GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

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admitted in the twentieth century 1 that confessions extorted
by the infliction of gross physical agony can be regarded
as trustworthy evidence.
(4) That Consequences Must, therefore, be Taken into
Account.
We may express these conclusions by saying that the
twentieth century has a more developed conception of
what constitutes evidence than the sixteenth, and that
it has a more enlightened conception of what constitutes
humane conduct. Many people would, that is to say,
refuse to-day to regard the infliction of gross physical
agony on a sentient being as being morally justifiable,
whatever the end in view. This at least is true of what
might be termed advanced moral opinion. But why does
advanced moral opinion disapprove of the infliction of
torture, whatever the end in view? Clearly, because of
the suffering which torture involves. Advanced moral
opinion, in other words, condemns torture because of its
consequences; and it condemns the consequences of tor*
ture because they are inimical to human happiness. Both
these condemnations entail, as we shall see in the next
chapter, a utilitarian theory of morals.
Now it is the fact that the moral sense has, during the
recorded period of human history, so frequently approved
of actions whose consequences were in the highest degree
disagreeable, that constitutes, in the view of the utilitarians,
which is also the view of most enlightened people to-day,
one of the most serious counts in the indictment against
moral sense theories. Many people, in other words, hold
that the fact that actions of which the moral sense has
historically approved have produced gross unhappiness,
and the farther fact that they Could have been known to
1 It is perhaps open to question whether this statement does not
csJl for qualification. It could have been made with some safety, so
far as Europe was concerned, prior to 1914. The history of post-war
Europe, however, seems to show that torture is again coming into
favour as a means of discovering "truth." In its report for 1936-37,
the Howard League for Penal Reforms speaks of the growing use of
torture to obtain evidence, especially from political prisoners.