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TWO:Utilitarianism agrees with the ancient hedonism in holding pleasure to be the sole good and pain the sole evil. Its adherents also, for the most part, admit that the desire of the one and the dread of the other are the sole motives to action; but, while making the end absolutely universal and impersonal, they make the motive into a momentary impulse, without any necessary relation to the future happiness of the agent himself. The good man does his duty because doing it gives him pleasure, or because the failure to do it would give him pain, at the moment; although he knows that a contrary course would save him from greater pain or win him greater pleasure hereafter. No accurate thinker would call this acting from a selfish or interested motive; nor does it agree with the teaching of Epicurus. Were all sensitive beings to be united in a single organism, then, on utilitarian principles, self-interest, interpreted in the sense of seeking its own preservation and pleasure, would be the only law that the individualised aggregate could rationally obey. But the good of each part would be rigorously subordinated to the good of the whole; and utilitarian morality desires that we should act as if this hypothesis were realised, at least in reference to our own particular interests. Now, the idea of humanity as forming such a consolidated whole is not Epicurean. It belongs to the philosophy which always reprobated pleasure, precisely because its pursuit is associated with the dereliction of public duty and with bitter rivalry for the possession of what, by its very nature, exists only in limited quantities, while the demand for it is unlimited or, at any rate, far exceeds the supply. According to the Stoics, there was only one way in which the individual could study his private425 interest without abandoning his position as a social being, and this was to find it exclusively in the practice of virtue.575 But virtue and public interest remained mere forms scantily supplemented by appeals to the traditional morality, until the idea of generalised happiness, of pleasure diffused through the whole community, came to fill them with substance and life.
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TWO:Nothing but old overalls and some tools on the floor, Dick commented.
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TWO:I.A new period begins with the Greek Humanists. We use this term in preference to that of Sophists, because, as has been shown, in specially dealing with the subject, half the teachers known under the latter denomination made it their business to popularise physical science and to apply it to morality, while the other half struck out an entirely different line, and founded their educational system on the express rejection of such investigations; their method being, in this respect, foreshadowed by the greatest poet of the age, who concentrates all his attention on the workings of the human mind, and followed by its greatest historian, with whom a similar study takes the place occupied by geography and natural history in the work of Herodotus. This absorption in human interests was unfavourable alike to the objects and to the methods of previous enquiry: to the former, as a diversion from the new studies; to the latter, as inconsistent with the flexibility and many-sidedness of conscious mind. Hence the true father of philosophical scepticism was Protagoras. With him, for the first time, we find full expression given to the proper sceptical attitude, which is one of suspense and indifference as opposed to absolute denial. He does not undertake to say whether the gods exist or not. He regards the real essence of Nature as unknowable, on account of the relativity which characterises all sensible impressions. And wherever opinions are divided, he undertakes to provide equally strong arguments for both sides of the question. He also anticipates the two principal tendencies exhibited by all future scepticism in its relation to practice. One is its devotion to humanity, under the double form of exclusive attention to human interests, and great mildness in the treatment of human beings. The other is a disposition to take custom and public opinion, rather than any physical or metaphysical law, for the standard and sanction of130 morality. Such scepticism might for the moment be hostile to religion; but a reconciliation was likely to be soon effected between them.
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