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

8UBJECTIVIST THEORY OF ETHICS 363
good stand for two different things; but, he holds, there
is a universal and reciprocal connection between them.
Thus whatever we call good turns out to be pleasant or
conducive to pleasure, and to whatever we find to be
pleasant we give the name of "good."
Although it is subjectivist, Hume's theory is not egoistic.
Just as his assertion that it is not the approval of the self,
but the approval of all or most men that confers lightness
upon actions, and goodness upon persons and characters,
constitutes a departure from the extreme subjectivist
position, so by his endeavour to establish the existence
and validity of altruistic sentiments he declares his repudiation
of Egoism. In this endeavour he succeeds better than
any other subjectivist writer. His theory is as follows.
Men, as we have seen, are so constituted that they feel
an emotion of approval for happiness and for whatever
conduces to happiness. This emotion of approval is not
confined to the happiness, or to what conduces to the
happiness, of themselves. On the contrary, they feel it
in contemplating happiness wherever or in whomsoever
it is found. The fact that they do so is invoked by
Hume as evidence for what he calls "the principle of
benevolence. "
Hume's Establishment of the Principle of Benevolence.
Now this principle is put forward as an altruistic one.
Hume, in fact, goes out of his way to criticize Hobbes
and Spinoza whose egoistic premises had committed them
to a repudiation ofany principle of benevolence. In opposi-
tion to their view, Hume brings forward the following
arguments. We* feel an emotion of approval for actions,
characters and sentiments, in literature and on the stage,
that cannot possibly affect us. Nor is it to the point to
say that we imagine ourselves as contemplating those actions
and being affected by those characters in real life, because,
as Hume trulysays, mere imagination could never produce
the emotion by itself, if we knew that it was only imagina-
tion. Again, we feel the emotion of approval for qualities