Principles of western civilisation

78 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

not only of individuals and of parties, but of whole generations and of entire periods of time to the ends of a larger process of life.

But neither in the philosophy of human history as a whole, nor in the theory of Western progress in particular, as presented in the writings of the school of thought here seeking to give us a theory of the principles of modern democracy, is any such conception of development to be distinguished. Mill’s theory of social progress is always, as we see it, simply a theory of progress towards a fixed state in which a conciliation between the self-interest of the individual in the present and the interest of society is to be completed. His theory of human conduct and ethics is, therefore, a theory of a future social condition so ordered that virtue is to be a matter simply of pursuing self-interest in an enlightened manner, and vice, in Bentham’s terms, a kind of false moral arithmetic, a mere “ miscalculation of chances in estimating the value of pleasures and pains.” In the region of ethics, as in the domain of political philosophy, the ideal with which Mill sought to associate the principles of Western Liberalism is, we see, simply a fixed condition of society in which, to use Bentham’s terms, there would be given to the social, nothing less and nothing more than the meaning and the influence of the self-regarding motive.”

We see, in short, everywhere the principles of the utilitarian State conceived as if they embraced the whole theory of society in process of evolution.*

1 Deontology, vol. i. p. 131. 2 Tbid. p. 23. 3 Compare Mr. Frederic Harrison’s remarks in this respect in his article on Mill in the Wineteenth Century, No. 235.