone that our enjoyment, in most things at least, wears away with familiarity. What at first afforded keen enjoy¬ ment is experienced with indifference, and finally becomes disagreeable. The modern theory is that it is the function of pleasure to excite us to action in novel situations, and this necessity is no longer present when the action necessary has become well known and tends to the habitual. The perfectionists were quite aware of this characteristic of pleasure, and derived important conclusions from it. Descartes, Leibniz, and Wolff include pleasure in the state of happiness, since to them happiness is a state of progress and activity, and is situated within the temporal order. The progress must be so rapid that before old pleasures begin to pall, new ones shall always have been acquired. Thus the search for pleasure becomes a positive incitement to moral progress. The new pleasures acquired of course always represent higher stages of perfection than the ones which preceded them. A transition to a lower state of perfection would be accompanied by pain. Spinoza attributes the same function to pleasure and pain. They define the content of desire in any given experience, and thus direct the conatus sui perservarandi along the line of moral progress. But Spinoza does not conceive of happiness as something to be attained within the temporal order. Consequently, while the impetus of pleasure with him, as with the others, is in the direc¬ tion of moral progress, he attempts, though not with entire success, to exclude it from the final state of eternal perfection. 2. It is also an unquestioned fact that intense pleasure is accompanied by strong emotional content, and that at such times our reasoning faculties are not, to say the least, at their best. We reason best when we are cool 12 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS and deliberate, and are not strongly aware of any particular pleasure or pain, but are simply in a state of comfort, free from disturbing elements of all kinds, pleasant and unpleasant, bodily and mental. For clearness of thought, then, we wish a minimum of pleasure and pain. On the other hand, when we are experiencing considerable pleasure or pain, our thoughts are confused ; and we cannot carry on any lengthy and connected thought, to say the least, under such circumstances. These facts naturally led a school who regarded pleasure as a form of cognition to regard it as confused thought. We can readily see the psychology that lies back of Spinoza’s regarding the state of perfection as devoid of pleasure altogether, or, at least, as attended only by “calm acquiescence,” and other like terms which seem to suggest a state of physical and mental comfort, quite free from any very strong affective content. The happiness which attends a state of intellectual perfection had to be free from pleasure altogether, unless pleasure should be con¬ ceived of as having qualitative distinctions. And this is of course what Descartes and Malebranche try to do — make qualitative distinctions in pleasure — when they have pleasures of purely intellectual origin, and those which, though also psychical, are due to the stimulation of the mind by the animal spirits. 3. While we read in works of fiction of people exuberant with “the joys of mere living,” “feeling how good it is just to be alive,” all will agree that the great bulk of pleasure experienced is due to some extrinsic cause or other. It may be that the pleasure is caused by a beautiful painting or some sublime music; it may be due to a good cigar or a box of chocolate creams; or, indeed, to the sight of a brave or generous action. Again, it may be caused by an image of some past event that arises in the mind; or it may be due to egotistical self-congratulation on some fine quality which we fancy that we possess. In any case, it has a definite extrinsic cause, external to the pleasure itself, and this is some form of cognitive content. The affective tone is referred to some definite sensa¬ tion or image as its cause. Now, if we accept the definition of pleasure as a sense of some per¬ fection, it seems to follow from the examples cited in the preceding para¬ graph, that the “perfection” may be of a personal character. One may derive pleasure from the consciousness of one’s own powers, or the per¬ fection may be due to an external object, and have nothing to do with one’s own perfection at all. At least this is the wav the matter appeared to Wolff. The writers previous to Leibniz did not consider the question whether perfection had to be one’s own to produce pleasure. It is probable THE PERFECTIONISTS 13 that they had the Aristotelian definition in mind,1 and by “consciousness of perfection,” so far as they had thought the matter out, they meant the conscious exercise of one’s capacities in the way for which they are fitted. However, their ambiguity led Wolff, justifiably enough, to derive the other view from them. The inadequacy for psychological purposes of such a view as that advanced by Wolff has been pointed out very forcibly by Hamilton. It is equally barren for ethical purposes. How pleasure can possibly be a guide to moral conduct in any way if it is incited quite as much by external objects which have no obvious ethical relation¬ ship to one, as by one’s own moral perfections (and, in the case of pain, by one’s own moral imperfections), it is hard to see. With all the school a perfect parallel between happiness and perfection is assumed. Happiness is the state of consciousness that accompanies perfection. This agreeable feeling needs not to be present all of the time? but whenever one thinks of one’s perfection it should be present. No difficulty about the perfect identity between happiness and the conscious¬ ness of perfection seems to have been raised. Upon the relationship of happiness and pleasure, and of pleasure to the emotions, there was some difference of opinion. To all of the school, however, the state of perfection involved, as one of its main characteristics, clearness of insight. Rational judgments, clear and distinct thoughts, were exceedingly prominent in the beatific vision of every rationalist. A. DESCARTES Descartes describes pleasure as the “feeling or sense of some per¬ fection.” Pleasure and pain are not very closely defined. As synony¬ mous with “pleasant,” we have such words as “agreeable” and “useful” (convenable) and even bien. Chatouillement seems sometimes to mean sensual pleasure, and sometimes the cause of it.2 It is associated with two of the passions, la joie and V amour — or rather is their cause, it is perhaps better to say — and furnishes the impulse to desire. Pain, in like manner, is associated with la tristesse and la haine, and furnishes the impulse to desire in the negative sense. Descartes distinguishes three different types of pleasure: (1) an initial feeling {sentiment), upon the presence of which joy and desire follow, due to external stimulation; (2) an agreeable passion = joy; (3) a purely 1 Cf., Sir William Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics , II, 461 f. 2 Cf., e. g., Passions, XCIV. The Passions is cited by the section numbers in Roman numerals; the correspondence is cited from the edition of Victor Cousin ( = C.) and Adam and Tannery (=A. & T.). 14 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS psychical experience which the mind has independently of the body. It is with the last two, of course, that we are mainly concerned in the study of ethics. The passions are distinctly psychical states, but are due to the action of the body upon the mind. In Descartes’ physiological account the animal spirits, which pass through the nerves, are supposed to impinge upon the pineal gland, or conarium, the principal seat of the soul; and, in consequence of this agitation from without, the various passions are experienced in the soul. Since the passions are due to the violent stimu¬ lation of the animal spirits, and the mind in experiencing them is liable not to be working in an orderly manner, the passions are confused ideas in the mind.1 For the same reason, the real amount of pleasure contained in a passion is liable to be vastly exaggerated. Moreover, since this pleas¬ ure is at best due only to bodily perfection, which is temporary in character, these bodily pleasures must be submitted to the scrutiny of the reason, in order not to become rated too highly. Passions, however, though liable to be overrated, do have a value. They are all good in their nature ; the only thing that we need fear is their wrong use or excess.2 Indeed, in the concluding section of the Passions he seems to allot to them a larger part of the pleasure of life than in other passages in his works. Here he says that, while the mind has pleasures of its own apart from the body, yet most of the pleasures of this life are due to them, and most of the pains as well. So that the function of the reason is so to direct them as to obtain the most pleasure that can be derived from them. Opposed to the passions, however, in being much more permanent, and more clearly perceived, are the pleasures of the mind itself. The mind is secure in the possession of these. Under this head, apparently, would come most of those pleasures which the English school, quoting Addison, call “pleasures of the imagination,” and all pleasures due to the action of the mind itself, not directly dependent upon sense stimula¬ tion. Thus, in the letter to the queen of Sweden3 he declares that the exercise of our free will — which is purely a mental act with Descartes — affords “a pleasure beyond comparison more sweet, more lasting, and substantial than all that come from any other source.” 1 C., X, 5, 63; A. & T., IV, 602 f.; V, 85; Principes, § 190 (A. & T., IX, 31 1 f.). 2 Passions, CCXI. 3 Quoted from The Philosophy 0} Descartes, by H. A. P. Torrey; cf. also Pas¬ sions, CXLVII, CXLVIII; C., IX, 214, 234; A. & T., IV, 267, 294; C., IX, 371- 78; A. & T., IV, 351-57. THE PERFECTIONISTS 15 Happiness ( beatitude ) consists of the conscious possession of all the perfection of which we are capable. This is mainly to be found in intel¬ lectual pleasures. He is, however, by no means a hedonist, even of a highly intellectual type, for he takes great pains to explain that he does not regard happiness as the highest good, though he says that it is very closely connected with it, and is the contentment or satisfaction of mind which results from its possession. By the end of our action we must understand both; for the highest good is undoubtedly that which we ought to propose to ourselves as the end in all our actions; and the contentment of mind which springs from it, being the attraction which makes us seek it, is also with good reason called our end.1 The supreme good is therefore virtue , the possession of all the good (i. e., perfection) of which we are capable.2 The inducement to seek this is beatitude , and possession of the highest good involves this also. Virtue alone is sufficient to make us happy in this life.3 One should, of course, by means of the reason, carefully evaluate all the different pleasures suggested by the passions, and desire to obtain them so far as he is able to get them. Reason teaches us that the sine qua non for happiness is calmness and acquiescence of mind, and that in this alone, and in the intellectual pleasures obtainable by everyone, true happiness may be found, quite independently of any physical pleasures; nay, even our pains upon the physical and passionate side may afford us intellectual pleasure in the mind itself.4 To obtain beatitude three things are necessary: (1) to use the mind in the best way possible to find out what ought to be done; (2) to carry out everything that reason dictates regardless of passions and appetites; (3) to desire nothing beyond one’s own capacities. The last two pre¬ scriptions, Descartes thought, are really involved in the first one. If one clearly sees what he ought to do, he will do it. This, of course, follows upon his treatment of the passions as confused ideas; if they are clearly perceived by the reason and given their true value, one will not be tempted to act upon them at the wrong time, since he will also behold the greater attractiveness in beatitude , which accompanies virtue. And if one per- 1 Torrey, op. cit., 332 f.; C., IX, 219; A. & T., IV, 275; cf. also C., IX, 237; A. & T., 305. ^ C., IX, 225 f.; X, 60 f.; A. & T., IV, 283 f.; V, 81 ff. 3 C., IX, 214; A. & T., IV 266 f. 4 Passions, CXLVII, gives an instance of this of a rather low sort; while C., IX, 231-34 (A. & T., IV, 292-94), shows this by pointing out the transcendent social and religious pleasures. i6 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS ceives that something is beyond one’s power to obtain, one will not desire it.1 Descartes recognizes a much larger social content in his happiness than any of his perfectionist successors, except perhaps Malebranche. Love is a large source of pleasure to us ; and in his idea of love we identify ourselves with the beloved object in a way that almost seems to suggest some of our modern ideas of the social self. Love causes us to regard ourselves and the objects of our affection as a whole of which we are only a part — sometimes much the less important part. If this object is some¬ thing which one considers less important than one’s self, like a flower or a bird, one would not make great sacrifices for it; but if one thinks of it as vastly more important — as one’s prince or one’s country, for example — one would not hesitate to give up one’s life for its sake.2 Greatest of all is our love for God. Regarding him as the source of all perfection, and loving him as such, one would not hesitate to abandon all to his will, and have no other passion than to do what is agreeable to him;3 from this we shall get a satisfaction of mind vastly superior to the pleasures of the senses. This love of God with Descartes is of a distinctly affective char¬ acter, and is active. The distinction between the cognitive and affective processes, upon which modern psychology lays so much emphasis, Descartes did not have very clearly in mind. The distinction which most concerned Des¬ cartes was that which he made between the action of the mind independ¬ ently of the body, and that occasioned by the body. For this reason we must not press the charge of reducing pleasure and emotion to cognitive terms too strongly with reference to Descartes. The tendency of the mathematical method was clearly in that direction; but Descartes’ emo¬ tions of the soul seem to be as genuine a part of reality as any other intel¬ lectual content. It is only the passions, due to the action of the body, which are confused. And so long as the mathematical method was used only in the manner of Descartes, the tendency to reduce feeling to intellect was in no danger of reaching the absurd lengths which we shall discover in the case of Spinoza. In Descartes’ position we find the main points of the perfectionist position stated in their original form. Pleasure is the consciousness of some perfection. It is always psychical, and is due either to bodily or 1 C., IX, 212 f.; A. & T., 265 f.; cf. Professor Max Heinze, Die Sittenlehre des Descartes, 15 f. 2 C., X, 15 f.; A. & T., V, 611 f. 3 C., IX, 234; A. & T., IV, 294. THE PERFECTIONISTS 17 to purely intellectual origin. It furnishes the initial spring to action. Happiness is composed of pleasures, and is at the same time due to the consciousness of the possession of all the perfection of which we are capable. Happiness and virtue are so closely related that it is scarcely necessary to distinguish between them, both being concerned with per¬ fection. The difficulties involved in the combination of pleasure, happi¬ ness, and virtue under the conception of perfection have not yet become apparent. While the passions are regarded as confused thought, the mathematical method has not been developed far enough to lead to the classification of all feeling in this manner, nor to lead to a narrowing of the social content in morality.1 B. MALEBRATS CHE The philosophy of Malebranche as a whole represents an attempt, not only to bring Cartesianism into full harmony with the Roman Catholic faith but to cause it to afford a satisfactory philosophical statement of the doctrines of the church and thus take the place of scholasticism. As a devout Christian, Malebranche wished to make his philosophical beliefs serviceable in the expression and interpretation of religion. His treat¬ ment of pleasure and pain is actuated by this motive. God is the efficient cause of everything which comes to pass. He is therefore the cause of our sensations and feelings. He has implanted within us a desire for pleasure and an aversion to pain. This is in order that we may seek what is good, and avoid what is evil. He goes on to identify pleasure with the good, and pain with the evil.2 Pleasure and pain are thus the immediate springs to action, and also enable us to dis¬ tinguish good from evil. Thus far, Malebranche seems to be a thoroughgoing hedonist. The difference, however, is not far to seek. Perfection is the summnm bonum. To have perfection is to share in universal order. It is in order that we 1 The question is sometimes raised as to whether we are to accept Descartes’ ethical statements at their face value, or whether they are to be thought of as written mainly to please the distinguished ladies to whom they are addressed, and as con¬ cealing his real thought rather than expressing it. It must be admitted that Des¬ cartes was a rare artist at paying compliments; but his ethical presentation seems to the present writer quite in general agreement with his philosophy as a whole, so far as he has developed it. His desire that his letters on ethics should be read only by those to whom they were addressed is hardly an indication that he was concealing his real thought in them, but exactly the opposite. He was expressing himself frankly upon a field that he felt to be delicate, and he did not care that his enemies should see what he had written. 2 Recherche de la verite, II, 79. i8 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS may obtain this that God has given us pleasures and pains. So pleasures and pains are not of value merely as such, but because through them we discern and desire perfection. In order to lead us to desire to share in this order, God has given us certain tendencies, all of which, when suc¬ cessful, produce in us feelings of pleasure. These are: (i) curiosity; (2) self-love; (3) benevolence.1 Self-love divides itself into two parts — the love of one’s enlargement or perfection, and the love of pleasure and happiness. The two should be in harmony. The contemplation of per¬ fection evokes a pleasurable response. The blessed love divine perfec¬ tions, God as he is, because the view of these perfections pleases them. “For, man having been made to know and love God, it is necessary that the sight of all that is perfect affords pleasure to us. ”2 Besides these natural inclinations, we also have passions, which are also instruments to prompt us in the right direction, when properly employed. To the passions, which are due to bodily origin, as well as to the body and its pleasures in general, Malebranche, however, does not make as liberal con¬ cessions as Descartes.3 The naivete of Malebranche ’s thought is evidenced by his ability to make rational self-love and benevolence both innate springs in the nature of man, and yet seemingly feel no problem as to their reconciliation. The fact that he does not use a mathematical mode of exposition gave him freer play than others of the school, and enabled him to give pleasure and feeling a larger part in perfection than he otherwise could have done. No sharp antithesis between pleasure and duty could arise in the mind of a man who regarded the consciousness of both to be due to the direct and immediate activity of God ! His free mode of exposition and wide sympathies give him a wider vision and a deeper recognition of the claims of pleasure, feeling, and happiness than any other of his school. In freely recognizing the worth of both physical and intellectual pleasures, and in making pleasure the spring to action and a factor in the discernment of good and evil, as well as in his recognition of the pleas¬ ures of both self-love and benevolence, this comprehensiveness is evidenced. On the other hand, he failed to appreciate the difficulties that a recognition of these elements elicits, probably on account of the inevitable obscurantism which seems ever to be the fate of philosophy when it is employed as an instrument for the statement and expression of religious doctrines. Failure to choose good and do right, and thus attain perfection, is not, however, due to wrong feelings, but to lack of intellectual discernment. 1 Recherche de la verite, II, Book IV. 2 Ibid., II, 40. 3 Henri Joly, Malebranche, 266 ff. THE PERFECTIONISTS 19 This occurs when we fail to perceive that God is the cause of our pleasures, and are thus led to seek pleasure as something immediately obtainable by us upon our own responsibility, instead of being something for which we must depend upon God. Under such circumstances self-love becomes the irreconcilable enemy of perfection and virtue.1 Self-love, the desire to be happy, is characteristic of saints and sinners alike; the difference simply is that the former see where it truly lies, while the latter seek after phantasms.2 A peculiar application of the doctrine of occasionalism occurs where Malebranche says that it is an act of injustice for us to produce movements in the body which force God, acting according to the universal laws of nature, to give us pleasures where they are not consonant with the divine order, and we do not deserve them. Such action on our part must inevitably expose us ultimately to his punishment.3 Reason is the guide which directs us in the search of true pleasures and leads us to God. It is reason which enables us to “see all things in God,” as their efficient cause and support. In the discernment of perfec¬ tion, both reason and feelings seem to co-operate. Reason discovers the good for us, and pleasure enables us to recognize it as such, and to enjoy and desire it.4 Any well-worked-out account of the functional relationship between thought and feeling either in reasoning or in volition we, of course, cannot find in Malebranche; but we must credit him with considerable acuteness in perceiving that both processes in some way involve an inti¬ mate union of the two. As compared with Descartes, Malebranche makes the affective side rather more prominent. “Love” is a word which he is constantly using as the explanation of our actions, and by it he clearly means a sentiment, and not something so devoid of feeling as Spinoza’s “intellectual love of God.” Both Malebranche and Descartes, of course, have the same general attitude toward mind and body. The mind is more perfect than the body, and shares in the divine perfection to at least a larger extent. Both regard the passions as the source of confused ideas; and both look to the reason to enable us to avoid the mistakes into which they are liable to lead us. Both adopt the same psychological and physiological expla¬ nation for this. Descartes makes the perfection of the body rather a larger content of perfection as a whole than does Malebranche, as has already been noted; but Malebranche makes love and the more refined 1 Traite de morale, 30, 72. 2 Traite, 263. 3 Recherche de la verite, II, 76; cf. also Janet and Seailles, History 0} the Prob¬ lems 0} Philosophy, English trans., II, 289. 4 Traite, 21 and footnote 6, 45. 20 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS spiritual pleasures much more prominent in his account than does Des¬ cartes. He recognizes fully as large a social content in morality as does Descartes, and has an explanation for this in making benevolence one of the fundamental principles of our nature. He is also less friendly to Stoicism than Descartes.1 As compared with Descartes, we find Malebranche equally appre¬ ciative of the moral claims of our fellow-men upon us. To Malebranche, however, the measure of moral value is chiefly religious. He distinguishes two kinds of society: a society devoted to the attainment of transient and perishable goods, and one “ governed by reason, sustained by faith, subsisting in the communion of true goods, whose object is a blessed life for eternity.”2 Beatitude is distinctly social in its nature. The heavenly Jerusalem is a city, and its joys are to be shared with the saints and the blessed Trinity. Malebranche ’s conception of “seeing all things in God” is not sufficiently pantheistic to preclude a social state in which a com¬ munity of free spirits are united in mutual love with one another and with the Deity. In Malebranche ’s presentation, then, we have largely the same defi¬ nitions of pleasure and beatitude as in Descartes. These, however, are less sensuous and more intellectual and religious in their nature. Though widely conscious of the social nature of happiness and duty, Malebranche insists upon making the thought of a future state of eternal blessedness the final standard by which to govern ourselves in all our social relation¬ ships. C. SPINOZA Malebranche, as we have seen, was interested in securing in ration¬ alism a medium for the expression of the doctrines of his church. He also seems to have been a man with broad sympathies, and was ready to allot a considerable content to feeling in human activity, so far as the method of his treatment admitted — and he did not adopt a rigidly mathe¬ matical mode of exposition. It is in Spinoza that we find the mathemati¬ cal method carried to its farthest development. In his case rationalism was the first interest: he had no religious affiliations which were dear to him, and, as a member of a despised and persecuted race, living a com¬ paratively solitary life, it is not strange that he did not feel so strong social sentiments; so neither of these considerations influenced him in opposition to the general tendency of the school to reduce all the contents of conscious¬ ness to cognitive terms and to deduce their conclusions in mathematical fashion. 1 Recherche de la verite, Book IV, chap. x. 3 Traite , 184. THE PERFECTIONISTS 21 It is not difficult for psychologists to unite either thought or feeling with volition, making one continuous process out of the two, provided the remaining factor is ignored. It is when the attempt is made to fuse all three into one process that the difficulties arise. Consequently, Spinoza found little difficulty in proclaiming that “will and understanding are the same;”1 but, as we shall see, it was not so easy for him to regard feelings as nothing other than confused thought. Pleasure and pain have to arise in consciousness as peculiar forms of cognition. Logically deducible from the definition of a thing is its conatus sui perserverandi , its endeavor to persist in its own being. But since all finite beings have this endeavor, and at the same time are finite, and not self-sufficient, they impinge upon one another in the assertion of their conatus, and each is necessarily determined at times in its action by causes lying outside of its own essence, and is passive. Now, perfection for Spinoza means enlargement or persistence in one’s own being.2 Changes in the condition of our conatus attract our attention. We are conscious of an increase in perfection as pleasure, and of the reverse as pain. The consciousness of the conatus itself persisting as further activity, and guided in its direction by pleasure or pain, is desire. From these three — pleasure, pain, and desire — Spinoza proceeds to account for our entire affective nature, as combinations of these with various cognitive elements.3 Spinoza thus makes a double abstraction. He abstracts the agreeable element out of our various feelings, and assumes that this is all that is unique and distinctive about them. He further assumes that this agreeable (or disagreeable) phase is simply a cognition. He recognizes nothing in pleasure and pain but a kind of cognition, and he recognizes nothing in the various emotions and sentiments but the fusion of pleasure and pain with images and ideas. When the mind is active, it always experiences pleasure, since it is always striving for its own enlargement and perfection. It may also receive pleasure when it is passive, since the effects of external stimula¬ tion may happen to be in accordance with its welfare. 4 Furthermore, the reason itself may evoke emotion, and seems to do so in carrying its dictates into action, at least part of the time.5 1 Ethica, II, xlix, Cor. 2 Ethica, IV, viii. 3 Love, for instance, is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause. ( Ethica , III, xiii, Cor.) 4 Ethica , III, lviii, lix. s In this we are reminded somewhat of Kant’s employment of reverence as an emotion induced by the action of the reason. 22 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS The positive value of pleasure and emotion, according to Spinoza’s account, seems then to be to indicate the direction of advancement toward perfection, and thus guide the conatus in its activity. They are thus at the same time cognitive and volitional — two terms which mean the same with him. There is nothing unique or distinctive about feeling, as com¬ pared with thought. It is distinguished from it only by being confused , while pure thought is clear and distinct. Thus feeling is a mark of imper¬ fection and finiteness. The ideal condition in a universe conceived in geometrical terms must, of course, be static. So we are not surprised to find that Spinoza’s beatitude is a state of absolute rest. In attaining this bliss one must, of course, be active, and successively pass to higher states of perfection. During this transition one must, of course, experience pleasures. But as one advances higher into the ether, we should expect that one ’s pleasures would become more refined, more intellectual, more clear and distinct, and less confused. Finally, when the realm of beatitude is reached, we should expect one’s feeling of pleasure to be altogether dissolved in the clear, cold light of reason. Along the line of Spinoza’s argument, this is the logical conclusion. Beatitude and the intellectual love of God ought to be absolutely devoid of any affective content whatsoever. But Spinoza was not a sufficiently bloodless man to be consistent with this logical conclusion of his argument. In his description of the blessed state expressions slip in which have a very suspicious emotional warmth. Even to God himself this impious logician ascribes clearly affective ele¬ ments — confused thoughts!1 That there can be little social content to morality or any high conception of duty in such a system inevitably follows. The Political Treatise sets out to demonstrate all social content from the principle of self-preservation and enlargement. The only duty that one owes to society is to look out for one’s self, and the pantheistic conceptions simply serve as a support to reinforce one in this determination.2 His mysticism, so far as he has applied it to conduct, is only in the inductive phase, where one abstracts oneself from everything in the way of social obligations to lose one’s identity in God, rather than in the later, deductive phase, where one loves all the 1 E. g., in Etkica V, xxxv, the term gaudet, and in xxxvi, laetitia, are used in reference to God, though in the latter case with an apology. In xlii the mind rejoices {gaudet) when in the state of beatitude, and its “calm acquiescence” suggests rather a state of pleasant repose, than one of pure thought, absolutely devoid of feeling. 2 Where Spinoza mentions benevolence and gratitude among the emotions, it is clear from the references which he gives that he does not regard them as at all dis¬ interested. ( Ethica , III, xxxiv, xxxv.) THE PERFECTIONISTS 2 3 creation as identical with one in God.1 To be sure, the content which Spinoza attempts to deduce from his premises geometrically is larger than his logic will admit of, and the system breaks down here, just as it does in his treatment of beatitude.2 My point simply is that, so far as Spinoza is true to his method — and he aims to be true to it throughout — his attempt to reduce feeling to cognitive terms results in the exclusion of all but purely egoistic considerations in morals. Identification of one’s self with God is not egoistic in one sense, but in another sense it is the quintessence of egoism. And it is in the way that ignores duties to others, because of one’s identity with God, that Spinoza’s system works out. Beatitude, therefore, at the close of the Ethics , seems to be wholly an individualistic affair. It is as attainable by a Simeon Stylites sitting upon his pillar, as by a Francis of Assisi busied with labor for his fellow-men. The beatitude of Malebranche, as we have seen, is of a distinctly social character. That at the close of Spinoza’s Ethics is entirely individual¬ istic. There is nothing in the conception to suggest that the presence of others is necessary for its enjoyment. In Spinoza’s account we find pleasure and feeling described in purely cognitive terms, as confused thought. They are valuable guides to action in the attainment of perfection, but when this state has been reached, the logic of the mathematical method requires that beatitude be described as wholly intellectual, and quite devoid of affective contents. Such a beatitude is distinctly individualistic in character, and in this respect furnishes a sharp contrast to the thought of Descartes and Malebranche. D. LEIBNIZ Leibniz was more of a man of affairs than any of his predecessors in the perfectionist school, and in some respects his presentation of pleasure and happiness represents a distinctly more modern spirit. On the other hand, the narrowing tendency of rationalism has advanced farther with him in some ways than with Descartes and Malebranche. His freer method of exposition and wider outlook upon life kept his presentation from 1 Cf. Paul Hermant, “Les Mystiques,” Revue de synthese historique, June, 1905 (end). 2 E. g., when he says that every man that follows virtue will desire others to have the same good that he himself possesses {Ethics, IV, xxxvii), that he will render back to others love and kindness for hatred and and contempt (xlvi), and that the love of God will be fostered in proportion as we conceive that a greater number of men are rejoicing in it (V, xx). Such passages lead us to see that Spinoza had a larger social sense than his logic admitted of; but the ideal described at the end of V is wholly individualistic. 24 PLEASURE IN NON -HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS being so narrow as that of Spinoza, but it evidences the inevitable result of setting up perfection as the moral ideal, and attempting to define pleasure, happiness, and the whole content of morality in terms of a single conception.1 Pleasure is described as the perception of some perfection. The perfection must have been sufficient to be notable, to afford pleasure, properly so called.2 In the Nonveaux essais he seems to adopt the Pla¬ tonic idea that pleasure must always be preceded by antecedent pain, of which it is the relief. However, the antecedent pain may have been very faint, even petite , while the ensuing pleasure may be great and profound.3 In this fact, that we can experience great pleasure subsequent to only slight pain, we perceive the goodness and wisdom of the Creator. Here there seems to be an inconsistency in Leibniz’ definition of pleas¬ ure. If pleasure arises only subsequent to preceding pain, how can the pleasure be greater than the antecedent pain ? An effect cannot be greater than its cause. In having recourse to the distinction between clear and confused ideas, complicated as it is in his case by the doctrine of petites perceptions , is not Leibniz obscuring the issue, and failing to see that if the pain is confused, the subsequent pleasure must be also ? Professor Dewey calls attention to this feature of Leibniz’ doctrine of pleasure, and remarks that Leibniz, “ accepting and emphasizing the very same fact that served Schopenhauer as a psychological base of pessimism, uses it as the foundation stone of optimism. ”4 One is inclined to feel, however, that here Schopenhauer is justified rather than Leibniz, if we hold strictly to this definition of pleasure. Perhaps the best way to interpret Leibniz’ doctrine of pleasure at this point, in order to reconcile it with the rest of his system, is to suppose that he regarded antecedent pain or uneasiness as necessary to initiate activ¬ ity; but that the activity, once begun, is pleasant not only as affording relief from antecedent pain, but also for its own sake. In other words, we suppose that Leibniz recognized activity as pleasant, after it has once been initiated, although he held the Platonic view as to its origin. In the Nouveaux essais , at least, good and evil are very explicitly 1 The chief sources from which we have to derive Leibniz’ ethical views are occasional passages in the Nouveaux essais and a few fragments published by Ger- hardt in Vol. VII of his works. It is a matter of great regret that Leibniz never fully worked out his ethical system. 2 I. e., petites perceptions are not pleasure {Works, V, 149; New Essays, English trans., 167.) The citations to the original are to the edition of Gerhardt. 3 V, 1 5 1 f . ; New Essays, trans., 170. * Leibniz’ New Essays — A Critical Exposition, 114. (Chicago, 1888.) THE PERFECTIONISTS 25 defined in terms of pleasure and pain.1 In this work, where Leibniz shows the influence of Locke, a number of statements sound very hedon¬ istic. These are not to be taken, however, as indicating a departure from his previous views, and those of his school in general. Descartes had said that pleasure and happiness are very closely connected with the highest good, and are the inducement that leads us to seek it; Malebranche made similar and even stronger statements; and Spinoza even made pleasure and pain determine the direction of our activity, and said that “we deem a thing good because we desire it,”2 but this simply meant with them that it is through pleasure and pain that we recognize perfection. Leibniz’ thought is the same. The only difference is that he is inclined to have more confidence in pleasure and pain, and gives them perhaps more of a sensuous content — certainly, more than Malebranche. The reason why we do not always act in the direction of the highest good (perfection) and the greatest happiness, is that our ideas are confused. We reason in words without having the object clearly in mind. Our thoughts are not both clear and distinct. We often have to act hastily, without having time to think out the results of what we do, and so perceive the pleasure and pain (and hence the perfection) involved. We act in the way that affords immediate pleasure which we can perceive clearly and distinctly, and not in the direction in which our perception is confused, although greater pleasure (and perfection) lies in that way. The remedy is, of course, to think out a line of conduct clearly and distinctly, once for all, and habituate ourselves to act thus ever after, even though upon subse¬ quent occasions our thought may be confused.3 Leibniz here offers an interesting contrast to Spinoza. With the latter, pleasure always is con¬ fused thought, which is to be reduced to the clear and distinct ideas of the reason and lose its affective characteristics; with Leibniz, thought is confused in thinking of an action, unless the pleasure involved in it is clearly and distinctly perceived. Happiness is defined as a condition of permanent pleasure. It is not a state of perpetual quietude, however, but one of unceasing activity. It is not eternal in the sense that a logical abstraction is eternal, being time¬ less; it is rather perpetual within the temporal series. It is not a sum of pleasures, but a continual progress to higher and ever higher stages of pleasure and perfection. One can never attain absolute perfection; that would be to lose one’s identity in God. But this would be an impos- 1 Works, V, 149; New Essays, trans., 167. 2 Ethics, III, ix, note, xxxix, note; IV, viii. 3 Works, V, 170-73, 193; New Essays, trans., 190-93, 216. 26 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS sibility for Leibniz, not merely because he wished to remain orthodox, but because it would contradict the essential principles of his system for two monads to lose their identity and become one monad.1 Leibniz’ view of beatitude thus seems to be quite in accordance with his monadology in that it preserves individualism, and with his theology as well. We cannot, therefore, agree with Mr. Russell that", except in order to be orthodox, his ethics (at least so far as concerns our problem) would have been similar to Spinoza’s.2 Professor Jodi’s charge that his ethics, as it is, is too similar for consistency with the rest of his thought, seems to me more justified.3 The explanation simply is that Leibniz had not fully worked out his own thought, and was naturally influenced by the most complete ethical exposition of the rationalistic school. As an account of individual development, Leibniz’ account of pleasure, happiness, and perfection appeals to one very strongly. His moral goal is a state of activity, such as one would expect an active man of the world to present. It is filled with more of the spirit of our own age and nation than the ideal of any other rationalist. Its deficiency comes in that there is no place in it that is very prominent for duty to occupy, nor the social demands that others have a right to make upon us, except so far as they coincide with the interests of our own happiness and development. The account is also naive in failing to perceive any opposition between pleasure and perfection. Its social deficiencies are not so great as they logically might be expected to be, for one reason. Leibniz, in his description of the perfection which affords pleasure, makes a certain place for the pleasures of a social sort by saying that the perfection which affords pleasure may be that of another, as well as one’s own, or even, he adds, the perfection of a lifeless pro¬ duction, such as a painting or other work of art.4 The inadequacy of such a treatment of social sentiments upon the one hand, and its incon¬ sistency with perfectionism as a whole, were not observed by Wolff, but later furnished a problem for Mendelssohn. E. WOLFF Wolff is largely a follower of Leibniz. His fuller exposition and lucid style, however, made his writings popular, and his use of the mathe¬ matical method caused his presentation to be definite, as well as complete. 1 Works, V, i8of. ; VII, 86; VI, 598 fT. ; Mollat, Lesebuch zur Geschichte der Staatswissenschaft , go. 2 A Critical Examination 0} the Philosophy of Leibniz , 202. (London and Cam¬ bridge, 1900.) 3 Geschichte der Ethik , I, 356 f. 4 Works, VII, 86. THE PERFECTIONISTS 27 For these reasons his importance in the history of philosophy is perhaps greater than that to which any peculiar merit or originality would entitle him. The mathematical method leads in his case to the limitation of pleasure to confused ideas, as it did with Spinoza. It also causes the inconsistencies into which he falls to become quite obvious to the reader, and exposes the difficulties into which the school had fallen more patently than had been the case with any previous writer. In thus fully working out the rationalistic conception of perfectionism, Wolff revealed to later writers its weak points, and opened the way for new efforts at repairing and modifying it, until, after first making similar efforts, Kant finally erected a quite different and much more brilliant moral edifice. Wolff attributes to the soul as vis representativa an inherent tendency to change its condition in the direction of more perfect representation. For realizing this, it has two faculties — the cognitive and appetitive. The confused ideas of sensation, memory and imagination, together with the lower appetites which apprehend the good under confused ideas of pleasure and pain, go to make up the sensibility, and are opposed to the will with its clear and distinct, rational idea of the good, and the higher cognitive faculties which co-operate with it. Pleasure is the perception of some perfection. It is always confused.1 It seems, however, to be the necessary spring to action, at least upon the part of the sensibility.2 He follows Leibniz in saying that the perfection perceived need not be one’s own; it may be the perfection of a painting, a clock, another person; and the perception of God affords the highest pleasure of all.3 Thus, as Sir William Hamilton has shown, pleasure with Wolff seems to be regarded as an attribute of the object.4 In one respect this view of pleasure was profitable for ethical purposes. Pleasure upon this view did not have to be wholly selfish. There could be such a thing as disinterested pleasure. Thus a certain social content could be gotten into morality, even if it has to depend upon pleasure to some extent to initiate action, and regards happiness as the necessary reward of ethical action. This leaves room for the words oder anderer in the rational law of action: “Thue, was dich und deinen oder anderer Zustand vollkom- 1 Psychologia Empirica, §536; cf. §511, end. Sometimes pleasure seems to be distinguished rather as an effect of this perception, but the distinction does not seem to be important and is not long maintained. Cf. Thun und Lassen , II, §49. 2 Gott, Welt, Seele, etc., II, § 133. 3 Gott, Welt, Seele, etc., II, §129; Thun und Lassen, §§678, 691; Philosophia Empirica, §§512 ff . 4 Lectures on Metaphysics, II, 463. 28 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS mender machet: unterlass, was ihn unvollkommender machet.”1 Such a description of pleasure and feeling is, of course, lamentably deficient in leaving nothing by which the unique features of selfhood can be dis¬ tinguished. Any perfection affords pleasure, no matter whose. And all perfection seems to afford pleasure in the same way. Thus there is no ethical problem of egoism and altruism in Wolff, because the distinction between ego and alter is not made. Wolff’s description of pleasure and feeling is the most abstract which we have to consider, for this reason. It not only abstracts the agreeable or disagreeable element out of feeling, and assumes that this is all there is to it; it also abstracts the subjective feature — the very characteristic that makes feeling unique and distinctive — and makes pleasure and pain be a part of objects perceived in much the same way that sound and color are projected into the object by common- sense. Pleasure serves two rather conflicting roles in Wolff’s account: (i) it is confused thought, and apprehends imperfectly the perfection which the reason cognizes clearly and distinctly; (2) it is the constituent of which happiness is composed, and happiness is the reward of moral action. The whole moral problem arises from the confused nature of feeling, and the errors into which it leads us.2 The remedy, of course, is to reduce the sensitive appetitus, the seat of pleasure and pain, into agreement with the rational appetitus , which is infallible.3 Since the judgments of the sensibility are confused, and those of the reason infallible, it would seem to be desirable to reduce the former to terms of the latter, extinguish it, as much as may be, and see all things according to the light of the reason. This would have brought Wolff into substantial agreement with Spinoza. Pleasures and pains would be confused ideas; the clearer they become, the less pleasure there would be in them. And such is the thought in some places,4 though never carried to its logical conclusions. On the other hand, he sometimes says that clearer rational discernment affords keener discrimination, and in this way affords the perception of new perfections, and so increases instead of diminishes pleasure.5 This last view seems more in accordance with his ruling thought, and with the view of beatitude, which he takes from Leibniz, which con- 1 Thun und Lassen , § 12; Philo sophia Practica, Part I, chap, ii, esp. §§ 152, 153, 188. 2 Psychologia Empirica , §511. 3 “A ratione nullus proficitur error” {ibid., §500). 4 E. g., Gott, Welt, Seele, etc., II, § 132; Psychologia Empirica, §511 end, §536. 5 Psychologia Empirica, §§ 530-32. THE PERFECTIONISTS 29 sists in an uninterrupted progress in the attainment of new perfections, and not in a static condition of absolute perfection.1 Without attempting to solve, or perhaps even being conscious of, the inconsistencies in his account of pleasure and happiness, the moral ideal with which Wolff leaves us is the perfection of all of our faculties, and to the extent to which this perfection is attained they will be found in perfect harmony. In this way his three definitions of happiness — condition of a permanent joy; perception of uninterrupted progress to higher per¬ fections; conformity to the laws of nature and reason — run together. It is hardly necessary to summarize the palpable inconsistencies in perfectionism which this, its final statement by Wolff, has really failed to overcome. In order to secure the co-ordination of pleasure, happiness, and moral obligation in terms of perfection, pleasure has not only been reduced to confused thought, but has lost its peculiar personal character, and become an attribute of objects. Morality is in the highest sense rational, and yet its performance is attended by pleasure, and its final reward is happiness. These difficulties led to a considerable modification of perfectionism by Mendelssohn, and to still more sweeping changes by Kant. But as these writers were influenced in these alterations largely by British writers, it will be necessary, before taking them up, to pass to the development in Great Britain. 1 Philo sophia Pradica, § 374; Thun und Lassen , § 44. III. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS Several causes, chief among which was the more rapid growth of individualism, led British writers much more quickly to a recognition of the difficulties which oppose the reconciliation of pleasure and happi¬ ness with morality and duty, than was the case upon the continent. British writers, in giving more attention to man as an individual, came to attribute importance to what peculiarly distinguishes one man from another and seems uniquely his own — his impulses and feelings. Conse¬ quently, British treatises were occupied with ethical and psychological topics at a time when the interests of continental writers remained mainly metaphysical.1 Again, the continental mind is more given to conceptual thinking, cares more for logical consistency, is more doctrinaire; and so it naturally sought for, and found satisfaction in, such a concept as perfection. Having found their point of departure in a general concept, perfection, continen¬ tal writers sought to include within it the whole content of morality. They went on to define pleasure very explicitly as the perception of some per¬ fection, and happiness as consciousness of the possession of all the per¬ fection of which we are capable. While at the beginning of the movement, as we have seen, Descartes and Malebranche are largely conscious of social interests, rationalism, having once adopted the conception of perfection as the highest good, and gotten its logical method into efficient working order, refused to recognize either any social content as moral obligation that could not be deduced from perfection, or any pleasures as genuine which could not be subsumed under both it and happiness. The whole rationalistic tendency was therefore to narrow the limits of perfection, happiness, and pleasure, and none of these conceptions could develop very far. On the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon, whose whole disposition is more experimental, and who cares more for immediate “ matters of fact” and “ common-sense ” than for logical deductions, followed the empirical method in ethics, as he has followed it mainly in his science, philosophy, and political government. The British writers did not give an explicit definition to pleasure. They assumed that everyone knows what pleasure 1 While Malebranche and Spinoza both wrote treatises upon ethics, their exposi¬ tions are respectively governed by religious and metaphysical rather than psycho¬ logical considerations. 30 THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 3 1 is; and, while this assumption caused their work to lack precision, it afforded their thought entire freedom of development. As they cared little for concepts, we do not read much in their writings of “ perfection’ ’ after the time of Cumberland. Starting, instead, from immediate sense-expe¬ rience, they were free to discover inductively whatever varieties of pleasure, happiness, and moral obligation lay in their way. With their thought thus afforded free expansion in all directions, they soon came upon a serious opposition. After the English nation refused any longer to regard the church as the arbiter and interpreter of right and wrong, the more conservative of its moral philosophers fell back upon the Stoic conception of natural law, which, they thought, would make moral principles at the same time rational, and not less eternal and immutable than God himself. Such morality was believed at the same time to be existent in the very nature of the universe, and to afford to the individual, then coming to self-con- ciousness, means for the highest realization of his powers and capacities. The social content of this morality was gradually becoming widened, in consequence in part, no doubt, of the nature of the political government, which, if not popular, still afforded some opportunity for the expression of public opinion, especially upon the part of the classes of society to which the ethical writers of the period belonged. Political privileges awakened in some measure feelings of public responsibility. Again, the whole genius of Calvinism, usually the faith of churchman and dissenter alike, tended to emphasize the idea of duty, and to strengthen social sanctions, in a wray. In consequence of these tendencies, morality had acquired a larger content in Great Britain, and was felt to be more authoritative, at least by some of her citizens, than was the case upon the continent. And, though the eighteenth century in some respects represents a lapse from the rigorous sense of duty found in the preceding century, still the idea of the personal character of moral responsibility must have persisted, and the widened social sense of the later century must have impelled a wider extension of the content of this duty. On the other hand, the constantly growing sense, both of the worth and of the motive power of the individual’s own feelings and impulses, was inevitably opposed to the idea of compelling him to submit to the external authority of a traditional morality. When British ethical theorists were thus confronted with the apparent opposition between this traditional morality, which had been regarded in the past as eternal and immutable, and which now had a widened social content, and the newly discovered individual, with his impulses and 32 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS feelings which were thought of as the necessary springs to his action, they had to choose between two alternatives: (i) The old moral content might be frankly thrown overboard, and a new start made, deriving the content of all morality, which should continue to be regarded as genuine, from the impulses and feelings of the individual (which usually meant, from his egoistic pains and pleasures). (2) The attempt might be made to show that the conventional morality, though no longer justifiable on the old arguments, was after all in accordance with the impulses and desires of the individual, and would afford him more satisfaction and pleasure than any other line of conduct possibly could do. The second alternative was, of course, the one adopted by the more conservative thinkers, and it is in this way that we are to interpret the work of Shaftesbury and his successors. The mode of treatment developed into two lines of thought which are to be distinguished : A. The widening of the conception of pleasure by finding new sources and kinds of pleasure, such as the pleasures of the moral sense and of sympathy, in order to effect a reconciliation between the demands of happiness and those of morality. This line of thought concedes that men will not act morally unless they perceive that such action is in the interests of their own happi¬ ness, and seeks, by the introduction of additional pleasures, to prove that this is the case. B. A critical examination of human actions, which went to show that rational self-love, or the desire for happiness, is not a primal impulse in man’s nature, but rather a regulative principle for the direction of impulses which do not always agree with it. At first — e. g., with Butler — this was not used to question the necessity that delib¬ erate action must be in the interests of pleasure and happiness, but merely to admit of other regulative principles, such as conscience and benevo¬ lence, provided these can be shown to be surer means of gaining happiness than the direct pursuit of it by self-love. The aim was thus to minimize the divergence between self-love and morality, and present philosophical arguments to show their ultimate coincidence in the cases where the imme¬ diate divergence cannot be overcome. Later, however, the question arises whether even rational action must be in the interests of self-love. Price thinks that, when the reason has become more fully developed, it will be able to initiate action on its own account; and Brown concludes that moral excellence is a stronger motive in man, even as he is consti¬ tuted at present, than personal pleasure. A noteworthy feature of both movements is that happiness is always assumed to be made up of pleasures. There is no attempt to substitute a refined or intellectualized happiness, distinguished from ordinary happi- THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 33 ness as blessedness or beatitude, such as we find among both rational¬ istic and idealistic writers upon the continent. Happiness is a sum of f pleasures, or a state of continuous pleasurable enjoyment. They never thought, before the time of Whewell, of defining happiness except in terms of pleasure. Their whole effort, instead, was either to discover new kinds of pleasure, or, finally, to question whether pleasure is, after all, the sole motive to action. A. THE ATTEMPTS TO SAVE MORALITY BY WIDENING THE CON¬ CEPTION OF PLEASURE A. SHAFTESBURY Like Descartes, Shaftesbury’s moral ideal is the perfection, or har¬ monious development and co-operation, of man’s faculties. He differs from Descartes, however, in paying less attention to the intellectual side of our nature, and a great deal more attention to the feelings or affections. To secure a proper balance or co-ordination of these is both to secure our highest personal development and happiness, and at the same time to fulfil most completely our social obligations. He distinguishes three kinds of affections. Natural affections lead to the good of the public; self-affections lead only to the private good of the individual; unnatural affections, to neither. Natural affections are more necessary to private pleasure than are the self-affections themselves. We do not enjoy the latter unless they are mixed with the former; even the elemental pleasures of food, drink, and sex are not of much pleasure to us unless we conceive of someone else sharing them with us — else they would be unnatural, and would not even contribute to our own happiness. Now, there is in everyone an end to which everything in his constitu¬ tion must refer. It is with reference to this that his affections must be tested. If they afford him pleasures which aid him to realize this end, they are moral, and otherwise they are not so. To this end if anything, either in his appetites, passions or affections be not conducing, but the contrary; we must own it ill to him. And in this manner he is ill with respect to himself; as he certainly is, with respect to others of his kind, when any such appetites or passions make him in any way injurious to them. Now, if by the natural constitution of any rational creature, the same irregu¬ larities of appetite which make him ill to Others , make him ill also to himself; and if the same regularity of affection which causes him to be good in one sense, causes him to be good also in the other; then is that goodness by which he is useful to others a real good and advantage to himself. And thus virtue and interest may be found at last to agree.1 1 Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit, 44. 34 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS One of the main theses of the essay is to show that this agreement between virtue and interest does take place. He concludes, in heavy type, that “to have the natural and good affections is to have the chief means and power of self-enjoyment;” while “to want them is certain misery and ill.”1 To secure a proper balance between the two good kinds of affections, and to suppress the third kind, is then the moral desideratum. To have the self-affections disproportionately strong is to lose the social pleasures; to have too strong benevolent impulses would, of course, be detrimental to society, if this proved detrimental to the individual’s own welfare, and consequently his ultimate usefulness. As a sort of balance-wheel to regulate the affections, and give additional motivation to the effort to keep them properly co-ordinated, Shaftesbury introduces the moral sense. Without this, as Sidgwick observes,2 a man would still find it to his interest to maintain the balance between the self- and the natural affections; but with it, one has an additional reason for doing so. The consciousness of this harmony or balance itself affords pleasure, and the absence of it affords pain. In this quasi-aesthetic manner Shaftesbury tries to give a more uni¬ versal principle of morality than individual pleasure. Its inadequacy, of course, is obvious enough. He has the same implicit faith that indi¬ vidual self-development, which the continental writers would have called perfection, and which he thinks of as an end toward which everything in our constitution must refer, entirely coincides with the attainment of pleasure and happiness. The difference is that he thinks of activity mainly in terms of feeling, and all his values are feeling values. He does not show the slightest tendency to reduce pleasure and feeling to cognitive terms. He also goes farther than the continental writers in his efforts to show that individual pleasures involve a social content, and that the duties which man owes to society are essential to his own pleasure. He thus has a keener appreciation of the social content of morality as fur¬ nishing a problem for ethics than had any of the perfectionists. Des¬ cartes and Malebranche, to be sure, have a large social sense ; but the reconciliation of social demands with those of the individual did not furnish them with a problem, as it did Shaftesbury. Such is Shaftesbury’s easy reconciliation of perfection, social virtue, and individual pleasure and happiness. Himself a man of singularly genial temperament, he felt little conflict between duty and his own happi- 1 Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit, 139. 2 History of Ethics, 189. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 35 ness. His optimistic reconciliation, however, did not fail to meet with dispute upon the part of his contemporaries. Its weak points were exposed by Mandeville and others, in a trenchant manner.1 B. HUTCHESON Another attempt to find an adequate basis for morality by widening the conception of pleasure was made by Hutcheson, who developed the idea of a moral sense as a special faculty which has for its function the percep¬ tion of virtue and vice, and the feeling of pleasure or displeasure accom¬ panying the perception. At first, in his earliest work, the Inquiry , the moral sense functions in an appreciative manner. The pleasures which it affords are of an aesthetic sort; and, as Scott has pointed out,2 since for Hutcheson beauty seems to mean order, regularity of spatial propor¬ tions, etc., rather than the sensuous pleasures of color, sound, etc., of which he had little appreciation, the morally good seems to afford about the same pleasure as does beauty. In his later works, notably the Pas¬ sions, and still more in his posthumous work, the Moral Philosophy , the moral sense comes to take on more of a cognitive and even rational nature, and to be less a matter of immediate intuition and feeling than was the case in the earlier work. The difference, however, is rather one of empha¬ sis, the present writer is inclined to think, than indicative of a radical change in his system of moral philosophy. The attitude to which Hutcheson throughout remains consistent is that pleasure of some sort is always the spring to action; and that virtue, or obedience to the moral sense, affords the most pleasure and happiness. The moral sense thus is the evaluating factor which appreciates moral values, and affords the greatest pleasure to us of any part of our nature. He ha? worked out a careful argument to prove this thesis in the Pas¬ sions, where he carefully distinguishes the different senses which we have, and compares the pleasures of each. He distinguishes five different kinds of senses, viz.: the external senses — sight, hearing, etc.; the u plea¬ sures of the imagination ,” which arise from regular, harmonious, and uniform objects, novelty, grandeur, etc.; the public sense, which gives a determination to be pleased at the happiness of others, and to be uneasy at their misery; the moral sense, by which we perceive virtue and vice in ourselves and others; and the sense of honor, by which the approbation or gratitude of others is a necessary occasion of pleasure. The first two 1 Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, I, 162 (Edin. ed. 1772). Cf. J. H. Tufts, The Individual and His Relation to Society in the British Ethics oj the Eighteenth Century , Monograph Supplements of Psychological Review, VI, No. 2, p. 14. 2 Francis Hutcheson, by W. R. Scott. 36 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS of these senses are individual and selfish in their nature; their gratification is the object of self-love, and they thus furnish interested pleasure. His argument proceeds carefully to compare and evaluate the pleasures originating from these five sources according to their intenseness and duration. He finds, following Shaftesbury, that the external senses afford little pleasure taken by themselves, unmixed with the pleasures really due to the higher senses. The intellectual pleasures due to the imagina¬ tion are much greater; but still decidedly inferior to those of the last three, which are the source of disinterested pleasures.1 These last are not only superior to the others as regards their intenseness and duration, but are so much superior that they seem to be qualitatively different.2 One will endure the severest pains of the first two kinds of senses for the sake of these higher pleasures.3 In the treatment in the Passions the “ public sense” and the “ sense of honor” seem to be used to buttress the moral sense by affording additional sources of pleasure which reinforce the pleasures of the moral sense, with which they always seem to be in entire agreement, and thus more deci¬ sively throw the balance of pleasure and happiness in favor of morality, as over against the selfish claims of the pleasures which are the object of self-love. In the Moral Philosophy the principle of “calm benevo¬ lence” is used in the same way. It seems to be a principle entirely co¬ ordinate with the moral sense, directing action in the same directions, and affording additional motivation.4 In the same manner, perfection is also employed, especially in the latter work, where the moral perfection of God and one’s own perfection and excellence are sources of pleasure to one.5 Considerations of religion and the perfection which is associated with them in Hutcheson’s mind are not introduced solely for the purpose of indicating additional kinds of pleasure. A morality founded upon the perceptions of a sense, and more especially upon the feelings of pleasure and pain which attend those perceptions, must necessarily lack any means of demonstration or justification other than its own presence in conscious¬ ness. There is no place for a universal standard in such a system. So Hutcheson is obliged to confess: “Everyone judges the affections of others 1 With all of the writers discussed in this section, “disinterested” pleasures are pleasures of a social kind into which considerations of self-love do not enter. 2 Passions, §§5, 6; esp. p. 158. Cf. Moral Philosophy, I, 62, 221 ff. 3 Passions, 142. 4 Cf. Sidgwick, History of Ethics, 201 f. s Moral Philosophy, I, chaps, ix, x. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 37 by his own Sense, so that it seems not impossible that in these Senses men may differ as they do in taste.”1 In the Moral Philosophy he is led to the conclusion that the moral sense requires cultivation, like any other faculty.2 Hutcheson was doubtless conscious that his system thus lacks a universal standard; and we must interpret the attempts to describe the moral sense as a faculty, to ascribe to it perfection and divine approval, and to make it, together with “calm benevolence,” regulating factors which control the other impulses and feelings, as all attempts to ground morality more thoroughly than could be done upon the mere basis of sense-perception and feeling. However this may be, and however much the influence of Butler may have led him to the modification of his earlier presentation, in which the moral sense seemed to serve as an immediate touchstone by which right and wrong could be perceived without reflection,3 the moral sense still remained a faculty analogous to the other senses with pleasure and pain attending its operations, and through these feelings right and wrong are recognized, while the reason is only the passive agent, carrying out the commands of the moral sense,4 If errors occur, these are at least as likely to be due to erroneous judgment upon the part of the reason as to lack of refinement upon the part of the moral sense. Hutcheson’s system employed the conception of pleasure as the basis of moral values and spring to action in a broad, free, and discriminating manner. He is thus able to get a wide social content into morality. His treatment of the pleasures of benevolence and the moral sense suggests the modern conception of a social self, which is broader, as well as deeper and more genuine, than the narrow self of self-love.5 In his system we find pleasure, happiness, virtue, perfection, religion, and man’s social and benevolent impulses working together in perfect harmony. The scheme has excluded purely individual pleasures where these are opposed to social good, and is unaware of any claims of duty, effort, or self-denial that do not afford pleasure and happiness to the agent, taking these last terms in their widened significance. Hutcheson differs from the rationalistic accounts in his recognition of a much wider social content of morality, and in a vastly larger and more discriminating account of pleasure and feeling in their moral aspects. Whereas the rationalists tried to make sense-perceptions and feelings subordinate to rational concepts, Hutcheson makes the moral sense domi- 1 Passions, 234; cf. Scott, op. cit., 283. 4 Moral Philosophy , I, 58-61. 2 I, 58-61. 5 Cf. J. H. Tufts, op. cit., p. 22. 3 Inquiry, Tr. ii, § i, esp. p. 115. 38 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS nate our nature, and regards the reason as an agent employed in carrying out its commands. He excels them in his broader and more compre¬ hensive view of life; he is inferior to them in his lack of a basic rational principle which would furnish a logical and universally valid foundation for ethics, since they came much nearer to this, to say the least, than he did. C. HARTLEY Another attempt to effect the agreement of pleasure and morality by widening the conception of pleasure was made by Hartley. This he sought to do, not so much by seeking new sources and kinds of pleasure, as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done, as by giving an account of the origin of the different kinds of pleasure, which should go to show that social pleasures represent a higher state of development than do physical and purely individual pleasures. He follows Hutcheson in distinguishing different kinds of pleasure, each of which is referred to a “sense,” and in arranging these senses in a hierarchy, with the moral sense supreme above the others. He differs from Hutcheson, however, in two important respects. With Hartley the physical pleasures and pains furnish the source from which all of the others are derived by the mechanism of association. Each sense is more complex than the one below it in the scale, and in general is a better medium for securing the lower type than the inferior one itself.1 Each sense also affords derived pleasures of its own, which are more comprehensive, and afford pleasure and satisfaction to larger aspects of our nature, than the ones below it. The moral sense represents the most complete view of man’s nature, embraces all the pleasures of the lower senses that can be consistently brought into harmony with one another and with it, and thus is the securest means of bringing happiness to the whole of our nature, including the future as well as the present. Self-love, which first seeks only the pleasures of the external senses and those of the imagination, when it becomes rationalized finds its own self annihilation in the moral sense and in the love of God, since in these the very pleasures at which it aims are most completely satisfied.2 Hartley’s argument thus reinforces that of Hutcheson in a significant manner. Hutcheson could only compare the pleasures of the different senses with one another, and try to show that those of morality are greatest. Hartley makes the different senses grow out of each other, and shows that they all have a common end, man’s happiness, and that their occa- 1 Observations on Man , fourth ed. (London, 1830), II, 279 ff. 2 Ibid., II, 282. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 39 sional opposition is simply the opposition of a less highly co-ordinated group of pleasures to a more perfectly co-ordinated one. We are thus able to see why there is an opposition in the nature of man, since he is a developing being, and how it is to be overcome. Another important respect in which Hartley differs from Hutcheson is in viewing these various “ senses” as merely combinations of pleasures and pains, which have to do wholly with the affective side of our nature.1 The moral sense as moral faculty, especially in Hutcheson’s later works, performs distinctly cognitive functions. It perceives good, and therefore experiences pleasure. While Hartley’s presentation makes it clear that pleasures are the immediate springs to action, it is hard to decide just how the intellectual side of our nature combines with them in the moral act, and also how right and duty are discerned. When our action finally becomes perfectly subjected to the moral and religious senses through the principle of association, “duty will at last become a pleasure, and a person be made to love and hate merely because he ought.”2 This makes it clear that duty and pleasure do not now perfectly coincide, and seems to suggest that duty must be apprehended cognitively, and not by the same manner that pleasure is experienced. He does not, however, explain how this is done, and so we are left in doubt as to what is his moral cri¬ terion or standard, how it is experienced, and how it co-operates with pleasure in the moral act. A conspicuous psychological error in Hartley’s account is in regarding pleasure and pain as ideas of much the same nature as other ideas,3 with which they can be associated in such a manner that a cognitive idea may be expected to be attended with the same affective idea whenever it is recalled.4 The attempt to derive the intellectual from the physical pleasures by means of the principle of association is not satisfactory; and he is scarcely more successful in showing how moral and social pleasures are derived from intellectual ones of an egoistic sort. In each case he is obliged to slip in a new content, of whose justification upon the basis of his method we do not feel fully convinced. In this respect Hartley’s relation to succeeding development reminds us of Descartes. He is him¬ self conscious of a wide social and ethical content, but introduces a method that is not adequate enough to cover it. The result is that his successors, 1 Ibid., I, 98 f. 2 Ibid., I, 497 f.; cf. II, 279 k Although his treatment does not always seem consistent with this position, these statements arc very explicit. 3 Ibid., I, pp. ii, iii. 4 Ibid., I, 82 k 40 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS who tried to use his method consistently, and to derive the whole content, both of morality and of pleasure, from simple sense-experiences, inevitably narrowed the content of each in a manner that both contradicts our intro¬ spection and overlooks a large part of our social duties and pleasures. D. HUME We find an illustration of the narrowing tendency of the principle of association when employed to deduce the principles of moral action from immediate impressions of pleasure and pain, in the works of a contempo¬ rary of Hartley — David Hume. In the Treatise the idea seems to be that the good is to be defined in terms of immediate impressions of pleasure and pain, and that practical ideas secure the vividness necessary to become impressions through “ sym¬ pathy,” just as the same takes place in the intellectual sphere through “ custom” or “habit. ” In contrast to Hartley, sympathy is not due to a new combination of pleasures affording a higher and more spiritual form of pleasure than the physical feelings from which it has been derived. It is rather a process through which we feel the same immediate pleasures and pains that others about us feel, as the result of a sort of transference or contagion.1 Two objections to such a theory at once arise. First, it makes no qualitative distinction between purely personal pleasures and pains and those of sympathy. A parent may testify that his feelings have been as acute when he witnessed his child suffering intense physical pain as if, he had suffered it himself; but he could hardly say that his feelings were exactly the same as those of his child. Similarly, one may sympathize with a young man whose fiancee, preferring a wealthier man, has suddenly jilted him; but one’s feelings would not be identical with his, especially in the way one felt toward the lady. Secondly, such an account of sym¬ pathy as the one here described affords no more inducement to relieve the suffering of another person whose misery causes us to suffer through misery rather than simply to turn our attention to other channels and become oblivious of the cause of our suffering. It was doubtless from some sense of such difficulties as these that we find Hume, even in the Treatise , not always consistent with the theory that all moral and social impulses are the result of a sympathy that is simply a matter of affective imitation or contagion. The moral “pleases after a particular manner,”2 and goodness and benevolence are disin- 1 Treatise , Book II, Part I, § xi; cf. J. H. Tufts, op. cit., 38 f. 2 Treatise, Book III, Part I, §ii; cf. Tufts, op. cit., 39 f. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 4i terested.1 In the Enquiry this change of attitude is much more marked. Passages are to be found in which the old view persists, but other passages suggest a quite different view. Sympathy is frequently described here as a distinct emotion or impulse,2 furnishing pleasures of its own which do not need at all to be reduced to egoistic ones. In fact, the doctrine that all our desires are ultimately due to self-love is very strongly attacked.3 Hume thus came to regard the pleasures of sympathy, benevolence, and the moral sense as different in kind from our personal pleasures; and in this later position Hume may be classed among those non-hedonis- tic ethical writers who widened the conception of pleasure so as to include other content than the pleasures of self-love, in order to preserve its agree¬ ment with morality. Though the pleasures of sympathy thus seem to have assumed a uniqueness and qualitative superiority of their own, in Hume’s mind, he never broke entirely free from the limitations which the conception of sympathy and the principle of association gave to the range of his ethical vision, and he is quite unaware of any duties which are not pleasures of some kind, or of any difference between social and moral demands. It is a striking fact that the most extreme of English empiricists is limited in his ethical treatment by the machinery of his method and his conception of sympathy in a way that in its logical effect reminds us more of the rationalists than does the system of any other British writer who comes within the range of this investigation. The attempt to derive moral conduct from simple pleasures and pains by means of the principles of sympathy and association is essentially an attempt to define morality in terms of a few conceptions, viz.: pleasures, happiness, sympathy, and association. These conceptions bear a fixed relationship to one another, and any content, to be recognized as moral, must comply with these requirements. While the logic of his method has a narrowing effect upon Hume’s view of morality, he at the same time recognizes larger moral demands than he can get into his system. This is parallel in a striking manner to the situation among the rationalists. They had attempted to define pleasure and happiness, virtue and duty all in terms of perfection. This attempt inevitably led to a narrowing of moral content; and when the mathematical method was strictly fol¬ lowed, as in the case of Spinoza, the content to which morality is justified seems altogether inadequate, and other content is illogically slipped in. 1 Treatise, Book III, Part III, § iii. 2 Tufts, op. cit., 39 f.; Enquiry, 214 ff., 259, 271. 3 Ibid., 266 ff. 42 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS The rigorous employment of either rationalist or empiricist methods thus led to similar logical difficulties. E. ADAM SMITH A much more satisfactory ethical presentation of sympathy is made by this follower of Hume. He maintains, with a consistency wanting in Hume, that the sympathy which is the cause of moral sentiments is both wholly disinterested1 and the largest source of pleasure which we have.2 In some respects Smith represents a genuine widening of morality beyond the bounds of any of his predecessors, inadequate as is the exclusive use of the conception of sympathy to explain all social and moral content. This is notably the case in his use of conscience, the sympathy of a supposed impartial spectator situated within our breasts, who regards all our actions with approval or disapprobation. The idea is a suggestive one, and has the effect of presenting the claims of duty and conscience, not only with greater force and vividness, but with greater sublimity, than perhaps is the case with any other writer who derives their content solely from feelings of disinterested pleasure.3 This large recognition of moral obligation is due to two reasons, the second of which is a consequence of the first. He recognizes moral and social pleasures as immediate, and so is not obliged to deduce them from the pleasures of self-love. Consequently, he is not obliged to explain so much of our moral sentiments by the principle of association, more of them being due to “ immediate sense and feeling.”4 In fact, the explicit use that he makes of association under the terms “custom” and “habit” is very little, being mainly to account for the absurdities of fashions and perverted moral tastes. The difficulties in such a presentation are, of course, obvious enough. Hume’s empiricism, if fully worked out, is as disastrous in ethics as in epistemology. If all conduct is merely due to feelings — even though partly to disinterested ones — and morality is simply a matter of associa¬ tions fixed through custom and habit, it has no stability, and no way in which it can justify itself, the moment that it is called into question. The necessity of finding a firmer basis was felt by Hutcheson, who was led to attribute to his “moral faculty” cognitive and even rational functions, so far as he could without prejudice to his system as a whole ; and the same 1 I. e., not due to the pleasures of self-love. See p. 36 above, first footnote. 2 Theory 0} Moral Sentiments , Part I, Sec. I, chaps, i and ii. 3 E. g., the eloquent description of conscience in Part III, chap. iii. 4 Ibid., Part VII, Sec. VII, chap. ii. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 43 need is implied in Smith’s description of the “impartial spectator.” The very idea of impartiality implies that one is not governed wholly by one’s feelings in one’s decisions: and in referring conduct to the approval of such a spectator, Smith is unconsciously introducing a rational factor into the exercise of moral sentiments. It is only on account of this uncon¬ scious inconsistency that Smith can ascribe so much force and authority to the decisions of this unseen spectator. It is exactly this difficulty that led British non- hedonists to abandon the attempt to make morality coincident with a widened sense of pleasure, and to look instead, so long as they continued to regard pleasure as the necessary spring to action, for some rational principle which might guide and regulate our feelings of pleasure, and hence our actions. It is in this way that we are to interpret Butler and Price, no less than Kant. B. SYSTEMS REVEALING AN INCREASING DIVERGENCE BETWEEN MORALITY AND PLEASURE, AND A GRADUAL REPUDIATION OF PLEASURE AS EXCLUSIVE MOTIVE Long before all non-hedonistic writers had abandoned the attempts through the discovery of new and larger sources of moral pleasure to reconcile the old content of morality, believed by an earlier age to be the expression of the eternal laws of nature, with the pleasures of the indi¬ vidual which were thought to be the real motives to his action — another line of argument had made its appearance. The writers who took the new point of view recognized that, widen the conception of pleasure much as we may, its pathway does not imme¬ diately coincide with that of duty. They therefore sought to show that the way of pleasure is a winding course which leads nowhere, while that of duty actually reaches the goal of happiness which the followers of the other path seek in vain. This argument seeks to minimize the divergence between the two paths as much as possible in order to demonstrate that the way of duty leads in the direction which seems to be indicated by that of pleasure. At the same time the genuineness, or at least the exclusive¬ ness, of pleasure as the motive of human conduct becomes increasingly called into question. A. BUTLER In the Sermons Butler begins with a careful examination of human nature, in which he finds that we have a number of particular impulses and passions, and three regulative rational principles: self-love, which leads us to seek our own happiness; benevolence, which leads us to seek the happiness of others; and, supreme above all other principles, conscience, 44 PLEASURE IN NON -HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS which embraces the whole of our nature and has a distinct authority of its own.1 The decrees of conscience in regard to the content of moral obligation are therefore final; they express not only the highest laws of our own nature, but those of the universe, which are prior to the acts of God himself.2 But, authoritative as the voice of conscience is, the mere fact of its authority does not guarantee that it will be obeyed. Its voice must meet with a response in man’s principles of motivation. Conscience seems rather to be a principle of moral discernment than an immediate spring to action. Its decrees must be proved to be in agreement with self-love before man will act upon them.3 A critical examination of self-love, however, reveals its deficiencies. It is not itself invariably acted upon. Man has a multitude of impulses and desires which are as likely as not to be opposed to his happiness.4 Moreover, the direct search for pleasure often defeats its own end — the well-known paradox of hedonism.5 We thus discover: (i) self-love is not an invariable principle of action, since in unreflective moments (and most of our moments are not deliberate) we do not act upon it; (2) self-love is not an infallible guide even when followed, but often leads us astray. The next point is to show that self-love in the main leads to the same result as conscience, that in the diverging cases conscience is the safer guide, and that we have good reason to believe that through conscience we shall obtain the happiness which is the desire of self-love, but to which self-love cannot be depended on to lead us. This postulation of the final agreement of duty and happiness is defended by a lengthy argument in the Analogy .6 The immediate coincidence of pleasure and morality has thus been definitely abandoned. This affords a freer method, and one is able to discover new lines of duty and new kinds of pleasure, since the immediate identity of the two is no longer assumed. But the divergence must not be increased any more than can be helped; and the argument is always to show, wherever possible, that they really agree, since upon their usual agreement rests in large part the evidence for the final agreement of the 1 It seems to me that Butler very clearly makes self-love inferior to conscience as regards moral authority, if indeed self-love can be said to have any authority at all. On the other hand, it is the necessary motive to action in cases of deliberation. Bernard (, Sermons 0} Butler, note B) is therefore correct, as vs. Sidgwick {History of Ethics, 196). 2 Analogy, ed. by Bernard (London, 1900), p. 112; cf. note E, by Bernard. 3 The famous “cool hour” passage, Sermon XI (p. 151 in Bernard’s edition). 4 Ibid., 139 b 5 Ibid., 141. 6 Analogy, Part I, chap. iii. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 45 exceptional instances. Butler’s exposition evokes our admiration on ac¬ count of his keen comprehension of the problem. He recognizes the divergence between duty and pleasure, and the ethical questions arising out of it, as no one else did, previous to Kant. He sees that the diver¬ gence cannot be overcome by the assumption of the pleasures of a moral sense, since such a treatment cannot furnish to morality the authority which is its due.1 There are, however, at least two serious difficulties which suggest themselves to the reader of Butler. First, the reconciliation of duty and happiness is effected only by means of a lengthy philosophical argument which the plain man cannot be expected to understand, although we can¬ not excuse him for that reason from the performance of his moral obliga¬ tions. Secondly, it is difficult to see why we have such a faculty as self- love at all. Why would not conscience, as supremely regulative principle, lead us to care for our own welfare as much as is our duty, without tempting us to go astray? In Hartley’s account, which represents a much less advanced position in his retention of the moral-sense doctrine, we see an advantage here, at least. Hartley can explain the conflict as one between earlier and later effected co-ordinations. But Butler cannot explain the matter at all. These two considerations partly explain why, after the time of Butler, the old attempts to effect a reconciliation by means of a moral sense and moral sentiments continued. B. PRICE Price represents another step in the direction of intellectualizing moral conduct. Not only the recognition of the content and authority of morality, as with Butler, but also to a large extent its motivation, is due to the intel¬ lectual part of our nature, while pleasure and feeling occupy a distinctly subordinate position. Reviving the doctrine of Cudworth and Clarke, Price proclaims moral laws to be “rational,” “immutable,” “eternal,” and “existing in the very nature of things;” and he further says that our intellect intuitively recog¬ nizes them to be such.2 Since the moral rectitude of an action is absolute and unvarying, it is wholly different from pleasure and pain, which admit of variations.3 “Morality is eternal and immutable. Right and wrong denote what actions are.”4 Thus far, pleasure and pain seem to be indeterminate phenomena which are capable of variations, and are of 1 Sermons , Preface, p. 1 1 . 2 A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals , 69, 158 f., 170, etc. 3 Ibid., 70. 4 Ibid., 74; cf. p. 98. 46 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS little moral worth. Action should be wholly discerned and motived by the intellect. And such is the ideal state, with Price.1 Unfortunately, however, the human reason is still in its infancy, and is too weak of itself always to enforce its injunctions. It can do so to some extent, to be sure, and as man advances, its ability increases, and the assistance of feelings is rendered unnecessary.2 At present, however, the reason needs to be reinforced by “instinctive determinations.”3 These are largely, though not wholly, impulses of pleasure and pain. Following Butler, he shows that many of our impulses are as much opposed to individual happiness as they are to morality.4 But, in the main, he looks to feelings of pleasure to reinforce the intuitive per¬ ceptions of the intellect. It is a wise provision of Providence, on account of the weakness of our reason, to cause our moral perceptions to be accom¬ panied by feelings of pleasure. We cannot perceive moral order or virtue without feelings of pleasure and approbation, nor the reverse without the opposite feelings.5 Moral self-approbation is the largest source of our private happiness.6 Consequently, in human beings moral action is a result both of an intellectual perception and of a feeling of pleasure, and it is difficult to decide which influence actuallv is the more decisive.7 To give us confidence in the affective reinforcement of moral motives, Price goes on to assure us that the desire for pleasure and aversion to pain also “exist in the very nature of things,” and no power whatever can prevent a creature from desiring his own happiness.8 This laudation of pleasure and happiness is hardly in accord with his original depreca¬ tion of the feelings in morality, but it seems clear that he wishes to give the feelings a functional part in reinforcing the moral intuitions and judgments of the intellect. In doing this, he fails to make a clear psychological distinction between the work of intellect and that of feeling. Bofh seem to aid to some extent in moral perceptions, and both seem to have some degree of motive power. Price’s account doubtless seemed to give to morality a more substan¬ tial foundation than that of Butler, which rested it upon a rational faculty. It is instead asserted to be perceived intuitively to exist in the very nature of objective reality, and thus has greater necessity and unqualified validity. It is no longer dependent upon feeling for all of its motivation. The weakness in the account, of course, is that the intuitionist had no answer 1 A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, 315, 339. 2 Ibid., 121 f. s Ibid., 90 f. 7 Ibid., 95-97. 3 Ibid., 95 f. 6 Ibid., 92. 8 Ibid., no. 4 Ibid., 118-21. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 47 for the man who steadfastly denies that he has any such intuitions of an eternal and immutable morality, or gives wrong content to it; whereas Butler could meet such a man with rational arguments. C. REID Reid’s attention was mainly given to the intellectual and volitional aspects of consciousness. Our problem was not prominent in his mind, and what little space we find devoted to it indicates slight advance upon the arguments of Butler. Besides numerous impulses and instincts (in the analysis of which in fuller detail he represents a genuine advance), he distinguishes two regulative principles governing conduct — duty, and the desire for one’s “good on the whole.” This latter consists of happi¬ ness and perfection. By perfection, however, he seems to mean nothing very different from happiness, so far as we can judge from his illustrations, and it seems safe to conclude that the desire for good on the whole is prac¬ tically synonymous with Butler’s self-love.1 This with Reid also is an inevitable spring of action, and the argument goes to show that it can be most surely obtained by obedience to duty. The advantages in favor of this course are similar to those mentioned by Butler. The road to duty is plain, while that to happiness is “dark and intricate, full of snares and dangers, and therefore not to be trodden without fear, and care, and perplexity.”2 Another point in favor of duty is the old idea of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson of the pleasures of the moral sense. The sight of others performing their duty affords us pleasure, while the highest pleasure of all is consciousness of good conduct in our¬ selves, which is the occasion of the most intense and permanent happiness of any thing in the world.3 In Reid, however, we perhaps have a stronger feeling of the authority and extent of duty than had hitherto been expressed, and a more painful consciousness of the dilemma which must face a man until he has become convinced that duty coincides with his good upon the whole, and that this latter can be obtained through it.4 1 Cf. Sidgwick, History of Ethics, 228. 2 Essays on the Active Powers (ed. 1788), 226. 3 Ibid., 248. 4 Beattie, whose Elements of Moral Science appeared two years after Reid’s Essays on the Active Powers, employs a sort of deductive hedonism to prove the imme¬ diate coincidence of happiness and virtue. The pleasures of the moral sense excel all others in dignity, intensity, and durability, in being always obtainable and most agreeable to our whole nature; and, therefore, happiness, or the most comprehensive gratification of which our propensities are capable, is identical with virtue. 48 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS D. DUGALD STEWART Stewart attributes the source of moral action to the moral faculty, which, though it can be improved by education and association,1 he takes great pains to show is one of the original elements of our nature. For this reason he is free from the tendency to narrow the content of moral obligation which has been noted in the case of some other writers who employed the doctrine of association. He does not have to derive the whole material of duty from elements which are originally not moral. In moral judgments three elements are present: the perception of the act as right or wrong; a feeling of pleasure or pain, varying in degree according to the acuteness of our moral sensibility; and a perception of the merit or demerit of the agent (whether one’s self or someone else).2 The prime spring to action must be found in the moral faculty itself. The very notion of virtue or duty implies obligation.3 How the motive to action can arise directly from this moral judgment is, one supposes, explainable from the affective element present in it. This element is also reinforced by other principles which obviously contain feeling elements, of which he mentions five: a regard to character, sympathy, a sense of the ridiculous, taste, and self-love. But none of these may be permitted to usurp the supremacy of the moral faculty as the ruling motive to action; they must simply co-operate with it as subordinate incentives.4 While admitting as unqualifiedly as Butler the supremacy of self-love as the necessary motive to action inseparable from our nature as rational and sensitive beings,5 Stewart seeks in this way to show that there are large sources of pleasure attending moral action and reinforcing it. Stewart does not attempt to define pleasure, which he apparently regards as one of the unanalyzable elements of experience. Happiness has for its prerequisite “the general habit or state of mind that is necessary to lay a groundwork for every other enjoyment.” This foundation, he attempts to show, is obtained by “doing our duty, with as little solicitude about the event, as is consistent with the weakness of humanity. ”6 This foundation being presupposed, “the sum of happiness enjoyed by an individual will be the degree in which he is able to secure the various pleasures belonging to our nature.” In the enumeration of our duties, he makes it a duty to ourselves to seek our happiness, and this is subordinate only to our duties to God and 1 Works , ed. by Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1877), VI, 235 ff. 2 Ibid., VI, 24. 5 Ibid., VI, 212-14. 3 Ibid., VI, 35 f., 41. 6 ibid., VI, 102 f.; VII, 349. 4 Ibid., VI, 35 f., 41. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 49 to our fellow-men, and to be followed whenever these other actions do not prohibit it. Stewart thus seeks to reduce in every way the divergence between duty and happiness. To a large extent it is a pleasure to do one’s duty, and a duty to seek one’s pleasure. But, minimize the differ¬ ences as much as he can, Stewart is obliged to admit that there is a wide margin of doubtful territory left, at least for the plain man, who cannot, by the mere guidance of common sense, unsupported by philosophical arguments, see the ultimate harmony between happiness and duty.1 Stewart thus represents some advance in insisting that the moral faculty must furnish the ruling motive in moral action; he also shows that the divergence between duty and happiness is less than might be generally supposed; but in the end, since he supposes that pleasure must be the inevitable end of action, the philosophical arguments of Butler become necessary to secure moral motivation. E. THOMAS BROWN An important advance in the line of development now under considera¬ tion was taken by Brown. As early as Butler, the initial springs to action were seen not to be immediately directed toward pleasure and happiness. But both Butler and the Scottish writers who had taken up his arguments had taken it for granted that when action is deliberate it must always be directed in the interests of the individual. Their problem had accord¬ ingly been to effect a reconciliation of morality with happiness, in order to secure its motivation. Brown, however, sees no reason to suppose that individual action is always directed by the desire for happiness, even when it is reflective. He distinguishes ten distinct desires in our nature, only one of which is directly for pleasure as such, and it is by no means the most important of the ten.2 The realization of any of these other desires of course affords pleasure, but it is not for the sake of the pleasure that it is desired. Pleas¬ ure follows the expression of an emotion, instead of being its cause.3 It is the very nature of our minds that some objects should appear to it immediately desirable, and in consequence pleasure arises from their attainment.4 In his psychology of ethics we must therefore credit Brown with a clearer discernment of the relationships of desire and pleasure than any of his predecessors. He frankly says that the very idea of pleasure and 1 Ibid., VI, 21. 2 Philosophy of Mind (Edinburgh ed., 1851), III, 325 ff. 3 Ibid., Ill, 345-50. 4 Ibid., Ill, 348. 5o PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS happiness almost involves their desire;1 but he perceives this is rather because these expressions are the general descriptions of the objects which we desire, than because in the generality of cases we desire them for their own sakes. The fallacies of hedonism, which Butler had sufficiently exposed to show that pleasure is not the immediate object of impulsive desires, Brown seems to have developed far enough in his own mind to lead him to conclude that happiness is not the object of deliberate action, except so far as by it we merely mean the attainment of our ends. It is only on this supposition that we can interpret this concession to happiness, and at the same time his insistence that other considerations, such as moral excellence and our own self-approbation and that of God, are of more value to us than our own happiness, interpreting the last word in its usual British sense of a state of continuous pleasurable enjoyment.2 Brown is, accordingly, able to say frankly that duty and happiness, though they may ultimately coincide, owing to “the gratuitous goodness of Heaven,” are yet, “with reference to our will or moral choice, distinct objects.”2 The argument of Butler, as we have seen, really afforded no refuge for the plain man, who could not follow the intricate argument of the Analogy , and become convinced that he would most surely obtain his happiness by obeying his conscience. Brown, on the other hand, frankly confesses that in the moral act these two considerations may be diametrically opposed, and yet the choice be made in the interests of moral excellence. At the same time, Brown freely recognizes that pleasure is a good, even for its own sake, and it is actually a duty to seek it when it does not conflict with higher moral claims.3 But in the event when it does, his faith in human nature is sufficiently strong for him to believe that the decision will usually be made in the right direction. Brown, as well as Stewart, made a large use of the principle of asso¬ ciation in his psychology of ethics. An action is not only attended with the emotion which it originally excited, but also with emotions associated with the class of actions to which it belongs. Thus the fact that an action is unjust evokes a greater emotional response than the action in itself would effect. Association therefore increases the affective response in manners sometimes favorable to moral action, and sometimes in a manner that obscures and beclouds real moral issues.4 Association does not, however, at all explain the origin of moral perceptions in the first place; these are due to as genuinely elemental constituents in our nature as any 1 Op. cit., Ill, 340. 3 Ibid., XCIX, esp. 415, 472, 481. ^ Ibid., IV, 455. 4 Ibid., Ill, 518-21. THE BRITISH NON-HEDONISTS 5i other kind of perceptions. This being the case, the result of associa- tionism in Brown is not at all to narrow the range of morality or weaken its authority. F. LATER INTUITIONISTS Mackintosh criticises Stewart and Reid for insisting upon the original nature of the moral faculty and conscience, and refusing to derive them by association. His own proposition so to derive them is not, however, ethically objectionable, as he does not wish to derive them from the pleas¬ ures of self-love, as Hartley had done, but to derive both alike from com¬ mon sources. The advantage that would be gained by this extension of association wrould be in the interests of simplicity, as it would not assume so many original constituents in the human mind. In this respect, with¬ out sacrificing any ethical advantage, Mackintosh seems to represent a spirit more in accordance with modern psychology, especially as his pres¬ entation of associationism is free from many of the crudenesses of his contemporaries.1 In some respects the two most eminent French exponents of intuition - ism seem to represent a position prior rather than subsequent to Brown. Cousin presents the same arguments as Reid and Stewart, though perhaps with a larger recognition of the importance of feeling in moral action, and with an assurance of the ultimate reward of moral action by happi¬ ness which has been fortified by an acquaintance with Kant.2 Jouffroy seems to believe in a closer identity between moral and pleasurable action ; he does not concede so large a divergence in this life, and is inclined to think that they can, usually at least, be shown to be immediately har~ monious.3 Both present the arguments with greater fervor and eloquence than the Scottish writers, and introduce aesthetic considerations more largely. British intuitionists after Brown no longer seek to reconcile moral obligations with the supposed demands of self-love. The claim that all our deliberate action is actuated by considerations of self-love is no longer admitted, and little positive use of pleasure is made by them. They usually analyze human conduct into a variety of impulses, propensions, affections, and other springs to action, in which feelings of pleasure and happiness are of course involved; but as these furnish neither the cri- 1 Progress 0} Ethical Philosophy, ed. by Whewell, 238 f., 241-66; cf. Preface (by Whewell), xxxix ff. 2 Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, trans. by O. W. Wight, esp. 255"57» 262, 281, 284, 296 ff. 3 Melanges philo so phiques (Ed. Paris, 1866), esp. 284-93. 52 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS terion nor motive to action, they are not of consequence for ethical pur¬ poses. Frequently, to be sure, the assertion is made that moral action affords the most happiness to man; but this serves simply as a sort of corollary to the main arguments. Whewell, to be sure, concedes that happiness must ultimately coincide with duty, in a way that at first reminds one of the old attitude; but we soon discover that the happiness of which he speaks is a general satis¬ faction of all our desires, and not a happiness of continued pleasurable enjoyment as such; and so the term has no specific content that will enable it to serve either as motive or as criterion for moral action.1 Martineau, after the controversy between intuitionism and utilitari¬ anism had been waging for half a century, makes an interesting conces¬ sion. In his doctrine pleasure is made to be a consequence of the satis¬ faction of a propensity, and thus he can agree that a calculation of pleasures is a calculation of the consequences of actions. Moral approbation is not, of course, to be determined by an estimation of consequences, but by the comparative evaluation of propensities to action. He admits, however, that after the moral criterion for determining the right in an action has thus been applied, one must be guided by consequences in selecting the means for carrying out an act; and in the selection of means considerations of pleasure have a legitimate place.2 He gives no illus¬ trations, and just how he intended the two principles to work together in practice it is hard to see. It seems to be a tacit confession that later intuitionism, in its complete ignoring of the position of pleasure in moral action, has been unable to work out the applications of its theory to imme¬ diate conduct satisfactorily, and that it must look to considerations of pleasure for assistance in selecting the materials upon which its propensions are to be exercised. 1 Elements of Morality , 241. 2 Types of Ethical Theory, II, 275. IV. MODIFIED PERFECTIONISM To the earlier perfectionists perfection was the summum bonum, as we have seen, and pleasure and happiness were defined in terms of per¬ fection. The mathematical method had been responsible to a considerable extent for preserving the harmony between these ideas, at the cost of arresting their further development. After the time of Wolff, however, new tendencies began to appear in Germany, due probably to the general movement of the eighteenth cen¬ tury. Individual happiness and welfare came to appear of more impor¬ tance to the minds of men; and if the sterner aspects of the age of Fred¬ erick the Great seem to have played the principal part in molding the thought and character of Kant, some of his contemporaries were more strongly affected by the hedonistic tendencies then prevalent in France and England. It was an age when too lofty ideals were no longer in vogue, when men cared more for material ease and enjoyment, and the assurance of these became a concern of importance. To be sure, this tendency was less strong in Germany than in France, but the altered attitude reveals itself in a milder way. It was a great age for psychological introspection; diaries, journals, and memoirs were abundant. ^Esthetics was a favorite field of inquiry, and the psychology of pleasure, especially upon the aesthetic side, received an amount of attention sharply in contrast with an earlier age. A prominent subject of interest in metaphysics was furnished by questions as to the assurance of God, freedom, and immortal¬ ity; this interest not being due to a taste for philosophical speculation as such, but on account of their bearing upon man’s present well-being and future happiness. A. MENDELSSOHN Mendelssohn, as contrasted with Wolff, evidences this change in inter¬ est. Although still a perfectionist, maintaining theoretically the old com¬ bination of perfection, pleasure, and happiness, the center of gravity in his system has changed, and the feelings come in for the principal analy¬ sis. The implication is that, since feelings are perceptions of perfection, it is through their guidance that we are to look for perfection. Conse¬ quently, Mendelssohn does not approach ethics by the way of “rational thoughts,” but by a direct study of the feelings and sensations. He corrects two important defects in Wolff’s definition of pleasure 53 54 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS which had stood in the way of its more extended use for ethical purposes. Wolff had limited pleasure to confused concepts, and to the sensibility. Mendelssohn shows that pleasure attends clear concepts as well, and that the increased discrimination which reasoning affords furnishes in¬ creased pleasure, especially of an aesthetic sort.1 Wolff had not distin¬ guished the subjective and objective elements present in pleasure. He apparently treated feelings of pleasure in much the same way as sensa¬ tions of color, light, and sound. These all have reference to something external, and so does pleasure. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, dis¬ tinguishes two elements in pleasure: (i) the pleasure of perceiving per¬ fection in the object; (2) the pleasure involved in one’s personal perfec¬ tion; and, of course, pain in one’s own imperfection. In perceiving a good, both kinds of pleasure are experienced, due to the excellence of the object and that of one ’s own perceptual activity. But in the perception of an evil object pain is felt only in the first of these ways. The object is perceived to be imperfect; but the efficiency of one’s mental activity in perceiving it affords one pleasure, and we should upon no account wish not to be able to perceive this imperfection. But if the imperfection is in one’s self, the evil perceived is altogether painful, and one had rather not have it than have it.2 This separation of the subjective, personal side of perfection and pleasure is, of course, of supreme importance to a writer who wishes to employ the feelings as a guide in conduct. His study of Shaftesbury, which doubtless encouraged him to give increased prominence to feeling in moral action, also led him to notice the problem of the harmonization of self-love and benevolence.3 The iden¬ tification of happiness and perfection has been so complete that he can say that happiness is the final aim of all our wishes. This desire for happiness is immediate in self-love, and mediate in our love for others. Self-love necessitates the love for others, since there can be no pleasure without an extrinsic object of enjoyment.4 Since this problem, serious for British ethics, is thus readily solved to his satisfaction, he devotes his attention mainly to a characteristic rationalistic problem, viz.: the proper co-ordination of the emotions 1 Schriften (ed. Leipzig, 1843), I, n8£f. 2 Ibid., I, 239 f. 3 Mendelssohn ’s relationship to English writers, as well as that of other writers with whom we have here to deal, is fully treated by G. Zart, Der Einfluss der engli- schen Philosophen auf die deutsche Philosophen des XVIII. Jahrhunderts. (Berlin, 1881.) 4 Schriften, III, 409. MODIFIED PERFECTIONISM 55 with the reason. The latter discerns good clearly and distinctly, but the pleasure attending its operation often has not the force and vivacity which the emotions of the confused sensibility have. Reason is, to be sure, more convincing, but the sensibility is always with us, and presents a larger quantity of characteristics more quickly and forcibly. 1 The moral desideratum is therefore to dissolve feelings into rational inferences, and to make sentient the operations of the reason.2 His presentation, though not developed by him into a system of morals, would apparently have afforded more room for the development of the social side, in consequence of his use of benevolence, than was the case with his continental predecessors; while his distinction between sub¬ jective and objective feeling would give a better working criterion than many of the English writers had. These possibilities are, of course, due to his breaking away to some extent from the limitations of the conception of perfection, and in throwing the emphasis upon feeling instead. How¬ ever, his attempt to derive social pleasures from those of self-love would have worked disastrously, as we have observed in the case of British writers. B. TETENS AND SCHMIDT The changed interests of the time are exemplified in such a writer as Tetens, whose Philosophische Versuche is mainly occupied with psycho¬ logical topics. Upon the moral side, however, he concludes his work with considerations upon the perfectibility of man, and how far this accords with his happiness. He concludes that the perfecting of man’s nature affords larger possibilities of pleasure and happiness, but whether these shall become actualities depends largely upon external circumstances. Man experiences the most pleasure when enabled to exercise his perfected capacities in the degree for which they are best fitted.3 We cannot always be sure that external circumstances will afford this exercise of increased perfection and consequent happiness.4 So it is only in a general way that man’s increased perfection and happiness run parallel.5 The initial impulse in man is toward the immediately agreeable, and only to a limited extent toward happiness, where this is not in accordance with immediate pleasure, and still less toward perfection.6 Thus with Tetens the old co-ordination between happiness and perfection has broken down; only a general parallel can be shown. The only possibility of reconciling the exceptions would be the assumption of a future life.7 1 Ibid., I, 216 ff. 2 Ibid., Ill, 412. 3 Philosophische Versuche (Leipzig, 1777), II, 809 f., 815. 4 Ibid., 816 ff. 6 Ibid., 8235. s Ibid., 820. 7 Ibid., 818, 833 f. 56 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS The entire subordination of perfection to pleasure and happiness in the case of a writer who still has a firm belief in their immediate coin¬ cidence is apparently furnished by the Geschichte des Selbstgejuhls of Michael Ignaz Schmidt.1 The only good is pleasure; this is conscious¬ ness of one’s own perfection, and beauty and goodness are both inferred from such feelings. Self-love is the primal impulse to activity, which it initiates in the interests of pleasure, and pronounces things to be good, perfect, and beautiful if they agree with it. 1 For an account of this work I have been obliged to depend upon Dr. Max Dessoir, Geschichte der Psychologies I, 271-75 (ed. of 1894); I, 437 b (ed. of 1902.) V. KANT In Kant’s own intellectual development we witness the same tendencies which were going on in the minds of others, and which characterized the period just treated. Bred in the Wolffian perfectionism, Kant came to see its inadequacies. Its narrow moral ideal lacked a sufficient social content and failed to recognize duty as a moral imperative, while it naively attempted to identify pleasure, or at least happiness, with perfection. On the other hand, Kant’s logical rationalistic training and his strong sense of duty led him to detect the inevitable instability and irrespon¬ sibility of an ethics grounded wholly upon feeling. He long tried to mediate between the two systems, retaining what was good in both; but he finally worked out an independent system of his own, quite different from either.1 A. THE EARLY RATIONALISTIC PERIOD In Kant’s early treatises, written prior to 1760, his attitude is thor¬ oughly Wolffian. He believes that the moral life must be founded upon a rational basis. Man must be raised to domination over the changing and varying movements of the sensibility governed by its pleasures and pains, by means of the clear insight of the reason. Three other influences which tended to reinforce him in his rational¬ istic position may be noticed. (1) The religion of his parents was that of the Pietists — a stern sect who believed that sensuous impulses of all kinds must be severely held in leash in order to please God. (2) His own weak and sickly body had to be kept in the most careful subjection; and thus in his own experience the opposition between sensibility and reason was painfully real. (3) The national condition was such that all must 1 In the discussion of Kant I am mainly indebted to Dr. Paul Menzer, Der Ent- wicklung der Kantischen Ethik in den Jahren 1760 bis 1785 (republished in the Kant- Studien, II and III) ; Dr. August Messer, Kants Ethik (Leipzig, 1904) ; Dr. A. Heg- ler, Die Psychologie in Kants Ethik (Freiburg i. B., 1891); and Dr. Fr. W. Foerster, Der Entwicklunsgang der Kantischen Ethik bis zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Berlin, (1894). The comprehensive treatment of Dr. Axel Hagerstrom, Kants Ethik (Upsala u. Leipzig, 1902), did not attract my attention until too late to be greatly available. Abbreviations are: H. = Hartenstein ’s edition of Kant’s Werke; G. S. — the new Gesammte Schriften (Berlin, 1902 — ); M. =Max Muller’s translation of the Critique of Pure Reason, the one-volume edition; A. =the translations in Abbott’s Kant’s Theory of Ethics. Quotations are usually made from the translations of Kant’s works, where such exist. 57 58 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS be prepared to sacrifice personal convenience and wealth to the good of the state; and Frederick the Great, the “philosopher of Sans Souci,” himself the advocate of a duty philsosphy, set the example, and was not slow to require others to follow it.1 Thus a stern religious training, a narrow regimen demanded by his personal state of health, and a rigorous government, all reinforced the opposition set up by the Wolffian philosophy between the reason and the sensibility, and the necessity of governing life by the former. B. THE PERIOD OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE During the second decade of his literary activity — led, no doubt, by the inadequacies of Wolffian perfectionism — Kant sought to utilize the feelings in working out a satisfactory moral statement. He accord¬ ingly made a study of at least three of the British writers who grounded morality upon feeling — viz., Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume — as well as of Rousseau. In the prize essay on Natural Theology and Morals , wrritten in 1762 or 1763, we find the new ideas of a feeling morality struggling with the old perfectionist conceptions for the mastery. He believes that the whole content of morality is due to feelings of pleasure and pain. These feelings may be analyzed into several principal “sensations of good,” from which arise higher, but not further reducible, judgments which declare this or that to be good. Thus, “Love him who loves you,” is an indemonstrable material principle of obligation. However, the feelings furnish no central principle of morality, and leave it in too indeterminate a character. Consequently, the material principles of morality, derived from the feelings, must be subordinated to the jormal principle of perfection furnished by the understanding. This formal principle is Wolff’s maxim: “Thue das Vollkommendste was durch dich moglich ist.”2 Just how the affective, material principles are to be brought into working relationship with this formal principle, Kant is unable to state very clearly; and he concludes the essay in doubt whether the intellectual faculty or feeling is properly the first ground of morality. This essay reveals Kant desirous of recognizing a larger social content of morality than can be gotten under the old conception of perfection. Consequently, he looks to the feelings to supplement this conception, 1 The nature of the Prussian government seems to have developed in many minds a strong, martial sense of duty. Cf. J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein. I, 44 f. 2 Cf. p. 27, above. KANT 59 and hits upon the device of “formal” and “material” principles of action adapted from Crusius,1 to effect the co-ordination. That he was not satisfied with the device is evident from the halting tone with which he concludes the essay. The prize essay made the perception of the good consist in an “unan- alyzable feeling of pleasure.” In the Observations on the Feeling oj the Beautiful and Sublime (about 1764) he makes a further discrimination of this feeling. Even thus early he has too strong an idea of the universal and unconditioned character of moral obligation to find in the feelings of sympathy and benevolence of the English writers a sufficient basis of morality, although he is willing to concede their value in reinforcing moral motivation. Instead, he finds the foundation of morality in another feeling — that of the beauty and dignity of human nature. The idea of the dignity and worth of humanity — a conception which he owes to Rous¬ seau — furnishes at once the universality and the obligatory character desired, for “if this feeling had the greatest perfection in any human heart, this person would love and cherish himself only so far as he is one of all, to whom his widened noble feeling extends itself.”2 However, that he is not fully satisfied with this attempt to ground morality in feeling may be inferred from his complaints of its indefinite character, when he laments, “das Gefiihl ist nicht einstimmig ! ”3 Kant’s ethical position at this time is succinctly stated in the program of his lecture course for 1765-66, 4 where he says that moral judgments can “immediately, and without the circumlocution of proofs, be recog¬ nized by the human heart through what one calls sentiment;” that the investigations of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume have proceeded farthest in the search for the first grounds of all morality, but are incom¬ plete and lack precision; and that this completeness and precision are to be afforded them by reference to the great significance of the reason for moral principles. It seems clear, both from this lecture program and from the essays just mentioned, that Kant was disposed at this time to take the greater part of his moral system from the British writers, simply using rationalistic conceptions to supplement the account, and give it greater definiteness and precision. While too much stress ought not to be laid upon a treatise written in a semi-playful manner, yet it seems quite evident that the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) represents a considerably altered attitude toward the British writers, and that their influence over him was waning. The 1 H., II, 301-4; G. S., II, 293-96. 3 H., II, 248; G. S., II, 226. 2 H., II, 239; G. S ., II, 217. 4 H., II, 311 ff.; G. S., II, 303 ff. 6o PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS primacy of the will over the feelings is indicated more emphatically, and the stronger moral impulse furnished by the law of duty, and the weaker one of benevolence, “bear us awTay to the discomfiture of our selfishness. The moral impulses here described do not seem to be feelings of pleasure and pain, but rather to be attributed wholly to the volitional side of our nature. If Kant had had his doctrine of freedom worked out at this time, feeling would have ceased to serve either as motive or as criterion of morality henceforth, and he would have here enunciated that “there % is nothing good except a good will;” but as such was not the case, he continued to seek a universal standard of morality in feeling. C. FROM THE INAUGURAL DISSERTATION TO THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON That a considerable shift took place in Kant’s thought at this time is indicated by a short but pointed passage in the Inaugural Dissertation (1770), in which moral perfection is the ideal, and is to be recognized only by the pure intellect. Epicurus and “some moderns who follow him from afar, ” like Shaftesbury, are to be rightly reprehended for at¬ tempting to reduce moral criteria to deductions from the sense of pleasure and pain.2 Perfection is still the highest conception of morality, but its content is to be recognized by the pure intellect, apparently, and not by an “unanalyzable feeling. ” Shaftesbury, who had been highly commended in the prize essay and the lecture program, is here emphatically repu¬ diated. From reading this passage one could easily infer that feeling is to play no part in morality whatever; but inasmuch as we still find him endeavoring to utilize pleasure and happiness in formulating moral prin¬ ciples later in this decade, one hesitates to make a conclusion that would necessitate the assumption of another large shift in the other direction, upon the strength of so brief a passage. However, it is clear that this attitude has greatly changed at this time from what it had been in 1765; and it is probable that henceforth he never was a conscious follower of the English school. Sometime during the decade that intervened between the appearance of the Inaugural Dissertation and the Critique oj Pure Reason Kant must have penned the celebrated “Fragment 6” in Reicke’s Lose Blatter A The 1 H., II, 342 f.; G. S., II, 335; Eng. trans. by Goerwitz, 63 f. 2 H., II, 403; G. S., 395 f.; Eng. trans. by W. J. Eckoff, 55. 3 It is difficult to fix a more precise date. The subject is fully discussed by Menzer in the Kant-Studien, III, 71-90; Thon, Die Grundprinzipien der Kantischen Moral - philosophies etc. (Diss., Berlin, 1895) ; Foerster, loc. cit. KANT 6l distinction between the sensible and intellectual faculties is still drawn upon the lines of the Dissertation , while the attempt at a transcendental deduction of happiness reveals the methodology of the Critique. In happiness two things are distinguishable— its matter and its form. The first consists in the gratification of sensuous desires; the second, of confused intellectual pleasures due to an inner agreement among the desires, constitutes virtue, and is the formal condition which makes happi¬ ness possible. “A man by such moral dispositions is worthy to be happy, i. e., is in possession of all the means whereby he can effect his own happi¬ ness and that of others.” However, he still lacks the empirical elements of happiness, since virtue furnishes no motives. These have to be supplied by the sensibility. This position reminds us very much of Wolff and Mendelssohn in many respects; for instance, in the derivation of morality from the intel¬ lect, while motivation must come from the sensibility. It is more like the latter in recognizing intellectual pleasures. The treatment is different from any rationalistic account in regarding intellectual pleasure as at the same time confused, and yet not as a motive to action. The fragment is extremely noteworthy in that it shows that Kant was endeavoring to find an a priori element in happiness, while he was working out his critical philosophy. Had he been satisfied with the result of this fragment, he doubtless could have based his critical ethics upon happiness. His failure to find a satisfactory a priori element in happiness, while he found one in his doctrine of the will, determined the character of his ethical system. It is significant, as Foerster remarks, that in this fragment Kant does not once mention the word “duty.” Private happi¬ ness is made the motive to morality, and even its a priori element, virtue, is a personal affair. To be virtuous is to be “worthy of happiness.” The fact that he was willing so far to abandon the larger social demands, which he had recognized at least as early as the Observations on the Beau¬ tiful and Sublime , provided only that he could find an a priori principle in private happiness, indicates how pressing was the demand for such a principle before he found one in his doctrine of the will. The lectures upon Psychology , reported by Politz, Dr. Max Heinze has shown almost beyond a doubt, must have been delivered between 1775 and 1779. 1 Here Kant distinguishes two kinds of pleasure, belonging respectively to the sensibility and to the understanding. Those belonging to the former are subdivided into animal and human. The psychological definition of pleasure here employed is virtually the same as that used by 1 Kant's V orlesungen iiber Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1894), 515 f. 62 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS him in the critical period, though not so well worked out, and so may be passed over here. Morality is concerned only with the intellectual pleas¬ ures, which are due to the understanding. Intellectual pleasure is distinguished from other kinds by being uni¬ versal and necessary. What is an object of intellectual pleasure is good; and “good” is defined as “what must necessarily please everyone. ”T The tentativeness of this description of the good as intellectual pleasure is indicated by his saying that, strictly speaking, it is not a pleasure, because the good cannot affect our senses, but that we call it a pleasure because we cannot otherwise express “the subjectively impelling power of objective necessitation.”2 This intellectual pleasure alone does not seem sufficient to afford us happiness. But it makes us “worthy of happiness.” This consciousness of desert furnishes the ground for faith in a future life, and becomes the motive to virtue, inducing us to obey moral laws, which without it would be only chimeras. In these lectures we thus have several of the ideas of the critical philos¬ ophy mixed with others of an earlier period. The division into sensible and intellectual pleasure is more in the spirit of the Dissertation. The inadequacy of intellectual pleasure to serve as a complete motive by itself, and yet the idea that it is a partial one, marks a transitional stage in his thought. The search for a universal and necessary element in morality, the employment of feeling to indicate the subjective side of moral obli¬ gation, the idea that morality only effects “worthiness to be happy,” and the postulation on this last ground of a future life, all foreshadow the critical period. In the Critique oj Pure Reason morality is given a larger social content than hitherto, and is grounded a priori in a principle of the pure practical reason. This principle is not given an explicit formulation. The old perfectionist formula has evidently been discarded, while the new maxim of the categorical law probably had not yet been worked out. At any rate, his only statement here is: “Do that which will render thee worthy of happiness.”3 Happiness would consist in the complete satisfaction of all our desires concentrated into one,4 as regards comprehensiveness, intensity, and duration.5 The direct search for this is prudence, which can proceed only upon empirical grounds; since happiness is largely a 1 P. 172 in Politz’ edition. 2 Ibid, p. 187. 3 H., Ill, 534; G. S., Ill, 525; M., 649. 4 H., Ill, 529; G. S., Ill, 520; M., 642. sH., Ill, 532; G. S., Ill, 523; M., 647. KANT 63 matter of the satisfaction of sensuous impulses, and no a priori principle can be found determining it. The moral law is not at all to be derived from the conception of happi¬ ness, nor does the desire for happiness serve as the proper motive for moral action.1 Morality, however, is being “ worthy of happiness,” and involves the idea that ultimately everyone must actually obtain as much happiness as he deserves.2 In this life, to be sure, the individual does not realize happiness, since this would necessitate that everyone else perfectly complies with it also. But we must believe that this must ulti¬ mately be the case in a future life, and the moral law forces us to postulate such a life, and also a Divine Being. Without such belief the “glorious ideals of morality are indeed objects of applause and admiration, but are not springs of purpose and action. ”3 Though the statement in this Critique is somewhat ambiguous — in fact, in places seems almost paradoxical — and is not wholly free from a theological setting,4 we really have an argument involved similar to that of the Critique oj Practical Reason. The argument is wholly a logical one. It is not a hedonistic desire for happiness that prompts to the obedi¬ ence to the moral law; the latter carries with it its own command, and is an expression of our own free will. But the idea of desert of happiness is involved in the conception of this moral law. If this desert were not thought of as realizable, the moral law would be self-contradictory; it would be a chimera, and the belief in its a priori character could not be maintained. In the statement referred to above — that, if the moral law were univer¬ sally followed, happiness would immediately ensue — we can perceive an advance upon “Fragment 6.” There individual morality could afford individual happiness; here individual happiness is obtainable only through universal obedience to the law and universal happiness. The social character of both moral obligation and happiness has become recognized. It would probably be going too far to say that in the Critique oj Pure Reason Kant thinks that the main purpose of the moral law is to effect universal happiness; but this is certainly involved in it. The fact that he defines moral action as action done in order to deserve happiness indi¬ cates that the connection between the two was certainly prominent in his mind. 1 H., Ill, 537; G. 5., Ill, 528; M., 652 f. 2 H., Ill, 534, G. S., Ill, 525, M., 649* sH, III, 537; G. 5., Ill, 528; M., 652. 4H., Ill, 536; G. S., Ill, 527; M., 651. 6-1 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS D. THE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN ITS FINAL FORM Between the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Grund- legung, Kant worked out the doctrine of freedom and its identification with the moral law. In these he found the a priori principle which he had at one time sought in happiness. These become the central point in his moral system, and other considerations, such as happiness and pleas¬ ure, are subordinated to it. As the later works all contain essentially the same point of view, it will no longer be necessary to discuss them in chronological order. The psychology of pleasure is stated most fully in the Menschen- kunde , edited by Starke, which, Menzer has shown, must have been written between the years 1779 and 1788, and so properly belongs to the critical period,1 and in the Anthropologie (1788). In both documents pleasure is defined as the feeling of the furtherance , and pain as that of the hin¬ drance, of life. The vital force has a degree along with which a state of comfort ( das Wohlbefinden) exists, which is neither pleasant nor painful. When this state is reduced to a lower pitch by any hindrance, pain is felt. The relief of this is pleasure. Pleasure is thus always preceded by pain, and is nothing positive. The passage in the Menschenkunde goes on to say that corresponding to sensuous pleasure and pain there is intellectual pleasure and pain; as in thought we are always dissatisfied with the present, and looking forward to the future. Pleasure cannot endure in an unbroken continuity, like pain. It is only the sudden, instantaneous removal of pain that affords pleasure. Thus in slow diseases there is conscious constant pain, and no pleasure. In persons of melancholic temperament the pain is constant, the sudden relief is not felt, and there¬ fore many of these are led to suicide as the only possible relief from pain. However, Kant regards pain as a wise design of providence in order to make us dissatisfied with our condition, and to impel us to progress. Kant’s psychology of pleasure must appear defective, even to a hedon¬ ist. If pleasure is only negative, while pain is positive, the function of the two could only be to conserve the present well-being of the subject; for, as soon as the subject were restored to the state of well-being from which pain announced a lapse, and the pain were wholly removed, then pleasure, if pleasure is due only to the sudden removal of pain, must cease also. There could be no progress. Moreover, as in many cases pleasure is not experienced at all in consciousness, while pain is very prominent, pessimism seems inevitable. Certainly a state of happiness consisting of permanent pleasure would be a contradiction in itself, and could not 1 Kant-Studien, III, 60. KANT 65 s* be morally postulated. It is clear that Kant does not always employ pleasure in this negative manner in which he here defines it, and that his treatment in his ethical works involves a recognition of positive pleas¬ ures, as well as pleasures of activity. Like Leibniz, he employs a defi¬ nition of pleasure which is inadequate to perform what he really intends it to do. With reference to desire and volition there are two kinds of pleasure: (1) contemplative , which is not connected with desire for the object, as in judgments of taste; and (2) practical , which is necessarily connected with desire for the object. It is with this latter type that ethics is concerned. It may be of two different varieties: (a) it may precede desire and be the cause of desire and volition, in which case the pleasure is “ pathological, ” since it determines action for its own sake, regardless of the moral law; (b) it may follow desire, and attend the feeling of reverence , which is due to the action of the reason and its moral law.1 Reverence is the feeling present in moral action. Like all other feelings, this is subjective. It is due to the consciousness upon the part of the sensibility, of its own repression by the reason. This feeling is of intellectual origin, and is the only one that can be known a priori.2 This feeling is often painful. The moral law checks our self-conceit, humbles our self-consciousness, thwarts our inclinations, and produces an impression of displeasure which can be known a priori .3 This, how¬ ever, is only the negative , pathological side of reverence. As the moral law comes to be known in its purity and sublimity as the activity of the pure practical reason, it awakens positive respect. Then one feels an interest in the law, and this conscious recognition of the law affords a feel¬ ing of self-approbation.4 In the Critiques Kant nowhere explicitly calls this positive feeling of reverence pleasurable, 5 though he describes the negative aspect as painful; but in the Tugendlehre moral feeling is quite frankly spoken of as “susceptibility for pleasure or pain,” according as one is conscious of the agreement or disagreement of action with the law of duty.6 That pleasure arises from doing one’s duty, Kant says very explicitly in the latter work; but, of course, it is a subjective feeling that is dependent upon the action of the reason, and not at all the cause of it. 1 Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals. 3 H., V, 83; A. 171. 2 H., V, 178; A., 166. 4H., V, 84; A., 172 s He almost does so in the Critique of Judgment, where he speaks of the moral law affording positive intellectual satisfaction in the feeling of the sublime (§ 29), and of a certain analogy between pleasure in the beautiful forms of nature and interest in the moral law (§ 42). 6 H., VII, 202-6; A., 309-11. 66 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS This description evidently is a re-echo of the Wolffian definition of pleasure as due to the agreement and co-operation of one’s powers. The explicit recognition of the presence of pleasure in the feeling of reverence in the T ugendlehre does not really represent a change in thought from the Critique of Practical Reason. The same idea is implied in the earlier work, but is not explicitly stated, perhaps for this reason. He was afraid at that time that any recognition of pleasure in moral action would be overrated, and he might be interpreted as holding a position similar to that of such writers as Mendelssohn and Schiller: whereas, at the time of writing the later work, he felt that his position had become sufficiently understood to enable him to designate the recognition which he was willing to give to pleasure in moral action without being misin¬ terpreted. The next topic which we shall have to consider is: Just what place does the feeling of reverence, with its attendant pleasure or pain, play in the moral act? The feeling clearly appears subsequent to the work of the reason, but prior to overt action. Two interpretations as to its func¬ tional significance are open to us. First, we may suppose that the practical reason is able to initiate action on its own account, without the instrumentality of the sensibility. The feeling of reverence is merely an accompanying circumstance, a sort of “ epi-phenomenon ” in moral action, and not at all fundamental. Many passages, mostly in the Critique of Practical Reason , seem to confirm this view.1 The feeling is merely the consciousness on the part on the sensibility of its own repression, and it has no part whatever to play in the moral act. There is no organic relationship between the sensibility and the reason. They are irreconcilable factors, and when action is moral the sensibility must be forced to the wall and suppressed in the interests of morality and freedom. Its only conceivable use is in determining action in non- moral situations, where reason need not be brought into exercise. At other times, the sensibility, with its feelings of pleasure and pain, is a nuisance, an incumbrance that must be pushed aside. In the extreme woodenness of the account, and the lack of any functional relationship between the sensibility and the reason, this interpretation does not credit Kant with any advance upon Wolff. Our other alternative is to say that Kant thought that the practical reason initiates moral action through the instrumentality of the sensibility. Desire may, indeed, be effected by the moral law, but it must evoke pleas¬ ure or pain before it can pass into action. In the mechanism of the moral XE. g., H., V, 24, 25 f., 66 f., 76 f.; A., no, 112, 153 f., 164 f. KANT 67 act the feeling of reverence is an essential part of the process: it is at the same time the effect upon the sensibility of the action of the reason, and the efficient cause of moral action. Action is always the consequence of pleasure and pain; but the pleasures and pains of reverence exceed all others, and so entirely transform the character of feeling when it is subjected to the reason and the moral law. It is scarcely possible to interpret the Grundlegung and the Tugendlehre in places, except in some such way as this.1 The passages in the Critique oj Practical Reason can, we believe, be reconciled with this view. The thesis which Kant is defend¬ ing in each of them is simply that feeling must not be considered as in any way prior to the action of the reason, and so determining the morality of the act.2 It is also to be remembered that the Critique oj Practical Reason proposes to dispense with psychological considerations, and so psycho¬ logical accuracy is not to be expected in it.3 If we are justified in adopting this latter interpretation, it is not difficult to explain Kant’s doctrine of moral interest. Interest in the moral law seems to be the same feeling as reverence viewed in its positive aspect, and become a motive to action. Through interest reason becomes prac¬ tical, and the moral law is realized in action.4 Such interest is a rational motive independent of the sensibility, in the sense that its origin is not due to the sensibility — else it would be “pathological.” It is repeatedly described as a “moral feeling.”5 In this use of interest, Kant is clearly attempting to secure what modern ethical psychologists would call the “mediation of impulse.” Professor Dewey, for instance, speaks of an impulse as mediated when the conse¬ quences of an act, the ideal considerations by which it is evaluated, are referred back to it, and the impulse becomes idealized or rationalized.6 Kant’s distinction between “practical interest,” which is rational and free, and “pathological interest,” which is empirical and dependent upon inclinations, is similar. The practical interest has been mediated; the pathological interest is unmediated, and unreflective.7 1 Especially H., IV, 308 f., and VII, 203 (A., 80 f. and 310). 2 Cf. A., 169, top; H., V. 81. 3 A., 95, note; H., IV, 9. 4H, IV, 261 f., 306 f.; V, 84 (A., 30, footnote; 80, footnote; 172 f.). s E. g., H., IV, 261; V, 85 (A., 80, 173); cf. Critique of Judgment , §142. 6 J. Dewey, The Study oj Ethics: A Syllabus (Ann Arbor, 1897), 17-19, 49— 5 5 * 7 However, there is this difference: For Kant the moral law is transcendental in character. The finite intelligence becomes aware of it rationally before it feels the impulse to act upon it empirically. Kant’s problem is to secure the mediation of 68 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS If we are justified in our interpretation of Kant’s use of reverence and interest, there seems to be a way in which the sensibility can be brought into active co-operation with the reason in a scheme of self-realization, with only very slight modification of Kant’s doctrine as a whole. Pleas¬ ure and pain would become the instruments through which the moral law becomes realized in human experience. Viewing pleasure as the con¬ comitant of successful activity, and pain as that of unsuccessful activity, but neither as the cause which initiates activity, but as useful in rein¬ forcing it and enabling the intelligible self to carry out its ends in the world of experience, we can allot to pleasure a genuine and useful place in moral self-realization. From such a point of view Kant could have postulated a summum bonum like that of Leibniz, which would ever have been a progression in the realization of duty, ever attended by pleasure and happiness, because duty was ever being successfully realized. Happiness would then have stood in logical relationship with his scheme of moral action, instead of being somewhat arbitrarily and externally forced into the conception of the complete good. Two reasons probably explain why Kant did not work out a more satisfactory account of the moral act, and effect a more logical relation¬ ship between the reason and the sensibility, duty and happiness, (i) His method was mainly metaphysical. He wished to discover the a priori elements in moral volition, and did not primarily concern himself with the psychology of the moral act. The metaphysical validity, the ultimate reality of morality, and not the way in which the volitional processes go on, occupied his main attention. (2) The inadequacy of his psycho¬ logical definition of pleasure rendered it impossible for him to give it a satisfactory place in moral action. He assumed that action upon the part of the sensibility is always governed by the direct desire for pleasure and happiness.1 Further, as we have seen, his psychological definition of pleasure involves pessimism, if taken literally; because he failed to take account of the pleasure of activity for its own sake. Having concluded our discussion of Kant’s doctrine of pleasure, let us now consider his treatment of happiness. On account of the reasons duty already recognized by the reason, so that it will pass over into volition, and be acted upon. Dewey’s problem is to rationalize impulses already present in conscious¬ ness. Doubtless in actual experience we have moral conflicts of both types. 1 He simply took psychological hedonism for granted, so far as the sensibility is concerned. Cf. H., IV, 278; V, 39; VII, 189; G. S., IV, 430; A., 46, 126, 296. I have not enlarged upon the hedonistic fallacy in Kant. Perhaps the best discussion of the fallacy is that by Woodbridge, International Journal of Ethics , VII, 475 ff. Messer fully explains the extent to which Kant is guilty of it {op. cit., chap. x). KANT 69 mentioned in the description of his doctrine of pleasure, Kant failed to give happiness a logical relationship to the rest of his moral system, though, as we shall see, he gave it considerable recognition — more, perhaps, than *s generally understood. In the works of the critical period, happiness consists of the complete satisfaction of all empirical wants and inclinations;1 it is a state of unin¬ terrupted pleasure;2 and it seems to comprehend the conservation and welfare of the being that enjoys it.3 It is not an ideal of the reason but of the empirical faculty of the imagination, and rests solely upon empirical grounds.4 It consists wholly in a pleasurable state due to the satisfaction of desires arising from the sensibility. In this view of happiness we are reminded of Wolff.5 The history of Kant’s treatment of happiness shows a gradual dis¬ placement of it from its originally prominent position during the sixties. It is gradually forced to surrender one function after another to the moral law. In the critical period what it still retains are the somewhat tattered, but by no means inconsiderable, remnants of its former authority. Three of these are especially prominent. 1. It is a duty to seek the happiness of others. In the precritical period, as we have seen, one of the main difficulties, in Kant’s mind, in the way of making one’s happiness the basis of moral obligation, was that it failed to give a sufficiently social content to moral action. The pleasures of benevolence and sympathy were altogether inadequate for the purpose. The happiness of others remained an important part of moral obligation; and in the Tugendlehre it makes up the main content of our duty to them, their moral well-being involving only indeter¬ minate obligation.6 2. Kant also continued to recognize it as a duty to seek one’s own happiness, under important limitations. The distinction between happi¬ ness and morality is not an inevitable opposition ; we are simply required to “ take no account ” of happiness when duty intervenes. Kant undoubt¬ edly recognized that a great deal of the ordinary conduct of life is non- moral, and in such cases, where no moral issue is involved, one is justified in following what Kant believed to be one’s invariable natural impulse to happiness. Kant goes even farther than this. It actually becomes a duty to seek one’s own happiness when this affords the means of fulfilling 1 H., IV, 253; G. S., IV, 405; A, 21. 3H., IV, 243; G. S., Ill, 395; A, 11. 2 H., V, 22; A, 108. 4 H., IV, 267; G. S ., IV, 267; A., 36. 5 Though Wolff does not hold consistently to this view. Cf. pp. 270. above. 6 H., VII, 189-92; A., 296-99. 7o PLEASURE IN NON -HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS our duty (e. g., acquirements of skill, riches, etc.), and when the absence of happiness (e. g., in poverty) would furnish temptation to transgress the law of duty.1 The reason why Kant did not make this recognition of happiness more prominent in his exposition is partly because his hedonistic psychology seemed to render it unnecessary, and partly be¬ cause the strongly hedonistic tendencies of the age caused Kant to feel it necessary to throw all the emphasis the other way. The subsequent lapse into which Romanticism fell shows that Kant was justified in affirming with all his might the unqualified force of the categorical imperative. 3. Another notable recognition of happiness is its retention in the com¬ plete good.2 It is not, of course, the main element in the highest good, nor is it an element that seems to follow logically from it. The highest good is simply arbitrarily widened to include happiness in the complete good. Without going into the merits of the discussion between Hager- strom and Messer3 as to whether and how far Kant is inconsistent with himself in including happiness in the complete good, it is unquestionably true that to the minds of many people the argument for God, freedom, and immortality would have been much stronger if he had presented them simply as postulates necessary to insure the completion of purposes that are morally enjoined upon us, but cannot be carried out in this life. It seems tolerably evident, as Messer indicates, that Kant always felt that there must be some kind of inner connection between virtue and happiness. Such reiterated expressions as “worthy to be happy” point in this direction, and his belief that punishment in the next world is morally ordered, confirms it.4 At any rate, Kant’s use of happiness here in a way that certainly is not required by his argument, and to many minds actually weakens it, shows how far Kant actually was from being a rigorist. He really favored hedonism more than his system warranted. The conspicuous failure in Kant’s ethical treatment of pleasure and happiness, as has been said, is his failure to reorganize them, and bring them into logical relationship with duty in the moral act. He had begun to do this in his treatment of reverence and interest, but he never worked 1 H., V, 97 k; A., 187. The doctrine of radical evil affords no contradiction to this interpretation. That is not inherent in the sensibility as such , but only in the tendency to subordinate the moral law to self-love. Cf. Messer, op. cit., 237. 2 An interesting development of this idea of the “complete good” has been re¬ cently made by Professor E. B. McGilvary, “TheSummum Bonum,” in Vol. I of the University 0} California Contributions to Philosophy. 3 Hagerstrom, op. cit., 499 k; Messer, op. cit., 249 ff. 4 H., VII, 149 f. KANT 71 the idea out and interpreted happiness in the light of it, as it would have been possible for him to have done except for the inadequacy of his defi¬ nition of pleasure. He inherited from Wolff a hedonistic psychology, so far as the sensibility was concerned, and a hopeless opposition between it and the reason; and he never outgrew this inherited limitation. Unable to overcome this opposition between duty and happiness, the greatness of his work rather lies in his full recognition and development of it. As has been pointed out, this opposition was not appreciated by the perfectionist school. Kant’s development was prompted by his percep¬ tion that morality includes more than individual well-being, however we may refine the conception. The unconditional character of moral obligation, and its entire independence of feeling and inclination, were perceived by him, and enunciated with directness and eloquence that is sublime. VI. SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS It is of course impossible, except in a very general way, to characterize as a whole the non-hedonistic writers since Kant, which are here to be noticed. With the rebirth of national self-consciousness at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the enthusiastic efforts and sacrifices made by patriots in consequence, with the great industrial development that has made men and nations more economically interdependent, and with the increased human sympathy revealed in a thousand ways that imply a recognition of common brotherhood, the social nature of morality and duty could not fail to be recognized. This closer sense of mutual interests and sympathies has led Utilitarians to believe that a man’s personal hap¬ piness is necessarily dependent upon universal happiness. To non- hedonistic writers who are not satisfied with the arguments for this kind of a reconciliation, the essentially social character of morality, and its superiority and fundamental opposition to the solicitations of personal pleasure, have been unquestioned. With a clearer sense of the unity of the conscious life, and a better feeling for historical development — results due in a considerable measure to the work of Kant — there is no longer to be observed so sharp a dualism between happiness and moral action, nor such arbitrary, external methods employed at overcoming it, as we have seen in the ethical postulates of Kant. Speaking generally, two attitudes toward happiness may be distin¬ guished. Some have extruded what have seemed the selfish, anti-social, and unaesthetic elements from a happiness composed simply of pleasure, and have associated this refined happiness, often distinguished as blessed¬ ness, with the realization of the moral ideal. Such is the attitude of Fichte, Herbart, and Lotze. Schopenhauer, who despaired of the realization of any positive moral ideal, also employs a quasi-happiness of aesthetic contemplation as a mitigation of more intense suffering and defeat. Another attitude is represented by those who refuse to see any connec¬ tion between happiness, however refined, and ultimate moral attainment; and, while recognizing a limited functional utility to pleasure and feeling in the psychology of the moral act, refuse to recognize happiness as any¬ thing more than a stepping-stone to a higher ethical plane. Hegel, T. H. Green, and Nietschze may thus be classified. The diversity of philo- 72 SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 73 sophical beliefs represented in each of these groups reveals how very general has been the basis of classification.1 A. FICHTE AND HE6EL The opposing attitudes of Fichte and Hegel arose from the difficulties involved in the somewhat paradoxical position of Kant, which at the same time maintained that pleasure is empirical and subjective, and yet affirmed that a happiness composed of such empirical and subjective feelings is a necessary ethical postulate. Both Fichte and Hegel are agreed that such a happiness ( Gliickseligkeit ) cannot be regarded as the reward of virtue; but while Fichte substituted for this a refined form of happiness which he called blessedness ( Seligkeit ), Hegel could not concede to happi¬ ness anything more than a transitional stage in moral development , and thought that the satisfaction which comes from truly ethical action must be of a wholly different character. Neither Fichte nor Hegel corrected Kant in his supposition that all empirical desires are hedonistic; but while the opposition between empirical pleasure and moral action is no less genuine, it seems less arbitrary, as we find in each suggestions that the latter develops out of the former. In this respect they seem to have more of a sense of moral development, and come more closely to our modern evolutionary point of view. Kant was a pre-revolutionary writer, and his ethics embodies much of the individualism of Rousseau. Fichte represents the best elements in the Revolution, and sought to give it a lofty ethical character. He gives a larger recognition to feeling in his use of conscience and blessedness in moral action than Kant had done ; this is natural in the case of a writer living in a period when the Revolution, in making men conscious of their own personalities, had inevitably emphasized the place of feeling. More¬ over, the national self-consciousness, which he had done so much to awaken, gave expression to patriotism, which is as much a matter of sentiment as of duty. Such a philosopher must inevitably make the function of feeling in carrying out the command of duty more prominent than Kant had done. Hegel, on the other hand, represents the reaction which set in against the Revolution, and is the champion of absolutism and bureau¬ cracy. Consequently, he stood for the entire repression of feeling and individuality in the interests of the state and church, in which alone true objectivity is to be found. 1 The classification does not seem important enough to justify treating Hegel out of chronological order; especially as the difference between the two attitudes can best be shown by treating his view in connection with that of Fichte. 74 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS Besides the general tendency of the times, much of this difference may be attributed to the characters of the men themselves. Fichte was a man of strong emotional temperament, who acted more quickly than he thought, and at the same time was a man of high moral integrity and conscientiousness. Such a man, while painfully appreciating the necessity of subordinating the feelings to the intellect, could not fail to recognize the genuine worth of feeling, if it could only be kept in its proper sub¬ ordinate place. Hegel, on the other hand, is described as a bloodless sort of man, coldly intellectual. Himself without emotions he could not fail to exalt the rational sphere in which his intellect achieved magnificent results, while he despised emotions and feelings, which he could not understand, but which he clearly saw made men act and think less rationally and con¬ sistently than he. Fichte, even more consistently than Kant, made the central point in his system the fulfilment of duty. It is in this that freedom consists; and the whole of life and experience has its raison d'etre in furnishing opportunity for the exercise of duty. Pleasure, happiness, and impulse are evaluated with reference to the carrying-out of duty. So far as they are conducive to this, or play a functional part therein, they are good and moral; so far as they impede the realization of duty, they are bad and immoral. Consequently, we have two kinds of feeling, happiness and impulse: the moral kinds, which are good, and the immoral kinds which are evil. Logically prior to all experience exists the primal impulse to activity, which is an important feature of the Fichtean system. The idea, of course, came to him from Spinoza. Activity, however, was a much more positive category in his mind than was the conatus in the mind of Spinoza. This primal, impulsive ego, in order to realize the moral law and exercise its freedom, posits a world of nature, or non-ego, in which the material of duty is presented objectively. But the pure ego, being intellectual and transcendental in character, cannot directly act upon this finite matter. It therefore posits in opposition to this material of nature a finite ego, in which the primal impulse to duty is present. The vocation of the finite ego is to exercise its freedom in the use of the material of duty presented to it in sensuous form by nature, and realize the lofty aims of the moral law through it. The non-ego, or nature, also has an impulse, and its action upon the finite ego (which, as an object in the world of objects, can be affected mechanically) awakens feelings of pleasure and pain, and desires. It is necessary that this should occur in order that the finite ego may employ these impulses, desires, and feelings for the carrying-out of the moral SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 75 law. These are neither good nor bad in themselves, and become good or bad only as the finite ego is affected by them. If the finite ego exercises its own freedom and employs them as means for the performance of duty, they are good and fulfil their proper function. If, however, the finite ego treats them as furnishing ends in themselves, the finite ego fails to exercise its freedom, and so far becomes a merely mechanical object in the world of objects. In experiencing feeling and natural impulse, the finite ego is passive; and what should properly be the means of action becomes perverted into the ends of action. The finite ego thus becomes entangled in a mesh of sensuous pleasures and inclinations, and, no longer standing under its own dominion, or that of the transcendental ego, it becomes the slave of nature.1 The possibility of this constitutes the radical evil in man. The failure of the finite ego to exercise its freedom is due to slothfulness — disinclination to reflect, so as to discern its duty, and employ it in the interests of its own freedom.2 Pleasures have no unitary principle in themselves, and can properly serve only as instruments for the ego to use in working out its duty. Happi¬ ness thought of as a harmonious totality of pleasures ( Glucks eligkeit ) is thus a contradiction in terms. It could not exist; and if it did, to seek it would be directly opposed to the higher development of the ego, and would be morally bad. To affirm that God guarantees to men such happiness is the height of impiety. Thus Fichte sharply disagrees with Kant in regard to happiness as a moral postulate.3 Though Fichte thus emphatically repudiates pleasure as furnishing the end of action, he recognizes even more fully than Kant that the exer¬ cise of freedom and performance of duty is attended by a certain feeling of pleasure. When the finite ego acts in accordance with freedom and the primal impulse, a feeling of enjoyment arises; and whenever this is not the case, sorrow and dissatisfaction are felt.4 This kind of feeling is unique in that it is innate in the experience of the finite ego. This feeling is conscience.5 It is not dependent upon anything external, but arises out of the depths of the soul, and has its source in the transcen- 1 Werke, II, 314; IV, 108 f.; Fichte's Popular Works (trans. by Wm. Smith, LL. D., London, 1889), I, 473. The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowl¬ edge (trans. by A. E. Kroeger, London, 1897), 113 ff. 2 Werke , IV, 177 ff., 202; Kroeger, op. cit., 188 ff., 212. 3 The most trenchant statement is in the “Appelation gegen die Anklage des Atheismus,” Werke, V; cf. esp. p. 219. * Werke, IV, 143 b; Kroeger, op. cit., 151. s Kant’s reverence is thus developed by Fichte into conscience. It is clearly a feeling, being the felt consciousness of our inner freedom. Cf. A. Dimitroff, Die psychologischen Grundlagen der Ethik J. G. Fichte's (Jena, 1898), 181. 76 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS dental ego. Even the feeling of dissatisfaction is not a feeling of unalloyed regret. Its presence shows that we are not totally depraved. We are glad that we are capable of feeling it, and our self-contempt is lessened by being aware that we still have a conscience, and our knowledge that this sorrow is a wholesome spur that sooner or later will impel us to better action.1 Fichte does not go so far as Kant in saying that it is ever a duty to seek our own happiness; though he does make it a material duty to keep our body and external possessions in such a condition that we may employ them in the pursuit of our duty most successfully. Nor could one interpret Fichte as regarding any part of action as non-moral. The pursuit of sensuous pleasure is not, however, the greatest evil. That is slothfulness. Anything is better than that. So action for even sensuous pleasure repre¬ sents the first step upward toward the blessed life.2 While Fichte has unmixed contempt for happiness viewed as the summation of pleasure, he revives the Spinozistic conception of beatitude (Seligkeit, beatitudo ), but with a considerably modified significance, remind¬ ing us in some respects more of Leibniz. Beatitude is a state which can be reached in this life, by carrying out the moral law in one’s conduct as perfectly as the limitations of finite individuality will admit.3 The method of reaching this is largely intellectual, but also active. The radical evil is due to failure to think out one’s duty — a statement which involves the idea of active thinking. The blessed life itself differs from that of Spinoza in the greater emphasis upon its active side; it is no state of idle contem¬ plation, but one of unceasing activity.4 Nor is there any such attempt to exclude feeling altogether as Spinoza made. Only the immoral and anti-social feelings are excluded. In this blessed life there is “eternal possession of the fulness of all that one is capable of enjoying,” “admir¬ able serenity and loveliness,” “love,” “freedom from pain, trouble, sorrow, and privation.”5 This blessed life is not a state of absolute perfection. Man is finite, and so is infinitely removed from such a state, and can never attain it. Consequently, as with Leibniz, Fichte’s beatitude is a state of eternal progress, constantly rising to new heights of attainment. It is on the 1 Werke, IV, 146; V,499 f.; Kroeger, op. cit., 154; Smith, op. cit., II, 416 f. 2 Werke, V, 499; Smith, op. cit., II, 416b 3 Werke, V, 409; Smith, op. cit., II, 305. 4 Cf. C. Bos, “La beatitude chez Spinoza et chez Fichte,” Archiv. jiir Geschichte der Philosophic, XVIII. 5 Smith, op. cit., II, 474-77; Werke, V, 548-50. SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 77 ground of the necessity of realizing the law of duty which will take forever, that Fichte postulates immortality. Such a view does not seem pessi¬ mistic to a busy, active personality like Fichte. With much the same view of pleasure, and with the same view of a primal impulse to activity Fichte’s counsel is just the opposite of Schopenhauer’s: “Act! Act! it is to that end that we are here. . . . Let us rejoice that power is given to us, and that our task is infinite.”1 There is much in Fichte that is quite in the spirit of our present func¬ tional and genetic modes of interpreting life, besides his assertion of the primacy of the practical reason; and beneath the heavy verbiage of his technical phraseology we can discern one of the noblest and most attrac¬ tive personalities with which we become acquainted in philosophy.2 Hegel follows Kant and Fichte in affirming that only in rational action is the will free. He has a better sense of historical development, however, than either of the other two, and for him the attainment of free¬ dom and rationality is a gradual process. At first superior to the animals rather by his possibilities than in actuality, man gradually, through thought and reflection, achieves a consciousness of his action, and so comes to be a partaker in reason. In the first stage of his upward development the will is free only in an abstract and formal manner. Man is guided by the “utterly subjective and superficial feeling of pleasant and unpleasant.”3 Pleasure is the harmony between external conditions and internal impulses, having for their purpose the canceling of some defect or want. Pain is felt where existing facts do not agree with one’s desires.4 While pleasure and pain thus do furnish a sort of union between subject and object, this syn¬ thesis is only of an abstract and formal character, only taking account of this relationship from the individual’s own subjective point of view. Con¬ sequently, pleasure attaches itself to all sorts of objects, and there is no unitary principle in it as regards the object in its true universality. 5 A further stage in the transition from the primitive state of the will as merely natural impulse, unguided by reflection, and the will as abso¬ lutely free, is represented by passionate action. At first the will was only natural impulse or inclination, influenced by pleasure. If, now, the prac- 1 Closing words of the Vocation of the Scholar, quoted from Smith. 2 “Er war eine der tiichtigsten Personlichkeiten, die man je gesehen” (Goethe). 3 Philosophy of Mind (trans. by Wallace), §472; Werke, VII, Part II, 364. 4 Ibid., 474. s “ Philosophische Propadeutik, ” Werke, XVIII, p. 56; trans. by W. T. Harris, Journal 0} Speculative Philosophy, IV, 174. 78 PLEASURE IN NON -HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS tical spirit throws itself in its totality into any one particular form of impulse, we have passion. Passion, like subjective impulse, is neither good nor bad in itself; it is subjective and contingent. Before man has become free and rational, the Spirit often directs his activities through the instrumentality of passion. Thus the great results of history have been accomplished through men who were not at all conscious of lofty moral ends, but acted for their own selfish interests and purposes. Thus the Spirit craftily employed their impulses and passions for the carrying out of ethical purposes, and objectifying them in institutions.1 The next stage in the transition is that of happiness. In this particular impulses and desires are no longer followed immediately, for the sake of the pleasure involved in them. They are instead compared with one another, weighed, and calculated. Happiness is represented as a totality of enjoyment, and furnishes a standard by which particular impulses are limited and co-ordinated, and one does not give way to what will afford only momentary enjoyment. In this way the grossness of animal pleasure is refined, and man’s dispositions and tastes are softened and improved. But the universalizing which takes place in happiness is still subjective and formal, and does not take account of the object. Thought, however, has the upper hand at this stage, and considerable progress over the preceding stages has been made.2 When one at last enters upon the rational stage, the contrast between subjective individuality represented by individual interests, and the rights of the world, is recognized, and a sort of working adjustment between the two is effected. Here we have the field of morality (Moralitat). In the final stage the two elements, subjective and objective, which were still opposed in morality, are brought together in a higher synthesis, and we have concrete social morality (Sittlichkeit) , in which the content of morals has become objective and universal, and is revealed in institutions, such as the family, state, and church. In this final stage pleasure and happiness evidently have no place in determining the ends of action, or furnishing a moral ideal. One’s whole concern is to realize the object itself, and its subjective relation, expressed by pleasure and happiness, is utterly lost sight of, and is a matter of indifference.3 But before morality, however objectified as social morality, can be realized in the action of a finite being, it must find expression in his voli- 1 Werke, IX, p. 41; Philosophy of History (translated by Sibree), 34. 2 Philosophy of Right (trans. by S. W. Dyde), §20; Werke VIII, §20; cf. Werke, XVIII, p. 58; Harris, op. cit., 176. 3 Werke, VII, ii, §472, addition; XVIII, pp. 56 f; Harris, op. cit., 174. SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 79 tional processes. To initiate action, interest must be aroused and for great, energetic action, this interest must take the strongly emotional form of passion.1 Hegel thus agrees with Kant in finding feeling necessary in the mechanism of the moral act, although not properly determining the grounds for action. Through the instrumentality of thought and reflection Hegel believes that the universal element represented by ethics and religion will not only be recognized by the mind, but will awaken interest and passion, and become expressed in action. The difficulty in making a course of action that has been presented to the mind get expressed in feeling in this way is apparent. It seems to one that Hegel ’s ethical account suffers at this point from its complete divorce between thought and feeling. If the action of the mind in which the higher ethical values are recognized could have been a psychosis in which thought and feeling were both present, he would not have had to connect the two in what impresses one as really an external and arbitrary manner, in order to secure action. It seems as though Hegel’s position would need but slight modification in order to escape this difficulty. Just as pleasure is a harmony between desires and external conditions on the subjective side when we act merely upon impulse, so, when our vision is widened and we intellectually recognize social morality in its objectivity, our feelings are similarly widened in their scope. In the final synthesis of subject and object of which he speaks, when the self has become identified with the object in thought and action, its feelings have become widened at the same time, so that these are vitally dependent upon social realization for their character. In this case, happiness, viewed in this widened sense and taken in its totality, would be correlative with morality, social morality, and religion, taken in their totality. The diffi¬ culty that stood in the way of Hegel’s taking such an attitude was the same dualism present in Kant and Fichte. All three assume psycho¬ logical hedonism for the empirical self, and have to oppose to this a rational self in which pleasure is not the end of action. Had they given more attention to psychology, and discovered that neither impulsive nor delib¬ erate action is actuated by an inevitable motivation in the direction of pleasure, this dualism in their ethics would have been unnecessary. B. SCHOPENHAUER Schopenhauer’s primal impulse to activity — “the will to live” — is much the same idea that we have found in Fichte. The very different 1 Werke, VII, ii, §§474, 475 and addition; IX, pp. 28, 29; Wallace, op. cit., Sibree, op. cit., 23 ff. This is an adaptation of the Kantian doctrine of interest; cf. p. 67 above. 8o PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS significance attached to this impulse by Schopenhauer is largely due to temperamental causes. Fichte’s was an intensely active personality, and to him the notion that the goal to which the primal impulse is directed is infinitely removed, is a welcome assurance of immortality, and a blessed life consisting in ceaseless struggle and progress. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, being of a nature which craves the rewards of success, but finds the struggle and effort of attainment unwelcome, recognizing nothing good in activity apart from its results, and seeing that these last are never fully gained, concludes that the will to live is essentially evil, and all human activity is vain and abortive.1 The Platonic definition of pleasure and pain, as used by Kant and Leibniz, has been shown to be implicitly pessimistic. These writers, however, had many other ideas in which they were more interested, and did not discover these pessimistic implications ; and if they had, this would simply have resulted in their correcting their accounts of pleasure, so as to recognize the pleasure of activity for its own sake. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, snatched upon this definition of pleasure, worked out its latent pessimism to its logical conclusions, and found in it a confirma¬ tion of his doctrine. He reasoned that since pleasure simply consists in the consciousness of the removal of a want, and the want itself is the occasion of pain, and so pleasure is merely negative and transient, while pain is positive and continuous with consciousness itself, the pain in fife must obviously outweigh the pleasure. Happiness, therefore, thought of as a state of continuous and unalloyed pleasure, is a contradiction in terms, and an absolute impossibility. Two other Kantian ideas of which Schopenhauer makes use in this connection are the disinterestedness of moral action, and the disinterest- edness of aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful — the latter a conception in the Critique of Judgment of which Kant himself did not make any ethical application.2 The only recourse to escape from existence, which is inevitably disappointing, is to deny the will to live, to cease to strive, and cease to have interests. He recognizes in sympathy, a conception derived from British sources, the only positively justifiable interest which one may 1 The chief sources for Schopenhauer’s attitude upon our problem are the “prize essay” on the Basis of Morality (trans. by A. B. Bullock); The World as Will and Idea , Book IV, esp. § 65, and chap, xlvii; and a short essay “On Ethics” in the Parerga und P arilopomena (trans. by E. B. Bax in Schopenhauer's Selected Essays, “Bohn Library”). 2 Though Kant did attach some moral significance to the feeling of the sublime. See p. 65 above, footnote 5. SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTUPY NON -HEDONISTS 8 1 have; and this constitutes the basis of morality for him. Sympathy itself, however, involving a denial of personal and selfish desires, is in a sense disinterested. The hope of success in moral achievement in thus denying the personal will through sympathy is afforded by aesthetic contemplation, whose disinterested satisfaction affords temporary relief. The answer to Schopenhauer, of course, is to indicate the desirableness of activity for its own sake, by pointing out the pleasures of unimpeded activity, and the consequent possibility of a happiness consisting in con¬ stant activity. The failure of such writers as Leibniz and Fichte to develop this conception of pleasure, using instead the utterly inadequate Platonic definition, afforded Schopenhauer the opportunity to use the conception to fortify his pessimism. An important service of the latter was to call forth this necessary correction in the definition of pleasure and happiness. C. HERBART A more positive ethical use of Kant’s aesthetic doctrine had already been made by Herbart. Through aesthetic pleasure he thought that the narrowness of the Kantian morality, and its abstract, empty character, could be overcome.1 Pleasure, in Herbart ’s psychology, is due to the harmonious co-operation of the different ideas, and pain to their disa¬ greement. When a presentation, upon its emergence above the threshold of consciousness, is in harmony with the presentations already there, a pleasant feeling ensues; but when some of the presentations present in consciousness strive to thwart and inhibit the new presentation, while others aid it, the consequent tension is painful. Such pleasures and pains are often empirical, and involve no a priori principles. Consequently, a happiness composed of pleasures merely, without further specification, would not be a proper end of morality.2 However, as Kant had himself recognized in the Critique oj Judgment , the feeling of the beautiful is not of this empirical and indeterminate character. It arouses involuntary and disinterested pleasure, which is a priori. Herbart concludes from this, that a morality based upon the feeling of the beautiful will have the necessary universality and objec¬ tivity.3 He distinguishes five different and not further reducible forms of moral beauty: inner freedom (agreement of the will with the judgment); perfection, due to energy, variety, and co-operation of desires and striv- 1 M. Mauxion, La metaphysique de Herbart , 317 ff. 2 Such an interpretation seems justifiable from such passages as Werke, XII, 126 (Hartenstein's ed.). 3 Allgemeine praktische Philosophic , Introduction. 82 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS ings; benevolence —a social principle due to the agreement of one ’s will with that of others; right; and equity. The first three of these principles please positively; the latter two, negatively— i. e., because their opposites displease us.1 This Herbartian scheme may be regarded as an advance upon Kant and Hegel, in giving a larger content to morality, by introducing the feelings, and by the broader significance which the doctrine of interest, now much current in educational circles, is able to assume in consequence. It also represents an advance in recognizing the value of psychology for ethics. Aside from the objections to its mechanical view of consciousness, and its failure to provide for a self — difficulties which do not concern us here — the great deficiency in the account is its failure to give any adequate grounds for the force and authority of duty. Morality certainly seems to ordinary consciousness to have greater force and a more categorical nature than aesthetic principles can have. Herbart’s partial recognition of this in asserting that moral beauty is superior to all other kinds, and is unique, implicitly confesses that morals really must be something more than even the highest branch of aesthetics. D. LOTZE That a larger significance should be attributed to feeling in ethics is not surprising in the case of a writer belonging past the middle of the nineteenth century, with its wider interests and sympathies, and its larger recognition in its religious, social, political, and literary activities of the genuine worth and significance of feeling and sentiment. The character of Lotze ’s problem, and the attitude which he took, may also be supposed to have exercised an influence in the same direction. A writer who recog¬ nized the significance and worth of a mechanical interpretation of the universe on the one hand, but believed at the same time that such mechan¬ ical laws are subordinate to mental activity, would naturally be led to perceive in feeling something that distinguishes man from the mechanism of nature, and to ascribe to it an importance as an evaluating and teleo¬ logical factor. Unfortunately, Lotze never worked out his ethical doctrine in detail, never writing the portion of the Metaphysics in which this was to be presented. We are therefore forced to derive these from a few pas¬ sages in the Micro cosmus and the outlines of his lecture courses. This is the more disappointing because his presentation of feeling and happi- 1 Op. cit., Book I; Einleitung in die Philosophic §§90 ff. Professor A. W. Small, in his General Sociology, chap, xxxii (Chicago, 1905), similarly finds in human con¬ duct six not further reducible interests. SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 83 ness in their moral significance is unique in several respects, and extremely suggestive. Psychologically, he thinks the hypothesis probably correct that feelings are the results and tokens of the agreement or disagreement between the excitations produced in us, and the conditions of our permanent well-being. Pleasure would therefore depend upon every encitement to the use of our natural capacities within the limits of these conditions, and it would rise in degree with the intensity of these encitements; on the contrary, pain would depend upon the fact that the excitations suffered are at strife with the aforesaid conditions.1 This definition clearly recognizes the pleasure in activity. It has another consequence of ethical significance for Lotze. Pleasure and pain thus defined are simply general designations for a great variety of feelings, whose specific content is not taken into account in saying whether they are pleasant or painful. Consequently, to set up “pleasure in general,” or happiness simply composed of pleasure, as a moral criterion would be to set up something that is never actually experienced by us in so vague a manner. We never experience pleasure in general any more than we do color in general. The particular pleasures which we do experience are qualitatively different from one another, and each has its own value. Thus egoistic hedonism rests upon a logical fallacy. The thought is the same as Hegel’s, when he said that pleasure is formal and empirical, lacking in any true objec¬ tivity. Lotze has made an advance in stating the principle in psycho¬ logical terms. Usually we do not think of hedonism as open to the charge of basing its moral principles upon an empty abstraction. This reproach is usually reserved for Kant. However, it is clear that to make pleasure or happiness the moral criterion, without further specification, will not serve to account for the moral distinctions which we all recognize.2 While thus objecting to hedonistic formalism, Lotze still believes that moral values are due to feeling. All self-consciousness, in the first place, is due to feeling. Without this, to be sure, one could be conscious of one’s self and others as all beings in a world, as subjects each of which is its own object; but the uniqueness of selfhood, the different valuation given to one’s own affairs, all desire to change any relations in the world, are due to feeling.3 And, in the second place, the distinctions which make some acts moral, and others immoral are due to qualitative distinctions 1 Outlines of Psychology (trans. by Ladd), § 48; cf. Metapliysic , translated by Bosanquet, II, 225 f. 2 Outlines of Psychology , § 8. 3 Ibid., §§52, 53; Bosanquet, op. cit ., I, 248-51, 687 ff. 84 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS in feelings — i. e., because we experience different kinds of pleasure with different moral values. Sensuous feelings have regard only to the well¬ being of the individual person experiencing them. Ethical and aesthetic feelings, on the other hand, are expressions of the furtherance or disturb¬ ance of the universal spirit in us.1 All moral action is thus due to feelings; but these are not merely feelings of pleasure and pain defined abstractly, but with regard to their content which is varied, individual, unique. It is to pleasure in this con¬ crete sense that we owe all the values which we can recognize. The highest good is accordingly happiness, or, better, blessedness, taken in this concrete sense, and recognized as involving the happiness of the uni¬ verse as a whole, and not our own happiness apart from this, but as included in it. Blessedness is of an aesthetic character. In beauty we have a per¬ ception of harmony between what is and what ought to be in a finite instance. And this harmony is not individual, limited to the personal experience of the person who perceives it, as is the merely agreeable, but has a certain objectivity and universality, and may be recognized by everyone.2 Blessedness, apparently, would be harmony, not different in character from what we have in beauty, but which would extend to the entire universe. Our present theoretical knowledge is not sufficient to prove to us that the realizing of this blessedness is the aim that we see manifested in the world, or that such a concord does take place in the world, viewed in its totality. But where such a harmony is perceived by us in a particular phenomenon, we recognize beauty; and this fact leads us to believe in the possibility in the world taken as a whole. It is only by supposing that this is the supreme aim of the world that we can explain the phenomena of inspiration, adoration, and moral obli¬ gation. Lotze thus suggests a new manner of presenting the moral postu¬ lates. He criticises Kant’s presentation of the moral law because it takes no notice of values. The imperativeness of duty can be explained only on the ground that the content of duty has value: value can only be a matter of feeling; and since the feeling in the case of moral values is not our own, it has to be referred to an infinite Spirit, God.3 Lotze ’s use of blessedness reminds us very much of Fichte. The difference is, that while Fichte developed the thought chiefly in his later writings, the idea is more fundamental in Lotze ’s ethics, and the aesthetic 1 Outlines of Psychology, § 50. 2 Outlines of Aesthetics (translated by Ladd)', § 12. 3 Outlines 0} the Philosophy of Religion (trans. by Ladd), ii4ff. SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 85 side is presented. He also follows Fichte in the employment of conscience (which with him as with Fichte is a feeling) as the guide in morality. He says, however, that conscience speaks unambiguously only in respect to the simple and pure relations of one will to another, and that in more intricate matters we must look to axioms derived from general experience.1 Lotze represents an advance upon the Kant-Fichte-Hegel develop¬ ment in his recognition that feeling is not only a necessary instrument in the mechanism of the moral act after the moral judgment has taken place (as these authors recognized), but also that feeling furnishes the values employed in the moral judgment also.2 The aesthetic character of morality, and the analogy between beauty and happiness, had already, as we have seen, been suggested by Herbart. But in Lotze ’s insistence that feeling is an original factor in experience as truly as cognition, and not merely secondary phenomenon due to the interaction of thought presentations, he represents a genuine advance upon Herbart. The ideas suggested by Lotze seem to the present writer very suggestive and it is greatly to be regretted that he did not live to write them out and publish them in full. The difficulty in such a view is that the analogy between ethical and aesthetic judgments is not a complete parallel. Moral imperatives have a deeper and more thoroughgoing objectivity and uni¬ versality. Whether Lotze could have met this difficulty satisfactorily is the question. E. GREEN Feeling with Green is a logical prerequisite, not only for ^//-con¬ sciousness, as we have seen in the case of Lotze, but for any consciousness. Animals have this, in the sense of a felt impulse after riddance from pain, and will in the sense of ‘‘activity determined by feeling.”3 By pleasure Green understands “any unimpeded activity,”4 or “realization of capa¬ city,”5 thus definitely recognizing the pleasure of activity. In the animal state, action is initiated, as Green supposes, by immediate presentations of pleasure and pain. If there ever occurs a situation in human experi¬ ence in which there is action immediately for pleasurable or painful feel¬ ing, such action is upon the same plane, and is non-moral. To a selj- conscious soul, however, feelings have an altogether altered significance, he describes his feelings to himself, distinguishes himself from them, and “is conscious of them as manifold relations in which he, the single self, stands to the world — in short as manifold facts.”6 The 1 Outlines of Practical Philosophy , §9. 4 Ibid., §276. 2 Cf. Microcosmus (translation), I, 244-48. s Ibid., §361. 3 Prolegomena to Ethics , § 119. 6 Ibid., § 120. 86 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS unity which is given to feeling in self-consciousness alters the character of desire completely. In the animal state desire is for immediate pleasant feeling. In the human state, on the other hand, desire is for objects. In the attainment of these objects it is thought that a certain self-satis¬ faction will be found. But the objects are not desired — or at least the chief incentive in any desire is not for any enjoyable feeling tone that attends the attainment of the object. The argument by which this is reached is both positive and negative. Positively, it is the main thesis iq this doctrine of knowledge that what Kant calls the “ objective unity of apperception” is due to the action of the self in organizing experience. Without the work of the self we should not perceive objects at all. Consequently, we could not desire them. All that we should desire wTould be such feelings as we had experi¬ enced that were pleasurable. It thus seems to run as a corollary to his epistemology that a self-conscious being should desire certain of the objects which he perceives. Just as his intellectual life forms a unity in conse¬ quence of its organization by, and with reference to, a self, so his practical life is organized about this self whose satisfaction it seeks. All desire is for self-satisfaction; objects are desired because one imagines that the self will feel satisfaction in them. Negatively, Green devotes much space to showing that pleasure can not be the principal aim of a self-conscious being, wdiether his action is moral or immoral. There is no unitary principle in pleasure. Pleasure can be found in any unimpeded activity whatever. Any person who has regard for anything beyond the passing moment cannot find satis¬ faction in pleasure. The aim for a life of continuous pleasure or a sum of pleasures is impossible. Here Green’s position is similar to Hegel’s. The difference is that Hegel regards action for pleasure as possible, and as practiced by persons, but as irrational and immoral; Green does not think that pleasure can ever be the object of a self-conscious being; at least, if it can, action in such a condition is not immoral, but non-moral.1 There is always pleasure present as the result of any satisfaction of self; this is the reason why men sometimes imagine that the desire for objects is a desire for the pleasure which attends their attainment.2 Green concedes that any interest or desire for an object may come to be rein¬ forced “by desire for the pleasures which, reflecting upon past analogous experience, the subject of the interest may expect as incidental to its satis¬ faction. ”3 This concession to the doctrine of “cool self-love” is made with emphasis upon the condition that this desire is to be understood as 1 Op. cit., §§ii2, 125. 2 Ibid., §158. 3 Ibid., §161; cf. §228. SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 87 only reinforcement, and as in no way able to take the place of the main motive — self-realization. It is the realization of those objects in which we are mainly interested that forms the content of our idea of happiness.1 Happiness for Green is an ideal which leads a man to suppress par¬ ticular desires in the interest of other desires, in order that he may attain a state of general well-being in which they will all be satisfied so far as possible. Such a state is not to be conceived of as a co-ordination of pleasures — since pleasures do not admit of co-ordination — but as an ideal arising from the unity of our conscious and volitional life.2 The effort for happiness psychologically is not an effort for pleasure, but for the reali¬ zation of various objects of desire, and such realization makes one the subject of happiness. Happiness is not the direct aim of an individual, any more than pleasure is. The distinction between what is right and what is wrong is not one that appertains to happiness any more than it does to pleasure. It is wholly a question of the filling of desire, the objects in which one seeks to realize one’s self. The only way to test these seems to be whether or not they are such as will accord with the moral ideal by affording “an abiding satisfaction to an abiding self.” The moral ideal by which they are to be tested has only partly become explicit up to the present time. We can recognize it only so far as it has become objectified in institutions like the family and the state. The moral ideal is social in character. So it is only in a social way that we can come to know the moral ideal, just as it is only in a social way that we come to have self-consciousness at all. A selfish life seems to be one in which sensuous impulses prevail, and in which one has not much social consciousness, because one has not much .^//-consciousness, using the term in his technical manner.3 For Green, then, pleasure has little moral significance. Since feeling is a prerequisite for self-consciousness, we may say that feeling is a pre¬ requisite for moral consciousness. But this does not furnish a criterion by which we can distinguish what is moral from what is immoral. True happiness is the reward of moral action, but this is not composed of pleas¬ ure, nor is it the direct object of desire and volition. The state of true happiness, in which the moral ideal is gradually being realized, cannot fail to be regarded by us as an enjoyable one; but it is questionable whether, in the case of any individual person, to say the least, it is any more enjoy¬ able than one in which the moral ideal is not being realized — indeed, 'Ibid., §228. 2 Ibid., §§127, 128. 3 At least this is the construction which I should put upon the sermon on The Witness of God. Cf. Prolegomena , § 232. 88 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS it may not be as much so.1 Nor is he ready to admit that moral action upon the part of the individual always increases general happiness, though not that of the individual himself. We do not seek the happiness of others directly, any more than we do our own. We seek for others the attainment of objects that will afford satisfaction, just as we do for our¬ selves.2 The moral reformer does not seek the pleasure of those for whom he labors, and Green thinks it doubtful whether his work increases their pleasure.3 As compared with Kant, we see an advantage in his treatment of happiness in one respect. Green’s true happiness is the direct result of moral action. He postulates a future life simply in order that the reali¬ zation now going on may be continued and completed. Thus he avoids the difficulties which we observed in Kant’s postulation of happiness in the complete good. On the other hand, one feels obliged to question whether in his scheme of self-realization Green has at all adequately provided for the feeling side of our nature. With him, as with Hegel, feeling occupies a rather incidental place in moral action. To be sure, he makes it a prerequisite for consciousness, and in an altered form for self-consciousness; but it plays no moral function, except possibly some¬ times to reinforce moral action. Introspection seems to assure us that emotion plays a very real part in moral life and volition, and that its place can hardly be of so fortuitous a character as he tries to make out. If feeling is of such minor significance, why is it, as Green himself admits, that, in its practical applications, Utilitarianism so often coincides with his view ? One is led to suspect that there must be some reason for this harmony, involving a closer harmony between happiness and the moral ideal than he has indicated.4 It seems, therefore, that Green’s account of self-realization would have been more satisfactory if he had attached to feeling a significance somewhat similar to that suggested by Lotze. The difficulty — and it is a serious one for an ethics of self-realization — is somehow to allow feeling 1 Prolegomena, §§276, 277. 2 Ibid., §§ 235, 236. 3 Ibid., §277. 4 An attempt to effect such a union has been made by a keen critic, but partial follower of Green, Professor J. Dewey, Syllabus 0} Ethics (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1897), and Philosophical Review, Vol. II. Professor H. W. Stuart, a pupil of Professor Dewey, has worked out the logical aspects of this new reconstruction of self-realiza¬ tion, “Valuation as a Logical Process” (published in the Studies in Logical Theory , edited by Dewey), and “The Logic of Self-Realization” (published in the University 0} California Contributions to Philosophy, Vol. I). SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON -HEDONISTS 89 to play a real part in moral valuation, and yet give to moral ideals the unconditional rational authority which they require. Green seems better to have fulfilled the latter demand, and Lotze the former. To satisfy both demands at the same time is a task open to contemporary self- realizationists. F. NIETZSCHE Nietzsche was mainly occupied, in his treatment of feeling, in com¬ bating Utilitarianism, and other doctrines which are disposed to make pleasure a criterion of moral values, or the psychological motive to action. While in his earlier works we occasionally find a passage which suggests the idea that one should act for one’s pleasure and happiness,1 such pas¬ sages are clearly opposed to the main tenor of his thought, and simply indicate that he had not yet thought out his doctrine thoroughly. It is only in his posthumous works that we see indications that the functional part which feeling plays in action is to be taken account of.2 The con¬ cessions there made, small though they are, indicate that he felt the neces¬ sity of taking some account of pleasure and pain, and lead us to believe that, if he had been able to complete Der Wille zum Macht, he would have given us a fairly detailed statement of his idea as to the part that feeling plays in action. To be sure, this part would not have been an exalted one; but it would have been a part. The only value which he regards as final is the “will for power.” This also furnishes the motive to action. But where he says that all sensations and perceptions ( Empfindungen und Sinnes- W ahrnehmungen) originally have arisen in some sort of relationship to the pleasure or pain of the organism,3 though unwilling to make pleasure and pain indicative of moral values now, he seems to make them represent a necessary stage through which every new constituent of our conscious¬ ness has passed. Pleasure and pain are phenomena which accompany human activity, though they are never the motives for it, nor the ends to which it is directed. They seem to be the simplest and most primitive form in which judgments of value can be made, pleasure being a feeling of increased power, and pain of diminished power.4 Whether something will be pleasant or 1 E.g., Morgenrothe , §§ 104-8. 2 Chiefly in the aphorisms published in Vol. XIII of his Werke, and the portions of Der Wille zum Macht in Vol. XV. 3 Werke, XIII, 270. 4 Werke, XIII, 254, 271 ff.; XV, 323, 331 ff. and passim. 9o PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS painful depends upon the amount of strength which one has. What will appear painful and dangerous to a weak man will be pleasant and welcome to a strong one, who finds in it an opportunity to exercise his power.1 A point that he makes much of is that pain is often desired for the opposition which it affords, and the opportunity of exercising one’s might in overcoming it. Pleasure itself is often experienced as a kind of rhythm, in which pain keeps appearing as a stimulus to further activity and increased pleasure as a result.2 The fact that the original impulse to power quite as often evokes pain as pleasure is a proof that neither is its aim, but that both are employed only to indicate the means for achieving power. They indicate this, however, only very imperfectly. They are “the most stupid thinkable expression for judgments.”3 What they stand for is much better expressed in a rational judgment; the utility of feeling is simply to indicate the means by which the will for power can express itself before rational judgments have been formed. To prefer a feeling to a rational judgment is to prefer an inherited tendency based, it may be, upon an originally erroneous judgment, instead of thinking out the matter carefully for one’s self. “To trust to one’s feeling — means to obey one’s grandfather and grandmother and their ancestors in a higher degree than the gods that dwell within us, namely our reason and experi¬ ence. ”4 While Nietzsche’s recognition of the pleasure of unimpeded activity represents a more adequate psychological comprehension of pleasure, his general attitude in regarding pleasure as a primitive form of judgment reminds one very much of the rationalists. Like them, he makes feeling perform the same kind of a function as thought, but more imperfectly. The difficulties involved in a view of this sort have perhaps been suffi¬ ciently exposed in the discussion of the perfectionists. In his emphasis upon the principle that pain is often willed in order to carry out our purposes (in his case the will for power), Nietzsche has emphasized a fact which many ethical writers have overlooked. Pain need not represent a lapse from a previous state of well-being. It may rather be an advance to a higher state. To find a piece of rag-time music which in the past has given one entire satisfaction now become inhar¬ monious, may indicate that one’s musical taste has improved. To feel 1 Werke, XV, 331. 2 Ibid., XIII, 274; XV, 325,328, 332. 3 Ibid., XV, 331. 4 The Dawn of Day, § 35 (trans. by Johanna Volz). SEVERAL NINETEENTH-CENTURY NON-HEDONISTS 91 displeasure in an action which formerly has seemed quite right may be an indication that one’s moral discernment has improved; and the fact that we now feel displeasure and pain does not indicate a moral lapse, but a moral advance. The appearance of the obstacle which affords the pain gives us something to be overcome, and is an opportunity for moral self- realization. VII. CONCLUSION In conclusion let us briefly review the modern non-hedonistic develop¬ ment through which we have passed, in its ethical attitude toward pleasure, feeling, and happiness. When the philosophy of the Renaissance was led, by its individualistic tendencies, to recognize in personal pleasure a motive to action, no serious problem at first seemed to be involved. Descartes defined pleasure as “the sense of some perfection.” He likewise defined happiness and virtue in terms of perfection. He thought that in attaining individual perfection a person is obtaining the most pleasure and happiness possible, and at the same time performing his duty. While laying more emphasis upon the spiritual and religious aspects of perfection, Malebranche pre¬ served the same co-ordination of pleasure, happiness, and duty in terms of perfection. Later rationalists had more difficulty in maintaining this co-ordination. Spinoza’s fidelity to the mathematical method led him to reduce feeling to cognitive terms. Pleasure became confused consciousness of per¬ fection, while happiness or beatitude was preserved in the moral ideal as clear and distinct consciousness of perfection. This forced a sharp diver¬ gence between beatitude and pleasure, but did not save the former from containing distinctly affective elements — i. e., confused , and hence imper¬ fect , thought. Thus the co-ordination logically breaks down, both between pleasure and beatitude, and between beatitude and perfection. It also fails to give much room for any social content. Leibniz escaped some of Spinoza’s difficulties by following Descartes in recognizing intellectual pleasures, and viewing happiness as an active and progressive state in which new degrees of perfection are constantly being attained. He thus effects a closer union between pleasure and happiness and the attainment of perfection. He likewise fails, however, to afford an adequate place for duty and social demands not evidently coincident with individual perfection and pleasure. The difficulties in the rationalistic co-ordination appear with increased sharpness in Wolff. His use of the mathematical method leads him to reduce pleasure to confused cognition, and even to make it an attribute of objects, losing sight of its subjective character altogether. Moral perfection he regards as altogether rational in its nature, and quite opposed to such confused elements as pleasure and impulse. However, he cannot 92 CONCLUSION 93 wholly dispense with the sensibility, and its confused feelings and impulses, in order to effect the carrying-out of the dictates of the reason in the world of action. The reward of the attainment of perfection, and at least a partial motive to effort in this direction, must therefore consist in a happi¬ ness composed of pleasure. Having thus thrown pleasure out of the window as confused and irrational thought, he is obliged to admit it again at the door as the reward of rational action, and the attainment of per¬ fection. The co-ordination had thus become full of internal inconsist¬ encies as well as very narrow in its recognition of social demands, when the problem was again attacked by Mendelssohn. The latter and his contemporaries cleared up the psychology of pleasure, and rediscovered its subjective characteristics. Influenced by the British moral sense writers, Mendelssohn also asserted the moral worth and dignity of the feelings. In thus disclosing the ethical significance of the feelings, how¬ ever, he made the difficulties in the old co-ordination in terms of perfection more difficult than ever. The only suggestion toward a solution of the difficulties which he is able to make is simply to say that somehow the reason must receive the warmth and impulsive character of the feelings in order to secure its motivation, while the feelings must acquire the clear insight and deliberateness of the reason. It was at this point that Kant inherited the problem ; but before review¬ ing the manner in which he treated it, let us resurvey the development in Great Britian. There the movement had begun with the same co-ordination of pleas¬ ure, happiness, morality, and perfection; and perhaps with a stronger conviction of the eternal and unconditional character of morality. When the growth of individualism had led to the belief that the necessary motive to action must be found in the feelings of the individual, the problem was forced upon the adherents of the old morality, how to secure the moti¬ vation of this latter. Their empirical method gave them in the main free play in attacking the problem; and to their minds, unclouded by the notion of a ruling conception, the seriousness of the problem was much more clearly appreciated. The first method adopted attempted to secure the motivation of morality by widening the range of personal pleasure so as to make it include the pleasures of the moral sense, benevolence, and sympathy. Such was the effort of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hartley, Hume, and Adam Smith; the last three of these accounting for the genesis of these higher, moral pleasures through association. This line of argument finally broke down, as it was found impossible to secure sufficient authority and stability for a morality derived wholly from the feelings. 94 PLEASURE IN NON-HEDONISTIC SYSTEMS Before attempts to derive a non-hedonistic morality from selfish con¬ stituents by means of association and sympathy had ceased, Butler had already introduced a new line of attack. He recognized the immediate divergence between duty and pleasure, but sought to overcome it ulti¬ mately by philosophical arguments and considerations of a future life. The earlier Scottish writers sought to minimize this divergence as much as possible, but had to fall back upon Butler’s arguments in the end. However, the tendency to question the genuineness of pleasure as exclu¬ sive motive to action kept increasing. Butler had shown that immediate impulses are as likely to be opposed to happiness as to favor it, and that self-love is a rational principle of conduct, and not an immediate impulse. It was only another step, though the deliberate Scots were a long time in taking it, to assert that the moral sense is itself due to original constit¬ uents independent from the impulse for pleasure. Inevitable motivation in the interests of pleasure and happiness need no longer be conceded. After Brown had arrived at this position and asserted the presence in our nature of higher moral values, the problem of pleasure and happiness seems to have been felt to be solved, and the discussion of it largely disap¬ pears from intuitionist treatises. However, an interesting concession to the utility of pleasure made by Martineau leads us to suspect that he, at least, knew that a working criterion of morality cannot ignore the feelings altogether. To return to Kant. After he became convinced that English ethics based upon feeling led to difficulties no less serious than those of the Wolf¬ fian school, he worked out his own doctrine of the categorical imperative. While in this he escaped some of the more crass inconsistencies of the Wolffian school, such as followed from the inclusion of all morality within the conception of perfection, and making pleasure an attribute of objects, he nevertheless had to face two serious problems inherited from them: (i) How is a purely rational morality to secure its motivation by the sen¬ sible, affective nature of man, and so be carried out in action ? (2) What is to be the relation of happiness to the attainment of such a morality ? Kant answered the first problem by securing the motivation of duty through the pleasures and pains of reverence and interest in the moral law. He answered the second by making a happiness composed of pleasures a necessary ethical postulate, and a constituent in the complete good. These somewhat forced explanations were not satisfactory to the successors of Kant, and our history of nineteenth-century writers is largely an account of the different ways in which they endeavored to solve these problems for themselves. CONCLUSION 95 Fichte’s only solution of the first problem was a further expansion of the idea of reverence into conscience ; he solved the second by refining happiness from its non-moral constituents, and making it wholly consist in intellectual and moral pleasures. Hegel solved the first problem in much the same manner as Fichte, and equally unsatisfactorily. He solved the second by making happiness only a transitional stage in the attainment of a higher, social, and objective morality, wholly intellectual in character, in which this imperfect ideal should be transcended. Both Fichte and Hegel followed Kant in taking psychological hedonism for granted, and are consequently forced to suppose a sharp opposition between the impulsive, feeling side of our nature, and the rational, moral side. Their attempts to overcome this dualism are unsuccessful, Fichte ’s account being hardly less mechanical than Kant’s, and Hegel’s eliminating the feelings entirely from final moral development. The work of Schopenhauer exposed the pessimism really involved in Kant’s psychological definition of pleasure, and in psychological hedon¬ ism — consequences which Fichte and Hegel had overlooked. Later ethical non-hedonists, warned by Schopenhauer’s pessimism, have avoided the false premises of his argument. The first of Kant’s problems thus no longer furnishes so acute diffi¬ culties to writers of this type, though it can hardly be said to have been finally solved. A solution of the second problem is presented by Herbart and Lotze, who find in the harmony of aesthetic pleasure an analogy to the harmony that would come from the realization of moral effort in happi¬ ness. Such an analogy, though very suggestive, fails to account for the unconditional and obligatory character of moral duty. Green is more successful in working out the development of the moral ideal, as regards its obligatory character, and in showing that it does not need to depend upon pleasure for its motivation. He fails, however, on the other hand, in securing a working criterion of moral values, since valuation involves the feelings, and these he has not adequately recognized. While none of these attempts have solved either of the problems, all of them indicate some progress in that direction. There certainly is some significance in the aesthetic analogy, though Lotze has exaggerated it. Green’s theory of self-realization, and even Nietzsche’s caustic aphorisms contain valuable material which will assist future writers essaying these problems. With the better comprehension of the psychology of ethics which we have at the present time, we may certainly expect that twen¬ tieth-century ethical writers will at least make large contributions toward their final solution.