CHAPTER IX.

PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY: PAIN AND PLEASURE.

THE ground being so far cleared before us, our line of reasoning is henceforth simple and straightforward, relating only to the question of Pain and Pleasure-Happiness and Misery. These will be found the ultimate springs of all our actions: Pain and Pleasure, which are only other names for desire and aversion, liking and antipathy, being to volition in the sensitive creation what attraction and repulsion are to the motions that go on in the physical world, Man, as we have seen, is equally the agent of Necessity with all other created beings, and this is the law, the first law of his nature, that he should wish for and seek his own happiness; and he is no more capable of avoiding it, or of acting contrary to it, than the atoms of matter can refuse to be guided by the influence which is called attraction. This proposition, however, requires explanation, for it will be immediately denied by many, who, from want of clearly understanding the nature of the law referred to, feel convinced that they are impelled to action by a thousand motives which cannot be said to partake of the character of either pleasure or pain. But those who reason in this way, for the most part think only of mere bodily

pleasure and pain. All kinds of feelings emanating from any part of the body; all actions of the mind, whether proceeding from the Intellectual Faculties, the Sentiments, or the Propensities, come under the denomination of Sensations, as before explained; and all sensations are pleasurable or painful, though in a thousand different degrees—at least all that are powerful enough tc impel to action. Locke says, "all action has its source in uneasiness; at all events all action has a cause. We act either instinctively or from motive. If instinctively, we are impelled directly by some desire, which desire proceeds from the action of some faculty, and each faculty, when indulged in its natural action, is the source of pleasure, and when ungratified, or disagreeably affected, produces pain; pains and pleasures are thus as numerous in their kind as the faculties. One person will feel pleasure in doing good, another in doing mischief; one in saving money, another in spending it; one will instinctively run away at the slightest cause of alarm, another will as instinctively face it. In all which cases it is not the less a pleasurable or painful sensation that induces each individual so to act, because he does not stay to make a calculation of the balance of pleasures or pains. When we act from motives, and calculation does take place, the will is determined by the greatest apparent good; good meaning right, duty, &c., which really means pleasure or happiness or the avoidance of

pain. The lower animals are impelled immediately to action by pleasures and pains, without even knowing that there are such feelings, i.e., without having any abstract notion of either one or the other, and by far the greater part of our actions are performed in the same way, instinctively, and without any calculation or reference to either pleasure or pain. Some of the most intelligent of the animals, dogs for example, are enabled to make some sort of calculation, and to balance future. punishment against present enjoyment, and so also does man in proportion as he becomes enlightened and his feelings are put under the direction of It is here that the moralist can be of use, by enabling us to make a more correct calculation than our unassisted reason could otherwise accomplish; by showing from experience and from our own constitution and from the constitution of nature, what conduct invariably leads to happiness in the end, and what to misery. The duty of the moralist then is to enable us to make a correct calculation of our pleasures and pains.

reason.

If the common objection be urged-Are all men then, eternally calculating pains and pleasures in all their actions? we answer, no; they more frequently act instinctively, that is, without calculation; but the pain or pleasure of the gratification or non-gratification of their wish, or desire, impel them into action. Take, for instance, the most common desire, that of food-appetite. A man,

before he eats, does not sit down to calculate the pleasure he shall have in eating, or the pain he shall suffer if he do not; but he feels a desire to eat, which desire, if analysed, will be found to consist of a slightly painful or uncomfortable feeling which increases in intensity until it is gratified. All others desires which form the motives to action, are similar in character, but not being equally necessary to the preservation of self, if not gratified the uneasy feeling ceases instead of increasing in intensity.

Are all men, then, moved to action only by the expectation of self-enjoyment, or is it possible to disregard our own individual interests ? Selfenjoyment or individual interest may form no part of our object or aim, and yet it is not the less pain or pleasure that impels us to action. It may be the pleasure of performing what we conceive to be our duty, or the pain following the neglect of it. It may be the pleasure we have in promoting the interests of others, or the pain of seeing them in want of such assistance; at any rate we cannot be indifferent, whether the end of the action regards ourselves individually or not; for in a state of indifference there is no motive, nothing to move the will, and we must will before we act. Our choice may lead us willingly to great and continued suffering, but the pains of remorse and self-reproach may be less easy to bear.

Bentham said, "No man ever had, can, or could

have a motive differing from the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain." "The first law of nature is to seek our own happiness;" and in illustration of this he adds, "Prudence, in common parlance, is the adaptation of means to an end. In the moral field that end is happiness. The subjects on which prudence is to be exercised are ourselves and all besides ourselves as instrumental, and all besides as instrumental to our own felicity."

'Of what can the sum total of happiness be made up, but of the individual units? What is demanded by prudence and benevolence is required by necessity. Existence itself depends for its continuance on the self-regarding principle. Had Adam cared more for the happiness of Eve than for his own, and Eve, at the same time, more for the happiness of Adam than for her own, Satan might have saved himself the trouble of temptation. Mutual misery would have marred all prospects of bliss, and the death of both have brought to a speedy finale the history of man."*

"But self-regarding prudence is not only a virtue -it is a virtue on which the very existence of the race depends. If I thought more about you than I thought about myself, I should be the blind leading the blind, and we should fall into the ditch together. It is as impossible that your pleasures should be better to me than my own, as that your eye-sight should be better to me than my own. My happiness * Deontology, vol. 1, p. 18.