REFORM OF MORALITY THROUGH DARWINISM.
§ 1. _The Materialists and Monists. Darwin and the English Utilitarians.
Gustav Jäger._
Among those who ascribe to Darwinism a morally reforming influence, we have
to mention in the first place the _materialists_. It is true that even
before the appearance of Darwinism they established their own moral
principle of naturalistic determinism and of the education of man only by
science and enlightenment, in opposition to a morality which rests on the
principle of the eternal value of the individual, of full moral
responsibility, of the holiness of the moral law, and of a divine author of
it; they stigmatized the ethical requirement of aiming at the eternal
welfare of the soul as a lower stage of morality in comparison with their
own, which carries in itself the reward of virtue; and they declared
Christianity and humanity, Christian morality and the morality of humanity,
two things irreconcilably opposed to one another. But in having taken
possession of Darwinism as their monopoly, they have made it the basis of
new attacks upon the present moral principle of Christendom; and therefore
we have here to mention them with their moral system.
Büchner, in his lecture on "Gottesbegriff und dessen {234} Bedeutung" ("The
Idea of God and its Importance"), replaces the moral principle (which in
his opinion is nothing innate but something acquired) by education,
learning, freedom and well-being; says that only atheism or philosophic
monism leads to freedom, reason, progress, acknowledgment of true
humanity--to humanism; that this humanism seeks the motives of its morality
not in the external relations to an extramundane God, but in itself and in
the welfare of mankind; and that infidels often, even as a rule, have
excelled by moral conduct, while Christianity has originated many more
crimes than it has hindered, and it would no longer be possible to
establish with real Christians a vital community as at present understood.
He declares the utterance of Madame de Staël, that "to comprehend
everything means to forgive everything," the truest word ever spoken; and
concludes his lecture with the remarks that the more man renounces his
faith and confides in his own power, his own reason, his own reflexion, the
happier he will be and the more successful in his struggle for existence.
Strauss in "The Old Faith and the New," a publication which certainly has
to be ranked here, for the reason that in it he founds on Darwinism his
whole knowledge of the world, on the ground of which he wishes to arrange
life, appears to be much more decent, and in the practical consequences
much more conservative, than Büchner; but essentially stands upon quite the
same ground. Häckel, Oskar Schmidt, and (as to his linguistic Darwinism) W.
Bleek, group themselves around Strauss, partly with, partly without express
reference to his deductions. {235}
Strauss arrives at a peculiar inconsequence, but one well worthy of notice,
when, in place of the struggle for existence which, according to the
conclusions of those who also reduce morality to Darwinism, is still the
_spiritus rector_ of moral development in mankind, and yet cannot of itself
possibly lead to the morally indispensable requirements and virtues of
self-sacrifice and of mere subordination under the moral idea, he suddenly
substitutes a going of man beyond mere nature, and herewith a moral
principle, which can never be deduced from Darwinism alone, and which is
directly opposed to monism and pankosmism, which is to be the basis of his
ethics. The reader may compare the manner in which he metaphysically
supports his moral principle when he says: "As nature cannot go higher, she
would go inwards. Nature felt herself already in the animal, but she
_wished to know herself also_.... In man, nature endeavored not merely to
exalt, but _to transcend herself_." Ulrici, the philosopher, in his reply
to Strauss, has pointed out in sharp terms this inconsequence, as well as
the other, that from the ground of a blind necessity which does not know
anything of a higher and a lower, the difference of higher and lower, good
and bad, rational and irrational, cannot at all be maintained; and that the
requirement of a progress cannot at all be made, and its idea not at all be
given. In this very perceptible inconsistency, Strauss calls that morality
which he requires, "_the relation of man to the idea of his kind_." To
realize the latter in himself, is the summary of his duties toward himself;
actually to recognize and promote the equality of the kind in all the
others, is the {236} summary of his duties towards others. He opposes the
internal satisfaction which originates therein, to the "rough" idea of a
reward of virtue and piety, coming from _without_, which, in order to
connect both, is in need of a God. And he again reaches that inconsequence
which from his metaphysical standpoint is entirely without motive, but as
to itself only worthy to be recognized, when in another formula of his
moral imperative he says: "Ever remember that thou art human, not _merely a
natural production_."
It is also this representation and realization of the _idea of the kind_,
which those who combine with their Darwinism a negation of theism have
mostly established before the appearance of the work of Strauss as the
highest moral principle, and to which they are also led most naturally by
Darwin's deduction of morality from the social instincts. Thus, Wilhelm
Bleek, in the preface to his "Ursprung der Sprache" ("Origin of Language"),
says (page XIII): "To aim at the inner and outer harmony of his genus in
one or the other way, and to promote the correct relations of the different
parts to one another in their reciprocal connections and in the greater
parts of the whole organism (family, community, nation), are the highest
visible designs of human existence, which must by themselves incite man to
noble actions and to virtuous deeds. In the performance of this task lies
the highest happiness which seems to be given to our species, a happiness
accessible by everyone in his own way. Neither the fruit of eternal
punishment nor the hope of an individual happiness, is really capable as a
truly saving idea to elevate man to a higher existence; even if we take no
account of the fact that {237} each of these two fundamental dogmas of the
vulgar dogmatism makes but refined egoism the lever of its ethics."
Häckel alone, in his "Natural History of Creation," with his utterances as
to Christianity, morality, and the history of the world, again sinks down
to the level of the coarseness of Büchner, and even below it. On page 19,
vol. I, he entirely contests the reality of the moral order of the world,
and continues: "If we contemplate the common life, and the mutual relations
between plants and animals (man included), we shall find _everywhere_ and
_at all times_, the very opposite of that kindly and peaceful social life,
which the goodness of the Creator ought to have prepared for his
creatures--we shall rather find _everywhere_ a pitiless, most embittered
_struggle of all against all_. Nowhere in nature, no matter where we turn
our eyes, does that idyllic peace, celebrated by the poets, exist; we find
everywhere a _struggle_ and a _striving to annihilate_ neighbors and
competitors. _Passion and selfishness, conscious or unconscious, is
everywhere the motive force of life._ Man in this respect certainly forms
no exception to the rest of the animal world." On page 237, vol. I, he
professes the most extreme naturalistic determinism: "The will of the
animal, _as well as that of man_, is never free. The widely spread dogma of
the freedom of the will is, from a scientific point of view, altogether
untenable." And on page 170, vol. I, he even says: "If, as we maintain,
natural selection is the great active cause which has produced the whole
wonderful variety of organic life on the earth, all the interesting
phenomena of _human life_ must also be explicable from the same cause. For
man is after all {238} only a most highly-developed vertebrate animal, and
all aspects of human life have their parallels, or, more correctly, their
lower stages of development, in the animal kingdom. The _whole history of
nations_, or what is called _universal history, must therefore be
explicable by means of natural selection,--must be a physico-chemical
process_, depending upon the interaction of adaptation and inheritance in
the struggle for life. And this is actually the case." That in his ethical
naturalism he sees a real reform of morality, he expressly declares on the
page next to the last of his "Natural History of Creation": "Just as this
new monistic philosophy first opens up to us a true understanding of the
real universe, so its application to practical human life must open up _a
new road towards moral perfection_." (Vol. II, p. 367.)
In the low conception of morality and its principle, Häckel is perhaps
seconded only by Seidlitz who says in his "Die Darwin'she Theorie"
("Darwin's Theory"), p. 198: "Rational and moral life consist in the
satisfaction of all physical functions, in correct proportion and relation
to one another. Man is immoral through excessive satisfaction of one
function and through neglect of the others."
As in the religious question, so in the ethical, Carneri also takes a
peculiar position. In reducing all the phenomena of existence, together
with the whole spiritual life of mankind, to a close development of nature
according to the causal law, in expressly grouping also the utterances of
the will of man under this law of an absolute necessity, in fully adopting
Darwin's doctrine as the wholly satisfactory key for the comprehension of
the entire development of nature up to the history of {239} mankind, in
advocating an absolutely monistic determinism and a nearly exclusive
dependence of the efficacy of moral principles on the theoretic cultivation
of the mind, on reasoning and education, he, as before mentioned, stands on
exactly the same ground with materialists and monists among whom he
expressly ranks himself; in the inconsequence with which he makes
concessions to the power of the idea and the ideal over man--concessions
which could never be concluded from a mere immanent process of nature--he
is closely related to Strauss. But it is peculiar that, although entirely
dependent in his reasoning on that monistic view of the world, and that
Darwinian view of nature, he defines his ethical developments and his
reflections on the organizations of human life in a relative independence,
which again separates him as moralist from these before-mentioned monists
and materialists, and rather ranks him, as we have seen in Chap. I, § 4, in
the line of the disciples of Spinoza and Hegel. From this it can also be
explained, how it could happen that in criticisms and reviews of Darwinism
and its literature the standpoint which he takes could find such different
and diametrically opposed expositions. While, for instance, the "Beweis des
Glaubens," in the March number of 1873, thinks that Carneri wishes to seek
on Darwinian ground a new and better basis for morality than we had
heretofore; while Häckel in the preface to the third edition of his
"Natural History of Creation," page XXIX, mentions the publication of
Carneri with the greatest praise, earnestly recommends all theologians and
philosophers to read it, and greets it as the first successful attempt at
applying fruitfully the monistic view {240} of the world, as established by
Darwinism, to the realm of practical philosophy and at showing that the
immense progress of our knowledge of the world caused by the descent theory
has only the most beneficial effect upon the further progressing
development of mankind in practical life;--a criticism in the "Ausland" (8
April, 1872, No. 15), calls the same publication "an attempt at harmonizing
Darwin's hypothesis with the current views of ethics, and at showing that
those doctrines cannot be sustained which result as strictly logical
conclusions from Darwin's theory, and which are opposed to the present
views of morality."
In returning from this digression to Darwinism in its purest form, to
Darwin himself, we have in the first place to resume the discussion entered
upon as to the way and manner in which, according to Darwin,
self-determination is originated. Love and sympathy, moral feeling (with
this definition he seems to point at the consciousness of moral freedom of
will and of responsibility), and conscience, are to him very important
elements of morality; and in the moral disposition of man he sees the
greatest of all differences between man and animal. He also willingly
acknowledges the powerful impulse which morality has from religion, when he
says ("Descent of Man," Vol. II, page 347): "With the more civilized races,
the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent
influence on the advance of morality." From these and all his other
deductions, we see that Darwin in no way intends to modify the maxims of
moral action; and if under the expression "reform of morality," with which
we have headed the present chapter, we should understand but {241} a reform
of moral action itself, we should without hesitation have to rank Darwin
with the next group, and not with that of which we now treat; just as in
our review of the position of Darwinism in reference to the religious
question, we had to rank him with those who take a neutral and peaceful
position in reference to religion.
But if he does not touch upon morality in the maxims, he nevertheless comes
forth in the _theory_ of moral action, in the science of morality with
reformatory claims,--namely, with the fact that reduces the whole moral
life to those agencies which are already active in the preceding animalic
stage. It is true, he makes, as we have seen, a distinction in the genetic
derivation of morality. He wholly reduces love and sympathy to social
instincts which man has in common with the animal; and he lets the formal
motives of moral action, sense of duty and conscience, originate through
the high development of intelligence and other spiritual forces, and to be
increased and transmitted by custom and inheritance, if those are present.
But, on the other hand, development of intelligence is to him an exclusive
product of the preceding stage on which it was developed, and thus, in his
opinion, entire morality, notwithstanding that double derivation, certainly
has purely and exclusively the natural basis as its origin. If that is once
the standpoint to which man sees himself led, he has, in order to reason
logically, but a double choice. He must either say that a development out
of a natural basis can possibly be consistent with the appearance of a new
and higher principle, or must give up the autonomy of the moral law, and
leave the moral action of {242} man, even in his maxims, to the unsteady
flowing of development, or even of arbitrariness, and to the degree of
education and intelligence of subjectivity. Neither the one nor the other
is done by Darwin. It is true, on the one hand he shows that modesty, so
often exhibited by him, of the investigator who does not wish to express
any opinion on questions regarding which he has not yet attained a mature
judgment; but on the other hand he also manifests the same aversion to
going beyond purely naturo-historical speculations which, as we have seen
in Part I, Book II, Chapter I, § 1, hindered him from obtaining a clear
conception of the importance of the question as to the origin of
self-consciousness and of moral self-determination, and the same want of
sequence in reasoning, which, as we have found in Chap. III, prevented him
from giving an affirmative or negative decision in such an important
question, as whether a divine end is to be observed in the processes of the
world.
In this naturalization of ethical principles, he is closely related to that
peculiar moral-philosophic tendency in England, which long before Darwin's
appearance, took its origin in John Stuart Mill, but which now, in the
closest connection with Darwin's principles, has its main advocate in
Herbert Spencer, and is commonly called the _utilitarian_ tendency. We
understand by this that conception of the moral motive which allows the
moral good, however it may be ideally separated from the useful in the
developed condition of mankind at the present time, in its origin to be
developed at the outset from the same origin as the useful,--namely, from
the sensation of like and dislike; a theory of utility which Sir John
Lubbock still tried to complete and deepen by {243} the theory of an
inheritance of the sensation of authority. Activities which originally
proved to be only useful, were inherited as traditional instinct by the
offspring, and were thus freed from the sensation of the useful, and acted
as _authority_; this is the origin of _duty_, according to the history of
development. Inasmuch as this philosophic system aims at taking from ethics
the absoluteness of its demands, and at drawing down these demands into the
activities of originating and developing, it is also to be treated of in
this place.
As in the religious question, so in the ethical, Gustav Jäger also stands
nearer to a neutral relation between Darwinism and the hitherto valid
principles. He puts the moral principles the same as the religious, into
the balance of utility to man in his struggle for existence, and finds it
thus easy and to be taken for granted, that the principles of morality, as
they became the common property of mankind as influenced by Christianity,
really prove themselves also the most serviceable to mankind. Social life
is of more benefit to man than hermit life; this reflection leads him to
the moral principle of charity. And as, according to Darwinism, rising
development shows itself in an increasing differentiation and more richly
organized physical development, so the organization of society according to
the principle of the division of work is that form of social life which
proves itself the most practical to man; and this reflection leads him to
the full acknowledgment of the entire ethical organization of human life
and its tasks.
But, as we saw, in treating of the religious question, that nobody, neither
friend nor foe, could possibly be {244} satisfied with the substitution of
the category of utility for that of truth, we are compelled to say in
reference to the ethical question, that a moral principle which, on such a
foundation, has its basis and authority only in its utility, is really no
authority, and loses its value with every individual who is unwilling to
acknowledge its utility and thinks another ground of action may be more
useful than the moral.
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