If,then,we ask,Who is a good man?we first reply that he is a man whose conduct produces happiness.Another conclusion is obviously necessary,and is implied in Mill's statement that the 'intention'is essential to morality.The man,that is,must foresee that his conduct will produce happiness.The 'calculation'is precisely what makes an action moral as well as accidentally useful.In other words,the man is good to whom the knowledge that an act will produce happiness is the same thing as a command to perform the act.The 'intention'could not affect conduct without the corresponding motive,and Mill can at times recognise the obvious consequence.
The 'physical law'(meaning the law enforced by physical coercion),he says incidentally,has 'extrinsic'sanctions;138the moral law is different,because it sanctions good actions for their goodness.'Moral approval'must therefore include approval of character.A man,to be moral,must be one who does useful things simply because they are useful.He must then,it would seem,be at least benevolent.The same thing is implied by the doctrine of 'intention'or 'calculation.'An action may be useful or the reverse without being moral when the consequences are unknown to the agent.To make it moral he must know the consequences --for otherwise he is merely acting at random;and the foreseen consequences constitute the 'intention.'To this Mill adds that he must have taken into account the consequences which 'might have been foreseen.'139Otherwise we should have to excuse a man because he had neglected to calculate,whereas to calculate is the very essence of virtue.A man who fired a gun down a crowded street would not be excusable because he had not thought of the result.He 'ought'to have thought of it.The question of moral approval of any given action turns upon these questions.Did a man foresee evil consequences and disregard them?He is then cruel.Did he neglect to consider them?He is then culpably careless,though not actually malignant.Were the consequences altogether beyond the powers of reasonable calculation?
Then he may be blameless,the whole moral question,therefore,depends upon the character indicated;that is,upon the motives which induce a man to calculate consequences and which determine his conduct when the calculation is made.
The truth is,I think,and it is characteristic of Mill's modes of analysis,that he is making an impossible abstraction.He is separating parts of a single process and treating them as independent.If actions are bad because they have bad consequences,motives are bad because they are causes of bad actions.You cannot suppress the effect without suppressing the cause,and therefore the cause of the cause.Mill relies chiefly upon one argument,the same conduct will produce the same consequences whatever the motives.That is undeniable.It is the same to me whether I am burnt because the persecutor loves my soul or because he hates me as a rebel to his authority.But when is conduct 'the same'?If we classify acts as the legislator has to classify them by 'external'or 'objective'relations,we put together the man who is honest solely from fear of the gallows and the man who is honest from hatred of stealing.So long as both act alike,the 'consequences'to their neighbours are alike.Neither is legally punishable.But if acts are classified by their motives,one is a rogue and the other virtuous;and it is only then that the question of morality properly arises.In that case,it is idle to separate the question of motive and consequences,because the character determines the motive and therefore the action.Nobody should have seen this more clearly than Mill as a good 'determinist.'Conduct and character are related as the convex and concave of the curve;conduct is simply the manifestation of character,and to separate them is absurd.
Why did he not see this?
For reasons,I think,which illustrate his whole method.From a scientific point of view,the ethical problem raises the wide questions,What are the moral sentiments?and,What functions do they discharge in regard to the society or to its individual members?We might hold that morality is justified by 'utility'in the sense that the moral rules and the character which they indicate are essential to the welfare of the race or its individual constituents.But to Mill this proposition is interpreted as identical with the proposition that conduct must be estimated by its 'consequences.'
We are to consider not the action itself,but its effects;and the effects are clearly independent of the motive when once the action has been done.
We may therefore get a calculus of 'utility':general rules stating what actions will be useful considered abstractedly from their motives.The method,again,might be plausible if we could further assume that all men were the same and differed only in external circumstances.That is the point of view to which Mill,like Bentham,is always more or less consciously inclining.The moral and the positive law are equally enforced by 'sanctions';by something not dependent upon the man himself,and which he is inclined to suppose will operate equally upon all men.Such language could be justifiable only of an average and uniform 'man,'a kind of constant unit,whose varying behaviour must always be explained by difference in circumstance.We have sufficiently seen the results elsewhere,and in this ethical doctrine they are especially manifest.
