UTILITARIANISM
by
John Stuart Mill
(1863)
Chapter 1
General Remarks.
THERE ARE few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human
knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward
state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress
which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and
wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is
the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in
speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and
schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two thousand
years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same contending
banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the
subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's
dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular
morality of the so-called sophist.
It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some cases similar discordance, exist
respecting the first principles of all the sciences, not excepting that which is deemed the most
certain of them, mathematics; without much impairing, generally indeed without impairing at all,
the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those sciences. An apparent anomaly, the explanation of
which is, that the detailed doctrines of a science are not usually deduced from, nor depend for
their evidence upon, what are called its first principles. Were it not so, there would be no science
more precarious, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out, than algebra; which
derives none of its certainty from what are commonly taught to learners as its elements, since
these, as laid down by some of its most eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as English law,
and of mysteries as theology. The truths which are ultimately accepted as the first principles of a
science, are really the last results of metaphysical analysis, practised on the elementary notions
with which the science is conversant; and their relation to the science is not that of foundations to
an edifice, but of roots to a tree, which may perform their office equally well though they be
never dug down to and exposed to light. But though in science the particular truths precede the
general theory, the contrary might be expected to be the case with a practical art, such as morals
or legislation. All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to
suppose, must take their whole character and colour from the end to which they are subservient.
When we engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing would
seem to be the first thing we need, instead of the last we are to look forward to. A test of right
and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a
consequence of having already ascertained it.
The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the popular theory of a natural faculty, a
sense or instinct, informing us of right and wrong. For--besides that the existence of such--a
moral instinct is itself one of the matters in dispute--those believers in it who have any
pretensions to philosophy, have been obliged to abandon the idea that it discerns what is right or
wrong in the particular case in hand, as our other senses discern the sight or sound actually
present. Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name
of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our
reason, not of our sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality,
not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less than what may be termed the
inductive, school of ethics, insists on the necessity of general laws. They both agree that the
morality of an individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the application of a
law to an individual case. They recognise also, to a great extent, the same moral laws; but differ
as to their evidence, and the source from which they derive their authority. According to the one
opinion, the principles of morals are evident a priori, requiring nothing to command assent,
except that the meaning of the terms be understood. According to the other doctrine, right and
wrong, as well as truth and falsehood, are questions of observation and experience. But both hold
equally that morality must be deduced from principles; and the intuitive school affirm as strongly
as the inductive, that there is a science of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list of
the a priori principles which are to serve as the premises of the science; still more rarely do they
make any effort to reduce those various principles to one first principle, or common ground of
obligation. They either assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of a priori authority, or they lay
down as the common groundwork of those maxims, some generality much less obviously
authoritative than the maxims themselves, and which has never succeeded in gaining popular
acceptance. Yet to support their pretensions there ought either to be some one fundamental
principle or law, at the root of all morality, or if there be several, there should be a determinate
order of precedence among them; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between the
various principles when they conflict, ought to be self-evident.
To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency have been mitigated in practice, or to what
extent the moral beliefs of mankind have been vitiated or made uncertain by the absence of any
distinct recognition of an ultimate standard, would imply a complete survey and criticism, of past
and present ethical doctrine. It would, however, be easy to show that whatever steadiness or
consistency these moral beliefs have, attained, has been mainly due to the tacit influence of a
standard not recognised. Although the non-existence of an acknowledged first principle has made
ethics not so much a guide as a consecration of men's actual sentiments, still, as men's
sentiments, both of favour and of aversion, are greatly influenced by what they suppose to be the
effects of things upon their happiness, the principle of utility, or as Bentham latterly called it, the
greatest happiness principle, has had a large share in forming the moral doctrines even of those
who most scornfully reject its authority. Nor is there any school of thought which refuses to
admit that the influence of actions on happiness is a most material and even predominant
consideration in many of the details of morals, however unwilling to acknowledge it as the
fundamental principle of morality, and the source of moral obligation. I might go much further,
and say that to all those a priori moralists who deem it necessary to argue at all, utilitarian
arguments are indispensable. It is not my present purpose to criticise these thinkers; but I cannot
help referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the most illustrious of them, the
Metaphysics of Ethics, by Kant. This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain
one of the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the treatise in question,
lay down a universal first principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation; it is this: "So
act, that the rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational
beings." But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he
fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say
physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral
rules of conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such
as no one would choose to incur.
On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to
contribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness
theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the
ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct
proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to
something admitted to be good without proof. The medical art is proved to be good by its
conducing to health; but how is it possible to prove that health is good? The art of music is good,
for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that
pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things
which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean,
the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by
proof. We are not, however, to infer that its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind
impulse, or arbitrary choice. There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this question
is as amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions of philosophy. The subject is within the
cognisance of the rational faculty; and neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the way of
intuition. Considerations may be presented capable of determining the intellect either to give or
withhold its assent to the doctrine; and this is equivalent to proof.
We shall examine presently of what nature are these considerations; in what manner they apply
to the case, and what rational grounds, therefore, can be given for accepting or rejecting the
utilitarian formula. But it is a preliminary condition of rational acceptance or rejection, that the
formula should be correctly understood. I believe that the very imperfect notion ordinarily
formed of its meaning, is the chief obstacle which impedes its reception; and that could it be
cleared, even from only the grosser misconceptions, the question would be greatly simplified,
and a large proportion of its difficulties removed. Before, therefore, I attempt to enter into the
philosophical grounds which can be given for assenting to the utilitarian standard, I shall offer
some illustrations of the doctrine itself; with the view of showing more clearly what it is,
distinguishing it from what it is not, and disposing of such of the practical objections to it as
either originate in, or are closely connected with, mistaken interpretations of its meaning. Having
thus prepared the ground, I shall afterwards endeavour to throw such light as I can upon the
question, considered as one of philosophical theory.
Chapter 2
What Utilitarianism Is.
A PASSING remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of supposing that those
who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely
colloquial sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the philosophical
opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary appearance of confounding them with any
one capable of so absurd a misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the
contrary accusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in its grossest form, is
another of the common charges against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly remarked by an
able writer, the same sort of persons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory "as
impracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and as too practicably
voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word utility." Those who know anything about
the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of
utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself,
together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the
ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet the
common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and periodicals, but in books
of weight and pretension, are perpetually falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the
word utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they habitually express
by it the rejection, or the neglect, of pleasure in some of its forms; of beauty, of ornament, or of
amusement. Nor is the term thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, but occasionally
in compliment; as though it implied superiority to frivolity and the mere pleasures of the
moment. And this perverted use is the only one in which the word is popularly known, and the
one from which the new generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning. Those who
introduced the word, but who had for many years discontinued it as a distinctive appellation, may
well feel themselves called upon to resume it, if by doing so they can hope to contribute anything
towards rescuing it from this utter degradation.*
[* The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to be the first person who brought
the word utilitarian into use. He did not invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr.
Galt's Annals of the Parish. After using it as a designation for several years, he and others
abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian
distinction. But as a name for one single opinion, not a set of opinions- to denote the recognition
of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it- the term supplies a want in the
language, and offers, in many cases, a convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution.]
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness
Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as
they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence
of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral
standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes
in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these
supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is
grounded--namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends;
and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are
desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure
and the prevention of pain.
Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of the most
estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it)
no higher end than pleasure--no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit--they designate as
utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of
Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the
doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German, French,
and English assailants.
When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers,
who represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to
be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true,
the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of
pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good
enough for the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to
that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human
being's conceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal
appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which
does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any
means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do
this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be included.
But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the
intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as
pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in
general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater
permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former--that is, in their circumstantial advantages
rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their
case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire
consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some
kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that
while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of
pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.
If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure
more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but
one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have
experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to
prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently
acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to
be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the
other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred
enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of
small account.
Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable
of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence
which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any
of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent
human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person
of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that
the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They
would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the
desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of
unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any
other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make
him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more
points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to
sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please
of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to
some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable: we
may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the
Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the
love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most
appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or
other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which
is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts
with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them.
Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness--that the superior
being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior--confounds the two
very different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities
of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly
endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is
constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and
they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only
because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human
being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And
if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the
question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher pleasures, occasionally, under the
influence of temptation, postpone them to the lower. But this is quite compatible with a full
appreciation of the intrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity of character,
make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable; and this no
less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental.
They pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the
greater good.
It may be further objected, that many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble,
as they advance in years sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that those who
undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower description of pleasures in
preference to the higher. I believe that before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they
have already become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a
very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance;
and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their
position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not
favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they
lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and
they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but
because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are
any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally
susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though
many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both.
From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. On a
question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is
the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the
judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority
among them, must be admitted as final. And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this
judgment respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to
even on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining which is the acutest of
two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those
who are familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always
heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth
purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced?
When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the pleasures derived from the higher
faculties to be preferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity, to those of which the
animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is suspectible, they are entitled on this subject
to the same regard.
I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly just conception of Utility or
Happiness, considered as the directive rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an
indispensable condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not the
agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may
possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can
be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a
gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of
nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others,
and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the
bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation superfluous.
According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the ultimate end, with
reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering
our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as
rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the
rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who in their
opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and
self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison. This, being, according to the
utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which
may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of
which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured
to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole
sentient creation.
Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors, who say that happiness, in any
form, cannot be the rational purpose of human life and action; because, in the first place, it is
unattainable: and they contemptuously ask, what right hast thou to be happy? A question which
Mr. Carlyle clenches by the addition, What right, a short time ago, hadst thou even to be? Next,
they say, that men can do without happiness; that all noble human beings have felt this, and could
not have become noble but by learning the lesson of Entsagen, or renunciation; which lesson,
thoroughly learnt and submitted to, they affirm to be the beginning and necessary condition of all
virtue.
The first of these objections would go to the root of the matter were it well founded; for if no
happiness is to be had at all by human beings, the attainment of it cannot be the end of morality,
or of any rational conduct. Though, even in that case, something might still be said for the
utilitarian theory; since utility includes not solely the pursuit of happiness, but the prevention or
mitigation of unhappiness; and if the former aim be chimerical, there will be all the greater scope
and more imperative need for the latter, so long at least as mankind think fit to live, and do not
take refuge in the simultaneous act of suicide recommended under certain conditions by Novalis.
When, however, it is thus positively asserted to be impossible that human life should be happy,
the assertion, if not something like a verbal quibble, is at least an exaggeration. If by happiness
be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that this is
impossible. A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with some
intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent
and steady flame. Of this the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life were
as fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness which they meant was not a life of
rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and
various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the
foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing. A life thus
composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of
the name of happiness. And such an existence is even now the lot of many, during some
considerable portion of their lives. The present wretched education, and wretched social
arrangements, are the only real hindrance to its being attainable by almost all.
The objectors perhaps may doubt whether human beings, if taught to consider happiness as the
end of life, would be satisfied with such a moderate share of it. But great numbers of mankind
have been satisfied with much less. The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two,
either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose: tranquillity, and excitement.
With much tranquillity, many find that they can be content with very little pleasure: with much
excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain. There is assuredly
no inherent impossibility in enabling even the mass of mankind to unite both; since the two are
so far from being incompatible that they are in natural alliance, the prolongation of either being a
preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the other. It is only those in whom indolence amounts to
a vice, that do not desire excitement after an interval of repose: it is only those in whom the need
of excitement is a disease, that feel the tranquillity which follows excitement dull and insipid,
instead of pleasurable in direct proportion to the excitement which preceded it. When people who
are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make it
valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for nobody but themselves. To those who have
neither public nor private affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case
dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must be terminated by death:
while those who leave after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have
also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an
interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health. Next to selfishness, the
principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation. A cultivated
mind--I do not mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains of knowledge
have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its
faculties--finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it; in the objects of nature,
the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind,
past and present, and their prospects in the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to
all this, and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it; but only when one has had
from the beginning no moral or human interest in these things, and has sought in them only the
gratification of curiosity.
Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amount of mental culture
sufficient to give an intelligent interest in these objects of contemplation, should not be the
inheritance of every one born in a civilised country. As little is there an inherent necessity that
any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid of every feeling or care but those which
centre in his own miserable individuality. Something far superior to this is sufficiently common
even now, to give ample earnest of what the human species may be made. Genuine private
affections and a sincere interest in the public good, are possible, though in unequal degrees, to
every rightly brought up human being. In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much
to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who has this moderate amount of
moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and
unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to
use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find this enviable existence, if he
escape the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering--such as
indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection.
The main stress of the problem lies, therefore, in the contest with these calamities, from which it
is a rare good fortune entirely to escape; which, as things now are, cannot be obviated, and often
cannot be in any material degree mitigated. Yet no one whose opinion deserves a moment's
consideration can doubt that most of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves
removable, and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow
limits. Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may be completely extinguished by the wisdom
of society, combined with the good sense and providence of individuals. Even that most
intractable of enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by good physical and
moral education, and proper control of noxious influences; while the progress of science holds
out a promise for the future of still more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And every
advance in that direction relieves us from some, not only of the chances which cut short our own
lives, but, what concerns us still more, which deprive us of those in whom our happiness is wrapt
up. As for vicissitudes of fortune, and other disappointments connected with worldly
circumstances, these are principally the effect either of gross imprudence, of ill-regulated desires,
or of bad or imperfect social institutions.
All the grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost
entirely, conquerable by human care and effort; and though their removal is grievously
slow--though a long succession of generations will perish in the breach before the conquest is
completed, and this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were not wanting, it might
easily be made--yet every mind sufficiently intelligent and generous to bear a part, however small
and unconspicuous, in the endeavour, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, which
he would not for any bribe in the form of selfish indulgence consent to be without.
And this leads to the true estimation of what is said by the objectors concerning the possibility,
and the obligation, of learning to do without happiness. Unquestionably it is possible to do
without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind, even in those parts
of our present world which are least deep in barbarism; and it often has to be done voluntarily by
the hero or the martyr, for the sake of something which he prizes more than his individual
happiness. But this something, what is it, unless the happiness of others or some of the requisites
of happiness? It is noble to be capable of resigning entirely one's own portion of happiness, or
chances of it: but, after all, this self-sacrifice must be for some end; it is not its own end; and if
we are told that its end is not happiness, but virtue, which is better than happiness, I ask, would
the sacrifice be made if the hero or martyr did not believe that it would earn for others immunity
from similar sacrifices? Would it be made if he thought that his renunciation of happiness for
himself would produce no fruit for any of his fellow creatures, but to make their lot like his, and
place them also in the condition of persons who have renounced happiness? All honour to those
who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they
contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or
professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic
mounted on his pillar. He may be an inspiriting proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an
example of what they should.
Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that any one can best
serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in
that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest
virtue which can be found in man. I will add, that in this condition the world, paradoxical as the
assertion may be, the conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect of
realising, such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except that consciousness can raise a
person above the chances of life, by making him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they
have not power to subdue him: which, once felt, frees him from excess of anxiety concerning the
evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the worst times of the Roman Empire, to
cultivate in tranquillity the sources of satisfaction accessible to him, without concerning himself
about the uncertainty of their duration, any more than about their inevitable end.
Meanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the morality of self devotion as a possession
which belongs by as good a right to them, as either to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The
utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest
good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice
which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.
The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the
means of happiness, of others; either of mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits
imposed by the collective interests of mankind.
I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge,
that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the
agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of
others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent
spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of
utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the
ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal,
utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as
speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in
harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so
vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every
individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole;
especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and
positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to
conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general
good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one
of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and
prominent place in every human being's sentient existence. If the, impugners of the utilitarian
morality represented it to their own minds in this its, true character, I know not what
recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possibly affirm to be wanting to it;
what more beautiful or more exalted developments of human nature any other ethical system can
be supposed to foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian, such systems
rely on for giving effect to their mandates.
The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with representing it in a discreditable
light. On the contrary, those among them who entertain anything like a just idea of its
disinterested character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high for humanity.
They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of
promoting the general interests of society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard
of morals, and confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell
us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that
the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of
all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not
condemn them. It is the more unjust to utilitarianism that this particular misapprehension should
be made a ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists have gone beyond almost
all others in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though
much with the worth of the agent. He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is
morally right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his trouble; he who
betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a crime, even if his object be to serve another friend
to whom he is under greater obligations.
But to speak only of actions done from the motive of duty, and in direct obedience to principle:
it is a misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as implying that people
should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or society at large. The great
majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals,
of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not
on these occasions travel beyond the particular persons concerned, except so far as is necessary
to assure himself that in benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate and
authorised expectations, of any one else. The multiplication of happiness is, according to the
utilitarian ethics, the object of virtue: the occasions on which any person (except one in a
thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other words to be a public
benefactor, are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public
utility; in every other case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he
has to attend to. Those alone the influence of whose actions extends to society in general, need
concern themselves habitually about large an object. In the case of abstinences indeed--of things
which people forbear to do from moral considerations, though the consequences in the particular
case might be beneficial--it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously
aware that the action is of a class which, if practised generally, would be generally injurious, and
that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it. The amount of regard for the public
interest implied in this recognition, is no greater than is demanded by every system of morals, for
they all enjoin to abstain from whatever is manifestly pernicious to society.
The same considerations dispose of another reproach against the doctrine of utility, founded on a
still grosser misconception of the purpose of a standard of morality, and of the very meaning of
the words right and wrong. It is often affirmed that utilitarianism renders men cold and
unsympathising; that it chills their moral feelings towards individuals; that it makes them regard
only the dry and hard consideration of the consequences of actions, not taking into their moral
estimate the qualities from which those actions emanate. If the assertion means that they do not
allow their judgment respecting the rightness or wrongness of an action to be influenced by their
opinion of the qualities of the person who does it, this is a complaint not against utilitarianism,
but against having any standard of morality at all; for certainly no known ethical standard decides
an action to be good or bad because it is done by a good or a bad man, still less because done by
an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man, or the contrary. These considerations are relevant, not
to the estimation of actions, but of persons; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory
inconsistent with the fact that there are other things which interest us in persons besides the
rightness and wrongness of their actions. The Stoics, indeed, with the paradoxical misuse of
language which was part of their system, and by which they strove to raise themselves above all
concern about anything but virtue, were fond of saying that he who has that has everything; that
he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king. But no claim of this description is made for the
virtuous man by the utilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians are quite aware that there are other desirable
possessions and qualities besides virtue, and are perfectly willing to allow to all of them their full
worth. They are also aware that a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous character,
and that actions which are blamable, often proceed from qualities entitled to praise. When this is
apparent in any particular case, it modifies their estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the
agent. I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of opinion, that in the long run the best proof of a
good character is good actions; and resolutely refuse to consider any mental disposition as good,
of which the predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct. This makes them unpopular with
many people; but it is an unpopularity which they must share with every one who regards the
distinction between right and wrong in a serious light; and the reproach is not one which a
conscientious utilitarian need be anxious to repel.
If no more be meant by the objection than that many utilitarians look on the morality of actions,
as measured by the utilitarian standard, with too exclusive a regard, and do not lay sufficient
stress upon the other beauties of character which go towards making a human being lovable or
admirable, this may be admitted. Utilitarians who have cultivated their moral feelings, but not
their sympathies nor their artistic perceptions, do fall into this mistake; and so do all other
moralists under the same conditions. What can be said in excuse for other moralists is equally
available for them, namely, that, if there is to be any error, it is better that it should be on that
side. As a matter of fact, we may affirm that among utilitarians as among adherents of other
systems, there is every imaginable degree of rigidity and of laxity in the application of their
standard: some are even puritanically rigorous, while others are as indulgent as can possibly be
desired by sinner or by sentimentalist. But on the whole, a doctrine which brings prominently
forward the interest that mankind have in the repression and prevention of conduct which
violates the moral law, is likely to be inferior to no other in turning the sanctions of opinion again
such violations. It is true, the question, What does violate the moral law? is one on which those
who recognise different standards of morality are likely now and then to differ. But difference of
opinion on moral questions was not first introduced into the world by utilitarianism, while that
doctrine does supply, if not always an easy, at all events a tangible and intelligible mode of
deciding such differences.
It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of the common misapprehensions of utilitarian
ethics, even those which are so obvious and gross that it might appear impossible for any person
of candour and intelligence to fall into them; since persons, even of considerable mental
endowments, often give themselves so little trouble to understand the bearings of any opinion
against which they entertain a prejudice, and men are in general so little conscious of this
voluntary ignorance as a defect, that the vulgarest misunderstandings of ethical doctrines are
continually met with in the deliberate writings of persons of the greatest pretensions both to high
principle and to philosophy. We not uncommonly hear the doctrine of utility inveighed against as
a godless doctrine. If it be necessary to say anything at all against so mere an assumption, we may
say that the question depends upon what idea we have formed of the moral character of the Deity.
If it be a true belief that God desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and that this
was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly
religious than any other. If it be meant that utilitarianism does not recognise the revealed will of
God as the supreme law of morals, I answer, that a utilitarian who believes in the perfect
goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily believes that whatever God has thought fit to reveal on
the subject of morals, must fulfill the requirements of utility in a supreme degree. But others
besides utilitarians have been of opinion that the Christian revelation was intended, and is fitted,
to inform the hearts and minds of mankind with a spirit which should enable them to find for
themselves what is right, and incline them to do it when found, rather than to tell them, except in
a very general way, what it is; and that we need a doctrine of ethics, carefully followed out, to
interpret to us the will God. Whether this opinion is correct or not, it is superfluous here to
discuss; since whatever aid religion, either natural or revealed, can afford to ethical investigation,
is as open to the utilitarian moralist as to any other. He can use it as the testimony of God to the
usefulness or hurtfulness of any given course of action, by as good a right as others can use it for
the indication of a transcendental law, having no connection with usefulness or with happiness.
Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatised as an immoral doctrine by giving it the name of
Expediency, and taking advantage of the popular use of that term to contrast it with Principle.
But the Expedient, in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that which is
expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself; as when a minister sacrifices the
interests of his country to keep himself in place. When it means anything better than this, it
means that which is expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose, but which
violates a rule whose observance is expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in this
sense, instead of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the hurtful. Thus, it would
often be expedient, for the purpose of getting over some momentary embarrassment, or attaining
some object immediately useful to ourselves or others, to tell a lie. But inasmuch as the
cultivation in ourselves of a sensitive feeling on the subject of veracity, is one of the most useful,
and the enfeeblement of that feeling one of the most hurtful, things to which our conduct can be
instrumental; and inasmuch as any, even unintentional, deviation from truth, does that much
towards weakening the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principal
support of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of which does more than any one
thing that can be named to keep back civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness
on the largest scale depends; we feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of a rule of such
transcendant expediency, is not expedient, and that he who, for the sake of a convenience to
himself or to some other individual, does what depends on him to deprive mankind of the good,
and inflict upon them the evil, involved in the greater or less reliance which they can place in
each other's word, acts the part of one of their worst enemies. Yet that even this rule, sacred as it
is, admits of possible exceptions, is acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is when
the withholding of some fact (as of information from a malefactor, or of bad news from a person
dangerously ill) would save an individual (especially an individual other than oneself) from great
and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in order that
the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the least possible effect in
weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be recognised, and, if possible, its limits defined; and
if the principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing these conflicting
utilities against one another, and marking out the region within which one or the other preponderates.
Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as
this--that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line
of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible
to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which
anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the
objection is, that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human
species. During all that time, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of
actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are dependent.
People talk as if the commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and as
if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of another, he
had to begin considering for the first time whether murder and theft are injurious to human
happiness. Even then I do not think that he would find the question very puzzling; but, at all
events, the matter is now done to his hand.
It is truly a whimsical supposition that, if mankind were agreed in considering utility to be the
test of morality, they would remain without any agreement as to what is useful, and would take
no measures for having their notions on the subject taught to the young, and enforced by law and
opinion. There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we suppose
universal idiocy to be conjoined with it; but on any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by
this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and
the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the
philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even
now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine right; and that
mankind have still much to learn as to the effects of actions on the general happiness, I admit, or
rather, earnestly maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility, like the precepts of every
practical art, admit of indefinite improvement, and, in a progressive state of the human mind,
their improvement is perpetually going on.
But to consider the rules of morality as improvable, is one thing; to pass over the intermediate
generalisations entirely, and endeavour to test each individual action directly by the first
principle, is another. It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is
inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveller respecting the place of
his ultimate destination is not to forbid the use of landmarks and direction-posts on the way. The
proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be
laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction
rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject,
which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody
argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to
calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated;
and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common
questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and
foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue
to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate
principles to apply it by; the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems,
can afford no argument against any one in particular; but gravely to argue as if no such secondary
principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain,
without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I
think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.
The remainder of the stock arguments against utilitarianism mostly consist in laying to its charge
the common infirmities of human nature, and the general difficulties which embarrass
conscientious persons in shaping their course through life. We are told that a utilitarian will be
apt to make his own particular case an exception to moral rules, and, when under temptation, will
see a utility in the breach of a rule, greater than he will see in its observance. But is utility the
only creed which is able to furnish us with excuses for evil doing, and means of cheating our own
conscience? They are afforded in abundance by all doctrines which recognise as a fact in morals
the existence of conflicting considerations; which all doctrines do, that have been believed by
sane persons. It is not the fault of any creed, but of the complicated nature of human affairs, that
rules of conduct cannot be so framed as to require no exceptions, and that hardly any kind of
action can safely be laid down as either always obligatory or always condemnable. There is no
ethical creed which does not temper the rigidity of its laws, by giving a certain latitude, under the
moral responsibility of the agent, for accommodation to peculiarities of circumstances; and under
every creed, at the opening thus made, self-deception and dishonest casuistry get in. There exists
no moral system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting obligation.
These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both in the theory of ethics, and in the
conscientious guidance of personal conduct. They are overcome practically, with greater or with
less success, according to the intellect and virtue of the individual; but it can hardly be pretended
that any one will be the less qualified for dealing with them, from possessing an ultimate
standard to which conflicting rights and duties can be referred. If utility is the ultimate source of
moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when their demands are
incompatible. Though the application of the standard may be difficult, it is better than none at all:
while in other systems, the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is no common
umpire entitled to interfere between them; their claims to precedence one over another rest on
little better than sophistry, and unless determined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged
influence of considerations of utility, afford a free scope for the action of personal desires and
partialities. We must remember that only in these cases of conflict between secondary principles
is it requisite that first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral obligation in
which some secondary principle is not involved; and if only one, there can seldom be any real
doubt which one it is, in the mind of any person by whom the principle itself is recognised.
Chapter 3
Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility.
THE QUESTION is often asked, and properly so, in regard to any supposed moral standard-
What is its sanction? what are the motives to obey it? or more specifically, what is the source of
its obligation? whence does it derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of moral philosophy
to provide the answer to this question; which, though frequently assuming the shape of an
objection to the utilitarian morality, as if it had some special applicability to that above others,
really arises in regard to all standards. It arises, in fact, whenever a person is called on to adopt a
standard, or refer morality to any basis on which he has not been accustomed to rest it. For the
customary morality, that which education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which
presents itself to the mind with the feeling of being in itself obligatory; and when a person is
asked to believe that this morality derives its obligation from some general principle round which
custom has not thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox; the supposed corollaries
seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem; the superstructure seems to stand
better without, than with, what is represented as its foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I
am bound not to rob or murder, betray or deceive; but why am I bound to promote the general
happiness? If my own happiness lies in something else, why may I not give that the preference?
If the view adopted by the utilitarian philosophy of the nature of the moral sense be correct, this
difficulty will always present itself, until the influences which form moral character have taken
the same hold of the principle which they have taken of some of the consequences- until, by the
improvement of education, the feeling of unity with our fellow-creatures shall be (what it cannot
be denied that Christ intended it to be) as deeply rooted in our character, and to our own
consciousness as completely a part of our nature, as the horror of crime is in an ordinarily well
brought up young person. In the meantime, however, the difficulty has no peculiar application to
the doctrine of utility, but is inherent in every attempt to analyse morality and reduce it to
principles; which, unless the principle is already in men's minds invested with as much
sacredness as any of its applications, always seems to divest them of a part of their sanctity.
The principle of utility either has, or there is no reason why it might not have, all the sanctions
which belong to any other system of morals. Those sanctions are either external or internal. Of
the external sanctions it is not necessary to speak at any length. They are, the hope of favour and
the fear of displeasure, from our fellow creatures or from the Ruler of the Universe, along with
whatever we may have of sympathy or affection for them, or of love and awe of Him, inclining
us to do his will independently of selfish consequences. There is evidently no reason why all
these motives for observance should not attach themselves to the utilitarian morality, as
completely and as powerfully as to any other. Indeed, those of them which refer to our fellow
creatures are sure to do so, in proportion to the amount of general intelligence; for whether there
be any other ground of moral obligation than the general happiness or not, men do desire
happiness; and however imperfect may be their own practice, they desire and commend all
conduct in others towards themselves, by which they think their happiness is promoted. With
regard to the religious motive, if men believe, as most profess to do, in the goodness of God,
those who think that conduciveness to the general happiness is the essence, or even only the
criterion of good, must necessarily believe that it is also that which God approves. The whole
force therefore of external reward and punishment, whether physical or moral, and whether
proceeding from God or from our fellow men, together with all that the capacities of human
nature admit of disinterested devotion to either, become available to enforce the utilitarian
morality, in proportion as that morality is recognised; and the more powerfully, the more the
appliances of education and general cultivation are bent to the purpose.
So far as to external sanctions. The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty may
be, is one and the same--a feeling in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on
violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more serious cases, into
shrinking from it as an impossibility. This feeling, when disinterested, and connecting itself with
the pure idea of duty, and not with some particular form of it, or with any of the merely accessory
circumstances, is the essence of Conscience; though in that complex phenomenon as it actually
exists, the simple fact is in general all encrusted over with collateral associations, derived from
sympathy, from love, and still more from fear; from all the forms of religious feeling; from the
recollections of childhood and of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of
others, and occasionally even self-abasement. This extreme complication is, I apprehend, the
origin of the sort of mystical character which, by a tendency of the human mind of which there
are many other examples, is apt to be attributed to the idea of moral obligation, and which leads
people to believe that the idea cannot possibly attach itself to any other objects than those which,
by a supposed mysterious law, are found in our present experience to excite it. Its binding force,
however, consists in the existence of a mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to
do what violates our standard of right, and which, if we do nevertheless violate that standard, will
probably have to be encountered afterwards in the form of remorse. Whatever theory we have of
the nature or origin of conscience, this is what essentially constitutes it.
The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motives apart) being a subjective
feeling in our own minds, I see nothing embarrassing to those whose standard is utility, in the
question, what is the sanction of that particular standard? We may answer, the same as of all
other moral standards--the conscientious feelings of mankind. Undoubtedly this sanction has no
binding efficacy on those who do not possess the feelings it appeals to; but neither will these
persons be more obedient to any other moral principle than to the utilitarian one. On them
morality of any kind has no hold but through the external sanctions. Meanwhile the feelings
exist, a fact in human nature, the reality of which, and the great power with which they are
capable of acting on those in whom they have been duly cultivated, are proved by experience. No
reason has ever been shown why they may not be cultivated to as great intensity in connection
with the utilitarian, as with any other rule of morals.
There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a person who sees in moral obligation a
transcendental fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of "Things in themselves," is
likely to be more obedient to it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective, having its seat
in human consciousness only. But whatever a person's opinion may be on this point of Ontology,
the force he is really urged by is his own subjective feeling, and is exactly measured by its
strength. No one's belief that duty is an objective reality is stronger than the belief that God is so;
yet the belief in God, apart from the expectation of actual reward and punishment, only operates
on conduct through, and in proportion to, the subjective religious feeling. The sanction, so far as
it is disinterested, is always in the mind itself; and the notion therefore of the transcendental
moralists must be, that this sanction will not exist in the mind unless it is believed to have its root
out of the mind; and that if a person is able to say to himself, This which is restraining me, and
which is called my conscience, is only a feeling in my own mind, he may possibly draw the
conclusion that when the feeling ceases the obligation ceases, and that if he find the feeling
inconvenient, he may disregard it, and endeavour to get rid of it. But is this danger confined to
the utilitarian morality? Does the belief that moral obligation has its seat outside the mind make
the feeling of it too strong to be got rid of? The fact is so far otherwise, that all moralists admit
and lament the ease with which, in the generality of minds, conscience can be silenced or stifled.
The question, Need I obey my conscience? is quite as often put to themselves by persons who
never heard of the principle of utility, as by its adherents. Those whose conscientious feelings are
so weak as to allow of their asking this question, if they answer it affirmatively, will not do so
because they believe in the transcendental theory, but because of the external sanctions.
It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to decide whether the feeling of duty is innate or
implanted. Assuming it to be innate, it is an open question to what objects it naturally attaches
itself; for the philosophic supporters of that theory are now agreed that the intuitive perception is
of principles of morality and not of the details. If there be anything innate in the matter, I see no
reason why the feeling which is innate should not be that of regard to the pleasures and pains of
others. I f there is any principle of morals which is intuitively obligatory, I should say it must be
that. If so, the intuitive ethics would coincide with the utilitarian, and there would be no further
quarrel between them. Even as it is, the intuitive moralists, though they believe that there are
other intuitive moral obligations, do already believe this to one; for they unanimously hold that a
large portion of morality turns upon the consideration due to the interests of our fellow-creatures.
Therefore, if the belief in the transcendental origin of moral obligation gives any additional
efficacy to the internal sanction, it appears to me that the utilitarian principle has already the
benefit of it.
On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they
are not for that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to speak, to reason, to build cities, to
cultivate the ground, though these are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not indeed a part
of our nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all of us; but this,
unhappily, is a fact admitted by those who believe the most strenuously in their transcendental
origin. Like the other acquired capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our
nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain small degree, of springing
up spontaneously; and susceptible of being brought by cultivation to a high degree of
development. Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a sufficient use of the external sanctions and of
the force of early impressions, of being cultivated in almost any direction: so that there is hardly
anything so absurd or so mischievous that it may not, by means of these influences, be made to
act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience. To doubt that the same potency
might be given by the same means to the principle of utility, even if it had no foundation in
human nature, would be flying in the face of all experience.
But moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation, when intellectual culture goes on,
yield by degrees to the dissolving force of analysis: and if the feeling of duty, when associated
with utility, would appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading department of our nature, no
powerful class of sentiments, with which that association would harmonise, which would make
us feel it congenial, and incline us not only to foster it in others (for which we have abundant
interested motives), but also to cherish it in ourselves; if there were not, in short, a natural basis
of sentiment for utilitarian morality, it might well happen that this association also, even after it
had been implanted by education, might be analysed away. But there is this basis of powerful
natural sentiment; and this it is which, when once the general happiness is recognised as the
ethical standard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality. This firm foundation is
that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures, which is
already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become
stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilisation. The
social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some
unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself
otherwise than as a member of a body; and this association is riveted more and more, as mankind
are further removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which is
essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's
conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being.
Now, society between human beings, except in the relation of master and slave, is manifestly
impossible on any other footing than that the interests of all are to be consulted. Society between
equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally. And
since in all states of civilisation, every person, except an absolute monarch, has equals, every one
is obliged to live on these terms with somebody; and in every age some advance is made towards
a state in which it will be impossible to live permanently on other terms with anybody. In this
way people grow up unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard of other
people's interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from
all the grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection) living in a state of constant protest
against them. They are also familiar with the fact of cooperating with others and proposing to
themselves a collective, not an individual interest as the aim (at least for the time being) of their
actions. So long as they are cooperating, their ends are identified with those of others; there is at
least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only does all
strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each individual a stronger
personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to identify his
feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an even greater degree of practical
consideration for it. He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who
of course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and
necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our existence. Now, whatever
amount of this feeling a person has, he is urged by the strongest motives both of interest and of
sympathy to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of his power encourage it in others; and even if he
has none of it himself, he is as greatly interested as any one else that others should have it.
Consequently the smallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of and nourished by the contagion of
sympathy and the influences of education; and a complete web of corroborative association is
woven round it, by the powerful agency of the external sanctions.
This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation goes on, is felt to be more and
more natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so, by removing the sources of
opposition of interest, and levelling those inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or
classes, owing to which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still practicable
to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the
increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which, if
perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the
benefits of which they are not included. If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a
religion, and the whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion, directed, as it once was
in the case of religion, to make every person grow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both
by the profession and the practice of it, I think that no one, who can realise this conception, will
feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality. To
any ethical student who finds the realisation difficult, I recommend, as a means of facilitating it,
the second of M. Comte's two principle works, the Traite de Politique Positive. I entertain the
strongest objections to the system of politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it has
superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of humanity, even without the aid
of belief in a Providence, both the psychological power and the social efficacy of a religion;
making it take hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling, and action, in a manner of
which the greatest ascendancy ever exercised by any religion may be but a type and foretaste; and
of which the danger is, not that it should be insufficient but that it should be so excessive as to
interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality.
Neither is it necessary to the feeling which constitutes the binding force of the utilitarian
morality on those who recognise it, to wait for those social influences which would make its
obligation felt by mankind at large. In the comparatively early state of human advancement in
which we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that entireness of sympathy with all others,
which would make any real discordance in the general direction of their conduct in life
impossible; but already a person in whom the social feeling is at all developed, cannot bring
himself to think of the rest of his fellow creatures as struggling rivals with him for the means of
happiness, whom he must desire to see defeated in their object in order that he may succeed in
his. The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social
being, tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between
his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures. If differences of opinion and of mental
culture make it impossible for him to share many of their actual feelings--perhaps make him
denounce and defy those feelings--he still needs to be conscious that his real aim and theirs do
not conflict; that he is not opposing himself to what they really wish for, namely their own good,
but is, on the contrary, promoting it. This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength
to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to those who have it, it possesses all
the characters of a natural feeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition of
education, or a law despotically imposed by the power of society, but as an attribute which it
would not be well for them to be without. This conviction is the ultimate sanction of the greatest
happiness morality. This it is which makes any mind, of well-developed feelings, work with, and
not against, the outward motives to care for others, afforded by what I have called the external
sanctions; and when those sanctions are wanting, or act in an opposite direction, constitutes in
itself a powerful internal binding force, in proportion to the sensitiveness and thoughtfulness of
the character; since few but those whose mind is a moral blank, could bear to lay out their course
of life on the plan of paying no regard to others except so far as their own private interest
compels.
Chapter 4
Of what sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible.
IT HAS already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the
ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first
principles; to the first premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the
former, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal to the faculties which judge of
fact--namely, our senses, and our internal consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same
faculties on questions of practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cognisance taken of them?
Questions about ends are, in other words, questions what things are desirable. The utilitarian
doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things
being only desirable as means to that end. What ought to be required of this doctrine--what
conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should fulfill--to make good its claim to be believed?
The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The
only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our
experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything
is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes
to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever
convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is
desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own
happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of,
but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each person's happiness is a
good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the
criteria of morality.
But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to be the sole criterion. To do that, it would seem, by
the same rule, necessary to show, not only that people desire happiness, but that they never desire
anything else. Now it is palpable that they do desire things which, in common language, are
decidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire, for example, virtue, and the absence of
vice, no less really than pleasure and the absence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as universal,
but it is as authentic a fact, as the desire of happiness. And hence the opponents of the utilitarian
standard deem that they have a right to infer that there are other ends of human action besides
happiness, and that happiness is not the standard of approbation and disapprobation.
But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a
thing to be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it
is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian moralists as
to the original conditions by which virtue is made virtue; however they may believe (as they do)
that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than virtue; yet
this being granted, and it having been decided, from considerations of this description, what is
virtuous, they not only place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to the
ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact the possibility of its being, to the
individual, a good in itself, without looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in
a right state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most conducive to the general
happiness, unless it does love virtue in this manner--as a thing desirable in itself, even although,
in the individual instance, it should not produce those other desirable consequences which it
tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be virtue. This opinion is not, in the
smallest degree, a departure from the Happiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very
various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an
aggregate. The principle of utility does not mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance,
or any given exemption from pain, as for example health, is to be looked upon as means to a
collective something termed happiness, and to be desired on that account. They are desired and
desirable in and for themselves; besides being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue, according
to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of
becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and
cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.
To illustrate this farther, we may remember that virtue is not the only thing, originally a means,
and which if it were not a means to anything else, would be and remain indifferent, but which by
association with what it is a means to, comes to be desired for itself, and that too with the utmost
intensity. What, for example, shall we say of the love of money? There is nothing originally more
desirable about money than about any heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is solely that of the
things which it will buy; the desires for other things than itself, which it is a means of gratifying.
Yet the love of money is not only one of the strongest moving forces of human life, but money is,
in many cases, desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often stronger than the desire to
use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires which point to ends beyond it, to be
compassed by it, are falling off. It may, then, be said truly, that money is desired not for the sake
of an end, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a
principal ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness. The same may be said of the
majority of the great objects of human life--power, for example, or fame; except that to each of
these there is a certain amount of immediate pleasure annexed, which has at least the semblance
of being naturally inherent in them; a thing which cannot be said of money. Still, however, the
strongest natural attraction, both of power and of fame, is the immense aid they give to the
attainment of our other wishes; and it is the strong association thus generated between them and
all our objects of desire, which gives to the direct desire of them the intensity it often assumes, so
as in some characters to surpass in strength all other desires. In these cases the means have
become a part of the end, and a more important part of it than any of the things which they are
means to. What was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of happiness, has come to
be desired for its own sake. In being desired for its own sake it is, however, desired as part of
happiness. The person is made, or thinks he would be made, happy by its mere possession; and is
made unhappy by failure to obtain it. The desire of it is not a different thing from the desire of
happiness, any more than the love of music, or the desire of health. They are included in
happiness. They are some of the elements of which the desire of happiness is made up.
Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a concrete whole; and these are some of its parts. And the
utilitarian standard sanctions and approves their being so. Life would be a poor thing, very ill
provided with sources of happiness, if there were not this provision of nature, by which things
originally indifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated with, the satisfaction of our
primitive desires, become in themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the primitive
pleasures, both in permanency, in the space of human existence that they are capable of covering,
and even in intensity.
Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a good of this description. There was no
original desire of it, or motive to it, save its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to
protection from pain. But through the association thus formed, it may be felt a good in itself, and
desired as such with as great intensity as any other good; and with this difference between it and
the love of money, of power, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render the individual
noxious to the other members of the society to which he belongs, whereas there is nothing which
makes him so much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the disinterested love of virtue. And
consequently, the utilitarian standard, while it tolerates and approves those other acquired
desires, up to the point beyond which they would be more injurious to the general happiness than
promotive of it, enjoins and requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest
strength possible, as being above all things important to the general happiness.
It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in reality nothing desired except
happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and
ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it
has become so. Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either because the
consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for
both reasons united; as in truth the pleasure and pain seldom exist separately, but almost always
together, the same person feeling pleasure in the degree of virtue attained, and pain in not having
attained more. If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other no pain, he would not love or
desire virtue, or would desire it only for the other benefits which it might produce to himself or to
persons whom he cared for. We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what sort of proof
the principle of utility is susceptible. If the opinion which I have now stated is psychologically
true--if human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness
or a means of happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that these are the
only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the
test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be
the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole.
And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind do desire nothing for itself but
that which is a pleasure to them, or of which the absence is a pain; we have evidently arrived at a
question of fact and experience, dependent, like all similar questions, upon evidence. It can only
be determined by practised self-consciousness and self-observation, assisted by observation of
others. I believe that these sources of evidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desiring a
thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely
inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon; in strictness of language, two different
modes of naming the same psychological fact: that to think of an object as desirable (unless for
the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same thing; and that
to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and
metaphysical impossibility.
So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it will hardly be disputed: and the objection
made will be, not that desire can possibly be directed to anything ultimately except pleasure and
exemption from pain, but that the will is a different thing from desire; that a person of confirmed
virtue, or any other person whose purposes are fixed, carries out his purposes without any
thought of the pleasure he has in contemplating them, or expects to derive from their fulfilment;
and persists in acting on them, even though these pleasures are much diminished, by changes in
his character or decay of his passive sensibilities, or are outweighed by the pains which the
pursuit of the purposes may bring upon him. All this I fully admit, and have stated it elsewhere,
as positively and emphatically as any one. Will, the active phenomenon, is a different thing from
desire, the state of passive sensibility, and though originally an offshoot from it, may in time take
root and detach itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in the case of an habitual purpose,
instead of willing the thing because we desire it, we often desire it only because we will it. This,
however, is but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise confined to the
case of virtuous actions. Many indifferent things, which men originally did from a motive of
some sort, they continue to do from habit. Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the
consciousness coming only after the action: at other times with conscious volition, but volition
which has become habitual, and is put in operation by the force of habit, in opposition perhaps to
the deliberate preference, as often happens with those who have contracted habits of vicious or
hurtful indulgence.
Third and last comes the case in which the habitual act of will in the individual instance is not in
contradiction to the general intention prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as in the
case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursue deliberately and consistently any
determinate end. The distinction between will and desire thus understood is an authentic and
highly important psychological fact; but the fact consists solely in this--that will, like all other
parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit, and that we may will from habit what we no
longer desire for itself or desire only because we will it. It is not the less true that will, in the
beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including in that term the repelling influence of pain as
well as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take into consideration, no longer the person who
has a confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous will is still feeble, conquerable by
temptation, and not to be fully relied on; by what means can it be strengthened? How can the will
to be virtuous, where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened? Only by
making the person desire virtue--by making him think of it in a pleasurable light, or of its
absence in a painful one. It is by associating the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong
with pain, or by eliciting and impressing and bringing home to the person's experience the
pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain in the other, that it is possible to call forth that
will to be virtuous, which, when confirmed, acts without any thought of either pleasure or pain.
Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of
habit. That which is the result of habit affords no presumption of being intrinsically good; and
there would be no reason for wishing that the purpose of virtue should become independent of
pleasure and pain, were it not that the influence of the pleasurable and painful associations which
prompt to virtue is not sufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of action until it has
acquired the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit is the only thing which
imparts certainty; and it is because of the importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on
one's feelings and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's own, that the will to do
right ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence. In other words, this state of the will
is a means to good, not intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothing is a
good to human beings but in so far as it is either itself pleasurable, or a means of attaining
pleasure or averting pain.
But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is proved. Whether it is so or not, must now be
left to the consideration of the thoughtful reader.
Chapter 5
On the Connection between Justice and Utility.
IN ALL ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the reception of the doctrine that
Utility or Happiness is the criterion of right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of justice.
The powerful sentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that word recalls with a rapidity
and certainty resembling an instinct, have seemed to the majority of thinkers to point to an
inherent quality in things; to show that the just must have an existence in Nature as something
absolute, generically distinct from every variety of the Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it,
though (as is commonly acknowledged) never, in the long run, disjoined from it in fact.
In the case of this, as of our other moral sentiments, there is no necessary connection between
the question of its origin, and that of its binding force. That a feeling is bestowed on us by
Nature, does not necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice might be a
peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts, to be controlled and enlightened
by a higher reason. If we have intellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as
well as animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there is no necessity that the
former should be more infallible in their sphere than the latter in theirs: it may as well happen
that wrong judgments are occasionally suggested by those, as wrong actions by these. But though
it is one thing to believe that we have natural feelings of justice, and another to acknowledge
them as an ultimate criterion of conduct, these two opinions are very closely connected in point
of fact. Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise
accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality. Our present object is to determine
whether the reality, to which the feeling of justice corresponds, is one which needs any such
special revelation; whether the justice or injustice of an action is a thing intrinsically peculiar,
and distinct from all its other qualities, or only a combination of certain of those qualities,
presented under a peculiar aspect. For the purpose of this inquiry it is practically important to
consider whether the feeling itself, of justice and injustice, is sui generis like our sensations of
colour and taste, or a derivative feeling, formed by a combination of others. And this it is the
more essential to examine, as people are in general willing enough to allow, that objectively the
dictates of justice coincide with a part of the field of General Expediency; but inasmuch as the
subjective mental feeling of justice is different from that which commonly attaches to simple
expediency, and, except in the extreme cases of the latter, is far more imperative in its demands,
people find it difficult to see, in justice, only a particular kind or branch of general utility, and
think that its superior binding force requires a totally different origin. To throw light upon this
question, it is necessary to attempt to ascertain what is the distinguishing character of justice, or
of injustice: what is the quality, or whether there is any quality, attributed in common to all
modes of conduct designated as unjust (for justice, like many other moral attributes, is best
defined by its opposite), and distinguishing them from such modes of conduct as are
disapproved, but without having that particular epithet of disapprobation applied to them. If in
everything which men are accustomed to characterise as just or unjust, some one common
attribute or collection of attributes is always present, we may judge whether this particular
attribute or combination of attributes would be capable of gathering round it a sentiment of that
peculiar character and intensity by virtue of the general laws of our emotional constitution, or
whether the sentiment is inexplicable, and requires to be regarded as a special provision of
Nature. If we find the former to be the case, we shall, in resolving this question, have resolved
also the main problem: if the latter, we shall have to seek for some other mode of investigating it.
To find the common attributes of a variety of objects, it is necessary to begin by surveying the
objects themselves in the concrete. Let us therefore advert successively to the various modes of
action, and arrangements of human affairs, which are classed, by universal or widely spread
opinion, as Just or as Unjust. The things well known to excite the sentiments associated with
those names are of a very multifarious character. I shall pass them rapidly in review, without
studying any particular arrangement.
In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to deprive any one of his personal liberty, his
property, or any other thing which belongs to him by law. Here, therefore, is one instance of the
application of the terms just and unjust in a perfectly definite sense, namely, that it is just to
respect, unjust to violate, the legal rights of any one. But this judgment admits of several
exceptions, arising from the other forms in which the notions of justice and injustice present
themselves. For example, the person who suffers the deprivation may (as the phrase is) have
forfeited the rights which he is so deprived of: a case to which we shall return presently. But also,
Secondly; the legal rights of which he is deprived, may be rights which ought not to have
belonged to him; in other words, the law which confers on him these rights, may be a bad law.
When it is so, or when (which is the same thing for our purpose) it is supposed to be so, opinions
will differ as to the justice or injustice of infringing it. Some maintain that no law, however bad,
ought to be disobeyed by an individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, should
only be shown in endeavouring to get it altered by competent authority. This opinion (which
condemns many of the most illustrious benefactors of mankind, and would often protect
pernicious institutions against the only weapons which, in the state of things existing at the time,
have any chance of succeeding against them) is defended, by those who hold it, on grounds of
expediency; principally on that of the importance, to the common interest of mankind, of
maintaining inviolate the sentiment of submission to law. Other persons, again, hold the directly
contrary opinion, that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it
be not judged to be unjust, but only inexpedient; while others would confine the licence of
disobedience to the case of unjust laws: but again, some say, that all laws which are inexpedient
are unjust; since every law imposes some restriction on the natural liberty of mankind, which
restriction is an injustice, unless legitimated by tending to their good. Among these diversities of
opinion, it seems to be universally admitted that there may be unjust laws, and that law,
consequently, is not the ultimate criterion of justice, but may give to one person a benefit, or
impose on another an evil, which justice condemns. When, however, a law is thought to be
unjust, it seems always to be regarded as being so in the same way in which a breach of law is
unjust, namely, by infringing somebody's right; which, as it cannot in this case be a legal right,
receives a different appellation, and is called a moral right. We may say, therefore, that a second
case of injustice consists in taking or withholding from any person that to which he has a moral
right. Thirdly, it is universally considered just that each person should obtain that (whether good
or evil) which he deserves; and unjust that he should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an
evil, which he does not deserve. This is, perhaps, the clearest and most emphatic form in which
the idea of justice is conceived by the general mind. As it involves the notion of desert, the
question arises, what constitutes desert? Speaking in a general way, a person is understood to
deserve good if he does right, evil if he does wrong; and in a more particular sense, to deserve
good from those to whom he does or has done good, and evil from those to whom he does or has
done evil. The precept of returning good for evil has never been regarded as a case of the
fulfilment of justice, but as one in which the claims of justice are waived, in obedience to other considerations.
Fourthly, it is confessedly unjust to break faith with any one: to violate an engagement, either
express or implied, or disappoint expectations raised by our conduct, at least if we have raised
those expectations knowingly and voluntarily. Like the other obligations of justice already
spoken of, this one is not regarded as absolute, but as capable of being overruled by a stronger
obligation of justice on the other side; or by such conduct on the part of the person concerned as
is deemed to absolve us from our obligation to him, and to constitute a forfeiture of the benefit
which he has been led to expect.
Fifthly, it is, by universal admission, inconsistent with justice to be partial; to show favour or
preference to one person over another, in matters to which favour and preference do not properly
apply. Impartiality, however, does not seem to be regarded as a duty in itself, but rather as
instrumental to some other duty; for it is admitted that favour and preference are not always
censurable, and indeed the cases in which they are condemned are rather the exception than the
rule. A person would be more likely to be blamed than applauded for giving his family or friends
no superiority in good offices over strangers, when he could do so without violating any other
duty; and no one thinks it unjust to seek one person in preference to another as a friend,
connection, or companion. Impartiality where rights are concerned is of course obligatory, but
this is involved in the more general obligation of giving to every one his right. A tribunal, for
example, must be impartial, because it is bound to award, without regard to any other
consideration, a disputed object to the one of two parties who has the right to it. There are other
cases in which impartiality means, being solely influenced by desert; as with those who, in the
capacity of judges, preceptors, or parents, administer reward and punishment as such. There are
cases, again, in which it means, being solely influenced by consideration for the public interest;
as in making a selection among candidates for a government employment. Impartiality, in short,
as an obligation of justice, may be said to mean, being exclusively influenced by the
considerations which it is supposed ought to influence the particular case in hand; and resisting
the solicitation of any motives which prompt to conduct different from what those considerations
would dictate.
Nearly allied to the idea of impartiality is that of equality; which often enters as a component
part both into the conception of justice and into the practice of it, and, in the eyes of many
persons, constitutes its essence. But in this, still more than in any other case, the notion of justice
varies in different persons, and always conforms in its variations to their notion of utility. Each
person maintains that equality is the dictate of justice, except where he thinks that expediency
requires inequality. The justice of giving equal protection to the rights of all, is maintained by
those who support the most outrageous inequality in the rights themselves. Even in slave
countries it is theoretically admitted that the rights of the slave, such as they are, ought to be as
sacred as those of the master; and that a tribunal which fails to enforce them with equal strictness
is wanting in justice; while, at the same time, institutions which leave to the slave scarcely any
rights to enforce, are not deemed unjust, because they are not deemed inexpedient. Those who
think that utility requires distinctions of rank, do not consider it unjust that riches and social
privileges should be unequally dispensed; but those who think this inequality inexpedient, think
it unjust also. Whoever thinks that government is necessary, sees no injustice in as much
inequality as is constituted by giving to the magistrate powers not granted to other people. Even
among those who hold levelling doctrines, there are as many questions of justice as there are
differences of opinion about expediency. Some Communists consider it unjust that the produce
of the labour of the community should be shared on any other principle than that of exact
equality; others think it just that those should receive most whose wants are greatest; while others
hold that those who work harder, or who produce more, or whose services are more valuable to
the community, may justly claim a larger quota in the division of the produce. And the sense of
natural justice may be plausibly appealed to in behalf of every one of these opinions.
Among so many diverse applications of the term justice, which yet is not regarded as
ambiguous, it is a matter of some difficulty to seize the mental link which holds them together,
and on which the moral sentiment adhering to the term essentially depends. Perhaps, in this
embarrassment, some help may be derived from the history of the word, as indicated by its etymology.
In most, if not in all, languages, the etymology of the word which corresponds to Just, points
distinctly to an origin connected with the ordinances of law. Justum is a form of jussum, that
which has been ordered. Dikaion comes directly from dike, a suit at law. Recht, from which came
right and righteous, is synonymous with law. The courts of justice, the administration of justice,
are the courts and the administration of law. La justice, in French, is the established term for
judicature. I am not committing the fallacy imputed with some show of truth to Horne Tooke, of
assuming that a word must still continue to mean what it originally meant. Etymology is slight
evidence of what the idea now signified is, but the very best evidence of how it sprang up. There
can, I think, be no doubt that the idee mere, the primitive element, in the formation of the notion
of justice, was conformity to law. It constituted the entire idea among the Hebrews, up to the
birth of Christianity; as might be expected in the case of a people whose laws attempted to
embrace all subjects on which precepts were required, and who believed those laws to be a direct
emanation from the Supreme Being. But other nations, and in particular the Greeks and Romans,
who knew that their laws had been made originally, and still continued to be made, by men, were
not afraid to admit that those men might make bad laws; might do, by law, the same things, and
from the same motives, which if done by individuals without the sanction of law, would be called
unjust. And hence the sentiment of injustice came to be attached, not to all violations of law, but
only to violations of such laws as ought to exist, including such as ought to exist, but do not; and
to laws themselves, if supposed to be contrary to what ought to be law. In this manner the idea of
law and of its injunctions was still predominant in the notion of justice, even when the laws
actually in force ceased to be accepted as the standard of it.
It is true that mankind consider the idea of justice and its obligations as applicable to many
things which neither are, nor is it desired that they should be, regulated by law. Nobody desires
that laws should interfere with the whole detail of private life; yet every one allows that in all
daily conduct a person may and does show himself to be either just or unjust. But even here, the
idea of the breach of what ought to be law, still lingers in a modified shape. It would always give
us pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of fitness, that acts which we deem unjust should be
punished, though we do not always think it expedient that this should be done by the tribunals.
We forego that gratification on account of incidental inconveniences. We should be glad to see
just conduct enforced and injustice repressed, even in the minutest details, if we were not, with
reason, afraid of trusting the magistrate with so unlimited an amount of power over individuals.
When we think that a person is bound in justice to do a thing, it is an ordinary form of language
to say, that he ought to be compelled to do it. We should be gratified to see the obligation
enforced by anybody who had the power. If we see that its enforcement by law would be
inexpedient, we lament the impossibility, we consider the impunity given to injustice as an evil,
and strive to make amends for it by bringing a strong expression of our own and the public
disapprobation to bear upon the offender. Thus the idea of legal constraint is still the generating
idea of the notion of justice, though undergoing several transformations before that notion, as it
exists in an advanced state of society, becomes complete.
The above is, I think, a true account, as far as it goes, of the origin and progressive growth of the
idea of justice. But we must observe, that it contains, as yet, nothing to distinguish that obligation
from moral obligation in general. For the truth is, that the idea of penal sanction, which is the
essence of law, enters not only into the conception of injustice, but into that of any kind of
wrong. We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be
punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures;
if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience. This seems the real turning point of
the distinction between morality and simple expediency. It is a part of the notion of Duty in every
one of its forms, that a person may rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may
be exacted from a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it may be exacted from him,
we do not call it his duty. Reasons of prudence, or the interest of other people, may militate
against actually exacting it; but the person himself, it is clearly understood, would not be entitled
to complain. There are other things, on the contrary, which we wish that people should do, which
we like or admire them for doing, perhaps dislike or despise them for not doing, but yet admit
that they are not bound to do; it is not a case of moral obligation; we do not blame them, that is,
we do not think that they are proper objects of punishment. How we come by these ideas of
deserving and not deserving punishment, will appear, perhaps, in the sequel; but I think there is
no doubt that this distinction lies at the bottom of the notions of right and wrong; that we call any
conduct wrong, or employ, instead, some other term of dislike or disparagement, according as we
think that the person ought, or ought not, to be punished for it; and we say, it would be right, to
do so and so, or merely that it would be desirable or laudable, according as we would wish to see
the person whom it concerns, compelled, or only persuaded and exhorted, to act in that manner.*
[* See this point enforced and illustrated by Professor Bain, in an admirable chapter (entitled
"The Ethical Emotions, or the Moral Sense"), of the second of the two treatises composing his
elaborate and profound work on the Mind.]
This, therefore, being the characteristic difference which marks off, not justice, but morality in
general, from the remaining provinces of Expediency and Worthiness; the character is still to be
sought which distinguishes justice from other branches of morality. Now it is known that ethical
writers divide moral duties into two classes, denoted by the ill-chosen expressions, duties of
perfect and of imperfect obligation; the latter being those in which, though the act is obligatory,
the particular occasions of performing it are left to our choice, as in the case of charity or
beneficence, which we are indeed bound to practise, but not towards any definite person, nor at
any prescribed time. In the more precise language of philosophic jurists, duties of perfect
obligation are those duties in virtue of which a correlative right resides in some person or
persons; duties of imperfect obligation are those moral obligations which do not give birth to any
right. I think it will be found that this distinction exactly coincides with that which exists
between justice and the other obligations of morality. In our survey of the various popular
acceptations of justice, the term appeared generally to involve the idea of a personal right- a
claim on the part of one or more individuals, like that which the law gives when it confers a
proprietary or other legal right. Whether the injustice consists in depriving a person of a
possession, or in breaking faith with him, or in treating him worse than he deserves, or worse
than other people who have no greater claims, in each case the supposition implies two things- a
wrong done, and some assignable person who is wronged. Injustice may also be done by treating
a person better than others; but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who are also
assignable persons.
It seems to me that this feature in the case- a right in some person, correlative to the moral
obligation- constitutes the specific difference between justice, and generosity or beneficence.
Justice implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some
individual person can claim from us as his moral right. No one has a moral right to our generosity
or beneficence, because we are not morally bound to practise those virtues towards any given
individual. And it will be found with respect to this, as to every correct definition, that the
instances which seem to conflict with it are those which most confirm it. For if a moralist
attempts, as some have done, to make out that mankind generally, though not any given
individual, have a right to all the good we can do them, he at once, by that thesis, includes
generosity and beneficence within the category of justice. He is obliged to say, that our utmost
exertions are due to our fellow creatures, thus assimilating them to a debt; or that nothing less
can be a sufficient return for what society does for us, thus classing the case as one of gratitute;
both of which are acknowledged cases of justice. Wherever there is right, the case is one of
justice, and not of the virtue of beneficence: and whoever does not place the distinction between
justice and morality in general, where we have now placed it, will be found to make no
distinction between them at all, but to merge all morality in justice.
Having thus endeavoured to determine the distinctive elements which enter into the composition
of the idea of justice, we are ready to enter on the inquiry, whether the feeling, which
accompanies the idea, is attached to it by a special dispensation of nature, or whether it could
have grown up, by any known laws, out of the idea itself; and in particular, whether it can have
originated in considerations of general expediency.
I conceive that the sentiment itself does not arise from anything which would commonly, or
correctly, be termed an idea of expediency; but that though the sentiment does not, whatever is
moral in it does.
We have seen that the two essential ingredients in the sentiment of justice are, the desire to
punish a person who has done harm, and the knowledge or belief that there is some definite
individual or individuals to whom harm has been done.
Now it appears to me, that the desire to punish a person who has done harm to some individual
is a spontaneous outgrowth from two sentiments, both in the highest degree natural, and which
either are or resemble instincts; the impulse of self-defence, and the feeling of sympathy.
It is natural to resent, and to repel or retaliate, any harm done or attempted against ourselves, or
against those with whom we sympathise. The origin of this sentiment it is not necessary here to
discuss. Whether it be an instinct or a result of intelligence, it is, we know, common to all animal
nature; for every animal tries to hurt those who have hurt, or who it thinks are about to hurt, itself
or its young. Human beings, on this point, only differ from other animals in two particulars. First,
in being capable of sympathising, not solely with their offspring, or, like some of the more noble
animals, with some superior animal who is kind to them, but with all human, and even with all
sentient, beings. Secondly, in having a more developed intelligence, which gives a wider range to
the whole of their sentiments, whether self-regarding or sympathetic. By virtue of his superior
intelligence, even apart from his superior range of sympathy, a human being is capable of
apprehending a community of interest between himself and the human society of which he forms
a part, such that any conduct which threatens the security of the society generally, is threatening
to his own, and calls forth his instinct (if instinct it be) of self-defence. The same superiority of
intelligence joined to the power of sympathising with human beings generally, enables him to
attach himself to the collective idea of his tribe, his country, or mankind, in such a manner that
any act hurtful to them, raises his instinct of sympathy, and urges him to resistance.
The sentiment of justice, in that one of its elements which consists of the desire to punish, is
thus, I conceive, the natural feeling of retaliation or vengeance, rendered by intellect and
sympathy applicable to those injuries, that is, to those hurts, which wound us through, or in
common with, society at large. This sentiment, in itself, has nothing moral in it; what is moral is,
the exclusive subordination of it to the social sympathies, so as to wait on and obey their call. For
the natural feeling would make us resent indiscriminately whatever any one does that is
disagreeable to us; but when moralised by the social feeling, it only acts in the directions
conformable to the general good: just persons resenting a hurt to society, though not otherwise a
hurt to themselves, and not resenting a hurt to themselves, however painful, unless it be of the
kind which society has a common interest with them in the repression of.
It is no objection against this doctrine to say, that when we feel our sentiment of justice
outraged, we are not thinking of society at large, or of any collective interest, but only of the
individual case. It is common enough certainly, though the reverse of commendable, to feel
resentment merely because we have suffered pain; but a person whose resentment is really a
moral feeling, that is, who considers whether an act is blamable before he allows himself to
resent it- such a person, though he may not say expressly to himself that he is standing up for the
interest of society, certainly does feel that he is asserting a rule which is for the benefit of others
as well as for his own. If he is not feeling this- if he is regarding the act solely as it affects him
individually- he is not consciously just; he is not concerning himself about the justice of his
actions. This is admitted even by anti-utilitarian moralists. When Kant (as before remarked)
propounds as the fundamental principle of morals, "So act, that thy rule of conduct might be
adopted as a law by all rational beings," he virtually acknowledges that the interest of mankind
collectively, or at least of mankind indiscriminately, must be in the mind of the agent when
conscientiously deciding on the morality of the act. Otherwise he uses words without a meaning:
for, that a rule even of utter selfishness could not possibly be adopted by all rational beings- that
there is any insuperable obstacle in the nature of things to its adoption- cannot be even plausibly
maintained. To give any meaning to Kant's principle, the sense put upon it must be, that we ought
to shape our conduct by a rule which all rational beings might adopt with benefit to their
collective interest.
To recapitulate: the idea of justice supposes two things; a rule of conduct, and a sentiment which
sanctions the rule. The first must be supposed common to all mankind, and intended for their
good. The other (the sentiment) is a desire that punishment may be suffered by those who
infringe the rule. There is involved, in addition, the conception of some definite person who
suffers by the infringement; whose rights (to use the expression appropriated to the case) are
violated by it. And the sentiment of justice appears to me to be, the animal desire to repel or
retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one sympathises, widened so as to
include all persons, by the human capacity of enlarged sympathy, and the human conception of
intelligent self-interest. From the latter elements, the feeling derives its morality; from the
former, its peculiar impressiveness, and energy of self-assertion.
I have, throughout, treated the idea of a right residing in the injured person, and violated by the
injury, not as a separate element in the composition of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the
forms in which the other two elements clothe themselves. These elements are, a hurt to some
assignable person or persons on the one hand, and a demand for punishment on the other. An
examination of our own minds, I think, will show, that these two things include all that we mean
when we speak of violation of a right. When we call anything a person's right, we mean that he
has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession of it, either by the force of law, or by
that of education and opinion. If he has what we consider a sufficient claim, on whatever
account, to have something guaranteed to him by society, we say that he has a right to it. If we
desire to prove that anything does not belong to him by right, we think this done as soon as it is
admitted that society ought not to take measures for securing it to him, but should leave him to
chance, or to his own exertions. Thus, a person is said to have a right to what he can earn in fair
professional competition; because society ought not to allow any other person to hinder him from
endeavouring to earn in that manner as much as he can. But he has not a right to three hundred
a-year, though he may happen to be earning it; because society is not called on to provide that he
shall earn that sum. On the contrary, if he owns ten thousand pounds three per cent stock, he has
a right to three hundred a-year; because society has come under an obligation to provide him with
an income of that amount.
To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society ought to defend me in the
possession of. If the objector goes on to ask, why it ought? I can give him no other reason than
general utility. If that expression does not seem to convey a sufficient feeling of the strength of
the obligation, nor to account for the peculiar energy of the feeling, it is because there goes to the
composition of the sentiment, not a rational only, but also an animal element, the thirst for
retaliation; and this thirst derives its intensity, as well as its moral justification, from the
extraordinarily important and impressive kind of utility which is concerned. The interest involved
is that of security, to every one's feelings the most vital of all interests. All other earthly benefits
are needed by one person, not needed by another; and many of them can, if necessary, be
cheerfully foregone, or replaced by something else; but security no human being can possibly do
without on it we depend for all our immunity from evil, and for the whole value of all and every
good, beyond the passing moment; since nothing but the gratification of the instant could be of
any worth to us, if we could be deprived of anything the next instant by whoever was
momentarily stronger than ourselves. Now this most indispensable of all necessaries, after
physical nutriment, cannot be had, unless the machinery for providing it is kept unintermittedly
in active play. Our notion, therefore, of the claim we have on our fellow-creatures to join in
making safe for us the very groundwork of our existence, gathers feelings around it so much
more intense than those concerned in any of the more common cases of utility, that the difference
in degree (as is often the case in psychology) becomes a real difference in kind. The claim
assumes that character of absoluteness, that apparent infinity, and incommensurability with all
other considerations, which constitute the distinction between the feeling of right and wrong and
that of ordinary expediency and inexpediency. The feelings concerned are so powerful, and we
count so positively on finding a responsive feeling in others (all being alike interested), that
ought and should grow into must, and recognised indispensability becomes a moral necessity,
analogous to physical, and often not inferior to it in binding force exhorted,
If the preceding analysis, or something resembling it, be not the correct account of the notion of
justice; if justice be totally independent of utility, and be a standard per se, which the mind can
recognise by simple introspection of itself; it is hard to understand why that internal oracle is so
ambiguous, and why so many things appear either just or unjust, according to the light in which
they are regarded.
We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertain standard, which every different person
interprets differently, and that there is no safety but in the immutable, ineffaceable, and
unmistakable dictates of justice, which carry their evidence in themselves, and are independent of
the fluctuations of opinion. One would suppose from this that on questions of justice there could
be no controversy; that if we take that for our rule, its application to any given case could leave
us in as little doubt as a mathematical demonstration. So far is this from being the fact, that there
is as much difference of opinion, and as much discussion, about what is just, as about what is
useful to society. Not only have different nations and individuals different notions of justice, but
in the mind of one and the same individual, justice is not some one rule, principle, or maxim, but
many, which do not always coincide in their dictates, and in choosing between which, he is
guided either by some extraneous standard, or by his own personal predilections.
For instance, there are some who say, that it is unjust to punish any one for the sake of example
to others; that punishment is just, only when intended for the good of the sufferer himself. Others
maintain the extreme reverse, contending that to punish persons who have attained years of
discretion, for their own benefit, is despotism and injustice, since if the matter at issue is solely
their own good, no one has a right to control their own judgment of it; but that they may justly be
punished to prevent evil to others, this being the exercise of the legitimate right of self-defence.
Mr. Owen, again, affirms that it is unjust to punish at all; for the criminal did not make his own
character; his education, and the circumstances which surrounded him, have made him a
criminal, and for these he is not responsible. All these opinions are extremely plausible; and so
long as the question is argued as one of justice simply, without going down to the principles
which lie under justice and are the source of its authority, I am unable to see how any of these
reasoners can be refuted. For in truth every one of the three builds upon rules of justice
confessedly true. The first appeals to the acknowledged injustice of singling out an individual,
and making a sacrifice, without his consent, for other people's benefit. The second relies on the
acknowledged justice of self-defence, and the admitted injustice of forcing one person to
conform to another's notions of what constitutes his good. The Owenite invokes the admitted
principle, that it is unjust to punish any one for what he cannot help. Each is triumphant so long
as he is not compelled to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than the one he has
selected; but as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to
have exactly as much to say for himself as the others. No one of them can carry out his own
notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding.
These are difficulties; they have always been felt to be such; and many devices have been
invented to turn rather than to overcome them. As a refuge from the last of the three, men
imagined what they called the freedom of the will; fancying that they could not justify punishing
a man whose will is in a thoroughly hateful state, unless it be supposed to have come into that
state through no influence of anterior circumstances. To escape from the other difficulties, a
favourite contrivance has been the fiction of a contract, whereby at some unknown period all the
members of society engaged to obey the laws, and consented to be punished for any disobedience
to them, thereby giving to their legislators the right, which it is assumed they would not
otherwise have had, of punishing them, either for their own good or for that of society. This
happy thought was considered to get rid of the whole difficulty, and to legitimate the infliction of
punishment, in virtue of another received maxim of justice, Volenti non fit injuria; that is not
unjust which is done with the consent of the person who is supposed to be hurt by it. I need
hardly remark, that even if the consent were not a mere fiction, this maxim is not superior in
authority to the others which it is brought in to supersede. It is, on the contrary, an instructive
specimen of the loose and irregular manner in which supposed principles of justice grow up. This
particular one evidently came into use as a help to the coarse exigencies of courts of law, which
are sometimes obliged to be content with very uncertain presumptions, on account of the greater
evils which would often arise from any attempt on their part to cut finer. But even courts of law
are not able to adhere consistently to the maxim, for they allow voluntary engagements to be set
aside on the ground of fraud, and sometimes on that of mere mistake or misinformation.
Again, when the legitimacy of inflicting punishment is admitted, how many conflicting
conceptions of justice come to light in discussing the proper apportionment of punishments to
offences. No rule on the subject recommends itself so strongly to the primitive and spontaneous
sentiment of justice, as the bex talionis, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Though this
principle of the Jewish and of the Mahometan law has been generally abandoned in Europe as a
practical maxim, there is, I suspect, in most minds, a secret hankering after it; and when
retribution accidentally falls on an offender in that precise shape, the general feeling of
satisfaction evinced bears witness how natural is the sentiment to which this repayment in kind is
acceptable. With many, the test of justice in penal infliction is that the punishment should be
proportioned to the offence; meaning that it should be exactly measured by the moral guilt of the
culprit (whatever be their standard for measuring moral guilt): the consideration, what amount of
punishment is necessary to deter from the offence, having nothing to do with the question of
justice, in their estimation: while there are others to whom that consideration is all in all; who
maintain that it is not just, at least for man, to inflict on a fellow creature, whatever may be his
offences, any amount of suffering beyond the least that will suffice to prevent him from
repeating, and others from imitating, his misconduct.
To take another example from a subject already once referred to. In a co-operative industrial
association, is it just or not that talent or skill should give a title to superior remuneration? On the
negative side of the question it is argued, that whoever does the best he can, deserves equally
well, and ought not in justice to be put in a position of inferiority for no fault of his own; that
superior abilities have already advantages more than enough, in the admiration they excite, the
personal influence they command, and the internal sources of satisfaction attending them,
without adding to these a superior share of the world's goods; and that society is bound in justice
rather to make compensation to the less favoured, for this unmerited inequality of advantages,
than to aggravate it. On the contrary side it is contended, that society receives more from the
more efficient labourer; that his services being more useful, society owes him a larger return for
them; that a greater share of the joint result is actually his work, and not to allow his claim to it is
a kind of robbery; that if he is only to receive as much as others, he can only be justly required to
produce as much, and to give a smaller amount of time and exertion, proportioned to his superior
efficiency. Who shall decide between these appeals to conflicting principles of justice? justice
has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible to bring into harmony, and the two
disputants have chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what it is just that the individual should
receive, the other to what it is just that the community should give. Each, from his own point of
view, is unanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must be perfectly
arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference.
How many, again, and how irreconcilable, are the standards of justice to which reference is
made in discussing the repartition of taxation. One opinion is, that payment to the State should be
in numerical proportion to pecuniary means. Others think that justice dictates what they term
graduated taxation; taking a higher percentage from those who have more to spare. In point of
natural justice a strong case might be made for disregarding means altogether, and taking the
same absolute sum (whenever it could be got) from every one: as the subscribers to a mess, or to
a club, all pay the same sum for the same privileges, whether they can all equally afford it or not.
Since the protection (it might be said) of law and government is afforded to, and is equally
required by all, there is no injustice in making all buy it at the same price. It is reckoned justice,
not injustice, that a dealer should charge to all customers the same price for the same article, not
a price varying according to their means of payment. This doctrine, as applied to taxation, finds
no advocates, because it conflicts so strongly with man's feelings of humanity and of social
expediency; but the principle of justice which it invokes is as true and as binding as those which
can be appealed to against it. Accordingly it exerts a tacit influence on the line of defence
employed for other modes of assessing taxation. People feel obliged to argue that the State does
more for the rich than for the poor, as a justification for its taking more from them: though this is
in reality not true, for the rich would be far better able to protect themselves, in the absence of
law or government, than the poor, and indeed would probably be successful in converting the
poor into their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to the same conception of justice, as to maintain
that all should pay an equal capitation tax for the protection of their persons (these being of equal
value to all), and an unequal tax for the protection of their property, which is unequal. To this
others reply, that the all of one man is as valuable to him as the all of another. From these
confusions there is no other mode of extrication than the utilitarian.
Is, then the difference between the just and the Expedient a merely imaginary distinction? Have
mankind been under a delusion in thinking that justice is a more sacred thing than policy, and
that the latter ought only to be listened to after the former has been satisfied? By no means. The
exposition we have given of the nature and origin of the sentiment, recognises a real distinction;
and no one of those who profess the most sublime contempt for the consequences of actions as
an element in their morality, attaches more importance to the distinction than I do. While I
dispute the pretensions of any theory which sets up an imaginary standard of justice not grounded
on utility, I account the justice which is grounded on utility to be the chief part, and incomparably
the most sacred and binding part, of all morality. justice is a name for certain classes of moral
rules, which concern the essentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more
absolute obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life; and the notion which we have
found to be of the essence of the idea of justice, that of a right residing in an individual implies
and testifies to this more binding obligation. The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one
another (in which we must never forget to include wrongful interference with each other's
freedom) are more vital to human well-being than any maxims, however important, which only
point out the best mode of managing some department of human affairs. They have also the
peculiarity, that they are the main element in determining the whole of the social feelings of
mankind. It is their observance which alone preserves peace among human beings: if obedience
to them were not the rule, and disobedience the exception, every one would see in every one else
an enemy, against whom he must be perpetually guarding himself. What is hardly less important,
these are the precepts which mankind have the strongest and the most direct inducements for
impressing upon one another. By merely giving to each other prudential instruction or
exhortation, they may gain, or think they gain, nothing: in inculcating on each other the duty of
positive beneficence they have an unmistakable interest, but far less in degree: a person may
possibly not need the benefits of others; but he always needs that they should not do him hurt.
Thus the moralities which protect every individual from being harmed by others, either directly
or by being hindered in his freedom of pursuing his own good, are at once those which he
himself has most at heart, and those which he has the strongest interest in publishing and
enforcing by word and deed. It is by a person's observance of these that his fitness to exist as one
of the fellowship of human beings is tested and decided; for on that depends his being a nuisance
or not to those with whom he is in contact. Now it is these moralities primarily which compose
the obligations of justice. The most marked cases of injustice, and those which give the tone to
the feeling of repugnance which characterises the sentiment, are acts of wrongful aggression, or
wrongful exercise of power over some one; the next are those which consist in wrongfully
withholding from him something which is his due; in both cases, inflicting on him a positive
hurt, either in the form of direct suffering, or of the privation of some good which he had
reasonable ground, either of a physical or of a social kind, for counting upon.
The same powerful motives which command the observance of these primary moralities, enjoin
the punishment of those who violate them; and as the impulses of self-defence, of defence of
others, and of vengeance, are all called forth against such persons, retribution, or evil for evil,
becomes closely connected with the sentiment of justice, and is universally included in the idea.
Good for good is also one of the dictates of justice; and this, though its social utility is evident,
and though it carries with it a natural human feeling, has not at first sight that obvious connection
with hurt or injury, which, existing in the most elementary cases of just and unjust, is the source
of the characteristic intensity of the sentiment. But the connection, though less obvious, is not
less real. He who accepts benefits, and denies a return of them when needed, inflicts a real hurt,
by disappointing one of the most natural and reasonable of expectations, and one which he must
at least tacitly have encouraged, otherwise the benefits would seldom have been conferred. The
important rank, among human evils and wrongs, of the disappointment of expectation, is shown
in the fact that it constitutes the principal criminality of two such highly immoral acts as a breach
of friendship and a breach of promise. Few hurts which human beings can sustain are greater, and
none wound more, than when that on which they habitually and with full assurance relied, fails
them in the hour of need; and few wrongs are greater than this mere withholding of good; none
excite more resentment, either in the person suffering, or in a sympathising spectator. The
principle, therefore, of giving to each what they deserve, that is, good for good as well as evil for
evil, is not only included within the idea of justice as we have defined it, but is a proper object of
that intensity of sentiment, which places the just, in human estimation, above the simply Expedient.
Most of the maxims of justice current in the world, and commonly appealed to in its
transactions, are simply instrumental to carrying into effect the principles of justice which we
have now spoken of. That a person is only responsible for what he has done voluntarily, or could
voluntarily have avoided; that it is unjust to condemn any person unheard; that the punishment
ought to be proportioned to the offence, and the like, are maxims intended to prevent the just
principle of evil for evil from being perverted to the infliction of evil without that justification.
The greater part of these common maxims have come into use from the practice of courts of
justice, which have been naturally led to a more complete recognition and elaboration than was
likely to suggest itself to others, of the rules necessary to enable them to fulfil their double
function, of inflicting punishment when due, and of awarding to each person his right.
That first of judicial virtues, impartiality, is an obligation of justice, partly for the reason last
mentioned; as being a necessary condition of the fulfilment of the other obligations of justice.
But this is not the only source of the exalted rank, among human obligations, of those maxims of
equality and impartiality, which, both in popular estimation and in that of the most enlightened,
are included among the precepts of justice. In one point of view, they may be considered as
corollaries from the principles already laid down. If it is a duty to do to each according to his
deserts, returning good for good as well as repressing evil by evil, it necessarily follows that we
should treat all equally well (when no higher duty forbids) who have deserved equally well of us,
and that society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who
have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and
distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should
be made in the utmost possible degree to converge.
But this great moral duty rests upon a still deeper foundation, being a direct emanation from the
first principle of morals, and not a mere logical corollary from secondary or derivative doctrines.
It is involved in the very meaning of Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle. That principle
is a mere form of words without rational signification, unless one person's happiness, supposed
equal in degree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is counted for exactly as much as
another's. Those conditions being supplied, Bentham's dictum, "everybody to count for one,
nobody for more than one," might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatory
commentary.* The equal claim of everybody to happiness in the estimation of the moralist and
the legislator, involves an equal claim to all the means of happiness, except in so far as the
inevitable conditions of human life, and the general interest, in which that of every individual is
included, set limits to the maxim; and those limits ought to be strictly construed. As every other
maxim of justice, so this is by no means applied or held applicable universally; on the contrary,
as I have already remarked, it bends to every person's ideas of social expediency. But in whatever
case it is deemed applicable at all, it is held to be the dictate of justice. All persons are deemed to
have a right to equality of treatment, except when some recognised social expediency requires the
reverse. And hence all social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume
the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people
are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves
perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction
of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last
learnt to condemn. The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by
which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social
existence, has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatised injustice and tyranny. So it has
been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and
so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.
[* This implication, in the first principle of the utilitarian scheme, of perfect impartiality
between persons, is regarded by Mr. Herbert Spencer (in his Social Statics) as a disproof of the
pretensions of utility to be a sufficient guide to right; since (he says) the principle of utility
presupposes the anterior principle, that everybody has an equal right to happiness. It may be more
correctly described as supposing that equal amounts of happiness are equally desirable, whether
felt by the same or by different persons. This, however, is not a pre-supposition; not a premise
needful to support the principle of utility, but the very principle itself; for what is the principle of
utility, if it be not that "happiness" and "desirable" are synonymous terms? If there is any anterior
principle implied, it can be no other than this, that the truths of arithmetic are applicable to the
valuation of happiness, as of all other measurable quantities.]
[Mr. Herbert Spencer, in a private communication on the subject of the preceding Note, objects
to being considered an opponent of utilitarianism, and states that he regards happiness as the
ultimate end of morality; but deems that end only partially attainable by empirical generalisations
from the observed results of conduct, and completely attainable only by deducing, from the laws
of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce
happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. What the exception of the word "necessarily,"
I have no dissent to express from this doctrine; and (omitting that word) I am not aware that any
modern advocate of utilitarianism is of a different opinion. Bentham, certainly, to whom in the
Social Statics Mr. Spencer particularly referred, is, least of all writers, chargeable with
unwillingness to deduce the effect of actions on happiness from the laws of human nature and the
universal conditions of human life. The common charge against him is of relying too exclusively
upon such deductions, and declining altogether to be bound by the generalisations from specific
experience which Mr. Spencer thinks that utilitarians generally confine themselves to. My own
opinion (and, as I collect, Mr. Spencer's) is, that in ethics, as in all other branches of scientific
study, the consilience of the results of both these processes, each corroborating and verifying the
other, is requisite to give to any general proposition the kind degree of evidence which
constitutes scientific proof.]
It appears from what has been said, that justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which,
regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more
paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other
social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save
a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or
medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner. In such
cases, as we do not call anything justice which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice
must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason
of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By this useful accommodation of language,
the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the
necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.
The considerations which have now been adduced resolve, I conceive, the only real difficulty in
the utilitarian theory of morals. It has always been evident that all cases of justice are also cases
of expediency: the difference is in the peculiar sentiment which attaches to the former, as
contradistinguished from the latter. If this characteristic sentiment has been sufficiently
accounted for; if there is no necessity to assume for it any peculiarity of origin; if it is simply the
natural feeling of resentment, moralised by being made coextensive with the demands of social
good; and if this feeling not only does but ought to exist in all the classes of cases to which the
idea of justice corresponds; that idea no longer presents itself as a stumbling-block to the
utilitarian ethics.
Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social utilities which are vastly more important,
and therefore more absolute and imperative, than any others are as a class (though not more so
than others may be in particular cases); and which, therefore, ought to be, as well as naturally are,
guarded by a sentiment not only different in degree, but also in kind; distinguished from the
milder feeling which attaches to the mere idea of promoting human pleasure or convenience, at
once by the more definite nature of its commands, and by the sterner character of its sanctions.
THE END