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which we must make the distribution. And it is just this in which the
idea of the supreme good fails to help us.
110. It has been suggested that a suitable formula for ethics may be
found in  my station and its duties. Each of us finds himself in a par-
ticular place in the world. The particular characteristics of the situation
suggest certain duties. Do these, and in this way the supreme good will
be most advantaged.
As an analysis of morality this theory has many recommendations,
and it was not, if I understand rightly, originally put forward as a moral
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology/93
criterion. But, for the sake of completeness, it will be well to point out
that it is not available as a criterion. In the first place, it fails to tell us
how we are to judge those persons who have endeavoured to advance
the good by going beyond, or contrary to, the duties of the station in
which they then were, and so transforming their society and their own
station in it. The number of these may be comparatively small. But the
effect of their action is so important for everyone that it is essential for
a moral criterion to be able to determine when such innovations should
be accepted and when rejected.
These cases can be brought within the scope of the formula, if it is
only taken as an analysis of morality. For there is no contradiction in
saying that my duty in a certain station e.g., that of a slave-holder, or
of a slave may be to destroy that station. But such cases are clearly
fatal to any attempt to use the formula as a criterion. Some fresh crite-
rion would be wanted to tell me whether my duty in my station did or did
not involve an attempt to fundamentally alter its nature.
Again, even in the ordinary routine of life, such a principle would
give but little real guidance. It lays down, indeed, the wide boundaries
within which I must act, but it does not say precisely how I shall act
within these boundaries, and so leaves a vast mass of true ethical ques-
tions unsettled. My station may include among its duties that I should
seek a seat in Parliament. If I get one, my station will demand that I
should vote for some bills and against others. But which? Shall I vote
for or against a Sunday Closing Bill, for example? Such questions can
in the long run only be answered by reference to an ethical ideal. And
the ideal of my station and its duties will not help us. For while the ideal
M.P. will certainly vote for the bills be thinks ought to pass, and against
those he thinks ought not to pass, there is nothing in the conception of a
perfect member of parliament which can tell us in which of these classes
he will place a Sunday Closing Bill.
Or my station may be that of a schoolmaster. This defines my duties
within certain limits. But it cannot tell me whether in a particular case it
is worth while to make a boy obedient at the cost of making him sulky.
Thus the principle, if taken as a criterion, is not only inadequate,
but it proclaims its own inadequacy. For the duty of an M.P. or a school-
master is not only to vote on bills, or to act on boys, regardless of the
manner, but to vote rightly on bills, or to act rightly on boys. And, since
the right way in each particular case can never be got out of the mere
idea of the station, the formula itself shows that some other criterion is
94/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
needed for the adequate guidance of our action.
111. I now proceed to the next branch of my subject namely that
the calculation of pleasures and pains does give a definite criterion of
action. (Calculation is, I think, a better word than calculus, which, as a
technical term of mathematics, seems to imply a precision unattainable,
on any theory, in ethics.) I am not now maintaining that it is a correct
criterion that it will enable us to distinguish right from wrong, but merely
that it is sufficiently definite to be applied to actions in an intelligible
way. The question of its correctness from an ethical point of view must
be postponed for the present.
112. The elements at any rate of such a calculation are clear. We do
know what a pleasure is, and what a pain is, and we can distinguish a
greater pleasure or pain from a lesser one. I do not mean, of course, that
the distinction is always easy to make in practice. There are some states
of consciousness of which we can hardly tell whether they give us plea-
sure or pain. And there are many cases in which we should find it im-
possible to decide which of two pleasures, or of two pains, was the
greater.
This, however, while it no doubt introduces some uncertainty into
our calculations, does not entirely vitiate them. For when we can see no
difference, as to amount of pleasure or pain between two mental states,
we may safely conclude that the difference existing is smaller than any
perceptible one. And, in the same way, if we are unable to tell whether a
particular state is more pleasurable than painful, we may safely con-
clude that the excess of one feeling over the other must be small. Thus
the margin of vagueness which is left is itself limited. This is quite dif-
ferent from the far more dangerous vagueness which we found in con-
sidering perfection. When we were unable to tell whether the mainte-
nance or the abolition of marriage would bring us nearer to the supreme [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]