ARTICLE II.-MORAL INTUITION VS. UTILITARIANISM.

WHAT are right and wrong? The intuitionist says: the right is the right, and the wrong is the wrong. These are simple ideas, admitting of no decomposition, and hence of no explanation. The utilitarian says: the right is that which tends to increase the sum of happiness, and the wrong is that which tends to diminish that sum or to produce misery.

How do we know what is right or wrong? The intuitionist says: by an innate moral power which calculates no results but decides upon inspection. The utilitarian holds, that only an examination of consequences can decide what is right or wrong. Why should I do what is right? Because it is right, says the intuitionist. We hold no parley with those who seek a reason for rectitude. The majesty of duty is not to be insulted by stipulations as to what you shall have for your service. Right is its own reason, and demands of every one an unconditional surrender. The utilitarian says, I must do the right because thereby I shall secure my own or others' good. I make very little of this myth, called virtue, but whenever I can lend a hand to anyone, I feel obliged to do it. Helpfulness is my idea of holiness.

These remarks serve to give some inexact hints of the leading points of difference between the two great schools of morals. In general, one relies upon moral insight, the other upon mental foresight. The one depends upon an intuition of nature, the other upon an apprehension of results. Yet though each party has held the other in detestation, still neither, when pressed by argument, has been able to avoid assuming the positions of the other. Dr. Whewell, in his Elements of Morality, a work meant to be an antidote to Paley, after insisting upon the degrading tendencies of the happiness system, reasons thus: "The object of the supreme rule of human action is spoken of as the true end of human action, the ultimate or supreme good, the summum bonum" (73). What is that supreme good? He says, "Happiness is conceived as necessarily an ultimate object of action." "The desire of happiness is the supreme desire."

"Happiness is our being's end and aim" (544).

"The supreme

Now as the

object of human action is happiness" (573). supreme rule derives its value and validity from the supreme end, it follows that in Dr. Whewell's mind happiness legitimates action; which is unmixed Benthamism.

On the other hand, Mr. Mill, who is the great apostle of utilitarianism, after a multitude of sharp hits at his predecessors for paying so little attention to the subjective effects of action, finally complains of Bentham, that "Man is never recognized by him as a being capable of pursuing spiritual perfection as an end, of desiring for its own sake the conformity of his character to his standard of excellence without hope of good or fear of evil from other sources than his own inward consciousness" (Dissertations and Discussions, vol. i, p. 384). This is everything but utilitarianism.

This mutual assumption of each other's position leads us to suspect that both parties are right and both are wrong. There is a moral instinct, but its province has been extended much too far. Considerations of advantage, on the other hand, do play an important part in our moral judgments, but do not create our moral nature. The intuitionist has said a great deal about the "eternal distinction between right and wrong," of "virtue, not happiness, as the end of man;" in all of which there is far more of rhetoric than of reason. The utilitarian, on the other hand, while unquestionably right in testing his code by the canon of consequences, has always been prone to regard the moral instinct as without ethical authority, but as being the result of prejudice or the product of contagion. We do not believe that our moral convictions are caught like the measles, no more do we believe that conscience can utter infallible oracles on every question proposed to it. For the control of life intuition is blind without the guidance of utility; and utility is the purest selfishness apart from moral intuition. To determine if possible the value and limitations of each method, is the purpose of this essay.

Each party has a strong word to utter in its own behalf. Men are judged in their motives without any estimate of results. We contemplate some example of lofty devotion to duty; and at once we clap our hands and cry, well done. John in Herod's

court rebuking the licentious king, wins our admiration before we have considered the consequences of the rebuke; and when a little later we see him in Herod's prison, bowing his neck to the sharp stroke which falls flashing down, we do not retract our praise. When Arnold Winkelried gathers in his side the sheaf of Austrian spears, we instinctively yield our admiration without thought of the victory which his sacrifice secured for Switzerland. Who thinks less of the three hundred who held the pass at Thermopyla because they were overborne and slain? The praise and honor we accord to Luther depend in no wise upon the good that flowed from his protest. Had the church crushed him, as it did Huss a hundred years before, it would not have affected our decision. Suppose, on the other hand, that the course of Nero were proved to have caused great good to modern Europe, still we should think no better of him. We judge persons, if we are sure of their motives, without thinking of results; and results are powerless to reverse our decision. The only use we make of consequences is to arrive at motives; we reason upon what a man did to find his motive in doing it; but the motive known, the judgment is instinctive and irreversible. This is not a question of argument, but a plain matter of fact. Despots in their mad ambition have struck blows that freed nations; and wicked men often prove blessings, as thunder storms clear the air. But we think no more kindly of the tyrants for the unintended good; nor do we remove our condemnation from wicked men because God makes their wrath to praise him. Demosthenes failed to secure Grecian unity and liberty; but his failure does not diminish our admiration. Indeed, never does he seem so grand a figure as after that fatal day at Cheronæa, while he stood amid the wreck of baffled plans with his country falling in ruins around him. Washington secured American independence; but it is not his success which we reverence. Success never won the reverence of a single human conscience, and never will. We judge no man by what he did, but by what he meant to do, and by the principle of action that ruled him. The only way in which a judgment of a person is ever modified, is by showing that he was moved by other motives than those we had attributed to him. Richard III. was a monster and is a monster forevermore.

Facts such as these are offered by the intuitionist to prove that consequences are not the standard of moral judgments.

On the other hand, the utilitarian shows that moral codes are constantly changing, so that the conscientious practices of one age are often the detestation of the next. As consequences manifest themselves moral judgments are reversed. Many things once thought righteous are now viewed with abhorrence. The asceticism of the early ages, and the deeds of the Inquisition, have had the sanction of conscience. Individual experience is a collection of mistakes; and the history of the race is mainly a record of measures once thought righteous, but which, when weighed in the balance of consequences, were found wanting. Indiscriminate alms-giving had the sanction of conscience until political economy by its irresistible reasoning and its still more irresistible facts showed its pernicious tendency. Now from these undoubted facts two things clearly appear; first, if conscience is a guide to action, it is an altogether unreliable one, and second, conscience can never maintain its authority against known inutility.

From data like these the utilitarian argues, that consequences furnish the only trustworthy test of moral judgments.

A glance at these conflicting arguments will serve to show that their opposition is rather seeming than real. The arguments of the intuitionist all relate to moral judgments upon persons, those of the utilitarian only to moral judgments upɔn actions. But abstract action has no moral quality at all. Our moral judgments are really upon persons, and never upon things. We never praise the sunshine or the rain, though they are of the greatest advantage. We never condemn the fire or the torrent, which sweeps life and property away. Impersonal agents may produce the highest good or the greatest mischief; but they never win our approval or receive our condemnation. These are reserved for personal agents only. Not even the acts of a person are really praised or blamed: it is the person doing those acts. He it is that is base or noble; he it is that is righteous or wicked. Often indeed we do speak of an action as good or bad, but in every such case the condemnation is really bestowed upon the actor, and is allowed to flow from him over the act. This is plain enough; for take the worst

deed ever done, and suppose the motive to have been good, we might wonder at the blindness or folly of the doer, but we should remove our condemnation. It would be called a mistake, an error, not a crime. We read Machiavelli's Prince only to detest the author; but if it could be shown that the book was written as a satire on the morals and diplomacy of the time, the very book which is now Machiavelli's shame would become his honor. Abstractly considered, action may be wise or unwise, helpful or hurtful; but it is never morally good or bad. An examination of consequences can decide upon the wisdom or folly of an action, and hence its fitness or unfitness to be done, but it can never determine its moral quality for the sufficient reason that it has no such quality to determine. Actions are instruments of expression, and their moral worth lies entirely in the motive or principle they aim to express. Now of many actions possible to the same motive, not conscience, but common sense and experience, are to determine which is best fitted to express that motive. Conscience may command us to love one another; but the specific actions which this rule involves are to be discovered by intelligence. Conscience may enjoin reverence toward God; but whether this sentiment shall manifest itself in the myriad abominations of idolatry, or in the pure worship of the Bible, depends not upon conscience, but upon civilization and mental culture. Yet in many things, and especially in religious matters, the particular actions whereby particular motives find expression become habitual, and at last seem to be the only natural way of expressing this or that sentiment of the soul. In this way the abstract action itself acquires with the unthinking and conventional a sacredness or vileness of its own. In this way, too, the claims of conscience are enormously exaggerated, and its authority is brought into just contempt. Custom and prejudice unite trivial and foolish observances to worthy and sacred feelings, and thus the authority of conscience is claimed for many actions base and ignoble. This practice is nonsense, you say to a man, and he replies, My conscience tells me that it is right. Conscience of this kind is the product of contagion, or a consolidation of prejudice, and needs nothing so much as a little good sense.

Now as actions have no moral quality in themselves, we resign without hesitation the making of a code, or the deter