[[1]]
The author of this essay has reason for believing
himself to be the first person who brought the word utilitarian into
use. He did not invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in
Mr. Galt's Annals of the Parish. After using it as a
designation for several years, he and others abandoned it from a growing
dislike to anything resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian
distinction. But as a name for one single opinion, not a set of
opinions—to denote the recognition of utility as a standard, not any
particular way of applying it—the term supplies a want in the language,
and offers, in many cases, a convenient mode of avoiding tiresome
circumlocution.
[[2]]
An opponent, whose intellectual and moral fairness it
is a pleasure to acknowledge (the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies), has objected
to this passage, saying, "Surely the rightness or wrongness of saving a
man from drowning does depend very much upon the motive with which it is
done. Suppose that a tyrant, when his enemy jumped into the sea to
escape from him, saved him from drowning simply in order that he might
inflict upon him more exquisite tortures, would it tend to clearness to
speak of that rescue as a 'morally right action?' Or suppose again,
according to one of the stock illustrations of ethical inquiries, that a
man betrayed a trust received from a friend, because the discharge of it
would fatally injure that friend himself or some one belonging to him,
would utilitarianism compel one to call the betrayal 'a crime' as much
as if it had been done from the meanest motive?"
I submit, that he
who saves another from drowning in order to kill him by torture
afterwards, does not differ only in motive from him who does the same
thing from duty or benevolence; the act itself is different. The
rescue of the man is, in the case supposed, only the necessary first
step of an act far more atrocious than leaving him to drown would have
been. Had Mr. Davies said, "The rightness or wrongness of saving a man
from drowning does depend very much"—not upon the motive,
but—"upon the intention," no utilitarian would have
differed from him. Mr. Davies, by an oversight too common not to be
quite venial, has in this case confounded the very different ideas of
Motive and Intention. There is no point which utilitarian thinkers (and
Bentham pre-eminently) have taken more pains to illustrate than this.
The morality of the action depends entirely upon the
intention—that is, upon what the agent wills to do. But
the motive, that is, the feeling which makes him will so to do, when it
makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality: though it
makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent,
especially if it indicates a good or bad habitual
disposition—a bent of character from which useful, or
from which hurtful actions are likely to arise.