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34?
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ETHICS
If, on the other hand, we are prepared to accept as self-
evidently true Sidgwick's Principle ofRational Benevolence,
then we cannot always justify an action on the ground
that it produces the greatest amount of happiness on the
whole. To sum up, the greatest amount of happiness on
the whole in a community, is not necessarily the same
as the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons
in that community.
Critical Survey of Utilitarianism. We are now in
a position to take a critical survey of the theory of Ob*
jective Utilitarianism as a whole. Of the many criticisms
to which it is exposed, I will mention three.
(i) THE DIFFICULTY OF ACCOUNTING FOR
ALTRUISM ON AN EGOISTIC BASIS. First, utilitarian
ethics, as expounded by most of adherents of the
doctrine which asserts
theory, is tied to a psychological
in effect that some change in the psychological state of the
agent is the only possible object of human action. This
change has usually been identified with an increase in the
agent's pleasure. Thus the doctrine of Psychological
Hedonism is the starting point of most utilitarian theories,
which maintain with John Stuart Mill that "pleasure and
freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends",
and with Bcntham that "nature has placed man under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.'*
These statements, if they mean what they say, mean that
the only possible* motive which a man can have for his
actions is that of increasing his own pleasure. This doctrine
may conceivably be true, although, as I shall try to show
1 in Chapter XI, there are good grounds for supposing
it to be false. But, if it is true, then it is not possible also to
maintain that men ought to be virtuous, that they ought
to try to promote the welfare of others, or that they ought
to aim at the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
If, in fact, we begin by basing an ethical theory on the
1 See Chapter XI, pp. 400-412*