by the opponents of

donism,

The opponents of ethical hedonism have thus not supplied uniformly insisted that the theory which makes pleasure the end and motive of all conscious activity ethical heis imperfect; and this psychological question has been the battle-field of many of the controversies, at any rate, of English ethics. Psychological hedonism has not, however, been confronted by the English moralists with an opposed theory of equal simplicity, nor can the controversy be said to have led to a thorough analysis of action. The psychological investigation has, in most cases, been carried no farther than the ethical interests at stake seemed to require; and the predominance of these interests has perhaps prevented the inquiry from being carried out with complete freedom from preconception on either side.

A uniform theory under which our various particular desires might be brought may, indeed, be said to have been suggested by Butler. He meets the hedonistic proposition that all desire is for personal pleasure, by the doctrine that no particular desire has pleasure as its end, since all pleasure presupposes a previous desire in the satisfaction of which it consists. This theory, which may have been derived from Plato,2 and was afterwards

1 "The very idea of an interested pursuit necessarily presupposes particular passions or appetites; since the very idea of interest or happiness consists in this, that an appetite or affection enjoys its object."-Sermons, Pref. ; cf. Serm. xi.

2 Phil., 31 ff.; cf. Gorg., 495 f.; Rep., ix. 585.

in maintaining the re

ality of nonhedonistic activity.

used by Schopenhauer to prove the negative nature of pleasure and consequent worthlessness of life, is, however, a generalisation which cannot be made to include the whole facts to be taken account of.1 Many pleasures occur independently of any precedent desire. And what Butler had to showand was really concerned to show-was that desire was not exclusively directed to objects thus independently found to be pleasurable: the contradictory, that is to say, and not the contrary, of psychological hedonism.

For this purpose Butler pointed to the whole class of affections which, although they may also tend to private interest, have an immediate reference to the good of others; and, in addition to these, he contended for an original principle of benevolence towards others in human nature, as well as of self-love or care for one's own interests and happiness. This latter, he held, so far from being the sole principle of action, implied the existence of a number of particular passions and affections, directed immediately to external objects—the satisfaction of these desires giving pleasure, though pleasure was not the end they aimed at. Voluntary action is thus not brought under any common rubric; fór, at the same time that the calm principle of self-love is directed to the agent's greatest pleasure, the object of hunger, for example, is said

1 Cf. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, I. iv. 2, 3d ed., p. 44.

to be not pleasure but food, that of benevolence not personal pleasure but the good of others.

The attempt to give unity to the non-hedonistic Non-hedonview of desire has come from a different quarter. generalised

istic action

Uninfluenced by the exigencies of ethical contro- by Herbart, versy, which formed the entire motive of Butler's investigation, Herbart and his school have worked out a theory of desire, which has many points of comparison with that of Butler. However much they may differ from the English moralist-of whose existence they are mostly ignorant-they are at one with him in rejecting the maxim of psychological hedonism, nihil appetimus nisi sub specie boni; and their differences from him are largely due to their having gone further in their analysis of the facts, and endeavoured to bring them under a general principle.

Butler's view of the object of desire is distinguished from the Herbartian chiefly in two respects. In the first place, he identifies that object with the external or real thing, whereas Herbart is careful to point out that it is a presentation or idea. In the second place, while Butler is content to postulate an original tendency of our nature towards certain objects, Herbart attempts to get behind this tendency, and explain the phenomena of striving from the interaction of presentations. Over and above the ordinary hypothesis of natural realism, Butler's theory implies a sort of pre-established

F

from the

tendency of

realisation.

harmony between our active tendencies and things outside the mind, in virtue of which some of these things do, and some do not, attract our desires. Herbart, on the other hand, attempts nothing less ideas to self- than a complete genetic account of mental phenomena, explaining the facts of presentation, desire, and feeling through "the persistence of presentation in consciousness and their rise into clearer consciousness."1 The phenomena of desire and feeling are both accounted for by this mechanism of impelling and inhibiting forces.2

It would be beyond the scope of this Essay to examine the above view of the active side of mental phenomena. For present purposes it is enough to draw attention to the fact that the common deduction of the phenomena of desire and will from the feelings of pleasure and pain is not the only "scientific" theory of human action, and that it is rejected on its merits by writers who have no hankering after what the psychological hedonist would call the mystical element of free-will. is of interest to note, too, that Professor Bain, in

It

1 Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, § 104, Werke, vi. 74 ; cf. Waitz, Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft, § 40, p. 418: "It is not difficult to recognise the basis of desire in the presentations brought forward by reproduction, and, at the same time, held back by an inhibition."

2 With Herbart's doctrine may be compared Mr H. Spencer's view of the genesis of feeling and voluntary action, Principles of Psychology, 2d ed., part iv. chaps. viii. and ix.

dency recog.

fixed ideas

whose works the traditions of psychological hedonism find their most careful expression, has modified the doctrine so as to allow of desire of pleasure and avoidance of pain explaining less than had been formerly required of them. Outside the circle of This tenhedonistically-determined motives, he recognises the nised in the influence of the presentation or idea as a self-realis- doctrine of ing element in the individual consciousness, apart from its pleasurable or painful characteristics.1 Those "fixed ideas," 'fixed ideas," as Mr Bain calls them, tend both to persist in the mind, and to project themselves into action, independently of pleasure and pain or at least with a force which is out of proportion to the pleasure they bring. As has been already seen, it is by means of this doctrine that he explains "the great fact of our nature denominated sympathy, fellow-feeling, pity, compassion, disinterestedness." To the same category belongs " much of the ambition and the aspirations of human beings. A certain notion-say of power, wealth, grandeur-has fixed itself in our mind and keeps a persistent hold there." It is asserted, indeed, that the action of such fixed ideas "perverts the regular operation of the will which would lead us to renounce whatever is hopeless or not worth the cost." And, certainly, their admission among

1 Cf. note to James Mill's Analysis, ii. 383 f.

2 The Senses and the Intellect, 3d ed., p. 344; cf. Mental and Moral Science, pp. 90, 91.