Practical Essays | Page 9

each, avoid aiming straight at the goal? must we look askance in some other direction?
Next, in the case of happiness proper, are we to aim at nothing at all, to drift at random; or may we aim at a definite object, provided it is not happiness; or, lastly, is there one side aim in particular that we must take? The answer here would probably be--Aim at duty in general, and at the good of others in particular. These ends are not the same as happiness, yet by keeping them steadily in the view, and not thinking of self at all, we shall eventually realise our greatest happiness.
Without, at present, raising any question as to the fact alleged, we must again remark that the prescription seems to contradict itself. Moralists of the austere type will never allow us to pursue happiness at all; we must never mention the thing to ourselves: duty or virtue is the one single aim and end of being. Such teachers may be right or they may be wrong, but they do not contradict themselves. When, however, we are told that by aiming at virtue, we are on the best possible road to happiness, this is but another way of letting us into the secret of happiness, of putting us on the right, instead of on the wrong, track, to attain it. Our teacher assumes that we are in search of happiness, and he tells us how we are to proceed; not by keeping it straight in the view, but by keeping virtue straight in the view. Instead of pointing us to the vulgar happiness-seeker who would take the goal in a line, he corrects the course, and shows us the deviation that is necessary in order to arrive at it; like the sailor making allowance for the deviation of the magnetic pole, in steering. Happiness is not gained by a point-blank aim; we must take a boomerang flight in some other line, and come back upon the target by an oblique or reflected movement. It is the idea of Young on the Love of Praise (Satire I., 5.)--
The love of Praise howe'er concealed by art, Reigns more or less and glows in every heart, The proud to gain it, toils on toils endure, The modest shun it but to make it sure.
Under this corrected method, we are happiness seekers all the same; only our aims are better directed, and our fruition more assured.
These remarks are intended to show that the doctrine of making men aim at virtue, in order to happiness, has no further effect than to teach us to include the interests of others with our own; by showing that our own interests do not thereby suffer, but the contrary. The doctrine does not substitute a virtuous motive for a selfish one; it is a refined artifice for squaring the two. The world is no doubt a gainer by the change of view, although the individual is not made really more meritorious.
We must next consider whether, in fact, the oblique aim at happiness is really the most effectual.
A few words, first, as to the original source of the doctrine of a devious course. Bishop Butler is renowned for his distinction between Self-Love and Appetite; he contends that in Appetite the object of pursuit is not the pleasure of eating, but the food: consequently, eating is not properly a self-seeking act, it is an indifferent or disinterested act, to which there is an incidental accompaniment of pleasure. We should, under the stimulus of Hunger, seek the food, whether it gave us pleasure or not.
Now, any truth that there is in Butler's view amounts to this:--In our Appetites we are not thinking every instant of subduing pain and attaining pleasure; we are ultimately moved by these feelings; but, having once seen that the medium of their gratification is a certain material object (food), we direct our whole aim to procuring that. The hungry wolf ceases to think of his pains of hunger when he is in sight of a sheep; but for these pains he would have paid no heed to the sheep; yet when the sheep has to be caught, the hunger is submerged for the time; the only relevant course, even on its account, is to give the whole mind and body to the chase of the sheep. Butler calls this indifferent or disinterested pursuit; and as much as says, that the wolf is not self-seeking, but sheep-seeking, in its chase. Now, it is quite true that if the wolf could give no place in its mind for anything but its hungry pains, it would be in a bad way. It is wiser than that; it knows the remedy; it is prepared to dismiss the pains from its thoughts, in favour of a concentrated attention