=Summary of Previous Discussion.=--We have carried on our discussion of
the relation between the common good as the standard for measuring
rightness, and pleasure as the end and spring of the individual's
activity, in terms of Mill's development of Bentham's utilitarianism.
But of course our results are general, and they may be detached not only
from this particular discussion, but from the truth or falsity of
utilitarianism as a technical theory. Put positively, our results are
these: (1) Moral quality is an attribute of character, of dispositions
and attitudes which express themselves in desires and efforts. (2) Those
attitudes and dispositions are morally good which aim at the production,
the maintenance, and development of ends in which the agent and others
affected alike find satisfaction. There is no difference (such as early
utilitarianism made) between good as standard and as aim, because _only
a voluntary preference for and interest in a social good is capable,
otherwise than by coincidence or accident, of producing acts which have
common good as their result_. Acts which are not motivated by it as aim
cannot be trusted to secure it as result; _acts which are motived by it
as a living and habitual interest are the guarantee, so far as
conditions allow, of its realization_. Those who care for the general
good for its own sake are those who are surest of promoting it.
=The Good Moral Character.=--The genuinely moral person is one, then, in
whom the habit of regarding all capacities and habits of self from the
social standpoint is formed and active. Such an one forms his plans,
regulates his desires, and hence performs his acts with reference to the
effect they have upon the social groups of which he is a part. He is one
whose dominant attitudes and interests are bound up with associated
activities. Accordingly he will find his happiness or satisfaction in
the promotion of these activities irrespective of the particular pains
and pleasures that accrue.
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