Whenever, then, thought wishes to conceive ethics as springing from pleasure or happiness, it arrives at resignation or enthusiasm, at spiritualised egoistic or at spiritualised expansive conduct. There is no way in which natural pleasure can, in really deep thinking, be brought into connexion with ethics. Hobbes, Locke, Helvetius, Bentham The explanation that altruism is a principle of action which the individual takes over from society is to be found expressed in characteristic ways by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679),_(_14_)_ John Locke (1632-1704),_(_15_)_ Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)_(_16_)_ and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)._(_17_)_ [pg 076] Hobbes represents the State as commissioned and empowered by the majority of the individual citizens to engage the whole body in action for the common advantage. In this way alone, he asserts, is it possible to realise the common good in which the egoism of individuals finds the highest possible degree of prosperity. Left to themselves, men would never be able to get free from their short-sighted egoism, and would, therefore, miss prosperity. Their only possible course, then, is to join in setting up an authority which will drive them into altruism. With external means only, however, organized society cannot engage the individual in all the activities which are needed for the common good. It must strive to ensure its power over him by means of spiritual conviction as well. Locke takes this need into consideration. According to him it is God and society together who force altruism upon the individual by appealing at the same time to his egoism. These two authorities have, that is to say (as our reason enables us to recognize), so ordered the course of things that actions beneficial to society are rewarded, and those injurious to it are punished. God has at his disposal rewards and punishments of endless duration. Society works in two different ways: through the power given to it by the criminal law, and through the law of public opinion in which it uses praise and blame as spiritual means of compulsion. Man being guided both by pleasure and absence of it, he manages to accommodate himself to those rules which defend the general good so effectually, and he thereby becomes moral. In spite of all their differences on single points, Hobbes and Locke agree in having this external conception of ethics. The essential point of distinction between them is [pg 077] that with Hobbes society alone plies the whip, while with Locke God and society handle it together.