Why Utility Pleases
Table of Contents
Part 1
It is natural to praise the social virtues for their utility.
- This is why moral writers everywhere use utility as the chief foundation of their reasoning.
In common life, utility is always appealed to.
The man who shows his usefulness gets the most praises.
A ship is more beautiful to an artist if its prow is wide and swelling beyond its poop in contradiction to the laws of mechanics.
A building with square doors and windows would hurt the eye as being ill adapted for humans.
Likewise, a man whose habits and conduct are hurtful to society is hated.
Footnote: An inanimate object may be useful just a man is. Therefore, it should also be called VIRTUOUS.
The sentiments, excited by utility, are very different in the 2 cases.
- One is mixed with affection, esteem, approbation, &c.
- The other is not.
Similarly, a statue may have good colour and proportions just like a human shape.
- But can we ever be in love with it?
Thinking rational beings have a set of naturally proper passions and sentiments
The same qualities can be transferred to an insensible, inanimate being. But they will not excite the same sentiments.
The beneficial qualities of herbs and minerals are sometimes called their VIRTUES.
But this is an effect of the caprice of language, which should not be regarded in reasoning.
We approve of beneficial inanimate objects.
Yet this sentiment is so weak, and so different from that which is directed to beneficent magistrates or statesman.
- They should not be ranked under the same class.
A very small variation of the object, even where the same qualities are preserved, will destroy a sentiment.
Thus, the same beauty, transferred to a different sex, excites no amorous passion, where nature is not extremely perverted.
The difficulty of accounting for these effects of usefulness, or its contrary, has:
- kept philosophers from admitting them into their systems of ethics
- induced them to employ any other principle to explain the origin of moral good and evil.
Ancient and modern skeptics infer from the apparent usefulness of the social virtues that moral good and evil arise from education.
This education was at first invented and later encouraged by politicians in order to:
- render men tractable
- subdue their natural ferocity and selfishness
This principle of precept and education is so powerful. It can:
- increase or reduce, beyond their natural standard, the sentiments of approbation or dislike
- create, without any natural principle, a new sentiment of this kind, as seen in superstitious practices
But the morality that is created by education will never be allowed by any judicious enquirer.
If morals were totally artificial, then:
- the words, HONOURABLE and SHAMEFUL, LOVELY and ODIOUS, NOBLE and DESPICABLE, would had never had place in any language.
- the politicians who invented these words would have never been able to render them intelligible
This means that the social virtues have a natural beauty and amiableness.
- This is antecedent to all precept or education which then recommends them to the esteem of uninstructed mankind, and engages their affections.
The social virtues derive their merit from their public utility.
This means they come:
- from self-interest, or [Superphysics note: this is the negative force]
- from more generous motives and regards [Superphysics note: this is the positive force]
Every man has a strong connection with society, and perceives the impossibility of his solitary subsistence.
This makes him prefer the those habits or principles which promote order in society.
Morality from Selfishness
This deduction of morals from self-love, or a regard to private interest, is obvious.
Polybius was one of the most serious, most judicious, and most moral writers of antiquity. He assigned this selfish origin to all our sentiments of virtue.
Footnote: Undutifulness to parents is disapproved of by mankind, [Greek quotation inserted here].
Ingratitude for a like reason (though he seems there to mix a more generous regard) [Greek quotation inserted here] Lib. vi cap. 4. (Ed. Gronorius.)
Perhaps the historian only meant, that our sympathy and humanity was more enlivened, by our considering the similarity of our case with that of the person suffering; which is a just sentiment.
The voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.
We frequently bestow praise on virtuous actions that are not based on self-interest.
Imagine a man with the most amiable moral virtues who displays these in an eminent and extraordinary manner.
People will readily approve him regardless of their country or era.
Aeschines, by his eloquence, banished Demosthenes. He secretly followed that Demosthenes:
- offering him money as support during his exile
- consoling his misfortunes.
Demosthenes cries:
ALAS! WITH REGRET I LEAVE MY FRIENDS IN THIS CITY, WHERE EVEN ENEMIES ARE SO GENEROUS!
The virtue of his enemy pleased him.
WHAT IS THAT TO ME? There are few occasions when this question is not pertinent.
And had it that universal, infallible influence supposed, it would turn into ridicule every composition, and almost every conversation, which contain any praise or censure of men and manners.
It is but a weak subterfuge, when pressed by these facts and arguments, to say, that we transport ourselves, by the force of imagination, into distant ages and countries, and consider the advantage, which we should have reaped from these characters, had we been contemporaries, and had any commerce with the persons.
It is not conceivable, how a REAL sentiment or passion can ever arise from a known IMAGINARY interest; especially when our REAL interest is still kept in view, and is often acknowledged to be entirely distinct from the imaginary, and even sometimes opposite to it.
A man at the edge of a cliff looks down and trembles.
The sentiment of IMAGINARY danger actuates him, opposed to the belief of REAL safety.
But the imagination is here assisted by the presence of a striking object; and yet prevails not, except it be also aided by novelty, and the unusual appearance of the object.
Custom soon reconciles us to heights and precipices, and wears off these false and delusive terrors.
The reverse is observable in the estimates which we form of characters and manners.
The more we make a habit of scrutinizing morals, the more we develop a delicate feeling of the minute distinctions between good and bad.
This lets us pronounce all kinds of moral determinations.
We connect ideas based chiefly on experience.
- These connections leads to our moral determinations.
Usefulness is agreeable, and engages our approbation.
But USEFUL for what? For somebody’s interest, surely.
Whose interest then? Not our own only, for our approbation frequently extends farther.
It must, therefore, be the interest of those, who are served by the character or action approved of; and these we may conclude, however remote, are not totally indifferent to us.
By opening up this principle, we shall discover one great source of moral distinctions.