First of all, it appears that such words can have no application or
relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists. Imagine an
absolutely material world, containing only physical and chemical facts,
and existing from eternity without a God, without even an interested
spectator: would there be any sense in saying of that world that one of
its states is better than another? Or if there were two such worlds
possible, would there be any rhyme or reason in calling one good and
the other bad,--good or {190} bad positively, I mean, and apart from
the fact that one might relate itself better than the other to the
philosopher's private interests? But we must leave these private
interests out of the account, for the philosopher is a mental fact, and
we are asking whether goods and evils and obligations exist in physical
facts _per se_. Surely there is no _status_ for good and evil to exist
in, in a purely insentient world. How can one physical fact,
considered simply as a physical fact, be 'better' than another?
Betterness is not a physical relation. In its mere material capacity,
a thing can no more be good or bad than it can be pleasant or painful.
Good for what? Good for the production of another physical fact, do
you say? But what in a purely physical universe demands the production
of that other fact? Physical facts simply _are_ or are _not_; and
neither when present or absent, can they be supposed to make demands.
If they do, they can only do so by having desires; and then they have
ceased to be purely physical facts, and have become facts of conscious
sensibility. Goodness, badness, and obligation must be _realised_
somewhere in order really to exist; and the first step in ethical
philosophy is to see that no merely inorganic 'nature of things' can
realize them. Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing _in
vacuo_. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no
world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to
which ethical propositions apply.
The moment one sentient being, however, is made a part of the universe,
there is a chance for goods and evils really to exist. Moral relations
now have their _status_, in that being's consciousness. So far as he
feels anything to be good, he _makes_ it good. It {191} _is_ good, for
him; and being good for him, is absolutely good, for he is the sole
creator of values in that universe, and outside of his opinion things
have no moral character at all.
In such a universe as that it would of course be absurd to raise the
question of whether the solitary thinker's judgments of good and ill
are true or not. Truth supposes a standard outside of the thinker to
which he must conform; but here the thinker is a sort of divinity,
subject to no higher judge. Let us call the supposed universe which he
inhabits a _moral solitude_. In such a moral solitude it is clear that
there can be no outward obligation, and that the only trouble the
god-like thinker is liable to have will be over the consistency of his
own several ideals with one another. Some of these will no doubt be
more pungent and appealing than the rest, their goodness will have a
profounder, more penetrating taste; they will return to haunt him with
more obstinate regrets if violated. So the thinker will have to order
his life with them as its chief determinants, or else remain inwardly
discordant and unhappy. Into whatever equilibrium he may settle,
though, and however he may straighten out his system, it will be a
right system; for beyond the facts of his own subjectivity there is
nothing moral in the world.
If now we introduce a second thinker with his likes and dislikes into
the universe, the ethical situation becomes much more complex, and
several possibilities are immediately seen to obtain.
One of these is that the thinkers may ignore each other's attitude
about good and evil altogether, and each continue to indulge his own
preferences, indifferent to what the other may feel or do. In such a
{192} case we have a world with twice as much of the ethical quality in
it as our moral solitude, only it is without ethical unity. The same
object is good or bad there, according as you measure it by the view
which this one or that one of the thinkers takes. Nor can you find any
possible ground in such a world for saying that one thinker's opinion
is more correct than the other's, or that either has the truer moral
sense. Such a world, in short, is not a moral universe but a moral
dualism. Not only is there no single point of view within it from
which the values of things can be unequivocally judged, but there is
not even a demand for such a point of view, since the two thinkers are
supposed to be indifferent to each other's thoughts and acts. Multiply
the thinkers into a pluralism, and we find realized for us in the
ethical sphere something like that world which the antique sceptics
conceived of,--in which individual minds are the measures of all
things, and in which no one 'objective' truth, but only a multitude of
'subjective' opinions, can be found.
But this is the kind of world with which the philosopher, so long as he
holds to the hope of a philosophy, will not put up. Among the various
ideals represented, there must be, he thinks, some which have the more
truth or authority; and to these the others _ought_ to yield, so that
system and subordination may reign. Here in the word 'ought' the
notion of _obligation_ comes emphatically into view, and the next thing
in order must be to make its meaning clear.
Since the outcome of the discussion so far has been to show us that
nothing can be good or right except {193} so far as some consciousness
feels it to be good or thinks it to be right, we perceive on the very
threshold that the real superiority and authority which are postulated
by the philosopher to reside in some of the opinions, and the really
inferior character which he supposes must belong to others, cannot be
explained by any abstract moral 'nature of things' existing
antecedently to the concrete thinkers themselves with their ideals.
Like the positive attributes good and bad, the comparative ones better
and worse must be _realised_ in order to be real. If one ideal
judgment be objectively better than another, that betterness must be
made flesh by being lodged concretely in some one's actual perception.
It cannot float in the atmosphere, for it is not a sort of
meteorological phenomenon, like the aurora borealis or the zodiacal
light. Its _esse_ is _percipi_, like the _esse_ of the ideals
themselves between which it obtains. The philosopher, therefore, who
seeks to know which ideal ought to have supreme weight and which one
ought to be subordinated, must trace the _ought_ itself to the _de
facto_ constitution of some existing consciousness, behind which, as
one of the data of the universe, he as a purely ethical philosopher is
unable to go. This consciousness must make the one ideal right by
feeling it to be right, the other wrong by feeling it to be wrong. But
now what particular consciousness in the universe _can_ enjoy this
prerogative of obliging others to conform to a rule which it lays down?
If one of the thinkers were obviously divine, while all the rest were
human, there would probably be no practical dispute about the matter.
The divine thought would be the model, to which the others should
conform. But still the theoretic question {194} would remain, What is
the ground of the obligation, even here?
In our first essays at answering this question, there is an inevitable
tendency to slip into an assumption which ordinary men follow when they
are disputing with one another about questions of good and bad. They
imagine an abstract moral order in which the objective truth resides;
and each tries to prove that this pre-existing order is more accurately
reflected in his own ideas than in those of his adversary. It is
because one disputant is backed by this overarching abstract order that
we think the other should submit. Even so, when it is a question no
longer of two finite thinkers, but of God and ourselves,--we follow our
usual habit, and imagine a sort of _de jure_ relation, which antedates
and overarches the mere facts, and would make it right that we should
conform our thoughts to God's thoughts, even though he made no claim to
that effect, and though we preferred _de facto_ to go on thinking for
ourselves.
But the moment we take a steady look at the question, _we see not only
that without a claim actually made by some concrete person there can be
no obligation, but that there is some obligation wherever there is a
claim_. Claim and obligation are, in fact, coextensive terms; they
cover each other exactly. Our ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves
as subject to an overarching system of moral relations, true 'in
themselves,' is therefore either an out-and-out superstition, or else
it must be treated as a merely provisional abstraction from that real
Thinker in whose actual demand upon us to think as he does our
obligation must be ultimately based. In a theistic-ethical philosophy
that thinker in question is, of {195} course, the Deity to whom the
existence of the universe is due.
I know well how hard it is for those who are accustomed to what I have
called the superstitious view, to realize that every _de facto_ claim
creates in so far forth an obligation. We inveterately think that
something which we call the 'validity' of the claim is what gives to it
its obligatory character, and that this validity is something outside
of the claim's mere existence as a matter of fact. It rains down upon
the claim, we think, from some sublime dimension of being, which the
moral law inhabits, much as upon the steel of the compass-needle the
influence of the Pole rains down from out of the starry heavens. But
again, how can such an inorganic abstract character of imperativeness,
additional to the imperativeness which is in the concrete claim itself,
_exist_? Take any demand, however slight, which any creature, however
weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sole sake, to be satisfied?
If not, prove why not. The only possible kind of proof you could
adduce would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a
demand that ran the other way. The only possible reason there can be
why any phenomenon ought to exist is that such a phenomenon actually is
desired. Any desire is imperative to the extent of its amount; it
_makes_ itself valid by the fact that it exists at all. Some desires,
truly enough, are small desires; they are put forward by insignificant
persons, and we customarily make light of the obligations which they
bring. But the fact that such personal demands as these impose small
obligations does not keep the largest obligations from being personal
demands.
If we must talk impersonally, to be sure we can say {196} that 'the
universe' requires, exacts, or makes obligatory such or such an action,
whenever it expresses itself through the desires of such or such a
creature. But it is better not to talk about the universe in this
personified way, unless we believe in a universal or divine
consciousness which actually exists. If there be such a consciousness,
then its demands carry the most of obligation simply because they are
the greatest in amount. But it is even then not _abstractly right_
that we should respect them. It is only concretely right,--or right
after the fact, and by virtue of the fact, that they are actually made.
Suppose we do not respect them, as seems largely to be the case in this
queer world. That ought not to be, we say; that is wrong. But in what
way is this fact of wrongness made more acceptable or intelligible when
we imagine it to consist rather in the laceration of an _à priori_
ideal order than in the disappointment of a living personal God? Do
we, perhaps, think that we cover God and protect him and make his
impotence over us less ultimate, when we back him up with this _à
priori_ blanket from which he may draw some warmth of further appeal?
But the only force of appeal to _us_, which either a living God or an
abstract ideal order can wield, is found in the 'everlasting ruby
vaults' of our own human hearts, as they happen to beat responsive and
not irresponsive to the claim. So far as they do feel it when made by
a living consciousness, it is life answering to life. A claim thus
livingly acknowledged is acknowledged with a solidity and fulness which
no thought of an 'ideal' backing can render more complete; while if, on
the other hand, the heart's response is withheld, the stubborn
phenomenon is there of an impotence in the claims {197} which the
universe embodies, which no talk about an eternal nature of things can
gloze over or dispel. An ineffective _à priori_ order is as impotent a
thing as an ineffective God; and in the eye of philosophy, it is as
hard a thing to explain.
We may now consider that what we distinguished as the metaphysical
question in ethical philosophy is sufficiently answered, and that we
have learned what the words 'good,' 'bad,' and 'obligation' severally
mean. They mean no absolute natures, independent of personal support.
They are objects of feeling and desire, which have no foothold or
anchorage in Being, apart from the existence of actually living minds.
Wherever such minds exist, with judgments of good and ill, and demands
upon one another, there is an ethical world in its essential features.
Were all other things, gods and men and starry heavens, blotted out
from this universe, and were there left but one rock with two loving
souls upon it, that rock would have as thoroughly moral a constitution
as any possible world which the eternities and immensities could
harbor. It would be a tragic constitution, because the rock's
inhabitants would die. But while they lived, there would be real good
things and real bad things in the universe; there would be obligations,
claims, and expectations; obediences, refusals, and disappointments;
compunctions and longings for harmony to come again, and inward peace
of conscience when it was restored; there would, in short, be a moral
life, whose active energy would have no limit but the intensity of
interest in each other with which the hero and heroine might be endowed.
{198}
We, on this terrestrial globe, so far as the visible facts go, are just
like the inhabitants of such a rock. Whether a God exist, or whether
no God exist, in yon blue heaven above us bent, we form at any rate an
ethical republic here below. And the first reflection which this leads
to is that ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe
where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there
is a God as well. 'The religion of humanity' affords a basis for
ethics as well as theism does. Whether the purely human system can
gratify the philosopher's demand as well as the other is a different
question, which we ourselves must answer ere we close.