VIII. The Ultimate Sanctions

CHAPTER VIII. THE ULTIMATE SANCTIONS. § 426. .Though occasionally, in the foregoing chapters, I have briefly indicated the origin of the obligation to be beneficent, I have not under each head referred to this origin, but have thought it best here to emphasize it generally. The admitted desideratum being Inaintenance and pros perity of the· species, or that variety of the species con stituting the society, the implication is that the modes of conduct here enjoined under the head of Negative Beneficence, have their remote justification in their con duciveness to such maintenance and prosperity. It was pointed out that certain restraints on free competition are deluanded not only by regard for a competitor as likely to be needlessly ruined, but also by regard for society at large; injury of which would· result froIn partial destruction of its producing and distributin~ organization. It was tacitly alleged that restraints on free contract are imposed by recognition of extremedanlages to individuals, considerable damage to society, and con sequent damage to the local·· variety of the species, which result if contracts are under all circumstances enforced to the letter. And kindred reasons were im plied for reprobating various minor divergencies' from the fundamental principle of social co-operation-that each (329) 330 THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL LIFE.

individual shall, under ordinary circumstances, receive neither more nor less than a true equivalent for his services. Here it should be added that the maintenance or pros perity of the race, or the variety, is the. ultimate sanction also for those kinds of negative beneficence treated of as restraints on praise and blaIne. For the right restraints are in an cases such as have in view the eventual welfare of the individual blamed or praised - his eventual iIn provement. But improvement of the individual consists in the better fitting of him for social co-operation; and this, .being conducive to social prosperity, is conducive to maintenance of the race. § 427. The second sanction is a correlative of the first, or indeed, from one point of view, is the first; since, unless the race nlaintained is a recipient of happiness, maintenance of it ceases to be a desideraturn. As was pointed out in § 16, "pessiInists and optimists both start vdth the postulate that life is a blessing or a curse, according as the average consciousness accompanying it is pleasureable or painful. . . . The truth that conduct is considered by us as good or bad, according as its aggregate results, to self or others or both, are pleasur able or painful, we found on exalnination to be involved In all the current judgments on conduct: the proof being that reversing the applications of the ·words creates absurdities. And we found that every other proposed standard of conduct derives its authority from this standard;" for "perfection of nature," or "virtuousness of action," or "rectitude of Inotive," cannot be conceived without including the conception of happiness as an ultimate result, to self, or others or both. Hence the conclusion that the ultimate sanction for the conduct we call beneficent is conduciveness to maintenance of the species, sirnultaneously inlplies that its ultilnate sanction THE ULTIMATE SANCTIONS. 331 is conduciveness to happiness, special or general: the two being different aspects of the same truth.

Their fundamental correlation is, as we before saw, necessary-has been inevitably established during the evo lution of life at large. For as in all types of creatures lower than the human, there have been no prompters to perfornlance of SOlne actions and desistence froln others, except the pleasurable and painful feelings produced re spectively, it follows that through myriads of genera tions of creatures preceding the hunlan, there have been in· course of establishlnent, organic relations between pleasures and beneficial actions, and between pains and detrimental actions - now to the individual, now to the species, no'w to both. Of these organic rela tions, the essential ones, referring to the needs of the physical life, are inherited by the hunlan race, savage and civilized; and are on the average efficient guides to the welfare of the individual and of the species. Though change from the requirements of savage life to the re quirements of civilized life, has put many of the more complex an10ng these relations out of gear; and though re-adjustlnent, already to sonle extent effected, has to continue through long future periods, before harlnony betwreen the feelings and the needs is fully re-established ; yet there cannot be an an abolition of this prilnordial method of guidance. The requisite re-organization of the human being, must make hhn like inferior beings in· the sense that not the lower parts of his nature only but the higher parts, will be adjusted to the conditions ilnposed by his mode of life-so adjusted that in him, as in theIn, all the actions conducive to self-welfare and the ,velfare of the species will be pleasurable.

Hence the two correlative sanctions of beneficence are conduciveness to happiness, immediate or remote, or both, and consequent conduci veness to mainten ance of the species or the variety, regarded as here332 THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL LIFE. after the recipient of increased happiness. And this .is implied vaguely if not clearly in the current conception of beneficence; since a lnode of conduct "which tends to increase the total of unhappiness, imlnediate or relllote or both, is universally recognized as not beneficent but maleficent. Of course these considerations touching the nature of Beneficence at large, here appended as a cOlllmentary on the actions classed under the head of Negative Benefi cence, equally apply, and indeed apply still rnore manifestly, . to the actions classed under the head of Positive Benefi cence, to which we novv passo PART VI. THE ETHICS O~' SOCIAL LIFE. POSITIVE BENEFICENCE.