If morality does not
exist for human welfare, what is it good for? And what else can welfare
ultimately be but happiness? Other proposed ends we shall presently
consider. But the happiness-account of morality leads to no dangerous
laxity. If any eudemonistic moralists have lived loosely, it was
because they did not realize what really makes for happiness or had
not strength of will to cleave to it, not because they saw happiness
as the criterion. An immature perception of this as the criterion without
a full recognition of its bearings may have misled some; it is possible
to see a general truth clearly and yet evaluate wrongly in concrete
situations. But the converse of the truth that morality makes for
happiness is the truth that the way to attain happiness is morality.
No lesson could be more salutary. Correct concrete evaluations are
more important than correct abstract generalizations, and Carlyle is
nearly always on the right side in the former. But his influence would
have been still more wholesome if he had added to his sound sermonizing
a sane and clearly analyzed theory.
Does the end justify the means?
Our account of morality may be called the eudemonistic account, from
the Greek eudemonia, happiness, or the teleological account, from
telos, an end. It asserts, that is, that morality is to be judged by
the end it subserves; that end is happiness. We have seen the sort
of protest that arises with respect to the word "happiness.
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