id="id00216">In other cases, the calculation is not easy, from the number of opposing considerations. For example, there are two sides to the question, Is dissent morally wrong? in other words, Ought all opinions to be tolerated? But if we venture to decide such a question, without the balancing or calculating process, we must follow blindfold the dictates of one or other of the two opposing sentiments,—Love of Power and Love of Liberty.

It is not necessary that we should go through the process of calculation every time we have occasion to perform a moral act. The calculations have already been performed for all the leading duties, and we have only to apply the maxims to the cases as they arise.

13. III.—The principle of Utility, it is said, contains no motives to seek the Happiness of others; it is essentially a form of Self-Love.

The averment is that Utility is a sufficient motive to pursue our own happiness, and the happiness of others as a means to our own; but it does not afford any purely disinterested impulses; it is a Selfish theory after all.

Now, as Utility is, by profession, a benevolent and not a selfish theory, either such profession is insincere, or there must be an obstruction in carrying it out. That the supporters of the theory are insincere, no one has a right to affirm. The only question then is, what are the difficulties opposed by this theory, and not present in other theories (the Moral Sense, for example) to benevolent impulses on the part of individuals?

Let us view the objection first as regards the Morality of Obligation, or the duties that bind society together. Of these duties, only a small number aim at positive beneficence; they are either Protective of one man against another, or they enforce Reciprocity, which is another name for Justice. The chief exception is the requiring of a minimum of charity towards the needy.

This department of duty is maintained by the force of a certain mixture of prudential and of beneficent considerations, on the part of the majority, and by prudence (as fear of punishment) on the part of the minority. But there does not appear to be anything in our professedly Benevolent Theory of Morals to interfere with the small portion of disinterested impulse that is bound up-with prudential regards, in the total of motives concerned in the morality of social order called the primary or obligatory morality.

Let us, in the next place, view the objection as regards Optional Morality, where positive beneficence has full play. The principal motive in this department is Reward, in the shape either of benefits or of approbation. Now, there is nothing to hinder the supporters of the standard of Utility from joining in the rewards or commendations bestowed on works of charity and beneficence.

Again, there is, in the constitution of the mind, a motive superior to reward, namely, Sympathy proper, or the purely Disinterested impulse to alleviate the pains and advance the pleasures of others. This part of the mind is wholly unselfish; it needs no other prompting than the fact that some one is in pain, or may be made happier by something within the power of the agent.

The objectors need to be reminded that Obligatory Morality, which works by punishment, creates a purely selfish motive; that Optional Morality, in so far as stimulated by Reward, is also selfish; and that the only source of purely disinterested impulses is in the unprompted Sympathy of the individual mind. If such sympathies exist, and if nothing is done to uproot or paralyze them, they will urge men to do good to others, irrespective of all theories. Good done from any other source or motive is necessarily self-seeking. It is a common remark, with reference to the sanctions of a future life, that they create purely self-regarding motives. Any proposal to increase disinterested action by moral obligation contains a self-contradiction; it is suicidal. The rich may be made to give half their wealth to the poor; but in as far as they are made to do it, they are not benevolent. Law distrusts generosity and supersedes it. If a man is expected to regard the happiness of others as an end in itself, and not as means to his own happiness, he must be left to his own impulses: 'the quality of mercy is not strained' The advocates of Utility may observe non-interference as well as others.