An introduction to social psychology / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
[1931]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to social psychology / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/554 (page 8)
    in the highest degree contributory to his own greatest happiness.” He points out that, although J. S. Mill admitted certain exceptions to this principle, his general view was that “ to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical impossibility.” So that, according to this school, any action of an indi¬ vidual that does not tend to produce for him the maximum of pleasure can only arise from an error of judgment as to the relative quantities of pleasure that will be secured by different lines of action. And, since, according to this school, all actions ought to be directed to securing a maximum of pleasure, action of any other kind is not only unreasonable action, but also immoral action ; for it is action in a way other than the way in which the individual knows he ought to act. Sidgwick then goes on to show that the doctrine that unreasonable action (or wilful action not in accordance with what the indi¬ vidual knows that he ought to do) is exceptional, para¬ doxical, or abnormal is not peculiar to the utilitarians, but is common also to their opponents ; he takes as an example T. H. Green, who “ still lays down as broadly as Bentham that every person in every moral action, virtuous or vicious, presents to himself some possible state or achievement of his own as for the time his greatest good, and acts for the sake of that good, and that this is how he ought to act.” So that Green only differs from Bentham and Mill in putting good in the place of pleasure, and for the rest makes the same grotesquely false assump¬ tion as they do Sidgwick then, instead of attacking and rejecting as radically false the conception of human motives common to both classes of his predecessors, goes on in all seriousness to offer a psychological explana¬ tion of the paradox that men do sometimes act unreason¬ ably and otherwise than they ought to act. That is to say, Sidgwick, like those whom he criticises, accepts the doctrine that men normally and in the vast majority of cases act reasonably and as they ought to act. in virtue of some unexplained principle of their constitution, and defines as a problem for solution the fact that they some¬ times act otherwise But the truth is that men are moved