A Crocean released from the orthodox convention might prefer to say that beauty is everywhere. I could meet him more than half way. My own starting point is morality; and I am interested in vindicating the moral quality of every movement of the mind, or the spirit. But I am no less interested in pointing out that beauty is everywhere and, possibly above all, that intelligence is everywhere. It is not my intention to elaborate a system of values, but the underlying thesis will be this: that morality and intelligence and beauty are only so many artificial and conventional separations, justified doubtless by convenience of communication, of what is inseparable in the concrete reality of mind, or spirit, or life. For ethics this means that the whole meaning of morality is nothing less than life, and that its subject-matter is as broad as "human nature"; and in the last chapters I shall go on to point out that human nature is still the issue involved in questions of knowledge and truth.

§ 26

So much for the place of morality among the values; now for the special character of utility. Morality, I have said, is everywhere. So far as the useful is the embodiment of human value, utility is also everywhere. Economic value, regarded as the expression of human need, is moral value.* And it is doubtless possible so to extend the application of "utility", by appealing vaguely to "the larger utilities", as to make it cover all of human life. But this is to give to the term a meaning and direction which is the reverse of the

4 I have dealt at length with the relation of the moral and the economic in a paper on "Moral Valuations and Economic Laws" in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XVI (1917), No. 1.

"strictly utilitarian". And it is my purpose throughout this essay to suggest that, in this stricter and only distinctive sense, utility is on the contrary a motive at variance with the motive of morality and in like fashion at variance with the motive of beauty and of truth.

Morality, intelligence, beauty are expressions of life: utility represents the organization of life into a system of means and ends, the substitution of mechanism for choice and interest and of habit for critical intelligence. A world finally utilitarian would be a world from which choice and direction (hence, all morality) had vanished, a world to be referred in every detail to the operation of "economic law" -a situation far from being represented in any actual human world.

To describe an activity as utilitarian is to say that it is a means to an end; and this implies that it is done not for its own sake but for the sake of its results. The interest and value lie wholly in the end. The end is a subject for intelligence and choice. The intelligence to be applied to the means is strictly limited; and in a thoroughly organized system of means and ends, as illustrated in an up-to-date factory system, the function of intelligence will be reduced to a minimum. So far as a man's activity is merely utilitarian it means that he has ceased to be a moral agent and has assumed the status of a machine.

Kant said, So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal and never as a means only. This marks the moral as distinct from the utilitarian order of society. In the conception of an "ordered society", of higher and lower classes, the lower classes have relatively the status of means

-to ends not their own. But the same implication resides in that more democratic conception of society which makes virtue for the individual to consist in being "a useful member" devoted to the common good. It may happen that in his social function, however humble, the individual finds food for his imagination and an enjoyment of life. But this consideration is irrelevant, and even confusing, to the idea of "a useful member". The ideally useful member is literally the machine; which alone exhibits a single-minded devotion to what it is designed to do.

The conception of utility is illustrated "in thine own person" so far as one part of life is treated as a means for another part as end. This is what we mean when we refer to the utilitarian motive most of the activities involved in making a living. What is implied is that no one makes shoes from any interest in shoes, but only for the money to be received for them. And perhaps the best picture of the utilitarian life is that of the business man who, as conventionally conceived, spends weary years in business in the hope of retiring on a fortune, or of the wage-earner who patiently accumulates savings in the hope of living to enjoy them. Such are the typically "useful" lives, and the question I raise is whether they are the ideally moral lives. And the question may be extended to cover all of those conceptions in which life is viewed under the form of a "vocation" or a "career" subject to the issue of "failure" or "success"-even though success be defined in no sordid terms. Life may be good or bad, but I wonder in what sense, except as a means to alien ends, it may be said to involve the issue of success.

This is not of course a proposal to banish utility from

life. The utilitarian organization of life into a system of means and ends is a necessity of getting things done; and there can be no doubt that things must be done. But this is not to say that the system of ends and means is an ideal conception of life.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRAGMATIC ATTITUDE

§ 27. The forward-looking attitude.

§ 28. Anticipation vs.

retrospection. § 29. Imagination and the specious present. § 30. Reflective intelligence and the flux of life.

A

S a significant and interesting expression of the

utilitarian motive (or at least as a means of further

defining that motive) I shall consider now the pragmatic attitude as represented by Professor John Dewey, an attitude also defined as "experimental" or "empirical". The attitude is significant as expressing the spirit of the age embodied in the conception of "modern progress". And it is interesting as a basis of criticism because Professor Dewey is a thorough-going critic of orthodox morality, who conceives morality to be coextensive with the meaning of "life", and conceives life as a process of reflective intelligence.

What remains, then, to give a utilitarian cast to the pragmatic attitude? I will put it as follows. For Professor Dewey it seems that the essence of immorality lies in the adoption of "fixed ends"; in taking any part of life to be of absolute and supreme importance, to which the rest of life is subordinate; or, as I should put it, in conceiving life as a matter of means and ends. He who adopts the orthodox program of fixed principles and unchanging moral laws has forsworn moral choice and made of himself a mechanism for the illustration of "moral law". But he will be no less of a mechanism, no less of a non-moral