The moral vices

The moral vices are:

• the pride which derives gratification from the abasement of others
• the egotism which thinks self and its concerns more important than everything else, and decides all doubtful questions in its own favour

These constitute a bad and odious moral character. These are unlike the self-regarding faults previously mentioned, which are not immoralities. They might be proofs of folly or lack of personal dignity and self-respect.

But they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach of duty to others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care for himself.

What are called duties to ourselves are not socially obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to others.

The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than prudence, means self-respect or self-development; and for none of these is any one accountable to his fellow-creatures, because for none of them is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them.

The distinction between the loss of consideration which a person may rightly incur by defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and the reprobation which is due to him for an offence against the rights of others, is not a merely nominal distinction.

It makes a vast difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control him, or in things in which we know that we have not.

If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his life uncomfortable.

If he spoils his life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason, desire to spoil it still further instead of wishing to punish him.

We shall rather try to alleviate his punishment, by showing him how he may avoid or cure the evils his conduct tends to bring upon him.

He may be to us an object of pity, perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment; we shall not treat him like an enemy of society= the worst we shall think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself, if we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for him.

It is far otherwise if he has infringed the rules necessary for the protection of his fellow-creatures, individually or collectively.

The evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others. Society must retaliate and severely punish him.

In the one case, he is an offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our own sentence= in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suffering on him, except what may incidentally follow from our using the same liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in his.

The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person’s life which concerns only himself, and that which concerns others, many persons will refuse to admit.

How can the conduct of a member of society be a matter of indifference to the other members?

No person is an entirely isolated being. It is impossible for a person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself, without mischief reaching at least to his near connections, and often far beyond them.

If he injures his property, he does harm to those who directly or indirectly derived support from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater or less amount, the general resources of the community.

If he deteriorates his bodily or mental faculties, he not only brings evil upon all who depended on him for any portion of their happiness, but disqualifies himself for rendering the services which he owes to his fellow-creatures generally; perhaps becomes a burthen on their affection or benevolence.

If such conduct were very frequent, hardly any offence that is committed would detract more from the general sum of good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no direct harm to others, he is nevertheless injurious by his example and should be compelled to control himself, for the sake of those whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt or mislead.

Even if the consequences of misconduct could be confined to the vicious, should society abandon their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for it?

If protection against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of mature years who are equally incapable of self-government?

If gambling, drunkenness, incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited by law, why should not law, so far as is consistent with practicability and social convenience, endeavour to repress these also?

The law has unavoidable imperfections. Opinion should at least organise a powerful police against these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are known to practise them?

Individuality should be restricted. impeding the trial of new and original experiments in living.

The only things it is sought to prevent are things which have been tried and condemned from the beginning of the world until now; things which experience has shown not to be useful or suitable to any person’s individuality.

There must be some length of time and amount of experience, after which a moral or prudential truth may be regarded as established= and it is merely desired to prevent generation after generation from falling over the same precipice which has been fatal to their predecessors.

The mischief which a person does to himself, may seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at large.

When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term.

If, for example, a man, through intemperance or extravagance, becomes unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral responsibility of a family, becomes from the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them, he is deservedly reprobated, and might be justly punished; but it is for the breach of duty to his family or creditors, not for the extravagance.

If the resources which should have been devoted to them, had been diverted from them for the most prudent investment, the moral culpability would have been the same.

George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his mistress, but if he had done it to set himself up in business, he would equally have been hanged. Again, in the frequent case of a man who causes grief to his family by addiction to bad habits, he deserves reproach for his unkindness or ingratitude.

But so he may for cultivating habits not in themselves vicious, if they are painful to those with whom he passes his life, or who from personal ties are dependent on him for their comfort.

Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it.

In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence.

No person should be punished simply for being drunk. But a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty.

Whenever, there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of morality or law.

But with regard to the merely contingent, or constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself;

The inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom. If grown persons are to be punished for not taking proper care of themselves, I would rather it were for their own sake, than under pretence of preventing them from impairing their capacity of rendering to society benefits which society does not pretend it has a right to exact.

But I cannot consent to argue the point as if society had no means of bringing its weaker members up to its ordinary standard of rational conduct, except waiting till they do something irrational, and then punishing them, legally or morally, for it.

Society has had absolute power over them during all the early portion of their existence= it has had the whole period of childhood and nonage in which to try whether it could make them capable of rational conduct in life.

The existing generation is master both of the training and the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed make them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably deficient in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always, in individual cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little better than, itself.

If society lets any considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences.

Armed not only with all the powers of education, but with the ascendency which the authority of a received opinion always exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge for themselves; and aided by the natural penalties which cannot be prevented from falling on those who incur the distaste or the contempt of those who know them; let not society pretend that it needs, besides all this, the power to issue commands and enforce obedience in the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are to abide the consequences.

Nor is there anything which tends more to discredit and frustrate the better means of influencing conduct, than a resort to the worse.

If there be among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the material of which vigorous and independent characters are made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke.

No such person will ever feel that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such as they have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs and it easily comes to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face of such usurped authority, and do with ostentation the exact opposite of what it enjoins; as in the fashion of grossness which succeeded, in the time of Charles 2nd to the fanatical moral intolerance of the Puritans.

With respect to what is said of the necessity of protecting society from the bad example set to others by the vicious or the self-indulgent; it is true that bad example may have a pernicious effect, especially the example of doing wrong to others with impunity to the wrong-doer.

But we are now speaking of conduct which, while it does no wrong to others, is supposed to do great harm to the agent himself= and I do not see how those who believe this, can think otherwise than that the example, on the whole, must be more salutary than hurtful, since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays also the painful or degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly censured, must be supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it.

But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place.

On questions of social morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the public, that is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong, is likely to be still oftener right; because on such questions they are only required to judge of their own interests; of the manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would affect themselves.

But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong as right.

This is because in these cases, public opinion means, at the best, some people’s opinion of what is good or bad for other people. But very often, it does not even mean that.

The public, with perfect indifference:

• passes over the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure
• considers only their own preference.

There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings.

For example, a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed.

But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person’s taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse.