(4) There is another important practical insight underlying the protests of Carlyle and those of his ilk, namely, that it pays to disregard the minor ills and discomforts of life and keep our thoughts fixed on the big things.  These minor ills do not matter much as they pass; they are transient, and usually leave little pain for reflection.  It is the fear of them, the complaining about them, the shrinking from them, the attending to them, that constitutes the greater part of their badness.  Carlyle has the same practical common sense that the Christian Scientists show; but, as in their case, he lets his practical wisdom confuse his theoretical insight.

Sympathize, then, as we all must with these anti-happiness preachers, we may point out that their intuitions are quite compatible with a sane view of the ultimate meaning of morality.  If morality does not exist for human welfare, what is it good for?  And what else can welfare ultimately be but happiness?  Other proposed ends we shall presently consider.  But the happiness-account of morality leads to no dangerous laxity.  If any eudemonistic moralists have lived loosely, it was because they did not realize what really makes for happiness or had not strength of will to cleave to it, not because they saw happiness as the criterion.  An immature perception of this as the criterion without a full recognition of its bearings may have misled some; it is possible to see a general truth clearly and yet evaluate wrongly in concrete situations.  But the converse of the truth that morality makes for happiness is the truth that the way to attain happiness is morality.  No lesson could be more salutary.  Correct concrete evaluations are more important than correct abstract generalizations, and Carlyle is nearly always on the right side in the former.  But his influence would have been still more wholesome if he had added to his sound sermonizing a sane and clearly analyzed theory.

Does the end justify the means?

Our account of morality may be called the eudemonistic account, from the Greek eudemonia, happiness, or the teleological account, from telos, an end.  It asserts, that is, that morality is to be judged by the end it subserves; that end is happiness.  We have seen the sort of protest that arises with respect to the word “happiness.”  We may now note a danger that arises from the use of the concept “end”; it finds expression in the familiar proverb, “The end justifies the means.”  Conduct is to be judged by the end it subserves; therefore, if the end is good any means may be used to attain it.  This has been the defense of much wrongdoing.  The Jesuits who lied, slandered, cheated, and murdered, to promote the interests of the Church, the McNamara brothers, who dynamited buildings and bridges as a means toward the final end of attaining for laborers a just share of the fruits of their labor, the suffragettes who have been burning private houses, sticking up mail-boxes, and breaking windows, have justified their crimes by reference to the great ends they expected thereby to attain.  What shall we say to this plea?