by Bart Schultz
in appointments to offices, civil or ecclesiastical. Speaking generally, the extent to which political ideals ought to influence moral duty would seem to depend partly
on the apparent remoteness or nearness of the prospect of realising the ideal, partly on its imperativeness, or the expediency of immediate realisation: and the force
attached to both these considerations is likely to vary with the political method
adopted; so that it belongs to Politics rather than Ethics to determine them more
precisely. (ME )
Somehow, after all political debate has been aired, there remains the ques-
tion of what the individual ought to do here and now, the sphere of ethics
proper.
Yet for all that, as we have seen, Sidgwick also admits that with utili-
tarianism, as opposed to alternative ethical conceptions, the links between
ethics and politics are especially intimate, and the demands of duty more
problematic. He frames this claim with considerable caution, in a lengthy
passage (part of which was quoted earlier) that sheds a flood of light on
his own personal strategies:
Perhaps we may say generally that an enlightened Utilitarian is likely to lay less
stress on the cultivation of those negative virtues, tendencies to restrict and refrain, which are prominent in the Common-Sense ideal of character; and to set more
value in comparison on those qualities of mind which are the direct source of
positive pleasure to the agent or to others – some of which Common Sense scarcely
recognises as excellencies. . . . Nay, we may even venture to say that, under most circumstances, a man who earnestly and successfully endeavours to realise the
Utilitarian Ideal, however he may deviate from the commonly-received type of a
perfect character, is likely to win sufficient recognition and praise from Common
Sense. For, whether it be true or not the whole of morality has sprung from
the root of sympathy, it is certain that self-love and sympathy combined are
sufficiently strong in average men to dispose them to grateful admiration of any
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exceptional efforts to promote the common good, even though these efforts may
take a somewhat novel form. . . . And it seems to be principally in this direction that the recent spread of Utilitarianism has positively modified the ideal of our
society, and is likely to modify it further in the future. Hence the stress which
Utilitarians are apt to lay on social and political activity of all kinds, and the
tendency which Utilitarian ethics have always shown to pass over into politics. For
one who values conduct in proportion to its felicific consequences, will naturally
set a higher estimate on effective beneficence in public affairs than on the purest
manifestation of virtue in the details of private life: while on the other hand an
Intuitionist (though no doubt vaguely recognising that a man ought to do all the
good he can in public affairs) still commonly holds that virtue may be as fully
and as admirably exhibited on a small as on a large scale. A sincere Utilitarian,
therefore, is likely to be an eager politician: but on what principles his political
action ought to be determined, it scarcely lies within the scope of this treatise to
investigate. (ME –)
Thus, while admitting that the dualism of the Methods on balance
demonstrates the greater role for calculation – and hence uncertainty – in
ethics, as compared to Whewellian intuitionism, Sidgwick is nonetheless
at pains to urge the utilitarian reformer that it would not be very utilitar-
ian to incur “general condemnation,” a reactionary backlash. Still, there
is no question that common sense needs reforming, and that the negative,
side-constraint conception of morals and virtue needs to evolve in such a
way as to make for a more positive, utilitarian character type. Given the
going mix of self-love and sympathy, common sense at least contains the
seeds of an appreciation for the high-minded utilitarian reformer.
Of course, what the Methods does repeatedly say, in this connection, is
that such efforts at reform must be exercised with the greatest care, given
the fledgling state of sociology and most of the social sciences that would
be instrumental in designing societal improvement. Much as he admires
the sweep of Spencer’s system, and the powerful emphasis on personal
altruism in Comte, Sidgwick is forever trying to rein their efforts in, to
avoid the “illimitable cloudland” of utopian speculation. Thus,
I hold that the utilitarian, in the existing state of our knowledge, cannot possibly
construct a morality de novo either for man as he is (abstracting his morality), or for man as he ought to be and will be. He must start, speaking broadly, with the existing social order, and the existing morality as a part of that order: and in deciding the
question whether any divergence from this code is to be recommended, must
consider chiefly the immediate consequences of such divergence, upon a society
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in which such a code is conceived generally to subsist. No doubt a thoughtful
and well-instructed Utilitarian may see dimly a certain way ahead. . . . he may see a prospect of social changes which will render a relaxation of other parts of the
moral code expedient or inevitable. But if he keeps within the limits that separate
scientific prevision from fanciful Utopian conjecture, the form of society to which
his practical conclusions relate will be one varying but little from the actual, with its actually established code of moral rules and customary judgments concerning
virtue and vice. (ME –)
Sidgwick clearly regarded himself as a “thoughtful and well-instructed”
utilitarian, one who would win the praise and not the censure of common
sense through his efforts to promote a more comprehensive sympathy,
while paying due court to the “Thou shalt nots” of traditional morality.
Certainly, as we have seen, the negative virtues played a considerable role in
his personal efforts to avoid hypocrisy, though viewed from this angle, his
reticence could be regarded as a utilitarian compromise with the common
regard for a decorous silence with respect to painful topics. That is, it
suggests that his somewhat puzzling acceptance of the difference between
acts and omissions – puzzling for a utilitarian – made sense in utilitarian
terms as a necessary compromise with the established code. And a pretty
convenient one, from his perspective, one that could certainly afford him
a defense against any charge of “corrupting youth.”
The note in these warnings against an excess of reforming or revolu-
tionary zeal seems to be steadfastly Millian – a resolute agnosticism about
what we can claim to know about the potential of individuals and societies,
and a correlative call for piec
emeal experimentation rather than a vague
faith that a “Cosmos” might arise out of a “Chaos.” And this is, of course,
no coincidence, given how all the while Sidgwick was struggling with re-
ligious and ethical issues, he was also struggling with the study of political
economy and politics, balancing the one interest against the other.
But the Methods scarcely indicates the complex content of Sidgwick’s
politics. Its few references to the “socialistic ideal” are not particularly
enthusiastic. Thus, in Chapter of Book III, he recognizes that various
political thinkers “hold that Justice requires a mode of distributing pay-
ment for services, entirely different from that at present effected by free
competition: and that all labourers ought to be paid according to the in-
trinsic value of their labour as estimated by enlightened and competent
judges.” If this socialist ideal could be effected “without counterbalancing
evils,” he allows, “it would certainly seem to give a nearer approximation
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to what we conceive as Divine Justice than the present state of society af-
fords.” But of course, he sets up this ideal only to demolish it by showing
how impracticable it would really be, exposed to all the difficulties of the
hedonistic method and then some. Thus, common sense “regards as
Utopian any general attempt to realise this ideal in the social distribu-
tion of the means of happiness,” and in the
actual state of society it is only within a very limited range that any endeavour is
made to reward Good Desert. . . . the only kind of Justice which we try to realise is that which consists in the fulfilment of contracts and definite expectations;
leaving the general fairness of Distribution by Bargaining to take care of itself.
(ME –)
Similarly, in a somewhat heated letter in response to Sir Louis Mallot,
Sidgwick denies that he is a radical favoring big government: “Nor do I
anywhere propose to ‘throw on government the task of dispensing distribu-
tive justice.’ Nor do I ‘propose’ that the community should take possession
of private capital employed in production: I expressly say that such a pro-
posal is not even ripe for practical discussion.” Allowing that there is “a
‘growing inequality’ in distribution, if the difference between the high-
est and the lowest class was increasing,” he nonetheless explains that the
“loose phrase that the ‘rich are getting richer and the poor poorer’ is one
that I should never use.” (CWC)
Yet these sharp cautionary disclaimers do not capture the more pro-
gressive aspects of Sidgwick’s view. Mallot, like Friedrich Hayek in more
recent times, was not really off base in suspecting Sidgwick of working
with great subtlety to undermine the foundations of laissez-faire, one of
the basic components of the old Benthamite platform. In an interesting
piece of appropriation, Albert Venn Dicey, in Law and Public Opinion,
would approvingly quote his friend Sidgwick’s confession that “we were
as much surprised as the ‘general reader’ to learn from Mill’s Autobiogra-
phy that our master, the author of the much-admired treatise, ‘On Liberty,’
had been all the while looking forward to a time when the division of the
produce of labour should be ‘made by concert.’” But Dicey excises the
next line in Sidgwick’s confession, which reads:
But though Mill had concealed from us the extent of his Socialism, we were all, I
think, conscious of having received from him a certain impulse in the Socialistic
direction: he had at any rate ceased to regard the science of Political Economy
as opposing a hard and fast barrier against the Socialistic conception of the ideal
goal of economic progress.
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The quotation misleadingly employed by Dicey is from Sidgwick’s
late essay “The Economic Lessons of Socialism” () – a piece that,
along with the other relevant essays in Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses,
does an admirable job of presenting in short compass some of Sidgwick’s
serious meditations on the question of socialism in their more or less
final form. In these essays, what Mill and Taylor had only suspected
by way of the coming relevance of socialism is taken for granted: “The
present unmistakable drift towards Socialism in Western Europe is a fact
of great interest, and a reasonable source of alarm to some, and perhaps
of hope to others, from the political and economic changes to which
it tends” (MEA ). A somewhat earlier essay, “Economic Socialism”
(), flatly states that “Socialism is flowing in upon us with a full tide”
(MEA ). Although Sidgwick does not follow Mill in the full blush
of his enthusiasm, he does allow that the controversies generated by
an increasingly open-minded political economy on the one side, and
an increasingly implacable Marxism on the other, have had a valuable
result, though he concludes that “the next lesson of importance will
come through experiment rather than reasoning.” This is not an experi-
ment in socialist communes or cooperatives of the sort Mill had admired
and encouraged, New Harmony or Rochdale. Sidgwick recognizes that
the experiment must be tried at a more ambitious level, and he dryly
suggests that “the post of honour” in this branch of knowledge go to
Germany.
Just how destructive of Benthamite orthodoxy Sidgwick’s arguments
could be is well brought out by “Economic Socialism,” which in
fact follows in brief the lines of his Principles of Political Economy.
The case for laissez-faire, or economic individualism, is described
thusly:
[A]ssuming that the conduct of individuals is generally characterised by a fairly
intelligent and alert pursuit of their private interests – regard for self interest on the part of consumers will lead to the effectual demand for the commodities that
are most useful to society, and regard for self-interest on the part of producers will lead to the production of such commodities at the least cost. If any material part of the ordinary supply of any commodity A were generally estimated as less adapted
for the satisfaction of social needs than the quantity of another commodity B that
could be produced at the same cost, the demand of consumers would be diverted
from A to B, so that A would fall in market value and B rise; and this change
in values would cause a diversion of the efforts of producers from A to B to the
extent required. On the other hand, the self-interest of producers will tend to
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the production of everything at the least possible cost; because the self-interest
of employers will lead them to purchase services most cheaply, taking account
of quality, and the self-interest of labourers will make them endeavour to supply
the best paid – and therefore most useful – services for which they are adapted.
Thus the only thing required of Government is to secure that every one shall be
really free to buy the utility he most wants, and to sell what he can best furnish.
(MEA )
Having thus set out the case with his customary impartiality, Sidgwick
goes on just as carefully to tick off the exceptions that he suggests are
“due to the manifest limitations under which abstract economic the-
ory is necessarily applied to the art of government.” Thus, it obviously
assumes that individuals are sensibly self-interested, and “even the ex-
tremest advocate of laisser-faire does not extend this assumption to chil-
dren,” which means that the condition of children must be discussed on
entirely different principles. Moreover, the political economists are con-
cerned with wealth, which is only one element of the statesman’s concerns.
Wealth may rightly be subordinated to considerations of physical or moral
well-being:
If we regard a man merely as a means of producing wealth, it might pay to allow
a needle-grinder to work himself to death in a dozen years, as it was said to pay
some American sugar-planters to work their slaves to death in six or eight; but
a civilised community cannot take this view of its members; and the fact that a
man will deliberately choose to work himself to death in a dozen years for an
extra dozen shillings a week is not a decisive reason for allowing him to make the
sacrifice unchecked. In this and similar cases we interfere on other than economic
grounds: and it is by such extra-economic considerations that we justify the
whole mass of sanitary regulations; restrictions on the sale of opium, brandy, and
other intoxicants; prohibitions of lotteries, regulation of places of amusement; and
similar measures. (MEA )
The political economist might investigate the effects of such regu-