Ethical thought falls from one paradox into another. If, as in antiquity, it thinks out a system in which the activity that must be directed to the common good is not sufficiently represented, it arrives at ethics which are no longer ethics, and ends in resignation. If it assumes and starts from such an activity directed to the common good, [pg 080] it arrives at an ethic in which there is no ethical personality. It is, strange to say, unable to mark out the middle course and let an activity which is directed to the promotion of the common good spring out of the ethical personality itself. Altruism as a natural quality. Hume, Adam Smith The explanations of altruism as an ennobling of egoism which has a spontaneous origin through the activity of reason, or which is brought into existence through the influence of society, are obviously unsatisfying both psychologically and ethically. Utilitarianism must therefore necessarily come to admit that altruism is somehow or other given independently in human nature side by side with egoism. It is true that it always appears there as the backward twin-brother who can be reared only with the most careful nursing, and therefore the upholders of the third alternative given above appeal to the considerations used for the first two. They continually allow the capacity for altruistic feeling to be exposed to the influence of considerations which seem calculated to let egoism discharge its waters into altruism. The two first views are taken into service as wet-nurses for the third. David Hume (1711-1776)_(_19_)_ and Adam Smith (1723-1790)_(_20_)_ must be named here. Hume agrees with the other utilitarians in allowing that the principle of seeking to promote the common good must be accepted as the dominant principle of morality. Whether actions are good or bad is decided solely by whether they are directed towards the production of general happiness [pg 081] or not. There is nothing which is in itself ethical or unethical. To the idea that ethics can have as their object the self-perfecting of the individual as little weight is given by Hume as by the other utilitarians. Like them, he opposes asceticism and other life-denying demands of Christian ethics, because he cannot discover in them anything profitable for the general welfare. But what makes men decide to work together for the common good? Consistent utilitarians answer: Reflexion about what the common good means. Of this one-sidedness Hume is not guilty, because he does not find it to be in accord with psychological facts. It is not out of high-minded reflexion, he asserts, but out of direct sympathy that the emotions and actions of benevolence arise. The virtues which serve the common good have their origin in feeling. We can resolve on acts of love only because there is in us an elementary feeling for the happiness of men, and a dislike of seeing them in misery. We become moral through sympathy.