CHAPTER XII

OBJECTIONS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS

Having now outlined the eudfemonistic account of morality, we may note certain objections that are commonly raised to it, and certain is understandings that constantly recur.

Do men always act for pleasure or to avoid pain?

Many of the earlier theorists, not content with showing that the good consists ultimately in a quality of conscious states, asserted that all of men’s actions are actually directed toward the attainment of agreeable states of experience or avoidance of disagreeable states.  There is no act but is aimed for pleasure of some sort or away from pain; men differ, then, only in their wisdom in selecting the more important pleasures and their skill in attaining what they aim for.  This assertion, easily refuted, has seemed to some opponents of the eudemonistic account of morality so bound up with it as to involve its downfall.

The classic statement of this erroneous psychology, which has been the source of much satisfaction to anti-eudemonistic philosophers, is to be found in the fourth chapter of Mill’s Utilitarianism.  “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.  Human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means to happiness” A careful reading of Mill shows that he did not mean these statements without qualification.  But since they, and similar sweeping assertions, [Footnote:  Cf.  Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 44:  “The love of happiness must express the sole possible motive of Judas Iscariot and of his Master; it must explain the conduct of Stylites on his pillar or Tiberius at Caprae or A Kempis in his cell or of Nelson in the cockpit of the Victory.”] have been a stumbling-block to many, we must pause to note their inaccuracy, while insisting that they are no part of a sound utilitarian, or eudemonistic, theory.  Far from the desire for happiness being the universal motive, it is one of the less common springs of conduct.  Habit, inertia, instinct, ideals drive us this way and that; we do a thousand things daily without any thought of happiness, because our minds are so made that they naturally run off into such action.  We desire concrete things, without reference to their bearing on our happiness.  We even go directly and consciously counter to our happiness at times, deliberately sacrifice it, perhaps for some foolish fancy.  The idealist in politics expects to get no pleasure out of what his associates deem his pigheadedness; but he has seen a vision and he keeps true to it.  Regulus did not go back to Carthage to be tortured to death for the pleasure of it, or to avoid the greater pain