Utilitarianism
by John Stuart Mill
(1863)
From: http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill1.htm
Chapter 1 Chapter
2 Chapter 3 Chapter
4 Chapter 5
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 fulfil- 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.
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