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* ETHICS
the agent's pleasure. Pity, as we have already seen, 1 arises
from the thought that a like calamity may befall ourselves.
Laughter is a "sudden glory" caused either by something
we do that pleases us, or by the apprehension of something
deformed in another, the contrast between which and our
own lack of the deformity gives us pleasure. The "worth"
or "value" of a man is the same as his "price", and his
"price" is simply what another would give for the use of
his power. Honour is simply "the manifestation of the value
1 '
we set
on a man because ofour estimation of his "worth";
cruelty is men's "contempt, or little sense of the calamity
of others . . . proceeding from the security of their own
fortune." In opposition to the Greek thinkers, Hobbes
urges that men have by nature no social character. They
are not, that is to say, by nature political and social beings;
they seek society not for its own sake, but only in order
that they may enjoy its honours and win its prizes. Thus
our delight in social gatherings is always self-interested
we meet in order to joke at others' expense, backbite the
absent, boast about ourselves and display our learning
or wit. In a word, the mind of man is concerned only with
its own glory; his senses with their own pleasures.
Ethics of Spinoza (1637-1677). I have illustrated
Hobbes's views in some little detail because his philosophy
provides the most consistent and unflinching exposition
of a certain type of ethical theory. This theory is egoistic.
It envisages, that is to say, some change in the state of
the agent as the only possible motive of action. It is also
hedonistic, since the state whose promotion is recognized
as a motive is always pleasurable and only pleasurable,
naturalistic in the sense that it is based upon an alleged
scientific study of the nature of man as just one among
the many inhabitants of the natural world, subject to
the same laws as those which determine the behaviour
of his fellow creatures, and iiibjectivist, in the sense that
the meaning which it gives to the word "good" is "that
1 See Chapter VI, p. 185.