"Utilitarianism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mill John Stuart)

1863

UTILITARIANISM

by John Stuart Mill

Chapter 1

General Remarks.

THERE ARE few circumstances among those which make up the present
condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been
expected, or more significant of the backward state in which
speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the
little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy
respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of
philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is
the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been
accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the
most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools,
carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more
than two thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers
are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither
thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the
subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old
Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's dialogue be grounded on a real
conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular
morality of the so-called sophist.

It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some cases
similar discordance, exist respecting the first principles of all
the sciences, not excepting that which is deemed the most certain of
them, mathematics; without much impairing, generally indeed without
impairing at all, the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those
sciences. An apparent anomaly, the explanation of which is, that the
detailed doctrines of a science are not usually deduced from, nor
depend for their evidence upon, what are called its first
principles. Were it not so, there would be no science more precarious,
or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out, than
algebra; which derives none of its certainty from what are commonly
taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid down by
some of its most eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as
English law, and of mysteries as theology. The truths which are
ultimately accepted as the first principles of a science, are really
the last results of metaphysical analysis, practised on the elementary
notions with which the science is conversant; and their relation to
the science is not that of foundations to an edifice, but of roots
to a tree, which may perform their office equally well though they
be never dug down to and exposed to light. But though in science the
particular truths precede the general theory, the contrary might be