Their tendency
was to minimise the difference between the egoistic and the altruistic
effects of action, and in so far as a difference had to be allowed to
emphasise the importance of the claims of the community at large, that
is, roughly speaking, to take the altruistic standpoint. Recent and
more careful investigators have brought out more exactly the extent
and significance of the divergence. In particular this was done with
perfect clearness and precision by the late Professor Sidgwick.
He showed that the difference--although it might be easily
exaggerated--was yet real and important, that the two systems did not
mean the same thing, that we could not rely upon altruistic conduct
always being for individual benefit, that there was no 'natural
identity' between egoism and altruism. He held that morality, to
save it from an unsolved dualism, required a principle capable of
reconciling the discrepancy between the conduct in accordance with the
axiom of Benevolence and the conduct in accordance with the equally
rational axiom of Self-love.[1]
[Footnote 1: Professor Sidgwick's last words on the question are as
follows: "If then the reconciliation of duty and self-interest is to
be regarded as a hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental
contradiction in one chief department of our thought, it remains
to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for
accepting this hypothesis.
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