The very nature of Morality, in that it is an aid to man in the struggle
for existence, makes it easy to understand the origin and nature of the
concepts Good and Bad. There are propensities and actions which
facilitate life in a community which, indeed, alone make it possible:
love of one's neighbour, helpfulness, liberality, consideration for the
feelings of others, and amiability. There are others which make such a
life difficult or absolutely impossible: uncompromising selfishness,
violence, cruelty, rapacity, instinctive hostility to one's neighbour.
Men recognized that the former were beneficial to them, the latter
harmful. The former aroused their liking, the latter their disapproval,
dislike and animosity. The quality of feeling which accompanied the
perceptions of actions of the former kind was akin to that with which
they responded to beneficial, profitable, useful and welcome sense
impressions. The quality of feeling, which actions of the second
category gave rise to, was akin to that due to harmful and repellent
sense impressions. Following the law of analogy, they placed on an equal
footing actions which were felt to be pleasing and pleasant sensations
of taste and smell; similarly with disagreeable actions and unpleasant
sense impressions; and finally they called the former good and the
latter bad, using terms originally applicable only to the realm of the
senses.
Not everything that is pleasant to the senses is beneficial. There are
poisons which are pleasing to taste, but none the less noxious for that,
such as (to give only one example) alcoholic drinks and impressions of a
certain order, like voluptuousness, which man greedily pursues, even
though they ruin his health. But these are exceptions. As a rule, not
only man, but all living creatures, derive pleasant sensations from
beneficial things; and it is probable that that category of sensations,
which we are conscious of as being pleasant, is nothing but the state of
coenesthesis, when the organism functions particularly energetically
under the influence of the absorption of food or of a special stimulus
of the senses, when it feels its life processes carried on particularly
vigorously, freely and harmoniously; just as we feel that state of
coenesthesis to be unpleasant, which occurs when the organism
functions badly, slackly, and in a manner calculated to endanger the
continuance of life. With the reservation that has been indicated we
can say in general that Good is equivalent to beneficial and pleasant,
Bad to harmful and unpleasant. This is true of the transferred and
spiritualized as well as of the immediate and material meaning of these
expressions of value. The significance of the words Good and Bad, the
point of departure, development and change of conception they indicate,
suffice to justify the Utilitarians and the Hedonists or Eudæmonists
among the moral philosophers, and to confute the contentions of their
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