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

ETHICAL THEORY SURVEYED 40!
but they do not sing in order to enjoy it. They sing from
pure lightness of heart, or to let off steam. Men swear
when enraged and sometimes break the furniture; but
they do not swear and break furniture because, after an
interval of calculation, they have come to the conclusion
that they will derive more pleasure from swearing and
furniture breaking than from keeping silence and leaving
the furniture intact. They are, it is clear, acting on impulse
which finds vent in action independently of reflection. When
a man rushes into the street to snatch a child from the
wheels of a passing car at the risk of his own life, it is
improbable that he first stops to calculate that by doing
so he will obtain more pleasure, than by staying where he
is, and probable that he acts from an unthinking impulse
to save the child's life.
The line between actions proceeding from unthinking
impulses and those whose motivation contains an admixture
of rational calculation is not easy to draw. Consider,, for
example, the case of boasting. We boast partly because
we have an instinctive disposition to do so, partly because
we wish to make other people admire us. With this object,
little boys boast unashamedly. But, as I have already
pointed out, 1 we presently discover that the effect of boasting
is not to cause people to admire us, but to cause
them to despise and dislike us. It is difficult, therefore,
to maintain that men boast in order to obtain pleasure,
since most men have learned by bitter experience that the
effect of boasting is only too often the contrary of pleasant.
It is, nevertheless, true that they boast and that the act
of boasting gives them pleasure.
THAT HEDONISM PUTS THE CART BEFORE THE
HORSE. It is the fact that it does give pleasure which
underlies the fallacy upon which Hedonism rests. This
fallacy depends upon a confusion which was originally
pointed out by Bishop Butler, 9 the confusion between the
1 See Chapter VI, p. 183.
1 See Chapter VI, pp. 187-189, for Butler'i analysis.