Of the writers who have been led by some such line of thought to attempt the combination of a rationalistic view of the ultimate basis of Ethics with a purely hedonistic criterion of conduct, by far the most important and the most distinguished is the late Professor Henry Sidgwick. To examine the system of rationalistic Utilitarianism with which his writings present us, will be perhaps the best way at once of exhibiting in further detail the argument which has been outlined, and of criticizing the attempt to stop exactly at this point in the dialectic which leads away from Utilitarianism towards what I may be excused for calling by anticipation a higher and deeper Moral Philosophy.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 1)

Professor Sidgwick's position in the development of English Utilitarianism may be indicated by saying that he takes up the controversy at the point at which it had been left by Mill. Of John Stuart Mill's attempt to reconcile a theoretical acceptance of the hedonistic Psychology with the practical recognition of an enthusiastic Altruism, and even of a disinterested love of Virtue, almost enough has been said in the last chapter. His expedient is to introduce into the hedonistic calculus differences of kind irresolvable into differences of degree. We have already seen that the desire of a higher pleasure is not really a desire of pleasure: what makes one pleasure higher than another must be something other than its pleasingness. Moreover, when Mill recognizes the possibility of desire for pleasure passing by association into a disinterested love of Virtue for its own sake, even were we to accept the paradoxical allegation that Virtue and pleasure have been invariably associated in our experience, we should still be confronted with the admission that as an actual fact it is possible for me now to desire something besides my own pleasure, however I may have come to desire it. Mill's own non-recognition of this consequence was due no doubt to the well-known fallacy of mental chemistry--of supposing that mental states contain within them unaltered the states out of which they may have grown, as a chemical compound stlil continues to have in it its component elements^[42]. But, even were his account of disinterested love of Virtue psychologically tenable, it might still be pointed out that the tendency of Mill's theory is to place the Saint's love of Virtue precisely on a level with the miser's love of money^[43] Granted that both may be accounted for by association, the discovery of the association tends to its own dissolution. When the miser discovers that money is a means and not an end, he will, if he is sensible, cease to love money for its own sake. When the Saint, instructed by the Philosopher, discovers that pleasure is the end and Virtue only the means, he must, one would suppose, cease to desire Virtue for its own sake and cultivate pleasure instead. The more rational he is, the more irrational will he deem it to confuse means with ends. Association of ideas is after all, in such a connexion only another name for confusion of thought. An ethical system which is based upon confusion of thought surely rests upon a precarious foundation.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 2)

Professor Sidgwick^[44] completely reverses the mode of expanding in an altruistic direction the Benthamite Hedonism adopted by Mill. It is because he does so that his Utilitarianism is, from an intellectual point of view, so great an advance upon Mill's: though the change of front involves some sacrifice of the peculiar unction which makes Mill's Utilitarianism so persuasive a book to young students of Philosophy. Professor Sidgwick sees that the admission of difference in kind among pleasures is utterly irreconcilable, not only with the hedonistic Psychology which he abandons, but with the hedonistic conception of ultimate good which he retains; while, on the other hand, the greatest-happiness principle defined as the creed which holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness, is not prima facie bound up with the doctrine that all desires are desires of pleasure.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 3)

Professor Sidgwick fully admits as a psychological fact the existence of disinterested affections, Benevolence among the number. He rightly, however, distinguishes (with Butler, but in opposition to Shaftesbury and others) between the possibility of action motivated by desire for the happiness of others and the reasonableness or obligation of gratifying such a desire in opposition to private interest. In point of disinterestedness Benevolence is on a level with Malevolence. But besides these particular affections (to use Butler's expression) or desires for particular objects, Professor Sidgwick recognizes also the possibility of a desire to do what is right and reasonable as such. And he does not in any way shrink from the admission that such a desire amounts to what Butler would call a desire to do what Conscience prescribes, or what Kant would call a respect for the Moral Law^[45]. When a man contemplates himself in his relations to his fellow men and asks what it is reasonable for him to do, he cannot but recognize that he seems made, as Butler would put it, to promote public good. A reasonable man contemplating the world as an impartial spectator, uninfluenced by a private desire or passions, would necessarily recognize Benevolence as that affection in the œconomy and constitution of human nature which ought to be gratified in preference to merely self-regarding desires. To the disinterested spectator more good must appear preferable to less good, irrespective of the question whether it is A or B who is benefited, while the same disinterested Reason will prescribe an equal distribution of good among beings capable of enjoying it. The right course of action is that which would appear reasonable to such a disinterested spectator, and to the agent himself in so far as his judgment as a rational being is unbiased by private desires; it is the course of action which, if he had to legislate for others unbiased by such desires, he would prescribe to all, the course which as a rational being he recognizes as fit to be made law universal. In his view of Duty as the reasonable course of action, and in holding that disinterested love of the reasonable may be a motive of action, Sidgwick follows Butler and Kant, who are so far in entire agreement. But Sidgwick (here identifying himself with Butler more closely than with Kant) also recognizes that to the rational being placed in the position of an impartial spectator, it must appear in itself equally reasonable that each man should pursue his own greatest happiness. When a man's own greatest happiness would have to be purchased by the sacrifice of greater happiness on the part of others, the reasonable course may still seem to be the promotion of the happiness of others at the expense of one's own, so long as he looks upon the matter from the point of view of universal Reason; and an impulse more or less strongly impelling to such a sacrifice is actually felt, at least at times, by all rational beings. But, all the same, it remains something apparently unreasonable--something contrary to that order of things which a perfectly rational being endowed with unlimited power might be expected to appoint--that the happiness of one should involve a voluntary deduction by another from his own in itself no less important happiness. Man is made to promote public good, but no less evidently is he made to promote private good. Here Sidgwick abandons the attempt to find in cases of collision between the requirements of universalistic and of egoistic Hedonism any course of action which is completely reasonable--reasonable from every point of view--without the admission of theological postulates. Entirely apart from such postulates, altruistic conduct can be shown to be reasonable: it is the course which will be chosen, as the more reasonable of the two alternatives, even in opposition to interest, by the man in whom the desire to do what is right and reasonable as such is predominant; but such a course can be shown to be the one and only reasonable course, and the contrary to be completely and wholly unreasonable, only by the aid of a hypothesis unverifiable by experience reconciling the individual with the universal Reason^[46], that the Universe is constructed upon a reasonable basis. And this assumption is one which on the whole the writer seems disposed himself to concede, though, at least in his later editions, he makes no positive assertion to that effect.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 4)

The great modern champion of rationalistic or universalistic Hedonism certainly cannot be charged with any desire to conceal the extent of his approximation to the position of Butler and Kant. He is at one with them in the point of view from which he regards the whole subject. He does not look upon the Science of Morals as a branch of Natural History. He gives up altogether the attempt to find the ultimate end of action by induction: he sees that no accumulation of observed sequences, no experience of what is, no predictions of what will be, can possibly prove what ought to be. He neither dismisses the ought as a figment (with Bentham), nor involves the whole discussion in inextricable confusion (with J. S. Mill) by failing to distinguish between the desirable and the desired, and calling a desire for the happiness of others a desire for happiness, a mode of speaking which would allow us to define the passion of revenge as a desire for pain, injury, or death. In one word, Professor Sidgwick shares with the father of Idealism the supreme conviction that νοῦς κρατεῖ πάντα. He recognizes that Morality is based upon rational and a priori judgements of value. In so far as the motive of moral action in the individual is concerned, Professor Sidgwick is in fact an Intuitionist or Rationalist. He is a Hedonist only in his view of the nature of ultimate or universal Good, and consequently in his view of the moral criterion. The fundamental question raised by Professor Sidgwick's position is the logical compatibility of a rationalistic theory of duty with a hedonistic conception of the true τέλος of man. Before discussing this question, it will be well to re-state Professor Sidgwick's position in a somewhat more concise form.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 5)

Looking upon human nature in Butlerian phrase as a system or constitution, Professor Sidgwick may be said to find in it three distinct groups of affections or propensions, viz. (1) the desire for happiness or private good, or self-love; (2) various disinterested desires for objects, i. e. passions such as Benevolence, hunger, anger, &c.; (3) the desire to do what is right and reasonable as such. In the calm moment when a man, under the influence of this last desire, sits down to ask what it is reasonable for him to do, reflection convinces him, according to Professor Sidgwick:--(a that for himself (assuming certain postulates which upon the whole he is justified in assuming) it is reasonable to gratify, in cases of collision, Benevolence in preference to self-love, but to make the gratification of all other passions subordinate and instrumental to the promotion of his own interest on the whole; (b) that in acting for the good of others, it is reasonable to gratify their other desires or passions only in so far as these can be made subservient to the satisfaction of their desire for happiness. In short, in himself he is to recognize Benevolence as having a prerogative over self-love, though both desires are rational; while in others he is to treat self-love as alone among these desires or propensions entitled to gratification. It is a duty to promote universal good, but universal good is merely pleasure. It is right to promote pleasure, but it is not the individual's own good to do so.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 6)

Such a position seems open to the following objections: (1) If we look not so much to the speculative as to the practical side of Sidgwick's Utilitarianism, and put aside certain admissions as to the logical incompleteness of his position, we may say that his attitude towards duty was the attitude of Butler or Kant, while his attitude towards the idea of good was that of the Hedonist pure and simple. He tells the individual to promote other people's good, but he tells them also that other people's good is pleasure. Reason bids him make duty rather than private pleasure his own end, but in thinking what is the end that he is to promote for other people, it pronounces that end to be pleasure. He thus assigns a different end to the individual and to the race. Professor Sidgwick in fact proves unfaithful to the principle which he professes to accept from Kant--not, indeed, as an adequate definition, but as a fundamental characteristic of the Moral Law--that it shall be capable of serving for law universal. It is pronounced right and reasonable for A to make sacrifices of his own happiness to the good of B; yet, in considering what is B's good, he is to treat him as a being for whom it is right and reasonable to live solely for his own happiness, to have no desire gratified but his desire for pleasure. It is a condition of the Moral Law, Professor Sidgwick tells us, that it shall be, in Kantian phrase, capable of serving for law universal; yet that law requires each individual to act upon the hypothesis that he is the only member of the human race subject to it. Reason, we are told, requires us to act at times in a way contrary to our interest from love of the right and reasonable as such; yet we are to treat all other human beings but ourselves as incapable of rational desires, as beings for whom it is reasonable to desire nothing but pleasure. Moral action is rational action; and rational action consists in the gratifying of desires which, it is admitted, become irrational and immoral as soon as they collide with the general interest. Such a consequence can only be avoided by the admission that other people's happiness is only a rational object of pursuit, for them as for me, in so far as it is not inconsistent with their promotion of the general pleasure. The nature of our universal end will then be profoundly modified. The end becomes not mere happiness but a social or moral happiness--a happiness which is consistent with a disposition on the part of each member of the society to promote the happiness of every other in so far as he can do so without sacrificing a greater amount of his own. Morality or Goodness would thus seem to have entered into our practical conception of the end which we are to regard as desirable for human society.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 7)

(2) Sidgwick would no doubt have replied to the above objection by frankly admitting the dualism of Practical Reason. A man may recognize, he wrote in his third edition, that There is something that it is reasonable for him to desire, when he considers himself as an independent unit, and something again which he must recognize as reasonably to be desired, when he takes the point of view of a larger whole; the former of these objects I call his own Ultimate Good, and the latter Ultimate Good taken universally; while to the sacrifice of the part to the whole, which is from the point of view of the whole reasonable, I apply the different term right to avoid confusion^[47]. It is no doubt quite intelligible that one thing should appear reasonably to be desired from a man's own point of view, and another thing when he takes the point of view of a larger whole. But can both of these points of view be equally reasonable? How can it be reasonable to take the point of view of the part when once the man knows the existence of the whole and admits that the whole is more important than the part? Must not the point of view of the whole be the one and only reasonable point of view? From the point of view of the whole, the worker for the good of the whole can alone seem reasonable. The only reasonable point of view surely must be the one which recognizes all the facts. From that point of view the promotion of the good can alone be the reasonable course of action. The reasonable course is to promote the general good, for the general good is greater than the good of the individual. There is surely no logical contradiction involved in holding that it is intrinsically right and reasonable to promote the good, though such a course will not always be consistent with the individual's own good; for Reason bids us promote not merely what is good, but the greatest good, and to promote one's own lesser good, just because it is one's own, will be completely and entirely unreasonable.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 8)

(3) If the Egoist is pronounced reasonable when he says my pleasure is good, and the universalistic Hedonist equally reasonable when he says the general pleasure is good, does that not show that the terms reasonable and good are really used in different senses? What is there in common between the good for me and objective good taken universally? The objective universal point of view really implied (by Professor Sidgwick's own admission) in the terms reasonable and good seems to be forgotten when it is contended that the promotion of the individual's good, even when inconsistent with the general good, is nevertheless a reasonable object of pursuit. The writer seems to be relapsing into that meaning of the term reasonable which has generally found favour with Hedonists who do not profess to be rationalistic--that is to say, internally self-consistent or conducive as a means to the end which any one happens actually to desire.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 9)

(4) The difficulties which have been pointed out might possibly be evaded by a new mode of statement^[48]. But if this were done--if it were frankly admitted that the Egoist's conduct is not really reasonable at all--even so the attitude of mind which universalistic Hedonism ascribes to the good man is one which, when fully realized is, I believe, practically, at least to the great mass of men, an impossible one. There is no logical contradiction in telling me to promote other people's good at the expense of my own, because it is intrinsically and objectively reasonable so to do. But for me to act on this rational principle there must be a subjective reason, or motive. Granted that it is reasonable for me so to act, the question still remains, Why should I be reasonable? The Sidgwickian Moralist might tell me that I have a desire to act reasonably. I reply: Yes, I have such a tendency, but it is, taken by itself, not a very strong one, and it is in my power to encourage it or to suppress it. I want you to give me some reason why, since you say my own true good is nothing but pleasure, I should pursue an end which is not my good. An abstract or objective Reason may indeed condemn me if I do not, but I cannot from my own point of view condemn myself when I pursue what, as you say, Reason itself tells me is my own true good, and decline (so far as I can help it) to trouble myself about an end which is not my good. The whole force of the subjective hold which the precept be reasonable has exercised over me, so long as I was unacquainted with the teachings of rational Utilitarianism, has lain in its inseparable connexion with another conviction--that it was intrinsically noble for me to act in this way, and that to act in accordance with the reasonable was a good to me, a greater good than I could obtain by pursuing the pleasure which you tell me is the only true good. Destroy that conviction, and I have no motive for trying to cultivate the love of rational action or that love of my neighbour which Reason pronounces to be reasonable. You have convinced me that there is nothing intrinsically good and noble about the promotion of other people's happiness. It is a very nice thing for other people no doubt, but it is not nice for me. It is in vain that you tell me such conduct is selfish and irrational, for you tell me also that slefishness and irrationality are not bad in themselves, however inconvenient they may be for other people.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 10)

Another way of stating this last difficulty of Sidgwick's position is to say that the internal contradiction which it involves is at bottom not so much formal as material. It may possibly be stated in a form which escapes formal contradiction, though Sidgwick himself does not always succeed in so stating it, but the internal or psychological contradiction remains. The acceptance of rationalistic Hedonism kills and eradicates all those impulses upon which it has to depend for the practical fulfilment of its own precepts, by pronouncing that they have no true worth or value--no less than Mill's Associationist explanation of the love of Virtue as due to a psychological confusion and muddle-headedness comparable to that of the miser. It tends to reduce the idea of reasonable conduct to the idea of conduct which escapes intellectual contradiction and incompleteness; but the desire to escape such contradiction or one-sidedness is not by itself a very powerful motive of conduct when it is pronounced to have no intrinsic value. For the contradiction, be it observed, involved in bad conduct arises, on the hedonistic view of good, merely when I attempt to justify my conduct. If I say it is reasonable of me to be an Egoist, I can be convicted of self-contradiction. But if I candidly admit I know that it is unreasonable to be an Egoist, but intend to be unreasonable, the contradiction disappears. When the prohibition of Reason is held to include a specifically moral condemnation, the idea of unreasonable carries with it the idea that conduct condemned is lacking in absolute or intrinsic worth. The idea is lost or pronounced illusive when to act reasonably is denied to be good. The whole force which makes Reason appeal to men as deserving of respect it derives from that conviction of the intrinsic value or goodness of rational conduct which Reason, as interpreted by Sidgwick, pronounces to be an illusion. We are perhaps entitled to say a priori^[49] that Reason could not deliver itself of two dogmas, which, though involving no formal contradiction, tend in their practical effect upon human life to neutralize one another--the dogma it is reasonable to be altruistic and the dogma to be reasonable is not a good to him who is reasonable or even intrinsically a good at all: but it would be strange that moral consciousness, which by the rationalistic Hedonist's admission proclaims its right to govern and control human life, should be so constituted that, in so far as men listen to its voice, its own purposes are defeated. There is in the last resort no way of refuting the Sidgwickian or any other Moralist but by showing that he actually misrepresents the content of the moral consciousness. And this, I have tried to show, the Sidgwickian Moralist conspicuously does. He abstracts one half of the moral consciousness as it actually exists, and attempts by the aid of it to silence and confound the other half. He accepts from the moral consciousness the abstract idea of value, of intrinsic and objective worth, and at the same time divorces it from that idea of the intrinsic worth of promoting what has worth, which is de facto found in inseparable conjunction with it. The only way in which this internal inconsistency or discord in the Sidgwickian system can be cured is by admitting that to act rightly or reasonably possesses value, that to promote the good is a good not merely to others, but to the individual himself.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 11)

(5) But after all, Sidgwick fully admits that he cannot make Reason consistent with itself without the admission of theological postulates. The negation of the connexion between Virtue and Self-interest, he tells us, must force us to admit an ultimate and fundamental contradiction in our apparent intuitions of what is Reasonable in conduct; and from this admission it would seem to follow that the apparently intuitive operation of the Practical Reason, manifested in these contradictory judgements, is after all illusory^[50]. We must, therefore, go on to ask whether, upon Professor Sidgwick's premisses, these theological postulates are admissible, and whether (even if admitted) they will suffice to restore the internal self-consistency of the Practical Reason.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 12)

The difficulties which the great sum of human and animal suffering presents to the belief in a benevolent Author of Nature ought not to be dissembled by those who believe that Reason warrants the venture of faith and who hold (with Plato) that the risk is a noble one^[51]. But, on the hedonistic view of the true end of human life, does not the demand made upon faith become absolutely overwhelming? Can a Universe have a rational purpose or constitution in which the end is only pleasure and yet in which Reason daily prompts to the sacrifice of pleasure? Surely the assumption of a harmony between the Universal and the Particular Reason must be pushed a step further. The faith that Reason is for us King of Heaven and Earth^[52], never found a more eloquent or a more sober exponent than Professor Sidgwick. but in what sense can it be said that Reason rules in a Universe in which the accomplishment of its true purpose depends upon a systematic concealment of that purpose? It is the sole end or τελός of man to get as much pleasure as possible: yet in order that hey may do so, he is throughout his earthly existence, by way of preparation or discipline for the realization of his true end in another state, to forget that end and live for a totally different one.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 13)

So completely does Professor Sidgwick reverse in dealing with the ultimate ground of morality the Aristotelian maxim that we must look to the end, upon which he lays so much stress in connexion with the moral criterion. We must believe in a future life, Professor Sidgwick tells us, because we must believe that the constitution of things is rational. And yet, according to Professor Sidgwick, the Universe is so constituted that the man who most completely succeeds in concealing from himself the true end of his being--or haply in never finding it out--will ultimately realize that end most thoroughly. That the Universe might be so constituted is a proposition which does not involve a logical contradiction, and which is incapable of empirical disproof; but where is the rationality of such a Universe? If we are to make assumptions, let them be such as will satisfy the logical demand on which they are founded. If we are to assume a rational order in the Universe, surely the end prescribed to a man by his Reason must be his highest end. Man is so far a rational being that he is capable of preferring the rational to the pleasant. Surely, then, the reasonableness of such a preference cannot be dependent on its ultimately turning out that he has after all preferred the very thing which his love of the reasonable led him to reject. It may be the case that what he rejected had a certain value and would under other circumstances have been good; it may be that it is reasonable to expect the preference of the higher good to be rewarded by the bestowal of the lower also. But surely in a rational Universe that which man, when he is most completely rational, desires most cannot be good merely as a means to what he desires less--in other words, it must have an intrinsic value. Bain's remark that I am to be miserable cannot be an inference from I am to be happy, is a perfectly fair comment or criticism^[53] upon a Theology which is founded upon a purely hedonistic conception of the good. If, however, the end of man be goodness or a happiness of which Virtue is an essential element, then it is not unreasonable that he should be required to undergo sufferings which may be necessary conditions of attaining that end for himself and others. If happiness be the true end, a constitution of things by which the neglect of happiness should be rewarded with happiness and devotion to happiness punished by the loss of it, would be a purely arbitrary, supremely irrational constitution. But if goodness be the end without which the highest happiness is incomplete, if goodness be of the essence of the highest happiness, then it is not inconceivable that the voluntary neglect of a lower good in the pursuit of a higher may be intrinsically necessary to the attainment of that completed state of being, of a life which shall embrace both these concepts of goodness and happiness which Modern Philosophy has been accustomed to separate--the Well-being or εὐδαιμονία of ancient Ethics. If Love be indeed the one element of earthly happiness which is to be permanent, then it is intelligible enough that Self-sacrifice should be a discipline necessary to fit men for its enjoyment.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 14)

I will add only one further remark at present on this supreme problem upon which the course of Professor Sidgwick's argument has compelled me to touch. Sidgwick claims Bishop Butler as his predecessor in the doctrine of an ultimate dualism of the Practical Reason. It is true that when Bishop Butler, the thinker who has so profoundly modified Professor Sidgwick's hedonistic tendencies, was engaged in writing Moral Philosophy as the champion of the disinterestedness of virtue against the Hobbist, when he touched upon the theological problems only as accessory to moral, he was satisfied with a position very much resembling that of his disciple. Conscience or a principle of reflection prescribed certain conduct as rational irrespectively of the interest of the individual; his highest end was duty. The existence of Conscience was to Butler the basis of Theology, not Theology the basis of Morality. Yet when he wrote the Sermons, he still regarded the happiness of the whole as the only conceivable end of the Creator as well as of altruistic conduct in the individual^[54]. When he came seriously to face the question of the moral government of the world, the difficulties of such a position were forced upon his notice. The result of the ten years' thought which intervened between the Sermons and the Analogy were embodied in those chapters of the latter work on human life as a state of discipline, which may still be regarded as (in spite of their rather old-world form and tone) the classical exposition of that one glimpse of a clue to the problem of the origin of evil which is open to those who refuse to be led by a desire for reconciliation or unity and a philosophical horror of dualism into some form or other of the denial that evil is evil.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 15)

The substance then of my contention is that Professor Sidgwick's attempt to reconcile a hedonistic conception of the good, and consequently a hedonistic criterion of Morality, with an intuitional or rational basis or ultimate ground of Morality breaks down. The dualism of Practical Reason is not bridged over, and cannot be bridged over without the admission of Virtue or character--at least the Virtue or character which consists in the promotion of general pleasure--as an element and the highest element of the good which it is right to promote for the whole human race.(Bk. 1 Ch. 3 § 2 ¶ 16)