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

which is intuitively obligatory, I should say it must be that. If
so, the intuitive ethics would coincide with the utilitarian, and
there would be no further quarrel between them. Even as it is, the
intuitive moralists, though they believe that there are other
intuitive moral obligations, do already believe this to one; for
they unanimously hold that a large portion of morality turns upon
the consideration due to the interests of our fellow-creatures.
Therefore, if the belief in the transcendental origin of moral
obligation gives any additional efficacy to the internal sanction,
it appears to me that the utilitarian principle has already the
benefit of it.

On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are
not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason the less
natural. It is natural to man to speak, to reason, to build cities, to
cultivate the ground, though these are acquired faculties. The moral
feelings are not indeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being in
any perceptible degree present in all of us; but this, unhappily, is a
fact admitted by those who believe the most strenuously in their
transcendental origin. Like the other acquired capacities above
referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a
natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain small
degree, of springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being
brought by cultivation to a high degree of development. Unhappily it
is also susceptible, by a sufficient use of the external sanctions and
of the force of early impressions, of being cultivated in almost any
direction: so that there is hardly anything so absurd or so
mischievous that it may not, by means of these influences, be made
to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience. To
doubt that the same potency might be given by the same means to the
principle of utility, even if it had no foundation in human nature,
would be flying in the face of all experience.

But moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation, when
intellectual culture goes on, yield by degrees to the dissolving force
of analysis: and if the feeling of duty, when associated with utility,
would appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading department of
our nature, no powerful class of sentiments, with which that
association would harmonise, which would make us feel it congenial,
and incline us not only to foster it in others (for which we have
abundant interested motives), but also to cherish it in ourselves;
if there were not, in short, a natural basis of sentiment for
utilitarian morality, it might well happen that this association also,
even after it had been implanted by education, might be analysed away.

But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment; and this it
is which, when once the general happiness is recognised as the ethical
standard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality.
This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the
desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a