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

794
ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
on rice, rusks, and vegetables; a military expert, that
they should be drilled daily and sleep with gas masks
hanging to their bedposts in the interests of security*
Or again, though the ends of the expert may not be
other than those of the community! the means that he
proposes to adopt in order to secure them may be other
than those which the community wills. Most men, no
doubt, desire a plenitude of goods, health and security.
It does not, however, follow that they are prepared to
turn themselves into robots, vegetarians, or soldiers; and
it does not follow, because they may and do acknowledge
other ends with whose realization
vegetable-eating and drilling conflict. Thus measures
proposed by an expert, although ancillary to ends which
the community desires, may nevertheless be unacceptable
because their adoption conflicts with other ends which
the expert does not recognize.
THAT THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ENDS AND
MEANS is OFTEN INVALID. It is frequently contended
that the expert's primary concern is with means.
In a democracy, it is said, the community should will
the ends, the expert determine the means for their achievement.
But the considerations just mentioned suggest that
in the political sphere the distinction between means and
ends may break down. For means may themselves be
ends in disguise. To take a concrete example: in the spring
of 1931 the Labour Government set up, at the instance
of the Liberal*, a Committee the May Committee on
National Expenditure to advise the Government in the
matter of effecting economies. It was the Report of this
Committee that precipitated the financial crisis of 1931.
The report recommended, among other measures, cuts
in State expenditure on education. But to advise that
this generation should save its pocket by restricting the
education of the next is not, as it at first sight appears to
be, to recommend means to an end; it is to prefer one
set of ends to another set. Now, where a conflict of ends