Principia Ethica 41

Principia Ethica 41

wholes which have intrinsic value. These wholes themselves may be, and

are, also beautiful; but the comparative rarity, with which we regard

them as themselves _objects_ of contemplation, seems sufficient to

explain the association of beauty with external objects.

 

And secondly (2) it is to be observed that beautiful objects are

themselves, for the most part, organic unities, in this sense, that

they are wholes of great complexity, such that the contemplation of

any part, by itself, may have no value, and yet that, unless the

contemplation of the whole includes the contemplation of that part, it

will lose in value. From this it follows that there can be no single

criterion of beauty. It will never be true to say: This object owes its

beauty _solely_ to the presence of this characteristic; nor yet that:

Wherever this characteristic is present, the object must be beautiful.

All that can be true is that certain objects are beautiful, _because_

they have certain characteristics, in the sense that they would not

be beautiful _unless_ they had them. And it may be possible to find

that certain characteristics are more or less universally present in

all beautiful objects, and are, in this sense, more or less important

conditions of beauty. But it is important to observe that the very

qualities, which differentiate one beautiful object from all others,

are, if the object be truly beautiful, as _essential_ to its beauty,

as those which it has in common with ever so many others. The object

would no more have the beauty it has, without its specific qualities,

than without those that are generic; and the generic qualities, _by

themselves_, would fail, as completely, to give beauty, as those which

are specific.

 

 

=122.= II. It will be remembered that I began this survey of great

unmixed goods, by dividing all the greatest goods we know into the two

classes of aesthetic enjoyments, on the one hand, and the pleasures of

human intercourse or of personal affection, on the other. I postponed

the consideration of the latter on the ground that they presented

additional complications. In what this additional complication

consists, will now be evident; and I have already been obliged to

take account of it, in discussing the contribution to value made by

true belief. It consists in the fact that in the case of personal

affection, the object itself is not _merely_ beautiful, while possessed

of little or no intrinsic value, but is itself, in part at least,

of great intrinsic value. All the constituents which we have found

to be necessary to the most valuable aesthetic enjoyments, namely,

appropriate emotion, cognition of truly beautiful qualities, and true

belief, are equally necessary here; but here we have the additional

fact that the object must be not only truly beautiful, but also truly

good in a high degree.

 

It is evident that this additional complication only occurs in so far

as there is included in the object of personal affection some of the

_mental_ qualities of the person towards whom the affection is felt.

And I think it may be admitted that, wherever the affection is most

valuable, the appreciation of mental qualities must form a large part

of it, and that the presence of this part makes the whole far more

valuable than it could have been without it. But it seems very doubtful

whether this appreciation, by itself, can possess as much value as the

whole in which it is combined with an appreciation of the appropriate

_corporeal_ __EXPRESSION__ of the mental qualities in question. It is

certain that in all actual cases of valuable affection, the bodily

__EXPRESSION__s of character, whether by looks, by words, or by actions, do

form a part of the object towards which the affection is felt, and that

the fact of their inclusion appears to heighten the value of the whole

state. It is, indeed, very difficult to imagine what the cognition of

mental qualities _alone_, unaccompanied by _any_ corporeal __EXPRESSION__,

would be like; and, in so far as we succeed in making this abstraction,

the whole considered certainly appears to have less value. I therefore

conclude that the importance of an admiration of admirable mental

qualities lies chiefly in the immense superiority of a whole, in which

it forms a part, to one in which it is absent, and not in any high

degree of intrinsic value which it possesses by itself. It even appears

to be doubtful, whether, in itself, it possesses so much value as the

appreciation of mere corporeal beauty undoubtedly does possess; that is

to say, whether the appreciation of what has great intrinsic value is

so valuable as the appreciation of what is merely beautiful.

 

But further if we consider the nature of admirable mental qualities,

by themselves, it appears that a proper appreciation of them involves

a reference to purely material beauty in yet another way. Admirable

mental qualities do, if our previous conclusions are correct, consist

very largely in an emotional contemplation of beautiful objects;

and hence the appreciation of them will consist essentially in the

contemplation of such contemplation. It is true that the most valuable

appreciation of persons appears to be that which consists in the

appreciation of their appreciation of other persons: but even here a

reference to material beauty appears to be involved, _both_ in respect

of the fact that what is appreciated in the last instance may be the

contemplation of what is merely beautiful, _and_ in respect of the fact

that the most valuable appreciation of a person appears to _include_

an appreciation of his corporeal __EXPRESSION__. Though, therefore, we

may admit that the appreciation of a person’s attitude towards other

persons, or, to take one instance, the love of love, is far the most

valuable good we know, and far more valuable than the mere love of

beauty, yet we can only admit this if the first be understood to

_include_ the latter, in various degrees of directness.

 

With regard to the question what _are_ the mental qualities of which

the cognition is essential to the value of human intercourse, it is

plain that they include, in the first place, all those varieties of

aesthetic appreciation, which formed our first class of goods. They

include, therefore, a great variety of different emotions, each of

which is appropriate to some different kind of beauty. But we must now

add to these the whole range of emotions, which are appropriate to

persons, and which are different from those which are appropriate to

mere corporeal beauty. It must also be remembered that just as these

emotions have little value in themselves, and as the state of mind in

which they exist may have its value greatly heightened, or may entirely

lose it and become positively evil in a great degree, according as the

cognitions accompanying the emotions are appropriate or inappropriate;

so too the appreciation of these emotions, though it may have some

value in itself, may yet form part of a whole which has far greater

value or no value at all, according as it is or is not accompanied by

a perception of the appropriateness of the emotions to their objects.

It is obvious, therefore, that the study of what is valuable in human

intercourse is a study of immense complexity; and that there may be

much human intercourse which has little or no value, or is positively

bad. Yet here too, as with the question what is beautiful, there seems

no reason to doubt that a reflective judgment will in the main decide

correctly both as to what are positive goods and even as to any _great_

differences in value between these goods. In particular, it may be

remarked that the emotions, of which the contemplation is essential

to the greatest values, and which are also themselves appropriately

excited by such contemplation, appear to be those which are commonly

most highly prized under the name of affection.

 

 

=123.= I have now completed my examination into the nature of those

great positive goods, which do not appear to include among their

constituents anything positively evil or ugly, though they include

much which is in itself indifferent. And I wish to point out certain

conclusions which appear to follow, with regard to the nature of the

Summum Bonum, or that state of things which would be the most perfect

we can conceive. Those idealistic philosophers, whose views agree

most closely with those here advocated, in that they deny pleasure to

be the sole good and regard what is completely good as having some

complexity, have usually represented a purely spiritual state of

existence as the Ideal. Regarding matter as essentially imperfect, if

not positively evil, they have concluded that the total absence of

all material properties is necessary to a state of perfection. Now,

according to what has been said, this view would be correct so far

as it asserts that any great good must be _mental_, and so far as it

asserts that a purely material existence, _by itself_, can have little

or no value. The superiority of the spiritual over the material has,

in a sense, been amply vindicated. But it does not follow, from this

superiority, that a perfect state of things must be one, from which

all material properties are rigidly excluded: on the contrary, if our

conclusions are correct, it would seem to be the case that a state of

things, in which they are included, must be vastly better than any

conceivable state in which they were absent. In order to see that this

is so, the chief thing necessary to be considered is _exactly what it

is_ which we declare to be good when we declare that the appreciation

of beauty in Art and Nature is so. That this appreciation _is_ good,

the philosophers in question do not for the most part deny. But, if we

admit it, then we should remember Butler’s maxim that: Everything is

what it is, and not another thing. I have tried to shew, and I think

it is too evident to be disputed, that such appreciation is an organic

unity, a complex whole; and that, in its most undoubted instances,

part of what is included in this whole is _a cognition of material

qualities_, and particularly of a vast variety of what are called

_secondary_ qualities. If, then, it is _this_ whole, which we know to

be good, and not another thing, then we know that material qualities,

even though they be perfectly worthless in themselves, are yet

essential constituents of what is far from worthless. What we know to

be valuable is the apprehension of just these qualities, and not of any

others; and, if we propose to subtract them from it, then what we have

left is _not_ that which we know to have value, but something else. And

it must be noticed that this conclusion holds, even if my contention,

that a true belief in the existence of these qualities adds to the

value of the whole in which it is included, be disputed. We should

then, indeed, be entitled to assert that the _existence_ of a material

world was wholly immaterial to perfection; but the fact that what we

knew to be good was a cognition of _material qualities_ (though purely

imaginary), would still remain. It must, then, be admitted on pain of

self-contradiction--on pain of holding that things are not what they

are, but something else--that a world, from which material qualities

were wholly banished, would be a world which lacked many, if not all,

of those things, which we know most certainly to be great goods. That

it _might_ nevertheless be a far better world than one which retained

these goods, I have already admitted (§ 111 (1)). But in order to shew

that any such world _would_ be thus better, it would be necessary to

shew that the retention of these things, though good in themselves,

impaired, in a more than equal degree, the value of some whole, to

which they might belong; and the task of shewing this has certainly

never been attempted. Until it be performed, we are entitled to assert

that material qualities are a necessary constituent of the Ideal;

that, though something utterly unknown _might_ be better than any

world containing either them or any other good we know, yet we have no

reason to suppose that anything whatever would be better than a state

of things in which they were included. To deny and exclude matter,

is to deny and exclude the best we know. That a thing may retain its

value, while losing some of its qualities, is utterly untrue. All that

is true is that the changed thing may have more value than, or as much

value as, that of which the qualities have been lost. What I contend is

that nothing, which we _know_ to be good and which contains no material

qualities, has such great value that we can declare it, _by itself_, to

be superior to the whole which would be formed by the addition to it of

an appreciation of material qualities. That a _purely_ spiritual good

may be the _best_ of single things, I am not much concerned to dispute,

although, in what has been said with regard to the nature of personal

affection, I have given reasons for doubting it. But that by adding

to it some appreciation of material qualities, which, though perhaps

inferior by itself, is certainly a great positive good, we should

obtain a greater sum of value, which no corresponding decrease in the

value of the whole, as a whole, could counterbalance--this, I maintain,

we have certainly no reason to doubt.