Origin of the human mind--Mr. Spencer's theory of the composition of
mind--His system of morality.
According to their appointment, our two disputants have met to discuss
the origin of mind.
SOPHEREUS. Will you begin this conference by stating the
evolution theory of the origin of the human mind?
KOSMICOS. Most willingly. I have thus far spoken of the
hypothesis of evolution as affording an explanation of the origin of
distinct animals, regarded simply as living organisms, differentiated
from each other by the slow process of development from a common stock,
by the operation of certain physical causes. I am now to account to you
for the origin of the human mind, upon the same hypothesis, namely,
that man is a development from some previous and lower organism. I
acknowledge that what we call mind, or intellect, has to be accounted
for; and that we who hold the evolution theory of the origin of man as
an animal must be able to suggest how his intellect became developed by
the operation of the same natural causes which produced his physical
organization. It is not material, in this inquiry, whether we agree
with Darwin in assuming some one distinct living organism of a very
low type, as the original stock from which all the other animal
organisms have been derived, or whether we go with Spencer back to
the primal molecules of organizable matter, and suppose that from a
single cell have been developed all the organisms possessing life, in
a regular order of succession. Upon either supposition, the doctrine
of evolution explains the origin of the human mind. For, upon either
supposition, there was a point in the long series of new forms, each
descending from a pre-existing form, at which the manifestations of
what we call mind may be said to have begun. This link in the connected
chain of organisms occurred where nervous organization began to act
with some spontaneous movement, with some power of voluntary exertion,
as distinguished from the involuntary exertions of a substance that
acted only in a certain and fixed way, although that substance was
endowed with life. The substance of nervous organization is alike
in all animals. In some it acts in a limited manner, and without
volitional control; in others, it acts in more varied modes, and it
manifests some power of volitional control and volitional rest, as
well as of involuntary movement. But in all animals the substance of
which nervous organization is composed--the substance which acts in
producing movement, whether voluntary or involuntary--is the same kind
of physical structure. In the higher animals, the great nerve-center
is the organ called the brain. To this organ proceed the impressions
produced upon one set of nerves by external objects, or by light or
heat. From the same organ proceed, by another set of nerves, those
movements which the animal is endowed with the power of making from
within. Contemplating, then, the whole animal kingdom as one great
connected family, but divided into different species, all of which have
a nervous organization, we find that each species is endowed with the
power of generating other individuals of the same species and of the
same nervous organization. In the long course of development of the
several species, or forms of animal life, there comes about a nervous
organization which acts freely within certain limits, but in a fixed
and invariable mode, so that the movements are uniformly the same,
and not in any proper sense volitional. To such an animal we should
not attribute any mind, for mind implies some power of comparison and
variation, some ability to act in more than a prescribed way. This
animal, which I have just supposed to possess a very limited power of
nervous action, transmits that power to its descendants; and in some of
the successive generations the power remains always at the same fixed
point. But the laws of natural and sexual selection are perpetually
operating among those descendants. In progress of time there comes
to be developed another organism, which has a wider range of nervous
action; and, as this ceaseless process of modification and improvement
goes on, there is developed still another nervous organization which
acts with still more varied movements. As the different species
of animals become evolved out of those that have gone before, the
expansion of nervous organization goes on; and as each new and higher
and more complex stage is gained, individuals of the species have the
power to transmit it to their descendants by ordinary generation.
At length, as in some of the mammalia, a nervous organization is
attained, whose action exhibits manifestations of what we call mind.
There appears to be a power of something like reasoning and volition,
because the nervous actions are so various and so much adapted to
outward circumstances. Thus, before we reach the human animal, we
find nervous organizations widely separated from those of the remote
progenitor species, because they can do so much more, and can do it
with an apparent power of voluntary variation. At last, this process of
modifications accumulating upon modifications culminates in an animal
in whose nervous organization we find the freest, the most complex,
and the most various power of receiving into his brain the impressions
derived from the external world, and of transmitting from his brain to
the different organs of his body those movements which the external
circumstances of his life, or his internal efforts, cause him to strive
for and to effect. This animal was the primeval man.[113]
Looking back, then, to the primal source of all nervous organization,
in the remote animal in which the nervous structure and action were
at the crudest state of development, and remembering that there was
a power of transmitting it to offspring, and that natural and sexual
selection were unceasingly operating to expand and perfect it, we may
trace the successive stages of its modification and growth, from the
lowest to the highest, until we reach in the primeval man the highest
development that it had yet attained. But throughout all its stages,
from the lowest to the highest, the system of nervous organization and
action is the same in kind. We do not call its manifestations or action
mind, or speak of them as indicating mind, until we find it developed
into a condition of some voluntary activity and power of variation, as
it is in many of the animals inferior to man. But in all the animals,
man included, mind is the action of the nervous organization when it
evinces a superior power of variation; and we speak of the brain of
such animals as the seat of mind because that organ is the source to
and from which nervous action proceeds.
Let me now illustrate this view by the acquisition of articulate speech
and the formation of language. In many of the lower animals with
which we are acquainted there is a power of uttering vocal sounds,
and of understanding them when uttered by their fellows. It must have
been a power possessed by those animals which were the progenitors
of man in the long line of descent of one species from another. But
in them it was a very limited power. It increased as the nervous
organization and the vocal organs became in the successive species
capable of a more varied action. The sounds of the external world
impressed themselves upon the brains of the primeval men more forcibly
than they did upon the brains of the other animals, and excited the
nervous organization to reproduce or imitate them. Those emotions
and desires which originated in the brain itself--the impressions
of pain or the sensations of pleasure experienced in the nervous
system--sought expression through the vocal organs. Certain sounds
repeated alike by the same individual, or by numerous individuals, for
a long time, became associated in their brains with certain feelings
or sensations. What are called words were thus formed; which, at
first, could have been nothing but the utterance of certain sounds
by the vocal organs, expressing the sensations felt by the nervous
organization, or the imitations of external noises. At length these
vocal sounds are gathered in the memory, multiplied and systematized,
and a rude language is formed. But, all the while, the first crude
human language was nothing but the result of nervous action excited
to greater activity than in the other animals, accompanied by nicer
and more capable vocal organs and a greater power of using them.
This acquisition, obtained by the primeval men, was transmitted to
their descendants as an improved physical organization, and in those
descendants it finally reached the marvelous development of the most
perfect languages of antiquity.
Let us now retrace our steps back to the time when nervous
organization, in the successive generations of the whole animal series
regarded as one great family of kindred animals successively developed
out of a common stock, began to act in such a way as to evince the
presence of what we call mind. Once attained, this improved nervous
organization would be transmitted by the parents to new individuals;
and so on through countless generations, just as the offspring would
inherit the same physical structure as the parents in other respects.
Mental phenomena are the products of nervous organization. We have no
means of knowing that mind is an organism or an entity. If it is an
existence capable of surviving the death of the body, which evolution
neither affirms nor denies, you must go to revelation for the grounds
of belief in its immortality. There is no conflict between the
evolution theory of the nature of mind and the doctrine of immortality
as taught by revealed religion.
SOPHEREUS. I am not disposed to constitute myself a champion
of revealed religion. I have lately read in the writings of some
well-meaning persons, whose positions and convictions made them anxious
about the truths of revelation, expressions of the opinion that there
is no necessary conflict between the hypothesis of a revelation and
the teachings of evolution. I have been rather surprised by such
concessions. But through all our discussions, and throughout all my
reflections and inquiries, I have excluded revealed religion from the
number of proofs of our immortality. But it seems to me that, as to
the possibility of a survival of the mind after the death of the body,
you have stated yourself out of court, not because you have propounded
something that is inconsistent with revelation, although it certainly
is, but because you have made mind to consist in nothing but the
action of nervous organization, and when that has perished what can
remain? You may say that science does not undertake to determine that
mind is or is not a special existence capable of surviving the body.
But, observe that you attribute to nervous action the production of
phenomena to which you give the name of mind, when the nervous action
evinces some power of volitional variation and control. Now, when and
where did this begin, in the long series of animal organisms which
you assume have been successively evolved out of one another? Remember
that, according to the system of evolution, there are supposed to
have been countless forms of animal organisms, graduating by slow
improvements into higher and higher organisms. Where and when and what
was the first animal that possessed a nervous organization which would
manifest the power of variation in so marked a degree as to render
it proper to speak of the animal as possessing or evincing mind? Are
not the works of naturalists of the evolution school filled with
comparisons of the minds of different animals, and do they not contend
that in many of them there are manifestations of mental power, of the
exercise of reason and comparison, and a volitional action according
to varying circumstances? Did, then, these manifestations of something
like mental power begin in the anthropomorphous ape from whom we are
supposed to be descended, or who is supposed to be of kin to us? Or did
it begin in any one and which of the innumerable intermediate forms
between that ape-like creature and the primeval man? And when once this
improved and improving nervous organization had been developed and
put into a condition to be transmitted to descendants, until in the
primeval man it had attained its highest development, what was it but
a more sensitive, more various, and complex condition of the substance
of which all nervous tissues are composed? And when these tissues are
decomposed and resolved into their original material elements, where
and what is the mind, whether of man or beast? It is nowhere and
nothing, unless you suppose that the improved and improving action
of the nervous organization at last developed an existence which is
not in itself material or physical, and which may be imperishable and
indestructible, while the material and physical organs by and through
which it acts for a time perish daily in our sight. If this is a
possible, it is a very improbable hypothesis, because the nature of the
human mind points to a very different origin.
I surely do not need to tell you that like produces like. If the mind
of man is now a spiritual essence, it is a wild conjecture to suppose
that it was generated out of the action of a material substance, in
whatever animal, or supposed species of animal, its genesis is imagined
to have begun. We must therefore determine, from all the evidence
within our reach, whether the mind is a spiritual existence. If it is,
it is not difficult to reach a rational conclusion that its Creator
contrived a means of connecting it for a season with the bodily organs,
and made the generative production of each new individual body at the
same time give birth to a new individual mind, whenever a new child is
born into the world. We can not discover the nature of the connection,
or the process by which generative production of a new body becomes
also generative production of a new mind. These are mysteries that
are hidden from us. But the fact of the connection--the simultaneous
production of the new body and the new mind--is a fact that the birth
of every child demonstrates. Whether the union takes place at any
time before birth, or whether it is only at birth that the mind, the
spiritual essence, comes into existence, and so may become capable of
an endless life, we can not know. But that this occurs at some time in
the history of every human being, we are justified in saying that we
know.
I shall now contrast your hypothesis of the origin of the human mind
with another and a very different one; and, in stating it, I shall
borrow nothing from the Mosaic account of the creation of Adam and
Eve. I shall not assert, on the authority of Moses, that God breathed
into Adam a living soul, for that would be to resort to a kind of
evidence which, for the present, I mean to avoid, and which would
bring into consideration the nature of the means by which the Hebrew
historian was informed of the fact which he relates, and which he could
have known in no other way. It would also give rise to a question
of what was meant by "a living soul." But I shall assume that there
is a spiritual and a material world; that a spiritual existence is
one thing and a material existence is another. I shall assume that
there is a spiritual world, because all our commonest experience, our
introspection and consciousness, our observation of what the human mind
can do, its operations and its productions, its capacity to originate
thought and to send it down the course of ages, its power to recognize
and obey a moral law as a divine command, the monuments of every kind
which attest that it is something which is not matter or material
substance, prove to us that the human mind is essentially a spiritual
existence; and that while it acts and must act by and through bodily
organs, so long as it acts in this world, it is a being quite distinct
from all the physical substance and physical organism with which it is
connected for a time. Physiology alone can teach us this much at least,
that mind is not matter; and experience, consciousness, and observation
teach us that while the action of the mind may be suspended for a
time when the nervous organization can not normally act, from disease
or injury, the mind itself is not destroyed, but its action may be
restored with the restoration of the brain to its normal condition.
I am going to assume another thing--the existence of the Creator, the
Supreme Governor of the universe, having under his control the whole
realms of the spiritual and the material world; alike capable of giving
existence to spiritual entities and to material organisms, and capable
of uniting them by any connection and for any purpose that might seem
to him good. I shall assume this, because some of you evolutionists
concede, if I understand rightly, the existence and capacities of the
Supreme Being, since you assume, and rightly, that the whole question
relates to his methods; and you believe that he chose the method of
evolution instead of the method of special creation for all the types
of animal life excepting the aboriginal and created lowest form, out
of which all the others have been evolved. With these two assumptions,
then, the nature of a spiritual existence, and the existence and
capacities of the Creator, I now state to you the opposite hypothesis
of the origin and nature of the human mind.
A pair of human beings, male and female, is created by the hand and
will of the Almighty; and to each is given a physical organism,
and a spiritual, intellectual self, or mind, which is endowed
with consciousness and capable of thought. Why is this a rational
supposition, aside from any evidence of the fact derived from its
assertion by an inspired or a divinely instructed witness? It is so,
because, when this aboriginal pair of human creatures fulfill the law
of their being, by the procreation of other creatures of the same
kind, the offspring must be supposed to possess whatever the parents
possessed of peculiar and characteristic organization. This law of
transmission is stamped upon all the forms of organic life; and we
may well apply it to the first pair of human beings. Its operation
must have begun in them and their offspring. Every law that proceeded
from the will of the Supreme Being began to operate at some time; and
this law, like all others, must have been put in operation by the
Creator at some definite period. He created in the first pair a bodily
organization, and he created in each of them the spiritual entity that
we now call mind, and established its connection with their bodily
organs. He established in them also the power of procreating offspring;
and this included the production of a new individual of the same
species, in whom would be united, by the same mysterious bond, the
same kind of physical organization and the same kind of spiritual or
intellectual existence, which is not matter, and could not have been
generated out of matter alone. The beginning of this connection of body
and mind in the first parents was an occasional and special exercise of
the divine power. It was not a miraculous exercise of power, because
a miracle, in the proper sense, implies some action aside from a
previously established course of things. It was simply a first exercise
of the power in the case of the creation of the first human pair;
that is, it was the establishment in them, specially, of the union of
the body and soul. Its repetition in the offspring, for all time, and
through successive generations, was left to the operation of the laws
of procreation and heredity. The nature and operation of those laws are
wrapped in mystery; but about the fact of their existence, and of the
compound procreation of a new body and a new mind at every new birth,
there can be no doubt whatever.
It seems to me that this hypothesis has in its favor a vast
preponderance of probability, because--
1. The generation of mind or spirit out of matter is inconceivable.
2. The creation of mind by the Almighty is just as conceivable as his
creation of a material organism; and the latter is conceded by all
naturalists who admit that there was a first animal organism; and
even some of the evolutionists hold that the first animal organism
was directly fashioned by the Creator, although all the succeeding
organisms were formed, as they contend, by natural and sexual selection.
3. The nature of mind--of the human mind--is the same in all
individuals of the race. They may differ in mental power, but they
all possess an intellectual principle that is the same in kind. To
the production of mind, or its formation, the process of evolution
was not necessary. Not only was it unnecessary, but in the nature of
things it was not adapted to do what it is supposed to have done in
the production of physical organisms. To suppose that the Creator,
instead of the direct exercise of his power of creation, left it to the
material laws of natural and sexual selection to produce a mind, is
to suppose him to have resorted to a method that was both unnecessary
and indirect, and was furthermore incapable of effecting that kind of
product. In reasoning about the methods of the Creator, it is certainly
irrational to suppose him to have resorted to one that was so ill
adapted to the accomplishment of his object. In the accomplishment
of some physical objects, we may well suppose that they have been
brought about by physical agencies that have operated very slowly
and indirectly; and we can see that this has often been the case in
regard to many material products. But for the production of mind, for
the accomplishment of a spiritual existence, there can be imagined no
secondary agencies, no gradual growth out of antecedent existences or
substances, no evolution out of some other and that other a material
organism. The first mind, the first human soul, must have come direct
from the hand and will of God. The succeeding minds may well have been
left to owe their existence to the laws of procreation, by a process
which we can not understand, but of which we have proof in the birth of
every child that has been born of woman.
KOSMICOS. We now have the two hypotheses of the origin and
nature of the human mind fairly before us; and here I must point out
to you wherein you do injustice to my side of the question. In the
first place, your assumption of one pair of progenitors of the human
race from whom have diverged all the varieties of the race, does not
encounter the evolution process of man's descent as an animal. It
is either an arbitrary assumption, or it is derived from the Mosaic
account of the creation, which, in a scientific point of view, and
aside from the supposed authority of that story, is just as arbitrary
an assumption as if the book of Genesis had never existed. Take,
therefore, Darwin's hypothesis of the zoölogical series: First, a
fish-like animal, of course inhabiting the water; next, the amphibians,
capable of living in the water and on the land; next, the ancient
marsupials; next, the quadrumana and all the higher mammals, among
whom are to be classed the _Simiadæ_ or monkeys; and out of these came
the hairy, tailed quadruped, arboreal in its habits, from which man is
descended. This long line of descent is filled with diversified forms,
intermediate between the several principal forms which are known to us,
and which were successively the progenitors of man. Now, hear Darwin on
the subject of one pair of progenitors:
"But since he [man] attained to the rank of manhood he has diverged
into distinct races, or, as they may be more fitly called, sub-species.
Some of these, such as the negro and European, are so distinct that,
if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further
information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as
good and true species. Nevertheless, all the races agree in so many
unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities,
that these can be accounted for only by inheritance from a common
progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterized would probably deserve
to rank as man. It must not be supposed that the divergence of each
race from the other races, and of all from a common stock, can be
traced back to any one pair of progenitors. On the contrary, at every
stage in the process of modification all the individuals which were in
any way better fitted for their conditions of life, though in different
degrees, would have survived in greater numbers than the less well
fitted. The process would have been like that followed by man, when he
does not intentionally select particular individuals, but breeds from
all the superior individuals and neglects the inferior. He thus slowly
but surely modifies his stock, and unconsciously forms a new strain.
So with respect to modifications acquired independently of selection,
and due to variations arising from the nature of the organism and the
action of the surrounding conditions, or from changed habits of life,
no single pair will have been modified much more than the other pairs
inhabiting the same country, for all will have been continually blended
through free intercrossing."[114]
The meaning of this is that if you go back to the period when an
animal, by the slow process of modification which was continually
operating among the preceding organisms, had been raised to the
present state of man, and then follow out the divergencies into the
distinct races of men, those divergencies would not have occurred in
consequence of any one pair having been modified much more than the
other pairs inhabiting the same country, but all the individuals would
have undergone a continually blending process through unrestrained
intercrossing; and those individuals of both sexes, who became in
a superior degree fitted for their conditions of life, would have
survived in greater numbers than the less well fitted, and would have
transmitted to their posterity those peculiarities which tended at last
to produce different races of the human family. So that the notion of a
single pair of the negro variety, or of a single pair of the Caucasian
variety, formed and completed as an independent stock, is not necessary
to account for these varieties.
To apply this, now, to the slow production of man's intellectual
faculties, we must, if we would do justice to Darwin's hypothesis of
the method in which he was developed as an animal, bear in mind that
his mental powers, like his animal structure, have been the necessary
acquirement of new powers and capacities by gradation, through the
perpetual process of modification, and retention and transmission of
the new acquisitions. Darwin, indeed, does not professedly undertake
the genealogy of the human mind; but he appears to hold the opinion
that in future psychology will be based on the gradual acquisition of
each mental power and capacity, as distinguished from their complete
production in any one pair, or in any one being; and he refers to
Herbert Spencer as having already securely laid the foundation for this
new psychology.[115]
I take, therefore, the great English naturalist as the person who has
most satisfactorily explained the origin of man as an animal, and
the great English philosopher as the person who has propounded the
most satisfactory theory of the origin of the human mind. The two
hypotheses run parallel to and support each other. Man, as respects his
mere animal structure, is an organism developed by a slow process of
modification out of preceding organisms. His mental faculties have one
by one grown out of the operation of the same physical agencies that
have formed his animal structure, and they have not been bestowed at
once upon any one pair, or upon any one individual of the race. After
they have all been acquired, as we now know and recognize them, they
have descended to the successive generations of the race.
SOPHEREUS. I have studied Mr. Spencer's "System of
Psychology," but I do not know whether we understand it alike. You
say that he has propounded the most satisfactory theory of the origin
of mind. Assuming that mind was evolved as an aggregate of powers and
capacities, slowly acquired, _pari passu_ with the evolution of the
animal organism, be good enough to tell me whether Mr. Spencer does
or does not conclude that mind is anything more than an aggregate of
powers and capacities of the nervous organization. I am quite aware
of the mode in which he meets the charge of materialism; but waiving
for the present the question of materialism, I should be glad to know,
according to your understanding of his philosophy, what he considers
mind to be.
KOSMICOS. To answer your question requires an analysis of
Spencer's "Principles of Psychology." You have here on your table the
third edition of that work, which received his latest corrections and
additions.[116] If you look at the preface of this edition, you will
see that, as between Realism and Idealism, he enunciates a view which
recognizes an element of truth in each, but rejects the rest. By this
"Transfigured Realism" he aims to conciliate what is true in Realism
with what is true in Idealism; and it is by this conciliation that he
answers the partisans of both systems, who will not sacrifice any part
of their respective doctrines. It is important for you to remember this
in judging of his psychological system. He begins by a description
of the structure and functions of the nervous system, and the nature
of nervous actions. Without repeating in all its minute details the
structure which he describes, it is enough to say that in all animals,
from the lowest to the highest, this peculiar part of the organism
which we call the nervous system is composed of two tissues which
differ considerably from those composing the rest of the organism.
In color they are distinguished from one another as gray and white,
and in their minute structures as vesicular and fibrous. In the gray
tissue, the vesicles or corpuscles contain a soft protein substance,
with granules imbedded in it, consisting of fatty matter. The more
developed of these nerve-corpuscles give off branching processes, and
the terminations of nerve-fibers are distributed among them. The white
tissue is composed of minute tubes containing a medullary substance or
pulp, viscid like oil. Imbedded in this pulp, which fills the tubes,
there lies a delicate fiber or axis-cylinder, which is uniform and
continuous instead of having its continuity broken by fat-granules.
This central thread is the essential nerve; and the sheath of
medullary matter, and its surrounding membranous sheath, are only its
accessories. While, therefore, the matter of nerve-fiber has much in
common with the matter of nerve-vesicle, in the latter the protein
substance contains more water, is mingled with fat-granules, and forms
part of an unstable mass; whereas in the former, the nerve-tube, the
protein substance, is denser, is distinct from the fatty compounds that
surround it, and so presents an arrangement that is relatively stable.
Conceive, then, of this interlaced physical structure extending
throughout the whole organism as a kind of circular mechanism, having
its periphery at the surface of the body and limbs, ramifying among
and into the internal organs, with various nerve-centers distributed
through the interior mechanism, and the one great nerve-center in the
brain. Conceive of this structure, further, as fed continually by the
blood-vessels, which repair its waste of tissue and keep it in proper
tone and activity. Then imagine it as first put in operation in some
animal in whom it has become developed as we now know it in ourselves,
and let that animal stand as the primeval man, who has become, by
inherited transmission of gradual accumulations, possessed of this
consummate development of nervous organization. You can then observe
the method of its action, and can perceive how mind became developed,
and what it is.
What I have now given you is only a general description of the
structure of the nervous mechanism, and in order to understand its
functions, we may take it up, in an individual, at a point of time
when it had not experienced a single movement or change from a state
of rest, but when it was completely fitted to act. Observe, then,
that its action will consist in the origination and accomplishment
of motion; or, in other words, in molecular change of the substance
composing the nerves, which, for illustration only, may be likened to
the conductor through which the molecular disturbance passes which is
popularly, but not scientifically, called the electric fluid. At the
surface of the body and limbs, the external termini of the nerves are
exposed to disturbance by contact with an external object. Along the
highly sensitive and minute conductor, the nerve which has by contact
with an external object at its outer extremity received a slight shock,
there passes through the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerve a
wave of disturbance, or a succession of such waves. This disturbance
reaches the brain, the great nerve-center, where it becomes a feeling.
In this way is generated the feeling of contact with an external
object, and this is what is commonly called the sense of touch, which
is simply a feeling produced in the great nerve-center of the brain.
Now, to reverse the process, let us suppose that this feeling, caused
by touching an external object, provokes or excites a desire to remove
that object, or to get rid of the continuance of the feeling, and
to be without the irritation or pain which it is causing. From the
central seat of nervous action, the brain, along another nerve, there
proceeds a wave, or a series of waves, in the fluid or semi-fluid
substance of which the conductor of that nerve is composed, and motion
is communicated to some muscle or set of muscles, which need to be put
in motion in order to break the contact with the external object. In
like manner, all internal organs of the body, the viscera, are supplied
with a system of nerves connected with the great nerve-center. If a
disturbance arises in one of the viscera, some action that is abnormal,
a sensation that is called pain is produced. So, too, in regard to the
normal action of the viscera, kept up by involuntary movements--those
movements originate in and are transmitted from the nerve-center, by
waves in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of which the special nerves
are composed, whose office it is to cause the necessary movements in
the muscular substance, or the tissue, of the particular organ.
In this way began, in the supposed individual, those simpler states of
feeling which pain or irritation produced in the nervous system, and
those other involuntary movements which were essential to the normal
and unconscious action of the viscera. These varying conditions of
the highly sensitive nervous system, which constitute and are rightly
denominated feelings, were constantly repeated; and, so far as they
are capable of becoming a part of consciousness, that consciousness
is a repetition of the same nervous actions many times over. Pass,
then, from the feelings called sensations to the feelings called
emotions, and it will be found that while both are states of nervous
action, the former are peripherally initiated and the latter are
centrally initiated. The meaning of this is that a sensation is an
effect produced at the nerve-center by the transmission, from the
outer terminus of a particular nerve, of the waves in the fluid or
semi-fluid substance of the nerve. The strong forms of feeling called
sensations are peripherally initiated, and the feelings called emotions
are centrally initiated. Now, any feeling of any kind is directly known
by each person in no other place than his own consciousness; and the
question is, Of what is consciousness composed? In order to afford an
answer to this question, Mr. Spencer proceeds to examine the substance
of mind, and then passes to a consideration of the composition of
mind. These are not the same thing; for, if there be no such thing,
properly speaking, as the substance of mind, its composition, or its
nature, must be looked for in another way. The expression "substance
of mind," if used in any way but that in which we use the _x_ of an
algebraic equation, has no meaning. If we undertake to interpret mind
in the terms of matter, as crude materialism does, we are at once
brought to this result, that we know, and can know, nothing of the
ultimate substance of either. We know matter only as forms of certain
units; but the ultimate unit, of which the ultimate homogeneous units
are probably composed, must remain absolutely unknown. In like manner,
if mind consists of homogeneous units of feeling, the ultimate unit,
as a substance, must remain unknown. When, therefore, we think of the
substance of mind, the simplest form under which we can think of it
is nothing but a symbol of something that can never be rendered into
thought, just as the concept we form to ourselves of matter is but the
symbol of some form of power absolutely and forever unknown to us, as
the representation of all objective activities in terms of motion is
only a symbolic representation, and not a knowledge of them. Symbols of
unknown forms of existence, whether in the case of matter, motion, or
mind, are mere representations which do not determine anything about
the ultimate substance of either. "Our only course is constantly to
recognize our symbols as symbols only, and to rest content with that
duality of them which our constitution necessitates. The unknowable as
manifested to us within the limits of consciousness in the shape of
feeling, being no less inscrutable than the unknowable as manifested
beyond the limits of consciousness in other shapes, we approach no
nearer to understanding the last by rendering it into the first."[117]
Discarding, then, the expression "substance of mind," excepting as
a mere symbol, Mr. Spencer passes to the "composition of mind"; and
here we reach his explanation of mind as an evolution traceable
through ascending stages of composition, conformably to the laws of
evolution in general, so that the composition of mind, as something
evolved out of simple elements, does not need or involve a symbolical
representation in the terms of matter.
The method of composition, by which the whole fabric of mind is
constituted, from the formation of its simplest feelings up to the
formation of the complex aggregates of feelings which are its highest
developments, can now be sketched. A sensation is formed by the
consolidation of successive units of feeling; but the feelings called
sensations can not of themselves constitute mind, even when many of
different kinds are present together. When, however, each sensation,
as it occurs, is linked in association with the faint forms of
previous sensations of the same kind, mind is constituted; for, by the
consolidation of successive sensations, there is formed a knowledge
of the particular sensation as a distinct subject of what we call
thought, or the smallest separable portion of thought as distinguished
from mere confused sentiency. Thus, as the primitive units of feeling
are compounded into sensations, by the same method simple sensations,
and the relations among them, are compounded into states of definite
consciousness. The next highest stage of mental composition is a
repetition of the same process. Take a special object, which produces
in us a vivid cluster of related sensations. When these are united with
the faint forms of like clusters that have been before produced by
such objects, we know the object. Knowledge of it is the assimilation
of the combined group of real feelings which it excites, with one or
more preceding ideal groups which were once excited by objects of the
same kind; and, when the series of ideal groups is large, the knowledge
is clear. In the same way, by the connections between each special
cluster of related sensations produced by one object, and the special
clusters generated by other objects, a wider knowledge is obtained.
By assimilating the more or less complex relations exhibited in the
actions of things in space and time, with other such complex relations,
knowledge of the powers and habits of things is constituted. If we
can not so assimilate them, or parts of them, we have no knowledge of
their actions. So it is, without definite limit, through those tracts
of higher consciousness which are formed of clusters of clusters of
feelings held together by extremely involved relations. This law
of the composition of mind is, therefore, the assimilation of real
feelings and groups of real feelings with the ideal feelings or ideal
groups of feelings which objects of the same kind once produced. You
can follow out, without my assistance, the correspondence which Mr.
Spencer exhibits between the views of mental composition and the
general truths respecting nervous structure and nervous functions with
which he began the treatment of mind, which consists largely, and in
one sense entirely, of feelings. The inferior tracts of consciousness
are constituted by feelings; and the feelings are the materials out of
which are constituted the superior tracts of consciousness, and thus
intellect is evolved by structural combination. "Everywhere feeling is
the substance of which, when it is present, intellect is the form. And
where intellect is not present, or but little present, mind consists
of feelings that are unformed or but little formed."[118] Does not
this statement, which in substance is Mr. Spencer's explanation of the
formation of mind, explain to you why he denominates it "transfigured
realism"?
SOPHEREUS. I have attentively and carefully read Mr. Spencer's
book from which you have made this partial analysis of his view of the
nature of mind, but whether it is realism "transfigured," or whatever
is, I think it must be admitted that its basis is a truly realistic
one; for it comes back at last to just what I suggested to you at the
beginning of this discussion, that mind, according to his view, is
constituted by the action of the nervous system, or, in other words,
that mind consists of the phenomena of movements which take place in a
physical structure. If this is all that can be predicated of mind, it
is not something that can have an independent and continuous existence
after the dissolution of the physical structure called the nervous
system. That structure is one that is analogous in its action to the
other part of the organism by which digestion, or the assimilation
of food, is carried on. We might as well suppose that by the action
of the digestive system there has been constituted a something which
will remain as a digestive function after the organs of digestion
have perished, as to suppose that the action of the nervous system
has constituted a something which will remain mind, a conscious and
independent existence, after the nervous system has been resolved
into its original material elements. Indeed, I do not understand Mr.
Spencer's philosophy as including, providing for, or leading to, any
possible continued existence of the mind after the death of the body.
He seems to exclude it altogether. There is a passage at the end of one
of his chapters which appears to be a summary of his whole philosophic
scheme, and which is one of the dreariest conclusions I have ever met
with. "Once more," he says, "we are brought round to the conclusion
repeatedly reached by other routes, that behind all manifestations,
inner and outer, there is a Power manifested. Here, as before, it has
become clear that while the nature of this Power can not be known,
while we lack the faculty of forming even the dimmest conception of it,
yet its universal presence is the absolute fact without which there can
be no relative facts. Every feeling and thought being but transitory,
an entire life made up of such feelings and thoughts being also but
transitory, nay, the objects amid which life is passed, though less
transitory, being severally in course of losing their individualities
quickly or slowly; we learn that the one thing permanent is the
Unknowable Reality hidden under all these changing shapes."[119]
I will not say that the mournful character of this hopelessness
of human destiny is proof of its unsoundness. I have accustomed
myself to accept results, whatever may be the gloom in which they
involve us, provided they are deductions of sound reasoning; and
our wishes or hopes can not change the constitution of the universe
or become important evidence for or against any view of what that
constitution is. But let me ask, what does this philosopher mean by
the transitory character of an entire life made up of transitory
feelings and thoughts, occupied throughout their continuance with
transitory objects, or objects which are quickly or slowly losing
their individualities? What possible room does he leave for the
development and discipline of an immortal being, supposing that man
is an immortal being, by an entire life passed in feelings, thoughts,
and action about objects which, relatively to the individual, may,
quickly or slowly, pass away from him? Or, what room does he allow
for the effect on such a being of an entire life spent in the pursuit
of objects or the enjoyment of pleasures which develop only his baser
nature and unfit him for anything else? In any scheme of philosophy
which omits to regard this life as a preparatory school for some
other life, it seems to me that something is left out which ought to
be included, and which ought to be included for the very reason that
the evidence which tends to show that mind is not constituted as Mr.
Spencer supposes, but that it is an existence of a special character,
not generated by the action of a physical structure, but deriving its
existence from the direct action of the creating Power, is so strong
that, if we leave this conclusion out of the hypothesis, we shall have
left out the strongest probabilities of the case. It is no answer to
the necessity for including this conclusion to say that there is a
power which we can not know, or an Unknowable Reality hidden under
all changing manifestations, among which are those of mind. A study
of those manifestations leads rightly to some conclusions respecting
the Power which underlies all manifestations. It is necessary,
therefore, to subject Mr. Spencer's philosophy of mind to the further
inquiry, How does he account for the moral sense? How does he explain
that part of consciousness which recognizes moral obligations--the
recognition of moral law and duty? We may easily dispense with the
phrase "substance of the mind," if we wish to avoid a term of matter;
but if mind is constituted by the perception of feelings excited in
the nervous system, what is it that perceives? Is there a something
that is reached by the feelings which constitute sensations in the
great nerve-center, which takes cognizance of them, which combines
them into portions of consciousness, or is consciousness nothing but
a succession of sensations, and if so, what is "thought"? And what
is that portion of thought which takes cognizance of moral duty, and
which shows man to be capable of recognizing and obeying or breaking
a moral law? I have somewhere read a suggestion that the polity which
is said to have been given to the Hebrew people on the Mount of Sinai,
and which is described as ten statutes written on two tablets of stone,
consisted of five laws on one tablet and five on the other; one set
of them expressing the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity, and the
other being the fundamental laws of the social life which the Hebrews
were commanded to lead. This division is not accurate, because the
commandments which express the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity
are four in number, and the commandments which were to constitute
their social law are six. But that there is a line of demarkation
between the two kinds of laws is obvious, and how they were written
on the tablets, or whether they were written at all, is immaterial.
Looking, then, first at the social law, whether there was more or less
of the same ethical character in the codes of other ancient peoples,
or whether the social law which is said to have been delivered to
Moses and by him communicated to his nation stands as an embodiment
of morality unequaled by anything that had preceded it, it is certain
that it found the Hebrew people capable of the idea of law as a divine
command. It is true that the corner-stone of the whole superstructure
is to be found in the fact that the several commands which constituted
this social code--"Honor thy father and thy mother," "Thou shalt do
no murder," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not steal,"
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," "Thou shalt
not covet thy neighbor's house," etc.--were addressed to a people to
whose representatives the Almighty is supposed to have revealed himself
amid "thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and
the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud, and all the people that were
in the camp [below] trembled." It is also true that the first of
these awful annunciations was said to have been, "I am the Lord thy
God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before [or beside] me."[120] So
that the source whence all the following commands proceeded was the
one and only God, who is described as having thus revealed himself in
fire and cloud and earthquake, and thus to have secured instant and
implicit faith in what he spoke. But what he is asserted to have said
was addressed to human minds. This is in one aspect the most important
fact in the whole Hebrew history. It makes no difference whether Moses
performed a piece of jugglery, or whether he actually went within
the fire and the cloud, and actually spoke with God and received his
commands. The indisputable truth remains that the individual minds
of the Hebrew people, whom Moses had led out of Egypt, received and
obeyed, as divine commands, an original and unique moral code, because
they were so constituted that they could embrace and act upon the idea
of law emanating from another than an earthly or a human source. What,
then, was this constitution of the human mind, that could thus receive
and act upon a divine command; and what is it now? It matters not, in
the view in which I ask this question, whether there was any deceit
practiced or not, or whether there is any practiced now in respect to
the authority giving the command. What is to be accounted for is the
capacity of the human mind to embrace and accept the idea of a moral
law, be it that of Moses, or of Christ, or of Mohammed.
KOSMICOS. I am glad that you put this matter of the ten
commandments hypothetically, because otherwise we might have been led
aside into an argument about the authenticity of the narrative. I
recognize, however, the bearing of the question which you have put, and
shall endeavor to answer it. Your question implies that the essential
constitution of the human mind has been the same in all ages; that
it was the same in this race of nomads, who had been, they and their
fathers for ages, serfs of the Egyptian kings, that it is in us.
Perhaps this assumption may be allowed; and, at all events, the real
question is, How did the idea of a moral law originate, and what is
the sense of moral obligation? Like all things else, it is a product
of the process of evolution. I shall not argue this by any elaborate
reasoning, but will proceed to state the grounds on which it rests.
I will first give you what I understand to be Darwin's view of the
origin of the habit of thinking and feeling, which we call the moral
sense. Primeval man must have existed in a state of barbarism. When he
had become developed out of some pre-existing animal, he was a mere
savage, distinguishable from his predecessors only by the possession
of some superior degree of mental power. Savages, like some other
animals, form themselves into tribes or bands. Certain social instincts
arise, out of which spring what are regarded as virtues. Individuals
of the tribe begin to desire the sympathy and approbation of their
fellows. They perceive that certain actions, such as protection
of other and weaker individuals against danger, gain for them the
sympathy and approbation of the tribe. There are thus formed some
ideas of the common advantage to the tribe of certain actions, and
of the common disadvantage of the opposite actions. Man is eminently
a social animal, and this desire for the sympathy and approbation of
his tribe, and this fear of their disapprobation, is so strong that
the individual savage is led to perceive that the common good of the
tribe is the object at which he must aim to conform. The first social
instincts, therefore, are those which perceive the relations between
certain kinds of conduct and the common good of the tribe; and out of
these relations, with the aid of increasing intellectual powers, is
developed the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do
ye to them likewise," which lies at the foundation of morality. These
social instincts, thus leading at last to the great rule of social
morality, are developed very slowly. They are at first confined to the
benefit of the same tribe, and they have no force in the relations of
that tribe to the members of any other. To a savage it is a highly
meritorious action to save the life of another member of his own tribe,
and if he loses his own life in the effort it is so much the more
meritorious. But he does not extend this idea of doing a good action
to the members of a different tribe, and, whether his own tribe is
or is not at war with the other tribe, he and his own community will
think it no harm if he murders a member of that other tribe. But as
the approach to civilization goes on--as man advances in intellectual
power, and can trace the more remote consequences of his actions, and
as he rejects baneful customs and superstitions, he begins to regard
more and more not only the welfare but the happiness of his fellow-men.
Habit, resulting from beneficial experiences, instruction and example,
renders his sympathies more tender and widely diffused, until at last
he extends them to men of all races, to the imbecile, maimed, and other
useless members of society, and to the inferior animals. Thus the
standard of morality rises higher and higher; but its origin is in the
social instincts, which spring out of the love of approbation and the
fear of disapprobation.[121]
But morality comprehends also the self-regarding virtues, those which
directly affect the individual, and which affect society but remotely
and incidentally. How did the idea of these originate? There is a
very wide difference between the morality of savages, in respect to
the self-regarding virtues, and the morality of civilized nations.
Among the former, the greatest intemperance, utter licentiousness,
and unnatural crimes are very common. But as soon as marriage was
introduced, whether monogamous or polygamous, jealousy led to the
inculcation of female virtue; and this, being honored, spread to the
unmarried females. Chastity, the hatred of indecency, temperance, and
many other self-regarding virtues, originating first in the social
instincts, have come to be highly prized by civilized nations as
affecting, first, the welfare of the community, and, secondly, the
welfare of the individual. This was the origin of the so-called "moral
sense." It rejects the intuitive theory of morality, and bases its
origin on the increasing perception of the advantage of certain conduct
to the community and the individual.[122]
SOPHEREUS. And in this origin of the social and the
self-regarding virtues, which I understand you to say is the theory of
Darwin, is the idea of a divine command to practice certain things, and
to avoid doing certain other things, left out?
KOSMICOS. The idea of a divine command, as the source of
morality, is not necessary to the explanation of the mode in which
the social or the self-regarding virtues were gradually developed.
In the progress from barbarism to civilization, what is called the
moral sense has been slowly developed as an increasing perception of
what is beneficial, and this has become an inherited faculty. We thus
have a sure scientific basis for the moral intuitions which we do not
individually stay to analyze when we are called upon to determine the
morality or the immorality of certain actions. The supposed divine
command is something that is aside from the process by which the idea
of morality or immorality became developed.
SOPHEREUS. And is this also Mr. Spencer's philosophy of the
moral sense?
KOSMICOS. Let me read you what Spencer says: "I believe that
the experience of utility, organized and consolidated through all
past generations of the human race, has been producing corresponding
modifications which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have
become in us certain _faculties_ of moral intuition--certain _emotions_
responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no _apparent_ basis
in the _individual_ experiences of utility."[123] I have emphasized
certain words in this passage in order to make its meaning distinct.
Mr. Spencer's theory is that we have certain _faculties_ of moral
intuition, which have become such by transmission and accumulation;
that the original ideas of right and wrong sprang from perceptions of
utility; and that when to the individual the question of a good or a
bad action in others or himself is now presented, he feels an _emotion_
which responds to right or wrong conduct, and feels it in the _faculty_
which he has inherited from ancestors, without referring it to his
_individual_ experience of the utility or inutility of certain conduct.
Now, in regard to the divine command as the origin of our ideas
of right and wrong, if you turn to Mr. Spencer's "Principles of
Sociology," you will find an immense collection of evidence which shows
the genesis of deities of all kinds. Beginning with the ideas formed
by the primitive men of souls, ghosts, spirits, and demons, the ideas
of another life and of another world, there came about the ideas of
supernatural beings, aided in their development by ancestor-worship,
idol-worship, fetich-worship, animal-worship, plant-worship, and
nature-worship. Hence came the ideas of deities of various kinds, one
class of which is that of the human personality greatly disguised, and
the other is the class which has arisen by simple idealization and
expansion of the human personality. The last class, although always
coexisting with the other, at length becomes predominant, and finally
there is developed the idea of one chief or supreme deity. Having
traced the origin of this idea of a supreme deity, Mr. Spencer puts and
answers this question: "While among all races and all regions, from
the earliest times down to the most recent, the conceptions of deities
have been naturally evolved in the way shown, must we conclude that
a small clan of the Semitic race had given to it, supernaturally, a
conception which, though superficially like the rest, was in substance
absolutely unlike them?"[124] He then proceeds to show that the Hebrew
Jehovah, or God, was a conception that had a kindred genesis with all
the other conceptions of a deity or deities. "Here," he says, "pursuing
the methods of science, and disregarding foregone conclusions, we must
deal with the Hebrew conception in the same manner as with all the
others." Dealing with it by the scientific method, he shows that behind
the supernatural being of the order of the Hebrew God, as behind the
supernatural beings of all other orders, there has in every case been
a human personality. Thus, taking the narrative as it has come down to
us of God's dealing with Abraham, he shows that what Abraham thought,
or is described as thinking by those who preserved the tradition, was
of a terrestrial ruler who could, like any other earthly potentate,
make a covenant with him about land or anything else, or that he was
the maker of all things, and that Abraham believed the earth and the
heavens were produced by one who eats and drinks, and feels weary
after walking. Upon either idea, Abraham's conception of a Deity
remains identical with that of his modern Semitic representative,
and with that of the uncivilized in general. But the ideas of Deity
entertained by cultivated people, instead of being innate, arise only
at a comparatively advanced stage, as results of accumulated knowledge,
greater intellectual grasp, and higher sentiment.[125]
To return now to the supposed divine command as the origin of morality,
it is obvious that the conception of the being who has uttered the
command makes the nature of the command partake of the attributes
ascribed to that being. Accordingly, the grossest superstitions, the
most revolting practices, the most immoral actions, have found their
sanction in what the particular deity who is believed in is supposed
to have inculcated or required. I do not need to enumerate to you the
proofs of this, or to tell you that the Hebrew God is no exception to
it. One illustration of it, however, is worth repeating. Speaking of
the ceremony by which the covenant between God and Abraham is said to
have been established, Mr. Spencer says: "Abraham and each of his male
descendants, and each of his slaves, is circumcised. The mark of the
covenant, observe, is to be borne not only by Abraham and those of
his blood, but also by those of other blood whom he has bought. The
mark is a strange one, and the extension of it is a strange one, if
we assume it to be imposed by the Creator of the universe, as a mark
on a favored man and his descendants; and on this assumption it is no
less strange that the one transgression for which every 'soul shall
be cut off' is, not any crime, but the neglect of this rite. But such
a ceremony insisted on by a living potentate, under penalty of death,
is not strange, for, as we shall hereafter see, circumcision is one of
various mutilations imposed as marks on subject persons by terrestrial
superiors."[126]
So that the Hebrew God who made the covenant with Abraham was not,
in Abraham's own conception, the First Cause of all things, or a
supernatural being, but he was a powerful human ruler, making an
agreement with a shepherd chief. In all religions, the things required
or commanded by the supposed deified person have been marked by the
characteristics of human rulers; and as a source of morality, or as
a standard of morality, the requirements or commands of the deified
person, however they are supposed to have been communicated, fail to
answer the indispensable condition of a fixed and innate system of
morality, which is that it must have proceeded from the Creator of
the universe, and not from a being who partakes of human passions,
infirmities, and desires, and is merely a deified human potentate.
Pass, now, to Mr. Spencer's "Principles of Morality"; and although but
one volume of this work has been as yet published, we may see that
he is entirely consistent with what he has said in his "Sociology"
and his other writings.[127] He does not leave us in any doubt as to
his theory of morals. It appears, from the preface to his "Data of
Ethics," that he has been compelled by ill-health to deviate from the
plan which he had mapped out for himself, and to publish one volume
of his "Principles of Morality" before completing his "Principles of
Sociology." But while we have reason for his sake and for the sake
of the world to regret this, we can easily understand his system of
morality. He means to rest the rules of right conduct on a scientific
basis, and he shows that this is a pressing need. In his preface, he
says:
I am the more anxious to indicate in outline, if I can not complete,
this final proof, because the establishment of rules of right conduct
on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral injunctions
are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the
secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Few things can happen
more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no
longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown
up to replace it. Most of those who reject the current creed appear
to assume that the controlling agency furnished by it may be safely
thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any other controlling
agency. Meanwhile, those who defend the current creed allege that, in
the absence of the guidance it yields, no guidance can exist; divine
commandments they think the only possible guides. Thus, between these
extreme opponents there is a certain community. The one holds that
the gap left by disappearance of the code of supernatural ethics need
not be filled by a code of natural ethics; and the other holds that it
can not be so filled. Both contemplate a vacuum, which the one wishes
and the other fears. As the change which promises or threatens to
bring about this state, desired or dreaded, is rapidly progressing,
those who believe that the vacuum can be filled are called upon to do
something in pursuance of their belief.
The code of natural ethics which Mr. Spencer propounds, and which is
a product of the process of evolution, may be summarized as follows:
Conduct is an aggregate of actions which are not purposeless, but
which include all acts that are adjusted to ends, from the simplest to
the most complex. The division or aspect of conduct with which ethics
deals, the behavior we call good or bad, is a part of an organic whole;
but, although inextricably bound up with acts which are neither good
nor bad, it is distinguishable as comprehending those acts with which
morality is concerned. The evolution of conduct, from the simplest
and most indifferent actions up to those on which ethical judgments
are passed, is what Mr. Spencer means by the scientific method of
investigating the origin of morality. We must begin with the conduct
of all living creatures, because the complete comprehension of conduct
is not to be obtained by contemplating the conduct of human beings
only. "The conduct of the higher animals as compared with that of
man, and the conduct of the lower animals as compared with that of
the higher, mainly differ in this, that the adjustments of acts to
ends are relatively simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other
cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the
less developed. Just as, fully to understand the part of conduct which
ethics deals with, we must study human conduct as a whole, so, fully
to understand human conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part of
that larger whole constituted by the conduct of animate beings in
general."[128]
Begin, for example, with an infusorium swimming about at random,
determined in its course not by an object which it perceives and which
is to be pursued or escaped, but apparently by varying stimuli in its
medium, the water. Its acts, unadjusted in any appreciable way to
ends, lead it now into contact with some nutritive substance which it
absorbs, and now into the neighborhood of some creature by which it is
swallowed and digested. Pass on to another aquatic creature, which,
although of a low type, is much higher than the infusorium, such as
a rotifer. With larger size, more developed structures, and greater
power of combining functions, there comes an advance in conduct. It
preserves itself for a longer period by better adjusting its own
actions, so that, it is less dependent on the actions going on around.
Again, compare a low mollusk, such as a floating ascidian, with a high
mollusk, such as a cephalopod, and it is apparent how greater organic
evolution is accompanied by more evolved conduct. And if you pass then
to the vertebrate animals, you see how, along with advance in structure
and functions, there is evolved an advance in conduct, until at length,
when you reach the doings of the highest of mammals, mankind, you not
only find that the adjustments of acts to ends are both more numerous
and better than among the lower mammals, but you find the same thing on
comparing the doings of the higher races of men with those of the lower
races. There is a greater completeness of achievement by civilized
men than by savages, and there is also an achievement of relatively
numerous minor ends subserving major ends.
Recollecting, then, what conduct is--namely, the adjustment of acts to
ends--and observing how this adjustment becomes more and more complete
as the organism becomes more developed, we have to note the order of
the ends to which the acts are adjusted. The first end, the first
stage of evolving conduct, is the further prolongation of life. The
next is that adjustment of acts to ends which furthers an increased
amount of life. Thus far the ends are complete individual life. Then
come those adjustments which have for their final purpose the life of
the species. Then there is a third kind of conduct, which results from
the fact that the multitudinous creatures which fill the earth can not
live wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in presence
of one another, are interfered with by one another. No one species can
so act as to secure the greatest amount of life to its individuals
and the preservation of the species--can make a successful adjustment
of its acts to these ends--without interfering with the corresponding
adjustments by other creatures of their acts to their ends. That
some may live, others must die. Finally, when we contemplate those
adjustments of acts to ends which miss completeness, because they can
not be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented
from making them, we reach the thought of adjustments such that each
creature may make them without preventing them from being made by other
creatures. Let me now quote Mr. Spencer's concrete illustrations of
these abstract statements:
"Recognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most evolved, let
us ask under what conditions their conduct, in all three aspects of
its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearly while the lives led are
entirely predatory, as those of savages, the adjustments of acts
to ends fall short of this highest form of conduct in every way.
Individual life, ill carried on from hour to hour, is prematurely
cut short; the fostering of offspring often fails, and is incomplete
when it does not fail; and in so far as the ends of self-maintenance
and race-maintenance are met, they are met by destruction of other
beings, of different kind, or of like kind. In social groups formed
by compounding and recompounding primitive hordes, conduct remains
imperfectly evolved in proportion as there continue antagonisms between
the groups and antagonisms between members of the same group--two
traits necessarily associated; since the nature which prompts
international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one
another. Hence, the limit of evolution can be reached by conduct only
in permanently peaceful societies. That perfect adjustment of acts
to ends in maintaining individual life and rearing new individuals,
which is effected by each without hindering others from effecting like
perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, shown to constitute a
kind of conduct that can be approached only as war decreases and dies
out.
"A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further
advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves
his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the
members of a society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends.
And if, either indirectly by industrial co-operation, or directly
by volunteered aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one another
the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still
higher phase of evolution; since whatever facilitates the making of
adjustments by each, increases the totality of the adjustments made,
and serves to render the lives of all more complete."
In the outline which I have now given you of the evolution of conduct,
you will perceive the foundation of Spencer's system of ethics. Actions
begin to assume an ethical character--conduct becomes good or bad--when
the acts tend to promote or to prevent the general well-being of the
community. But how is the perception or recognition of this quality
in an action reached? What is the determining reason for considering
an action good or bad? Obviously, conduct is considered by us as good
or bad according as its aggregate results to self, or others, or
both, are pleasurable or painful. Mr. Spencer shows that every other
proposed standard of conduct derives its authority from this standard:
"No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable
state of feeling called by whatever name--gratification, enjoyment,
happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings,
is an inexpugnable element of the conception. It is as much a necessary
form of moral intuition as space is a necessary form of intellectual
intuition."[129]
On this fundamental basis, Mr. Spencer rests his system of absolute
ethics and relative ethics. Relative ethics are those by which,
allowing for the friction of an incomplete life and the imperfections
of existing natures, we may ascertain with approximate correctness what
is the relatively right. This is often exceedingly difficult, because
two cases are rarely the same in all their circumstances. But absolute
ethics are the ideal ethical truths, expressing the absolutely right.
Such a system of ideal ethical truths, which must have precedence over
relative ethics, is reached only when there has been, in conformity
with the laws of evolution in general, and in conformity with the laws
of organization in particular, an adaptation of humanity to the social
state, changing it in the direction of an ideal congruity. But, as in
relative ethics, the production of happiness or pleasure is the aim,
however imperfectly accomplished, so in the ideal state the aim is
the same, the difference being that in the latter the accomplishment
of happiness or pleasure and the exclusion or prevention of pain are
complete.
SOPHEREUS. And do I understand you that in this system of
ethics the idea of a moral law proceeding from and consisting of the
command of a Supreme Lawgiver is left out?
KOSMICOS. Certainly it is. Did I not just now read to you from
Mr. Spencer's preface his complete rejection of the supposed sacred
origin of moral injunctions, and what he says of the necessity for the
secularization of morals to take the place of that system which is
losing its authority?
SOPHEREUS. And this philosopher is the same writer who
negatives the idea of any creation of organic life, and who also
negatives the idea that the human mind is an existence of a spiritual
nature, owing its existence to a Creator?
KOSMICOS. Undoubtedly; we have gone over all that ground.
SOPHEREUS. And he is the same philosopher who denies the
existence of a Supreme Being, Creator, and Governor of the universe?
KOSMICOS. Perhaps you may call it denial, although what he
maintains is that we know, and can know, nothing on the subject of a
personal God.
SOPHEREUS. Very well. I will reflect upon all this until we
meet again.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] Probably Kosmicos did not mean that man excels all other animals
in the delicacy and perfection of his nervous organization, for some
of his senses are inferior to those of some of the other animals, as
his movements are less swift. Apparently his meaning is that, taken as
a whole, the nervous organization of man evinces the greatest power of
variation and the widest range of action.
[114] Darwin's "Descent of Man," pp. 608, 609.
[115] Darwin's "Origin of Species," p. 428.
[116] "The Principles of Psychology," by Herbert Spencer, third
edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1885.
[117] "Principles of Psychology," i, p. 162.
[118] "Principles of Psychology," ii, p. 503.
[119] "Principles of Psychology," ii, p. 503.
[120] Revised version.
[121] Darwin, "Descent of Man," Part I, chap. iv.
[122] "Descent of Man," Part I, chap. iv.
[123] Quoted in Darwin's "Descent of Man," p. 123.
[124] "Principles of Sociology," i, p. 433, § 202.
[125] Ibid., chap. XXV, p. 414 _et seq._
[126] "Principles of Sociology," i, p. 135.
[127] "Principles of Morality," vol. i. I. "The Data of Ethics." By
Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1884.
[128] "The Data of Ethics," pp. 6, 7, by Herbert Spencer. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1884.
[129] "The Data of Ethics," pp. 45, 46, by Herbert Spencer. New York:
D. Appleton & Co., 1884.