“Things are good or evil only in relation to pleasure or pain. That we call ‘good’ which is apt to cause or increase pleasure, or diminish pain, in us.”
“What is it moves desire? I answer, happiness, and that alone.”
“Happiness, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure we are capable of.”
“The necessity of pursuing true happiness [is] the foundation of all liberty.”
“The preference of vice to virtue [is] a manifest wrong judgement.”
“The government of our passions [is] the right improvement of liberty.” *
The last of these statements depends, it would seem, upon the doctrine of rewards and punishments in the next world. God has laid down certain moral rules; those who follow them go to heaven, and
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* The above quotations are from Book II, Ch. XX.
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those who break them risk going to hell. The prudent pleasure-seeker will therefore be virtuous. With the decay of the belief that sin leads to hell, it has become more difficult to make a purely self-regarding argument in favour of a virtuous life. Bentham, who was a freethinker, substituted the human lawgiver in place of God: it was the business of laws and social institutions to make a harmony between public and private interests, so that each man, in pursuing his own happiness, should be compelled to minister to the general happiness. But this is less satisfactory than the reconciliation of public and private interests effected by means of heaven and hell, both because lawgivers are not always wise or virtuous, and because human governments are not omniscient.
Locke has to admit, what is obvious, that men do not always act in the way which, on a rational calculation, is likely to secure them a maximum of pleasure. We value present pleasure more than future pleasure, and pleasure in the near future more than pleasure in the distant future. It may be said–this is not said by Locke–that the rate of interest is a quantitative measure of the general discounting of future pleasures. If the prospect of spending $1000 a year hence were as delightful as the thought of spending it today, I should not need to be paid for postponing my pleasure. Locke admits that devout believers often commit sins which, by their own creed, put them in danger of hell. We all know people who put off going to the dentist longer than they would if they were engaged in the rational pursuit of pleasure. Thus, even if pleasure or the avoidance of pain be our motive, it must be added that pleasures lose their attractiveness and pains their terrors in proportion to their distance in the future.
Since it is only in the long run that, according to Locke, self-interest and the general interest coincide, it becomes important that men should be guided, as far as possible, by their long-run interests. That is to say, men should be prudent. Prudence is the one virtue which remains to be preached, for every lapse from virtue is a failure of prudence. Emphasis on prudence is characteristic of liberalism. It is connected with the rise of capitalism, for the prudent became rich while the imprudent became or remained poor. It is connected also with certain forms of Protestant piety: virtue with a view to heaven is psychologically very analogous to saving with a view to investment.
Belief in the harmony between private and public interests is
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characteristic of liberalism, and long survived the theological foundation that it had in Locke.
Locke states that liberty depends upon the necessity of pursuing true happiness and upon the government of our passions. This opinion he derives from his doctrine that private and public interests are identical in the long run, though not necessarily over short periods. It follows from this doctrine that, given a community of citizens who are all both pious and prudent, they will all act, given liberty, in a manner to promote the general good. There will be no need of human laws to restrain them, since divine laws will suffice. The hitherto virtuous man who is tempted to become a highwayman will say to himself: “I might escape the human magistrate, but I could not escape punishment at the hands of the Divine Magistrate.” He will accordingly renounce his nefarious schemes, and live as virtuously as if he were sure of being caught by the police. Legal liberty, therefore, is only completely possible where both prudence and piety are universal; elsewhere, the restraints imposed by the criminal law are indispensable.
Locke.states repeatedly that morality is capable of demonstration, but he does not develop this idea so fully as could be wished. The most important passage is:
“Morality capable of demonstration. The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and on whom we depend; and the idea of ourselves, as understanding, rational beings, being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action as might place morality among the sciences capable of demonstration: wherein I doubt not, but from selfevident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out, to any one that will apply himself with the same indifference and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences. The relation of other modes may certainly be perceived, as well as those of number and extension: and I cannot see why they should not also be capable of demonstration, if due methods were thought on to examine or pursue their agreement or disagreement. ‘Where there is no property, there is no injustice,’ is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: for the idea of property
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being a right to anything, and the idea to which the name ‘injustice’ is given being the invasion or violation of that right, it is evident that these ideas being thus established, and these names annexed to them, I can as certainly know this proposition to be true as that a triangle has three angles equal to two right ones. Again: ‘No government allows absolute liberty:’ the idea of government being the establishment of society upon certain rules or laws, which require conformity to them; and the idea of absolute liberty being for any one to do whatever he pleases: I am as capable of being certain of the truth of this proposition as of any in the
mathematics.” *
This passage is puzzling because, at first, it seems to make moral rules dependent upon God’s decrees, while in the instances that are given it is suggested that moral rules are analytic. I suppose that, in fact, Locke thought some parts of ethics analytic and others dependent upon God’s decrees. Another puzzle is that the instances given do not seem to be ethical propositions at all.
There is another difficulty which one could wish to see considered. It is generally held by theologians that God’s decrees are not arbitrary, but are inspired by His goodness and wisdom. This requires that there should be some concept of goodness antecedent to God’s decrees, which has led Him to make just those decrees rather than any others. What this concept may be, it is impossible to discover from Locke. What he says is that a prudent man will act in such and such ways, since otherwise God will punish him; but he leaves us completely in the dark as to why punishment should be attached to certain acts rather than to their opposites.
Locke’s ethical doctrines are, of course, not defensible. Apart from the fact that there is something revolting in a system which regards prudence as the only virtue, there are other, less emotional, objections to his theories.
In the first place, to say that men only desire pleasure is to put the cart before the horse. Whatever I may happen to desire, I shall feel pleasure in obtaining it; but as a rule the pleasure is due to the desire, not the desire to the pleasure. It is possible, as happens with masochists, to desire pain; in that case, there is still pleasure in the gratification of the desire, but it is mixed with its opposite. Even in Locke’s own
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* Op. cit., Book IV, Ch. III, Sec. 18.
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doctrine, it is not pleasure as such that is desired, since a proximate pleasure is more desired than a remote one. If morality is to be deduced from the psychology of desire, as Locke and his disciples attempt to do, there can be no reason for deprecating the discounting of distant pleasures, or for urging prudence as a moral duty. His argument, in a nutshell, is: “We only desire pleasure. But, in fact, many men desire, not pleasure as such, but proximate pleasure. This contradicts our doctrine that they desire pleasure as such, and is therefore wicked.” Almost all philosophers, in their ethical systems, first lay down a false doctrine, and then argue that wickedness consists in acting in a manner that proves it false, which would be impossible if the doctrine were true. Of this pattern Locke affords an example.
CHAPTER XIV Locke’s Political Philosophy
A. THE HEREDITARY PRINCIPLE
IN the years 1689 and 1690, just after the Revolution of 1688, Locke wrote his two Treatises on Government, of which the second especially is very important in the history of political ideas.
The first of these two treatises is a criticism of the doctrine of hereditary power. It is a reply to Sir Robert Filmer Patriarcha: or The Natural Power of Kings, which was published in 1680, but written under Charles I. Sir Robert Filmer, who was a
