CHAPTER I

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[Illustration]

A REVIEW OF THE SYSTEMS OF ETHICS FOUNDED ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

BY

C. M. WILLIAMS

New York

MACMILLAN & CO.

AND LONDON

1893

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1892,

BY MACMILLAN & CO.

TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.

PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON, U.S.A.

* * * * *

TO MY FIRST TEACHER OF MORALS

MY MOTHER

THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED

PREFACE

Of the Ethics founded on the theory of Evolution, I have considered only

the independent theories which have been elaborated to systems. I have

omitted consideration of many works which bear on Evolutional Ethics as

practical or exhortative treatises, or compilations of facts, but which

involve no distinctly worked-out theory of morals. On the other hand, I

have ventured to include Professor von Gizycki's "Moralphilosophie"

among the theoretical systems founded upon the theory of Evolution,

since, although the popular form of the work renders the prominence of

the latter theory impracticable, the warp of Evolution is clearly

perceptible throughout it. In analyzing Hoeffding's work, I have made use

not of the Danish but the German edition of his "Ethics," which was

translated with his cooeperation.

It is generally customary for an author to acknowledge, in the preface

of his book, his especial indebtedness to those who have most influenced

the growth of his thought in the line of research treated in the book.

But I find this duty a difficult one to perform. Many of the authors

whose work has aided me are cited in the text. But it is impossible,

with regard to many points, to say to whom one is indebted, or most

indebted, since much that one reads is so assimilated into one's

organized thought, and changed in the process of assimilation, that its

source and original form are no longer remembered. Besides this, much is

always owed to personal influence and argument, and also to indefinite

and minute forces whose workings it is impossible to trace. The growth

of thought is, like any other growth, by imperceptible degrees and

infinitesimal increments, and we breathe in ideas from our mental

atmosphere as we breathe in perfumes or infections from our physical

atmosphere. It is, of course, unnecessary to mention Mr. Spencer's name

in this connection, since it goes without saying, that every one who

writes on Ethics in their relation to the Theory of Evolution must owe

much to him, even where he differs from him. But there is perhaps one

name which it is fitting that I should mention here, since the influence

of its bearer on my work, although one for which I have reason to feel

peculiarly indebted, is not of a nature to determine its mention in

connection with any particular theory. I refer to my first teacher of

Philosophy, Professor M. Stuart Phelps, now deceased, whose life and

labor all those who had the privilege of sharing his instruction and

benefiting by his kindness must ever hold in grateful remembrance.

CONTENTS

PART I

PAGES

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1-2

DARWIN 2-12

WALLACE 12-23

HAECKEL 23-28

SPENCER 28-76

FISKE 77-82

ROLPH 82-107

BARRATT 107-120

STEPHEN 120-143

CARNERI 143-175

HOeFFDING 175-200

GIZYCKI 200-224

ALEXANDER 225-263

(REE) 264-268

PART II

INTRODUCTION

Refutation of _a priori_ objections to Evolutional Ethics, and a

statement of reasons for supposing that an application of the

theory of Evolution to Ethics must be of use 269-276

CHAPTER I

THE CONCEPTS OF EVOLUTION

Extension of the meaning of Darwinian concepts since

Darwin--Lewes on the Struggle for Existence as internal--The

mystery of "Variation" according to Darwin not a metaphysical

mystery, but one of the incompleteness of scientific

knowledge--Rolph's criticism of the Darwinian conception of the

Struggle for Existence criticised--General classification of the

theories of Evolution--Fechner's theory of the Tendency to

Stability--Petzoldt on Fechner--Petzoldt's concepts of Tendency

and Competition--Zoellner and Du Prel--Examination of the concept

of Absolute Stability, and of a full stability of the universe,

in the light of the question as to the finite or infinite

character of the material universe--Periodicity in

Organisms--Criticism of the concepts of Cause and

Effect--Criticism of Spencer's definition of Life--The concepts

of Heredity and Adaptation--The point of dispute with regard to

Variation--Darwin, Haeckel, and Eimer with regard to the

inheritance of individual acquirements--Criticisms of

Weismann--Habit in the life of the individual--Advantage of the

method pursued by Avenarius in the "Kritik der reinen

Erfahrung"--Lamarck on the relation of Use and Function--Darwin

on Habit and Instinct--Function and Tendency to

Function--Relation of organism and environment--Theory of a

special vital force--The relation of exercise to strength of

Tendency--The concepts of Cause and Effect as applied to

organism and environment--Relation of primary tendency to

later-evolved function--Form and Function--The mixture of types

in sexual propagation--Summary of conclusions 277-306

CHAPTER II

INTELLIGENCE AND "END"

The question as to the extent to which Reason is diffused in the

universe--Darwin and Haeckel on Reason and Instinct--Du Prel on

Reason as a fundamental property of all matter--Carneri on the

automatism of animals--The dependence of theories on this

question on the starting-point assumed in the

argument--Difficulties of assigning a limit-line to

Reason--Schneider's criteria--Insectivorous plants--Knight,

Darwin, etc., on the movements of plants--Race-habits--So-called

reflex-action in man--From non-analogy no inference

possible--Arbitrary nature of the assumptions involved in the

two starting-points of query--Reason = Cause or Effect?--Further

criticism of the concepts of Cause and Effect--The bias of the

specialist--Attempted definition of the province of

reason--Definition of "End"--Unreliability of inference as to

the nature of ends in other individuals; in other

species--Possible inferences from the analogy of the nervous

system--Certain possible limiting assumptions as to the province

of knowledge in animal species--The Law of the Variation of

Pain and Pleasure in function--The ultimate

dilemma--Examinations of Teleological conceptions with respect

to the Tendency to Stability--Criticism of Wallace on the Origin

of Life, or of Consciousness--Summary of conclusions 307-340

CHAPTER III

THE WILL

Difficulties of definition--The Will and

Consciousness--"Involuntary" action--Will in passivity--The

concept of Choice--"Ends" and the Will--The Future and Will--The

External and Will--Criticism of Barratt's axioms and

propositions--Discussion of the relation of Thought and Feeling

to Will--The argument of the Physiologist--The argument of the

Evolutionist--The argument from social statistics--The argument

from Psychiatry, Criminology, etc.--The argument from the

psychological principles on which Evolutional Ethics is

founded--Definition of Natural Law and Necessity--The positive

factors of Evolution--The positive and active character of the

organism as the result of evolution--The equivalence of

Conditions and Results--The positive character of the organism

as a part of Nature--The sense of Freedom as the sense of

Activity--The theory of the Will as determined by Motives--As

determined by Feeling--As determined by the desirability of the

end or object--The argument of Concomitance and that of Sequence

as used by both Materialist and Spiritualist--The endeavor to

prove (1) the causal character of physiological process; (2) the

causal character of Consciousness--Inconsistencies of these

attempts 341-359

CHAPTER IV

THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THOUGHT, FEELING, AND WILL IN EVOLUTION

Hume on Reason and Passion--The constant connection of Thought

with Feeling, and with Feeling as pleasure or pain--The question

as to whether Thought or Feeling is primary--Application of

answer to previous considerations on the diffusion of

Consciousness in Nature--The relation of the concepts of the

Pleasurable and Painful to the concept of "End"--Will as a

constant accompaniment of Consciousness--Absurdities to which

the division of Consciousness into distinct faculties leads--Law

of the growth of functional tendency and of pleasure in

function--The New as a disturber of equilibrium--The pleasure

involved in the overcoming of obstacles--The equilibrium of

function as Health--Connection of the pleasure of food-taking

with Health--Criticism of Rolph's principle of the Insatiability

of Life--Further criticism of Rolph on the Darwinian theory of

Growth--The cooerdinate progress of physiological adaptation with

the advancement of knowledge, and with the variation of Feeling

and Will--The pleasure of the strongest motive as relative, not

absolute--The character of the End in view--The pleasure of

anticipation and the pleasure of the event--Criticism of

Sidgwick on Hedonism--Criticism of Rolph's theory of Want as

universal motive--Suicide--Rest--The diminution of pain with

lapse of time as adaptation--Pleasure in pain as pleasure in

function--The relation of Health to Happiness--The theory of the

absolute Freedom of Feeling--The concepts of Cause and Effect as

applied to the evolution of Thought, Feeling, and

Will--Application of conclusions to the Teleological Argument 360-382

CHAPTER V

EGOISM AND ALTRUISM IN EVOLUTION

Prototypes in other animal species of what we term Egoism and

Altruism in man; care for the young on the part of the

parent-animal; mutual aid between the sexes; animal

societies--Experiments of Lubbock showing the irregularity and

caprice of action altruistic in form, among the ants--Benno

Scheitz on maternal care among lower species--Answers to the

argument of automatism--Dependence of a theory of moral

Evolution on the definition of Egoism and Altruism--The

significance of the terms progressive--The possibility of

differences in the form of the evolution of Altruism, in

different species--The possibility of the combination of

different forms in the evolution of a single species--Discussion

of the question of the first beginning of action prompted by

altruistic motive--The argument of the illogical nature of a

supposed development of Altruism from Egoism--The question as to

whether Health, the Preservation of Species, or Pleasure, is the

actual final end of action--The question of Heredity in relation

to that of the moral evolution--Stephen's views--Arguments from

Ribot, Dugdale's "Jukes," etc. 383-422

CHAPTER VI

CONSCIENCE

The gradual character of the evolution of Altruism--Paul

Friedmann on the genesis of benevolence--The observable growth

of Altruism from Egoism in the individual--Human society as

necessitated by increase of the species--Criticism of Darwin's

form of statement on this point--The mixed character of the

motives which lead to advancement--The necessity of evolution,

primal organisms once having come into existence--General

features of the moral evolution in the human race--Personal and

Social Virtues--Racial evolution as subordinate to the evolution

of the species--Criticism of Stephen--The theory of the

connection of Intelligence and Morality--Testimony of Maudsley,

Lombroso, Dugdale--The advantages of conformity to social

standards--Definition of "advantage"--Arguments from the general

direction of social advancement--The direction of evolution in

the race as a whole and in the individual not always the

same--Conclusion: the connection of Intelligence with Morality

not invariable--Definition of Morality--Identification of

Morality with Justice--Special rules of morality--Morality as

inward--The virtue of Truthfulness--Necessity of individual

sacrifice--Dependence of Justice on certain general features of

particular circumstances---Definition of Conscience--The mixed

character of remorse--The theory of Conscience as a special

sense--Criticism of Utilitarianism--Criticism of some forms of

reaction against Utilitarianism--The terms "higher" and "lower"

as applied to pleasures and "ends"--The idea of a "return to

Nature"--The objection to Evolutional Ethics on the ground of

degradation--Struggle as an element of virtue--The evolution of

social rewards and punishments--Criticism of the objection to

state-punishment on the ground of Determinism--Morality and the

question of the Transcendental--Conscience in other species--The

contempt for "mere habit"--The concepts of Cause and Effect as

applied to the moral evolution 423-465

CHAPTER VII

THE MORAL PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES AS SHOWN BY HISTORY

The assimilative character of human progress--The character of

our savage ancestors--Greek civilization--The Greek treatment of

children--Of old men--Human sacrifices among the

Greeks--Slaughter of prisoners--Slavery--The Greek attitude

towards the fundamental virtues of trustworthiness--Athenian

Democracy--Roman civilization--Treatment of children--Human

sacrifices--Gladiatorial shows--Slavery--Moral character of the

Middle Ages--Human sacrifice in England before the Roman

conquest--Slave laws--State punishment in England: burning,

hanging, and boiling, quartering and disembowelling--Women under

the criminal law--Blood-money--The classification of

crimes--Caste-favor in English criminal

law--Mutilation--Flaying--Ordeals--Punishment by starvation--The

press--The rack--"Skevington's Daughter"--Benefit of Clergy--The

position of the English churl--The worship of rank--Hanging for

petty theft--The pillory--Brutality of public feeling--Condition

of the prisons--Jail-breaking, bribery, etc.--More concerning

women under the law--Favor to rank--The logical consistency of

human character in its various directions of action--General

comparison of the past with the present--The evidence of

literature--Modern philanthropy--Decrease of national

prejudices--Growth of the democratic spirit--Lack of imagination

a reason for the failure to realize the evils of the past--The

Golden Age of Man 466-499

CHAPTER VIII

THE RESULTS OF ETHICAL INQUIRY ON AN EVOLUTIONAL BASIS

Criticism of Alexander's theory of the right as always absolute

right and as the expression, on all planes of development, of an

equal equilibrium--The Moral Evolution as one involving the

whole of humanity and the whole earth--Gradual relaxation of the

Struggle for Existence--The final limitation of the increase in

density of population--The increase of vitality--The habituation

to progress--The gradual cooerdination of individual with social

welfare through (1) Spread and increase of sympathy with the

individual on the part of society as a whole; (2) Growth of

individual predilections in the direction of harmony with social

requirements--Decrease of punishment through (1) Increase in

general sympathy; (2) Increase of amenability of the individual

to influence--Increase of pleasure in pleasure--The possible

egoistic element in sympathy with pain--Criticism of Rolph on

Want as necessary to induce action--The moral evolution and

emotion--Criticism of Spencer on Altruism--Criticism of Wundt on

Evolutional Ethics--The theory that Evolution adds nothing to

Ethics--Criticism of Stephen on the impossibility of predicting

the course of Evolution--The Moral Evolution as willed--The

motives furnished by Evolutional Ethics--The theological

doctrine of a "change of heart"--The doctrine of the

Atonement--Divine forgiveness--Theology and social evils--The

prominence of the idea of self-salvation in Christian

doctrine--Human sacrifice among the Jews--Biblical authority for

the killing of witches and heretics--The infliction of death for

ceremonial offences among the Jews--The visiting of the sins of

the fathers upon the children--Slave-holding, adultery, murder,

etc., by God's chosen, bloodshed and cruelty of all sorts by

God's express command--Animal sacrifice among the Jews--The

original idea of Jehovah and of Heaven--The autocracy of the

Jewish priesthood confirmed by Christ--Forced exegesis--The

asceticism of Christianity--Slavery and the New

Testament--Predestination, Hell, and the Justification of the

Elect--The defence of Christianity as being a comforting

belief 500-528

CHAPTER IX

THE IDEAL AND THE WAY OF ITS ATTAINMENT

Criticism of Stephen's assertion that the ideal cannot be

determined--The necessity of the choice between evils, under

present social conditions--The argument for individual

gratification of "natural desire"--Dangers of

Utilitarianism--Moral right of the minority and the ethical

demand for compensation to the minority--The contest between

Individualist and Socialist--Criticism of Spencer on personal

vice--Individualistic errors--Socialistic pessimism--The idea of

a "return to Nature"--The Socialistic glorification of the

laborer--The agitation against machinery--The agitation against

luxury--The abolition of luxury and the population question--The

proposed change of social "environment"--Socialism at the

present date--Arbitrary character of many Socialistic

ideas--Criticisms of Bellamy--The idea of a

Revolution--Conclusions--The education of the child--The right

of the child to state protection--The advantages of parental

control--The education of women--The question of

prostitution--Monogamy or polygamy?--Temporary

contracts--Divorce--The argument that the freedom of women must

involve the forfeiture of chivalric feeling in men--The respect

for age--Desirable changes in criminal law--Criticism of Bellamy

on Crime--The question of Capital Punishment--Arguments

for--Arguments against--Conclusions--The conflict between

justice and mercy--The supreme arbiter--The courage of Moral

Sincerity--Heroic characters--The final destruction of the human

species--The loss of belief in personal immortality--The human

and earthly ideal 529-581

A REVIEW OF EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS

PART I

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

In the preface to the latest edition of his "Natuerliche

Schoepfungsgeschichte," Haeckel, writing of recent developments of

thought on the subject of evolution, and the change of attitude

observable in our later literature, says: "The vast mass of literature,

yearly increasing in astonishing measure, on the theory of evolution in

its various branches, best illustrates the remarkable change which

public opinion has undergone. Twenty years ago, the greater part of this

literature was in opposition to Darwin; to-day such opposition is not to

be feared from well-informed students of science. On the other hand,

almost the whole literature of biology now gives testimony in Darwin's

favor, for almost all zooelogical, and botanical, anatomic, and

ontogenetic works are founded upon the principles of the development of

species, and derive from Darwin their best and most fruitful ideas."

No science is a better exponent of this radical and important change

than that which has to do with the principles of morals; for by no

science was the theory of evolution assailed, in the beginning, with

more vehemence and indefatigability. Not only did the zealous adherents

of Christian dogma fear to find, in the destruction of all distinct

barriers between the different forms of animal life, a ground for the

denial of God's especial favor to man, and the worshippers of emotional

morals become indignant at the unveiling of the divine Mystic (as if

only ignorance were reverence, and only the Unknown worthy of homage),

but even the less conservative schools of philosophy often showed

themselves unfavorable or hesitant towards the new ideas, dreading their

implications. All this is changed. If England's most popular living

philosopher was among the first to declare himself for Darwin, and to

revise his whole system in accordance with the theory of evolution, so

that this theory early began to find adherents among students of

philosophy in all lands where English is spoken, it was not long before

the newer schools of France and Germany began to follow in their wake.

Now every year, and almost every month, brings with it a fresh supply of

books, pamphlets, and magazine articles on "The Evolution of Morality,"

"L'Evolution de la Morale," "Die Evolution der Sittlichkeit,"

"Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus," etc. So many are the waters which now

pour themselves into this common stream that the current threatens soon

to become too deep and swift for any but the most expert swimmers.

In a short review of Evolutional Ethics, it will be impossible to

consider all the literature that has added to our knowledge on this

subject; we must confine ourselves to the few books that are most

prominent. The first laborer in this line, not only indirectly through

general theory, but also directly through particular theory, is, as

usual, Charles Darwin; and though Darwin was himself no psychologist,

and moreover advances his ideas on the origin and development of morals

only in the tentative manner that necessarily attaches to a first

attempt when made by so conscientious a thinker, he doubtless suggested

to all other writers in this field a very large part of that which was

best in their work. A Review of Evolutional Ethics must, therefore, in

order to start with the proper origin of the science, begin with

CHARLES DARWIN

In the essay on "Instinct" appended to G. J. Romanes' "Mental Evolution

in Animals,"[1] Darwin says: "The social instinct is indispensable to

some animals, useful to still more, and apparently only pleasant to some

few animals." The social tendency being thus classed as an instinct, it

belongs to our work to examine what are Darwin's theories as to the

origin and nature of instinct.

In the chapter on "Instinct," in "The Origin of Species," Darwin

premises: "I have nothing to do with the origin of the mental powers,

any more than I have with that of life itself."[2] Again: "Frederick

Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians have compared instinct

with habit. This comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion of the

frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but not

necessarily of its origin.... If we suppose any habitual action to

become inherited--and it can be shown that this does sometimes

happen--then the resemblance between what originally was a habit and an

instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished.... But it would be

a serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have

been acquired by habit in one generation, and then transmitted by

inheritance to succeeding generations. It can be clearly shown that the

most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of

the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been acquired by

habit."[3] Of one of the habits of these last-named insects Darwin,

however, writes: "I have not rarely felt that small and trifling

instincts were a greater difficulty on our theory than those which have

so justly excited the wonder of mankind; for an instinct, if really of

no considerable importance in the struggle for life, could not be

modified or formed through natural selection. Perhaps as striking an

instance as can be given is that of the workers of the hive-bee arranged

in files and ventilating, by a peculiar movement of their wings, the

well-closed hive: this ventilation has been artificially imitated, and

as it is carried on even during winter, there can be no doubt that it is

to bring in free air and displace the carbonic acid gas; therefore _it

is in truth indispensable, and we may imagine the stages_--a few bees

first going to the orifice to fan themselves--_by which the instinct

might have been arrived at_."[4] Again: "Glancing at instincts,

marvellous as some are, they offer no greater difficulty than do

corporeal structures on the theory of the natural selection of

successive slight, but profitable modifications. We can thus understand

why nature moves by graduated steps in endowing different animals of

the same class with their several instincts."[5] And again: "As I

believe, the most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the

hive-bee, can be explained by natural selection having taken advantage

of numerous successive, slight modifications of simpler instincts,

natural selection having, by slow degrees, more and more perfectly led

the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a

double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of

intersection; the bees, of course, no more knowing that they swept their

spheres at one particular distance from each other, than they know what

are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and of the basal rhombic

plates; the motive power of the process of natural selection having been

the construction of cells of due strength and of the proper size and

shape for the larvae, this being effected with the greatest possible

economy of labor and wax; that individual swarm which thus made the best

cells with least labor, and least waste of honey in the secretion of

wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted their newly acquired

economical instincts to new swarms, which in their turn will have had

the best chance of succeeding in the struggle for existence."[6] And

further, of instinct in general: "It will be universally admitted that

instincts are as important as corporeal structures for the welfare of

each species, under its present conditions of life. Under changed

conditions of life, it is at least possible that slight modifications of

instinct might be profitable to a species; and if it can be shown that

instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in

natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of

instinct to any extent that was profitable. It is thus, as I believe,

that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have originated. As

modifications of corporeal structure arise from, and are increased by,

use or habit, and are diminished or lost by disuse, so I do not doubt it

has been with instincts"; though Darwin adds: "But I believe that the

effects of habit are in many cases of subordinate importance to the

effects of the natural selection of what may be called spontaneous

variations of instincts; that is, of variations produced by the same

unknown causes which produce slight deviations of bodily structure."

However, "No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural

selection, except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous

slight, yet profitable, variations."[7] And of habit as connected with

heredity, Darwin writes: "Changed habits produce an inherited effect, as

in the period of the flowering of plants when transported from one

climate to another. With animals the increased use or disuse of parts

has had a more marked influence.... No breeder doubts how strong is the

tendency to inheritance; that like produces like is his fundamental

belief; doubts have been thrown on this principle only by theoretical

writers.... If strange and rare deviations of structure are really

inherited, less strange and commoner deviations may be freely admitted

to be inheritable. Perhaps the correct way of viewing the whole subject

would be to look at the inheritance of every character whatever as the

rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly.... If it could be shown that

our domestic varieties manifested a strong tendency to reversion--that

is, to lose their acquired characters whilst kept under the same

conditions, and whilst kept in a considerable body, so that free

intercrossing might check, by blending together, any slight deviations

in their structure, in such case I grant that we could deduce nothing

from domestic varieties in regard to species. But there is not a shadow

of evidence in favor of this view; to assert that we could not breed our

cart and race horses, long and short horned cattle, and poultry of

various breeds, and esculent vegetables, for an unlimited number of

generations, would be opposed to all experience."[8] Darwin recognizes,

in instinct, the possibility for the play of a certain amount of

imitation, as also of intelligence and experience,[9] though denying to

these the range attributed to them by Wallace. And summing up his theory

in the essay given by Romanes, he writes: "It may not be logical, but to

my imagination it is far more satisfactory, to look at the young cuckoo

ejecting his foster brothers, ants making slaves, the larvae of the

ichneumidae feeding within the live bodies of their prey, cats playing

with mice, otters and cormorants with living fish, not as instincts

specially given by the Creator, but as very small parts of one general

law leading to the advancement of all organic bodies--Multiply, Vary,

let the strongest Live and the weakest Die."

It will thus be seen that Darwin, while confessing a disability to

account for the origin of _Instinct_,--beginning with some form of

instinct as already existent, just as he begins with life as already

existent,--does advance some perfectly definite views as to the probable

origins of _instincts_,--namely, preservation, in the struggle for

existence, of numerous slight but profitable variations. The assertion

of the inadequacy of habit to account for the origin of more complex

instincts, as in the case of the hive-bees, when compared with the

subsequent explanation, in the same connection, of the rise of these

very instincts partly by habit acquired from experience and imitation,

partly by accidental modifications of simpler instincts, both taken

advantage of by natural selection,--would seem to limit the term

"habit," as here used, to modes of action acquired during the life of

the individual; this interpretation of the word being confirmed by the

additional phrase "in one generation." But here, as everywhere in

Darwin's work, an unknown quantity appears--namely, the cause of

variation; _i.e._ of the differences, or tendency to differ, of

offspring, from the parental type.

In "The Descent of Man," published twelve years later than "The Origin

of Species," and "The Variation of Plants and Animals under

Domestication," which appeared yet three years later, Darwin's views on

instinct and habit are still further elaborated, and a definition of the

relation of these to reason, pleasure, pain, and the moral sense,

attempted. In Vol. I. of the former work, Darwin devotes two chapters to

these subjects. Instinct he calls, pages 116-122, "inherited habit"; and

on page 168 he says: "But as love, sympathy, and self-command became

strengthened by habit, and as the power of reasoning becomes clearer, so

that man can value justly the judgments of his fellows, he will feel

himself impelled, apart from any transitory pleasure or pain, to certain

lines of conduct." Here, I take it, the word "habit" cannot be

interpreted as referring to one generation of men, but to the race as a

whole, a general continuity being thus ascribed to the inheritance of

mental characteristics, and the important concept of progress as

adaptation acquired. In contrasting reason with instinct, Darwin thinks

that instinct and intelligence do not, as Cuvier maintained, stand in

inverse ratio to each other, but that a high degree of intelligence is

compatible with complex instincts--as in the case of the beaver; "yet it

is not improbable that there is a certain amount of interference

between the development of free intelligence and of instinct,--which

latter implies some inherited modification of the brain. Little is known

about the functions of the brain, but we can perceive that, as the

intellectual powers become highly developed, the various parts of the

brain must be connected by very intricate channels of the freest

intercommunication; and as a consequence, each separate part would

perhaps tend to be less well fitted to answer to particular

sensations or associations in a definite and inherited--that is,

instinctive--manner. There seems even to exist some relation between a

low degree of intelligence and a strong tendency to the formation of

fixed, though not inherited habits; for, as a sagacious physician

remarked to me, persons who are slightly imbecile tend to act in

everything by routine or habit; and they are rendered much happier if

this is encouraged."[10] Darwin thinks instinctive action and action

from habit may not be connected with either pleasure or pain, though he

would seem to contradict this view in the latter part of the passage

just quoted, and again where he says: "Although a habit may be blindly

and implicitly followed, independently of any pleasure or pain felt at

the moment, yet if it be forcibly and abruptly checked, a vague sense of

dissatisfaction is generally experienced."[11]

In writing of the social instinct, Darwin begins with it as already

existent, and seems, moreover, to maintain concerning it a theory of

purpose elsewhere denied in his works and, indeed, antagonistic to the

whole principle of the struggle for existence. He says: "It has often

been assumed that animals were in the first place rendered social, and

that they feel, as a consequence, uncomfortable when separated from each

other, and comfortable whilst together; but it is a more probable view

that these sensations were first developed, _in order that_ those

animals which would profit by living in society, _should be induced to

live together_, in the same manner as the sense of hunger and the

pleasure of eating were, no doubt, first acquired, in order to induce

animals to eat."[12] If it were not for the expressions "should be

induced" and "to induce," the words "in order that," taken in connection

with what follows, might be interpreted as referring to mere sequence of

time, as, on page 199, where Darwin refers to the "social faculties"

simply as antecedent to society, they evidently do. For he says: "In

order that primeval man, or the ape-like progenitors of man, should

become social, they must have acquired the same instinctive feelings

which induce other animals to live in a body." The sentences referred to

which follow the first quotation are as follows: "The feeling of

pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental or filial

affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young

remaining for a long time with their parents; and this extension may be

attributed in part to habit, but chiefly to natural selection. With

those animals which were benefited by living in close association, the

individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society would best

escape various dangers, whilst those that cared least for their

comrades, and lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers. With

respect to the origin of the parental and filial affections, which

apparently lie at the base of the social instincts, we know not the

steps by which they have been gained; but we may infer that it has been

to a large extent through natural selection." The passage may possibly

be consistently explained by the idea of the Survival of the Fittest,

but it is at least very unclear in its wording. At the beginning of

Chapter IV. of the same book, Darwin also gives a synopsis of the

development of the moral sense from the social instincts, through the

pleasure of association and service, remorse being a result of the power

of representation, regard for the approbation and disapprobation of

fellows arising from sympathy with them until resulting habit plays a

very important part in guiding the conduct of the individual. Another

passage, however, again introduces an antagonism between habit,

instinct, and reason, and natural selection: "It is impossible to decide

in many cases whether certain social instincts have been acquired

through natural selection, or are the indirect result of other instincts

and faculties, such as sympathy, reason, experience, and a tendency to

imitation; or again, whether they are simply the result of

long-continued habit." Darwin distinguishes between "the all-important

emotion of sympathy," and that of love. "A mother may passionately love

her sleeping and passive infant, but she can hardly at such times be

said to feel sympathy for it"; but he includes both love and sympathy

under the head of "sympathetic emotions"; and on page 163 he says: "With

mankind, selfishness, experience, and imitation probably add, as Mr.

Bain has shown, to the power of sympathy; for we are led by the hope of

receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to

others; and sympathy is much strengthened by habit." Again, on page 166,

"instinctive love and sympathy" would seem to be contrasted with love

and sympathy as habit, the increase of such feelings in the race through

habit, elsewhere more or less distinctly asserted, being here ignored:

"Although man, as he now exists, has few special instincts, having lost

any which his early progenitors may have possessed, this is no reason

why he should not have retained, from an extremely remote period, some

degree of instinctive love and sympathy for his fellows. We are, indeed,

all conscious that we do possess such sympathetic feelings; but our

consciousness does not tell us whether they are instinctive, having

originated long ago in the same manner as with the lower animals, or

whether they have been acquired by each of us during our early years."

But again, on page 220, sympathy is referred to as an element of the

social instincts:[13] "It should, however, be borne in mind that the

enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the

approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is

founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally

developed through natural selection as one of the most important

elements of the social instincts"; though, on pages 167, 168, the social

instinct is again contrasted with sympathy, since according to Darwin

the desire for the approbation of others and the consequent yielding to

their wishes is the result of sympathy: "Thus the social instincts,

which must have been acquired by man in a very rude state, and probably

even by his early ape-like progenitors, still give the impulse to some

of his best actions; but his actions are in a higher degree determined

by the expressed wishes and judgments of his fellow-men." Again the

social and the maternal instincts and sympathy are identified and

classed as under the dominion of the moral sense, pages 168-170: "It is

evident, in the first place, that with mankind the instinctive impulses

have different degrees of strength; a savage, will risk his own life to

save that of a member of the same community, but will be wholly

indifferent about a stranger; a young and timid mother urged by the

maternal instinct will, without a moment's hesitation, run the greatest

danger for her own infant, but not for a mere fellow-creature.

Nevertheless, many a civilized man, or even boy, who never before risked

his life for another, but full of courage and sympathy, has disregarded

the instinct of self-preservation, and plunged at once into a torrent to

save a drowning man, though a stranger.... Such actions as the above

appear to be the simple result of the greater strength of the social or

maternal instincts than that of any other instinct or motive; for they

are performed too instantaneously for reflection, or for pleasure or

pain to be felt at the time; though, if prevented by any cause, distress

or even misery might be felt.... I am aware that some persons maintain

that actions performed impulsively, as in the above cases, do not come

under the dominion of the moral sense, and cannot be called moral.... On

the contrary, we all feel that an act cannot be considered as perfect or

as performed in the most noble manner, unless it be done impulsively,

without deliberation or effort, in the same manner as by a man in whom

the requisite qualities are innate." Darwin defines the office of the

moral sense as "telling us what to do,"[14] that of conscience,--which

includes remorse, repentance, regret or shame, fear of the gods and of

the disapprobation of men,--as reproving us if we disobey it;[15]

conscience seems elsewhere to be defined as concerned with resolve to

better future action; and in still another passage, the moral sense and

conscience are identified. But again, in another paragraph, Darwin seems

to ascribe remorse or regret, not to the baulking of an instinct, but to

a _judgment_ of having been baulked: "A man cannot prevent past

impressions often repassing through his mind; he will thus be driven to

make a comparison between the impressions of past hunger, vengeance

satisfied, or danger shunned at other men's cost, with the almost

ever-present instinct of sympathy, and with his early knowledge of what

others consider as praiseworthy or blamable. This knowledge cannot be

banished from his mind, and from instinctive sympathy is esteemed of

great moment. He will then feel as if he had been baulked in following a

present instinct or habit, and this with all animals causes

dissatisfaction, or even misery."[16] But, in spite of all

indefiniteness in the use of terms and uncertainty as to the

interrelations of "the social instincts," sympathy, reason, pleasure,

and the moral sense, it is, after all, comparatively easy to gather,

after a little deeper study, the general and more important features of

Darwin's theory as to the origin of morality. We may state these as

follows: The social instinct led men or their ape-like progenitors to

society,[17] this instinct growing out of the parental or filial

affections through habit and natural selection. Virtue is, at first,

only tribal.[18] The social qualities of sympathy, fidelity, and courage

implied in mutual aid and defence, were no doubt acquired by man through

the same means. "When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same

country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the

one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic, and

faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to

aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer

the other.... Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and

without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above

qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes; but in the

course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn

overcome by some other tribe still more highly endowed. Thus the social

and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused

throughout the world." Though in a warlike state, where courage is

especially necessary to tribal existence, the bravest men would perish

in larger numbers than other men, and the survival of the unfittest

would seem thus to be secured, the influence of their bravery on others

might excite the latter to imitation and do far more good than the

begetting of offspring who would inherit their bravery. So, also, pity,

though inciting modern society to the preservation of the weak, yet is

useful in that it cultivates sympathy; and so, too, wealth, affording

leisure for intellectual pursuits and a wider choice in marriage, tends,

in the end, to the preservation of the fittest morally, by direct or

indirect means.[19] Altruistic action, followed from selfish motives,

may become habit; habits of benevolence certainly strengthen the feeling

of sympathy; and "habits followed during many generations probably tend

to be inherited." Furthermore, melancholy tends often to suicide, as

violence, and quarrelsomeness to a bloody end, intemperance to the

destruction of individual life, and profligacy to disease and sterility;

so that some elimination of the worst dispositions takes place. These

are some of the probable steps of advancement, though the process is

too complex to be clearly followed out. The approbation of

others--the strengthening of sympathies by habit--example and

imitation--reason--experience and even self-interest--instruction during

youth, and religious feelings--are the causes which lead to the

advancement of morality.[20] In the paragraph just quoted, Darwin says:

"With civilized nations, as far as an advanced standard of morality and

an increased number of fairly good men are concerned, natural selection

apparently effects but little, though the fundamental social instincts

were originally thus gained"; but he later writes: "Judging from all

that we know of man and the lower animals, there has always been

sufficient variability in their intellectual and moral faculties for a

steady advance through natural selection"; and he further says: "No

doubt such advance demands many favorable concurrent circumstances; but

it may well be doubted whether the most favorable would have sufficed,

had not the rate of increase been rapid, and the consequent struggle for

existence extremely severe."[21] The end or aim of morality is the

general good, rather than the general happiness, though "no doubt the

welfare and the happiness of the individual usually coincide; and a

contented, happy tribe will flourish better than one that is

discontented and unhappy.... As all wish for happiness, the 'greatest

happiness principle' will have become a most important secondary guide

and object; the social instinct, however, together with sympathy (which

leads to our regarding the approbation and disapprobation of others),

having served as the primary impulse and guide."[22] And with regard to

the future, Darwin says: "Looking to future generations, there is no

cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may

expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed

by inheritance. In this case the struggle between our higher and lower

impulses will be less severe, and virtue will be triumphant."[23]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] P. 381. This essay originally formed part of the chapter on

"Instinct" in "The Origin of Species," but was omitted for the sake of

condensation.

[2] Vol. I. p. 319.

[3] Pp. 320, 321.

[4] Appendix to "Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 378, 379. The italics

are my own.

[5] "The Origin of Species," II. p. 286.

[6] Ibid. I. pp. 353, 354.

[7] "The Origin of Species," I. pp. 321, 322.

[8] Ibid. I. pp. 12-17.

[9] Appendix to "Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 370, 383; see also

"The Descent of Man," I. p. 102 _et seq._; and "Nature" for Feb. 13,

1873, introduction to a letter to the editor from William Higginson.

[10] P. 103.

[11] Pp. 160, 161.

[12] P. 161.

[13] See also p. 171. And, p. 172, sympathy is designated as "a

fundamental element of the social instincts."

[14] P. 178.

[15] Pp. 174, 178.

[16] P. 173.

[17] "Descent of Man," I. p. 199, etc.

[18] Ibid. p. 179.

[19] Ibid. pp. 199-209.

[20] Ibid. p. 212.

[21] Ibid. pp. 219, 220.

[22] Ibid. p. 185.

[23] Ibid. p. 192.

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE

"Whatever we may define instinct to be, it is evidently some form of

mental manifestation," says Wallace in his "Contributions to Natural

Selection" (1871). We know little of the senses of animals; some animals

may even possess senses which we have not, and by which stores of

knowledge of the outside world may be opened that are closed to us. We

do not know certainly, for instance, what is the office of the little

stalked balls that are the sole remnants of hind wings in flies, or what

is the office of the third joints of the antennae in the same insects,

though both these evidently correspond to some sense. How can we pretend

to fathom the profound mystery of the mental nature of animals, and

decide what or how much they can perceive or remember, reason or

reflect? Defining instinct, then, as "the performance by an animal of

complex acts, absolutely without instruction," Wallace refuses to accept

the theory of such action, in any case where all other modes of

explanation have not been exhausted; for "a point which can be proved

should not be assumed, and a totally unknown power should not be brought

in to explain facts, when known powers may be sufficient." He maintains

that there is a possibility, for instance, of the instruction of young

birds by old in the art of nest-building. It is quite likely that birds

remember the form, size, position, and materials of the nest in which

they were hatched, as it is also probable that young birds often pair

with old ones who have experience in nest-building. Man's architecture

is also chiefly imitative. "Birds brought up from the egg in cages do

not make the characteristic nest of their species, even though the

proper materials are supplied them, and often make no nest at all, but

rudely heap together a quantity of materials." "No one has ever yet

obtained the eggs of some bird which builds an elaborate nest, hatched

those eggs by steam or under quite a distinct parent, placed them

afterwards in an extensive aviary or covered garden, where the situation

and the materials of a nest similar to that of the parent-birds may be

found, and then seen what kind of nest these birds would build. If under

these rigorous conditions they choose the same materials, the same

situation, and construct the nest in the same way and as perfectly as

their parents did, instinct would be proved in their case; now it is

only assumed.... So no one has ever carefully taken the pupae of a hive

of bees out of the comb, removed them from the presence of other bees,

and loosed them in a large conservatory with plenty of flowers and food,

and observed what kind of cells they would construct. But till this is

done no one can say that, with every new swarm there are no bees older

than those of the same year, who may be the teachers in forming the new

comb."[24] "Young birds never have the song peculiar to their species

if they have not heard it, whereas they acquire very easily the song of

almost any other bird with which they are associated." Moreover, there

are failures and imperfections in the nesting of birds that are not

compatible with the theory of instinct, which is supposed to be

infallible, but are quite so with the theory of intelligence and

imitation. Furthermore, in their manner of building, birds adapt

themselves to circumstances and frequently alter and improve. The theory

of instincts in man is likewise in the wrong. The sucking of the child,

which is said to be instinctive, is merely one of those _simple_ acts

dependent on organization, like breathing or muscular motion. "So

walking is evidently dependent on the arrangement of the bones and

joints, and the pleasurable exertion of the muscles, which lead to the

vertical posture becoming gradually the most agreeable one; and there

can be little doubt that an infant would learn of itself to walk, even

if suckled by a wild beast."

The theory of instinct "implies innate ideas[25] of a very definite

kind, and if established, would overthrow Mr. Mill's Sensationalism and

all the modern philosophy of experience."

The reason why natural selection acts so powerfully upon animals, is to

be found mainly in their individual isolation. "A slight injury, a

temporary illness, will often end in death, because it leaves the

individual powerless against its enemies.... There is, as a rule, no

mutual assistance between adults, which enables them to tide over a

period of sickness. Neither is there any division of labor; each must

fulfil _all_ the conditions of its existence, and therefore natural

selection keeps all up to a pretty uniform standard." But in man as we

now behold him, this is different. He is social and sympathetic; and in

society, a division of labor takes place that leaves the physically

defective still something to do by which he may sustain life, and saves

him from the extreme penalty which falls upon animals so defective. By

his skill in constructing for himself tools and clothing and in planting

his own food, man has an immense advantage over the animals, in whom a

change of structure must take place in adaptation to changed conditions.

Moreover, he not only escapes natural selection himself, but "is

actually able to take away some of that power from nature, which, before

his appearance, she universally exercised," establishing so his

supremacy by means of that subtle force we term mind. "We can anticipate

the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic

animals, when man's selection shall have supplanted natural selection."

We must, in future geological study, trace back the gradually decreasing

brain of former races to a time when the body as well begins materially

to differ, if we would wish to reach the starting-point of the human

family. Before that time man had not mind enough to preserve his body

from change. From this point, however, we shall probably see that, while

all other forms of animal life changed again and again, man's physical

character became fixed and almost immutable, advance taking place only

in his mental and moral characteristics, with which are united

modifications of the brain, as well as of the head and face, parts that

are immediately connected with the brain and the medium of the most

refined emotions. By man's superior sympathetic and moral feelings, he

becomes fitted for the social state. There is one feature, however, in

which natural selection will still act upon him--namely, the color of

the skin, which, as Mr. Darwin has shown, is correlated with

constitutional peculiarities, liability to certain diseases being often

accompanied by marked external characteristics; so that, in certain

countries, certain tints would be likely to be weeded out, and certain

other tints, with which, again, color and texture of the hair seem to be

associated, would be established by natural selection.

Natural selection has no power "to produce modifications which are in

any degree injurious to their possessor, and Mr. Darwin uses the strong

expression that a single case of this kind would be fatal to his theory.

If, therefore, we find in man any characters which all the evidence we

can obtain goes to show would have been actually injurious to him on

their first appearance, they could not possibly have been produced by

natural selection. Neither could any specially developed organ have been

so produced if it had been merely useless to its possessor, or if its

use were not proportionate to its degree of development. Such cases as

these would prove that some other law, or some other power, than natural

selection, had been at work. But if, further, we could see that these

very modifications, though hurtful or useless at the time when they

first appeared, became in the highest degree useful at a much later

period, and are essential to the full moral and intellectual development

of human nature, we should then infer the action of mind, foreseeing the

future and preparing for it, just as surely as we do when we see the

breeder set himself to work with the determination to produce a definite

improvement in some cultivated plant or domestic animal"; we should

infer a creation by law. Skull-measurement shows that the brain of the

savage was, and is, larger than it needs to be, and "capable, if

cultivated and developed, of performing work of a degree and kind far

beyond what he ever requires it to do." In evidence of this, Wallace

cites the measurements of Esquimaux skulls and the testimony of Paul

Broca to the fine form and capacity of the skulls of Les Eyzies, a race

of cave-dwellers undoubtedly contemporary with the reindeer in Southern

France.[26] He also argues that the loss, by man, of the hairy covering

so long persistent in the mammalia, cannot have taken place on account

of its lack of usefulness, since even the most savage tribes show a need

of it, endeavoring to replace it by artificial coverings, especially on

the back. This naked skin is, however, of importance to civilization,

since it leads to the adoption of both clothing and houses, and

develops, through the former, the sense of modesty. The loss of the

prehensile character of the whole foot, and especially of the pedal

thumb, is a preparation for civilization. So, too, the capacity of the

human voice for music, of little use to savages, since their singing

consists only in a sort of monotonous howling, must be regarded as a

preparation for the civilized man's delight in music, and probably also

for a higher state than that to which we have yet attained.

Nor can the sanctity which attaches to virtue, even among savages, be

explained by utility or natural selection. The "mystic sense of wrong,"

which, although few laws enforce truth, yet attaches to untruth, even

among whole tribes of utter savages, is an example of such sanctity.

Wallace adds, however, in the same breath: "No very severe reprobation

follows untruth. In all ages, falsehood has been thought venial or even

laudable under certain conditions." He asserts that "the utilitarian

doctrine is not sufficient to account for the development of the moral

sense," but seems, nevertheless, to adopt a utilitarian principle as the

basis of the moral sense when he says: "Where free play is allowed to

the relations between man and man, this feeling [_i.e._ of sanctity]

attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice

which are the products of our affections and sympathies which we term

moral"; and he adds: "while it may be, and often is, perverted to give

the same sanction to acts of narrow and conventional utility which are

really immoral,--as when the Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner

starve than eat unclean food; and looks upon the marriage of adult

females as gross immorality." The explanation of this inconsistency is,

according to Wallace, that the strength of the moral feeling, in any

case, will depend on the individual or racial constitution, and on

education and habit; and the acts to which its sanctions are applied

will depend on the extent of modification of the simple feelings and

affections by custom, law, and religion. If a moral sense is an

essential part of our nature, it is easy to see that its sanction may

often be given to acts which are useless or immoral, just as the natural

appetite for drink is perverted by the drunkard into the means of his

destruction.

These phenomena of the preparation of the human being for civilization

and morality can be explained only on the supposition of a superior

intelligence which has guided man's development in a definite direction,

just as man guides the development of many animal forms. By a superior

intelligence is not necessarily meant the supreme intelligence. The

modern cultivated mind seems incapable of realizing between it and the

Deity other grades of intelligence, which the law of Continuity would,

however, force us to infer: and rejecting first causes for any and every

especial effect in the universe, except in the sense that the action of

any intelligent being is a first cause, we can still conceive that the

development of the essentially human portions of man's structure may

have been, in this sense, "determined by the directing influence of some

higher intelligent beings acting through natural and universal

laws."[27] "It is probable that the true law of this development lies

too deep for our discovery." Wallace quotes, in support of his theory,

some of Professor Tyndall's much-disputed statements,--to the effect

that the chasm between the phenomena of mind and those of brain is

impassable. "To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or

of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no

clear conception. You cannot have in the whole what does not exist in

any of the parts;[28] and those who argue thus should put forth a

precise definition of matter with clearly enumerated properties, and

show that the necessary result of a certain complex arrangement of the

elements or atoms of that matter will be the production of

self-consciousness. There is no escape from the dilemma,--either all

matter is conscious, or consciousness is[29] something distinct from

matter, and in the latter case its presence in material forms is a proof

of the existence of conscious beings outside of, and independent of,

what we term matter.

"The merest rudiment of sensation or self-consciousness is infinitely

removed from absolutely non-sentient or unconscious matter. We can

conceive of no physical addition to, or modification of, an unconscious

mass which should create consciousness, no step in the series of changes

organized matter may undergo, which should bring sensation where there

was no sensation or power of sensation at the preceding step. It is

because the things are utterly incomparable and incommensurable that we

can only conceive of _sensation_ coming to matter from without, while

_life_ may be conceived as merely a specific modification and

cooerdination of the matter and the forces that compose the universe, and

with which we are separately acquainted. We may admit with Professor

Huxley, that _protoplasm_ is the 'matter of life' and the cause of

organization; but we cannot admit or conceive that _protoplasm_ is the

primary source of sensation and consciousness, or that it can ever of

itself become _conscious_ in the same way as we may perhaps conceive

that it may become _alive_."

Wallace then reaches, without further preliminary discussion, the

conclusion that "matter is essentially force" (arguing that we may draw

this conclusion from the preceding considerations); that "matter, as

popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically

inconceivable. When we touch matter, we only really experience

sensations of resistance, implying repulsive force; and no other sense

can give us such apparently solid proofs of the reality of matter as

touch does." Wallace considers it a great step in advance thus "to get

rid of the notion that matter is a thing in itself which can exist _per

se_, and must have been eternal, since it is supposed to be

indestructible and uncreated,--that force, or the forces of nature, are

another thing given or added to matter, or else its necessary

properties,--and that mind is yet another thing, either a product of

this matter and its supposed inherent forces, or distinct from and

co-existent with it"; and to be able to substitute for this theory "the

far simpler and more consistent belief, that matter, as an entity

distinct from force, does not exist; and that FORCE is a product of

MIND."

"If we are satisfied that force or forces are all that exist in the

material universe, we are next led to inquire what is force." We are

acquainted with two kinds of force--our own will-force, and the forces

of nature. Freedom of the will cannot be disproved, for it cannot be

shown that there is not one-thousandth of a grain's difference between

the force exerted by the body and the force derived from without. "If,

therefore, we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our

will, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it

does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be will-force;

and thus, that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but

actually _is_ the _will_ of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme

Intelligence."

But though Wallace declares "natural selection, as the law of the

strongest, inadequate" to account for man's mental and moral

development, since the finer feelings and capacities could have been of

no use to human beings in the early stages of barbarism, and further

maintains that it is also difficult to understand how "feelings

developed by one set of actions could be transferred to acts of which

the utility was partial, imaginary, or altogether absent," he

nevertheless has other passages like the following: "In proportion as

physical characteristics become of less importance, mental and moral

qualities will have increasing influence on the well-being of the race.

Capacity for acting in concert for protection and for the acquisition of

food and shelter; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each

other; the sense of right, which checks depredations upon our fellows;

the smaller development of the combative and destructive propensities,

self-restraint in present appetites; and that intelligent foresight

which prepares for the future, are all qualities that, from their

earliest appearance, must have been for the benefit of each community,

and would, therefore, have become the subjects of natural selection. For

it is evident that such qualities would be for the well-being of man;

would guard him against external enemies, against internal dissensions,

and against the effects of inclement seasons and impending famine, more

surely than could any merely physical modification. Tribes in which such

mental and moral qualities were predominant would therefore have an

advantage over other tribes in which they were less developed, would

live and maintain their numbers, while the others would decrease and

finally succumb." "From the time, therefore, when the social and

sympathetic feelings came into active operation, and the intellectual

and moral faculties became fairly developed, man would cease to be

influenced by natural selection in his physical form and structure. As

an animal, he would remain almost stationary, the changes of the

surrounding universe ceasing to produce in him that powerful modifying

effect which they exercise over other parts of the organic world. But

from the moment that the form of his body became stationary, his mind

would become subject to those very influences from which his body had

escaped; every slight variation in his mental and moral nature which

should enable him better to guard against adverse circumstances, and

combine for mutual comfort and protection would be preserved and

accumulated; the better and higher specimens of our race would therefore

increase and spread, the lower and more brutal would give way and

successively die out, and that rapid advancement of mental organization

would occur which has raised the very lowest races of man so far above

the brutes (although differing so little from some of them in physical

structure) and, in conjunction with scarcely perceptible modifications

of form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the European races."

"When the power that had hitherto modified the body had its action

transferred to the mind, then races would advance and become improved,

merely by the harsh discipline of a sterile soil and inclement seasons;

under their influence a hardier, a more provident, and a more social

race would be developed." And especially: "If my conclusions are just,

it must inevitably follow that the higher--the more intellectual and

moral--must displace the lower and more degraded races; and the power of

natural selection, still acting on his mental organization, must ever

lead to a more perfect adaptation of man's higher faculties to the

conditions of surrounding nature and to the exigencies of the social

state. While his external form will probably ever remain unchanged,

except in the development of that perfect beauty which results from a

healthy and well-organized body, refined and ennobled by the highest

intellectual faculties and sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution

may advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single

nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the

noblest specimens of existing humanity.

"Our progress towards such a result is very slow, but it still seems to

be a progress."

In "Darwinism" (1889), Wallace advocates Weismann's theory of heredity.

With regard to instinct, he uses arguments similar to those of his

earlier work. He says of the hunting instincts of dogs: "At first sight

it appears as if the acquired habits of our trained dogs--pointers,

retrievers, etc.--are certainly inherited; but this need not be the

case, because there must be some structural or physical peculiarities,

such as modifications in the attachments of muscles, increased delicacy

of smell or sight, or peculiar likes and dislikes, which are inherited;

and from these, peculiar habits follow as a natural consequence, or are

easily acquired." So that he thus defines instinct, by implication, as

he does also in his former book, as inherited habit which has no

correlative in physical organization, and is unconnected with feelings

of liking or disliking. He further says: "Again, much of the perfection

of instinct is due to the extreme severity of the selection, any failure

involving destruction"; and adds that, even if we admit the inheritance

of the effects of the direct action of the environment on the

individual, the effects are so small in comparison with the amount of

spontaneous variation of every part of the organism, that they must be

quite overshadowed by the latter.[30] In his theory of a higher

intelligence guiding human development, Wallace seems, in this book, to

have abandoned all his former arguments except those from the mental and

moral faculties, and it is perhaps due to a perception of the

inconsistencies of his former utterances on the subject of the moral

sense that he barely touches upon it in this book. On the other hand, he

has elaborated his arguments from the mathematical and artistic

faculties, and added an argument from wit and humor, none of which are

found, he urges, among savages, except in their very rudiments, and none

of which could have been developed by natural selection, since none

could have been a cause of man's conquest in his struggles with wild

beasts or with other tribes or nations. In answer to the objection that

the law of Continuity, which he has quoted as favoring the belief in the

existence of grades of supernatural beings between man and the Deity,

tells against the introduction of new causes in man's development,

Wallace maintains that there are certainly two other points in evolution

where such new causes come into play,--namely, at the beginning of life

and at the beginning of consciousness. "Increase of complexity in

chemical compounds, with consequent instability, even if we admit that

it may have produced protoplasm as a chemical compound, could certainly

not have produced living protoplasm,--protoplasm which has the power of

growth and reproduction, and of that continuous process of development

which has resulted in the marvellous variety and complex organization of

the whole vegetable kingdom, or, that is, vitality."[31] "All idea of

mere complication of structure producing" consciousness is "out of the

question." "Because man's physical structure has been developed from an

animal form by natural selection, it does not follow that his mental

nature, even though developed _pari passu_ with it, has been developed

by the same causes only."[32] Yet, in assuming Weismann's theory,

Wallace asserts: "Whatever other causes have been at work, Natural

Selection is supreme, to an extent which even Darwin himself hesitated

to claim for it." "While admitting, as Darwin always admitted, the

cooeperation of the fundamental laws of growth and variation, of

correlation and heredity, in determining the direction of lines of

variation, or in the initiation of peculiar organs, we find that

variation and natural selection are ever-present agencies which take

possession, as it were, of every minute change originated by these

fundamental causes, check or favor their further development, or modify

them in countless ways according to the varying needs of the

organism."[33]

In the opening portions of this book Wallace introduces a teleological

argument to the effect that the pain which we ordinarily conceive as

connected with the struggle for existence among lower species is mostly

a figment of our imagination. Periods of suffering are comparatively

short, since death speedily and without anticipation puts an end to

those animals in any way incapacitated. Livingstone describes how, when

seized by a lion, a sort of stupor succeeded the first shock, so that he

felt neither fear nor pain; it is probable that terror induces this same

condition in animals seized by beasts of prey, and that their end is

therefore painless after the first shock. Cold is generally severest at

night and tends to produce sleep and painless extinction. Hunger is

scarcely felt during periods of excitement, "and when food is scarce,

the excitement of seeking it is at its greatest." Nor is the gradual

exhaustion and weakness of slow starvation necessarily painful.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] For criticism of these arguments, see Romanes, "Mental Evolution in

Animals," p. 225, etc.; also "Animal Intelligence." In his second

edition of this book (1891), Wallace notices a few of the instances

cited by Romanes in objection to his theory: such as the recognition of

the hen's call by a chicken hatched in an incubator, the fear shown, on

the other hand, at the note of a hawk, and the fear exhibited by most

young animals at the voice or presence of their natural enemies. Of

these he says, however: "But in all these cases we have comparatively

simple motions or acts induced by feelings of liking or disliking, and

we can see that they may be due to definite nervous and muscular

cooerdinations which are essential to the existence of the species. That

a chicken should feel pleasure at the sound of a hen's voice, and pain

or fear at that of a hawk, and should move towards the one and away from

the other, is a fact of the same nature as the liking of an infant for

milk and its dislike of beer, with the motion of the head towards the

one and away from the other when offered to it." Of two authentic cases

of the building of a nest by young birds, without instruction, he says

that, in one case (that of ring-doves), the nest is a very simple one,

and that the birds also received some assistance; and in the other case

the nest was not built with the neatness ordinarily characteristic of

the species. (See "Natural Selection and Tropical Nature," pp. 108-112.)

The most of Romanes' instances and arguments he does not notice or

answer.

[25] In his second edition, Wallace writes "not only innate ideas, but

innate knowledge."

[26] In the second edition of this book, Wallace maintains the same

position with regard to skull-measurement as a criterion of mental

capacity. Nor does he notice distinctions in skull-form or the

proportions of different parts of the brain to each other, except in the

one case of the Eyzies.

[27] See Wallace on "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," "The

Psycho-physiological Sciences and their Assailants," and "The Scientific

Aspect of the Supernatural."

[28] Wallace omits this particular clause in his second edition.

[29] The second edition reads "is, or pertains to."

[30] Pp. 442, 443.

[31] This is contradictory of the passages on the subject of life above

noticed as occurring in the "Contributions to Natural Selection," and

retained in the second edition of that book.

[32] P. 463.

[33] P. 444.

ERNST HAECKEL

In his "Anthropogenie" (1874), Haeckel says: "The soul, or 'psyche' of

man has evolved, as function of the cerebro-spinal nerve-chord

simultaneously with the latter, and just as, even yet, brain and spinal

column develop from the simple nerve-chord, so the human mind, or the

soul-activity of the whole human race, has evolved, gradually and step

by step, from the lower vertebrate soul. 'Spirit' and 'soul' are only

higher and combined or differentiated powers of the same function which

we designate with the general expression 'force.'"[34] In his essay on

"Cell-souls and Soul-cells" (1878), Haeckel attributes to all animals

the possession of soul, and adds that "we cannot wholly deny a soul to

the plants also." The possession of soul he defines as the "capacity of

sensibility in the organism to excitations of various sorts, and of

reaction upon these excitations with certain movements." "This uniform

character of protoplasm gifted with soul permits us the hypothesis that

the ultimate factors of the soul-life are the plastidules, the

invisible, homogeneous, elemental particles, or molecules, of

protoplasm, which, in limitless multiplicity, compose the unnumbered

cells." The soul connected with the higher developments of brain and

spinal column is likewise a higher development, and differs from the

soul connected with the uncentralized organization of lower species. In

the latest edition of his "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte" (1889), he

further asserts that all matter is possessed of soul, and that "the

antithesis which we have assumed between living and dead nature does not

exist. When a stone, thrown into the air, falls to the earth according

to fixed laws, or when a crystal is formed in a solution of salts, or

when sulphur and quicksilver combine to form cinnabar, these phenomena

are not more and not less mechanical phenomena of life than the growth

and bloom of the plants, than the propagation and sense-activity of

animals, than the perception and thought-processes of human beings."[35]

And both in this work and in his "Anthropogenie" he quotes the words of

Goethe, that "matter can never exist and act without soul, the soul can

never exist and act without matter." This last statement is, however,

rather a metaphysical one, in distinction from Haeckel's other

statements on this subject, which are properly naturalistic.

In his lecture on "Cell-souls and Soul-cells," Haeckel says of instinct:

"Unbiassed observation, applying its tests without prejudice, shows

conclusively that the so-called 'instinct' of the animals is nothing

else than a sum of psychical functions originally acquired by

adaptation, fixed by habit, and descending from generation to

generation by inheritance. Originally carried out with consciousness and

reflection, many instinctive actions of the animals have become

unconscious, as have, in like manner, the ordinary acts of intelligence

in man. These too, may, with the same justice, be regarded as the

expression of innate instinct, as often is the impulse to

self-preservation, maternal love, and the social impulse. Instinct is

not an exclusive attribute of the animal-brain, nor is reason an

especial endowment of man; there is, on the contrary, for the unbiassed

observer, a long, long scale of gradual improvement and evolution in

psychic life, which may be traced step by step, from the higher to lower

human beings, from the perfect to the imperfect animals, until we reach

those simple worms, whose nerve-ganglia are the beginning of all the

numberless brain-forms of the scale."

In his "Anthropogenie," Haeckel denies Free Will, maintaining that all

phenomena are the result of mechanical causes--_causae efficientes_, not

_causae finales_. In an essay on the "Relation of the Theory of Evolution

in its present form to Science in General" (1877), he says of Ethics:

"By far the most important and the most difficult demand which Practical

Philosophy makes upon the theory of Evolution seems to be that of a new

theory of Morals. Certainly in the future, as in the past, the careful

development of moral character and of religious conviction must be the

chief problem of education. But until now the greater number of people

have clung to the conviction that this most important problem could be

solved only in connection with certain ecclesiastical articles of faith.

And since these dogmas, especially as connected with ancient myths of

the Creation, are in direct opposition to the facts of evolution, the

latter have been believed to be, in the highest degree, inimical to

religion and morality.

"This fear we believe to be erroneous. It has its origin in the

continual confusion of the true, reasonable, nature-religion and the

dogmatic, mythological, church-religion. The Comparative History of

Religions, an important branch of Anthropology, teaches us the manifold

nature of outward form in which different peoples and epochs have, in

accordance with their individual character, enveloped religious thought.

It shows us that the dogmatic teachings of the church-religion itself

are subject to a slow, continuous evolution. New churches and sects

arise, old ones disappear; at the best, a particular tenet of faith

lasts but a few thousand years, an inconsiderably short space of time

compared with the aeons of the geological periods. Finally, the History

of Civilization shows us to how small an extent true morality has been

associated with any particular ecclesiastical form. The greatest

rudeness and barbarity of custom often goes hand in hand with the

absolute dominion of an all-powerful church; in confirmation of which

assertion one need only remember the Middle Ages. On the other hand, we

behold the highest standard of perfection attained by men who have

severed connection with every creed.

"Independent of every confession of faith, there lives in the breast of

every human being the germ of a pure nature-religion; this is

indissolubly bound up with the noblest sides of human life. Its highest

commandment is love, the restraint of our natural egoism for the benefit

of our fellow-men, and for the good of human society whose members we

are. This natural law of morality is much older than all

church-religion. It has developed out of the social instincts of the

animals. We meet with its rudiments among all animals, especially among

all mammals. Following the laws of association and of division of labor,

many individuals of such species unite to form the higher community of

the swarm, herd, or tribe. The existence of the latter is necessarily

dependent upon the mutual relations of the members of the community and

the sacrifices which these make to the whole society at the cost of

their own egoism. The consciousness of this necessity of self-sacrifice,

the sense of duty, is nothing else than a social instinct. But this

instinct is always a psychical habit, which was originally acquired, but

which, becoming in the course of time hereditary, appears at last as

innate.

"In order to convince ourselves of the wonderful power of the sense of

duty among animals, we need only to destroy an ant-hill. Immediately we

see, in the midst of the destruction, thousands of zealous citizens

employed, not in the rescue of their own precious lives, but in the

protection of the beloved community to which they belong. Brave soldiers

of the ant-state prepare to offer strong resistance to our intruding

finger; instructors of youth rescue the so-called ant-eggs, the precious

larvae, on which the future of the state depends; busy workers

immediately begin with undiminished courage to clear away the ruins and

to prepare new dwellings. But the admirable state of civilization among

these ants, among bees and other social animals, has been developed,

just as has been our own, from the rudest beginnings.

"Even those finest and most beautiful forms of human emotion which we

especially celebrate in poetry are to be found prefigured among the

animals. Have not the tender mother-love of the lioness, the touching

affection between male and female parrots, the self-sacrificing fidelity

of the dog, been long proverbial? The noblest emotions of sympathy and

love, which direct action, are here, as with human beings, nothing else

than ennobled instinct." Beginning with this conception, the Ethics of

Evolution has to seek for no new principle, but, on the contrary, to

trace back the old rules of duty to their scientific basis. Long before

the rise of all church-religion, these natural commandments regulated

the lawful relations of human beings, as of gregarious animals. This

significant fact the church-religions should utilize, instead of

disputing. For the future does not belong to that Theology which

declares war against the triumphant Theory of Evolution, but to that

which makes it its own, acknowledges it, and turns it to advantage.

"Far, therefore, from fearing, from the influence of the Theory of

Evolution, a subversion of all accepted moral law and a destructive

emancipation of Egoism, we, on the contrary, look forward to a system of

Ethics erected upon the indestructible foundation of unchanging natural

law, since at the same time with the clear recognition of our true place

in nature, the study of Anthropogeny opens to us the comprehension of

the necessary character of our old rules of duty. Like theoretical

science, Practical Philosophy and Pedagogy will no longer derive their

most important principles from so-called revelations, but from the

scientific truths of Evolution. This victory of Monism over Dualism

opens to us a most hopeful prospect of an unending continuation of our

moral, as of our intellectual evolution. In this sense, we welcome the

Theory of Evolution in its present form newly stated by Darwin, as a

challenge--the most important challenge of pure and applied science."

As touching on the idea of a nature-religion as conceived by Haeckel,

may be noticed, however, a passage which occurs at the end of chapter

XII. of the "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte," as well as the passage

before referred to in which it is asserted that we know only _causae

efficientes_, never _causae finales_. The passage is as follows: "The

general significance of the degenerated or rudimentary organs in the

most important questions of natural philosophy cannot be over-estimated.

On these may be founded a theory of Disteleology as opposed to the

ancient, usual Teleology."

With especial theories of Heredity advocated by Haeckel we are not

concerned, except in one respect. Even in the first edition of his

"Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte," Haeckel makes a distinction between

conservative and progressive inheritance, and in the edition of 1889 he

still maintains this division against Weismann and others, claiming the

heredity of acquired habit, under certain circumstances, and showing

conclusively that even wounds and blemishes received during the life of

an individual may be, in some instances, inherited by descendants.[36]

The laws of progressive heredity he gives as four: (1) the law of the

inheritance of adaptation; (2) the law of the surer inheritance of

qualities fixed by continual operation of its causes on individual

generations; (3) the law of homochronous inheritance or inheritance at a

corresponding age; (4) the law of homotypous inheritance, which may be

otherwise called the law of inheritance in corresponding parts of the

body.[37]

Having thus glanced at the special theories by which the great original

authorities paved the way for a system of Evolutional Ethics, we may

direct our attention to the more purely philosophical writers who have

turned these theories to advantage and elaborated them. The first on the

list is

FOOTNOTES:

[34] P. 703 _et seq._

[35] Erster Vortrag.

[36] P. 194 _et seq._

[37] For illustrations and proofs of these laws, see the "Natuerliche

Schoepfungsgeschichte," pp. 193-197.

HERBERT SPENCER

In treating of Mr. Spencer's work, it is necessary to begin with a book

which made its appearance before the publication of "The Origin of

Species," namely, "Social Statics" (1851), Mr. Spencer's first

noteworthy publication. In this are contained some remarkable

statements, which are of especial worth as showing in what measure the

thought of the time was already tending in the direction of the

revelations of its greatest prophet, and science, in England as in

Germany, was slowly coming to recognize the unity of nature in life and

human progress. An analysis of the first and theoretical part of this

work will be, therefore, of use, and with this we will begin.

Mr. Spencer opens his book with some criticisms of Utilitarianism or the

"Expediency Philosophy." Every rule, in order to be of value, must have

a definite meaning. The rule of "the greatest happiness to the greatest

number" supposes mankind to be unanimous in the definition of the

greatest happiness; the standard of happiness is, however, infinitely

variable, in nations and in individuals. For happiness signifies a

gratified state of all the faculties; and no two individuals are alike

in faculties. In endeavoring to fix a standard, we are met by such

insolvable problems as: What is the ratio between mental and bodily

enjoyments constituting the greatest happiness? Which is most truly an

element in the desired felicity, content or aspiration? The conclusion

we inevitably reach is that a true conception of what human life should

be is possible only to the ideal man,--in whom the component feelings

exist in their normal proportions. The world as yet contains no such

men, and we are left with an insolvable riddle on our hands.

There is the same uncertainty as to the mode of obtaining the greatest

happiness.

The Expediency Philosophy believes that man's intellect is competent to

observe accurately and to grasp at once the multiplied phenomena of life

and derive therefrom the knowledge which shall enable him to say whether

such or such measures will conduce to the greatest happiness of the

greatest number.

If without knowledge of terrestrial phenomena and their laws, Newton had

attempted a theory of planetary and stellar equilibrium, he might have

cogitated to all eternity without result. Such an attempt, however,

would have been far less absurd than the attempt to find out the

principles of public polity by a direct examination of that wonderfully

intricate combination, Society. In order to understand Society it is

necessary to comprehend Man.

Another mistake of the Expediency Philosophy is that it assumes the

eternity of government, which marks a certain stage of civilization, but

which will by no means necessarily last forever. Time was when the

history of a people was the history of its government. Feudalism,

serfdom, slavery,--all were forms of government. Progress means less

government; constitutional forms, political freedom, democracy, all mean

this. Government is a sign of imperfection, an evil necessary against

knavery; it must exist only so long as this exists. The Expediency

Philosophy is, however, founded on government; takes it into

partnership: but a system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of

correct rules for the best, as well as the worst, members of society,

and applicable to humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Of the

Expediency Philosophy it must, therefore, be said that it can claim no

scientific character, since:

Its fundamental proposition is not an axiom but a problem to be solved;

It is expressed in terms possessing no fixed acceptation;

It would require omniscience to carry it into practice;

And, moreover, it takes imperfection for its basis.

The existence of society argues a certain fitness and desire of mankind

for it; without this, it would not exist, as eating and drinking, and

the nourishment and protection of offspring would not take place if

there were no corresponding desires, but merely an abstract opinion in

favor of the worth of the two. In the method of nature, there is always

some prompter, called a desire, answering to each of the actions which

it is requisite for us to perform. It is probable, therefore, that we

shall find an instrumentality of this sort prompting us to morality. In

objection to the theory of a moral sense, the want of uniformity in

judgment as to what is right is often advanced. But none deny the

importance of appetite, though all know that it is by no means an

infallible guide in the choice of kind or quantity of food. The same may

be said of parental affection. The foundation of the claim of any man

that he has as great a right to happiness as any other can be found in

the last analysis in feeling only; he feels that it is so.

None but those committed to a preconceived theory can fail to recognize

the workings of such a faculty as the moral sense. It is clear that the

perceptions of propriety or impropriety of conduct do not originate with

the intellect but with the emotional faculties. The intellect,

uninfluenced by desire, would show both miser and spendthrift that their

habits were unwise; whereas the intellect, influenced by desire, makes

each think the other a fool, but does not enable him to see his own

foolishness.

This is a universal law: Every feeling is accompanied by a sense of the

rightness of those actions which give it gratification. From an impulse

to behave in a way we call equitable arises a perception that it is

proper, and a conviction that it is good. There is, however, a

perpetual conflict amongst feelings, from which results an incongruity

of beliefs.

It has been said that codes derived from the moral sense have no

stability since this sense ratifies one principle at one time and place,

another at another. The same objection applies, however, to every other

system of morals, and happily there is an answer to the objection. The

error criticised is one of application, not of doctrine. The decisions

of the Geometric Sense are conflicting; yet there are certain axioms

upon which all agree; and in the same manner there are moral axioms to

be found, upon which all must agree. Disagreement is to be looked for

among imperfect characters. But nature's laws know no exception: Obey or

suffer are the alternatives. A progress from entire unconsciousness of

these laws to the conviction that law is universal and inevitable,

constancy an essential attribute of divine rule, is the substance of the

progress of man. The end of these unbending utterances is universal

good; we have no alternative but to assume the law of constancy to be

the best possible one. As with the physical, so with the ethical; all

religions teach the inevitableness of punishment and reward, with which

deeds are _necessarily_ and _indissolubly_ connected. It is of infinite

importance to recognize and follow the laws of society. To the objection

that one cannot always be guided by abstract principles, that there are

exceptions where prudence must act, it may be replied that there are no

exceptions to the laws of nature; that even if, in a particular

instance, partial good may result, a far greater general evil is

entailed by the opening of the way to future disobediences, and that we

cannot, moreover, be sure that an exceptional disobedience will bring

the anticipated benefits. Moral as well as physical evil is the result

of a want of congruity between the faculties and their sphere of action.

With regard to the results of varying conditions upon man, we have three

alternative theories from which to choose: either man remains entirely

unaltered by his surroundings, or he grows more unfitted for them, or

else he grows more fitted for them. The first two suppositions being

absurd, we are obliged to admit the remaining one. And since all evil

results from non-adaptation, and non-adaptation is being continually

diminished, it follows that evil must be continually diminishing. The

evil in society shows that man is not yet completely adapted to a state

which requires that each individual shall have such desires only as may

be fully satisfied without trenching upon the ability of other

individuals to obtain a like satisfaction. The primitive condition of

man required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his

own; the old attribute still clings to him in some measure; the belief

in human perfectibility amounts to the belief that man will eventually

become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress is not an

accident but a necessity; and if, instead of proposing it as a rule of

human conduct, Bentham had simply assumed the "greatest happiness" to be

the creative purpose, his position would have been tenable enough. It is

one thing, however, to hold that greatest happiness is the creative

purpose, and quite a different thing to hold that greatest happiness

should be the immediate aim of mankind. Truth has two sides, a divine

and a human; or, it is for man to ascertain the conditions which lead to

the greatest happiness, and to live in conformity with these.

The men who are to realize this greatest sum of happiness must be such

as can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the activity and

happiness of others. The first great condition of the attainment of the

end is, therefore, justice, and, as a supplement to this, negative and

positive beneficence,--abstinence from diminishing the spheres of

activity of others, and further, a positive increase of their pleasure.

For man is sympathetic, and the sympathetic pleasures increase the sum

total of happiness.

The exercise[38] of all the faculties in which happiness consists is not

only man's right but also his duty. For the fact of pain, of punishment,

proves that God intends and wills such exercise. But the exercise of all

the faculties is freedom; all men have, therefore, a right to freedom of

action. This principle, however, implies a limitation of man by men,

whereby we arrive at the general proposition that every man may claim

the fullest liberty to exercise his feelings _compatible with the

possession of a like liberty in every other man_. In the progress of

mankind, or adaptation, the conduct which hurts necessary feelings in

others must inevitably undergo restraint and consequent limitation;

conduct which hurts only their incidental feelings, as those of caste or

prejudice, will not inevitably be restrained, but if it springs from

necessary feelings, will, on the contrary, be continued at the expense

of these incidental feelings and to their final suppression. Morality is

_not_, therefore, to be interpreted as a refraining from the infliction

of any pain whatever, for some sentiment must be wounded; and by much

wounding it is gradually weakened. When men mutually behave in a way

that offends some essential element in the nature of each, and all in

turn have to bear the consequent suffering, there will arise a tendency

to curb the desire that makes them so behave.

Questions of individual morality seem to present a difficulty to this

theory of freedom. Thus, for instance, on the principle above adopted,

the liberty of drunkenness cannot be condemned as long as the drunkard

respects a like liberty in others; and here we fall into the

inconsistency of affirming that a man is at liberty to do something

essentially destructive of happiness. However, if we admit, as we must,

that liberty is the _primary_ law, no desire to get a secondary law

fulfilled can warrant us in breaking this primary one; we must deal with

secondary laws as best we can.

The first principle above stated may also be secondarily derived. The

regulation of conduct is not left to the accident of a philosophical

inquiry; the agent of morality is the Moral Sense.

In all ages, but more especially in recent ones, have there been

affirmations of the equality of all men and their equal right to

happiness. When we find that a belief like this is not only permanent

but daily gaining ground, we have good reason to conclude that it

corresponds to some essential element of our moral constitution; more

especially since we find that its existence is in harmony with that

chief prerequisite to greatest happiness lately dwelt upon; and that its

growth is in harmony with the law of adaptation, by which the greatest

happiness is being wrought out.

To assert, however, that the sense of justice is but the gradually

acquired conviction that benefits spring from some kinds of action, and

evils from other kinds, the sympathies and antipathies contracted

manifesting themselves as a love of justice and a hatred of injustice,

is as absurd as to conclude that hunger springs from a conviction of the

benefit of eating.

The Moral Sense must be regarded as a special faculty, since, otherwise,

there would be nothing during the dormancy of the other faculties, which

must sometimes occur, to prevent an infringement on the freedom

requisite for their future action.

As Adam Smith has shown in his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," the proper

regulation of our conduct to others is secured by means of a faculty

whose function it is to excite in each being the emotions displayed by

the beings about him. The sentiment of justice is nothing but a

sympathetic affection of the instinct of personal rights, a sort of

reflex function of it. Other things being equal, those persons

possessing the strongest sense of personal rights have, also, the

strongest sense of the rights of others. There is no _necessary_

connection between the two; but in the average of cases they bear a

constant ratio.

It may be objected that if the truth that every man has a freedom to do

all that he wills, provided he infringe not upon the equal freedom of

others, be an axiom, it should be recognized by all, as is not the case.

This difficulty seems in part due to the impossibility of making the

perfect law recognize an imperfect state. It may further be answered

that the Bushman knows nothing of the science of mathematics, yet that

arithmetic is a fact; the difference in men's moral perceptions is no

difficulty in our way, but rather illustrates the truth of our theory,

since man is not yet adapted to the social state.

In further confirmation of the doctrine of the free exercise of

function, it may be added that, since non-fulfilment of desire produces

misery, if God is to be regarded as willing such non-fulfilment, he must

be regarded as willing men's misery; which is absurd. If men are not

naturally free, then a doctrine of the divine right of kings is easily

reached, and whoever is king must be regarded as such by divine right,

no matter how he reached the throne.

Spencer then proceeds to apply his first principle or axiom of freedom

to prove the right to life and liberty, to the use of the earth, to

property and free speech; and considers further the rights of women and

of children, and the political rights of individuals; the constitution

and duty of the state; commerce, education, and the poor-laws;

government colonization, sanitary supervision, postal arrangements, etc.

A remarkable feature of this part of "Social Statics" is that Spencer,

while applying his principle with quite an opposite result to all other

property, advocates the nationalization of the land, on the ground that

the freedom of the individual is right only in so far as it does not

hinder a like freedom in others; and that the monopolization of the

privileges of land-ownership by individuals does prevent the enjoyment

of the same privilege by others.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

The course of civilization could not possibly have been other than it

has been.

Progress shows us that perfect individuation joined to the greatest

mutual dependence will be reached in the future of the race. There will

be an ultimate identity of personal and social interests, and a

disappearance of evil. Spencer gives, however, a number of arguments to

prove that the interest of society is, at present also, the interest of

the individual.

* * * * *

The "Theory of Population" (published in 1852), which is founded on the

theory of an antagonism between the intellectual and the reproductive

powers, and on the ancient theory of a direct relation between

skull-capacity or brain-size and intellectual power, contains this

passage: "From the beginning, pressure of population has been the

proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the

race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to

agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth's surface. It forced

men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has

developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive

improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It

is daily pressing us into closer contact and more mutually dependent

relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due

peopling of the globe, and the bringing of all its habitable parts into

the highest state of culture,--after having brought all processes for

the satisfaction of human wants to the greatest perfection,--after

having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete

competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for

social life,--after having done all this, we see the pressure of

population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring

itself to an end."

In a letter to Mr. Mill, published in Bain's "Mental and Moral Science"

(p. 721, 3d edition), Spencer repudiates the title of Anti-Utilitarian,

which Mr. Mill, in view of the criticisms of Utilitarianism contained in

"Social Statics," had applied to him. He defines his position in respect

to Utilitarianism as follows: "I have never regarded myself as an

Anti-Utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly

understood, concerns, not the object to be reached by men, but the

method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end

to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end.

The Expediency Philosophy, having concluded that happiness is a thing to

be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than

empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the

guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations.

"But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly

so-called--the science of right conduct--has for its object to determine

how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other

modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but

must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things, and I

conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce from the laws

of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily

tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having

done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and

are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness

or misery.

"Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early

stages, planetary astronomy consisted of nothing more than accumulated

observations respecting the positions and motions of the sun and

planets; from which accumulated observations it came by and by to be

empirically predicted, with an approach to truth, that certain of the

heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the

modern science of planetary astronomy consists of deductions from the

law of gravitation--deductions showing why the celestial bodies

necessarily occupy certain places at certain times. Now the kind of

relation which thus exists between ancient and modern astronomy is

analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the

Expediency Morality and Moral Science properly so-called. And the

objection which I have to the current Utilitarianism is, that it

recognizes no more developed form of morality--does not see that it has

reached but the initial stage of Moral Science.

"To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that,

corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral

Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain

fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions

are the results of accumulated experiences of Utility, gradually

organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of

conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition

of space possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from the

organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals,

who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nervous organizations--just

as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and

complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of

thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe

that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all

past generations of the human race, have been producing nervous

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. I also hold that, just as the

space-intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of geometry, and

has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them, so will

moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science; and

will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them."

In "Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals"[39] (1871),

Spencer, after quoting portions of the above letter as defining his

position, continues with a consideration of the continual readjustment

of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable, the former of

which prescribes a system far too good for men as they are, the latter

of which does not of itself tend to establish a system better than the

existing one; and he reiterates his law of the perfect man as follows:--

"Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is

_relatively_ right, it still follows that we must first consider what is

absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other."

Spencer further expressly repudiates empirical Utilitarianism, and

denies the assertion of Mr. Hutton that he by implication recognizes no

parentage for morals beyond that of the accumulation and organization of

the facts of experience. On this head he says:--

"In the genesis of an idea, the successive experiences, be they of

sounds, colors, touches, tastes, or be they of the special objects that

combine many of these into groups, have so much in common that each,

when it occurs, can be definitely thought of as like those which

preceded it. But in the genesis of an emotion, the successive

experiences so far differ that each of them, when it occurs, suggests

past experiences which are not specifically similar, but have only a

general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests benefits or evils

in past experience which likewise are various in their special natures,

though they have a certain community of general nature. Hence it results

that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous confused

consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of combination among

impressions received from without, there is a vague cloud of ideal

combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of ideal feelings of

pleasure or pain that were associated with them. We have abundant proof

that feelings grow up without reference to recognized causes and

consequences, and without the possessor of them being able to say why

they have grown up, though analysis, nevertheless, shows that they have

been formed out of connected experiences. The experiences of utility I

refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized

connections between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote

results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations

between groups of feelings that have often recurred together,

though the relation between them has not been consciously

generalized"--associations which though little perceived, nevertheless

serve as incentives or deterrents. Much deeper down than the history of

the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connections.

The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread

indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological

accompaniments of destructive action.

"What we call the natural language of anger is due to a partial

contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call into play;

and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over the brow

which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of these same

contractions. Conversely with the natural language of pleasure, and of

that state of mind which we call amicable feeling; this, too, has a

physical interpretation."

Of the altruistic sentiments, Spencer says: "The development of these

has gone on only as fast as society has advanced to a state in which the

activities are mainly peaceful. The root of all the altruistic

sentiments is sympathy, and sympathy could become dominant only when the

mode of life, instead of being one that habitually inflicted direct

pain, became one which conferred direct and indirect benefits; the pains

inflicted being mainly incidental and indirect." Sympathy is "the

concomitant of gregariousness; the two having all along increased by

reciprocal aid."

"If we suppose all thought of rewards or punishments, immediate or

remote, to be left out of consideration, it is clear that any one who

hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid representation of that

pain which rises in his consciousness, is restrained not by any sense of

obligation or by any formulated doctrine of utility, but by the painful

associations established in him. And it is clear that if, after repeated

experiences of the moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the

unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check

himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is of like

nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts, repetitions of kind

deeds and experiences of the sympathetic gratifications that follow tend

continually to make stronger the association between deeds and feelings

of happiness."

Spencer continues: "Eventually these experiences may be consciously

generalized, and there may result a deliberate pursuit of the

sympathetic gratifications. There may also come to be distinctly

recognized the truths that the remoter results are respectively

detrimental and beneficial--that due regard for others is conducive to

ultimate personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal

disaster; and then there may become current such summations of

experience as 'honesty is the best policy.' But so far from regarding

these intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the

moral sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such

recognitions of utility and making them possible. The pleasures and

pains directly resulting, in experience, from sympathetic and

unsympathetic actions, had first to be slowly associated with such

actions, and the resulting incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed,

before there could arise the perceptions that sympathetic and

unsympathetic actions are remotely beneficial or detrimental to the

actor; and they had to be obeyed still longer and more generally before

there could arise the perceptions that they are socially beneficial and

detrimental. When, however, the remote effects, personal and social,

have gained general recognition, are expressed in current maxims, and

lead to injunctions having the religious sanction, the sentiments that

prompt sympathetic actions and check unsympathetic ones, are immensely

strengthened by their alliances. Approbation and reprobation, divine and

human, come to be associated in thought with the sympathetic and

unsympathetic actions respectively. The commands of a creed, the legal

penalties, and the code of social conduct, mutually enforce them; and

every child, as it grows up, daily has impressed on it, by the words and

faces and voices of those around, the authority of these highest

principles."

The altruistic sentiments develop, and altruistic action becomes

habitual, "until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in

question the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once

ruled unchallenged."

And Spencer sums up his objections to the interpretation of his theory

of the development of the moral sentiment as follows: "What I have said

will make it clear that two fundamental errors have been made in the

interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been

construed in senses much too narrow.

"Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has

very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses

and means and proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures,

positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the

ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered; and, further, it

implies conscious recognition of means and ends--implies the deliberate

taking of some course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in

its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and

consequences, as standing in observed relations, and is not taken to

include the connections found in consciousness between states that occur

together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not

perceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I habitually use

these words, as will be manifest to every one who reads the 'Principles

of Psychology.'"

In his essay on Prison Ethics (1860), Spencer says: "The antagonistic

schools of morals, like many other antagonistic schools, are both right

and both wrong. The _a priori_ school has its truth; the _a posteriori_

school has its truth; and for the proper guidance of conduct there

should be due recognition of both. On the one hand, it is asserted that

there is an absolute standard of rectitude; and respecting certain

classes of actions, it is rightly asserted. From the fundamental laws of

life and the conditions of social existence are deducible certain

imperative limitations to individual action--limitations which are

essential to a perfect life, individual and social; or, in other words,

essential to the greatest possible happiness. And these limitations,

following inevitably as they do from undeniable first principles, deep

as the nature of life itself, constitute what we may distinguish as

absolute morality.

"On the other hand, it is contended, and in a sense rightly contended,

that with men as they are, and society as it is, the dictates of

absolute morality are impracticable. Legal control, which involves the

infliction of pain, alike on those who are restrained and on those who

pay the cost of restraining them, is proved by this fact to be not

absolutely moral, seeing that absolute morality is the regulation of

conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted. Wherefore, if it

be admitted that legal control is at present indispensable, it must be

admitted that these _a priori_ rules cannot be immediately carried out.

And hence it follows that we must adapt our laws and actions to the

existing character of mankind--that we must estimate the good or evil

resulting from this or that arrangement, and so reach _a posteriori_ a

code fitted for the time being. In short, we must fall back on

expediency." Spencer then goes on to argue that an advanced penal code

is as impossible to an early stage of civilization as is an advanced

form of government; a bloody penal code is both a natural product of the

time and a needful restraint for the time, and is also the only one

which could be carried out by the existing administration.

The aim of morality is life, of absolute morality complete life; society

is therefore justified in coercing the criminal who breaks through the

conditions of life or constrains us to do so. Coercion is legitimate to

the extent of compelling restitution, and preventing a repetition of

aggressions; no further. Less bloody systems of punishment, wherever

introduced, have borne excellent fruit. It may be deductively shown that

the best of all systems must be that best calculated to reform the

criminal; too severe punishment, instead of awakening a sense of guilt,

prevents the same, begetting a sense of injustice towards the

inflicting power, which causes resentment; so that, even if the

criminal, on reentering society, commits no further crime, he is

restrained by the lowest of motives--fear. The industrial system applied

in prisons must have the best results--counteracting habits of idleness,

strengthening self-control, and educating the will.

The principle of freedom, which runs through all Spencer's works, is

especially enounced again, in his essay, "The Man versus the State"

(1884), in which he combats "the great political superstition" of

so-called "paternal government." He says: "Reduced to its lowest terms,

every proposal to interfere with citizens' activities further than by

enforcing their mutual limitations, is a proposal to improve life by

breaking through the fundamental conditions of life."[40]

In "The Data of Ethics" (published 1874), Mr. Spencer assumes a somewhat

different standpoint from that of his earlier works bearing on morals.

The course of reasoning contained in this book is as follows:--

The doctrine that correlatives imply one another has, for one of its

common examples, the relation between the conceptions of whole and part.

Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a whole can be framed without a

nascent idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part can be

framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there

is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part

without a correct idea of the correlative whole. Still less, when part

and whole are dynamically related, and least of all when the whole is

organic, can the part be understood except by comprehension of the whole

to which it belongs. This truth holds not only of material but also of

immaterial aggregates.

Conduct is a whole and, in a sense, an organic whole, and Ethics, of

which it is a part, cannot be understood except through the

understanding of the whole of conduct.

A definition of conduct must exclude purposeless actions,--such, for

instance, as those of an epileptic in a fit. Hence the definition

emerges either: acts adjusted to ends; or, the adjustment of acts to

ends; according as we contemplate the formed body of acts, or think of

the form alone. And conduct, in its full acceptation, must be taken as

comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends, from the simplest to the

most complex, whatever their special natures and whether they are

considered separately or in their totality.

A large part of conduct is non-ethical, indifferent; this passes, by

small degrees and in countless ways, into conduct which is either moral

or immoral.

The acts of all living creatures, as acts adjusted to ends, come within

the definition of conduct; the conduct of the higher animals as compared

with that of man, and of the lower animals as compared with the higher,

differs mainly in that the adjustments of acts to ends is relatively

simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other cases, so in this

case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed; human

conduct as a part of the whole of the conduct of animate beings. And

further: as, in order to understand the part of human conduct with which

Ethics is concerned, we must study it as a part of human conduct as a

whole, and in order to understand human conduct, we must again study it

as a part of the whole of conduct exhibited in animate beings, so, in

order to comprehend this too, we must regard it as an outcome of former,

less developed conduct, out of which it has arisen. Our first step must

be to study the evolution of conduct.

Morphology deals with physical structure, physiology with the processes

carried on in the body. But we enter on the subject of conduct when we

begin to study such combinations among the actions of sensory and

motor-organs as are externally manifested.

We saw that conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by the

exclusion of purposeless actions; but during evolution this distinction

arises by degrees. We trace up conduct to the vertebrates and through

the vertebrates to man, and find that here the adjustments of acts to

ends are both more numerous and better than among lower mammals; and we

find the same thing on comparing the doings of higher races of men with

those of lower. These better adjustments favor, not only prolongation,

but also increased amount of life.

And among these adjustments of acts to ends, there are not only such as

further individual life but also, evolving with these, such as favor the

life of the species. Race-maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining

conduct, arises gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct.

The multitudinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth are

engaged in a continuous struggle for existence, in which the adjustments

of acts to ends, being imperfectly evolved, miss completeness because

they cannot be made by one creature without other creatures being

prevented from making them. This imperfectly evolved conduct introduces

us, by antithesis, to conduct which is perfectly evolved,--such

adjustments that each creature may make them without preventing other

creatures making them also. The conditions of such conduct cannot exist

in predatory savage life; nor can it exist where there remains

antagonism between individuals forming a group, or between groups of

individuals,--two traits of life necessarily associated, since the

nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of

individuals on one another also. Hence the limit of evolution can be

reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies; can be

approached only as war decreases and dies out.

The principle of beneficence is not derived by Spencer from the

principle of freedom, in "Social Statics"; and here, as in the latter

book, Spencer has difficulty with it. He says: "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 cooeperation, 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."

Thus, then, says Spencer, "we have been led to see that Ethics has for

its subject-matter that form which universal conduct assumes during the

last stages of its evolution."

By comparing the meanings of a word in different connections, and

observing what they have in common, we learn its essential significance.

Material objects we are accustomed to designate as good or bad according

as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends. The good

knife is one which will cut; the good gun is one which will carry far

and true; and so on. So of inanimate actions, and so, also, of living

things and actions. A good jump is a jump which, remoter ends ignored,

well achieves the immediate purpose of a jump; and a stroke at billiards

is called good when the movements are skilfully adjusted to the

requirements. So too our use of the words good and bad with respect to

conduct under its ethical aspects has regard to the efficiency or

non-efficiency of the adjustments of acts to ends. This last truth is,

through the entanglements of social relations, by which men's actions

often simultaneously affect the welfares of self, of offspring, and of

fellow-citizens, somewhat disguised. Nevertheless, when we disentangle

the three orders of ends, and consider each separately, it becomes clear

that the conduct which achieves each kind of end is regarded as

relatively good; and conduct which fails to achieve it is regarded as

relatively bad. The goodness ascribed to a man of business, as such, is

measured by the activity and ability with which he buys and sells to

advantage, and may coexist with a hard treatment of dependents which is

reprobated. The ethical judgments we pass on such self-regarding acts

are ordinarily little emphasized; partly because the promptings of the

self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral

enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding

desires, less strong, do need moral enforcement. With regard to the

second class of adjustments of acts to ends, which subserve the rearing

of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the

words good and bad to them, according as they are efficient or

inefficient. And most emphatic are the application of the words, in this

sense, throughout the third division of conduct comprising the deeds by

which men affect one another. Always, then, acts are good or bad,

according as they are well or ill-adapted to ends. That is, good is the

name we apply to the relatively more evolved conduct; and bad is the

name we apply to that which is relatively less evolved; for we have seen

that "evolution, tending ever towards self-preservation, reaches its

limits when individual life is the greatest, both in length and breadth;

and we now see that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the

conduct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct tending to

self-destruction." With increasing power of maintaining individual life

goes increasing power of perpetuating the species by fostering progeny;

and the establishment of an associated state both makes possible and

requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in each and

in his offspring, not only without preventing completion of it in

others, but with furtherance of it in others; and this is the form of

conduct most emphatically termed good. "Moreover, just as we saw that

evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously

achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in

fellow-men; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the

conduct conceived as best, when it fulfils all three classes of ends at

the same time."

Has this evolution been a mistake? The pessimist claims so, the optimist

claims not. But there is one postulate in which both pessimists and

optimists agree--namely, that it is evident that life is good or bad,

according as it does, or does not, have a surplus of agreeable feeling;

if a future life is included in the theory of either, the assumption is

still the same, that life is a blessing or a curse according as

existence, now considered in both worlds, contains more of pleasure or

of pain; and the implication is therefore that conduct which conduces to

the preservation of self, the family, and society, is good or bad in the

same measure. "Thus there is no escape from the admission that conduct

is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable or

painful." So that if self-mutilation furthered life, and picking a man's

pocket brightened his prospects, we should regard these acts as good.

Approach to such a constitution as effects complete adjustment of acts

to ends of every kind is, however, an approach to perfection, and

therefore means approach to that which secures greater happiness.

"Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an

inexpugnable element of the conception" of moral aim.

Here follow criticisms of the religious school of morals, which bases

its system on the will of God, and of the school of "pure

intuitionists," who hold "that men have been divinely endowed with moral

faculties." "It must be either admitted or denied that the acts called

good and the acts called bad naturally conduce, the one to human

well-being and the other to human ill-being. Is it admitted? Then the

admission amounts to an assertion that the conduciveness is shown by

experience; and this involves abandonment of the doctrine that there is

no origin for morals apart from divine injunctions. Is it denied that

acts classed as good and bad differ in their effects? Then it is tacitly

affirmed that human affairs would go on just as well in ignorance of

the distinction; and the alleged need for commandments from God

disappears." To affirm that we know some things to be right and other

things to be wrong, by virtue of a supernaturally given conscience; and

thus tacitly to affirm that we do not otherwise know right from wrong,

is tacitly to deny any natural relations between acts and results. For

if there exist any such relations, then we may ascertain by induction,

or deduction, or both, what these are. And if it be admitted that

because of such natural relations happiness is produced by this kind of

conduct, which is therefore to be approved; while misery is produced by

that kind of conduct, which is therefore to be condemned; then it is

admitted that the rightness or wrongness of actions is determinable, and

must finally be determined, by the goodness or badness of the effects

that flow from them, which is contrary to the hypothesis. Spencer also

repeats and enlarges upon his formerly stated objections to

utilitarianism as superficial: "The utilitarianism which recognizes only

the principles of conduct reached by induction, is but preparatory to

the utilitarianism which deduces these principles from the processes of

life as carried on under established conditions of existence."

Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently

generalizes these empirically, but only when it reaches the stage at

which its empirical generalizations are included in a rational

generalization, does it become developed science. So with Ethics; a

preparation in the simpler sciences is presupposed. It has a biological

aspect; since it concerns certain effects, inner and outer, individual

and social, of the vital changes going on in the highest type of

animals. It has a psychological aspect; for its subject-matter is an

aggregate of actions that are prompted by feelings and guided by

intelligence. And it has a sociological aspect; for these actions, some

of them directly, and all of them indirectly, affect associated beings.

Belonging under one aspect of each of these sciences,--physical,

biological, psychological, sociological,--it can find its ultimate

interpretations only in those fundamental truths which are common to all

of them, as different aspects of evolving life.

THE PHYSICAL VIEW

While an aggregate evolves, not only the matter composing it, but also

the motion of that matter, passes from an indefinite, incoherent

homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity. It is so with

conduct. The conduct of lowly organized creatures has its successive

portions feebly connected. From these up to man may be observed an

increase in cohesion. Man, even in his lowest state, displays in his

conduct far more coherent combinations of motions; and in civilized man

this trait of developed conduct becomes more conspicuous still. But an

even greater coherence among its component motions broadly distinguishes

the conduct we call moral from the conduct we call immoral. The

application of the word dissolute to the last, and of the word

self-restrained to the first, implies this fact. The sequences of

conduct in the moral man are more easily to be specified, as implied by

the word trustworthy applied to them; while those of the less principled

man cannot be so specified; as is implied by the word untrustworthy.

Indefiniteness accompanies incoherence in conduct that is little

evolved; and throughout the ascending stages of evolving conduct there

is an increasingly definite cooerdination of the motions constituting it,

until we reach the conscientious man, who is exact in all his

transactions. With this increase of definiteness and coherence goes also

an increase of heterogeneity; the moral man performs more varied duties,

adjustments of acts to ends in more varied relations, than does the

immoral man.

Evolution in conduct is, like all other evolution, towards

equilibrium,--not the equilibrium reached by the individual in death,

but a moving equilibrium. His evolution consists in a continual

adjustment of inner to outer relations, until a state of society shall

be reached in which the individual will find his nature congruous with

the environment.

THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW

"The truth that the ideally moral man is one in whom the moving

equilibrium is perfect, or approaches nearest to perfection, becomes,

when translated with physiological language, the truth that he is one in

whom the functions of all kinds are duly fulfilled." Either excess or

defect in the performance of function results in a lowering of life, for

the time being at least. Hence, the performance of every function is, in

a sense, a moral obligation. One test of action is thus given us. An

action must be classed as right or wrong in respect of its immediate

bearings, according as it does or does not tend either to the

maintenance of complete life for the time being or the prolongation of

life to its full extent. This is true even though the remoter bearings

of the action may call for a different classification. The seeming

paradoxy of this statement results from the tendency, so difficult to

avoid, to judge a conclusion which presupposes an ideal humanity, by its

applicability to humanity as now existing. In the ideal state, towards

which evolution tends, any falling short of function implies deviation

from perfectly moral conduct.

"Fit connections between acts and results must establish themselves in

living things, even before consciousness arises; and after the rise of

consciousness these connections can change in no other way than to

become better established. At the very outset, life is maintained by

persistence in acts which conduce to it and desistence from acts which

impede it; and whenever sentience makes its appearance as an

accompaniment, its forms must be such that in the one case the produced

feeling is of a kind that will be sought--pleasure, and in the other

case is of a kind that will be shunned--pain." So, in the case of the

seizure of food, for example, "the pleasurable sensation," everywhere

where it arises, must be itself the stimulus to the contraction by which

the pleasurable sensation is maintained and increased; or must be so

bound up with the stimulus that the two increase together. "And this

relation, which we see is directly established in the case of a

fundamental function, must be indirectly established with all other

functions; since non-establishment of it in any particular case implies,

in so far, unfitness to the conditions of existence." "Sentient

existence can evolve only on condition that pleasure-giving acts are

life-sustaining acts."

It is true that, in mankind as at present constituted, guidance by

present or proximate pleasures and pains fails throughout a wide range

of cases. This arises throughout evolution by changes in the

environment, from which result partial misadjustments of the feelings,

necessitating readjustments. This general cause of derangement has been

operating on human beings in the changes from a primitive to a

civilized condition through the direct opposition and struggle of the

militant and the industrial spirit, in a manner unusually decided,

persistent, and involved.

But there is a still further relation between pleasure and welfare to be

considered. There are connections between pleasure in general, and

physiological exaltation, and between pain in general and physiological

depression. Every pleasure increases vitality, every pain decreases

vitality. Non-recognition of these general truths vitiates moral

speculation at large. "'You have had your gratification--it is past; and

you are as you were before,' says the moralist to one; and to another he

says: 'You have borne the suffering--it is over; and there the matter

ends.' Both statements are false; leaving out of view indirect results,

the direct results are that the one has moved a step away from death,

and the other has moved a step towards death."

However, it is with the indirect results that the moralist is especially

concerned; since remote consequences of action are especially to be

considered in ethical questions. But doubtless a better understanding of

biological truths would be to the benefit of moral theory and society at

large.

Spencer especially combats, in a note at the end of this chapter,

Barratt's theory, stated in "Physical Ethics," that movements of

retraction and withdrawal and movements that secure the continuance of

the impression of any acting force, are the external marks,

respectively, of pain and pleasure. A great part of the vital processes,

even in creatures of developed nervous systems, are carried on by

unconscious reflex action, and there is, therefore, no propriety in

assuming the existence of what we understand by consciousness in

creatures not only devoid of nervous systems but devoid of structures in

general. It is more proper to conceive such feelings as arising

gradually, by the compounding of ultimate elements of consciousness.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW

"Mind consists of feelings and the relations among feelings.[41] By

compositions of the relations, and ideas of relations, intelligence

arises. By composition of feelings, and ideas of feelings, emotion

arises. And, other things equal, the evolution of either is great in

proportion as the composition is great. One of the necessary

implications is that cognition becomes higher in proportion as it is

remoter from reflex action; while emotion becomes higher in proportion

as it is remoter from sensation."[42]

"The mental process by which, in any case, the adjustment of acts to

ends is effected and which, under its higher forms, becomes the

subject-matter of ethical judgments, is, as above implied, divisible

into the rise of a feeling or feelings constituting the motive, and the

thought or thoughts through which the motive is shaped and finally

issues in action. The first of these elements, originally an excitement,

becomes a simple sensation; then a compound sensation; then a cluster of

partially presentative and partially representative sensations, forming

an incipient emotion; then a cluster of exclusively ideal or

representative sensations forming an emotion proper; then a cluster of

such clusters forming a compound emotion; and eventually becomes a still

more involved emotion composed of the ideal forms of such compound

emotions. The other element, beginning with that immediate passage of a

single stimulus into a single motion, called reflex action, presently

comes to be a set of associated discharges of stimuli producing

associated motions; constituting instinct. Step by step arise more

entangled combinations of stimuli, somewhat variable in their modes of

union, leading to complex motions, similarly variable in their

adjustments; whence occasional hesitations in the sensori-motor

processes. Presently is reached a stage at which the combined clusters

of impressions, not all present together, issue in actions not all

simultaneous, implying representation of results, or thought. Afterwards

follow stages in which various thoughts have time to pass before the

composite motives produce the appropriate actions, until at last arise

those long deliberations during which the probabilities of various

consequences are estimated, and the promptings of the correlative

feelings balanced; constituting calm judgment. That, under either of its

aspects, the later forms of this mental process are the higher,

ethically considered as well as otherwise considered, will be readily

seen."[43]

"Observe, then, what follows respecting the relative authorities of

motives. Throughout the ascent from low creatures up to man, and from

the lowest types of man to the highest, self-preservation has been

increased by the subordination of simple excitations to compound

excitations,--the subjection of immediate sensations to the ideas of

sensations to come,--the overruling of presentative feelings by

representative feelings, and of representative feelings by

re-representative feelings. As life has advanced, the accompanying

sentience has become increasingly ideal; and among feelings produced by

the compounding of ideas, the highest, and those which are evolved

latest, are the re-compounded or doubly ideal. Hence it follows that, as

guides, the feelings have authorities proportionate to the degrees in

which they are removed, by their complexity and their ideality, from

simple sensations and appetites. A further implication is made clear by

studying the intellectual sides of these mental processes by which acts

are adjusted to ends. Where they are low and simple, these comprehend

the guiding only of immediate acts by immediate stimuli--the entire

transaction in each case, lasting but a moment, refers only to a

proximate result. But with the development of intelligence and the

growing ideality of the motives, the ends to which the acts are adjusted

cease to be exclusively immediate. The more ideal motives concern ends

that are more distant; and with approach to the highest types, present

ends become increasingly subordinate to those future ends which the

ideal motives have for their objects. Hence there arises a certain

presumption in favor of a motive which refers to a remote good, in

comparison with one which refers to a proximate good."[44]

Out of the three controls of conduct, the political, the religious, and

the social, the first and the last of which are generated in the social

state through the supremacy of individuals in the midst of a control

that is also, in some degree, exerted by the whole community, the moral

consciousness grows; the feeling of moral obligation in general arising

in a manner analogous to that in which abstract ideas are generated, out

of concrete instances. As in such groupings of instances the different

components are mutually cancelled to form the abstract idea, so in

groupings of the emotions, there takes place a mutual cancelling of

diverse components; the common component is made relatively appreciable,

and becomes an abstract feeling. That which the moral feelings--the

feelings that prompt honesty, truthfulness, etc.--have in common, is

complexity and re-representative character. The idea of

authoritativeness has, therefore, come to be connected with feelings

having these traits: the implication being that the lower and simpler

feelings are without authority. Another element--that of

coerciveness--originated from experience of those several forms of

restraint that have established themselves in the course of

civilization--the political, religious, and social. By punishment is

generated the sense of compulsion which the consciousness of duty

includes, and which the word obligation indicates. This sense, however,

becomes indirectly connected with the feelings distinguished as moral;

and slowly fades as these emerge from amidst the political, religious,

and social motives, and become distinct and predominant. The sense of

duty is, therefore, transitory, fading as a motive as pleasure in

right-doing is evolved.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW

"Not for the human race only, but for every race, there are laws of

right living. Given its environment and its structure, and there is, for

each kind of creature, a set of actions adapted in their kinds, amounts,

and combinations, to secure the highest conservation its nature

permits." Yet in man we find an additional factor in the formula for

life: for man is sociable to a degree not found anywhere else among

animals. The conditions of the associated state have therefore called

for an emphasizing of those restraints on conduct entailed by the

presence of fellow-men. "From the sociological point of view, then,

Ethics becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of

conduct that are fitted to the associated state, in such wise that the

lives of each and all may be the greatest possible, alike in length and

breadth." "But here we are met by a fact which forbids us thus to put in

the foreground the welfare of citizens, individually considered, and

requires us to put in the foreground the welfare of the society as a

whole. The life of the social organism must, as an end, rank above the

lives of its units." These two ends are not harmonious at the outset,

since as long as communities are endangered by rival communities, a

sacrifice of private to public claims is necessary. When, however,

antagonism between communities shall cease, there will cease to be any

public claims at variance with private claims; the need for the

subordination of individual lives to the general life will cease, and

the latter, having from the beginning had furtherance of individual

lives as its ultimate purpose, will come to have this as its proximate

purpose. Between the commands of duty towards members of the same

community and towards those of different communities as between the

sentiments answering to these relations, there is, at present, conflict.

In the course of evolution, however, the various forms of subjection

countenanced by a warlike regime--slavery, the subjection of women to

men, and paternal absolutism, become more and more unpopular, and are

done away with. For each kind and degree of social evolution, there is

an appropriate compromise between the moral code of enmity and that of

amity; this is, for the time being, authoritative.[45] But such

compromise belongs to incomplete conduct; the end of evolution is in the

annihilation of enmity between societies as between individuals. Nor is

a mere abstinence from mutual injury enough. Without cooeperation for

satisfying wants the social state loses its _raison d'etre_. In all

efforts for cooeperation equivalence of exchange is a necessary basis;

all failure to fulfil such equivalence causes antagonism and thus a

diminution of social coherence; in the social, as in the animal

organism, waste without repair destroys the equilibrium of the parts;

fulfilment of contract is, therefore, the primary condition of the

welfare of society.

And even mutual punctiliousness in the fulfilment of contract is not

sufficient to the moral ideal. Daily experience proves that every one

would suffer many evils and lose many goods, did none give him unpaid

assistance. The limit of the evolution of conduct is not reached until,

beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are

spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others. The form of nature

which thus adds beneficence to justice, is one which adaptation to the

social state produces. "The social man has not reached that

harmonization of constitution with conditions forming the limit of

evolution, so long as there remains space for the growth of faculties

which, by their exercise, bring positive benefit to others and

satisfaction to self. If the presence of fellow-men, while putting

certain limits to each man's sphere of activity, opens certain other

spheres of activity in which feelings, while achieving their

gratifications, do not diminish but add to the gratifications of others,

then such spheres will inevitably be occupied."[46] But of beneficence,

as well as of justice, sympathy is the root.

The assumption that feelings can be arranged in a scale of

desirability, against which Mr. Sidgwick especially argues in his

objections to (empirical) egoistic hedonism, is not necessarily an

element of such hedonism, although Bentham, in naming intensity,

duration, certainty, and proximity as traits entering into an estimation

of the relative value of a pleasure or pain, has committed himself to

it. But if a debtor who cannot pay offers to compound for his debt by

making over to me any one of various objects of property, will I not

endeavor to estimate their relative value, though I may not be able to

do it exactly; and if I choose wrongly is therefore the ground of choice

to be abandoned? Mr. Sidgwick's argument against empirical hedonism must

tell, moreover, in a still greater degree, against his own

utilitarianism, since this is applicable, not to the individual simply,

but to many classes of differing individuals. To this difficulty must be

added, moreover, the future indeterminateness of the means for obtaining

such universal happiness. Mr. Sidgwick's objection contains, however, a

partial truth; for guidance in the pursuit of happiness through the mere

balancing of pleasures and pains is, if partially practicable throughout

a certain range of conduct, futile throughout a much wider range. "It is

quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate aim of action,

and at the same time to deny that it can be reached by making it the

immediate aim. I go with Mr. Sidgwick as far as the conclusion that 'we

must at least admit the desirability of confirming or correcting the

results of such comparisons (of pleasures and pains) by any other method

upon which we may find reason to rely'; and I then go further, and say

that throughout a large part of conduct guidance by such comparisons is

to be entirely set aside and replaced by other guidance."

The fact cited by Mr. Sidgwick as the "fundamental paradox of hedonism,"

that to get the pleasures of pursuit one must "forget" them, is

explained by the fact that the pleasures of pursuit lie greatly in the

consciousness of capability in the efficient use of means, and the sense

of the admiration excited thereby in others. And so the "fundamental

paradox" disappears. Yet the truth of the pleasure derived from means as

distinguished from ends is of significance. Throughout the evolution of

conduct we find a growing complexity of adjustment of acts to ends, the

interposition of more and more complex means, each as a step to the

next, and leading to the final attainment of even remoter ends. Of

these means, each set, with its accompanying satisfaction, developed

with the function, comes at last to be regarded as proximate end, and

constitutes an obligation; and each later and higher order of means

comes to take precedence in time and authoritativeness of each earlier

and lower order of means. In this manner arises the authoritativeness of

moral requirements, as designating the latest and highest order of

means.

Such means are more determinable than the end--happiness--for any

society. What constitutes happiness is more difficult of determination

than what constitutes the means of its attainment. We may now see our

way to reconciling sundry conflicting ethical theories, which generally

embody portions of the truth, and simply require to be combined in

proper order in order to embody the whole truth. The theological theory

contains a part. If for the divine will, supposed to be supernaturally

revealed, we substitute the naturally revealed end towards which the

Power manifested throughout Evolution works; then, since evolution has

been, and is still, working towards the highest life, it follows that

conformity to those principles by which the highest life is achieved, is

furtherance of that end. The doctrine that perfection or excellence of

nature should be the purpose of pursuit, is in one sense true; for it

tacitly recognizes that ideal form of being which the highest life

implies, and to which evolution tends. There is a truth, also, in the

doctrine that virtue must be the aim; for this is another form of the

doctrine that the aim must be to fulfil the conditions to achievement of

the highest life. That the intuitions of a moral faculty should guide

our conduct is a proposition in which a truth is contained; for these

intuitions are the slowly organized results of experiences received by

the race while living in presence of these conditions. And that

happiness is the supreme end is beyond question true; for it is the

concomitant of that highest life which every theory of moral guidance

has, distinctly or vaguely, in view.

Thus, those ethical systems which make virtue, right, obligation, the

cardinal aims, are seen to be complementary to those ethical systems

which make welfare, happiness, pleasure, the cardinal aims.

Spencer follows up this argument with a chapter on the relativity of

pleasures and pains, and then proceeds with an argument against

excessive altruism as, in the end, selfish, since it is destructive to

the power for work and to individual life, diminishes the vigor of

offspring, and finally results in the survival of the less altruistic as

the fittest; this chapter is under the heading "Egoism versus Altruism."

It is followed by a chapter on Altruism versus Egoism, in which is shown

that some individual self-sacrifice, at least to offspring, is found far

down in the scale of being; that altruism is, therefore, "no less

primordial than self-preservation,"[47] and hence no less imperative;

that this altruism, at first unconscious, becomes, in higher stages of

evolution, conscious; and that if often selfish in motive, it may be

without any element of conscious self-regard, although it conduces

greatly to egoistic satisfaction. Indeed, pure egoism defeats itself,

since pleasure palls by over-indulgence, is dulled by maturity, and

almost destroyed by old age. He that can find pleasure in ministering to

that of others has, however, a source of pleasure which may serve in

place of personal pleasure. In the associated state, a certain altruism

is, and must necessarily be, an advantage to each member of the

community. Whatever conduces to the well-being of each is conducive to

the well-being of all.

Here follows a criticism of utilitarianism as one form of pure altruism,

since, according to the utilitarian doctrine, each individual is to

count for one, not more than one, and the individual share of happiness

thus becomes infinitesimal as compared with general happiness. Shall A,

who has, by labor, acquired some material happiness, take the attitude

of a disinterested spectator with regard to their use, as Mr. Mill

recommends? And will he, as such, decide on a division of these means to

happiness with B, C, and D, who have not labored to produce them? From

the conclusion that a really disinterested spectator would not decree

any such division, Spencer seems to draw the conclusion that Mr. Mill's

position is untenable. He further illustrates the untenability of

utilitarianism (as pure altruism) by the figure of a cluster of bodies

generating heat, each of which will have, as long as it generates heat

for itself, a certain amount of proper heat and a certain amount of heat

derived from the others; whereas the whole cluster will become cold as

soon as each ceases to generate heat for itself and depends on the heat

generated by the rest. Utilitarianism involves the further paradox that,

to achieve the greatest sum of happiness, each individual must be more

egoistic than altruistic. "For, speaking generally, sympathetic

pleasures must ever continue less intense than the pleasures with which

there is sympathy." And while the individual must be extremely

unegoistic in that he is willing to yield up the benefit for which he

has labored, he must, at the same time, be extremely egoistic, since he

is so selfish as willingly to let others yield up to him the benefits

they have labored for. "To assume that egoistic pleasures may be

relinquished to any extent is to fall into one of those many errors of

ethical speculation which result from ignoring the laws of biology....

To yield up normal pleasure is to yield up so much life; and there

arises the question:--to what extent may this be done?... Surrender,

carried to a certain point, is extremely mischievous, and to a further

point, fatal."[48] After beginning, however, with this assertion that to

assume that egoistic pleasure may be relinquished to any extent is to

fall, from ignorance of biology, into an error of ethical speculation,

Spencer reaches only the conclusion that, if the individual is to

continue living, he _must_ take "certain amounts" of those pleasures

which go along with the fulfilment of the bodily functions, and that

"the portion of happiness which it is possible for him to yield up for

redistribution is a limited portion." He further argues that "a

perfectly moral law must be one which becomes perfectly practicable as

human nature becomes perfect"; but that the law of utilitarianism does

not so become practicable, since opportunities for practising altruism,

which originate in imperfection in others, will diminish and finally

disappear in the ideal state. There is no addition to happiness by

redistribution, and there is the additional labor and loss of time of

such redistribution. The conclusion must be that "general happiness is

to be achieved mainly through the adequate pursuit of their own

happiness by individuals, while reciprocally, the happiness of

individuals is to be achieved in part by their pursuit of the general

happiness." The chapter on the conciliation of altruism and egoism is

occupied with the development of sympathy, as the militant spirit grows

less. The expression of emotion, as also the power of interpreting such

expression, must become greater as the impelling cause to concealment

found in lack of sympathy, disappears. When conditions require any class

of activities to be relatively great, there will arise a relatively

great pleasure accompanying that class of activities; the scope for

altruistic activities will not exceed the desire for altruistic

satisfaction. Such altruistic satisfaction, though in a transfigured

sense egoistic, will not be pursued egoistically--that is, from egoistic

motives. General altruism will resist too great altruism in the

individual, and as the occasion for self-sacrifice disappears, altruism

will take on the ultimate form of sympathy with the pleasure of others

produced by the successful activities of these. And so there will

disappear the apparently permanent opposition between egoism and

altruism.

The last two chapters of "The Data of Ethics" deal with Ethics as the

law of the ideal man in an ideal society, and treat of the attainment of

general principles in this science as in other sciences by the neglect

of conflicting factors, and the recognition of fundamental factors, in

the gradually accumulated knowledge of society. On account of the

diversity of men and societies, a code of perfect personal conduct can

never be made definite; only certain general conditions of perfection

can be pointed out. As life is now carried on, the conflict of claims is

continual; and ethical science, here necessarily empirical, can do no

more than aid in making least objectionable compromises. Absolute

Ethics, which supplies the law of perfect right-doing possible only in

an ideal state, does not greatly aid Relative Ethics, yet it aids

somewhat, as keeping before consciousness an ideal conciliation of

claims, and suggesting search for the best form of compromise possible

under the circumstances.

"Justice," which constitutes Part IV. of "The Principles of Ethics," and

to which "The Data of Ethics" belongs as Part I., was published (1891)

in advance of Parts II. and III. The argument of the book runs as

follows:--

Ethics properly involves a consideration of the conduct of animals as

well as of human beings, for the primary subject-matter of Ethics is

conduct considered as producing good and bad results to self or others,

or both, not, as most people believe, conduct as calling forth

approbation or disapprobation. And even on this latter view, Ethics

includes Animal Ethics, since we feel approbation or disapprobation with

regard to many actions of animals.

Animal Ethics includes, as its two cardinal principles, the opposed

classes of altruistic and egoistic acts. For preservation of the

species, benefits received must be, during immaturity, inversely

proportionate to merit or capacities possessed, merit being measured by

powers of self-sustentation, and after maturity, directly proportionate

to worth as measured by fitness to the conditions of existence.

Furthermore, though the species is made up of individuals, many of these

individuals may disappear and the species still be preserved, whereas

its disappearance as a whole involves absolute failure in achieving the

end, so that, where preservation of individuals conflicts with

preservation of the species, the individuals must be sacrificed.

The principle that among adults benefits must be in proportion to

merits, implies in its biological aspect survival of the fittest. Its

violation involves double harm to the species by sacrifice of the

superior to the inferior, and consequent increase of the inferior.

"Interpreted in ethical terms, it is that each individual ought to be

subject to the effects of its own nature and resulting conduct"; and

throughout sub-human life this rule holds without qualification. The

same principle is displayed in the mutual relations of the parts of

organisms, every part being nourished in proportion to its use or

function, a balancing of the relative powers of the parts being thus

effected, and the organism "fitted as a whole to its existence by having

its parts continuously proportioned to the requirements." In a parallel

manner, the species as a whole is fitted to its environment by the

greater prosperity to self and offspring that comes to those better

adapted.

But sub-human justice is extremely imperfect, alike in general and in

detail.

In general it is imperfect, in that the sustentation of multitudinous

species depends on the wholesale destruction of others; so that, in the

species serving as prey, the relations between conduct and consequence

are so habitually broken that in very few individuals are they long

maintained. It is true the destruction of the species serving as prey is

the result of their natures; "but this violent ending of the immense

majority implies that the species is one in which justice, as above

conceived, is displayed in but small measure." Sub-human justice is also

imperfect in detail, in that the relation between conduct and

consequences is, in such an immense proportion of cases, broken by

accidents,--such as scarcity of food, inclemencies of weather, invasions

by parasites, attacks of enemies,--which fall indiscriminately on the

superior and the inferior. As organization becomes higher, sub-human

justice becomes more decided; as general superiority increases, there

is less dependence on accident, and individual differences become more

important.

With the beginning of gregariousness, we find the new element of

cooeperation, passive or active, which is an advantage to the species.

This involves so much restraint of conflicting acts as will leave a

balance of advantage; else survival of the fittest will exterminate the

variety in which association begins. The experience of the evils of not

maintaining such limits to action results in an inherited tendency to

maintain them. The general consciousness of the need for maintaining

them results in punishment of their disregard. Self-subordination among

solitary animals is found only in parenthood; among gregarious animals

there is a further subjection of the individual to his kind, and where

an occasional sacrifice of life furthers the preservation of species,

sub-human justice may rightly have this second limitation.

In order of priority, the law of relation between conduct and

consequence, the principle that each individual ought to receive the

good and evil resulting from his own nature, stands first; it is the

primary law holding of all creatures. The law of the restraint, in

gregarious animals, of interfering acts, is second in time and

authority, and is simply a specification of the form which the primary

law takes under conditions of gregarious life, since, in asserting

restriction of the interactions of conduct and consequence, it tacitly

reasserts that these interactions must be maintained in other

individuals, that is, in all individuals. The third law, of the

occasional sacrifice of individuals to their kind, is later and narrower

in application, and a qualification of the first law. The first law is

absolute for animals in general; the second is absolute for gregarious

animals; but the third "is relative to the existence of enemies of such

kinds that, in contending with them, the species gains more than it

loses by the sacrifice of a few members; and in the absence of such

enemies this qualification imposed by the third law disappears."

As human life is a development of sub-human life, so human justice is a

development of sub-human justice. According to pure justice, the

individual should suffer the consequences of his acts, and that such is

the general opinion is implied in such common expressions as: "He has no

one to blame but himself"; "He has made his own bed, and now he must lie

on it"; "He has got no more than he deserved"; or, "He has fairly earned

his reward."

The truth that, with higher organization, danger from accident becomes

less, longevity is greater, and so differences count for more, showing

their effects for longer periods, and justice therefore becomes greater,

applies also to human beings. The rate of mortality decreases with man,

and according to his civilization.

More clearly in the case of human beings than in that of other animals

is it shown that gregariousness establishes itself because it profits

the variety. Where a variety live on wild food, they associate only in

small groups; game and fruit, widely distributed, can support these

only. "But greater gregariousness arises where agriculture makes

possible the support of a large number on a small area; and where the

accompanying development of industries introduces many and various

cooeperations." The advantages of cooeperation can be had only by

conformity to the conditions which association imposes--by such

limitation of the pursuits of individuals as to leave a surplus of

advantage to associated life. "This truth is illustrated by the

unprosperous or decaying state of communities in which the trespasses of

individuals on one another are so numerous and great as generally to

prevent them from severally receiving the normal results of their

labors." Mutual restraint being more imperative with human beings than

with animals, there is with them a still more marked habit of

punishment.

"Through all which sets of facts is manifested the truth, recognized

practically if not theoretically, that each individual, carrying on the

actions which subserve his life, and not prevented from receiving their

normal results, good and bad, shall carry on these actions under such

restraints as are imposed by the carrying on of kindred actions by other

individuals, who have similarly to receive such normal results, good and

bad. And vaguely, if not definitely, this is seen to constitute what is

called justice."

In the highest gregarious creature, the necessity which we found, of an

occasional sacrifice of the individual in defence of species, assumes

large proportions, the defence being not only against enemies of other

kinds, but also against enemies of the same kind. This obligation is

less than that of care for offspring, or mutual restraint. It exists

only as necessary to protect the society against destruction, hence only

for defensive, not for offensive, war. It may be objected that war

peoples the earth with the stronger, but this is not necessarily so,

since the conquered may merely be fewer in number. And further, it is

only during the earlier stages of human progress that the development of

strength, courage, and cunning are of chief importance. But for an

accident, Persia would have conquered Greece; and Tartar hordes once

very nearly overwhelmed European civilization. The races best fitted for

social life do not necessarily conquer, and there are injurious moral

reactions on both conquering and conquered. Only defensive war retains a

quasi-ethical justification. It belongs, however, to a transitional

state, and is not justified by Absolute Ethics.

As the organs of inferior animals are moulded into fitness for the

requirements of life, so, simultaneously, through nervous modifications,

their sensations, instincts, emotions, and intellectual aptitudes are

also moulded to these requirements,--in the gregarious animals to the

conditions of gregarious life. Many evolutionists appear to regard the

variability of man as ceasing with civilized life, but the whole analogy

of nature is against such a theory; we must assume that man, like other

animals, is moulded to suit his requirements, and that moral changes are

among those thus wrought out. Aggressive actions often entail suffering

on the individuals of a group performing them, as well as on the group

as a whole, and on the other hand, harmonious cooeperation in a group

profits the average of its members; so that there is a tendency to

survival of groups having such adaptation of nature. And just as a love

of property, formerly gratified by possession of food and shelter, came

later to be extended to the weapons for obtaining these, and, later,

even to the raw materials, the pleasure in ownership becoming more and

more abstract and remote from material satisfaction, so the natural

impatience of animal nature at restraint of its powers becomes in man a

sentiment of egoistic justice, for justice requires the free play of all

forces in order that the results of character may fall upon the

individual. It is more difficult to understand how the altruistic

sentiment of justice comes into being. On one hand, its implication is

that it can be developed only by adaptation to social life; on the

other, it appears that social life is impossible without the maintenance

of those equitable relations which imply a sentiment of justice. These

requirements are fulfilled by a pro-altruistic sentiment of justice,

which takes its place. The first deterrent from aggression, among

animals, is fear of retaliation; a further restraint, with man, is fear

of reprobation or social disgrace. To these are to be added the feelings

arising under political and religious authority--the dread of legal

punishment and the dread of divine vengeance; and these four kinds of

feelings cooeperate, forming a body of feeling, which checks the

primitive tendency to pursue the objects of desire without regard to the

interests of fellow-men, and though containing nothing of the altruistic

sentiment of justice, makes social cooeperation possible. Creatures which

become gregarious, tend to become sympathetic in degrees proportionate

to their intelligence--by sympathy being meant the arousing of kindred

feeling by the witness of a display of feeling in others, sympathy being

fostered by common enjoyments and sufferings. The altruistic sentiment

of justice is slow in assuming a high form, "partly because its primary

component does not become highly developed until a late phase of

progress, partly because it is relatively complex, and partly because it

implies a stretch of imagination not possible for low intelligences."

As, until pain has been felt, there cannot be sympathy with pain, so the

altruistic sentiment of justice cannot be developed until the egoistic

sentiment has arisen; moreover, the sentiment of justice is concerned,

not only with concrete pains and pleasures, but also with their

conditions, and hence this sentiment demands a development of the power

of mental representation.

There is a close connection between the sentiment of justice and the

social type. Predominant militancy affords no scope for the egoistic

sentiment of justice, and at the same time sympathy is perpetually

seared by militant activities. On the other hand, as fast as voluntary

cooeperation, which characterizes the industrial type of society, becomes

more general than compulsory cooeperation, which characterizes the

militant type of society, individual activities become less restrained,

and the sentiment which rejoices in the scope for them is encouraged;

while simultaneously, the occasions for repressing the sympathies become

less frequent.

The idea of justice is different from the mere sentiment of justice; the

former gradually arising from the latter, in the course of generations,

by experience of the limits to which action can be carried without

causing resentment from others. But since the kinds of activity are many

and become increasingly various with the development of social life, it

is a long time before the general nature of the limit common to all

cases can be conceived. A further reason for the slowness of development

is, that the arising ideas of justice have been perpetually confused by

the conflicting requirements of internal amity and external enmity.

Two elements, a positive and a negative, constitute the idea of

justice--that of man's recognition of his claims to unimpeded activities

and the results they bring, and that of the limits which the presence of

other men necessitate. The primordial ideal suggested is inequality, for

since the principal is that each should receive the results due to his

own nature, then, since men differ in their powers, unequal benefits are

implied. But mutual limitations suggest a contrary idea, experience

showing that the bounds to which one may pursue his own ends are, on the

average, the same for all, so that the idea of equality arises.

Unbalanced appreciations of these two factors in human justice lead to

divergent moral and social theories.

Among the rudest men the appreciations are no higher than among inferior

gregarious animals. Where war has developed political organization the

idea of inequality predominates, but the idea is one, not of natural,

but of artificial apportionment. And in general, we find that the

primary or brute factor in justice is but little qualified by the human

factor.

All movements are rhythmical, social movements included, and after the

idea of justice in which inequality predominates comes a conception in

which the idea of equality unduly predominates--as in Bentham's ethical

theory, where "one person's happiness, supposed equal in degree (with

proper allowance made for kind), is accounted for exactly as much as

another's"; and this is the theory which Communism would reduce to

practice. It is an absolute denial of the principle of inequality, and

must apply alike to the worthy and unworthy, as well as to the superior

and inferior in physical and intellectual capacities, since moral

inequalities are as much inherited as others. Here we have a deliberate

abolition of that cardinal distinction between the ethics of the family

and the ethics of the state emphasized at the outset--"an abolition

which, as we saw, must eventuate in decay and disappearance of the

species or variety in which it takes place."

The true principle shows an amalgamation of these two. "The equality

concerns the mutually limited spheres of action which must be maintained

if associated men are to cooeperate harmoniously. The inequality concerns

the results which each may achieve by carrying on his actions within the

implied limits. No incongruity exists when the ideas of equality and

inequality are applied, the one to the bounds and the other to the

benefits. Contrariwise, the two may be, and must be, simultaneously

asserted."

"Any considerable acceptance of so definite an idea of justice is not to

be expected. It is an idea appropriate to an ultimate state, and can be

but partially entertained during transitional states; for the prevailing

ideas must, on the average, be congruous with existing institutions and

activities." During the thirty, or rather forty years' peace, and

weakening of militant organization, the idea of justice became clearer;

but since then the idea of regimentation has spread. It is predominant

in the conception of socialism with its army of workers with appointed

tasks and apportioned shares of products, and every act of Parliament

which takes money from the individual for public purposes shows a

tendency in the same direction. In the countries where militancy is most

pronounced, socialism is most highly developed. "Sympathy, which, a

generation ago, was taking the shape of justice, is relapsing into

generosity; and the generosity is exercised by inflicting injustice.

Daily legislation betrays little anxiety that each shall have that which

belongs to him, but great anxiety that he shall have that which belongs

to somebody else."

The formula of justice may be expressed thus: "Every man is free to do

that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any

other man."

This is not to be interpreted as meaning that aggression is permissible

as long as retaliation is permitted; for the formula means that

interference with another's life is limited, that life shall not be

impeded in one case further than is necessary to the maintenance of

other lives; it does not countenance a superfluous interference on the

ground that an equal interference may balance it. In earlier stages, the

conception of justice was this erroneous one of a balancing of

injuries--an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. By oscillations

which become gradually less, social equilibrium is approached; and with

this approach to equilibrium comes approach to a definite theory of

equilibrium.

In the reigning school of politics and morals, scorn is expressed for

every doctrine which implies restraint of immediate expediency, or what

appears to be such;--contempt for generalizations and abstract

principles, with unlimited faith in political machinery. Strangely

enough, we find this approval of political empiricism and disbelief in

any other guidance, in the world of science also. The accepted

scientific fact that causation holds of the actions of incorporated men

as of other parts of nature, remains a dead letter; there is no attempt

to identify the causation, and ridicule is visited upon those who

endeavor to find a definite expression for the fundamental principle of

harmonious social order.

Peoples with whom confusion is not caused by the conflicting disciplines

of outer war and internal peace, early arrive at the principle of

equity, and accordingly some uncivilized tribes show a stronger sense of

it than is found among civilized peoples. Nevertheless, the conception

of justice has slowly evolved to some extent, and is expressed in such

formulae as, "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you"

(too sweeping a statement of the equality of claims, since it implies no

recognition of the inequality necessary in the shares of good

respectively appropriate), or in the Kantian rule, which is an

allotropic form of the Christian rule. Jurists, too, have recognized a

natural law of equity underlying human law. To the reproach that belief

in such a law is an _a priori_ belief, it may be answered that _a

priori_ beliefs are explained by the theory of evolution, as arising

with determination of the nervous system and certain resulting

necessities of thought, and that they differ from _a posteriori_ beliefs

merely in the circumstance "that they are the products of the

experiences of innumerable successive individuals, instead of the

experiences of a single individual." If we ask for the ground of the

greatest happiness principle, we come to an _a priori_ belief also; for

whence is the postulate? If it is an induction, where and by whom has

the induction been drawn; and if it is a truth of experience derived

from careful observation, then what are the observations, and when was

there generalized that vast mass of them on which all politics and

morals should be built? "Not only are there no such experiences, no such

observations, no such inductions, but it is impossible that any should

be assigned." The like is true of Bentham's rule: "Everybody to count

for one, nobody for more than one," and also of the objection to this

rule, that happiness cannot be divided, or greatest happiness obtained,

by equal division of the means to happiness; they all lead, in the last

analysis, to an _a priori_ belief. Moreover, the rule of natural equity,

the freedom of each limited only by the like freedom of all, is not an

exclusively _a priori_ belief, but although the immediate dictum of the

human consciousness after subjection to the discipline of prolonged

social life, it is deducible from the conditions to be fulfilled,

firstly for the maintenance of life at large, and secondly for the

maintenance of social life.

Rights, properly so-called, are corollaries from the law of equal

freedom, and "so far is it from its being true, as some claim, that the

warrant for what are properly called rights is derived from law, it is,

conversely, true that law derives its warrant from them."

In the application of this theory to practical questions, Mr. Spencer's

"Justice" differs from "Social Statics," which it resembles in form and

method, in general in the greatly increased conservatism of the views

expressed. This is shown in all parts of the book, though perhaps most

clearly in those parts relating to the Rights of Women, to the Land

Question, and to the Limits of State-Duties. "Social Statics" advocated

land-nationalization; but "Justice," though still asserting the original

right of the aggregate of men forming the community to the use of the

earth, as that from which all material objects capable of being owned

are derived and so that on which the right to property is originally

dependent, denies the expediency and the justice of a present

redistribution of the land according to this principle; and this because

of the confusion of claims at the present time, the impossibility of

ascertaining whose ancestors were the robbers and whose the robbed in

the gradually arising monopoly, the wrong of making descendants

responsible for the sins of their ancestors, and leaving those now

dependent on the land without compensation for their loss, and the fact

that any claim to the land is merely a claim to it in its original

condition, not in its present state of drainage and cultivation effected

by the labor of generations. Moreover, "under the existing system of

ownership, those who manage the land experience a direct connection

between effort and benefit, while, were it under state-ownership, those

who managed it would experience no such direct connection. The vices of

officialism would inevitably entail immense evils."

The whole of the practical part of "Justice" is especially directed

against Socialism; in general, the course of history shows a less and

less interference with personal freedom, and growing benefit from this

cause. The practicality of woman suffrage and of universal man suffrage

at the present time is denied. If earlier legislation was too much for

the benefit of wealthy and ruling classes, recent extensions of the

suffrage have resulted in still more injurious class-legislation of

another sort.

In this book, Mr. Spencer seems to adhere to his theory of a "final

perfect adaptation to the conditions of social life." Not only is the

distinction between Relative and Absolute Ethics still drawn, but there

are numerous references to an "ultimate state," though certain of these

references might suggest the view that by such a state was meant only

the attainment of so great a degree of civilization as would involve the

cessation of wars.[49] Other passages, however, seem to contradict this

view. One may be especially cited; it is as follows: "This law [of the

gradual reestablishment of deranged harmony, through adaptation and

heredity], holding of human beings among others, implies that the nature

which we inherit from an uncivilized past, and which is still very

imperfectly fitted to the partially-civilized present, will, if allowed

to do so, slowly adjust itself to the requirements of a fully-civilized

future." And after some consideration of adaptation up to the present

time, the paragraph concludes: "If, in the course of these few thousand

years, the discipline of social life has done so much, it is folly to

suppose that it cannot do more--folly to suppose that it will not, in

course of time, do all that has to be done."[50] But in the abridged and

revised edition of "Social Statics" (1892), the following passage occurs

as part of a note at the end of the chapter on "The Evanescence (?

Diminution) of Evil." "The rate of progress towards any adapted form

must diminish with the approach to complete adaptation, since the force

producing it must diminish; so that other causes apart, perfect

adaptation can be reached only in infinite time."[51]

Vol. I. of "The Principles of Ethics," including Parts I., II., and

III., appeared in August, 1892. In this volume, "The Data of Ethics,"

reprinted as Part I., remains unchanged, except for one or two

unimportant sentences. To this Part I. is, however, appended a chapter

which was, according to Mr. Spencer, written for the first publication

of "The Data of Ethics," but was either put aside for some reason, or

else overlooked, probably the latter, says the author, since it contains

material which should have been embodied. The chapter is headed "The

Conciliation," and seems to correspond to the two chapters on "Trial and

Compromise" and "Conciliation" which follow the chapters on "Egoism

_versus_ Altruism," and "Altruism _versus_ Egoism"; for it begins with a

consideration of the conflict of claims shown by "the last two

chapters," the apparent impossibility of the establishment of an

equilibrium, and the consequent apparent necessity of self-sacrifice.

But this conflict between egoism and altruism is merely transitional and

is in process of gradual disappearance, in the same manner in which the

present degree of conciliation of the two has been reached,--namely, by

the growth of such a constitution in each creature as entails pleasure

in altruistic action. Even with the lower animals, the acts which are

necessary to care for ova or young are the fulfilment of an instinct

which is gratified by the act; and in the human race, conciliation

between egoism and altruism, which goes hand in hand with evolution, has

reached a high degree. In the evolution of the human race itself, from

savagery to its present condition, there has been a marked increase of

this conciliation; this is true not only in the family, but to a small

extent also with regard to the larger groups of men constituting

societies. There is decrease of cruelty, increase of justice, both in

the form of state institutions and in their methods of administration,

more active benevolence, and a public sentiment that leads large numbers

of people to find egoistic gratification in the pursuit of the general

good even to the neglect of private interests. Self-sacrifice thus

ceases to be sacrifice in the ordinary sense of the word, since it comes

to bring with it more pleasure than pain. The future must hold in store

changes analogous to those of the past, but these must go on much more

rapidly under the present comparatively peaceful organization of society

than they have during the militant life of the past. This moral

development is retarded, however, not only by the degree of militancy

yet existing, but also by the necessity for a certain degree of

bluntness of feeling, too great sensitiveness to the suffering of others

entailing, while the pressure of population is as great as at present, a

misery that would make life intolerable. It is likely that, with social

progress, human fertility will decrease as cerebral activity increases,

until a comparative balance of fertility and mortality is reached as

"human evolution approaches its limit of complete adaptation to the

social state"; and sympathy will increase in proportion, no longer

entailing on its possessor more of pain than of pleasure, but the

contrary. "Sympathy is the root of every other kind of altruism than

that which, from the beginning, originates the parental activities. It

is the root of that higher altruism which, apart from the

philoprogenitive instinct, produces desire for the happiness of others

and reluctance to inflict pain upon them. These two traits are

inevitably associated. The same mental faculty which reproduces in the

individual consciousness the feelings that are being displayed by other

beings, acts equally to reproduce those states when they are pleasurable

or when they are painful."

The general corollary from the above-described process of evolution is

that, with the increase of sympathy there arises the double result, that

by its increase it tends to decrease the causes of human misery, and in

proportion as it does this, it becomes itself the cause of further

reflected happiness received by each from others. "And the limit towards

which this evolution approaches is one under which, as the amount of

pain suffered by those around from individual imperfections and from

imperfections of social arrangement and conduct, becomes relatively

small, and simultaneously the growth of sympathy goes on with little

check, the sympathy becomes at the same time almost exclusively a source

of pleasure received from the happiness of others, and not of pains

received from their pains. And as this condition is approached, the

function of sympathy is not that of stimulating to self-sacrifice and of

entailing upon its possessor positive or negative pain, but its function

becomes that of making him a recipient of positive pleasure." Thus

altruism will overgrow egoism, becoming itself a source of egoistic

pleasure, and eventually, with the diminution of the pressure of

population, there will come a state in which egoism and altruism are so

conciliated that the one merges in the other.

Among the social animals, with the ant and the bee, for instance, who

cannot be supposed to possess a sense of duty, we see that this

identification of egoism and altruism, as necessary to social life, has

taken place to a considerable extent; and since pleasure of every kind

is the concomitant of nervous structure, we can understand the pleasure

in altruistic as well as in egoistic activities, as soon as there exists

the nervous structure answering to these activities. As certainly as

there yet exist in civilized men instincts of the chase inherited from

savage ancestors, there are growing up and will continue to grow up in

men, these other structures which will prompt to altruistic activities.

Part II. of "The Principles of Ethics" is concerned with "The

Inductions of Ethics." It opens with a chapter on the confusion of

ethical thought due to the fact that, conforming to the general law of

evolution, "the set of conceptions constituting ethics, together with

the associated sentiments, arise out of a relatively incoherent and

indefinite consciousness; and slowly acquire coherence and definiteness

at the same time that the aggregate of them differentiates from the

larger aggregate with which it originally mingled. Long remaining

undistinguished, and then but vaguely discernible as something

independent, ethics must be expected to acquire a distinct embodiment

only when mental evolution has reached a high stage." "Originally,

ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.

Religion itself, in its earliest form, is undistinguished from

ancestor-worship," which passes, in the second stage, into worship of

dead rulers, and is a method of propitiation, prompted by self-interest.

Among some peoples, the idea of sin is limited to offences against the

gods; and in those other cases where there are ethical commands, the

propriety of not offending God is the primary reason given for obeying

them. This last phase of thought is illustrated by the religion of the

Hebrews, among whom good and bad conduct was but little associated with

the intrinsic natures of right and wrong. The popular belief is still

that right and wrong become such by divine fiat.

The gods of primitive, warlike peoples were gods of war, and the belief

in the moral virtue and honor of war still holds large place in the

thought of the world. The ethics of enmity, thus taught at the same time

with the ethics of amity necessary to the internal life of society, gave

rise to utterly inconsistent and contradictory sentiments and ideas,

which, in considerable measure, still exist side by side, in our

churches and outside them.

But, together with these ethical conceptions, there have slowly evolved

other, utilitarian conceptions, derived from a recognition of the

natural consequences of acts. Authority has been introduced into these

conceptions as the source of the duty of action in accordance with them;

yet there has generally been also some perception of their fitness. Such

utilitarian conceptions are to be found in the later Hebrew writings,

among the Egyptians, Greeks, etc. "The divergence of expediency-ethics

from theological ethics is well illustrated in Paley, who in his

official character derived right and wrong from divine commands, and in

his unofficial character derived them from observation of consequences.

Since his day, the last of these views has spread at the expense of the

first."

A still further simultaneous origin of moral dictates is found in the

sentiments which have arisen with such habits of conformity to rules of

conduct as have been furthered by survival of the fittest. We thus have

a conflict of ethical ideas arising from the conflict of these various

sanctions; and also from the further conflict that ensues where a later

religion has been grafted on a more primitive one, as is the case

everywhere in Christendom.

Among modern writers who assert the existence of a moral sense, there is

a division between those who regard the dicta of conscience as supreme,

and those who hold them to be subordinate to divine commands. The two

are agreed in so far as they regard conscience as having a supernatural

origin; and, in that they both recognize the moral sentiment as innate

and suppose human nature to be everywhere the same, they are also, by

implication, alike in supposing that the moral sentiment is identical in

all men.

But as a matter of fact, the moral sentiment is connected with entirely

different rules among different peoples, prescribing monogamy among one

people, polygamy among another; demanding faithfulness and chastity on

the part of women among one people, encouraging adultery among another,

etc.

Common elements in all codes of rules for conduct are the consciousness

of authority, whether that of a God, of a ruler or government, or of

conscience, the more or less definite sense of power or coercion on the

part of this authority, and the representation of public opinion. These

elements, combined in different proportions, result in an idea and a

feeling of obligation, forming a body of thought and feeling which may

be termed pro-ethical, and which, with the mass of mankind, stands in

place of the ethical.

"For now let us observe that the ethical sentiment and idea, properly

so-called, are independent of the ideas and sentiments above described

as derived from external authorities, and coercions, and

approbations--religious, political, or social. The true moral

consciousness which we name conscience does not refer to those extrinsic

results of conduct which take the shape of praise or blame, reward or

punishment, externally awarded; but it refers to the intrinsic results

of conduct which in part and by some intellectually perceived, are

mainly and by most intuitively felt. The moral consciousness proper

does not contemplate obligations as artificially imposed by an external

power; nor is it chiefly occupied with estimates of the amounts of

pleasure and pain which given actions may produce, though these may be

clearly or dimly perceived; but it is chiefly occupied with recognition

of, and regard for, those _conditions_ by fulfilment of which happiness

is achieved or misery avoided." It may or may not be in harmony with the

pro-ethical sentiment; but in any case it is "vaguely or distinctly

recognized as the rightful ruler, responding as it does to consequences

which are not artificial and variable, but to consequences which are

natural and permanent." With the established supremacy of this ethical

sentiment, the feeling of obligation retires into the background, right

actions being performed "spontaneously or from liking." "Though, while

the moral nature is imperfectly developed, there may often arise

conformity to the ethical sentiment under a sense of compulsion by it;

and though, in other cases, non-conformity to it may cause subsequent

self-reproach (as instance a remembered lack of gratitude, which may be

a source of pain without there being any thought of extrinsic penalty);

yet with a moral nature completely balanced, neither of these feelings

will arise, because that which is done is done in satisfaction of the

appropriate desire."

Where the really ethical sentiment conflicts with the factitious idea

and sentiment of obedience to legal authority, the latter may rule at

the expense of the former, as, for instance, in the case of a pedler

condemned for selling without a license. "His act of selling is morally

justifiable, and forbidding him to sell without a license is morally

unjustifiable--is an interference with his due liberty which is

ethically unwarranted."

The remainder of Part II. of the "Principles of Ethics" is occupied with

data cited to show that the amount of internal aggression, of revenge

and robbery, is greater among peoples much occupied with external

aggression, and that these decrease, while justice, generosity (which

Mr. Spencer defines as having a double root, in the philoprogenitive

instinct and the relatively modern feeling of sympathy), humanity

(including kindness, pity, mercy), filial obedience, and industry,

increase as more peaceful habits are reached. A greater veracity is also

indirectly the result of this evolution, since a coercive internal

structure of society is connected with external enmity, and such

coercive structure is unfavorable to veracity. Chastity also increases

with the social evolution, though it does not necessarily characterize

societies of the non-militant type. Its increase is connected with the

growth of the higher moral and aesthetic feelings; romantic love plays a

predominant part in our art. Intemperance, as causing, indirectly,

social evil by a lowering of social efficiency, must, in like manner,

decrease with social advancement.

In summing up his inductions, Spencer says: "Though, as shown in my

first work, 'Social Statics,' I once espoused the doctrine of the

intuitive moralists,... yet it has gradually become clear to me that the

qualifications required practically obliterate the doctrine as

enunciated by them. It has become clear to me that if, among ourselves,

the current belief is that a man who robs and does not repent will be

eternally damned, while an accepted proverb among the Bilochs is, that

'God will not favor a man who does not steal and rob'; it is impossible

to hold that men have in common an innate perception of right and wrong.

"But now, while we are shown that the moral sense doctrine in its

original form is not true, we are also shown that it adumbrates a truth,

and a much higher truth. For the facts cited... unite in proving that

the sentiments and ideas current in each society become adjusted to the

kinds of activity predominating in it.... If the life of internal amity

continues unbroken from generation to generation, there must result not

only the appropriate code, but the appropriate emotional nature.... Men

so conditioned will acquire, to the degree needful for complete

guidance, that innate conscience which intuitive moralists erroneously

suppose to be possessed by mankind at large. There needs but a

continuance of absolute peace externally, and a rigorous insistance on

non-aggression internally, to insure the moulding of men into a form

naturally characterized by all the virtues." Complete exemption from war

has already been attained by some few isolated peoples. "May we not

reasonably infer that the state reached by these small uncultured tribes

may be reached by the great cultured nations, when the life of internal

amity shall be unqualified by the life of external enmity?"

Part III. of the "Principles of Ethics" is occupied with practical

considerations concerning "The Ethics of Individual Life," under the

headings "Activity," "Rest," "Nutrition," "Stimulation," "Culture,"

"Amusements," "Marriage," "Parenthood." Of the general ethical relation

of the individual to society, Spencer says:--"Integration being the

primary process of evolution, we may expect that the aggregate of

conceptions constituting ethics enlarges at the same time that its

components acquire heterogeneity, definiteness, and that kind of

cohesion which system gives to them. As fulfilling this expectation, we

may first note that while drawing within its range of judgment numerous

actions of men towards one another which at first were not recognized as

right or wrong, it finally takes into its sphere the various divisions

of private conduct--those actions of each individual which directly

concern himself only, and in but remote ways concern his fellows."

Ethics has been commonly regarded as merely a system of interdicts on

certain kinds of acts which men would like to do and of injunctions to

perform certain acts which they would like not to do. It says nothing

about the great mass of acts constituting normal life, though these have

their ethical aspect. The pleasurable has been too often regarded as

outside the legitimate sphere of ethical approval, where not directly

the rightful subject of ethical disapproval. But pleasure is an

accompaniment of vitality, and furthers the vital activities; and if the

general happiness is to be the aim of action, then the happiness of each

unit is a fit aim; and there is unquestionably "a division of ethics

which yields sanction to all the normal actions of individual life,

while it forbids the abnormal ones." There is an altruistic as well as

an egoistic justification of the care for self, since the health of

descendants and the ability to provide for offspring is directly

concerned; and since such care is needful to exclude the risk of

becoming a burden to others. And there is a further positive

justification of egoism which results from the obligation to expend some

effort for others, and to become, as far as possible, a source of social

pleasure to others.

It will be seen, from the above analysis, that the chapter appended to

Part I. still speaks of an ultimate state of complete adjustment to

social life[52]; this chapter was, however, published from the original

MS. without alteration. Some passages in Part II. seem to involve the

same idea of a possible complete attainment of the ethical end,[53] but

Part III. closes with reference to "an approximately complete adjustment

of the nature to the life which has to be led."

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Spencer elsewhere says "due exercise," _vide_ p. 76.

[39] Essay on "Morals and Moral Sentiment."

[40] P. 105.

[41] _Vide_ "Principles of Psychology."

[42] P. 104.

[43] Pp. 104,105.

[44] Pp. 108, 109.

[45] Pp. 134, 148.

[46] P. 147.

[47] Pp. 202, 203.

[48] P. 231.

[49] See pp. 71, 193.

[50] Pp. 258, 259.

[51] As the "revision" of the theoretical part of this book chiefly

consists, like its abridgment, in the elimination of the references to

Divine Will and other earlier views held before acquaintance with

Darwin's theory of life, there is nothing in the book, in distinction

from Mr. Spencer's other later works, that needs especially to be

considered here.

[52] See, for instance, _supra_, p. 70.

[53] See _supra_, p. 75.

JOHN FISKE

As Herbert Spencer's closest follower, John Fiske deserves to stand next

him in order of analysis. Fiske accepts, though evidently with

reluctance, what he terms "the terrible theory" of evolution, which

establishes the fact of man's consanguinity with dumb beasts. In his

book on "The Destiny of Man" (1884), he sets forth his theory of the

evolution of society as foreshowing man's final destiny. With regard to

the beginnings of psychical development in the course of evolution, he

thus expresses himself: "At length there came a wonderful

moment;--silent and unnoticed, even as the day of the Lord which cometh

like a thief in the night, there arrived that wonderful moment at which

psychical changes began to be of more use than physical changes to the

brute ancestor of man. Through further ages of ceaseless struggle the

profitable variations in this creature occurred oftener and oftener in

the brain, and less often in other parts of the organism, until bye and

bye the size of his brain had been doubled and its complexity of

structure increased a thousandfold, while in other respects his

appearance was not so very different from that of his brother apes....

No fact in nature is fraught with deeper meaning than this two-sided

fact of the extreme physical similarity and enormous psychical

divergence between man and the group of animals to which he traces his

pedigree. It shows that when humanity began to be evolved, an entirely

new chapter in the history of the universe was opened. Henceforth the

life of the nascent soul came to be first in importance, and the bodily

life became subordinated to it. Henceforth it appeared that the process

of zooelogical change had come to an end, and a process of psychological

change was to take its place. Henceforth along this supreme line there

was to be no further evolution of new species through physical

variation, but through the accumulation of psychical variations one

particular species was to be indefinitely perfected.... Henceforth, in

short, the dominant aspect of evolution was to be, not the genesis of

species, but the progress of civilization.... In the deadly struggle for

existence, which has raged throughout countless aeons of time, the whole

creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring

forth that last consummate specimen of God's handiwork, the Human Soul."

And further, of the genesis of this Human Soul: "With the growth of the

higher centres, the capacities of action become so various and

indeterminate that definite direction is not given to them until after

birth." By the increase of cerebral surface, infancy, which is the

period of plasticity, is prolonged, Man becomes teachable, and though

inherited tendencies and aptitudes still form the foundations of

character, yet the career of the individual is no longer wholly

predetermined by the careers of its ancestors, but individual experience

comes to count as an enormous factor in modifying the career of mankind

from generation to generation.

The psychical development of humanity since its earlier stages has been

largely due to the reaction of individuals upon one another in those

various relations which we characterize as social.

Foreshadowings of social relations occur in the animal world.

Rudimentary moral sentiments are also clearly discernible in the highest

members of various mammalian orders and in all but the lowest members of

our own order. But in respect of definiteness and permanence, the

relations between animals in a state of gregariousness fall far short of

the relations between individuals in the rudest human society. The

primordial unit of human society is the family, the establishment of

which was made necessary and took place through the lengthening of

infancy. When childhood had come to extend over a period of ten or a

dozen years, a period which would have been doubled where several

children were born in succession to the same parents, the relationships

between father and mother, brothers and sisters, must have become firmly

knit; thus the family came into existence, and the way was opened for

the growth of sympathies and ethical feelings. The rudimentary form of

the ethical feelings was that of the transient affection of a female

bird or mammal for its young. First given a definite direction through

the genesis of the primitive human family, the development of altruism

has yet scarcely kept pace with the general development of intelligence;

the advance of civilized man in justice and kindness has been less

marked than his advance in quick intelligence. But the creative energy

which has been thus at work through the bygone eternity is not going to

become quiescent to-morrow; the psychical development of man is

destined to go on in the future as it has in the past. And from the

"Origin of Man," when thoroughly comprehended, we may catch some

glimpses of his destiny.

The earlier condition of things was a state of universal warfare, on

account of the limitation of the food-supply. This warfare was checked

by the beginnings of industrial civilization, which made it possible for

a vastly greater population to live upon a given area, and in many ways

favored social compactness. A new basis of political combination was now

furnished by territorial continuity and by community of occupation. The

supply of food was no longer strictly limited, for it could be

indefinitely increased by peaceful industry; and, moreover, in the free

exchange of the products of labor, it ceased to be true that one man's

interest was opposed to another's. Men did not, it is true, at once

recognize this fact, but have done so only gradually. When the clan had

grown into the state, and the state into the empire, in which many

states were brought together in pacific relations, the recognized sphere

of moral obligation became enlarged, until at length it comprehended all

mankind. The coalescence of groups of men into larger and larger

political aggregates has been the chief work of civilization; and the

chief obstacle to such coalescence has been warfare. Great political

bodies have arisen in three ways. The first, conquest without

incorporation, proved itself suicidal. The second way was conquest with

incorporation, but without representation; and this lacking, the

government retrograded and gradually became a despotism. The third

method, federation, has been the policy of the English government. The

advantage of the habit of self-government has been shown in England's

wide conquest and colonization. The federative method of political

union, pacific in its very conception, is assuming an unquestionable

sway and destined to become universal; the progress of the race will be,

as it has been, with the gradual elimination of warfare.

In a race of inferior animals, any maladjustment is quickly removed by

natural selection. But in man there is a wide interval between the

highest and lowest degree of completeness which are compatible with

maintenance of life; in all grades of civilization above the lowest,

there are so many kinds of superiorities which severally enable men to

survive, notwithstanding accompanying inferiorities, that natural

selection cannot, by itself, rectify any particular unfitness. Hence,

the action of natural selection upon man has long since been essentially

diminished through the operation of social conditions. Therefore the

wicked flourish. Vice is but slowly eliminated, because mankind has so

many other qualities, besides the bad ones, which enable it, in spite of

them, to subsist and achieve progress.

The fundamental difference between civilized man and the savage lies in

the representative power, the imagination, by which men comprehend

pleasure and pain in others. Use and disuse, in place of natural

selection, have come to be paramount with man; and though the ethical

emotions are still too feeble, they will be more and more strengthened

by use, while the manifestation of selfish and hateful feelings will be

more and more weakened by disuse. Man is slowly passing from a primitive

social state, in which he was little better than a brute, toward an

ultimate social state, in which his character shall have become so

transformed that nothing of the brute can be detected in it. The

"original sin" of theology is the brute inheritance, which is being

gradually eliminated; and the message of Christianity: "Blessed are the

meek, for they shall inherit the earth" will be realized in the state of

universal peace towards which mankind is tending. Strife and Sorrow

shall disappear. Peace and Love shall reign supreme. The goal of

evolution is the perfecting of man, whereby we see, more than ever, that

he is the chief object of divine care, the fruition of that creative

energy which is manifested throughout the knowable universe.

We know soul only in connection with body. Yet nothing could be more

grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Cabanis that the brain

secretes thought as the liver secretes bile; the molecular movements of

the brain and the phenomena of thought and feeling are merely

concomitants related in some unknown way. It is not even correct to say

that thought goes on in the brain. He who regards man as the consummate

fruition of creative energy and the chief object of divine care, is

almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul's career is not

completed with the life upon the earth. Difficulties to this theory he

will meet; yet the alternative view contains difficulties at least as

great; nor is there any problem in the simplest and most exact

departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a

transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude. A broad

common sense argument has often to be called in, where keen-edged

metaphysical analysis has confessed itself baffled. The doctrine of

evolution does not allow us to take the atheistic view of the position

of man; the Darwinian theory, properly understood, replaces as much

teleology as it destroys. In the Titanic events of the development of

worlds from the nebular mist and their after-destruction, we may find no

signs of purpose, or even of a dramatic tendency; but on the earth we do

find distinct indications of a dramatic tendency; though doubtless not

of purpose in the limited human sense. Are we to regard the Creator's

work as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks just for

the pleasure of knocking them down again? On such a view the riddle of

the universe becomes a riddle without a meaning. "I can see no

insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period in the

evolution of humanity this divine spark [the soul] may have acquired

sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the wreck of material

forms and endure forever. Such a crowning wonder seems to me no more

than the fit climax to a creative work that has been ineffably beautiful

and marvellous in all its myriad stages."

Fiske gives some further definition of social evolution in man, in his

"Cosmic Philosophy" (1874). He there denies the incompatibility of

free-will with causation, saying that "it is the doctrine of

lawlessness, and not the causationist doctrine, which is incompatible

with liberty and destructive of responsibility."[54]

He further postulates heterogeneity of the environment as "the chief

proximate determining cause of social progress," and defines such

evolution as "a continuous establishment of psychical relations within

the community, in conformity to physical and psychical relations arising

in the environment, during which both the community and the environment

pass from a state of relatively indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a

state of relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which

the constituent units of the community become ever more distinctly

individual."[55] "The progress of a community, as of an organism, is a

process of _adaptation_--the continuous establishment of inner relations

in conformity to outer relations. If we contemplate material

civilization under its widest aspect, we discover its legitimate aim to

be the attainment and maintenance of an equilibrium between the wants

of men and the outward means of satisfying them. And while approaching

this goal, society is ever acquiring in its economic structure both

greater heterogeneity and greater specialization. It is not only that

agriculture, manufactures, commerce, legislation, the acts of the ruler,

the judge, and the physician, have, since ancient times, grown

immeasurably multiform, both in their processes and in their appliances;

but it is also that this specialization has resulted in the greatly

increased ability of society to adapt itself to the emergencies by which

it is now beset."[56] Religion, too, is adjustment; form after form has

been outgrown and perished, yet the life of Christianity, incorporated

in ever higher forms, is continually renewed. The omission of the moral

feeling, as a factor, from Comte's interpretation of the progress of

society, is a fatal defect, since moral and social progress depend more

on feelings than on ideas. As Wallace shows, tribes which combined for

mutual help and protection, restrained appetite by foresight, and felt

sympathy, would have an advantage in the struggle for existence.

"As surely as the astronomer can predict the future state of the

heavens, the sociologist can foresee that the process of adaptation must

go on until, in a remote future, it comes to an end in proximate

equilibrium. The increasing interdependence of human interests must

eventually go far to realize the dream of the philosophic poet, of a

Parliament of Man, a Federation of the World.

"'When the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law,' and when

the desires of each individual shall be in proximate equilibrium with

the means of satisfying them and with the simultaneous desires of all

surrounding individuals."[57]

FOOTNOTES:

[54] Vol. II. p. 189.

[55] Ibid. p. 223, 224.

[56] Vol. II. p. 212.

[57] Ibid. pp. 227, 228.

W. H. ROLPH

"BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS" ("Biologische Probleme," 1884)

For what purpose are we in the world? asks the philosopher, and lays,

with this question, the foundation for later errors. In the effort to

rescue from destruction the theory of a creative intelligence, teleology

has adapted itself to many forms of scientific theory, not excepting

that of evolution. It reads into evolution progress towards what is, in

one way or another, assumed to be an end. But we really know, in the

universe, nothing but continuity, eternal change according to natural

law, and so only _causae efficientes_, never _causae finales_; and organic

development as well as processes in inorganic nature are to be explained

in this manner. The assumption that the result of a process is an end

towards which the process was directed is unwarranted. The question of

science is not: Wherefore is any creature in the world? but: What is he?

What is his actual aim, that is, his endeavor?

In the answer to this question, all philosophical schools have something

in common. Happiness, in one form or another, is acknowledged to be the

"end" of life in this sense. A follower of the utilitarian school may

define happiness as the "sublime feeling that one has taken part in the

continuous improvement of humanity, and the increase of human

happiness," but his words are less a definition of the concept than a

designation of the way in which happiness is to be arrived at. The

"sublime feeling" can be represented only as a feeling of happiness, of

joy. The religious theory, too, which represents the joys of religion on

earth and in heaven, as compensating for the evils of this life, makes

happiness the end of life, though in a different manner. Spencer is

right in declaring that happiness, however it may be defined, always

means, in the end, a greater amount of pleasure than of pain. At this

point, however, the harmony of the schools ceases. The question as to

the method by which this surplus of pleasure is to be obtained is

answered in different ways. All say, indeed, by seeking good and

avoiding evil. But opinion is divided as to what is good and what is

evil.

Rolph here introduces a long criticism of the different schools. Against

utilitarianism he urges that, in so far as it makes the happiness of the

greatest number its principle, it asserts the right of the majority over

a minority, and so advocates, by implication, an absolute subjection to

authority.

Our whole moral education has for its aim to give the young as high a

conception as possible of the happiness which springs from virtue and,

on the other hand, to decry the pleasure which may result from forbidden

acts. We seek, in this manner, to diminish the inward struggle and bring

about the right result. He who has grown up under good influences

escapes many temptations to which a man of less moral education falls a

prey. According to Wallock, who makes the degree of inner struggle the

measure of virtue, the man of better education in this case, the more

moral man, must have less merit than the less moral man. Wallock thus

founders on the rock which Kant so skilfully avoids; according to the

former, the man whose lusts have been mastered by education could never

equal the man of evil instincts, and the chastity of a Magdalen must be

regarded as more moral than that of a pure woman.

Spencer's theory, that the conduct of the higher animals is better

adjusted to ends than that of lower species, is erroneous; the lower

animals are exactly as well organized for the ends of their existence as

are the higher animals for theirs; the tapeworm is relatively just as

perfect as the human being, in comparison with whom he possesses many

superior qualities. The common judgment that the human being is superior

does not accord with the real adjustment of things, but with our human

conception of the ideal end of organization, our anthropocentric idea of

the aim of life. We foolishly believe that the tapeworm and every other

animal has the same end as the human being, and rank the animals

according to this principle, instead of tracing the different

genealogical branches to a like height and then comparing them. Not the

fitness for ends, but the kind and multiplicity of the ends for which

there is fitness, determine our judgment; and the ends by which we judge

are those of our own life. We judge subjectively and absolutely instead

of objectively and relatively. We are ever unconsciously influenced by

the conception that nature, in creating the tapeworm, merely made a

false step and a step backwards in her way towards the creation of man.

That all animals are adapted, some in a greater, some in a less degree,

to the ends of their existence, is proved by the simple fact of their

existence, that is, of their survival in the struggle for existence; but

which are in a higher, and which are in a less degree so adapted, is, in

the individual instance, extremely difficult to determine. In any

attempt at such an estimate, we must meet with peculiar difficulties,

resulting from the fact that we judge of the adaptation to ends with

less certainty the further from us any animal is in its organization. A

comparison such as Spencer institutes is possible only with respect to

like functions of similar organs in closely related forms.

The assertion that increase of ability for self-preservation leads to

better care for the young, and makes of such care a duty, is likewise

erroneous. For, up to the highly organized class of the crustacea, we

have no example of care for the young. In the struggle for existence,

the species which survive must be such as not only are in themselves

best fitted for survival, but as also bring forth best fitted progeny.

Nor has Spencer made clear on what ground natural process is to be

regarded as identical with duty. In truth he has succeeded in showing

only that care for the young is wide-spread in the animal kingdom, from

which fact naturally follows that it is a quality which tends to the

preservation of species.

It cannot be conceded that such a perfection as Spencer pictures, where

each shall fulfil all the functions of his own life in the most perfect

and complete manner without interfering with a like freedom in others,

is possible. The assertion involves the extension to all living beings

of that ideal principle of equal claims which Spencer repudiates with

regard to man,--showing that not all men are capable of a like degree of

happiness and that individuals desire, moreover, pleasure differing in

quality. Furthermore, a world of beings which, like the animals and many

plants, can support life only by means of organic material, must, in

order to exist, destroy organic life, either animal or vegetable. The

theory does not even hold with regard to individuals of the same

species; Spencer himself acknowledges the truth of the principles of

Malthus and of Darwin, according to which, even with the lowest rate of

increase, a struggle of competition must soon arise between individuals

of the same species.

Nor does Spencer's proof of the fundamental character of altruism hold,

on investigation. He demonstrates that through the animal species up to

man, there is less and less self-sacrifice of the mother animal in

giving birth to offspring. But this physical sacrifice is not altruism;

altruism lies in conscious care for the young after birth, and this is

not lessened, but increased, the higher we ascend.

That morality is but greater adjustment of acts to ends cannot be

admitted. If, in ordinary speech, the word good refers to greatest

adjustment to ends, whatever the ends may be, that is no proof that it

must have the same significance in Ethics. A good shot may be a good one

in that it hits the mark; but what if it kill a man? The acts of

criminals may be as well adjusted to their ends and as easy to predict

as those of a good man. Spencer's theory would lead, consistently

carried out, to the principle that the means justify the end, an

assertion that is even more dangerous than its opposite. The fact is,

that in Ethics it is the nature of the end which is of importance.

Spencer endeavors to show that only normal exercise of function is

favorable to life, and so moral;--that excess and deprivation are both

injurious. It is not true, however, that excess is always injurious;

within certain bounds it is made up for by reserves in the animal

organism. Or, if Spencer should answer to this objection, that his

"normal" is not to be represented by a sharp line, difficult to keep to,

but by a broad road within which excess is safe, such a representation

would both burden his theory with two dividing-lines, and moreover would

not save it. For he has not deemed it necessary to treat the concept

"normal" to an exact definition, and we find him using it in his later

deductions in an entirely new sense--not as equilibrium between capacity

of function and its exercise, but in the ideal significance of a harmony

between the claims of the individual on the one side, and those of the

environment on the other. This normal is nowhere actually to be found

and cannot, from the nature of things, be arrived at. By addition of

this significance, the word normal becomes indefinite in meaning, and is

used, now in one sense, now in the other. Normal exercise of function

has, however, nothing to do with the claims of the environment, which

generally demands, indeed, a deviation from the normal.

Nor is Spencer's analysis of the beginning of the process of

food-seizure, adduced in support of the theory that happiness and

morality are commensurable, confirmed by facts. According to this

theory, the process of food-taking begins with the contact of animal and

food, in which act the commencement of diffusion of food in the body of

the animal causes a pleasure which leads to the seizure of its prey and

the further act of devouring it. The theory might hold of the lowest

organisms, but could not be true of any animal furnished with an

impenetrable shell or skin. Nor would the seizure follow with sufficient

promptness if it were left to the action of the pleasure caused by

diffusion. Moreover, we should expect to find, according to this theory,

a much more general and finer development of the organ of taste among

the animals,--to find it as a special organ on the lowest planes of

animal life; it is, on the contrary, the latest of the special senses to

develop. It is the reaction on the sense of touch, the lowest and most

general of the special senses, which causes the seizure of nourishment.

We must, therefore, deny that pleasure is the motive to the seizure of

food, and so, too, reject the conclusion that it is the motive to every

other act.

Besides arguing that normal function brings pleasure, Spencer has

attempted to prove that all pleasure has its spring in normal function,

and is therefore moral. Could he succeed in so doing, hedonism would be

proved. For since all schools agree in regarding happiness as the end of

life, and since all these, in common, acknowledge happiness to be an

excess of pleasure over pain, enjoyment might be regarded as the

absolute guide. But if, as Spencer acknowledges, pleasure and morality

are only in a perfectly adapted society commensurate, then in only such

a society can pleasure be the criterion; and since we do not live in a

perfectly adapted society, the theory is not applicable to us, and if

practicably applied would be fatal to society.

Against Spencer's theory of the final spontaneity of morality, many

objections may be urged, among others especially the one that such a

morality ceases to be morality at all, virtue being possible, as Kant

has demonstrated, only where a certain conquest of desire is achieved.

Such a morality is, moreover, unattainable, an extravagant fancy.

THE PROBLEM OF FOOD-TAKING

Rolph thinks Spencer's theory awakes the conjecture that it was not

first arrived at through investigation, but rests upon a preconceived

opinion, as do to a greater or less extent all theories on this subject.

It seems as if the author had first attached himself to that theory

which best accorded with his scientific bias, and then tried whether

this theory might be proved or supported by facts of biology and

psychology. One might surmise, from the very skilful, but often too

artificial argument, that the author pursued the following train of

thought. Pleasure, and indeed the greatest possible pleasure, is the end

of endeavor in the organic world, that is, the psychical cause of

endeavor. May it not also be the physical cause?

Rolph answers this question with a denial, and endeavors to show that

the taking of food has its cause in the insatiability of all organic

substance. The theory of Spontaneous Generation contains nothing

impossible or improbable; is, on the contrary, a necessary logical

assumption not to be disproved by the mere result of experiment under

conditions of the laboratory. It is easy to imagine that organic

elements, which are to be found in great quantities in inorganic nature,

may come together by chance, or rather in the natural order of things,

to the formation of protoplasm.

The movement of these masses of protoplasm seems, at first glance, to

set the law of gravitation at defiance, but we may answer that an

ascending balloon might seem, to an uninstructed observer, to do the

same, although its movement is merely the natural result of that force;

it is not necessary, therefore, to assume a free inner motive, the soul,

as the cause of the one motion or the other. The first assimilation of

food has its beginning in the process of endosmose and exosmose, in

which the protoplasm, as in general the denser fluid, increases in

volume, taking up more than it gives out; the process occurring, in

detail, according to the special relations of attraction in the parts.

The organism always takes up the greatest amount possible under the

circumstances, exactly as, in the inorganic world, water takes up the

greatest amount possible of salt or any other soluble substance; the

growth of a crystal, and the oxidation of iron are illustrations of the

same principle. Of the limit of this capacity to take up new matter into

the organism we know nothing; all recent experiments go to show that the

organism is capable, under propitious circumstances, of an enormous

receptivity, such as, under natural conditions, it never reaches. The

lower animals feed continually, and their whole lives are passed in this

employment. In plants the tendency is seen still more clearly.

Experiments with electric, violet, and ultra-violet light show an

enormous growth in plants exposed to its action. But this can be only an

indirect growth, namely, the exorbitant acceleration of organic change

and assimilation. This fact is proved by experiments turning on increase

of warmth in soil; from which is seen to result an unusual development

of that part of the plant to which growth is especially directed at the

time. When the warmth of an incubator is increased, the animal organ

especially engaged in development at the time is affected in like

manner. So that we may assume that the organism is capable of responding

to every demand that nature makes upon it under normal conditions; and

since the greatest possible assimilation under the existing conditions

is thus removed from the control of the creature, the latter appears

practically insatiable. This insatiability must appear to the observer

an inner impulse of the organism, an effort towards increase of

nourishment. It may be called mechanical hunger in distinction from

psychical hunger, of which it is the basis. It is not necessary to take

into consideration, in the question as to the degree of assimilation

possible, the amount of excretion of substance by the organism; we must,

on the contrary, assert that this is dependent upon the amount of

assimilation. The measure of growth depends, therefore, on the degree of

assimilation of new material. This degree, however, like the degree to

which the matter may be dissolved in a liquid in the case of inorganic

matter, is especially affected by light and warmth. The creature which

comes into existence in the sun will experience a decrease of organic

change when placed in the shade; and the creature which comes into

existence in the shade will experience an increase of such change under

the influence of the sun, a decrease again with a return to the shade.

This decrease means hunger,--harm. Experiments with zooespores throw an

interesting light upon these relations. They show that the zooespores,

although suited to very different degrees of light, all shun darkness.

Although when in the light they soon come to rest, divide, and copulate,

they remain, in the darkness, in a state of continual unrest and motion.

They grow so thin "that they almost excite pity" (Strassburger), and

finally perish of hunger. Only such zooespores as are distinguished by

sex and copulate come to rest, or those of such sorts as prey upon

others. It is easy to perceive that the unrest of the zooespores in the

darkness springs from lack of nourishment, from hunger; they seek

feverishly for the light, without which assimilation follows with

insufficient energy to satisfy need and render life possible. In

darkness, copulation alone can do this; copulation takes, then, the

place of normal nourishment.

Or let us consider the case of an organism which has originated in the

shade. Heat, as we know, increases chemical change, in inorganic as well

as organic matter; it hastens the disintegration of certain compounds,

and alone renders it possible in many cases. In general, we may assert

that increase of temperature within certain limits increases

assimilation; that is, capacity to assimilate. Therefore, if an animal

is placed in the sun, its capacity, that is, its need, to assimilate is

increased, although assimilation is much more energetic than before.

Need to assimilate or hunger is, therefore, dependent upon the supply of

food, although, doubtless, also on other conditions, especially those of

light and temperature. If this is true, the hunger of a simple organism

that assimilates energetically must be more intense than that of one

which assimilates slowly, in spite of the consumption of an enormous

quantity of food in the case of the former. Botanists know (Sachs,

"Lehrbuch der Botanik," p. 613) "that growth may be so hastened by too

high a temperature that assimilation (especially under scanty light)

does not suffice to provide the necessary material for it. The

transpiration of the leaves may be so increased that the roots cannot

repair the loss. And on the other hand, a too low temperature of the

soil may so diminish the action of the roots that even a small loss by

transpiration cannot be repaired."

At what stage of organization psychical hunger is added to mechanical

hunger, or whether it may be identified with it, we cannot say. In any

case, the former appears exceedingly early, for excitations of hunger

may be observed in creatures very low in the scale of being. Certainly

hunger is never absent where there is movement.

Hunger, a sense of pain, is, therefore, the first impulse to action.[58]

With a like effort in the attempt to obtain food, that organism will be

best nourished which commands the best means of obtaining and preparing

its food,--the best apparatus for the seizure and grinding of food, and

the best salivary gland. And finally, greater surface of skin, of lungs,

of gills, or of intestines, causes greater capacity for assimilation,

and since this surface is increased by cell-division or propagation, the

capacity of the organism for assimilation grows with its capacity of

propagation.[59] Protoplasm is never entirely homogeneous, and we must

suppose some difference even in the beginning; such difference is,

indeed, fundamental through the very composition of protoplasm from the

four fundamental elements, and this or that other element. These

different elements must be held together by forces of attraction, and

the direction of these forces must have some common centre represented

by some differentiation of the protoplasm, whether as clearer spot, or

as nucleus. This spontaneously generated organism, neither animal nor

plant, is nourished, as we have seen, by diffusion, by the

transformation of inorganic into organic substance. The lowest organisms

possess no definite organs for taking food; they manifest, however,

phenomena of movement which are exactly like those of the animal

organism, for they appear unconditioned and hence voluntary. Locomotion

is, in the lowest animal forms, the only means of obtaining nourishment.

The amoeba surrounds and takes in whatever is by chance met with.

Animals a little higher in the scale swim about and seek their food; or,

remaining in one place, they cause, by means of cilia, a movement of the

water towards a certain part of the body, a sort of mouth where the

protoplasm is open and can take up the prey in the same manner as does

the amoeba. Ascending the scale of life, we find more and more

complicated apparatus for the seizure of food, for its preparation and

digestion, and the beginning of a nervous system, first as the

differentiation of certain muscle-cells, then in connection with a

special sense, that of hearing. If we assume any pleasure to be

connected with the earliest acts of assimilation, it must be that of the

satisfaction of a want, the stilling of pain in the form of hunger.

THE PROBLEM OF PERFECTIBILITY

In the earliest forms of propagation, the younger organism is a true

copy of that from which it springs, the trifling differences being due,

as Schmankewicz has shown, to outer influences. The differences of male,

female, worker, and soldier are due to such outer influences. The

differences in the younger organism, where propagation takes place

through copulation, may be explained by the mixture of types, through

which, by action and reaction, some qualities are intensified, while

some others become latent or are entirely destroyed. To these mutual

influences are to be added such as come from without, especially those

of warmth, and of quantity and quality of food. Under too great an

increase in temperature, the young organism may even be destroyed, the

process of assimilation not being able to keep pace with it. Those

variations which have led to the development of existing forms, that is,

which were favorable to life, are chiefly such as could be brought about

by relative or absolute increase of assimilation. This is true of

mental, as well as of physical, qualities.

It is a fact established without doubt, that the most common and most

widely distributed species show the greatest variability, and that those

species, on the contrary, which are now rare, although they were,

perhaps, at earlier periods, the most common and extremely variable,

vary, at the present date, the least of all. Following Darwin, one

generally draws the conclusion that the severity of the struggle for

existence favors the formation of varieties. For, it is said, the most

common species fight the severest battle with one another, while the

scanty representatives of rarer species come the least into competition

and continue unchanged. But this theory is, in two ways, erroneous. In

the first place, no attention is paid to the fact that a rare species

may be exposed to a severe struggle against another species for the same

nourishment, while a common species may, on the other hand, be exposed

to no such struggle, and, supporting life from a generous supply of

food, be subjected to but slight pressure. The conception of the

Darwinians means nothing more or less than that the individuals of a

species vary the more, the less favorable the conditions of nourishment;

and this cannot be conceded. Again, the fact is to be taken into

consideration, that the species at present common must have passed

through a favorable period in which food was so plentiful that it not

only afforded an abundance to individuals past the dangers of infancy

and youth, but allowed, in addition, the existence of an ever-increasing

number of individuals. And it is this period of increase, of abundance,

not a period of struggle, which has developed the variations we now have

before our eyes. In the same manner one must conclude, with regard to

the rarer species, that the formerly existing numerous varieties were

destroyed during the period of decline, that is, of overpowering

pressure. We have abundant proof of this in the fact that domesticated

species, which are carefully tended and fed, and so wholly withdrawn

from the struggle for existence, vary enormously, and produce the most

wonderful monstrosities.

To what direct causes the appearance of a variety is due, is a question

as yet unanswered. But Weismann's investigations have shown us that

climate plays a large part in their development. Embryology teaches us,

moreover, that the development of the young organism does not take place

with the same uniformity in all organs, but that, on the contrary, in

one period one organ, in another, another, undergoes a more rapid

growth, which may be influenced by variations in food or temperature.

Through such variations the development of monstrosities is explained.

We know that influences of nourishment are operative in the development

of the larvae of bees to workers or to queens, and we can easily conceive

that other organs besides the sexual are subject to these influences.

The field in which such influences may be operative is, indeed,

boundless.

All these considerations lead us to the conclusion that variability in

general, but especially that variability resulting in a so-called

improvement of the varieties producing it, is an accompaniment of

prosperous conditions. This is a conclusion not yet reached in zooelogy,

although botanists long ago recognized, in abundance of food, the most

essential condition for the development of variations.

Darwinism fails to account for any need of nourishment beyond that

necessary for the maintenance of the _status quo_ of life. According to

Darwin, the animal can acquire only sufficient for the repair of loss.

The struggle for existence is, therefore, according to him, a struggle

of self-defence, and its results could be, at the best, only the

maintenance of species in their present position or, in a less favorable

case, their decline, and finally their destruction. But this view is

wholly false. The animal acquires not only enough to repair loss, but

much more. How could the first amoeba have propagated itself, if it

consumed no more than it needed for mere self-maintenance, and how could

evolution have taken place? We have seen that, even in the inorganic

world, there is not an equality of loss and repair, but that, in osmose,

the denser fluid takes up more than it gives, while the fluid that is

less dense loses more than it receives, and the mutual exchange reaches

the maximum possible under the existing circumstances. It is this

characteristic which renders the involuntary and forced tendency of the

organism to satiation independent of the amount of waste; this

mechanical hunger is the spring of the insatiability of organisms, and

explains to us their increase in number, the process of increasing

perfection, and individual development. Without it, an eternity would

not have sufficed for evolution; we should still have only a world of

primitive amoebae.

This theory of development is, then, the opposite of that ordinarily

assumed. The latter asserts that increase of growth demands increase of

nourishment, whereas this asserts the fact that increase of nourishment

determines growth. The struggle for existence is not a struggle for the

mere necessaries to maintain life, but a struggle for increase of

acquisition, increase of life; it is not a struggle of defence, but an

attack which only under certain circumstances becomes a defence. The

rule with which we advise our friends is, "Forward! strive to better

yourself!" though we may endeavor, in hypocritical spirit, to persuade

to contentment those who come into competition with our interests.

The chief points, therefore, in which this theory differs from that of

Darwin, are as follows:--

"The struggle for existence is really a struggle for increase of

nourishment, of life; and independent of the supply of the moment, it

goes on at all times, hence even in a state of abundance.

"Limitation of supply by competition leads to fixation of the species

and, in the end, to its decrease and disappearance.

"Sickness, climate, and direct enemies are the destructive agencies, and

must secure more propitious conditions for survivors, the stronger their

effect.

"Only under conditions of prosperity can the survivors propagate

largely, and perfect themselves, separating into varieties and species.

"The increase and differentiation of the organic world shows us that

conditions of prosperity have been the rule, those of want the

exception."

Rolph's extremely interesting chapter on Propagation traces the sexual

instinct to the "mechanical hunger." The earliest example which may be

adduced in support of this theory is that of the zooespores which, by

copulation, sustain life for a time under the unfavorable conditions of

darkness, the thinner male representing, as does also the spermatozooen,

the seeking individual suffering from want, the female representing a

means of sustenance. The sex of the young organism is in like manner

referred by Rolph to conditions of nourishment during development. We

now come to the chapter on

ANIMAL OR NATURAL ETHICS

The existence of morality presupposes the existence of commandments of

duty, and of an authority. Among animals, as well as among human beings,

we find recognized authority and can discern the principles of action

which constitute the duty of any particular animal. Authority among the

lower animals is based on might, which is, indeed, the universal source

of authority, without which no authority can exist. Personal authority

is but a particular form of the authority of circumstances; and to this

authority every creature must be subject. It consists of two factors:

the outer authority of the environment, and the inner authority of

impulse. Duty is obedience to authority. The duty of the organism

consists in action that corresponds to these two authorities, following

the direction given as the resultant of the mixture of the two

components. That is, that manner of life is right or moral which renders

the life of the organism the fullest possible under the circumstances.

The unreasoning organism is unconsciously drawn to seek this maximum,

while the reasoning being seeks it through reflection. The impulse to

happiness includes, therefore, for the reasoning being, the impulse to

morality; or, ideally expressed, the relative morality equals the

relative happiness; morality and happiness are the same thing.

An authority without the means of enforcing itself is a

self-contradiction. The means by which nature makes its authority felt

is organic excitation. In proportion to its strength, an excitation

produces sensation, in case it is not too weak to make itself felt at

all. Every excitation has a definite significance and may come from

without or within. Pleasant excitations are always, primarily, the

feeling of the stilling of pain, though there are pains, such as, for

instance, that of a wound, the toothache, headache, an aching corn,

which have no corresponding feeling of pleasure. Nor is pleasure the

only offspring of pain, since pain may bring forth pain. Pleasure

depends, in its character as pleasure as well as in its strength, on the

feeling preceding it in the organism; that is, its quality is the

result, not of the degree of organic excitation, but of the order of

succession of the feelings. For this reason, the same feeling which

brings pleasure to one individual may bring pain to another.

This whole deduction is at variance with Spencer's theory that

pleasurable excitations are favorable to life, painful ones injurious.

And since observation is in direct opposition to his assertion, his

followers have been obliged to supplement it with the conception that

pain is gradually weeded out by natural selection. On the contrary, we

need pain at every instant, since it is the impulse to action;

persistence in the same condition through lack of excitation, must

result in death; pleasure can never originate action, it can only cause

persistence in action already begun. The fact has been too often

overlooked, that the motive and the "end" of an action are by no means

the same. The motive is pain, and the end is either simply the stilling

of pain or an additional positive pleasure. There are, therefore, many

actions which are directed to no concrete positive end, but only to the

purely negative end of escape from pain without consideration of the

further results; a striking example of such action is suicide. Even

where positive pleasure appears as an end, it is never in itself the

motive to action. In order to become a motive, it must first be

transformed into an excitation, into desire for pleasure; and this

desire for a definite or an indefinite pleasure is, in its essence,

pain--the pain of the absence of pleasure.[60]

The pleasure sought may be one already known through experience, or it

may be one not yet experienced. In the latter case, the desire is

awakened by instruction or reflection, or else induced by instinct. But

the motive is always the same, namely, a seeking after pleasure, hence a

feeling of pain.

This view furnishes us with a psychical explanation of the association

of ideas, the mysterious so-called transferrence of the feeling of

pleasure from the end to the means. Pleasure begins as soon as we have

begun the action which will bring us with certainty to the end desired,

and this pleasure may reach such a degree of strength at some point of

the process as to conquer the desire for the real end, hem further

action, and dispose to continuance at the point reached. The action of

the miser may be thus explained.

The objection that, if pain is the motive, the organism is nothing but a

bundle of pains, is by no means valid, for it overlooks the fact that

pain remains, in an immense number of cases, below the threshold of

consciousness; as in the case of organic action, where it is rhythmic.

The same is true of reflex action. To any close observer of the lower

organisms, it seems most probable that these possess consciousness (see

Wundt, "Physiologische Psychologie"), nor is it by any means proved that

the plants do not possess it likewise. It is certainly remarkable that

exactly the lowest plants, which stand so near the animals in the

phenomena of their life, exhibit movements closely resembling those of

animals. And it is, moreover, a fact that automatic and reflex actions

increase with the degree of organization, and are most numerous in human

beings. With increased exercise, one chain of movements after the other

is withdrawn from consciousness; and through this removal from

consciousness action gains in certainty and rapidity, and in energy

also, since the part of the force which was before lost in inducing

consciousness is now released. Such removal from consciousness is,

therefore, a benefit to the organism, as an adaptation to the increased

demands of circumstances. Movements which thus become unconscious are

each and every one of them movements which have but one definite end and

an interruption of which either kills or seriously injures the organism,

or at least brings disorder into its life for the time being. An easily

excited consciousness would be an exceeding danger to the animal.

Conscious action is directed to the attainment of variable ends by means

which are also variable. It cannot, therefore, astonish us that

consciousness disappeared in plants after the loss of free motion.

By the regular exercise of certain actions or of trains of thought,

either through necessity or by habit certain tracks are worn or taken

possession of, so that the whole process, from the excitation to the

action resulting upon it, takes place with such rapidity that we are no

longer conscious of its separate phases and so of the growth of the

result.

The first commandment of animal ethics is, therefore: "Flee pain"; and

closely associated with it is a second commandment furnished by the

insatiability of the organism, the impulse to happiness, to increase of

life. The principle of Spencer's ethics, according to which normal

living is right living, would result in stagnation. Right living

consists, on the contrary, in progress, in passing beyond the normal. No

educator would hesitate for an instant to pronounce the continuance of a

pupil upon a present normal immoral, and to oppose it with all his

powers. From day to day the developing organism advances the line of its

normal activity. And as in the individual, so in the species: every new

generation exceeds in a certain measure the activity of the last. Not

rest, but motion, constitutes the normal; not rest, but motion, is

happiness, and the spring of happiness. Not that being which has no

wants, but that which develops and satisfies the greatest possible

number of wants, is the happiest, leads the most pleasurable life. When

we apply these principles to the animals, we reach the conception that

all such as lead a solitary life live morally when they endeavor, with

all their powers, to better their own condition. That they injure plants

and other animals in so doing need not trouble us, since they are forced

to do so in order to maintain life. The principle on which animal life

is based is hence preeminently egoistic and acknowledges no other right

than that of might. Spencer, in speaking of altruism on the lowest plane

of animal life, makes the fundamental and quite fatal mistake that he

does not first sharply and distinctly define egoism. Had he done this,

he would certainly have found that, for egoism, as for altruism, the

criterion of consciousness, of will, is indispensable. In his definition

of altruism as consisting in those acts which in any way benefit others,

he does nothing less than get rid of egoism altogether, since there are

no acts which do not, in the end, benefit others than the performer. The

greater number of the young brought forth by lowest organisms serve as

food for other species, and hence the parent animal, in bringing forth

such numbers, favors these species rather than her own flesh and blood.

The fly would act altruistically, according to Spencer's definition, in

being caught in the net of the spider.

A creature which gets its food, as do many of the lower species, without

exertion of its own, does not act egoistically, nor does the animal

which, in the natural course of its growth, brings forth young by

spontaneous division; but that animal may do so which acquires its food

by means of any voluntary actions, however insignificant, or which

voluntarily protects and cares for its young; and such voluntary action

increases rather than decreases with greater organization. Real egoism

begins with the voluntary acquisition of food, a process continued in

the forced excretion of the young. But since this action benefits the

second generation, we may regard it as the connecting link between

egoism and altruism. It is not purely altruistic; altruism proper begins

with the nourishment and care of the young. And to what degree we have a

right to consider even this as really altruistic can be determined only

by further investigation. The emptying of the milk-glands is combined

with pleasure; it may therefore be regarded as primarily egoistic, and

furnishes us with a further example of the development of altruism from

egoism. Altruism increases, not only with higher organization, but also

with a higher development of social life.

The beginnings of society are to be found in the family life of animals;

the most primitive form of this is the temporary, voluntary association

of male and female among the higher species; that is, the anthropoids

and vertebrates. On this merely temporary association follows, as a

higher stage, the lasting family union, which exists among comparatively

few animals. The so-called "states" of the animals are, in their most

typical instances, nothing but families living in a condition of

polyandry.

Closer association gives opportunity for a misuse of the powers and aims

of the individual, before impossible. Examples of this are the theft of

honey from one hive of bees by the workers of another, and the carrying

off of the young by wasps and ants, as also the slaughter of the drones.

Since the robber of yesterday may be the robbed of to-day, such acts are

harmful to individuals, to the family, and to the species. They diminish

the degree of life, and are opposed to animal ethics. The association of

male and female, since only temporary, affords little opportunity for

immorality, and the duties of parents to their young are, for the most

part, faithfully performed. In striking contrast to the natural morality

of wild animals is the immorality of domestic animals, which give

themselves up to every sort of vice when not restrained. The moral

conditions of any associated animals not under control, whether in

zooelogical gardens, in the town, or in the country, is, in fact,

monstrous. Immorality increases with the closer association of animals.

The closer the contact and the looser the bond between the individuals

of a species, the greater the opportunity for immorality, and the worse

the resulting habits. The careless life of pleasure led by animals that

live in solitude, is interfered with, in a state of association, by

certain duties. How far the performance of such duties springs from a

concealed pleasure, or from instinct, or follows upon the command of

authority, we, unfortunately, cannot say. The limitation of

gratification signifies, however, decrease of pleasure. The needs of

different animals differ according to differing organization; higher

organization means greater and more complicated desire, the satisfaction

of which is often impossible, but it means also the attainment of

capacity for greater pleasure in form and intensity. Hence even the

partly attained pleasure of the higher animals is, in intensity as well

as in fulness, much greater than the completely attained pleasure of the

lower animals.

HUMANE ETHICS

Rolph contests Lubbock's theory that the early type of man lived in a

condition of sexual promiscuity, and gives as a reason for his opinion

the "strict" monogamy of those animals which are most closely related to

man. The customs of such animals should have as much weight, as

evidence, as those of any of the present tribes of savages, since these

tribes are as old as civilized races, and their customs cannot,

therefore, be unhesitatingly regarded as primary ones.

The real needs of men, those the gratification of which is indispensable

to the maintenance of life, are few. By experience, and by experience

alone, can man learn that present gratification may mean future pain,

and so be withheld from such gratification; for only disinclination to

one form of pleasure can induce inclination to another form. In the

simplicity of primitive social conditions and the uniform character of

action under such conditions, rules of experience must have been early

formed, which, inherited by succeeding generations, became the rules of

conduct.[61] With the development of authority,--first the paternal

authority, then that of the family, and finally that of the elders of

the tribe,--the possibility of establishing rules of action, and

inducing morality, increased. The very nomination of elders, to which

primitive authority may almost everywhere be traced, shows how great was

the respect for experience.

Spencer remarks, in one place in his "Data of Ethics," that human beings

first banded themselves together because they found it more advantageous

to cooeperate. This is only conditionally true. Before human beings could

find association advantageous, they must have accumulated experience of

it. That they did this by their own inclination is certainly not true.

Wherever we find two solitary beings coming together by chance, enmity

is the first feeling excited, and war the result. Everything new,

everything unknown, causes aversion, and this aversion must lead to

misunderstandings and war the more surely because each of the opponents

feels himself disturbed in his supposed right to limitless possession.

Human beings must first have warred with one another before they came to

the knowledge, not that social life, that is, mutual forbearance, was

more advantageous, but that more closely associated individuals gained

in power against a common enemy by their association. Man did not choose

society, but was, on the contrary, forced into it, for good or evil,

through increase of his kind. The discovery of the first tools must have

had an immense influence upon increase in the number of individuals,

which was before limited by struggle with wild animals, and by the

restriction of food to fruit. We must conclude that, under such

circumstances, a lasting contract was inevitable, and that, with it,

vices suddenly appeared which had before existed only potentially, as

predisposition. War or theft must have followed the mutual limitation of

rights, but against this disturbance of the peace other members of the

society must have banded themselves together. The weaker must soon have

been driven from their possessions by the stronger, and must then have

united for the purpose of obtaining, by association, what they were

unable to acquire otherwise. The growing children settled near their

parents, with whom they entered into a family union, in which the father

represented the authority. In this arrangement is the germ of civil

order,--of the ideas of right and wrong. Inner conflicts can at first

scarcely have occurred, since the possessions of the family were in

common, and a conception of theft between members of the family could

not exist. Furthermore, there was scarcely anything worth stealing, for

the implements must have been so primitive that each individual could

easily manufacture them for himself. Only women could have been, in the

beginning, an object of conflict, and for avoidance of this conflict

laws and customs arose, which are, to our modern minds, inexplicable.

Real polyandry may doubtless be explained by the idea of the common

right of possession among brothers; it has, in most cases, this

significance. It is extended, indeed, later, to more distant relatives,

and gains finally a solemn significance, the presentation of the wife,

or of one of a number of wives, being a symbol of fraternity by which

the guest is honored.

With the manufacture of better tools and weapons, temptation to theft

was increased, and authority began to be directed inwards to the society

itself, since inner conflict injured the family in its contests with

outer enemies. What is true of the family in this connection, is true of

the tribe. A joint egoism of the society as a whole must thus have been

developed, as soon as the first step of association was taken. The

earliest law is always negative, a prohibition, not a positive command.

War had its good as well as its evil side, since it made different

peoples acquainted and gave them knowledge of each other's tools,

weapons, and customs. War was, at first, the only means by which peoples

learned to know each other. The establishment of peace led to the union

of different peoples, or at least to peaceful intercourse by exchange,

which united the tribes by common interests, corrected ideas, and

tempered customs.

The egoistic impulses, the feeling of unconditional right to possession,

are the impulses with which the child is born; morality is not inborn,

but must be developed by education, as is shown by the example of such

children as are neglected in education.[62] Or, if there is anything

innate in the direction of morality, it is merely a certain inherited

predisposition acquired in the course of the thousands of years of

social intercourse, which makes it easier for us to respond to

education. If this is not so, and the impulse to morality is innate, why

has it required so many centuries for man to make the simple connection

of ideas, that what is just towards one man is just towards another. In

this feeling of justice, acquired through an extension of egoism, is the

root of all virtue. It is the spring of sympathy or benevolence, which

can be developed only where the feeling of the like rights of others is

strong.

But an unconsidered over-estimate of this feeling is the source of

Spencer's Utopia, as it is of that of present socialism. We have seen

that authority is a primary and necessary factor of society. Authority,

virtue, and duty are interdependent, and must be of about the same

antiquity. From all compulsion imposed by authority, the creature, by

its nature, attempts to escape, and the feeling which prompts this

attempt has been falsely called the instinct of freedom. Authority

exceeds its bounds, where it issues commands not demanded by the general

conditions existing in the society. But though these conditions may

demand a limitation of personal freedom, their requirements must,

nevertheless, in general, be enforced.

Natural and Humane Ethics may thus be at variance in some things; may in

others, coincide. There is no necessary conflict and no necessary

agreement between them; therefore the theological theory of an absolute

contradiction between them is false, as is also the teleological theory

of their coincidence. The latter theory, not being able to deny that the

moral and the natural do not always coincide under present

circumstances, endeavors to avoid the difficulty by calling these

conditions abnormal. The theory falls into two errors: in the first

place, it ignores the fact that we have our organs, not _for_ use but

_by_ use; and that our inherited characteristics may be regarded as an

adjustment to the conditions of our ancestors, but not an adjustment to

our own; and in the second place, there are no abnormal conditions.

There are new or changed conditions, but either there are no abnormal

ones, or all are abnormal.

But although increase of life means also increase of desire, although

the organism is insatiable, yet there is, as we have seen, an increase

of happiness, both in quantity and quality, with higher organization.

The absolute amount is increased, but not the relative amount, the

amount realizable in proportion to desire.

Want does not lead to improvement, as Darwin maintains, and the

individual cannot be just or sympathetic in a condition of want. The

freer he is from the direct care of the acquirement of necessities, the

more manifold capabilities will he develop, and the greater will be his

happiness.

The task which authority must set itself, in order to secure greater

justice in society, and so greater happiness, is twofold, a positive and

a negative task. The positive task consists in such an education of the

young as will enable them by their own effort to advance towards their

individual ideal of happiness, and in the inculcation of such an ideal

as corresponds to their individual talents and means, and is attainable

under the existing circumstances. The negative task, already implied in

the positive one, is the imposition of necessary restrictions in the

means used for the attainment of happiness. Within the limits set by

justice, the individual has a natural right to seek his own pleasure,

and for each individual an attainable maximum may be reckoned. This is

not saying, however, that the individual has a just claim to this

maximum, in case he cannot, or will not, be sufficiently energetic to

gain it by his own efforts. It is an error of modern times to suppose

that the realization of happiness rests in any other hand than that of

the individual himself--that the state can make and decree happiness.

Happiness cannot be secured by means of decrees, by a division of goods,

or by gifts. Division is always unjust, since it leaves out of

consideration that individuality of character which is the only measure

of sensibility to pleasure. The negative part of the task is to be

accomplished less by inculcation of many special virtues than by the

continual direction of the attention to the fundamental virtue of

justice. The positive task is to be accomplished by the most thorough

education of the intelligence of the individual, through which he shall

learn to inquire the reason of moral precepts, to judge for himself, and

then to act on the decision he arrives at. We have seen that the ethical

education of the present time tends to reduce inner struggle, rendering

the results of wrong-doing as repellant as possible. One in whom has

been instilled a very terrible conception of the sufferings resulting,

in the present and future life, from wrong-doing, will perhaps

automatically avoid the evil; and the means for a moral education seem

thus attained. However, it is not so; for when the individual accustoms

himself to being directed in action, not by his own carefully won

experience, but by feelings instilled by others, concerning the ethical

character of which his own insight does not, and cannot, afford him any

explanation, he opens the way to every chance influence, and becomes the

plaything of unknown forces; while he at the same time divests himself

of that personal responsibility without which no society can exist. The

true ideal of education is such as sharpens the judgment and accustoms

the individual to consider his action from all sides, in the

consciousness of personal responsibility. Only through such action is

man the possessor of freedom. He who acts without reflection, from

unreliable emotion, is not free. The freest possible decision is that

which is reached as the result of such a careful consideration of all

the single components of reflection that no one of them exceeds in its

influence its real worth. The ideal of education is not, therefore, the

production of spontaneous decision and action, but of reasoning,

conscious action. That this principle is the only right one is shown by

our former observations, according to which, as society develops, more

and more actions are the result of reflection. And in case a state of

moral perfection is attainable, it can be arrived at only as each member

of the society acts from perfect reflection, not from impulse or

instinct. In attempting social improvement, we must take example by the

chemist, who does not attempt a chemical combination by force but

endeavors to attain the conditions under which the elements will unite,

through their own inner laws, to the desired, homogeneous body. This is

a wearisome process; but it is the shortest and swiftest, for it leads

us to the desired end.

The single virtues cannot be regarded as ideal principles. They

contradict each other, and whether the one or the other should have the

preference depends on the individual case and can be decided only by

reflection. The formulation of these general rules of conduct under the

name of virtues has, practically, only the advantage of reducing the

numberless possibilities of action to a few; but such principles can

never be exhaustive. Wherever the individual forgets this fact and is

led to regard virtue as an end, instead of as the means to an innocent

happiness, virtue ceases to be virtue and becomes its opposite. Thus

thrift becomes avarice, generosity extravagance, courage foolhardiness,

openness want of consideration, gentleness weakness, and chastity

celibacy. The single virtues are only abstractions from special

circumstances generalized to an ideal of action. But in practical life,

we have to do with individual cases whose conditions are by no means

ideal, and cannot be treated as ideal. We must act, in each case, for

the relative best, not for absolute good; and what is best for one sex

or in one society may not be best for the other sex or in another

society. A compromise between idealism and realism is everywhere

necessary; and such a compromise is made, despite all fine words to the

contrary, by every one,--by one only more openly or consciously than

another. It is comforting to remark that mankind shows itself, and

always has shown itself, instinctively taking the road to the attainment

of the end.

Through an extension of relations, authority, at first represented by a

single individual, the head of the family or tribe, reaches the point of

development where the one ruler is unable to rule all parts, and decide

all questions, alone, so that he is obliged to call in help. He

naturally chooses men near to him, with whose character he is

acquainted. But there arises, by this division of authority, the danger

of its misuse to the disadvantage of the ruler himself. Since despotic

government depends on might alone, and the voice of the people has no

influence, every person in any way related to the ruler represents a

danger. Nevertheless, the establishment of new powers to assist the

ruler was the starting-point of constitutional government. For by this

division of power the ruler rendered it impossible for himself to govern

without help from others, and opened the way to a contract of compromise

with the people. The influence of individuals upon the state spread,

thus, to the people itself. Self-government, pure parliamentarism, is

the ultimate end to be reached by the process.

We have seen that neither pleasure, nor utility, nor virtue, nor,

finally, religion, can be regarded as the absolute means, but only as

the relative means to the attainment of happiness. Both the hedonist and

the utilitarian need to correct and further define their principle, as

well in respect to the end to be attained, as in respect to the means

proposed. Their principles are not to be rejected, but fanaticism is to

be condemned. Principles may have exceptions; but fanaticism recognizes

no exceptions.

As to man's final end. Though he has attained to the power of shaping,

to some extent, his own environment and means of existence, yet he does

not occupy an exceptional position in the animal kingdom, and must cease

to exist unless he submits to adapt himself. It has been almost the rule

that the highest animals of an epoch have later died out and been

replaced by some new aristocracy, developed from somewhat lower forms.

It is to be supposed that man, also, will be destroyed, whether by a new

ice-age or by a period of heat. By the very fact of his supremacy, he

disturbs the primal equilibrium, and originates conditions which, even

now, press hard upon single lands and may easily become dangerous to all

civilization. Destruction may also threaten mankind morally, for the

development of morality hitherto gives no surety of its continuance.

Every advancement brings with it some evil, every virtue contains the

germs of some vice. Modern humanity has given us an unreasoning

soft-heartedness, with an extravagant malady of forgiveness which is

nothing less than immorality itself, since it on the one hand undermines

the general sense of justice, while on the other it prompts and

encourages wrong-doing.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] For further arguments in support of this assertion, see

"Biologische Probleme," pp. 64-66, etc.

[59] Und da diese Flaeche durch Zelltheilung oder Fortpflanzung

vergroessert wird, so waechst die Aufnahmefaehigkeit des Organismus mit der

Fortpflanzungsfaehigkeit desselben (p. 67).

[60] Und diese Begierde... ist ihrem innersten Kerne nach, eine Unlust,

ein Leid: das Leid des Entbehrens des Genusses (p. 176).

[61] Bei der Binfachheit der primitiven socialen Verhaeltnisse und der

Einfoermigkeit der Lebenstaetigkeit muessen sich bald Erfahrungsregeln

gebildet haben, die nun durch Vererbung uebertragen und damit zu

Lebensregeln vertieft wurden (p. 195).

[62] Compare _supra_, p. 100, note.

ALFRED BARRATT

Alfred Barratt's "Physical Ethics" (1869) deals with First Principles,

"Pure," as distinguished from "Applied," Ethics, the aim of the science,

as stated by the author, being "to try to establish the first principle

which is the condition of further progress. If we can establish a

principle _a priori_, and then verify its universality by an appeal to

mental phenomena and to philosophical theories, its existence as a fact

will be made certain; if, in addition to this, we can connect it with

laws still more general and with the family of natural sciences, it will

be no longer a fact, but become a scientific law, a section of the

universal code; and the title of this essay will be justified."

_Part First_ of "Physical Ethics" is occupied with the statement of

axioms, definitions, and propositions "derived from general experience."

They are as follows:--

"_Axiom 1._--Actions, like objects, are capable of being classified

according to their properties, and of being measured by a definite

standard.

"_Obs._--This axiom merely means that the qualities of actions, like

those of objects, are fixed and constant, so that the same action has

always the same properties and moral value, and, under the same

circumstances, always produces the same effect.... It follows from this

axiom that it is possible to act so as to attain a definite object, and

thus a general end of action may be arrived at....

"_Axiom 2._--The end of action (being some common property or effect) is

a possible object of knowledge.

"_Axiom 3._--We are capable of being affected by any external object

only through our faculties, or (in other words) as a part of our

consciousness.

"_Axiom 4._--Faculties are known only by their action, or (in other

words) so far as they are portions of our consciousness.

"_Axiom 5._--The sphere of action lies in the adaptation of 'inner' to

'outer' sequences, of faculties to the laws of nature.

"_Axiom 6._--The constitution of man and other animal beings is an

organism consisting of a number of parts, each having its appropriate

function, and the end of each part results from the performance of its

function.

"_Axiom 7._--Approbation is the standard whereby we judge of the moral

value of actions, and is the universal mark of the due performance of a

function and of the attainment of an end."

DEFINITIONS

"1. Good is the object of moral approbation. The highest good is,

therefore, the ultimate object of such approbation, the end of action.

"2. Pleasure is that state of consciousness which follows upon the

unimpeded performance (as such) of its function, by one or more of the

parts of our organism."

PROPOSITION I

"The Good is relative to our faculties. For no object can affect us

except through our faculties (Axiom 3); but to be known by us is to

affect us;

"Therefore, nothing can be known except through our faculties, or (in

other words) except in relation to our faculties;

"But the Good, or End of Action, is a possible object of knowledge

(Axiom 2);

"Hence the Good is relative to our faculties.

"_Corollary 1._--The highest good of man at any time is relative to his

faculties at that time.

"_Corollary 2._--Since ideas derive their elements from experience, the

idea of perfect Good, or God, can only be an idealization of humanity.

PROPOSITION II

"The Good is a state of Consciousness. For, the Good is a possible

object of knowledge (Axiom 2); but all objects of knowledge are states

of consciousness;

"Hence the Good is a state of Consciousness. Or, the Good exists (or is

capable of being known) only by affecting our faculties, or, in other

words, only as an affection of our faculties (Proposition I);

"But an affection of our faculties is a state of consciousness;

"Hence the Good exists only as a state of consciousness.

"_Obs._--... To speak of anything existent external to our

consciousness, is, as we saw, a pure hypothesis, incapable of proof,

perfectly unintelligible and void of utility. When, therefore, we make

use of the ordinary dualistic phraseology, we must remember that the two

worlds there distinguished are merely two divisions of the universe of

self considered as distinct for convenience of language, but differing

only as two classes comprehended under a common genus.

PROPOSITION III

"The Good is relative to circumstances. For, the Good is determined by,

and therefore lies in action (Axioms 7, 6, Obs.); but Action is relative

to circumstances (Axiom 5). Hence the Good is relative to circumstances.

PROPOSITION IV

"The Good depends upon the adaptation of faculties to circumstances.

"For, the Good is identical with the end (Def.); which results from the

performance of function by each part of the organism (Axiom 6).

"But the function of each part is its adaptation to circumstances

(Axioms 5, 6): Hence the Good depends upon the adaptation of faculties

to circumstances.

"_Corollary._--Since man is an organism composed of parts (Axiom 6), the

whole good of man is the sum of the goods of his parts, and therefore

depends upon the adaptation of all his parts to their corresponding

circumstances.

PROPOSITION V

"The Good is Pleasure.

"For the good results from the due performance of functions (Prop. IV);

but the Good is a state of consciousness (Prop. II), therefore the Good

is the state of consciousness which results from the due performance of

functions (as such). Hence (by Definition), the Good is Pleasure.

"_Obs._--By our definitions of Good and Pleasure it was evident that

they were coextensive, being both marks of the same thing; to prove

their identity it was necessary to show that Good is a state of

consciousness."

Of these propositions Barratt says that I and II are perhaps the most

important, since they assert the impossibility of Transcendentalism.

_Part Second_ of "Physical Ethics" is a "Verification by Special

Experience."

THE ORIGIN OF THE MORAL SENSE

The assumption of a moral sense has already been made in the definition

of Good as the object of Approbation.

Our previous reasoning would lead us nevertheless to guess that this

sense is not, in its nature, a simple and indecomposable faculty. How,

then, did this sense arise, and what is its nature and composition?

In the lowest animal organization, there are merely vague and indefinite

states of consciousness corresponding to the undeveloped state of

physical function. With the development and specialization of advancing

evolution arises Perception; by which likeness and unlikeness among

sensations are distinguished, and classification is begun.

"At first only the most obvious resemblances are noticed, but as

experience progresses, wider and wider classes ever tend to be formed,

till at last we arrive at those highest ideas which are coextensive with

experience. These, though the last in order of birth, become the

starting-points of science--just as men formed the idea of stones

falling long before they discovered the law of attraction, yet by that

law they afterwards 'explain' the former fact. Thus we trace the whole

of Perception or Knowledge to this power of comparison and noting

likenesses, and this we see to be coincident with the organization of

consciousness into central meeting-places or ganglia, in which different

sensations are presented to a common tribunal and so compared together.

We see, therefore, that Perception does not originate consciousness; it

only organizes and develops it. We cannot, therefore, agree with Mr.

Herbert Spencer, who will not allow consciousness to the lowest

animals."[63]

The process of perception or Knowledge works, not only on states of

consciousness themselves, but on the changes from one state to another,

or, in other words, on relations. Thus results, on the one hand,

recognition of objects; on the other, argument and reasoning, for the

most abstruse reasoning is nothing more than a classification of

relations.

"We have now, therefore, two distinct divisions of Consciousness:

_Sensation_, which as before consists only of pleasure and pain, though

now of different kinds; and _Perception_, which classifies states of

consciousness and their relations, and is therefore concerned only with

change. Knowledge, therefore, has originally no other object than

different pleasures and pains, but eventually it attends so much to the

differences and resemblances that it ceases to remember the pleasure or

pain; in its absorption in the relation it well-nigh forgets the things

related. This process is furthered by the fact that, as the medium gets

more extended, each part of it has less average effect upon the

organism: the primary pleasures and pains being spread over a larger

surface are less intense, and so obtrude themselves less. This is

exemplified by the common observation that sensation and perception tend

to exclude each other.... Nevertheless pleasure and pain ever remain

indissolubly connected with consciousness, though their presence is

often unheeded, and only the more violent forms force themselves on the

attention.

"What is true of these simple forms of consciousness, is true of their

later development. The relation of sensation to perception is the same

as that between the faculties of which these are respectively the germs,

emotion and intellect. For emotion is associated sensations of pleasure

and pain; and intellect is associated perceptions of change and

relation. Hence by their very nature these are at once mutually

exclusive and inseparable. A strong emotion drives out reason, and much

reasoning chills emotion.... Yet we can give _some_ reason for any

emotion; and we feel some emotion in working a mathematical problem....

In every intentional act it is evident that both are involved; the end

being given by emotion, the means by reasoning. Reasoning can give no

end, it can only arrange, elicit, suggest; emotion can give no means,

for it cannot classify or observe relations. In the building up,

therefore, of any moral faculty, both these elements must take a part.

Hence it will be well to trace, a little more closely, their mode of

formation, and their connection with muscular activity.

"When in the course of experience a certain sequence of sensation

frequently recurs, the consciousness becomes habituated to it, and the

return of the first sensation is followed by an idea or associative

image of the others.... Hence the idea of pleasure or pain not actually

felt comes to be associated with objects, which, if placed in certain

different positions, would effect us in the way imagined.... Pleasure

may thus be associated through a train of ideas of any length.... After

a time this process becomes organic, the intermediate terms are lost,

and pleasure is _directly_ connected with sensations and ideas that are

in themselves not distinctly pleasurable.

"Now by various trains of association, various pleasures and pains are

connected with the same object. These different combinations of

pleasures and pains, some of which arise, before reasoning, by

unintentional association, but the higher of which are the results of

automatization of reasoning, form the different emotions....

"Action in its origin is simply the correlative of sensation.

Contractility and irritability are the two general properties of vital

tissue, or rather are two sides of one fundamental property which is

also known under the name of sensibility--the power of contraction under

irritation, or of expressing impressed force. Irritability means merely

the phenomena of consciousness, the development of which we have

hitherto been tracing, though we have been throughout obliged to express

ourselves in the language of the inner, and not of the outer

experience.... This internal development we have already examined; we

must now turn to the obverse external development which takes its origin

in contractility.

"The connection between these two fundamental properties is exceedingly

intimate, that of ultimate identity or at any rate inseparability. For

not only is contraction universally the result of irritation, but the

only evidence that we have of irritation is the contraction which

follows, and in their early stages the two represent one and the same

process. When, however, the expression, in action, of force impressed

in sensation, becomes indirect and immediate, the name of irritability

is given to the _immediate_, internal results of its impression, while

contractility expresses the action _ultimately_ expressed. Hence the

seat of irritability is preeminently the nervous system, while

contractility, or the _vis musculosa_, is the name of the special

property of the muscular tissue.

"Considering them however in their origin, they together represent a

certain form of the transmission of force.... Some kinds of impressed

force are followed by movements of retraction and withdrawal, others by

such as secure a continuance of the impression. These two kinds of

contraction are the phenomena and external marks of pain and pleasure

respectively. Hence the tissue acts so as to secure pleasure and avoid

pain by a law as truly physical and natural as that whereby a needle

turns to the pole, or a tree to the light.... Hence, the law of

Self-Conservation, or of the direction of Action, is merely another mode

of expressing the fundamental property of animal tissue, which we have

every reason to believe is derived from the more elementary physical

properties of matter. The course of action is just as dependent on

physical laws as that of a stone which falls to the ground. The belief

in external consciousness makes no difference either way; the earliest

phenomena of such consciousness are those of pleasure and pain,

therefore we can suppose it to exist only as pleasure and pain. In the

one case we say that action aims at, or naturally results in, the

phenomena of pleasure; in the other case that it aims at the actual

consciousness of pleasure.

"The expression of impressed force, or the connection of action and

sensation, is at first in the unorganized tissue direct and immediate,

without the agency of nervous communication, or to return again to the

ordinary psychological language, is unintentional or involuntary.... The

earliest modification is due to association, whereby secondary

sensations, or (as they are called later when they become perceived)

ideas are produced. These manifest themselves as weaker repetitions of

the primary pleasures and pains, and, therefore, are naturally followed

by like results.... The process is this: the force originally impressed

by the first sensation, instead of being all expressed in action, is

partly induced by habituation into an internal channel, and so

transformed into the kind of force which generally impresses the second

kind of sensation, and this now produces its appropriate action. Hence

part of the original force has undergone two transformations instead of

one; the immediate antecedent of action being the force produced by

association, or in other words, the associated pleasure. This is the

rudiment of _motive_, which, however, is not generally called by that

name till it is _perceived_. The same process may go on through two or

more links of association; the first transformed force being again

transformed internally instead of expressed, and the second again in its

turn, until eventually a transformation is reached which finds its

easiest way of escape in action; the immediate motive power being that

transformation of force, or that associated pleasure, which immediately

precedes the action. Actions of this kind constitute the lower phenomena

of instinct: and we see therefore that they may depend on any number of

links of unperceived, or, as we say, unconscious reasoning; and that

their motive is also 'unconscious.' These actions stand half way between

Reflex and Voluntary Actions....

"We now come to the third and last development of associated action.

Here not only is each associated idea perceived, but the change, in each

case, is also a fresh centre of association; whereby similar changes are

connected with it, and it is referred to a class. Hence the whole train

is perceived, not only by the classification of each of its parts with

similar previous sensations, but by the classification of each of its

sequences with previous like sequences: in other words, it is now a

chain of reasoning from the past to the present. That associated

pleasure from which this reasoned train commences is now called the

_motive_ (though really the immediate motive power lies in the last

transformation which directly precedes the active expression) and the

series of ideas intervening between this and the action is called the

_means_. Hence the motive associates the means, and the motive power is

transmitted through them till it is finally expressed in the action

which is appropriate to the attainment of the pleasurable state whose

idea is its source. This association of means with ends is at first

sight opposed to the natural direction, which is from antecedent to

consequent; but when a line of nervous connection is formed, a current

may be transmitted indifferently in either direction. An effect may lead

us to think of its cause, as easily as a cause associates its effect.

By the sequence of action and sensation, a connection is established

between their ideas, which is independent of the order of excitation.

This last kind of action is that which we call voluntary, and the series

of classified ideas and relations which lead to it is called Reasoning.

If at any point the current is attracted in two or more directions by

different trains of association, deliberation is the result; and the

eventual victory of one and the consequent transmission of the force

along it is entitled Will.

"We have therefore distinguished four kinds of action: _Reflex Action_,

which is purely physical and independent of association, and which is

the last link in all the derived varieties; _Lower Instinctive Action_,

which is caused by the first introduction of association, and is hardly

to be distinguished in its phenomena from the last;... _Higher

Instinctive Action_, which involves perception of qualities or

objects;... and finally, _Voluntary_ or _Intentional Action_, such as we

find it in man.... Though we have separated these classes from each

other for clearness of description, there is no distinct line to be

drawn anywhere between them. Each fades insensibly into the next....

Evolution, we must remember, does not advance by stages; these are

merely marks that we make ourselves, like the constellations in

astronomy, for convenience of study.

"Finally, we must remark that the last two kinds of Action ever tend to

relapse into the second, which subjectively is a mere form of the first.

Association of all kinds tends to become organic. By this we mean that,

as the connection becomes more definitely marked and easy, the perpetual

radiation which occurs as the current passes the different points on its

path, disappears; and the whole current passes unimpaired. First, the

radiation caused by the changes disappears, and reasoning becomes

instinct, as in doing a mathematical example from mere memory of the

different steps. Secondly, the radiation from the different nervous

centres also disappears, and the current which ends in action becomes

not only unreasoning but unperceived, as in walking or reading aloud

while thinking of something else....

"Long habituation has two effects: it increases the number of trains

connected with each object, and also the length of each. If we suppose

the simpler emotions to have, by this time, become organic or apparently

simple states of consciousness, a continuance of association tends to

connect them together in bundles, as they themselves were originally

bundles of elementary pleasures and pains. Hence the emotions become

organized in their turn so as to form higher emotions, and eventually,

when association has completed its work,... this organization ends in

one supreme emotion, which is the head of the emotional or sensitive

side of the consciousness....

"Turning next to the second effect of prolonged habituation, we find

that, with objects or actions with which pleasure was at first

associated and which so were called pleasurable, further association

often connects a subsequent pain which increased experience has shown

always to follow upon the immediate pleasure. This pain often more than

counterbalances the preceding pleasure; hence when it is taken into the

emotion, that emotion becomes one no longer of appetition but of

aversion, and the object or action is remembered as one not to be sought

after but avoided. It cannot, however, be called painful, because it

causes immediate pleasure, so a new name has to be invented, and it is

called Bad, or Evil. Similarly, many things which are immediately

associated with pain are found to be eventually followed by pleasure

which more than counterbalances the pain, and as this experience becomes

consolidated by the power of association, they attract rather than

repel, and for a name whereby to distinguish them, are called Good; so

that Good and Evil are correlative terms like Pleasure and Pain, and

mean respectively the greatest total Pleasure, and the greatest total

Pain. Now this experience when once acquired is never lost, but by

virtue of hereditary transmission descends from parents to children.

But, as in the case of the simpler emotions, only the results survive,

and not the means whereby they were arrived at; so that, in a short

time, the words Good and Evil come to be quite separated from Pleasant

and Painful; nay, as might be expected from their origin, they tend to

acquire exactly opposite meanings; for Pleasure and Pain come to signify

only immediate pleasure and pain; and the final reckoning is often

considerably at variance with the first item; as in a race the man who

leads for the first lap seldom wins in the end....

"This, then, is the origin of the Moral Sense.... The Moral Sense,

therefore, is merely one of the emotions," though the last of all in the

order of evolution; it can only claim a life of some two or three

centuries; and there are even some who still doubt its existence. "Man

at any rate is the only animal who possesses it in its latest

development; for even in horses and dogs we cannot believe that it has

passed the intentional or conscious stage.... Good, with them, has no

artificial meaning; it is simply identical with the greatest pleasure."

Only by complete and perfect obedience to all emotions can perfect

freedom from regret be obtained in the gratification of all desire. Man

is at present passion's slave, because he is so only in part; "for the

cause of repentance is never the attainment of some pleasure, but always

the non-attainment of more: not the satisfaction of one desire, but the

inability to satisfy all. The highest virtue, therefore, consists in

being led, not by one desire, but by all; in the complete organization

of the Moral Nature."

OF THE SOCIAL RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL

When we assert the end of Action to be Pleasure, do we mean the pleasure

of the individual, or universal happiness? "Good has been shown to

follow immediately on the adaptation of an organism to circumstances; it

is evident that external objects can affect it only in so far as they

form part of these circumstances. Hence it follows that the pleasure and

pain of others can come in only incidentally; from the fact that each

man is not an isolated unit, but a member of society. But further, this

social medium itself is, after all, nothing but a part of the individual

affected by it; it is one division of that primary side of his nature,

by which the other side, the emotional, the intellectual, the moral, is

being continually moulded and fashioned; and even if we take the

narrower meaning of self, the pleasures and pains of others cannot

possibly affect a man's actions or emotions except in so far as they

become a part of his. If man aims at pleasure merely by the physical law

of action, that pleasure must evidently be ultimately his own; and

whether it be or be not preceded by phenomena which he calls the

pleasures and pains of others, is a question not of principle but of

detail, just as the force of a pound weight is unaltered whether it be

composed of lead or of feathers, or whether it act directly or through

pulleys.

"The principle, therefore, is clear enough, that the happiness of others

can have only an indirect influence upon the good of each individual.

But it is equally clear that this direct influence must be of no mean

extent, and that it is now our duty to trace its history." Here follows

a scheme of the development of the state from the family, which last was

necessitated by the helplessness of infancy, and from which arose the

habit of human association. We have no evidence from history or science

that mankind has not always existed in a state of society; there is no

warrant for assuming an earlier condition of isolation. "Hence to the

human race the earliest Good was inseparably bound up with what we now

call the Family Virtues."[64] The state, thus originated, developed as a

social organism, with ever greater integration, heterogeneity, and

complexity of parts, and "the End or Good of each individual became

largely modified by the extension of the medium to which his actions had

to be adapted"; man became a member, not only of the family but of the

state, and the conceptions of his nature and duty became wider, "so that

at last the more perfectly each attains his own interest, and the more

pleasure he gathers to his own store, the more certainly does he secure

the universal happiness of mankind." If a man aims, as Spinoza remarks,

at doing real good to himself, he will be sure to do most good to

others.

THE UNSELFISH EMOTIONS

Under this head is traced the genesis of sympathy through representation

of the pains and pleasures of others and interpretation of them by

individual experience in the same environment; and the genesis of

benevolence, the active side of sympathy, through habit associated with

the ideas of the pleasures and pains of others. Love is defined as

"originally the association of many pleasures with one individual." From

the wider experience of man as a member of a state is developed justice

or the sense of equality of right, patriotism, etc. All these feelings

are hereditary.

OF THE RELATION OF MAN TO NATURE

This portion of the book treats of the gradual development of knowledge

to wider and wider generalization; of the extension of sympathy from man

to the animal world also; of the universality of consciousness, which

exists in the inanimate as well as the animate world; of the perfection

of morality through the perfection of knowledge, since "knowledge moulds

emotion, and absolute virtue is nothing but absolute correspondence with

nature in action resulting from thought"; and of the evolution of

religion, through knowledge, to a religion of knowledge of the real

universe or of humanity.

OF THE WILL

Under this heading the metaphysical doctrine of freedom of the will is

combated as a contradiction of the laws of Cause and Effect. Praise and

blame, reward and punishment, are desirable because of their effect on

action.

OF OBLIGATION

Barratt defines obligation as a "violent motive." Paley says: "If a man

finds the pleasure of sin to exceed the remorse of conscience, of which

he alone is the judge, the moral-instinct man, so far as I can

understand, has nothing more to offer." What, then, asks Barratt, has he

himself to offer if a man finds the pleasure of sin to exceed the pain

entailed by disobedience to the external command? It may, indeed, be the

fact that particular kinds of motive only come from particular sources,

but unless we can prove that those coming from a command are always the

strongest, we cannot claim for them a position such as that implied by

the word obligation, of being the highest or most universal motives. In

a contest between two motives, it is not the kind but the quantity which

decides. For if two pleasures or pains be equal, what does it matter

where they came from? And if they be not equal, the greater, whatever

its source, will always be the stronger motive.

"Hence obligation is nothing more than a 'violent motive.' Prudence and

duty are both the following of the greatest pleasure; but so far as in

ordinary language we make a distinction between them, the pleasure aimed

at in prudence is proximate and only slightly greater than the pain,

whereas in duty it is not only very considerably greater, but the

greatness is further glorified by a dim aureole of magnificent

generalities and the halo of an unfathomable future....

"And as the result of a motive is in no way dependent on its external

source, so neither is it influenced by its mode of internal operation. A

motive may be strong either by its own natural force as a large excess

of associated pleasure in one direction, or by the facility artificially

given to its expression by the long-continued custom, either in

ourselves or in our fathers, of acting in a certain way on certain

occasions. In other words, the strength of a motive is not absolute, it

is relative to the habits and predispositions of our organisms; but the

strongest motive, whatever its kind, prevails in all cases.

"Obligation is often, again, confounded with compulsion: but submission

to physical force is not morally an act at all, because its [Greek:

arche] or immediate antecedent is external to us, and therefore

independent of our moral laws."

OF PLEASURES THAT ARE CALLED BAD

"We saw that Good differs from Pleasure simply by a widening of the

field of calculation; whereby the pleasure of the moment is often found

to entail future pain greater than itself (allowance being made for

perspective), and is therefore condemned as Bad. When, therefore, we

speak of Pleasure as opposed to Good, we always mean the pleasure of the

moment; or very often by a still further narrowing of the term, sensual

as opposed to intellectual pleasures."

FOOTNOTES:

[63] Pp. 39, 40.

[64] P. 73.

LESLIE STEPHEN

"THE SCIENCE OF ETHICS" (1882)

While with regard to the matter of Ethics,--the general classifications

of right and wrong conduct,--moralists are almost unanimous, with regard

to its form,--the essence and criterion of right and wrong,--there is

great disagreement. All widely spread opinions deserve respect by their

mere existence; they are phenomena to be accounted for. On the subject

of morals, as on all other subjects, opinions gradually modify and

approach each other; but a perfect agreement will probably not be

arrived at.

Leaving aside metaphysical questions, however, we may be able to find,

as in physical science, some constants or ultimate elements which,

though they, according to the metaphysician's view, require further

analysis, yet constitute, within their sphere, scientific knowledge

independent of metaphysics. The follower of Hegel means, in all

probability, precisely the same thing as the follower of Hume, when he

says that a mother loves her child; though, when they come to reflect

upon certain ulterior imports of the phrases used, they may come to

different conclusions. The formula remains the same; for all purposes of

conduct it evokes the same impressions, sentiments, and sensible images,

and it therefore represents a stage at which all theories must coincide,

though they start, or profess to start, from the most opposite bases.

"Mothers love their children" is not unconditionally true; some mothers

do not love their children; but the statement is of worth as

approximating scientific truth. It may be well to attempt to ascertain

in how far it may be rendered scientific.

In the physical sciences, the statements of laws arrived at by the labor

of generations are ideal statements, in which a mass of modifying

circumstances are disregarded for the sake of simplification. Even in

these sciences, the power of prediction is small. Of the complicated

conditions of human action we have even less accurate knowledge than of

those of physical phenomena, though this does not lead us, any more than

in the physical sciences, to suppose that prediction would not be

possible if we knew the conditions. So far as man is a thing or an

animal, it is comparatively easy to determine his conduct. Given a

starving dog and a lump of meat in contact, you can predict the result.

But to determine the behavior of a human being with a glass of water

presented to his lips, you must be able to calculate the action of human

motive and to unravel the tangled skein of thought and feeling in its

variation in the individual under consideration. Moreover, much of the

life of the individual is ruled, not by conscious motive, but by

automatic habit, acquired through education. The prediction of action in

society as a unit is not less difficult than the prediction of

individual action, for if individual differences neutralize each other,

so that a certain uniformity in the influence of circumstances is shown

by statistics, it is not the less difficult to predict what these

uniformities will be. Society as an organism, not a mere aggregate,

presents, in the interaction of more complicated conditions, greater

difficulties than does the individual as such; and it may be said that

prediction of the course of history, even in general terms and for a

brief period, would require an intellect as much superior to that of

Socrates as the intellect of Socrates is superior to that of an ape.

And yet mankind does possess knowledge of conduct, which does not differ

in kind from scientific knowledge; there is, in fact, but one kind of

knowledge, which passes into scientific knowledge as it becomes more

definite and articulate. The knowledge that mankind possesses consists

in what we have thus far taken for granted, that under the same

circumstances of outward environment and inward character, human conduct

does not change. Of society, as of an organism, we cannot say _a priori_

that it is so and could not have been otherwise; we can only show, _a

posteriori_, how different parts mutually imply each other, so that,

given the whole, we can see that any particular part could not have been

otherwise. Our gain from such knowledge is the recognition that there

may be discoverable laws of growth essentially relevant to our

investigation of conduct. So long as reasoning was conducted upon the

tacit assumption that social phenomena can be satisfactorily explained

by studying their constituent elements separately, attention was

diverted from the important principles of the interrelation of parts to

the whole. The theory of evolution brings out the fact that every

organism, whether social or individual, represents the product of an

indefinite series of adjustments between it and its environment. Every

race or society is part of a larger system, product of the continuous

play of a number of forces constantly shifting with an effort towards

general equilibrium, so that every permanent property represents, not an

accidental similarity, but a correspondence between the organism and

some permanent conditions of life. To solve the problem of existence by

calculation is an impossibility; but our own lives are working it out;

the evolution of history is the solution of our problem. And when we

fully recognize that a problem is being solved, we have only to gain

some appreciation of its general nature and conditions, in order to

reach some important, though limited, conclusions, which may fairly be

called scientific, as to the meaning of the answer. These conclusions

are not scientific in the sense of giving us quantitative and precise

formulae, but they may be so far scientific as to be certain and

reliable.

Thus we may be able to show how a given set of instincts corresponds to

certain permanent conditions under which they were developed, and

(returning to the problem of differing theories of morals with which we

started) to show what is the cause of differing opinions. Our

investigations of the problem of morality have nothing to do, in the

first instance, with moral principles which are, or profess to be,

deduced from pure logic, independent of any particular fact; they deal

with actual moral sentiments as historical facts. The word moral, as

used in our considerations, does not, therefore, refer to an ideal moral

code, but to the one actually existing in the case considered.

Ethical speculation, as thus understood, must be concerned with

psychological inquiries--inquiries in regions where the vague doctrines

of common sense have not yet crystallized into scientific coherence; we

must therefore proceed with caution.

The contention between materialist and idealist is irrelevant to our

discussion. The fact that mechanical processes underlie all mental

process does not make the latter the less a fact; nor can the mechanical

statement ever supersede the psychological statement. The proposition

that hunger makes men eat will express truth, whatever material

implications are involved in the statement.

Conduct is determined by feeling; we fly from pain, we seek pleasure;

life is a continuous struggle to minimize suffering and lay a firm grasp

upon happiness. "Good" means everything that favors happiness, and "bad"

everything that is conducive to misery; nor can any other intelligible

meaning be assigned to the words. The difficulty of proving these

propositions lies in the fact that they are primary doctrines, for proof

of which we must appeal to the direct testimony of consciousness. But

critics oppose, not so much the propositions themselves, as certain

supposed implications. By pain and pleasure is here meant every

conceivable form of agreeable or disagreeable feeling. The assertion

that conduct is determined by pain and pleasure is not meant as a denial

that it is also, in some sense, determined by the reason; but a state of

consciousness which is neither painful or pleasurable cannot be an

object of desire or aversion. The reason is often contrasted with the

feelings in its determination of conduct, the reasonable man being

defined as one who, instead of being the slave of immediate impulse, is

capable of adapting means to ends and following, thus, courses of

conduct not in themselves agreeable but promising a greater total of

happiness. The fact is, however, that all happiness that determines the

will is future; conduct is determined, in every case, not by a future

feeling of pleasure, which, as future, does not yet exist, but by

present feeling. It is therefore more accurate to say that conduct is

determined by the pleasantest judgment than to say that it is determined

by the judgment of what is pleasantest. The intention of the agent is

defined by the foreseen consequences of his conduct; his end is defined

by that part of the foreseen consequences which he actually desires; and

the end defines the motive, that is, the feeling, which actually

determines conduct. The pleasantest end is adopted because the foretaste

of the pleasure is itself pleasurable. The intellect and the emotions

are in reality related as form and substance, and cannot be divided.

In the action of pain and pleasure, it seems to be an obvious fact that

pain, as pain, represents tension, that is, a state of feeling from

which there is a tendency to change; pleasure represents equilibrium, or

a state in which there is a tendency to persist. The worm writhes on the

hook, and the mind may be said to writhe under a painful emotion in the

effort to writhe into some more tolerable position. In the act of

choice, each mode of action is tried ideally, and the individual settles

into that which is, on the whole, the easiest. The analogy which

naturally offers itself and seems to give the best account of the facts

is the mechanical principle of least resistance. It is not, perhaps,

superfluous to remark that the volition may exercise a very small

influence, even when the limiting conditions are in a great part ideal.

The more painful is not necessarily the less permanent condition. It is

one in which there is an additional chance against permanence. Terror

sets up so disturbed a condition that the mind cannot settle into any

definite course. We can no more alter arbitrarily the circumstances of

our microcosm than those of the external world. It is as difficult to

avoid brooding in vain regret as to evade a physical constraint.

Reason and feeling are bound together in inseparable unity. But reason,

whatever its nature, is the faculty which enables us to act with a view

to the distant and the future. A great part of conduct is automatic; it

is either not determined by conscious motives, or it is determined by

motives which, though they rise for a moment to the surface of

consciousness, are forgotten as soon as felt. Of our conscious conduct,

again, part may be called instinctive and part reasonable. These modes

of action pass into each other by imperceptible degrees. The instinctive

may be converted into reasoned as the consequences become manifest, and

the reasoned become instinctive as the consequences are left out of

account. So, again, the instinctive action becomes automatic when it is

performed without leaving any trace upon consciousness. It may still be

voluntary in the sense that the agent may be able to refrain from it if

his attention happens to be aroused. Habitual actions pass through all

these gradations. When the reason is called into action, it is not in

virtue of a purely logical operation that it conquers if it does so; it

is in virtue of the fact that it reveals a new set of forces ready to

spring into action to the necessary degree.

We may be said to feel by signs as well as to reason by signs. The sight

of a red flag may deter us from crossing a rifle range without calling

up to our imagination all the effects of a bullet traversing the body.

If the motive which prompts us to run the risk be strong, it may be

necessary to convert a greater volume of latent, into active emotion;

and as we frequently fail to do this, we often run risks which we should

avoid were the consequences distinctly contemplated.

The development of the whole nature implies a development of both the

emotional and the intellectual nature; new sensibilities imply new

sentiments; and increased range of thought is associated with an equal

growth in complexity and variety of emotion. The more reasonable being

acts with emotion, but his emotions have more complex and refined

methods. The reasonable man is a better mirror of the world without him,

his conduct shows a better adaptation to ends and a greater logical

consistency in its parts; more harmony of action between the different

instincts. The important question is not solved by these facts. We may

still ask: How is the relation between the different instincts, the

influence exerted by each member of the federation, determined?

We start with certain fixed relations between our various instincts; and

however these may change afterwards, our character is so far determined

from the start. Again, it is plain that this inherited balance varies

greatly with different peoples and gives rise to different types. In one

man the sensual passions have a greater relative importance than in his

neighbor, and so forth. And the question arises, whether we can

determine which of these types is most reasonable.

In the construction of the bow, we may suppose that, from rude

beginnings, through discovery of better and better forms as adapted to

ends in view in its construction, a form of bow would finally be reached

which would represent the maximum of efficiency. This bow may be called

the typical bow. As exquisitely adapted to its purpose, it arouses in us

aesthetic satisfaction. Like the bow, every organism represents the

solution of a problem, as well as a set of data for a new problem. As

the bow is felt out, so the animal is always feeling itself out. The

problem which it solves is how to hold its own against the surrounding

pressure and the active competition of innumerable rivals. Though we

cannot apply an _a priori_ method, cannot define the materials of which

men are made or the end which they have to fulfil, we can determine to

some extent their typical excellence. Recognizing the general nature of

the great problem which is being worked out, we can discover what is

implied in some of the results. The process of evolution must be, at

every moment, a process of discovering a maximum of efficiency; though

the conditions are always varying slowly, and an absolute maximum is

inconceivable. At every point of the process, there is a certain

determinate direction along which development must take place. The form

which represents this direction is the typical form, any deviation from

which is a defect. It is conceivable that the highest efficiency in

different departments of conduct may imply consistent conditions. The

greatest philosopher may also be the greatest athlete and the greatest

poet. It is equally clear that there is no necessary connection. What,

then, is the relative value of different kinds of efficiency? A complete

answer to the question might bring out the fact, which seems on other

grounds probable, that it is an advantage to a race to include a great

variety of different types. It is enough, however, to say that, in

speaking of a type, the assertion is not intended, that there is one

special type conformity to which is a condition of efficiency, but that

evolution is always the working out of a problem, the solution of which

implies the attainment of certain general qualities.

We have changed our point of view from the consideration of pain and

pleasure to that of the conditions of existence. The fact is simply,

that the constants in one problem are variables in the other. Given a

certain character, the agent does what gives him pleasure. But if we ask

how he comes to have that character, the only mode of answering is by

referring to the conditions of existence. His character must be such as

to fit him for the struggle for existence. There must therefore be a

correlation between painful and pernicious actions on the one hand, and

pleasurable and temporal on the other. The useful in the sense of the

pleasure-giving must approximately coincide with the useful in the sense

of the life-preserving. All conduct may be considered as a set of

habits, to each of which there is a corresponding instinct--the word

habit being used to designate any mode of conduct, automatic or

voluntary, which may be brought under a general rule, instinct denoting

all conscious impulses to action, whether including more or less

reasoned choice, and whether innate or acquired. Habits graduate from

the essential processes which constitute life rather than maintain it,

and which are, for the most part, automatic, to the most superficial and

transitory. In order that the proposition "This habit is a bad one" may

have any real meaning, we must assume that the organism can exist

without it. A habit cannot be removed as one takes off a coat, as has

been too often assumed; the whole character of the man is affected by

its removal.

A capacity is essential if it is essential under normal conditions of

environment. The quality which makes a race survive may not always be a

source of advantage to every individual, or even to the average

individual. Since the animal which is better adapted for continuing its

species will have an advantage in the struggle, even though it may not

be so well adapted for pursuing its own happiness, an instinct grows and

decays not on account of its effects on the individual, but on account

of its effects upon the race. The qualities of the individual and those

of the race mutually imply each other, since the individual can no more

be considered apart from society than the apple can be considered apart

from the tree on which it grows. It remains true, however, that certain

qualities of the apple may vary whilst the relation to the tree remains

approximately the same, as also that the individual may vary in his

qualities to some extent, his relation to society remaining

approximately constant; and qualities thus variable may be regarded as,

in so far, independent of society.

Social development takes place without corresponding change of

individual organization. We cannot interpret the changes from savage

life arrived at in present civilization, as representing an essential,

great, or corresponding difference in the innate faculties of the

civilized man from those of the savage, but must regard them rather as

representing the accumulation of mental and material wealth. The child,

learning, with the words of his language, their implicit meanings, has

his feelings modified by them, is thus a philosopher and metaphysician

in the cradle by the associations given him, and is educated from

infancy by the necessity of conforming his activities to those of the

surrounding mass. All organization implies uniformities of conduct, and

therefore continuous discipline. Society is an organism in this sense,

not in any mystical sense. It is not an organism with a single centre of

consciousness.

An organization implies organs; and these are to be found in the various

organizations, political, religious, etc., by which, through a greater

or less division of labor, certain special functions are relegated to

particular associations. We thus have not only to go beyond the

individual and refer to the organs in order to determine the "law" or

form of any instinct developed through the social factor, but we have

also to classify the various social instincts by reference to the

complex structure of society, which implies a distribution into mutually

dependent organs. Moreover, such organs, though primarily directed to a

specific end, acquire a vitality independent of any special end, become

organs discharging a complex function, and imply the existence of a

correspondingly complex set of instincts. We come really to love an

organization because it supplies us with a means of cultivating certain

emotions and of enjoying the society of our fellows; it would be an

entirely inadequate account of the facts if we regarded it simply as the

means of attaining that pleasure which has given the pretext for its

formation.

The organs of society are not, however, distinct from each other as the

physical organs are distinct; the same individuals may be members of

various organizations. The race is not, in fact, analogous to the higher

organism, which forms a whole separated from all similar wholes, but to

an organism of the lower type, which consists of mutually connected

parts spreading independently in dependence upon external conditions,

and capable of indefinite extension, not of united growth. We may

consider the race, thus, as forming social tissue, rather than

constituting an organism. The tissue is built up of men, as the tissue

of physiology is said to be built up of cells. The laws of growth and

vitality of the organs of society are always relative to the underlying

properties of the tissue; although, in particular cases, the more

civilized race may be supplanted by the less civilized, we may assume

that these accidental and contingent advantages will be eliminated on

the average, and the general tendency will be to the predominance of

those races which have intrinsically the strongest tissue. Not the state

as such, and (as we have seen) not the individual, is the unit of

evolution; the state may develop when the external pressure is little or

nothing; the social tissue is that primary unit upon which the process

of social evolution impinges. The family is not, itself, a mode of

organization cooerdinate with other social organs, but rather represents

the immediate and primitive relation which holds men together. It is

quite possible to suppose men living together without any political and

social organization; but some association between the sexes, however

temporary and casual, and some protection of infants by parents, are

absolutely necessary to the continuance of the race beyond a single

generation. A change in family associations implies a corresponding

change of vast importance in the intimate structure of society itself,

in the social tissue. The state may make a marriage law, but it cannot

create or modify the family tie beyond certain narrow limits. It can

bestow privileges upon some one kind of association, but it cannot

originate it, cannot enforce fidelity and chastity.

The social tissue is its own end, or depends upon the whole system of

instincts possessed by man as a social and rational creature.

The development of society as an organic structure implies the

development of customs in the race, and habits in the individuals

forming it. There must be certain rules of conduct which are observed by

all, in order that corresponding rules may be observed by each.

Custom in the civilized society may be distinguished from positive law.

In primitive states, the distinction is imperceptible. The authority of

law itself must rest upon custom,--the custom of obedience. But physical

force alone, or the dread of its application, cannot produce obedience;

the application of such force is so little essential that a state of

society is conceivable, in which it should disappear altogether; men

might be willing to obey their rulers simply from respect and affection.

The power of applying coercion in case of need must no doubt increase as

the strength of the social bond increases; but that bond is also the

stronger, in proportion as the need of applying it becomes less. The

whole social structure, then, must rest, in the last resort, upon the

existence of certain organic customs, which cannot be explained from

without. They depend, for their force and vitality, upon the instincts

of the individual as modified by the social factor; they correspond to a

given state of the social tissue. A legal sanction may be added to any

custom whatever, and thus it may seem that a state can make its own

constitution and define its own organic laws; in reality, however, the

power of making a certain constitution presupposes a readiness to act

together and accept certain rules as binding, and thus implies a whole

set of established customs, essential to the life of the society and

giving rise to special types of character in its members. Every law of

conduct more or less affects the character of the persons subject to it,

so long as it is enforced; and necessarily, every variation in the

character more or less affects the sentiments from which the external

law derives its force. The correspondence, however, is not so intimate

that one mode of statement can always be rendered into the other. For

laws, indeed elaborate codes, are developed without seriously affecting

the general character of the underlying customs, and in the same way

instincts may vary widely without producing any normal change in the

external order, though they affect the mode in which it works. The

essence of any law is in the mutual pressure of the different parts of

the social structure. Any association with a given end will have laws

determined with reference to that end. When we pass, however, from the

organ to the tissue, we still have an organic structure with certain

rules of conduct and corresponding instincts, but we no longer have a

definite end or a fixed material. The material, that is, is to be

regarded as developing and determining the development of the subsidiary

organs. And since the most efficient society normally survives, we may

inversely infer from the survival of a society that it has developed the

properties on which its efficiency depends. The actual laws existing at

any period may not represent the greatest degree of efficiency possible;

but they must be an approximate statement of the essential conditions.

The moral law, as applicable to all members of a society, defines some

of the most important qualities of the social tissue. It is as

independent of the legislature as are the movements of the planets. This

is true whether you resolve morality into reason or make it dependent

upon utility. The action of any set of people can no more change the

nature of facts than that of logical necessities. This is, however,

fully true only of morality as it ought to be in correspondence with

facts. Actual morality corresponds to men's theories about facts, and it

may, therefore, deviate from what the code would be if they were

incapable of error. But it is plain that, though it varies, it must vary

within incomparably narrower limits than other systems of law, because

its variation is determined by far more general conditions; it maintains

itself, so to speak, by the direct action of the organic instincts. The

doctrines of the greatest moral teacher, though somewhat in advance of

prevailing standards, are successful only in proportion as they are

congenial to existing sentiments, give articulate shape to thoughts

already obscurely present in the social medium. Like Socrates, the

reformer must be something of a midwife. Morality grows, and is not

made; that is, it is the fruit of a gradual evolution of the organic

instinct continued through many generations. The ordinary mind resists

any change in principles instilled into it from birth; the great masses

are sluggish in movement.

The moral law has to be expressed in the form: "Be this," not "Do this."

The existence of a character such that variations of circumstances will

cause no deviation from morality is the only security for morals. The

legislator is forced to classify conduct by its objective

manifestations. But the cunning of the man who desires to evade the code

can still devise innumerable methods of accomplishing his end

indirectly. Law permits what it does not prohibit, and is, therefore, in

danger of producing hypocrisy instead of virtue.

The process by which the moral law (or rather, the law of conduct which

includes, but is not coincident with the moral law) is developed, is a

process of generalization. It corresponds to a vast induction carried on

by the race as organized in society. Beginning with modes of conduct

which are seen to be bad, society gradually perceives that the ultimate

principle of classification must be by the primary feelings, that rules

of conduct must be expressed in terms of character, and other rules

which concern the application of these to more special cases must take a

subordinate position and be regarded as only of conditional value. All

these rules must necessarily correspond, within very narrow limits, to a

statement of the conditions of vitality of the tissue which they

characterize. In an ideal state of society, every general principle

would also be recognized in every particular rule. This is a result a

gradual approximation to which, rather than its actual attainment, must

be anticipated.

Morality implies action for the good of others in some sense. Society

may be regarded both as an aggregate and as an organism. There are

certain qualities which we may suppose to vary in the individual without

necessarily involving a change in the social structure. How is the

general rule, as distinguished from other rules, deduced from the

general principle of social vitality?

The law of nature has but one precept, "Be strong." But when we regard

the individual in his relations to society, the law takes on different

forms. This may be expressed by saying that the law "Be strong," has two

main branches, "Be prudent" and "Be virtuous," the first applying to

cases in which the individual is primarily affected, the other to those

in which the units are affected through society and the social factor

must be taken into account.

To find a classification of the virtues that will not run into infinite

detail or be a simple affirmation of the general principle, the internal

development of moral character under its emotional and intellectual

aspects may furnish a sufficient method. The general formula of primary

individual virtues is: "Be strong." The condition of vitality of the

individual as a complex of instincts, is expressed by the formula: "Be

temperate." And the class of virtues referring to the conditions of

intellectual efficiency, has the general rule: "Be truthful."

_Ceteris paribus_, an increase of individual energy is an advantage to

society; and, as a matter of fact, we find that civilized society

differs conspicuously from the ruder in stimulating more vigorously and

systematically the various energies of its members. The most conspicuous

virtue of this class is the virtue of courage. In more primitive

conditions, courage, as necessary to the preservation of society, is

regarded as a virtue in itself; later, some mixture of judgment and

reason is required in its exercise; and finally, since it may be

combined with other anti-social qualities, it is not approved in the

same manner as the more directly social virtues. Courage is now regarded

merely as one manifestation of a character which is fitted for all the

requirements of social existence.

The courage of the bulldog is blind instinct. Where such an instinct

exists, the animal survives by reason of it, not because he forms any

conscious judgment of its advantages. It seems necessary to suppose that

races owed their survival to military prowess when reflection was still

in the most rudimentary stage. The utility of courage must have been a

very obvious discovery as soon as reflection became possible; but the

quality must have existed, in some degree, before it could be

discovered, although the existence of a distinct moral sentiment

doubtless implies some reflection. Moreover, the instincts which imply a

perception of utility must themselves comply with the conditions of

existence, must themselves be useful. Increased intelligence might act

to the disadvantage of the race by increasing selfish cowardice through

a keener perception of personal, as distinct from social, risk; but this

cannot be true ultimately, since we perceive that intelligent races have

an advantage; we may suppose that those races are most successful in

which a perception of the vitality of courage goes along with an

increase of courage. This principle must be regarded, therefore, as

working, not only through the less conscious instinct of the lower

races, but also upon the judgments of a highly civilized society. The

like is true, _mutatis mutandis_, of other qualities (such as industry,

energy, and so forth) which belong to the same class.

The estimate of courage differs with respect to the two sexes, as does

also that of chastity. The historical explanation is simple; courage was

necessary in men in early social stages, to race-preservation; to women,

on the other hand, has been given, from early times, a class of social

functions not requiring courage. The estimate, once fixed, survives even

when some of its early conditions disappear. The savage acquired his

wife by knocking her down; to him the ideal feminine character must

have included readiness to be knocked down, or at least unreadiness to

strike again; and, as some of the forms of marriage recall the early

system, so in the sentiments with which it is regarded there may still

linger something of the early instinct associated with striking and

being struck.

The virtues of chastity and temperance occupy an intermediate position

between the virtues of strength and the directly social virtues. Some of

them are a part of the prudential, and others of the directly moral

code. Temperance is primarily prudential, but the sexual and parental

instincts concern the most intimate structure of society. Our

instinctive classification of temperance as higher than courage has good

reason; the classification of it as a personal virtue cannot be

maintained. A man whose vice injures only himself in the first place,

becomes incapable of benefiting others. As we condemn the man whose

character is bad, whether external circumstances do, or do not, give him

an opportunity of displaying it, so we object logically to the man who

is destroying his social qualities, whether the immediate effect of his

conduct tells upon himself or upon others. Another element, an

instinctive disgust at sensuality, seems to precede judgment upon

intemperance, with a strength not to be accounted for by a mere summing

up of consequences. The human hog revolts us as the smell of the sty

turns our stomach. The justification of the instinct is not that it

implies a judgment of what is useful, but rather that it is a useful

judgment. As men become more intellectual, sympathetic, and so forth,

they gain fresh sensibilities, which are not simple judgments of

consequences but as direct, imperative, and substantial, as any of the

primitive sensibilities. To get rid of the sensibility you must lower

the whole tone of the character. Asceticism, which has arisen chiefly at

times of great indulgence, may have been of use if only as a

demonstration of the possibility of conquering the prevailing passions.

In a similar manner, we may think a great reformer, a Howard for

example, admirable, though he neglects duties which must be performed in

the ordinary case. We thus admit that the general moral code of

benevolence prescribes different conduct according to a man's

opportunities and talents.

Truth is a virtue of slow growth; the savage, like the child, is unable

to distinguish clearly the difference between imagination, hypothesis,

and historical statement. The perception of the utility of truth first

takes the external form: "Lie not," which corresponds approximately but

not perfectly to the internal rule: "Be trustworthy." The internal rule,

as such, is the higher; the external may have exceptions.

We come, at last, to the directly social virtues of justice and

benevolence. So far as truth and temperance are strictly virtuous, they

may be classed, the one under justice, the other under benevolence.

There is no real conflict between justice and benevolence; so far as a

man is really benevolent, he will not wish to benefit some to the injury

of others. Justice seems to consist in the application to conduct of the

principle of sufficient reason.

It is not safe to infer altruistic intention merely from altruistic

consequences. The sexual appetite appears to be the most selfish of

impulses, in that it prompts to conduct often ruinous to its objects. On

the other hand, it is the root of all social virtues. We cannot be sure

that the hen who covers her chicks regards them as more than comfortable

furniture in the nest. Altruism begins with the capability of benevolent

intention; where the conferring of pleasure upon others becomes a

possible motive. The generation of pleasure in others' happiness has

been traced to association; but, though the pleasant association

doubtless prepares the way for the higher sentiment, the latter is

something more.

It is true that all conduct is egoistic, in the sense that all conduct

has its source in the pain and pleasure of the doer; but there is great

difference between conduct that regards human beings as mere means to

personal pleasure and that which takes into account their feelings as

sentient beings. Sympathy springs from the primary intellectual power of

representation. I cannot properly know a man without knowledge of his

thoughts and feelings. Cruelty is, in many cases, simple insensibility,

incapacity for projecting ourselves into the position of other beings.

We may desire the pain of others when it is useful as a deterrent, or

secures our own safety; yet to think about other beings is, in general,

to stimulate our sympathies, our sensibility being thus quickened by the

same power which implies intellectual progress.

To believe in the existence of sentient beings is to take into account

their feelings, to believe that they have feelings, which may persist

when I am not aware of them. A real belief, again, implies that, at the

moment of belief, I have representative sensations or emotions

corresponding to those which imply the actual presence of the object. To

take sentience into account is to sympathize, to feel with. The only

condition necessary for the sympathy to exist, and to be capable,

therefore, of becoming a motive, is that I should really believe in the

object, and hence have representative feelings. Systematically to ignore

these relations is to act as I should act if I were an egoist in the

extremest sense and held that there were no consciousness in the world

except my own. But really to carry out this principle is to be an idiot;

for an essential part of the world as interesting to me is constituted

by the feelings of other conscious agents, and I can ignore their

existence only at the cost of losing all the intelligence which

distinguishes me from the lower animals. It is true that this vicarious

sympathy, this pain at another's pain, may result in our simply getting

rid of our own pain by going away from the sufferer, removing him, or

dismissing him from our mind; as a fact, these methods are often

pursued. But in many cases, such a course is impossible without the

renunciation, at the same time, of many pleasures. If a man is to live

with his friends, he must share their joys and sorrows; the choice is

not between a particular pain and its absence, but involves the whole

question of the renunciation of companionship. Emotions are inevitable,

whether sympathetic or not, in proportion, not simply to the pain and

pleasure at the moment, but to the intensity and degree in which they

form part of the world of the individual,--the world constituted, not by

mere sensations, but by the whole system of thoughts and emotions

sustained by the framework of perception. The existence of pure

malignity must, it is true, be admitted; it may be partly explained as

love of the "sensational," the novel; the full explanation must be left

to the psychologist. Sympathy is the natural and fundamental fact. If

intellectual progress carried with it inferior sociability, it would

tend to be eliminated; the world would be to the stupid; it must carry

with it something which counterbalances the anti-social tendency. Reason

is that which enables a human being to take account of future, as well

as present pleasures. The working of the instincts or feelings, which

dictates conduct, approximately coincides with the prevision as to the

maximum of happiness obtainable by the agent; normally, it is prudent

to be virtuous; and the sympathetic motives, so to speak, always develop

within the framework provided by the other motives. To become reasonable

is to act on general principles, and to act consistently; and this

includes the condition that a statement of the real cause of my action

should equally assign the reason of my action. The law which my feelings

actually follow must coincide with the principle which commends itself

to my reason. In order, then, that a being provided with the social

instincts should act reasonably it is necessary that he should take that

course of conduct which gives the greatest chances of happiness to the

organization of which he forms a part. As the pain or pleasure in

another's pain or pleasure is direct, so the end willed is willed as

pleasurable to the subject, and the statement that altruism involves the

contradiction of aiming at something else than the real end--the

pleasure of the subject--in order to secure that end, is erroneous. The

fact probably is that the mind "flickers," taking into consideration

various consistent and mutually dependent ends, some of which may be

primarily egoistic, some altruistic. The physician is not benevolent

enough to cure me unless he expects a fee; but he may act also out of

sympathy; he need not be always thinking of his fee. Our sympathies

would be stifled, if it were not for the cooeperation of motives of a

different kind.

Altruism is the faculty essentially necessary to moral conduct; but the

altruistic sentiment is not to be identified with morality. The

elementary sympathy must be regulated and disciplined, in order that it

may give rise to true morality. Virtues, for instance, which belong to

the type of truthfulness and justice, generally imply a severe restraint

of the immediate sympathetic impulses.

We recognize the internal motive as desirable, and recognize a

difference between the man who acts only from prudential motives and the

one who acts from moral motives. We consider the latter meritorious,

that is, that he has a certain claim upon society, inasmuch as he has

done for nothing what another man will only do for pay, or has refrained

from action from which a less moral man can be restrained only by

coercion. Wherever society finds sacrifice of the individual necessary,

it pays for it in terms of merit. Merit is the value put upon virtue; it

is a function of the social forces, by which our characters are moulded.

Every character is developed under circumstances, and depends upon

mutual adjustment with these; we cannot disentangle the two factors.

Upon the power to infer future action the science of Ethics depends. The

action of the individual is not a matter of chance; in this sense it is

caused. But the instinct from which the action springs is not something

external to the man, which moves him; there is not the man plus the

instinct; the whole man, including the instinct, acts in a certain way,

in which he would not act if he did not possess the instinct. We are

accustomed to say that a man has inherited certain qualities; but the

man is not one thing and the inherited qualities another; the whole man

is inherited. Merit implies effort. This does not mean that effort,

taken absolutely, is the measure of merit. Such an assumption would lead

to our excusing men for the very qualities that make them wicked,--the

murderer because of his spiteful disposition, for instance. The man is

most meritorious who is virtuous with the least effort--provided always

that he has the normal passions of a man. By these, however, since they

are morally neutral, he is accessible to temptation and to a certain

struggle.

Conscience appears, historically, as a development of simpler instincts;

it is not a primary or a separate faculty; material morality makes its

appearance long before the conscious recognition of a moral law. The

existence of conscience is undeniable. Yet moralists are much given to

exaggerate the sorrow which it actually excites. In almost every case,

the pain which we feel for a bad act is complex, and due only in part to

our conviction that we have broken the moral law. If we regard

conscience as a separate faculty judging of action by some inherent

power, we have to attribute to it reason and feeling. It is not a

primary attribute of the agent (to borrow Spinoza's language), but a

mode of the attributes.

There is, indeed, a sensibility which seems to have as good a claim as

any to be regarded as elementary, and which is clearly concerned in most

of our moral judgments: the sense of shame. This is excited by the

consciousness of the judgment of others. It operates, however, not only

in cases of a breach of morality; but often more strongly even in cases

not concerned directly with morality; and may even operate against the

moral code. But the variation is clearly not indefinite. Social

development implies the development of a certain type of character,

which includes, as essential, certain moral qualities; the

consciousness of the code and of the condemnation of certain classes of

acts, which it would cause, is implied in the sense of shame. The sense

is closely connected with the instinctive disgust before noticed. It

seems to have especial reference to decency and indecency. The value of

the sense of decency cannot be measured by a consideration of a

particular set of bad consequences from indecent actions other than the

shock to decency; we must consider the whole difference between a state

of society which does, and one which does not, possess it; it is an

essential symptom of refinement and delicacy. Again, the judgments of

conscience may be compared to aesthetic judgments. The difference between

the aesthetic and other pleasures depends upon the form of gratification,

not upon the instincts gratified, and seems to correspond to the

difference between work and play. The artist may appeal to our moral

emotions, giving us imaginary ideals; but emotion at the contemplation

of such types is in the aesthetic phase when we simply enjoy their

contemplation, and it passes into the practical phase as soon as it

begins to have a definite relation to the conduct of our lives. Only in

so far as the moral law has become internal, is the delight in heroic or

benevolent energy spontaneous; in so far, we may speak of the existence

of a moral, as of an aesthetic, sense. A man of fine moral sensibility

may, indeed, like the artist, perceive finer moral discords than can be

measured by formulae; and may thus supply a more delicate test. But the

complex problem of a difference in moral judgment may yet be solved

approximately by reference to the test of social welfare; the highest

type is that which is best fitted for the conditions of social welfare.

The collective experience of the race is always progressing towards a

more accurate solution of the problem.

The utilitarian theory, which makes happiness the criterion of morals,

coincides approximately with the evolutionist theory which makes health

of the society the criterion; for, as we have seen, health and happiness

approximately coincide. The utilitarian theory fails, however, in one or

two respects. It gets rid, as much as possible, of _a priori_ truths,

and rejects intuitions; it bases its argument on the assumption that all

knowledge is empirical and the ethical problem to be solved by a summing

up of the consequences of action. It thus neglects the truth which is

implied by evolution,--that the organism itself is solving the problem;

it neglects the instinctive sense generated by social evolution.

Moreover, it considers society as an aggregate of similar individuals,

taking little account of the variability of human desire. And, further,

the utilitarian theory lays its stress upon morality as extrinsic;

according to it, love of morality for its own sake, as love of the means

to the end, must be as unreasonable as the miser's love for his gold.

Association, in this sense, means illusion; and the more reasonable we

become, the more we should deliver ourselves from the bondage of such

errors; the theory fails just at the point where true morality begins.

Furthermore, in substituting the external rule: "Do this," for "Be

this," it seems to fall into the error of expediency. Though lying is

assumed to be, on the whole, detrimental to happiness, truth is

maintained to be desirable only where it contributes to happiness. The

utilitarian destroys, to some extent, the force of the objection to this

by asserting the danger of trusting ourselves. The force of this

objection is only seen, however, when it is applied, not to the

external, but to the internal code; we instinctively feel the danger to

character in the lie, and hesitate to trust human nature in the

establishment of such a precedent, just as we object to permitting the

taking of life even in cases where prolonged life means prolonged

misery, because we cannot trust human nature with the decision as to

life and death. We make binding laws of morality, and leave it to the

man of exceptional qualities to break them; for the generality of

mankind, the stricter code is safer.

What is the sanction of morality? Why should a man be virtuous? The

answer depends upon the answer to the previous question: What is it to

be virtuous? If, for example, virtue means all such conduct as promotes

happiness, the motives to virtuous conduct must be all such motives as

impel a man to aim at increasing the sum of happiness. These motives

constitute the sanction, and the sanction may be defined either as an

intrinsic, or as an extrinsic, sanction; that is, it may be argued

either that virtuous conduct leads to consequences which are desirable

to every man, whether he be or be not virtuous; or, on the other hand,

that virtuous conduct as such, and irrespectively of any future

consequences, makes the agent happier. The problem is, thus, to find a

scientific basis for the art of conduct. The "sanction" must supply the

motive power by which individuals are to be made virtuous. This is, for

the practical moralist, the culminating point of all ethical inquiry.

Now there is, by our theory, a necessary and immediate relation between

social vitality and morality. But it does not follow that there is the

same intimate connection in the individual case. The sacrifice of some

of its members may be essential to the welfare of the society itself.

We have, then, to answer three questions: first, whether the virtuous

man, as such, is happier than the vicious; second, whether it is worth

while, on prudential grounds, for the vicious man to acquire the

virtuous character; and third, whether it can be worth while, in the

same sense, for the vicious man to observe the moral law.

If any man outside the pulpit were to ask himself what were the main

conditions of happiness, the answer would certainly include health as

the first, most essential, most sufficient condition. But the whole

process of nature, upon the evolutionist doctrine, implies a correlation

between the painful and the pernicious, and thus the elaboration of

types in which this problem is solved by an ever-increasing efficiency

and complexity of organization. Hence we may infer that the typical or

ideal character, at any given stage of development, the organization

which, as we may say, represents the true line of advance, corresponds

to a maximum of vitality. It seems, again, that this typical form, as

the healthiest, must represent not only the strongest type--that is, the

type most capable of resisting unfavorable influences--but also the

happiest type; for every deviation from it affords a strong presumption,

not merely of liability to the destructive processes which are

distinctly morbid, but also to a diminished efficiency under normal

conditions. However, the typical man, though he is, on this theory, the

virtuous man, is also much more than is generally understood by that

name. Happiness is the reward offered, not for virtue alone, but for

conformity to the law of nature, "Be strong." Beauty, strength,

intellectual vigor, aesthetic sensibility, prudence, industry, and so

forth, are all implied in the best type, and are, so far, conducive to

happiness. If virtue be taken in the narrower sense as implying chiefly

the negative quality of habitual abstinence from forbidden actions,

there is no reason to suppose that it coincides with happiness. You can

raise a presumption that moral excellence coincides closely with a happy

nature only when you extend "moral" to include all admirable qualities.

It is chiefly practical reasons which cause an attempted evasion of this

conclusion; the practical moralist holds that the non-social qualities

may be left to take care of themselves, but that stress must be laid

upon the social qualities as the more important, in order to obtain them

in society.

Sympathetic motives may lead to self-sacrifice; but this is also true of

selfish motives; gin is a more potent source of imprudence, even in a

moderate sense, than family affection; and the sympathetic motives have

on their side the far greater intrinsic advantage, that they promote

ends more permanent, far richer in interest, and giving a proper

employment to all the faculties of our nature, besides the intrinsic

advantages that spring from friendly relations with the society of which

we form a part. It is, however, true that higher activity of any sort

may cause pain in an uncongenial medium, and that, hence, the man who is

morally in advance of his age may suffer through his morality; every

reformer who breaks with the world, though for the world's good, must

expect much pain. "Be good if you would be happy," seems to be the

verdict even of worldly prudence; but it adds in an emphatic aside, "Be

not too good." We must acknowledge that excessive virtue cannot be

recommended to the selfish person upon grounds intelligible to him.

There is, however, a general advantage in possessing more varied

possibilities of enjoyment, and in being on the side of the strongest

forces, those of progress.

Extreme self-sacrifice is sometimes demanded of a man by his moral

principles. Is the sacrifice worth making? Would Regulus have suffered,

from remorse, pain worse than death, had he chosen life at the cost of

honor, or would he have found, as many do, that remorse is amongst the

passions most easily lived down? To these questions can only be answered

that morality must often involve pain, but that the virtuous man

nevertheless chooses it.

We must thus conclude, leaving one great difficulty unsolved; and this

is because this difficulty is intrinsically insoluble; there is no

absolute coincidence between virtue and happiness. The scientific

moralist has to do with facts; beyond these he cannot go. From the

scientific point of view, we may hold that evolution implies progress,

and that progress implies a solution of many discords and an extirpation

of many evils; but there is no reason for supposing that all evil will

be extirpated and perfect harmony attained. New sensibilities bring with

them new dangers; even sympathy, when not guided by knowledge, may lead

to rash changes productive of evil as well as good. To improve, whether

for the race or the individual, whether in knowledge or in sympathy, is

to be put in a position where a new set of experiments has to be tried,

and experience to be bought at the price of pain.

It is true that beyond the science lies the art; we must incite the

intrinsic motives to good through the pressure of the social factor. A

certain disadvantage to the individual cannot form a reason for our not

endeavoring to make him moral as far as possible; the good of society as

a whole is involved; and even the man who is himself immoral sees the

advantage of living in a moral medium, and would prefer that the world

at large should not be guided by his own principles.

B. CARNERI

Carneri begins his book on "Morality and Darwinism" ("Sittlichkeit und

Darwinismus," 1871), with the rejection of the older Spiritualism in

favor of Idealism, on the ground that modern investigation has made it

impossible for philosophy to assume any foundation but one sanctioned by

science; and with a rejection of dualism in favor of monism, on the

ground that the investigations of Wundt and others have shown the

psychical and the physical to be identical.

Instinct is defined by Carneri as thought upon the standpoint of mere

sensation, but following the laws of the same logic as governs conscious

thought. There is, thus, according to his view, no exception to be taken

to the conception which represents instinct as the action of mental

force, the difference between it and human reason as one of degree only.

It is nevertheless a confusion which ascribes reason to the animals.

Even their intelligence is one-sided, since it does not reach

self-consciousness, and it is not to be regarded as an unqualified

improvement upon instinct, since the latter loses both in intensity and

in certainty of action when it no longer governs undisturbed by other

influences: only such animals as are endowed with intelligence

ever eat of injurious food. In human beings instinct has almost

disappeared;--almost, we say, since savages do many things in an

instinctive manner, and even civilized men at times perform acts which,

on account of the exceeding rapidity of their execution, cannot be

regarded as the results of reflection. Instinct may be compared to

polarity in magnetism, according to which opposites are attracted.

Instinct was evolved by natural selection. But intelligence and judgment

are doubtless also to be found even far down in the scale of species.

The brute consciousness is, nevertheless, only a transition-stage, in

which the individual is still lost in the species; and, as such, it is

not to be confused with human reason. Consciousness in the brutes is

purely subjective, a consciousness "fuer sich"; while in human beings it

is consciousness "an und fuer sich," consciousness that becomes

subject-object through the concepts developed by language.

Man is as unconditionally subject to the law of causality, psychically

and physically, as the merest atom. There is no such thing as chance;

but in this very fact lies a consolation. In the concept of

individualization in its broadest sense, is included the conception of

freedom, and in the very nature of man there is an indestructible

impulse to freedom; his being, as self-conscious, is identical with the

latter impulse. This increases with increasing civilization, and has

finally become the problem by the solution of which alone man can attain

to self-satisfaction. It is true that the power of choice is

inconsistent with the law of causality; but in the manner in which the

man, as a thinking being, takes his stand over against the species, he

becomes a person, an individuality. As one of the species, he shares the

characteristics of the species, is an expression of the species-idea,

and his action is determined outwardly by things; but it is so

determined only mediately by means of thought, of concepts; these are

the immediate determinants. Hence, man's relation to things is a

different one according to the grade of his knowledge. In so far as this

is adequate, that is, corresponds to the truth of actuality, his

relation is an active one; in so far as it is, on the contrary,

inadequate, the relation is a passive one.

Character is inborn and can never be effaced but only clarified, though

this least through the bitter experience of the results of action. As

the horse loses his sure-footedness after one fall, and falls again more

easily, so we lose, through many a deed, the motive furnished by the

consciousness of never having committed it, and have a greater tendency

to repeat it. If an act has bad results, it is more likely that an

attempt to avoid these results by cunning will be made at later

opportunities for the act, than that the act itself will be avoided.

And even if it were to be avoided, such avoidance would not constitute

an improvement of the character; the latter would but hide itself under

a mask to reappear at the first prospect of exemption from punishment.

That which alone can modify character is a considerable extension of

knowledge. For, since all things influence us only in proportion to the

worth we attribute to them, their power over us must differ according to

the correctness or incorrectness of our judgment. Therefore, the more we

regard things in the light of their actual worth and hence also in their

relations to each other, the more our character, beholding in these

relations the general as the true, will incline to avoid extremes in

action. A preponderantly sensual character remains such through life;

but there is no doubt that a careful education, which makes it

acquainted with nobler principles and develops a sensibility to true

beauty, may ennoble it; while, if the education is, on the contrary,

neglected, it must sink deeper and deeper into the mire of coarseness

and vulgarity.

Character is the sum of its "affections," that is, of all

states and motions of the disposition. These are divisible into

"passions,"--included under selfishness, which is the general,

all-embracing passion,--and the active conditions of existence. These

two divisions are also identical with pain and pleasure, passion with

pain, and activity with pleasure. All desires have their root in the

primary instinct of self-preservation and self-propagation, the instinct

of self-propagation being only the racial form of the instinct of

self-preservation. The instinct of self-propagation is the highest of

all the passions, yet, as Spinoza says, every form of love which

recognizes another cause than mental freedom is easily turned to

hate,--if it is not already a sort of madness, nourished rather by

discord than concord. The various forms of family love, the love of

country, and friendship, noble sisters of love in the narrower sense,

result in desirable activity only as they exist in the form of concepts.

Civilization is nothing but the struggle of inadequate and adequate

concepts, in which, as in the struggle for existence in nature, only

that is triumphant which, instead of assuming a position of separation,

makes the general and the conditions of existence its own; so that

charity in the widest sense of the term is, of all humane feelings, that

to which the palm has been given. In this feeling, the dialectic

movement of the concept "man" is completed and perfected, the single

man, instead of perishing in the struggle of all against all, first

working his way upward out of his species and then taking up, in his own

being, the whole of mankind through the medium of benevolence. By this

evolution he raises himself to the level of the general. Far higher than

that confused sympathy which, in lending temporary aid to one, brings

lasting harm to many, is this adequate concept; true benevolence is

founded upon the clearest reasoning, and is the activity of the mind's

fullest power. The discord which self-consciousness has caused in man

can be done away with only by the greatest possible clarification of

self-consciousness: man returns mentally to the bosom of the universal,

when every living thing causes him to exclaim in the words of the Indian

philosopher: "Behold thyself."

Ethics ranks higher than morals, the latter merely comprising a

collection of particular rules of conduct which, as particular, bear the

stamp of the individual, the non-universal. The details of morality

change according to epochs and peoples. This change has been regarded as

an argument that there is no absolute but only relative good. But the

concept of the Good is, like the concept of the Beautiful, the fruit of

education; that is, it is the product of mind, which, through its own

evolution, arrives at Knowledge. When we do away with all concessions to

one-sided, extravagant desires, abstain from placing mind above the

universal law of causality, and are content with the facts made known to

us by science, we perceive that the absolute True, Beautiful, and Good,

bears the character of the Universal. In this universal character it has

always finally found expression in human life, and in this character it

will always find expression. The idea which reaches perfect expression

in the dialectic movement of these three concepts, the True, the

Beautiful, and the Good, has come into existence by the mediation of the

self-individualizing self-consciousness, just as the evolution on the

earth, which reaches its completion in man, is the outcome of the first

chemical process. Not only have the two one law,--(mind is only in so

far realized[65] as nature is expressed through it, and the actuality of

nature is its expression in mind) but both are, in fact, one, the

succession in their development on the earth being a succession only in

relation to the earth, and for us in this respect. Although to our

notion of time, thousands of millions of years lie between the two,

their separation does not represent a second for the universe and its

eternity, for the comprehension of which it must be disregarded.

The good man is he who does good for its own sake, without effort, not

out of momentary caprice, but out of perfect knowledge and conviction.

He is free, since he acts out of his own character, the law of nature

appearing as the law of his own mind; freedom lies in the absence of

discord and strife in the mind. The good man has strength of soul, just

as the man who lifts a weight without effort, not he who lifts it only

with the greatest effort, possesses strength of body.

There is no absolute Evil in contrast to the absolute Good. Evil is

negative. The perfection of man is identical with the attainment of

absolute Good through evolution.

Morality knows nothing of either reward or punishment; for it there are

only causes and effects. This truth, on which morality is based, lends

to the freedom out of which its activity proceeds a deeper worth. The

eternal laws of mind point the way by which mankind has to proceed; it

is the same way by which man has become man and by which he must

proceed, even if he did not will to advance thus. In the struggle for

existence, which knows only victory or destruction, progress is a

necessity of nature, but it is less painful and more rapid the more

clearly these laws come to be perceived by consciousness. Yet, however

clear they may be, it is only by a tireless endeavor which shrinks from

no sacrifice, that progress takes place. The end which morality has in

view is distant, for it is high; but only with its attainment will

mankind fully deserve its name when "struggle has been transformed to

labor, when no insignia are recognized but those of right, no weapon

used but intelligence, no banner raised but that of civilization."

In the volume, "Man the 'End' of Man" ("Der Mensch als Selbstzweck,"

1877), "a positive criticism of Hartmann's Philosophy of the

Unconscious," Carneri defines instinct as no form of real thought,

nothing dependent upon perception, but merely an inherited, mechanical

dexterity dependent upon sensation. For the assumption that thought is

the source of instinct must lead us naturally, on account of the

existence of the latter where the centralizing organ of thought is

absent, to the theory that thought is universal in nature; that is, we

shall arrive at a theory of atom-souls. It is evident here that not

Carneri's definition of instinct so much as his conception of thought

is changed from the one adopted in "Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,"

thought being now limited, as it was not in the former book, to

self-conscious mental activity, assumed to be dependent upon nervous

centralization in the brain. In this book also, the author defines the

idea as something having mental existence, though not, he says, in any

metaphysical sense. His idealism is not of such sort that he recognizes

any other way to the attainment of ideas than that of science; and to

him "the service of the materialist who gives us information concerning

the function of the smallest nerve-fibres is of more worth than that of

the idealist who originates a whole philosophical system." The work of

philosophy lies in the rejection of all that is contrary to science, and

the clarification of ideals.

The will may be defined, not as a definite, separate power, but as the

self-conscious impulse to action resulting from excitation. Any other

definition is inconsistent with the theory of evolution, according to

which that individuation which is the first condition of the struggle

for existence, is nevertheless but the expression of all previously

existing oppositions. To make of the will or of the impulse to

self-preservation anything separate and individual, is as childish as to

personify death. The individual is totality as unity. Darwinism teaches

us, not that the world together with man has been created according to

any teleological principle, but that it has developed by virtue of

motion. The human being moves by virtue of reciprocal action and

reaction with the world. Yet only by virtue of his unity as feeling does

he think and will. Individuality is that which stamps all our activity

with the mark of the ego, which causes us to recognize every impulse

that moves in us as our impulse, to call all our willing ours. The

psychical, the summation of functions to which we give this name,

reaches consummation in the clarification of feeling to consciousness,

in which the desire of an action or of abstinence from an action appears

to us as our will. As thought is based on perception, so will is based

on impulse; and since thought and will appear as the two highest

opposites of feeling, and this, according to our definition, springs

from sensation by way of perception, the will, including action and

abstinence from action, arises out of the general sensitivity. The

progress of science authorizes the expectation that the close relation

of sensitivity to simple reaction will one day be discovered.

The conceptions of teleology are groundless. The so-called "ends" of

nature have the peculiarity that they are according to the means. It

does not rain in order that there may be vegetation, but vegetation

exists because it is conditioned by the rain. Only with thinking man, in

his struggle for existence, arises the concept of ends; man has not

attained to civilization by help of a friend; rather has he wrung

civilization from nature as an enemy; compelled by it to the exertion of

his whole strength, and growing in cunning by exercise, he has learned

to use the weaknesses of his foe to his own advantage. To want he owes

the greatest things that he has accomplished. By way of labor alone can

victory over nature be achieved and salvation won.

The standpoint of faith is childlike. Faith does not reason, and may not

do so if it wishes to remain faith. The child can comprehend nature and

man's relation to it only by the language of faith, and there are large

classes of people who, for a long time, will be accessible to no other

language but this. But faith must decrease in the same ratio as mankind

outgrows intellectual childhood. In the same measure, the worth of the

philosophical solution of certain problems must increase; and among the

most important of these problems must be reckoned that of bridging the

chasm between the individual and the world, which has grown wider with

the awakening of consciousness. It lies in the nature of self-conscious

thought to reach out beyond itself, just as it lies in the nature of

sense-perception to regard this "beyond" as the world to come. Hence the

endless longing which seeks the ruler of the world to come, and despairs

without him; until the supposed right to a future life is perceived to

be the right to the Only Whole, and an end is set in the attainment of

this whole. For the thinking man an aimless life has no meaning; there

is only one means of bridging the chasm; namely, that mankind shall set

itself an end.

A final destruction of life upon the earth must surely come, whether it

be in the shape of a sudden catastrophe or as the result of a slow

process. But such an end can no more be regarded as the "end" in the

philosophical sense than death can be regarded, in the same sense, as

the "end" of the individual life. By the development of ideas, which are

concepts of reason in distinction from concepts of the understanding, we

arrive at a notion of the ideal as end.

In the ethical ideal, there is contained more than the empiricist can

offer. The enthusiasm with which the true artist starves for his art, or

the martyr perishes for his conviction, can never be fully explained

from the empirical standpoint. One does not even need to be an idealist

in order to act thus; but the materialist or the realist who possesses

true love of beauty and a heart framed for great deeds, merely deceives

himself when he refuses to acknowledge the All-embracing which therein

overwhelms him. Sociology and the History of Civilization can only point

out how man has attained to the ideas of the Beautiful and the Good;

what these are and wherefore their influence is so powerful,--the real

worth of the Beautiful and the Good,--thought by concepts alone can

show.

The Idea of Man, as he has already developed and may yet develop, is, as

far as our knowledge reaches, the highest of human thoughts. We are

therefore formulating no metaphysical theory in personifying mankind,

and pointing out that the perfecting of which it is capable is the great

end which it has set itself. We know, by our knowledge of human nature,

that mankind will always endeavor to be happy, and that it will approach

nearer perfection the more real and general its happiness becomes.

The particular rules of morality may and must change; but the highest

principle of all morality is changeless. From the purest moral feeling

came Schiller's words: "Live with thy generation, but be not its

creature; serve thy contemporaries, but in that which they need, not

that which they prize. Without having shared their guilt, share with

noble resignation their punishments, and yield thyself freely to the

yoke which they both illy could do without and illy bear. By the

steadfast courage with which thou refusest their pleasure, thou shalt

prove to them that it is not cowardice which causes thy submission." In

these three sentences there lies a whole system of ethics.

In the will to good, indivisible from a feeling of freedom, of which no

power on earth can rob us, lies true happiness.

For mind, as for matter, the law of the indestructibility of force, of

work, is true. That which appears as force or energy is motion; every

impulse to motion is motion, and only in so far as it appears, can the

quantity of motion, force, energy, increase or diminish; as a matter of

fact, it always remains the same. But just as the activity and force of

matter increase with its differentiation, so the activity and energy of

the mind increase with intelligence. It is through intelligence that we

come to a comprehension of the distinction between good and evil, and

through intelligence that we are able to increase social prosperity, and

so morality.

There are no innate, primary human rights; there are only acquired

rights which man has gained for himself in the process of development.

If we were to express negatively the end which mankind sets itself, we

should define it as the greatest possible reduction of pain. Conscious

existence is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure; but the general

progress heedlessly overrides the individual being, and we therefore

have to erect barriers against the stream which thus turns pleasure into

pain.

Pain and pleasure are relative to the individual. Every sensation is

pleasurable as long as it does not exceed in strength a certain limit

corresponding, in each case, to the nature of the individual. Since,

however, every sensation becomes, by perception, feeling, thought

appears as a modifying factor in all pain which does not arise from too

extreme physical injury. The manner in which our perceptions,

thought-images, are formed, the store of thought-images and concepts

which we possess, and hence our thought-capacity, combined with the

extent and clearness of our knowledge, are decisive not only with

respect to the avoidance of pain and attainment of pleasure, but also

with respect to our attitude towards pain and pleasure in general; every

pain and every pleasure has, in the last analysis, such worth alone as

we attribute to it. The universalization of true education, the increase

of intelligence, is, therefore, the means by which man's lot may be

bettered.

Through the conditions of the earth's atmosphere, man has grown to be

the glorious creature that he is. If we gradually give him, by

education, an advantageous love of life and pleasure therein, and at the

same time do not neglect the cultivation of ethical principles, virtue

will become, with the increase of happiness, a necessity.

If intelligence is to bear the fruit which we thus demand of it, its

nature must be such as not only to be nourished by actual life, but also

to uplift by its increase the whole man. And this is, in fact, the case;

where it is not so, we have to do with a one-sided development such as

existing circumstances often condition, but which cannot be regarded as

normal. This point of view is the necessary consequence of the unity

which we postulate of man. If thought and will have their origin in

feeling, and if will clarifies itself through the clarification of

thought, then all advance in thought leads, in general, to an advance in

feeling, and true intelligence is inseparable from true love. We use the

word "love" here, as designating intelligence in its highest sense, and

declare, moreover, that we would desire to see this meaning alone

attached to love. Over against the conception of love which we find in

Hartmann and Schopenhauer, we place the conception of Spinoza, who

designates it as a free, reasonable activity, and says of it as

distinguished from passion that "the love of both man and wife has for

its cause, not a pleasing exterior merely, but especially freedom of

soul."

If we regard intelligence and love in their highest antithesis, the one

appears as the appropriative, the other as the self-devoting conception

of things. But since we form a conception of things and make them our

own only in proportion to our intelligence, our attitude towards them

must be according to this measure; and since there is no action without

reaction, intelligence must be broadened by love as well as love

clarified by intelligence. The highest of all is intelligence; but it is

love that first lends it creative power; without love it cannot create,

but only destroy. Everything great and noble that man can point out as

his work is due to love--love of mankind, love of country, love of

knowledge, love of art, love of labor in general. If the devotion is

deficient in purity, determined by extraneous motives, the work will

bear marks of the deficiency. The reason why the power of love is so

much greater than every other power is that its all-embracing, boundless

character reacts upon it as a feeling of eternity, enabling it to

undertake all things, as if it might conquer even death. Life,

considered in its parts, is cheerless; but love, regarding it in its

totality, points out to it the way of salvation through itself. Love is

the concrete element which exalts the abstraction of Intelligence to

incarnate Idea; therefore is love the idealizing principle from which

intelligence draws belief in its own aims. And if one questions whence

comes the conception of immortality, impossible to be won from

experience, love must confess itself guilty of originating it, being

unable, to exist without this self-delusion.

Carneri thus places himself in direct opposition to Schopenhauer's and

Hartmann's notion of love, which, he says, "falls like a deep shadow

over their whole conception of the world"; and he pleads in favor of a

standpoint which shall make self-perfection the aim of existence for

woman as for man. He propounds a theory of education for woman which,

according to his own statement, places him at one in spirit with Mill;

but he avers that he cannot follow the latter in his more extreme views,

which, he says, were evidently assumed by Mill only in view of the

strength of the enemy with which he had to contend. The book ends with

the following paragraph:--

"We do not run after ideals; hence no plan floats before us, according

to which the world should be shaped anew. He who understands how to read

the book of History knows that, in no one place does the identity of

form and content come more clearly into view than in others, and that,

with every new content, there is always a new form also. The modern

state has by no means outlived itself yet, and those who endeavor to do

away with it know not what they are about. Instead of thinking upon a

new form, let us devote our care to the clarification of the content. No

one deceives himself as to the suffering in the world; but he deceives

himself who thinks that he alone can bring about a better condition.

Only the action of all can better things. Therefore, that which remains

for us to do can be summed up in these few words: _Let us make every

effort possible to place every one in a position to help himself._ This

is the only ethical conception of universal reform. Let us prize

knowledge above all things, and let us show that we so prize it by

increasing it and diffusing it as much as lies in our power; let us

prize it above all things, and prove that we do so by using it for the

good of mankind. By knowledge we have become human beings, because

knowledge has brought us to a comprehension of the Beautiful and the

Good. It is knowledge that sets life an end in the attainment of the

Good, and knowledge that glorifies our path to that end. Let us educate

for ourselves wives that shall not merely dimly feel what we think, but

such as will bring to the execution of our will a clear understanding.

Let us educate for ourselves wives who, fired by the same feelings as

our own, will unite their efforts with ours in the education of a

generation that shall take _morally_ the stand upon which the science of

the century finds itself. Let us seek true happiness if we would find

virtue. It is to no wisdom, but it is likewise to no foolishness that we

owe the existence of the world. Man can be foolish; but he can also be

wise; and if he is wise, then the world too is wisely arranged."

Carneri begins his "First Principles of Ethics" ("Grundlegung der

Ethik," 1881) with an investigation of the origin of primary concepts

and our knowledge through these. In order to bring light into our

conception, we must first of all learn the way to the concept; for then

only can we see how the concept completes itself in the judgment, and

becomes, in reasoning, the criterion of its own worth.

The problem which first presents itself to us is that of Life in

general. The problem is inseparable from that of corporeality. If we

follow phenomena to their last conceivable reduction, we finally pass

from the perception of mass to the concept of matter; but further than

this we cannot go. At least, we can perceive only material things, and

that which we call the spiritual in distinction from the corporeal has

always something corporeal as its basis; and if we do not wish to

dispense with the reliable guidance of experience, we shall not overleap

this barrier. Science cannot reckon with supernatural factors.

What matter _is_ we cannot know; that it exists, however, that the

phenomena of nature are no empty seeming, sensation, as the felt result

of the mutual relation between us and the outer world, testifies.

Sensation is the basis of our self-consciousness, of the only full and

irrefutable certainty that we possess. As to what true Being or

Existence is, there is disagreement; but there can be none regarding the

fact that we are conscious of our sensations; and upon this

consciousness rests the postulate of the materiality[66] of all

existence. In order to assert the materiality of all phenomena, we are

forced to distinguish between a corporeal and a non-corporeal action of

matter; matter operates mentally when its division or differentiation

proceeds so far that the resulting phenomena can no longer be perceived

by the senses, but only conceived by thought. The indivisibility of mind

from corporeality follows directly from this definition of the mental

side of nature. We distinguish between the two only for convenience'

sake. The newer Psychology knows nothing of Sensuality in the old sense

of the word, since the basis of all psychical effects is physical.

For matter operating mentally, as for matter operating corporeally,

there are no specific energies; it is, as Wundt expresses it,

functionally indifferent. The differing results of a high

differentiation of centralized organisms arise in accordance with the

changing combinations of elementary parts and nerve activities. These

results are not, however, to be regarded as the mere effects of matter,

but as phenomena of the same, in fact, as the consummation and crown of

the whole evolution of nature. Even in the sense-organs we see the

differentiation of matter advance beyond the sphere of sense-perception.

Therefore, in distinguishing between mind and matter, we are still in

the realm of the natural, and follow the path of experience, if by

experience is understood not alone immediate experience, but also the

conclusions which directly or by strict analogy may be drawn from it.

The theory of an atom-soul and the theory of an organizing principle

must be abandoned as teleological, and so inconsistent with the facts of

evolution. The theory which holds force to be a transcendental

existence, a something outside of matter, must also be rejected. With

the endless divisibility is given an endless motion, inward or outward;

the endlessly divisible matter exists in endless motion, or what is the

same, the endless motion is the endlessly divided matter. Hence motion,

like matter, can never diminish; only the form of its appearance

changes.

The order in nature cannot be used as the basis of a teleological

argument; what we call order of nature is necessity as distinguished

from chance. For example, the statement that the life of the earth

requires the alternation of day and night means merely that, since day

and night alternate upon the earth, only such beings could arise and

continue in existence thereon as flourish under this alternation.

The first appearance of protoplasm introduces no strictly new thing, but

only a new form of matter with life-motion; and the formation of germs

is only a further step of the process. The most important characteristic

of all life is sensation. This is the form in which, in all living

things, that which in the rest of nature we call reaction, appears. That

it is so easy for us to say in the same breath, the animal possesses

sensation; and, by this particular excitation we produce in him this

particular sensation, has its reason in the fact that the animal is not

only capable of sensation, but is, moreover, continually in a state of

sensation. By the fact of its continual reaction upon sensation, it

keeps itself alive. Hence the two concepts coincide, so to speak;

sensation is to life what divisibility is to matter. We express with

these words more than a similitude, since all sensation is based upon

motion, is, indeed, motion, and every motion may be reduced to a

division or differentiation in the broadest sense of the word. All

further distinctions, as, for instance, with respect to the mode of

sensation (which belongs, without doubt, to plants as well as to

animals), we leave unnoticed; all differences in the forms of life are

but those of degree, though they may be wide differences of degree; they

are to be ascribed to the influence of outer circumstances.

Sensation develops in the direction of least resistance. In the animal

world, we have to distinguish between outer and inner factors, with the

latter of which a new element seems to be introduced. The difference

between the two is not, however, one of essence, since the will, too, is

determined by outward circumstance. The inner factors of evolution are

comprised in the germ, from which the individual is produced; while the

environment constitutes the outer factors. The individual enters the

world with a certain reserve quantity of force, which represents his

power of resistance to outside forces, and he passes the more rapidly

from youth to age the more rapidly this force is consumed. This

accumulation of force is, therefore, identical with the impulse to

self-preservation, which, as modified by various inner and outer

excitations, manifests itself in various forms. But he who, as

unimpassioned thinker, desires progress, desires also retrogression; he

who desires youth desires age, since the two concepts are correlative

and the one includes the other; old age, and finally death, must come to

our planet as a whole, as well as to the human individual. The original

tendencies of the total character determine, for the most part, the

manner in which the individual sustains the struggle for existence; yet

the environment is in no less degree active in this determination. Not

less important than the manner of reaction is the differing

susceptibility to particular kinds of excitation; the character

resulting from the mutual action and reaction of individual and world

depends upon the manner in which the individual adapts himself to

circumstances, ennobles and disciplines himself.

In idealism, as long as it remains within proper bounds, there is

certainly truth; he who derides it, derides himself. But realism has

also its truth, as long as it does not misjudge the worth of concepts,

by which alone we clearly recognize what things are to us, what their

relations to us are, and so how we have to deal with them. Concrete

concepts inform us as to what is true and what is not true in phenomena.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that what things are in

themselves, not what they are for us, is of importance to us; as if we

could have an interest in that which things are not for us. The decisive

point is the fact that, not things as they appear to us, but their

rightly conceived appearance, their appearance as understood by adequate

concepts, is the beginning and end of knowledge. Hence the true student

of nature can no more do without the concept than the true philosopher

can leave material perception out of account. Stiff-necked Materialism

is as one-sided as old-time Metaphysics; the one has no meaning for its

form, the other no form for its content; the one is a corpse, the other

a ghost, and each strives in vain to attain the warmth of life. Natural

Science and Philosophy must tread different paths, in so far as division

of labor requires them to do so; but they labor at the two sides of one

whole. Nature is not a machine, but life in its fullest form, and the

task set us is to understand her as she is, not to patch together a

nature out of disconnected scraps.

Carneri adopts the definition given by Claude Bernard, to whom life is

neither a principle nor a result, but a conflict. To the chemical

synthesis, from which protoplasm results, is added, through mechanical

integration, morphological synthesis, to whose special form inherited

characteristics are related as elements. Through the conflict within

living forms, and between these and the rest of the world, motion,

attaining to the character of function, appears as continuous

consumption. Destruction and renewal are inseparable correlative

concepts. This fact is contained in the concept of the conservation of

force, work, and motion. We may distinguish between (1) latent life,

such as that accumulated in the germ, (2) the merely oscillating

plant-life, and (3) free animal life. With this distinction, we place

ourselves upon the standpoint of the individual, for whom there is both

beginning and end, and to whom renewal is subordinated to destruction;

for consumption, death is the characteristic of living in distinction

from non-living matter. If, therefore, we regard life as identical with

death, we merely assert that we consider death identical with life, and

that, in the broader sense of the word, for the universe as a whole,

there is no death. That which Claude Bernard designates as Construction

is the differentiation and division of labor arising in the process of

integration. The cell constitutes the first integration of protoplasm.

In it, motion takes place in a particular form, organizes according to

this form, causes division and synthesis, and impresses features of

character that, by their action and reaction with the environment,

either effect their own destruction, or else maintain their existence,

propagate themselves, become fixed, and undergo further evolution. In

this manner species arise and vary: and the more primitive the form, the

more variable it is; the more advanced, the more fixed. Hence the

invariable character of the germ-cells. In bone-formation, it is clearly

shown that special structure begins very early,--in the cell, namely;

but it is preserved only where it is aided by the necessary action and

reaction. Autonomic in itself, life submits itself to the general laws

of evolution.[67] As the direction of motion is determined for whole

groups of cells by the direction of the motion of the protoplasm in the

single cells, so organic function is determined by the grouping of the

irritable, contractile, sensible cells. From the first origin of life up

to its most perfect development, everything is formed at the cost of

other forms. If life is, therefore, to be conceived as a conflict, it is

a conflict as wide as the universe itself, and we say, with Claude

Bernard, that "life may be characterized, but not defined."

Everything that has sensation lives. As life depends upon particular

combinations of particular elements, so sensation is the characteristic

mark of such combinations, and a higher form of that simple reaction

common to nature in general. Reaction has its reason in the motion

arising from the endless divisibility of matter, through which the most

different combinations and reactions are produced. Since we have before

us, in our contemplation of corporeal nature, not abstract matter in

general, but some sixty or more special chemical elements, we must, in

thinking of atoms, have in mind atoms of these particular elements, and

not atoms of abstract matter in general; of such atoms of matter in

general, or, if one will, of primordial matter, we can know only that

they would in general attract and repel. Only by degrees can a

particular reaction of the elements have been developed; and since our

known elements have particular different reactions, they must be the

product of different combinations. Sensation is due to certain

combinations of these elements; when the combinations no longer exist,

the atoms of these elements still react according to their

characteristic method as atoms of particular elements, but the sensation

dependent on their peculiar combinations is destroyed. The atom as such

is devoid of sensation, and we may convert our earlier proposition,

making it read: Only that which lives is sensible. We know quite well

how much of this course of reasoning is of hypothetic nature; but the

strictest consistency cannot be denied it. The method which explains

life by the assumption of sensible atoms is a much shorter and easier

one; but is it not likewise a method of greater risk? And is there no

danger that, in rejecting a method by which all changes in phenomena are

referred to functions of combinations of elements, we may seek, in

matter itself, something that is not matter? The above theory of life,

also, takes its departure from the assumption that all was, originally,

in the formation of the world, living in the broader sense of the word.

But here we are concerned with life in the narrower sense of the word,

as distinguished from what we call dead nature.

Soul is, therefore, according to our definition, equivalent to animal

life, in contrast to the life of the plant. The significance of the

distinction lies in the intermediation of the general organic unity, not

in a qualitative division. The elements are the same; only their

connection is different, and that which distinguishes the animal is a

centralization of the organs. In referring to the possession of soul by

the animal, we simply point out the independent manner in which, by

reason of sensation, its impulses govern, and develop, through the

scale, up to consciousness and will. Of course the gradations are very

numerous, inasmuch as the functions of the soul are determined by the

development of the organism. The difference between animals whose

sensation attains clear consciousness and such as do not attain to more

than a mechanical action, does not concern us, as long as we regard the

psychical phenomena in their most general form. Every animal possesses

soul; we avoid the expression "_a_ soul," as giving the soul the

significance of something by itself. In like manner, we do not say that

_a_ life, but that life belongs to the animal. The chief condition

necessary to soul as to life consists in union to a whole, and soul

represents the gradation by which life lifts itself to the plane where

it becomes a mirror of the world.

Sensation, as centralized in the brain, becomes perception, the

sensation of a part becoming the sensation of the whole, a _feeling_ of

the individual. It is perceptions which cause movement. To find a

connection between perception as generally understood and the action of

the muscle would be as difficult as to show the connection between body

and soul in the sense of Spirit. But if we regard perception as feeling,

then the awakening of a corresponding impulse, and the transformation of

this into will, which finds expression in a corresponding motion, is

something so natural that it needs but a glance at the nerve-apparatus

in order to comprehend the rapidity of the whole process. With regard to

the unconscious character of the greater part of the process, and its

corresponding rapidity, we have to consider the gradual nature of the

development of the nervous system, the gradual drill of the parts, until

the whole process becomes perfect. By feeling is here not meant

necessarily feeling as pain or pleasure. This quality of feeling does

not necessarily belong to every perception, else thought, as a train of

perceptions, would be unbearable; a certain strength of feeling is

necessary in order that it may attain the character of pain or pleasure;

as we recognize a boundary at which sensation begins, so we recognize

one at which feeling begins to attain the character of pleasure and from

which, up to a second boundary-line, it continues to appear as pleasure;

beyond this line it appears as pain. Moderate feeling is beneficial to

the organism, immoderate feeling harmful; hence the appearance of the

one as pleasure, and of the other as pain. We say expressly "moderate,"

not "weak" feeling, because too weak feeling may also, under certain

conditions, be painful. Horwicz rightly protests against any attempt to

arrange the feelings in an exact scale, since a particular feeling may

lead to quite different phenomena of emotion, according to the

particular circumstances and the particular development which it

undergoes in the organism, and since it is furthermore nothing

changeless and distinct, but merely an energy that necessarily leads to

activity. Hence it is that the excitation which does not pass the stage

of sensation remains localized, but when it attains to the stage of

feeling takes possession of the whole individual, and brings the

essential tendency of his being[68] to expression.

As Carneri tends to interpret the sensation which he predicates of the

lower animals as a mere higher reaction of living matter, and thus

wholly mechanical, so he tends to regard the activity of all animals

which lack brain (under which he understands especially the nervous

developments found in the gray matter which contains Haeckel's

"soul-cells") as devoid of pleasure and pain, and due to mere

inheritance and force of habit. So the action of the ants is not to be

attributed to intelligence, but to mere reaction upon sensation due to

inheritance and exercise; and so the movements of a butterfly impaled

upon a red-hot needle would be attributable to the hindrance of its

flight, not to pain.[69] Thus, with Carneri, the words "sensation,"

"soul," "perception," and "feeling," lose their ordinary significance;

and this fact must be held in mind in the interpretation of his

assertions that "all animals have soul," and "all animals have

sensation."

Carneri further cites Haeckel's definition of the organism as a

cell-monarchy, in which different individuals, and different groups of

individuals, having different duties, are guided by a central power. He

does not intend thus to assume special centres for consciousness and

will, but only to assert that, through such centralization, the

expression of the whole individual, as total consciousness and total

will, takes place.

Not only the brain, but other parts of the nervous system, are affected

in perception; and the same parts are operative in remembrance. Thus the

association of ideas is explained.

As long as the animal remains upon the plane of mere instinct, it has

only blind impulses.[70] Only in the most highly organized animals do we

find the first traces of conscious, though not yet of self-conscious,

will. In that the animal knows what it will, it distinguishes clearly

the objects of its will, and hence its own impulses. Upon the earlier

plane of mere self-preservation, the beneficial, harmful, and

indifferent were not yet made inward, but only distinguished outwardly

by nature in the struggle for existence, in which the fittest survived;

in consciousness, however, the harmful and advantageous become inward,

taking the form of pain and pleasure. But the animal never gets beyond

the concrete case,--in which his inherited instincts, working with a

rapidity and freedom we often see imitated in the passions of men,

sometimes act so advantageously as almost to deceive us into believing

them the result of reflection; yet sometimes, again, bring most

disastrous results. The animal never attains to a notion of the Whole.

Associations and general perceptions the higher animal species have, but

not concepts.

Impulses appear, in their primary form in the animals, as passions.[71]

The first beginning of the ethical may be found in the passion of love

in the broadest sense of the word, as sexual love and the love of

offspring. The first is chiefly exacting, the second is higher, in that

it gives.

That which divides man physically from the brutes is merely the union of

qualities, all of which, but never all of which united, we find among

the animals; that which divides him mentally from them is self-conscious

thought, developed by means of speech. Through the development of

attention, which arises in connection with a greater and greater

centralization, sensation becomes perception, this develops further to

general perceptions, and is still further perfected to concepts.

Carneri believes primitive man to have been, not more benevolent than

the animals, but less so. Leaving out of account the carnivorous

animals, the brutes seem to satisfy their own wants without interfering

with the satisfaction of others, and, except where the possession of

females is concerned, to live in peace with each other. On the other

hand, the influence of man upon the domestic animals may be seen in the

greed of the dog, who, as capable of instruction, takes on himself all

the evil qualities of his master. The cat, who is not so intelligent as

the dog, is not thus influenced.

For nature there is no good and evil. The animal which tears and devours

its prey is no worse than the swollen stream, that uproots the trees in

its course. With consciousness, intention awakes; yet in the brute this

is only secondary; the brute distinguishes between pain and pleasure,

but not between these as the result of its own action in distinction

from that of nature outside itself. Only the self-consciousness of the

human being knows good and evil; nature does not know evil, for she does

not know the opposition on which it is based. There is wisdom in the

story of Genesis, which sees in the beginning of knowledge, the

commencement of evil. The awakening of self-feeling is the beginning of

a chasm, through the full development of which the individual is at

length separated from nature. With self-consciousness and the feeling of

boundless isolation that therein comes over him, man begins his ethical

development.

But the ethical does not begin with the human being known to us by

natural history; even yet there are races of man which stand lower than

many species of animals; and the early development of moral activity was

of necessity much more of the nature of that which we call evil than of

that which we call good. The mind is a sort of light; and as warmth is

indivisible from the motion which we call light, and the first warmth of

the sun could only burn, so the motion which we call mind could at first

only have destroyed; self-consciousness, in its earliest stages, can

have produced only the intense feelings which lie nearer pain than

pleasure. As man came to have intention, and gained new wants in

development, he could regard the intentions of his fellow-men only with

distrust. Envy, hatred, dislike, were developed long before the family,

and, later, the tribe furnished opportunity for love. Self-consciousness

could, at first, interpret good and evil only as having reference to

self, just as it also conceived its freedom as that of its own caprice.

The desire for happiness and endeavor to attain it is the primary

incentive to all human undertakings. It is erroneous to suppose that man

is nearer to the brutes by this impulse; the animal does not possess it,

has only the impulse to self-preservation.

The idea that man and wife together first constitute the complete human

being, and that the real future of this human being lies in the

children--the idea of the family is, certainly, of all ideas,

primordial, though it probably came late to consciousness. From the

family developed the tribe with the eldest at its head. The more

peaceful the tribe, the more others combined against it, and by their

combination compelled it still further to strengthen its resources. The

feeling of power awakened by the growing concord extended further and

further, and finally made its way to the individual with the full force

of the Idea. This development, but more especially the compelling power

of the struggle for existence, soon called the bravest to command in

place of the eldest of the tribe.

It is by the agency of no other being that, in the mutual relation of

physical and mental activity, consciousness is attained; man himself

comes to a feeling of himself. In the being endowed with soul, who on

the one hand attains, through integration, an independence that appears

as the impulse to self-preservation, on the other hand becomes conscious

of this impulse to self-preservation through a centralized nervous

system that raises the part-sensations to feelings of the whole,

sensation divides into two chief functions, which appear as passion and

thought. We are not concerned, in thought and passion, with opposites,

but with an opposition which a single phenomenon develops through

manifold action and reaction with the rest of the world of phenomena.

The distinction is merely a convenience in finer investigations; there

is, in fact, as little thought without emotion as emotion without

thought. And since emotion always manifests itself as will, this highest

opposition is best defined as that of thought and will. In order to

understand the human being, we must analyze these two sides of

consciousness.

Carneri's examination of the primary laws of thought can be only touched

upon here. In the law of Identity, or, negatively speaking, the law of

Consistency,[72] there comes to our consciousness a more general Species

which includes a determinate species. "The adequate, clear, correct,

corresponding[73] concept is consistent with itself," means, the

adequate concept finds itself again in every object which it includes.

The law of Identity expresses, therefore, not entire sameness, with

which the cessation of all thought would be reached, but simple

consistency. It affords us, thus, the means of recognizing the Untrue in

that which is not what it is called, hence also the means of recognizing

the True. The law of Excluded Middle contains an extension or doubling

of the law of Identity, in that the identity here appears, not in the

form of consistency, but in that of contradiction; as, "either--or." Not

one, but two cases are supposed, only one of which can exist or be true.

The disjunctive proposition which corresponds to it is not less

determinate than the categorical proposition which corresponds to the

law or judgment of Identity, but is rather, on the contrary, a more

forcible affirmation of it. In this determinate nature lies the worth

of the Excluded Middle. Du Bois Raymond's address on the Limits of

Knowledge has caused much joy to conservative thinkers; but these have

made much more out of it than it really means. There is either for us a

transcendental, or there is not; and if not, then we are limited to the

knowledge of nature. The scientific limit set to our knowledge by our

hypotheses and theories is, however, merely a limit set for the purpose

of rounding knowledge to a whole, not of closing it to a further

advancement; but such hypotheses must be consistent with experience and

founded upon it; otherwise we leave knowledge behind us and abandon the

hope of it. We cannot say what, within the province of science, man will

not know, except that he never will know everything.

The law of Causality is the most important law of thought, after that of

Identity. Reason and result are often confused with cause and effect.

The reason on account of which we do a thing is not, however, the cause

by which it occurs. The cause is the complexity of all conditions which

make it possible, and the reason of its performance coincides with a

conscious design on our part that constitutes our purpose. Causality has

nothing in common with the concept of purpose. The principal of

Sufficient Reason has been made the bridge between Causality and Design.

Probably human experience reached first the conception that nothing

occurs without sufficient reason, and only later, by a further mental

step, the conviction that everything for which the necessary conditions

exist takes place. With this conviction, the concept of causality became

clear; but, at the same time the bridge which connects it with the

theory of design in the succession of events was destroyed, so that only

a logical leap can restore us to this incomplete conception of earlier

experience. Causal necessity excludes purposed necessity. That which

takes place may be regarded as, in one direction, conformable to an end,

but may, on the other hand, conform to no end in any direction. A

succession of events conforms to purpose only in so far as it is

regarded by a particular consciousness which combines it in thought with

ends of its own or such as it ascribes to another consciousness. In the

law of Causality, as in the law of Identity, the necessity of

self-consistency and the self-consistency of Necessity reaches

expression. The sufficient reason is simply the completeness of the

conditions, with the existence of which the event takes place, and the

absence of which the event fails to take place.

Spinoza's "Will and intellect are one and the same" is the ethical law

of Identity. All thought is willed; that is, indivisible from a certain

coloring which it has in virtue of its identity with the will, just as

all will is connected with thought; there is, indeed, a will-less

thought, which might, however, just as correctly be called "unthinking

thought,"[74] just as "unthinking willing" is, in reality, will-less

willing. In all mental operations, the identity of the two functions is

found. A will is unthinkable without something willed--an end, given by

thought. It is the fact that, in his practical life, man recognizes

purpose as a necessity, which causes him to read purpose into nature.

"At the basis of identity lies a concept which throws light upon the

teleological principle. This is the concept of the General. The basis of

the principle of identity is a concept of species which embraces the

general in contrast to the singular and particular; just as the judgment

of Identity constitutes an advance to still greater Generality. The

concept of the General which reaches expression in species coincides

with the concept: Law of Nature. The Law is, for a particular circle of

events, what the Species is for a particular circle of objects. As in

the Species, the characteristics are expressed which an object must

exhibit in order to belong to it, so in the Law the conditions are

expressed which much exist in order that the instance included under it

may take place. The relation of Identity to Causality is unmistakable.

Species and Law include no mere plurality of objects and instances, for

as often as the instance comes to pass the law is fulfilled, and the

number belonging to a species is, in conception, limitless. Worlds like

our earth may come into existence again and again; hence specimens of a

certain species, eternally destroyed, may eternally renew themselves,

and instances which fall under a certain law may eternally occur. Simply

their conditions must exist in order that they may occur. Such cases

form, therefore, a whole; and this is Totality in Little." The

importance of every whole which sets itself over against the greater

whole has already been noticed. The former whole constitutes the concept

of Individuality which, as Undivided Unity, becomes independent. "The

limitlessness which we claim for the whole is one of conception; we thus

seek to make that which is incomprehensible conceivable." The concept

does not need to be imagined; it may be thought. "Every one knows what

he means when he opposes the whole to the part. The whole is not a

larger part, but the opposite of the part, as 'all' constitutes the

opposite of the many and the particular."

What we aim at, in this analysis, is a true Realism in the conception of

the Purposeful. The Purposeful is that which conduces to an end, the

Useful. From Individuality follows the individual nature of ends. Every

man has his own ends, and in the attempt to attain his ends does not

hesitate to set himself in opposition to all the rest of mankind. If he

is sufficiently energetic and cunning, he may even succeed, for a time,

in his endeavors, to the harm of humanity. Yet to have the whole of

humanity against oneself is to endeavor to proceed in the direction of

greater resistance, and the process must, sooner or later, result in the

triumph of the stronger power. In the struggle for existence, in its

larger as well as its smaller manifestations, the individual seeks, with

all his power, to satisfy the impulse to happiness which arises with

conscious existence; while the species, as the complex of all energies

developed by its parts, has an impulse to self-preservation of its own,

which, by its action as type, has originated and preserved for centuries

the conception of changeless kind.

"Here is the beginning of the dawn, whose sun, however, in order to

become visible and impart warmth, must rise still higher. The certainty

afforded in the law of Identity in positive form, in the law of

Contradiction in negative form, in the law of Excluded Middle in the

form of an opposition, and in the law of Sufficient Reason in

conditional form, is based upon Causality, Community of Species, or

Totality. For this reason, deduction and induction are only then to be

relied upon when the first form of reasoning has for its middle

proposition one that expresses causality, community of species, or

totality, and the latter form of reasoning takes these for its point of

departure. The analysis of Deduction is of worth as clarifying and

confirming thought, and thus extending its field as often as the

syntheses of Induction stand the proof of the process of clarification.

The supernaturalism of Dualism leads to a dead, the natural character of

Monism to a living, dialectic,--to the dialectic of Becoming. The

concept assumes a concrete form, and, as higher and higher rising sun,

enables us to conceive what it will be to us as Idea. The understanding

knows nothing of ideas; their realm is that of the reason; yet since the

reason is but a higher development of the understanding, the

commencement of this dawn must be perceptible in it. Moreover, the

division which we make between the two originates in our genetic

treatment of the subject, which seeks to explain the concept by showing

the course of its development. Yet the distinction is no empty

abstraction which may not claim life and form to a certain extent. The

human being is always the whole human being; but he is not always

uniformly developed, either physically or mentally. In one individual

the understanding, in another the reason, manifests itself more plainly

in thought. This is also true of the race, the people, and the epoch, as

of the individual. Modern development has turned more and more from the

ideal to material interests; we seem to be progressing towards a

reaction," but what that reaction will be, we cannot say; it may be a

reaction in the worst sense. The mistakes of the understanding cannot be

predicted. With the point of culmination, the extreme is reached, and in

Spiritualism may be found traces of a touching of extremes. Yet the

influence of the understanding is to be relied on in so far as it is the

clear mirror of Necessity. The understanding may err, just because it is

conscious; but experience always corrects these mistakes. Nature, as

gifted with mind, is no new nature; the laws of thought are the natural

laws of the mind. In their mirror the will sees the accomplishment of

the first mental development, and learns to comprehend this, on higher

mental planes, as Common Weal.

The opposition of the individual to the rest of the world which arises

with self-consciousness and individuality is greater, the greater the

individuality. To the struggle for existence is added the struggle for

happiness, which, separating into numberless desires that gain in

attractiveness with every obstacle opposed to their satisfaction, is the

origin of all the passions,--of greed, jealousy, envy, hatred, etc.

Through passion, which is the exaggeration of activities that, in a

normal form, are good, man is led into a struggle for false happiness,

just as the concepts under which his passions arise are false. The

individual against the world cannot attain happiness for himself. The

greatest good, peace of soul, freedom from passion, is attained only

through knowledge, by which the concepts of the individual are

corrected; it is attained, not as dead incapability of emotion, but only

as clear enjoyment of life after past storm. Labor and education are

the path to true happiness and, through true happiness, to virtue. The

passions are not separate existences; the whole man is the passion of

his heart; the whole man feels, just as the whole man thinks. But just

for this reason, because of the identity of will and understanding, the

correction of the concept is the correction of will. This is not saying

that will and understanding are never in opposition to each other; the

apparent opposition is, however, merely a hesitation of the will, which

does not know what it really will. It is true that one passion can be

conquered only by another; we cannot will an emotion that leads to a

certain course of action; but we can fix our attention on the objects

which produce it, and by thus reaching a clear recognition of their

actual and necessary relations, affect our own action. It is true that

man does as he wills; but he wills necessarily as he does. According to

the doctrine of freedom, it must be exactly those who act without

knowing wherefore they act, and who are thus driven by blind impulse,

who are the most fully self-determined. A real freedom and conquest of

necessity can, on the contrary, be attained only by obedience. Just as,

in the animal, the summation of impulses and desires reaches a focus in

feeling, so in man, in proportion to his development, the summation is

in consciousness, the focus of which is the point of concentration of

the will's activity. Spinoza's "Will and understanding are one" means:

the activity of the will is the realization of the activity of thought.

Every one, the more self-sacrificing, as the less self-sacrificing man,

does that which is to him the pleasantest; egoism turns the scale in

both cases; only in the one case the egoism has a basis of broader love.

And since we act according to our conception of things, the question of

our responsibility is the question of our full possession of

consciousness. The necessity of nature must take away our desert, as far

as a future life and its reward are concerned; but from the standpoint

of a being who desires happiness and attains to it through evolution,

necessity gains a new aspect. Natural Selection is Natural Necessity.

Yet not in the understanding, as such, but in the reason, is the

reconciliation of the same with will. Reason in the narrower sense is a

higher development of the understanding, constitutes its completion and

perfection, and presupposes a high degree of culture; though in a wider

sense, as the half-unconscious modification of the impulses by

adjustment to the needs of the species, it develops early in man. By it

alone man becomes man in the full sense of the word. The activity of the

mere understanding is an analytical, that of the reason a synthetical

one, the return of cold consciousness to warm feeling, of abstract mind

to concrete nature. Truth lies, for the reason, in Totality; hence, to

it, the General alone is comprehensible. It has to do, not with abstract

concepts, to which nothing in the realms of the mental or physical

corresponds, but with concepts of species, concrete concepts, which we

call, in distinction from abstract concepts, ideas. By ideas is not

meant existences in the Platonic sense, but the Typical in species.

The impulse to happiness which arises with consciousness as thought and

will, calls itself "I." It is the individual who, with every nerve-cell

and every drop of blood, attempts his own realization. But all

individuals are alike in this, that they reach, at last, a point where

they recognize the fact that their ego is but a miserable half which

needs a Thou to its completion. In the union of the Thou and the I, the

first I becomes a complete and perfect I. Man and woman both realize

that only together do they represent the whole human being. I and Thou

together constitute a We. The ego remains after, as before the union,

the axis upon which the whole world turns. But the egoism of mere

understanding is, by a broader thought, elevated to the altruism of

reason. As the highest union of thought and will, the reason becomes

Idea in and for itself, actual, absolute Idea. With the We was born the

Saviour who should reconcile the sharply opposed factors of awaking

consciousness. The light of his gospel spread in wider and wider

circles; man and woman no longer beheld, each, merely his own happiness

in the other; they saw their mutual happiness in their children, and

their own and their children's happiness in friends, and their own and

their children's and their friends' happiness in their fellow-men. The I

of the reason is the self-conscious We.

The struggle for happiness has brought forth, out of the privileges and

endeavors of individuals, civilization in its present form. Want and the

necessity for labor have been the spur to endeavor and advance. Through

the concepts of ends and of intention, the self-conscious will further

evolved ideas, which themselves undergo a struggle in the activities to

which they give rise; and this is no longer the struggle for existence,

but the struggle for civilization.

There are three Ideas which, arising out of the extension of the I to

Thou and We, are the spring of all ethical conceptions; these are Love,

Humanity, and Public Spirit.[75] Love is the passion of passions and is

the spring of all capacity to altruistic emotion. Love is life in its

highest degree;[76] and by the manner in which a human being loves one

may know what manner of man he is, and what will be the nature of his

feelings towards his fellow-men in other relations of life. A man's

conduct towards women is the surest test of his character. That which

Spencer calls Integration, that which has created all nature, from the

first germ to the perfect human being, and, as preservative cell-labor,

still continues to create,--this infinite Something comes to

consciousness in the human being, as Love. On the lowest plane it can

appear only as simple impulse; but what, developing from stage to stage,

it can accomplish, the history of Love shows us.

To these three ideas of Love, Humanity (or Benevolence), and Public

Spirit correspond three outward phenomena, which bear such relation to

them in the development of morality as the body bears to the soul. These

are: the Family, the State-form, and the Representatives of Great Ideas.

These latter, the men who have been pioneers of civilization, we do not

need to pity or regard as victims, though life was to them a mighty

struggle and a restless labor; in their suffering was their pleasure;

and that which impelled them and compelled them to attain their end was

the impulse to happiness. Therein lies the wonderful secret of the

clarified impulse to happiness, that it finds its highest satisfaction

in itself. Such representatives of great ideas are those in whom the

species overcomes the individual, and out of the species "man" the

species-man is developed. That which they express is the True, if only

the True for, and in, mankind. In this lies their worth; as worth in

Science also, and in the Beautiful, lies in the truth of the Idea that

is therein expressed. The True becomes practical in the Good.

The reason is thus the first condition of happiness, and freedom of the

will lies in the ethical ennoblement of reason, which is nothing more

nor less than obedience, as the total result of all natural causes; by

it the individual is lost in the species as a whole. This ethical height

does not consist in impulse, but in the self-conscious activity of will.

Its mental expression is an Ethical Sense, in distinction from the Moral

Sense of the Intuitionists. Through it man is at one with himself as

with his kind.

The Ethical Sense is not the common property of the species. Just as it

has, however, reached expression in a few, so it is more and more

realized in the many by the process of evolution, through which a common

will, purpose, and good are necessarily finally evolved from all

striving of individual wills after happiness. Ethical ideas arise as the

result of experience, and in them man gradually attains reason.

For the Reason to which Love, Public Spirit, and Humanity are the

natural element, the General (Common) as truth, is no empty conception,

but a promise whose fulfilment is the Good and the Beautiful. The

faithfulness of this Reason never swerves, since it depends on no fear,

but springs from the clearest conviction, and therefore is one with the

love which it feels and inspires. Its friendship is as strong as it is

unselfish, for it does not call anything "friendship" that is based on

other relations than those of mind. Its generosity is always strength,

its mercy never weakness. As far as its power reaches, so far and no

farther do its remorse and pity extend; for all passions which reduce or

dim the activity of the soul are unreasonable. The way to the attainment

of the ethical spirit is pleasure, which guides, though it often

misguides us; fortunately, on the wrong paths we sooner or later meet

with pain, while on the right path we are ever accompanied by pleasure

as "transition from less to greater perfection," to quote Spinoza. The

feeling of Responsibility consists in the soul's recognition of all its

action and omission of action as its own, and in the courage to endure

the consequences of these.

The ethical Ideal, which the ethical imagination as "scientific"

conceives, is the truly happy man, the man fully in harmony with

himself. This idea is to be regarded as a star by which we are to shape

our course, not as an end to be fully attained. Through labor mankind

approaches this ideal, attains knowledge from experience, and clarifies

the concept of happiness. The "I" extends itself to an "I" of mankind,

so that the individual, in making self his end, comes to make the whole

of mankind his end. The ideal cannot be fully realized; the happiness

of all cannot be attained; so that there is always choice between two

evils, never choice of perfect good, and it is necessary to be content

with the greatest good of the greatest number as principle of action.

This is an ideal which is actually and necessarily evolved. Benevolence

has become more general, and has attained a degree not conceived of in

former times. The ideal of a happy humanity has gained definite

outlines, and has become an earnest aim towards which we steer with

filling sails. The end is not to be reached by force, which brings in

its train evil that cannot be gotten rid of for generations, but must be

attained within the bounds prescribed by the state, through education

and increase of intelligence. Nor can the state declare and ensure

happiness; the duties of the state are chiefly negative, as Bentham has

said. Each individual sacrifices a portion of his happiness in order

that the rest may be secured to him by the state; the first-named part

comprises his duties, the rest constitutes his rights; the office of the

state is to hold each to his duties and secure to each his rights. There

is no perfect state, just as there is no perfectly good individual; but

there is progress in states as in individuals.

The merely Useful can never furnish a full solution of the problem of

Ethics, any more than Mathematics and Mechanics or Physics and

Physiology can do so. The Perfect is much more than the merely Useful.

Spencer finds the condition of happiness in the exercise of function.

But he regards happiness as the final end of morality, while, according

to our system, the latter is the product of the former.

Carneri again pleads, in this book, for the like right of woman with man

to mental culture, and to labor which shall make her independent of the

caprice of man; the good of the family alone to be regarded as the

limiting factor.

The extent of Carneri's work on the subject of Ethics makes it

impossible to consider minor points of his theory, such as are included,

for instance, in his criticism of Hartmann, of Schopenhauer, Feuerbach,

and others; or to define more clearly than has been done his relation to

Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, etc. His book "Entwicklung und Glueckseligkeit,"

published in 1886, is a collection of essays which first appeared

separately in "Kosmos," and which, as such, do not hold to each other

the relation of parts of an organic whole. They are chiefly a

recapitulation of the views already expressed in the "Grundlegung der

Ethik," with some extensions and possibly some modifications;--these

last, however, chiefly of an extraneous character. In these essays

Carneri demands a systematic moral training in the common school, to the

end of the development of conscience, such training to be non-religious,

though not anti-religious excepting in case the religion itself be seen

to transgress the laws of right established by humane reason; he

protests against the error of Materialism, as likewise against that of

the Apriorists and the "Ideologists" or Idealists in the narrower sense

of the word; and he reaffirms, defines, and further defends his

standpoint as that of a "Real-idealist"; that is, of one to whom Kant is

the point of departure in a farther evolution of theory. He reaffirms

the oneness of the universe, so of man with nature, restates the

self-identity of the individual in will and thought, limits the

knowledge of man to nature as it is for us, but invests it with

certainty within these bounds, and reasserts the necessity of the

progress of the whole through the efforts of the many for happiness. He

lays further stress upon the absence of morality, not only among the

animals, in whom at least general ethical feelings, in distinction from

those towards individuals, are not found, but also among savages;

morality being not the incentive to, but the product of the state. From

this standpoint, he combats Socialism as proposing impossible ideals,

since it presupposes ethically perfect men as governing and being

governed by the laws, and since it disposes of the freedom of the

individual. The theory of compulsion reckons without the will of man as

he is and must be. Man has no primordial rights (except, perhaps, the

right to get and keep all he can); he has only rights that he has gained

by the help of the state. There is no one commandment in which man's

whole duty may be expressed, unless it be, perhaps, some such new

rendering of Kant's words as this: Act always in such a manner that the

maxims of thy will might be taken as the principle by which to render

happy the greatest possible number of human beings. But this can never

become a categorical imperative for all men. Morality lies in the Will

to Good, which becomes in the moral, or according to Carneri's phrase,

the ethical man, a second nature: his sense of duty is joy in duty,

highest satisfaction of his desire for happiness. It might perhaps be

claimed that Carneri, in his theory of the Conscience, has in this book

laid more stress on feeling than in his others; however, it is to be

recollected that, with him, thought and feeling are no distinct

faculties, but that conscience means less an impulse unconscious of

final ends than a self-conscious attitude or readiness of the will as

the result of conviction.

Carneri's latest book, "Die Lebensfuehrung des modernen Menschen" (1891),

is practical rather than theoretical, a consideration of general

problems and rules of action.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Wirklich.

[66] Stofflichkeit; by this word Carneri designates "das Gemeinsame

aller Gegenstaendlichkeit."

[67] An sich autonom, unterwirft sich das Leben den Cesetzen, die aus

der allgemeinen Entwicklung sich ergeben.

[68] Daseinstrieb.

[69] Pp. 112, 113.

[70] Dunkle Triebe.

[71] Affecte.

[72] Widerspruchslosigkeit.

[73] Entsprechend.

[74] Gedankenloses Denken.

[75] Gemeinsinn oder Gemeingeist, pp. 340, 410. Carneri explains this

word as equivalent to the English "common-sense," but defines the latter

as feeling for the general, the universal.

[76] Potenz.

HARALD HOeFFDING

"ETHICS" ("Ethik," 1887)

Ethical judgments contain an estimate of the worth of human actions.

Every such estimate presupposes the existence of a need, a feeling which

spurs us on to the judgment of the action, as also the existence of a

standard, an ideal, according to which we judge. The motive to the

ethical judgment may be called the basis of Ethics. The standard

involved in the ethical judgment determines the content of Ethics, in

that it decides which actions, which directions and modes of life, are

to be called good in the ethical sense. The ethical basis is the

subjective, the standard the objective, principle in Ethics; the

character of an ethical conception depends upon this presupposed basis,

the applied standard, and the relation between the two.

The feelings and impulses of the individual are not only influenced by

his own experience, but bear also a character derived from the

experience of the whole species; hence the ethical judgments delivered

by the individual are the result of the whole experience of his kind. It

is by virtue of this circumstance that the ethical system of the

individual gains its power; as ethics of the species, it is a condition

of the health and vitality of human life.

This actual working Ethics of the species and of life has been named

Positive Morality. Such Positive Morality manifests itself in the

every-day judgments and principles of men, often in the form of

proverbs, and may express either the enduring worldly wisdom of a

nation, a tribe, or a religious society, or the less enduring "public

opinion" of a century or an epoch.

Is it well to treat such Positive Morality to a criticism, which,

arousing, as it must, doubts and questions, will interfere with the

certainty and energy of action that characterize unreflecting instinct?

Is it well to examine the principles of such a system from a scientific

standpoint? We may answer: Life itself leads naturally to such

questionings; only where the view is narrow and the problems simple is

there full security from doubt. With the growth of experience begins a

comparison of the different laws and ideals, the differing institutions

of different epochs and peoples of which one learns; or new experience

presents problems which cannot be solved by means of the system handed

down; or the individual seeks some orderly arrangement of the great

multiplicity of ethical judgments which he himself pronounces or hears

others pronounce, for the purpose of distinguishing between the more and

the less important ones. It is certainly a serious point in an

individual's or a nation's development when reflection and criticism

begin; but where life leads naturally to such questionings, we must

either find some answer to them or else some reason why they shall not

be answered. Moreover, it is to be noticed that certainty and force of

action are not absolute Goods. The greatest energy may take a most

disastrous direction, and must then be checked. To a new and better

insight, when attained, one must endeavor to secure all the energy

possible. All evolution consists in the diversion of energy from lower

to higher ends.

A scientific system of Ethics does not, and cannot, take the place of

Positive Morality; it only supplies the latter with a basis of reason,

broadens, and develops it. Such a scientific system only endeavors to

discover in accordance with what principles we direct our life, and to

secure for these, when ascertained, greater clearness and inner harmony.

In the mental life of the human being, a continuous action and reaction

of the conscious and the unconscious takes place, as well as of

perception, feeling, and will. What is won in the one province may

profit the others also.

Two tasks of Scientific Ethics, as Historical Ethics and as

Philosophical Ethics, are to be distinguished. Historical Ethics has to

do with the description and explanation of the development of Positive

Morality. Philosophical Ethics has to decide upon the worth of the

various forms assumed by the latter. Philosophical Ethics is a practical

science, and is based upon the supposition that we set ourselves ends

which may be reached through human action. Every ethical judgment

presupposes such an end, for feeling is set in motion by the sight or

the thought of an act only when the latter promotes, or stands in the

way of something, the existence and success of which are desired by us.

Not all that is developed as practical morality can be pronounced good.

On the other hand, customs which were at first assumed from motives

which must be condemned by Philosophical Ethics, may yet prove

themselves good, and may be practised, later, from higher motives; and

such customs cannot then be condemned on account of their origin. Hence,

Philosophical Ethics is both conservative and radical; it respects

nothing simply because it exists; but since it endeavors to furnish

guidance beyond present standards, it attempts to show how that which

has been developed historically may be given new forms and thus used for

further progress. It is difficult, from a broader view, to distinguish

perfectly between Historical and Philosophical Ethics; the historian has

an ideal which he applies more or less in his researches; and the

philosopher in Ethics is more or less ruled by the prevailing opinions

of his time. This necessitates a continual re-discussion of problems.

Yet it does not prevent the existence, in any system, of lasting

principles among the less enduring ones.

Theological Ethics is directly opposed to Historical Ethics as well as

to Philosophical Ethics. It builds upon tradition, upon truth as

something historically revealed. So far, it might appear as if

Theological Ethics were related to Historical Ethics. But the system of

the former does not recognize the method of scientific research, since

the revelation on which it is based is due, according to its doctrine,

to an interposition of supernatural forces not to be explained by the

physical, psychological, and social laws that serve as the foundation of

historical science. It demands a unique position for its historical

basis, and asserts that this must be looked at in an entirely different

light from that in which the rest of the history of the world is

regarded. It appears to approach Philosophical Ethics in instituting an

examination of the worth of historic acts and modes of life. But it

undertakes this examination, not according to any principle that can be

found in nature, but from the point of view of a supernatural revelation

of an ideal. Its foundation is an absolute principle of Authority; its

good is that which is God's will. But how is the individual to be sure

as to what, in the single case, is God's will? By the inward testimony?

How is he to distinguish certainly between such and his own natural

thoughts and feelings; what means of distinction can be applied? In

passing thus to the province of Psychology, we assume a human means of

distinction, and the principle of Authority loses its force. Or if it be

said that we should receive this principle of Authority because it

answers to a need of our nature, we may ask how we know that the need is

one that should be satisfied? Its mere existence cannot guarantee that.

Or how, then, are we to distinguish which of other wishes and needs of

our nature should, and which should not, be gratified? Is the principle

of Authority to decide this? Then we argue in a circle.

A similar circle is adopted by such theologians as attempt to combine

the two assertions: "The good is good because God wills it"; and "God

wills it because it is good." If the good is identical with God's will,

this means that he wills it because it is his will; if he, however,

first recognizes something as good, and therefore wills it, then his

will bows to a law and rule, and is not, in itself, the cause whereby

the Good is good.

Have we not, as a fact, already broken with the absolute principle of

Authority as soon as we begin to reflect, to endeavor to bring the

various commandments of Authority into harmony with each other, thus

applying the measure of our own reason to them?

But it is not these inner contradictions alone which hinder

Philosophical Ethics from making use of theological assumptions; that

which has called Philosophical Ethics into existence and lends it

interest, is the conviction that the ultimate reason of the ethical must

lie in man himself. However lofty may be the ideal, it can become man's

ideal only through his own recognition of it as ideal. For this reason

Socrates was the founder of Ethics by the command: "Know thyself!" In

this command is expressed the principle of free investigation, the

opposite to that of blind obedience. The desire to make Ethics as far as

possible independent of assailable assumptions is likewise active in the

establishment of a system of Philosophical Ethics.

In the great, sometimes too great, regard paid to the distinction

between the subjective and the objective worth of actions, and the

contest as to the relative importance of the two factors, the fact is

often overlooked, that the standard by which ethical judgment is

pronounced is itself of subjective nature. The question arises as to

wherefore we seek a general and objective standard.

It is a fact that human beings reflect upon their own acts, pronouncing

them, according to the result of this reflection, good or bad. How are

such judgments as these possible?

We will suppose, first, the simplest conceivable case, namely, that the

acting subject pronounces judgment on his own act without consideration

of the existence of other beings. Such a judgment must presuppose

memory; but it presupposes something more, namely pain or pleasure

through memory; an end is aimed at only because the thought of a result

causes pleasure. In the simple case supposed, the feeling which

determines the end can be only that of the individual himself, and the

latter will judge the act as good or bad according as it has affected

his own life. The character and significance of the judgment will depend

on whether the feeling of pain or pleasure is determined only by the

single moment or has reference to the life of the individual as a whole.

The lower the life of consciousness, the more isolated and independent

are the single moments of time in relation to each other, and the less

is the significance of the memory and the thought of the ego as a whole

embracing the single moments with their content. Only a half-unconscious

instinct hinders the individual from losing himself in the moment; the

instinct of self-preservation leads him to consider the future and to

make use of the experience of the past. The more he loses himself in the

moment, the less is the power of judgment, since comparison and action

and reaction of the different states cannot take place. The single

moment bears to all others the relation of an absolute egoist, who does

not wish to relinquish any part of its satisfaction for their advantage.

And here we may perceive the possibility of a standpoint upon which all

judgment is dispensed with. Such a standpoint is represented by

Aristippus of Cyrene, who asserts the sovereignty of the moment. It is

not without its justification. Ethics itself must show cause for the

relinquishment of the satisfaction of the moment in favor of other

moments.

If the principle of the sovereignty of the moment could be practically

carried out, no reasoning could overthrow it. However, there can

scarcely be a conscious individual in whom there are not instincts and

impulses which reach beyond the moment. When a momentary state of

feeling, as the effect of an act of the subject, comes together in

consciousness with the feeling determined by the conception of the life

as totality (the result of memory and comparison), a new feeling arises

which is either one of harmony or one of discord. The standard by which

judgment is pronounced is determined by this feeling. The capacity for

such feelings is conscience, as this may manifest itself in entirely

isolated individuals. Conscience, in the broadest sense of the word, is

a feeling of relations, and requires only a relation between central and

peripheral feelings,--feelings of wider, and feelings of narrower

thought-connection. The single moment and the single act are judged

according to their worth as parts of the individual life as totality.

And here the individual is confronted by the necessity of bringing the

single parts of his life into harmony. The problem is certainly never

solved by any individual involuntarily. The estimation of earlier acts

according to the assistance they give in this task is, therefore, at

this point, of great importance to the individual. The judgment

pronounced is thus not only made possible through the central feeling

which corresponds to the life as totality, but is determined by it. An

acute sense for that which benefits the individual life whose single

members are the moments, is a condition of the continuance and

development of the life; it is a higher sort of instinct of

self-preservation, and need not be confined to the continuance of

physical life, but may also refer to the ideal needs.

And here we come upon the standpoint of Individualistic Ethics. From

such a standpoint, the problem is to determine, not only how much energy

may be used in the single moments of time, but also in what manner it

should be used in order to secure as great variety and many-sidedness as

may be consistent with the interests of the life as totality. Nor are

the interests of the life to be summed up in physical self-preservation;

the individual acquires, in the natural course of things, interests of

increased ideality and complexity, through which the life gains in

content.

The ethical law, from the standpoint of Individualism, is expressed by a

formula which requires harmonious relation between the interest of the

life as totality and the impulse of the moment; it consists of two chief

mandates: (1) The single instant should have no greater independence

than corresponds to its significance in the life as totality; (2) but,

on the other hand, the single moments should be as richly and intensely

lived as is consistent with the preservation of the life's totality.

Of Individualism, or the principle of the Sovereignty of the Individual,

the same is true as of the sovereignty of the moment, that no reasoning

can overthrow it; if the individual recognizes no end but his own life,

there is no logical way of transition to another standpoint. A change of

aim can take place only through such a change in the central feelings

which determine the standard of the individual that a wider circle of

conceptions enter into his reflections. Until this takes place, there is

no use in appealing to conscience.

The science of Ethics has often claimed to be a science of pure reason.

This claim is opposed to its character as a practical science, since

action can be judged only according to the ends it had in view, and ends

presuppose feelings of pain and pleasure. On the other hand, there is,

in the mere capacity for pain and pleasure, no limitation of the extent

of the circle of conceptions with which the feelings of pain and

pleasure are connected.

Individualism can be carried out in practice only approximately; the

individual has his origin in the species, and lives his whole life as a

part of the life of his kind, with an organization in which the results

of the action and passion of earlier generations are inherited, and in a

mental atmosphere which has induced the development of his species. And

just as the instinct of self-preservation did away with the isolation of

the single moments of the individual life, becoming, thus, the basis of

feelings determined by the interests of the life as totality, so the

sympathetic instincts do away with the isolation of the single

individuals and determine the conditions of the life of the species in

the minds of its individuals. The most primitive form of the sympathetic

instincts is exhibited in the family. Here, however loose and variable

the relation of man and wife may be, that of mother and child cannot, by

its nature, be done away with or essentially changed. In this case, the

sympathetic feeling springs immediately from the natural instinct, and

the relation is the nucleus which makes possible the higher forms of

family life. In the family circle, the sympathetic feelings are

cultivated, and arrive at such strength that they come to include ever

wider and wider circles of human beings. Indeed, the mother-love remains

forever the image and criterion of all sympathy, as well in respect to

strength as to purity.

When sympathy has reached full purity, it is a feeling of pain or

pleasure determined by the fact that other beings feel pain or pleasure.

The most important point of its development was when it so broadened as

to include all mankind. The Peripatetic and the Stoic schools of Greek

philosophy led to this idea of love to all humanity and the natural

union of all men in one great society. But this idea acquired greater

historic importance when it became a chief commandment of a great

religion,--of Christianity. To this sympathetic feeling the criterion of

good and evil is no longer to be found in the individual life, but is

dependent on the life of the whole society of which the individual is a

member.

Yet sympathy is not, from this standpoint, identical with the ethical

feeling, conscience. Conscience is here, too, a feeling of relations

determined by the relation between the ruling or central feeling of the

individual and the results of action. When the individual feels his own

interests subordinate to the good of the whole of which, through

sympathy, he regards himself as a part, the ethical feeling appears as

the feeling of duty. A feeling of duty may be spoken of, likewise, from

the standpoint of pure Individualism, for the concept of duty expresses

only the relation of a lower, narrower consideration to a higher; and

this is represented, in Individualism, by the relation of the single

moments to the life as a whole.

From another point of view, the ethical feeling appears, in its higher

development, as the feeling of justice, which, while regarding the good

of the whole as the chief end, considers also the peculiarities of

individuals. Sympathy in its active form is impulse to share. This

sharing must be carried out according to fixed principles; where

sympathy is universal, differences of division can be justified only by

the fact that the Goods divided, if otherwise divided, would not be in

so high a degree Goods to those to whom they reverted, or would not

conduce to so great progress of the society as a whole. The ethical law

upon this standpoint, the standpoint of Humane Ethics, can be no other

as to content, than that action shall conduce to the greatest possible

welfare and the greatest possible progress of the greatest possible

number of conscious beings; and this law includes two chief mandates, a

negative and a positive mandate: (1) The individual may not receive more

than befits the position which, in consequence of his peculiar

qualities, he occupies among his kind; (2) but, on the other hand, the

capacities and impulses of every individual shall be as fully and

richly developed and satisfied as is consistent with the demands of the

life of the species as a whole. These two mandates follow with logical

necessity from the concept of society as a multiplicity of conscious

beings united into one whole. It is contrary to the unity of society,

that an individual, or that individuals, should be wilfully preferred to

others; every exceptional position must be justified by the demands of

the general conditions of life; on the other hand, a society is the more

perfect the more freely and more independently the single members move,

and the larger the number of different possibilities it realizes, if, at

the same time, unity is preserved and attains an ever higher character

and ever increasing validity.

When the ethical feeling develops, upon the basis of sympathy, to the

feeling of duty and justice, the principle included in the above law

becomes the standard according to which the individual judges his own

actions as well as those of others, and pronounces them good or bad. The

good is that which preserves and develops the welfare of conscious

beings.

The ethical principle now arrived at applies to the deeds of conscious

beings, presupposing an end in view. Unconscious nature affects man's

life, but its workings have no ethical character. The ethical judgment

is itself determined by the principle on which it is pronounced, and

hence it serves to produce greater welfare. This is especially to be

seen where the judging and the acting individual are one and the same

person; in other cases, it becomes a special problem to bring the acting

individual to the recognition of the principle; this is a problem of

psychologic-pedagogical nature.

The word "welfare" is used in preference to utility or happiness in

order to prevent misunderstanding, and may be defined as including all

that serves to satisfy the needs of man's nature. Ethics must take into

consideration all the gradations of life, and cannot, therefore,

distinguish in the beginning between outer and inner, higher and lower,

welfare. Such a distinction is already an ethical judgment, and can be

made only after determination of the ethical criterion. Another mistake

is the stress often laid upon momentary feelings of pain and pleasure.

Pain signifies, it is true, the beginning of the disintegration of life,

and pleasure its normal and harmonious development; yet each must be

considered in its relation to the whole consciousness, the whole

character, and the whole social state. So-called utilitarianism has

injured its own cause by resolving consciousness into a sum of feelings,

and society into a collection of individuals. The significance of single

feelings of pain and pleasure for the welfare of society cannot be

determined as if the problem were a simple arithmetical one.

The reasoning of Philosophical Ethics must not be confused with

practical reflection. In the last we are led by instincts and impulses,

by motives of which we are, for the most part, wholly unconscious, by

thoughts and feelings the first origin of which we cannot designate. We

follow the "positive morality" to which we have accustomed ourselves and

which is, in part, an inheritance of our species. Ethics as an art

precedes Ethics as a science; the aim of the latter is partly to show by

what principles the former is guided, and partly to correct these

principles.

The ethical principle broadens out, thus, from the single moment of the

individual life until it embraces the whole of mankind; but there are

many points in the course of the development at which we can make a

stand, and there may, therefore, be as many philosophical systems as

there are larger or smaller totalities. The position of the man who

holds fast consistently to a principle that determines the criterion by

the family, the caste, the nation, a sect, as highest totality, is as

unassailable as we have seen that of the individualist to be. The

psychologic-historical evolution alone can bring us, through the changes

which it produces in the feelings, beyond these criterions. In other

words, every criterion has a psychologic-historical basis. He who is to

recognize and carry out practically the principle of the greatest

possible welfare, must be no egoist or individualist, no fanatical

patriot or sectarian; this is the subjective condition necessary to the

objective principle. The conscience which is to be regulated by the

objective principle is always itself the condition of the recognition of

this principle. A system which leaves this fact out of consideration

takes on a dogmatic character. The basis of all ethical judgments is

feeling. By this is not meant, however, that the standpoint of an

individual cannot be influenced by argument; the feelings are always

connected with concepts, and discussion of these concepts is both

possible and must react upon them even if only very gradually.

Conscience is not infallible in its application of the objective

principle; a wider experience may show it to have erred. Conscience is

highest authority, but still an authority which may continually perfect

itself. The objective principle makes possible the mutual correction of

different consciences and the self-correction of the conscience of the

individual through self-judgment.

The difference between Subjective Ethics and Objective Ethics, as here

explained, does not coincide with the difference between Individual

Ethics and Social Ethics. Objective Ethics includes both the latter,

since it recognizes individual peculiarities. It has yet to be decided

whether, within the bounds of Objective Ethics, Individual Ethics and

Social Ethics are dependent upon each other, or whether one, and if one

then which one, determines the other. It has to be decided whether,

according to the principle of welfare, the free self-development of the

individual is to be limited by the conditions of social life, or _vice

versa_. Within the limits of Objective Ethics, there may arise an

Individualism of another sort than that before mentioned, founded, not

upon the sovereignty of the individual, but upon the principle of

welfare, which demands as many independent and peculiar points of

departure for action as possible. The like is true, also, of the

question of smaller organizations within larger ones.

The history of Ethics shows us that the ethical judgment of actions at

first regarded the outer act itself and its results, but was gradually

extended to include the motive, the disposition, the character of the

acting subject. It is perfectly natural that regard should first be

attracted to that which is the object of sense-perception. Moreover,

action at an earlier stage of development is essentially reflex action,

and the expression of instinct; the motives are simple and transparent,

and interest does not linger long with them. The great revolutions in

Ethics appear as essentially progress with regard to the importance

accorded, in ethical judgment, to the inner factors of action. This

greater inwardness is combined with a generalization; for the rejection

of a motive is the rejection of all action occasioned by it, and the

ethical acceptance of a motive the acceptance of all action springing

from it. Hence the transference of regard to inner conditions represents

a great simplification of the ethical law. Examples of such a

transference may be found in the rupture between Christianity and

Judaism, and between Protestantism and Catholicism.

In this way, too, Objective Ethics leads to Subjective Ethics. The

objective judgment not only presupposes a subjective basis, but also

finds some of its best objects in actions which spring from the same

mental constitution which is the basis of the judgment. Here, the basis

of mental constitution and the motive coincide; the ethical law demands

the existence of the moral disposition by which it itself exists in the

species. This Kant expresses in the assertion that it is a duty to

possess conscience. Since the recognition of duties presupposes the

existence of conscience, it might seem as if here were an argument in a

circle. But that this is an illusion may be seen from the fact that the

basis of ethical judgment and the motive do not necessarily coincide and

that it is not necessarily an imperfection when they do not coincide. It

may be necessary in some cases, in accordance with the principle of

welfare, that other motives than the sense of duty shall guide the

action; it may be necessary and healthful, for example, that in some

cases man should be led by the instinct of self-preservation, or by an

immediate sympathy, to labor for the welfare of others, and that

conscience should not be aroused in every single act. It may even be a

sign of perfection when actions that demand exertion and sacrifice are

carried out without the intervention of a sense of duty. Indeed, mental

drill in the end renders that which at first took place by means of a

long psychological process of reflection and will, direct and without

special consciousness of its reason.

All Ethics is practical Idealism. All systems assume an end, and an end

is not anything at present existing, but something which ought to be.

All systems assume, therefore, strong feeling, impulse, and endeavor,

combined with the image of that which is the object of the endeavor. But

the ideal must have points of contact with actuality, so that at least

an approach to it is practicable; it must be physically,

psychologically, and historically possible.

Ethical ideals deviate from the actual in three ways. In the first

place, there is often in actual willing and doing something directly

opposed to the principle of welfare. In this case, the office of Ethics

is to restrain and forbid. To this function corresponds, in the

practical life of the will, the hemming by which involuntary, original,

or acquired impulses and inclinations are repressed. Again, actual

willing and doing often exhibit only a weak and imperfect realization

of that which Ethics demands. Here there must be an increase in the

degree as well as in the extent of the realization. To this corresponds,

in the practical life of the will, effort and attention, the power of

the will, through its influence upon conceptions and feelings, to react

upon itself. And finally, there may be, in willing and doing, a lack of

unity and harmony; various opposed tendencies and impulses may make

themselves felt. Here a process of harmonizing and concentration is

necessary. And to this corresponds, in the practical life of the will, a

drilling in connected action and trains of thought, and in the power to

make an end of reflection by decision. In all three cases, the principle

of welfare is to be followed; and the three processes are to be applied

not only in the development of the individual but also in that of

societies, and of the species.

That which manifests itself in conscience is a species-instinct. In the

feeling of judgment, the relation between central and peripheral factors

finds expression, neither of which, and least of all the central

factors, are developed by individual experience, but both of which are,

on the contrary, the product of the experience of the species. What Kant

called the Categorical Imperative is, in fact, an instinct; and every

instinct speaks unconditionally, categorically, gives no reasons and

admits of no excuse.

No instinct finds expression without the existence of conditions which

call it forth; but all manner of individual and social circumstances may

furnish such conditions.

When conscience begins to be conscious of its office, it manifests

itself as an Impulse.[77] The thought of actions which the instinctive

judgment has recognized, or to the performance of which it has perhaps

incited, is combined with pleasure, the conception of actions of the

opposite nature with pain. The tendency arises to linger with the former

and to repeat them, and to turn from the latter, if no stronger impulses

of another sort make themselves felt.

Conscience may develop, without losing entirely its instinctive or

impulsive character, to practical reason. This takes place through the

development of the conceptions which determine the conscience as

impulse, to greater clearness and distinctness. When conscience acts as

instinct, the individual does not know what he does. If it acts as

impulse, he has a dawning consciousness of his acts. And when it

becomes practical reason, there arises a clear consciousness of ethical

laws and ethical ideals. In different individuals, conscience may appear

in very different forms and degrees, as instinct, impulse, practical

reason, sense of duty, sense of justice. Sometimes it appears as mainly

negative and restraining, sometimes again as chiefly positive, partly

harmonizing and partly increasing. Here it appears as enthusiastic

devotion, there as quiet and continuous tendency. It would be impossible

to name even the principal forms in which it may manifest itself, but it

is of great importance to call attention to the fact of these individual

differences, since we suffer at present from a dogmatism that has but

one measure for all these different manifestations.

We must go a step farther still. There may be men who possess no

strictly ethical feeling and who do not need it. Such men do what they

can with their whole heart without applying any reflective standard to

their own or others' acts. They entirely absorb themselves with

unflagging zeal in a work that perfectly corresponds to their

capabilities and impulses, without any doubt of its rightfulness and

import. They may devote themselves to art and science, to the service of

society, or to their family. Or they belong to the class of happy

natures who spread light and joy by their mere existence. They act in

accordance with the law, without being in possession of the law, and

what objection can Ethics have to offer to this? Ethics is for the sake

of life, not life for the sake of Ethics.

Since all ethical judgments have conscience for their psychological

basis, conscience is highest authority, highest law-giver, in comparison

with which every other authority is subordinate and derived. To wish to

go beyond one's conscience is to wish to go beyond oneself. When I yield

to another human being whose judgment I trust more than my own, this can

be justified only as it takes place through my conscience. Conscience is

infallible, if one understands by infallibility that it is, at every

instant, the highest judge; this infallibility does not mean, however,

that it does not err. Every earnest conviction takes the form of

conscience; the truth is not, however, secured by the mere form. Was it

not from conviction that Aristotle asserted the right of slavery, and

Calvin, with Melancthon's approval, sent Servetus to the stake?

Not less dogmatic than Fichte's assertion that conscience never deceives

us, is the view which regards a system of Ethics as merely the science

of the forms of society and of outward acts, and thus declares

conscience to be without authority in comparison with outer

circumstances and their demands. The law which we obey must always

express itself in the form of conscience. The light which illumines for

us all other things must be within ourselves.

Here we perceive the possibility of a conflict between Subjective Ethics

and Objective Ethics, between the two principles upon which Ethics is

founded. There can be no other solution to the problem than that we

shall follow the command of conscience, provided it speaks clearly and

after sufficient deliberation. It may be added that conscience can

correct and control itself, the later and more experienced conscience

criticising the earlier. As long as the individual acts according to his

best conviction, he is morally healthy; hence, from an ethical point of

view, a pernicious action carried out under the conviction that it is

good is to be preferred to a good action performed with the conviction

that it is bad. In the former case, the spring is pure; in the latter it

is corrupt. Only he who has courage to make mistakes can accomplish

anything great. It is not the cold and narrow, but those who are zealous

for the true and good, who thus err.

The power of self-correction can be developed only when some definite

principle or criterion may be found. Such a principle is that of

welfare. The problem of the application of this principle to action is,

however, like that of the application of the principle of causality to

actual phenomena, an endless one.

In close relation to the concept of Authority stands that of Sanction.

The Authority commands or forbids, the Sanction enables the command or

prohibition to remain in force. The sanction consists in the pain or

pleasure connected with the observation or transgression of the command,

in the reward or punishment which one brings on oneself through one's

action, in the heaven or hell which one approaches by the action. It is

only, however, when the authority itself is an outward one that the

sanction holds this outward relation to the action. In this outward form

it has no immediate ethical significance. The ethical character of an

action is dependent, in subjective regard, on its origin in the

intention of the performer, in objective regard, on its harmony with the

principle of welfare. What ethical significance could it have that here

a feeling of pain or pleasure not arising from the action itself, is

added to it? The outer sanction of reward and punishment is thus but an

educating sanction. The inner sanction consists in a feeling of harmony

and unity with one's own highest convictions, of consistency between

one's ideas and one's actual willing. Thus arises an inner peace that

may be stronger than all contradiction and opposition from without.

Such an inner sanction is not only an effect of the action, but a

feeling already present before the action. It was the preservation and

full development of this feeling that led to the decision and made it

possible. Blessedness, says Spinoza, is not the reward of virtue, but

virtue itself.

The manner in which the ethical is so often made dependent upon certain

fixed religious or speculative assumptions must be, from an ethical

point of view, matter for great solicitude. In the first place, it is

easy to suppose that the man who no longer respects these dogmas may

have emancipated himself also from the ethical maxims dependent upon

them, and would be most consistent if he acted in accordance with the

principle: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." In the second

place, action is reft of its ethical character when the attention is

directed to things outside its essence and origin, and considerations of

reward and punishment are declared to be a necessary motive. Not even a

belief in progress within the world of experience can have any absolute

worth for Ethics. It may be theoretically difficult to maintain such a

belief; and even if the victorious direction of evolution were shown to

be unfavorable to Ethics, ethical principles would not be destroyed.

Simply the problems would be different; pity and resignation would

acquire greater importance. Wherever the ethical disposition were

present, it would take the side of the conquered and remain upon that

side though the gods themselves were with the conquerors. Ethical worth

does not depend upon mere might.

The birth-hour of conscience is the time when, through the difference

between ideal and actuality, a certain feeling arises. Its death-hour

would be the instant in which the difference forever disappeared. Such a

disappearance might occur in two ways, either through the conquest of

the ideal by actuality or through that of actuality by the ideal. The

objection has been made to the theory of evolution that it fulfilled

the first of these possibilities, and so left no room for Ethics. But

the very fact of the existence of ethical impulses as the actual result

of evolution would seem to belie this theory. And indeed, we see that

evolution is not physical growth alone, but mental as well; and that the

important feature of man's development consists in his aspiration

through desires and impulses, which act as moving forces in his life.

Aspiration is necessary to his evolution, and indifference and lack of

sensibility an obstacle to it. The theory of evolution leads directly to

Ethics, in that it shows that the struggle for existence becomes, in its

higher forms, a common struggle for the continuance and development of

human life. The theory of evolution takes us, indeed, not only to, but

beyond, Ethics; for, according to Spencer, the ethical sense is but an

intermediate condition in a development toward a state of "organic

morality," where right-doing will be involuntary and natural, and a

special ethical sense no longer existent or necessary. Such a state

would constitute the realization of the second alternative mentioned

above, with which Ethics would come to an end. This state is

conceivable, and Ethics could have no objection to offer to it. Yet we

are still far from such a condition, and though we may strengthen our

courage and hope with the thought of a continual progress of human

nature, yet the assumption of such an end to evolution cannot have an

essential influence upon the method of Ethics.

We must, in fact, suppose that progress will bring us new problems and

new ideals, that, as the Ethics of the civilized man includes whole

provinces unknown to the savage, so many relations will certainly

present themselves in the future whose ethical significance our present

thick-skinned condition, our ignorance and egoism, prevent us from

comprehending.

Can one do more than one's duty? From the standpoint of ethical systems

which are founded on authority or any outward principle, this question

may be answered in the affirmative. The Roman Catholic Church

distinguishes, for instance, between that which is commanded and that

which, beyond the command, is merely advised. But he who follows an

inward sanction cannot but feel that he has done no more than his duty

when he has done all that lies in his power for the welfare of mankind.

It may be right, from a pedagogical standpoint, to give especial praise

to actions that tower above the usual; he who performs them, however,

only then possesses the right spirit when he feels that he has done no

more than his duty, and could not have done otherwise. Even from a

pedagogical standpoint, the difference between duty and merely

counselled action, beyond the duty commanded, can be only a relative

one; that which is, upon a lower plane of development, merely advised,

becomes, upon a higher plane, one of the most elementary duties; mercy

to the conquered may be a high virtue in a savage, but to the civilized

man it is a primary rule of morals.

It is of the highest importance to keep in mind the fact that conscience

itself is a cause, and that ethical judgment, arising as a feeling,

takes part, by its influence upon the will, in the ethical evolution

towards highest welfare. Keeping this in mind, it is easy to see that

Ethics not only calls for no limitation of the law of Causality, but

that such a limitation would be pernicious, even destructive, to Ethics.

There are at least six different significations in which the expression

"freedom of the will" may be used.

It may be used to denote absence of outward constraint; but this might

rather be called a freedom of action than a freedom of the will.

It may be used to denote absence of inner constraint; the will which

springs from pain or fear is often called unfree in distinction from the

will which springs from pleasure or hope.

It may refer to energy and vitality of the will. Here the stress is laid

upon the amount which the will can accomplish, not, however, upon its

independence of causes. One can be a determinist and yet concede that

the will plays an important part in the world; or one can be an

indeterminist and yet assume that free will plays but a small part in

the world.

By freedom of the will is often meant the power of choice. This freedom

is not opposed, however, to causality, but to blindness of action,

subjection to momentary impulses. "Free will" denotes, in this case,

self-conscious will.

Or the word "freedom" may refer to the will as ruled by ethical motives.

In this sense, only the good man is free. This significance of the word

is the oldest, comes down to us from Socrates, and is used by Augustine,

Spinoza, and many others.

But the sense of the word "freedom" with which the strife between

Determinism and Indeterminism has to do is that in accordance with

which a free will is not subject to the law of Causality, is not, like

other phenomena, a link in the chain of causes, but is, on the contrary,

a cause, without being an effect. To be free in will is, according to

this definition, to will without cause,--independent of all that has

gone before.

Indeterminism destroys the bond between the individual and his kind,

between the individual and the rest of existence. Indeterminism is hence

unable to regard existence as a totality. Every deeper philosophical or

religious conception becomes, thus, impossible; the only religious

conception consistent with Indeterminism is Polytheism, since every

being that can form the absolute beginning of a chain of causes is a

little god, an absolute being. This fact is to be noted, for the reason

that Determinism is sometimes designated as a godless doctrine.

The assertion that the will is without cause, and the assertion that we

ourselves are the cause of our willing, are two different assertions.

The last finds a cause in our nature. Thoughts and feelings, tendencies,

instincts, and impulses arise in us, and in these the origin of the acts

of the will is to be sought.

If the will, or a part of it, is not subject to the law of Causality, it

stands in relation to the whole personality as something isolated and

accidental. The Indeterminist who asserts that Determinism makes man a

mere machine, himself makes of him something much meaner, something

incoherent and accidental. Ethical judgment is based upon the assumption

that my action is mine; it is, therefore, clear and certain only when

motives and the decision they cause are known. The less my actions can

be understood by knowledge of my character, the more easily I may be

regarded as irresponsible. Although law regards, by its nature, action

and not motive, yet even the judge must gain an insight into the

motives, the outer and inner relations from which the deed originated,

both in order to determine the degree of punishment necessary, and in

order even to be fully persuaded that the action really took place.

Many recent Indeterminists designate the freedom of the will as

exceedingly small. They thus extend the dissolution of the unity of

existence and of the unity of personality to the act of willing itself.

Moreover, if responsibility depends upon freedom, it is impossible to

see how reward and punishment are to be justified upon this standpoint;

since the individual can say with reason that he is not guilty with

respect to the whole, but only with respect to a very small part of his

act.

The words Responsibility, Guilt, Accountability, are taken, like so many

other ethical expressions, from Jurisprudence, or rather they come to us

from a time when the distinction between the province of Jurisprudence

and that of Ethics had not yet been recognized. That I am made

accountable for my action means that I stand as the one to whom reward

or punishment for the deed is meted out. _For what reason_ the action is

rewarded or punished is a question by itself.

In relation to Ethics, the feeling of guilt, of responsibility or

accountability, signifies that my act is subjected to the judgment of

conscience. If I find discord between my act and that which I recognize

as good, remorse arises,--a feeling of inner disharmony, unworthiness,

and self-contempt which may increase until it becomes the greatest

psychical pain. This feeling may be defined, from a deterministic

standpoint, as dissatisfaction with oneself because one has not acted

otherwise, and the wish that one had done so. This wish arises in the

moment of reflection, when one weighs one's act. From the present wish

is not, however, to be concluded that one could just as well have acted

otherwise _at the moment the act took place_. Such an illusion dates the

experience dearly bought with mistake and remorse back to an earlier

period. According to the theory of retribution, remorse must be greatest

in him who has committed the greatest crime. This is not so, however;

since remorse arises from a contrast between ideal and act, which

contrast can take place only when the conception of the ideal is strong;

the purest and best characters often have the strongest feelings of

remorse.

Remorse first arises when a new attitude of mind is attained different

from that which ruled at the time of the action. Time is necessary for

this new feeling to replace the old, if it is to be more than a

momentary passion, and during this interval the two feelings are both

active in consciousness. This is the time of the birth-pains by which

the new character comes into being. The significance of remorse lies in

the fact that it urges forward, that it gives birth to impulse and

endeavor after a higher plane. Only because remorse is a _motive_, is it

of ethical nature.

If the law of Causality were not active in the realm of the psychical,

this ethical endeavor would be hopeless. Only where order reigns can

the will accomplish anything. Only as we know the law of outer nature,

and know what conditions must be produced in order to bring about a

certain result, can we serve our own ends in this province; and the like

is true in our relation to human nature. Here the problem is to find

motives of the right sort and of sufficient strength. Of what use were

all possible exertion if, under given conditions, the same motive were

followed by now this, now the other entirely different decision. I am

master of my future willing only in so far as a causal relation exists

between my present and my future will. We find, therefore, that the

reason why responsibility goes no further back in the causal chain than

the will, is this: that it is the will which is to be acted on and

altered. That which precedes the act of the will interests us,

ethically, only in so far as it influences the will.

It is a strange assertion, sometimes made, that the consistent

Determinist must be a mere spectator of his own and others' lives. As if

one could feel no pain or pleasure and no desire to interfere, because

one believes life to be subject to law. It is true that theoretical

study may weaken practical interest; but Indeterminism is a theory as

well as Determinism.

What the ethically bad is follows from what has already been said. It

consists of a more or less conscious isolation of the single moment in

the life of the individual, or of the single individual in the life of

the species, such that not only a hindrance to the welfare of individual

or species arises, but also a relaxation of energy and a diminution of

the coherence of individual or species. In most such cases, inertia is

at work. The one moment demands to be lived without any consideration of

others, the individual will not move outside the circle of his own

interests. Such a resistance to influence may be unconscious. It may be

authorized in so far as it is a condition of the development of real

willing that action shall not immediately respond to impression. In this

resistance lies, therefore, the germ of the ethical as well as the

non-ethical life of the will. The clearer consciousness becomes, the

more this inertia takes on the character of defiance. Or the discord

felt through consciousness of the good may be so painful that the

individual desires to free himself at any price. In this case, no

remorse is felt; on the contrary, the individual seeks to dull the

awakened consciousness, or to get rid of it.

It is important to note that conceptions develop, in this connection,

faster than feelings. And as long as the former do not find points of

connection with the existing feelings, they will have no practical

influence. The bad consists in the persistence, from inertia or

defiance, upon a lower plane of development after the consciousness of a

higher has arisen. Evil is the animal in man, the remains of an earlier

plane of life. From the instincts of self-preservation and

self-propagation in their most primitive forms, the ethically bad is

produced, and offers fierce resistance to harmonizing influences.

Evil is, furthermore, a sociological phenomenon; the general

psychological elements take on different forms under different

historical conditions; society, in its different forms and functions, is

always one of the determining factors of its development. The criminal

is, like the saint, the child of his time.

It appears, therefore, that the term "bad" is applied from a standpoint

not shared by him to whom it is applied. If the man who stands upon the

lower plane of morals possessed the full and clear consciousness that

the predicate of badness applied to his conduct, the corresponding

feelings and impulses must arise in him, and his conduct be altered. It

is psychologically impossible to act against our fixed and full

conviction, if this is not blunted by other impulses.

The definition of the good must be, on different ethical planes, a

different one. But when a disinterested and universal sympathy

determines the ethical judgment, only that can be good which preserves

and adds to the welfare of conscious beings, increases their pleasure or

diminishes their pain. Every action which tends in this direction

without producing further results of an opposite nature, is authorized;

every action of which the opposite is true is to be rejected.

Since, in general, pleasure is connected with the healthy and natural

use of the powers, with that which preserves and benefits life, and pain

is connected with the opposite of this, Ethics merely continues the work

begun by nature, in aiming at human progress, at as rich and harmonious

a development of human powers as is possible. The problems of Ethics

concern, therefore, the pleasures of the moment as well as those of the

whole life, the pleasures of the individual as well as those of the

whole species. This remains true even if we accept the pessimistic view

that all life is pain; the good would consist, from this point of view,

in as great alleviation of pain as possible. Even the ascetic tortures

himself only in order to gain greater good.

The ethical end as welfare is not to be conceived as a state of

continuance on the same plane. Such a continuance is impossible;

evolution does not stand still; every step of progress creates new

needs, the satisfaction of which again demands endeavor; perfect

satisfaction is impossible. Even the development of sympathy makes it

easier to wound us in many ways and brings us larger duties. The need of

variety alone would make continuance upon one plane impossible; we labor

not only in order to arrive at conscious ends, but also in order to

relieve ourselves of accumulated energy. The highest end that we can

conceive is a progress in which each step is felt as a good because it

affords scope for action without over-exertion.

Activity is also welfare. But it is so only in so far as it is healthful

activity; when the powers are over-exerted or dissipated in action,

having no common end, or when their application in one direction is at

the cost of other more important directions, progress ceases to be

welfare. The evolution of civilization contains an element of blindness

and heedlessness which is bound up with both its excellencies and its

faults. But civilization is not an act of choice; it is the continuance

of the evolution of nature. Progress is necessary; it is impossible to

remain upon any level attained. Ethics must, therefore, accept progress

as a fact. It does not feel an admiration for an order of nature in

which no advance appears possible without one-sidedness and dissipation

of energy. It is not so hard-hearted that it could forget, in the

seeming splendor of outward results, the anxiety and pain, the sweat and

blood, with which these were won. It demands, therefore, that the heavy

burdens be lightened, the scattered forces united, and all capabilities

that are of worth developed. On the other hand, Ethics is not so

sentimental and short-sighted that it could forget that progress can

take place only through exertion and suffering. Its chief task with

regard to progress is to impress upon the mind the fact that life should

not be made a mere means to the solution of impersonal problems.

Civilization is a means for the individual, not _vice versa_.

The natural division of Ethics is into Individual Ethics and Social

Ethics. It has sometimes been assumed that the whole duty of man could

be summed up in Individual Ethics. However, it is not necessarily true

that that which assists the best development of the individual serves

society as a whole also. When the attention is directed so excessively

to oneself, the general welfare is likely to be forgotten. On the other

hand, a too great subjection of individual interests makes a man a mere

parasite, robbing him of all self-dependence. When Ethics condemns the

instinct of self-preservation, it condemns its own means. If the impulse

to self-preservation, self-assertion, and self-development were evil,

then our essential nature would be evil, and Ethics would be impossible.

The right relation of the two principles is given in the principle of

welfare. Mill's book "On Liberty" denies the ethical significance of

self-development and forgets the individual's oneness with his kind, in

declaring personal vices of no importance to the general welfare. That

which Mill wished to defend was the freedom of the individual, the loss

of which through the compulsion of society and the "moral police" he

feared. But he might have accomplished this purpose without denying the

ethical value of self-development. There is nothing that is a ground for

greater solicitude than the mistake that public opinion and Ethics are

one, and that a condition of things is no longer a subject for ethical

condemnation when no outer power has the right to denounce it.

The first question which presents itself in Individual Ethics is: How is

the individual to educate himself to an ethical personality? Here the

development and strengthening of the ethical principle as governing and

determining the life of the individual is concerned. The problem is one

with the determination of the chief virtue which includes all other

ethical qualities. This virtue is justice, which includes in itself the

two groups contained under Self-assertion and Self-sacrifice.[78]

In the application of this general theory of Ethics, Hoeffding maintains

the radical-conservative and individual-social position already stated.

The principle of welfare demands the reconciliation of the free

development of the individual and the progress of society as a whole;

the individual does not live to himself alone, hence the state has a

right to demand sacrifices; but it must always be able to show good

reason for such; the burden of proof lies with the side which would take

away the most valuable possession of the individual,--the right to free

self-development in the ever-shifting direction of his need. This very

characteristic of change makes it impossible for the state to decide for

the individual what are his needs, and how they may be satisfied; hence

the best course of the state is a chiefly restrictive one. The relation

between state-help and self-help must be exactly the reverse of that

which Socialism, in remarkable agreement with Bureaucracy and

Absolutism, asserts. Socialism presupposes not only perfection in the

governed but also perfection in the persons to whom the government is

entrusted. It assumes, moreover, that pleasure in activity and its

resulting power of originality and invention would not be weakened if

men's right of initiative were taken from them and their needs

determined by others. Much of the good even now accomplished by the

state in its functions is due to the competition with individual

undertakings.

Philanthropy, on the part of individuals as on that of the state, will

best follow this same principle of indirect aid, in order to obtain the

best results through education of character. Organization is desirable

on the part of individuals, but the state will achieve best results by

acting through smaller organizations which afford a wider field and the

possibility of more intelligent work. In its methods of punishment,

also, the state must have regard, not only to prevention through fear,

but also and chiefly to the bettering of the criminal character; capital

punishment and life-long imprisonment cannot be justified from a higher

ethical standpoint. Freedom should be allowed and tolerance shown the

various religious sects as corresponding to various needs. The more

liberal education of woman, which will make her capable of greater

independence of thought and action, is one of the chief means to the

solution of the marriage-question. The ideal of marriage is free

monogamy; in polygamy, the purely physical must always rule; that part

of self which one can surrender to many can be only the animal; long

association and sympathy alone admit to the sanctuary of love. It

belongs to the nature of true love to believe in its own endlessness; it

is, therefore, incompatible with its nature to arrange for a mere

temporary union. Yet where an unhappy union exists, divorce should be

permitted. Strict divorce laws have always fettered and burdened nobler

natures, while light-minded people have easily found means of escape.

The view that the artist occupies a peculiar position in his ideal

world, must free himself from the actual world, and live only for his

ideal, is ethically false; art should lend form to actual life, defining

and clarifying it, broadening the view and educating sympathy. A great

artist is, at the same time, half a prophet; his whole people and epoch

must learn to know themselves through him. Freedom is to be regarded as

both means and end. A representative government is not only an education

for the people, who through freedom alone can learn to use freedom, but

affords the state, moreover, a firmer foundation in the consciousness of

its citizens that they are responsible for the existing condition of

things.

The development of conscience in force and extent takes place through

thought and imagination. Knowledge alone is not enough; it must be fixed

by exercise,--made a persistent thought, until it becomes, by means of

the laws of association, such a thought as will easily come in play

whenever the case requires it.

FOOTNOTES:

[77] Trieb.

[78] Selbstbehauptung und Hingebung.

GEORG VON GIZYCKI

"MORAL PHILOSOPHY" ("Moralphilosophie," 1889)

Moral Philosophy has a scientific and a practical office. Its scientific

task is to supply the human being with a clearer, more thorough

understanding, founded on ultimate reasons, of his moral life. Its

practical task is to answer the important question: How am I to act? How

shall I order my life?

It was not left to science first to direct human action. Custom and law

seek to order the doing and leaving undone of the members of society.

Ethical philosophy ascertains means of testing the actually existing

ideas of morality, and thus enables us to better law and custom.

A highest criterion, one only, is necessary, by which to judge of the

morality of a deed. If there were more than one, the judgment might fall

out differently from the different standpoints furnished by these.

When I regard the qualities which I consider morally good, I perceive

that they all have a direction conducive to the general welfare or

happiness; and when I regard the qualities which I consider morally bad,

I find that they all have an aim prejudicial to the general welfare or

happiness.

When I attempt to convince any one that certain conduct which he

considers right is wrong, by showing him that it is opposed to the

general welfare, my final appeal is to his conscience. And in the same

manner, when I correct some of my own moral conceptions, it is my

conscience which determines me to the proof of them, and my conscience

which is the standard that determines my decision. Conscience is the

principle underlying my moral convictions. But I do not possess, in

conscience, a moral power which never errs; hence it behooves me to

judge carefully. Body and mind both have their laws on which depend the

welfare and happiness of society; the last results of science and human

experience give us these laws.

There are few things in regard to which there is so great unanimity as

there is in regard to the right and good. In the fundamental questions,

all the more highly civilized peoples are, for the most part, agreed.

On the lowest planes of civilization, only the narrowest tribal

association is taken into consideration in morals, but gradually, with

the growth of experience, growth of the understanding, which permits the

recognition, in a much higher degree, of the results of action and the

power of sympathy, ever larger circles of human beings are

regarded,--the tribe, the nation, the whole of mankind, all sentient

beings. In this development of conscience and benevolence, there is

nothing to cause moral uncertainty or contempt of conscience; for, in

that case, the fact that there was once a time when human beings were

not on the earth must be a reason for contempt of everything human.

We call various different things good, of worth, others bad, evil; there

must be something common to all these, on account of which we apply the

common term to them. That which is thus common to them is their relation

to a consciousness for which they are good or bad, and not to a merely

perceiving consciousness, but to one that feels and wills. As true and

false relate to the intellectual side of human nature, so do good and

bad relate to the side of feeling and will. Such things are good as are

the mediate or immediate cause of agreeable states of consciousness or

of the prevention or removal of disagreeable states; and on the other

hand, such things are bad as are the cause of pain or the hindrance of

pleasure. We say of these things that they are agreeable or

disagreeable. Or we may use, instead of "agreeable," the term "object

of desire," and instead of "disagreeable," the term "object of

aversion"; for all that is agreeable has an attractive influence upon

the will, and all that is disagreeable or painful has a repellant one.

Joy is that condition of consciousness which we seek to attain and

preserve, whose existence we prefer to its non-existence; and pain is

that state of consciousness which we seek to avoid and destroy, whose

non-existence we prefer to its existence.

The good is often defined as that which conduces to some end; but an end

is nothing other than something willed; that which conduces to an end is

the cause of something that is willed, so that this explanation also

refers back to a consciousness.

Whatever is existent for us must be existent in us, in our

consciousness. Our states of consciousness are either painful, or

indifferent, or pleasant. We must turn, therefore, in the last analysis,

not to things, but to the mind, if we wish to distinguish what is good

and what is bad; and according to the differing constitution of

different minds, the same things may be good or bad. There is good and

bad with respect to our body or senses, and good and bad with respect to

our mind. A moral good is one which causes conscious states of moral

satisfaction.

The good has often been divided into the useful and the agreeable. The

agreeable is that which causes immediate, the useful that which causes

mediate pleasure. A thing may be both useful and agreeable; and the like

is true of the disagreeable and the harmful. The useful and the harmful

in this, as it were inner, (subjective) sense, are to be distinguished

from the useful and the harmful in an objective sense; in the last

sense, that is useful which tends to the preservation of life. Between

the useful and harmful, and the pleasurable and painful, in this sense,

there must exist, as the theory of evolution teaches us, a wide-reaching

correspondence. Living beings do that which is pleasurable to them; they

avoid that which is painful; they continue alive when they do that which

is conducive to life and avoid that which is harmful to life. This

continuous process of exterminating those beings to whom the harmful is

agreeable and the useful painful, must tend to make the harmful coincide

with the painful, and the useful with the pleasurable. The agreement is,

however, far from being a perfect one; and it is the less so, the more

complicated are the conditions of life. It is the most imperfect in

human beings.

Good is that which causes pleasure or prevents pain; that is better

which causes more pleasure or prevents more pain. A thing may cause both

joy and pain; in this case, the excess decides whether a thing is good

or bad; and the greater the excess, the better or the worse is the

thing. The greatest possible excess of satisfied states of consciousness

in the life of a human being one may call his greatest possible

happiness. The greatest possible happiness is hence the standard by

which good and evil are determined.

From these reflections is to be seen that a distinction is to be made

between that which is _desired_ and that which is _desirable_. All that

is desired is pleasurable, yet much that is pleasurable has pain for its

result,--pain that is far greater than the momentary pleasure.

The good is often considered as opposed to the agreeable, and the bad as

opposed to the disagreeable or painful. In this case, by pain and

pleasure are understood feelings of the moment, by good and bad are

understood enduring, or at least long-continuing causes of lasting or

oft-recurring pain or pleasure; momentary pleasure may be bought at the

expense of long suffering; and short pain may be the condition of the

prevention of greater evil.

A thing may be good as regards one individual, bad as regards another. A

thing is truly good as regards a society when its total effect has for

the society lasting beneficial results, that is, accords with the

happiness of the society during its whole existence; and that is for

mankind truly good which is, in its total effect, beneficial to present

and future humanity.

In general, we may say that, when we order our conduct by the thought to

serve mankind to the best of our ability, we have a satisfied

consciousness, a good conscience. In so far, therefore, a noble deed is

good for ourselves as well as for society. The question whether or not

the performance of our duty corresponds to our greatest possible

happiness, is a different one. But the good man does not allow this

thought the chief role in consciousness; he is filled with the thought

of doing his duty in devoting himself to the happiness of mankind, and

there is but _one_ form of his own happiness which he will not forego,

namely, the blessedness of a good conscience. This consciousness, this

blessedness which unites the human being to mankind, he should regard

as his highest good; for it is a moral good; and the dissatisfaction

which lies in the consciousness of having violated his duty towards

mankind he should regard as the greatest evil.

It may be objected that this morally satisfied consciousness, this sort

of joy, cannot be called a good. A good is the _cause_ of pleasurable

states of consciousness. But it would appear strange to claim that joy,

happiness, are not goods, and pain, unhappiness, not evils; the terms

"good" and "evil" and "worth" refer not only to joy and suffering, but

also to _desire_ and _will_; and no one doubts that happiness is an

object of desire, and pain an object of aversion.

From what has been said it appears that happiness cannot be defined as

"satisfaction of the desires." Such satisfaction may have unhappiness as

its result. Not all desires are to be satisfied simply because they are

desires.

The study of the history of moral conceptions appears to show us that

most changes in this province are the result of a change of views

concerning the effects of actions with regard to the welfare of society;

hence, that they were the fruit of experience. This process of change

takes place, however, very gradually; the rules which are the result of

experience are handed down, for the most part, without statement of

reasons; and only in a very limited measure do the new generations labor

for a progressive development of moral conceptions. We cannot wonder

that a clear consciousness of the highest reasons of moral precepts is

seldom to be found. Yet in civilized societies, the conviction is

general that at least an average conformity to rules of morality is the

indispensable condition of the safety and the good of society. The

answer to the question: What would happen if every one were to act thus?

has been regarded, from earliest times, as decisive with regard to the

moral quality of an act.

When we recognize that actions which we call good and bad are so called

because of their causal relation to pain and pleasure, the belief must

arise in us, that the worth of qualities of character depends on the

promise they contain of future action. The most important power for the

happiness or misery of humanity is the character of human beings. Hence

the morally good, excellence of character, is to be regarded as

preeminently Good. And so it appears that our instinctive judgments are

justified by the deliberations of calm reason.

The question: Why shall I act in accordance with the general welfare? is

answered by these considerations; because such action is right and

reasonable, enjoined by conscience and reason, by human nature itself in

its higher development. He who does not recognize this fact, who does

not find in it the highest and holiest of commandments, and who yet

desires to act reasonably and well, recognizing duties to all men, does

not see what he himself really will.

The conception of right-doing is the motive of the human being, in so

far as he is good. The teacher who desires to have moral influence will

endeavor to awaken this motive in his hearers or readers. For this

purpose he must appeal to their actual characters. And it is as much a

_petitio principii_ to assume, in Ethics, the existence of moral

feelings, as to assume, in Optics, the existence of sight. Just as there

are blind persons, so there are persons without moral feelings. These

are, however, comparatively few; some trace of moral feeling, of

conscience, is to be found in almost every member of society.

The general welfare, that is, the greatest possible true happiness of

all, not the greatest happiness of the smallest number which is often

the ruling principle of state laws, nor the greatest happiness of the

greatest number without consideration of the minority,--is the highest

ethical criterion. It may be difficult to ascertain wherein this

happiness consists; Bentham demands, for the determination of the worth

of an action, a calculation of the intensity, duration, certainty,

fecundity, and purity, of the feelings produced by it. But the happiness

and misery of mankind is surely the most important object of mankind; it

must be, therefore, our highest care to ascertain the results of an

action _as far as we are able_. And, in fact, the most important results

of any form of action are generally ascertainable.

To make endeavor after one's own and others' perfection the criterion of

morality is to set up a false standard, a form without a content, since

"perfection" designates merely a state that accords with some

preconceived concept or end. The question is: What end shall human

perfection realize? The criterion of general welfare alone can define

human perfection. It is such a constitution of man's bodily and

spiritual characteristics as conduces in the highest degree to general

happiness.

Too long and detailed a consideration of possible results is not

desirable in every case where action is called for. There is seldom time

for a consideration of the intensity, duration, etc., of resulting pain

and pleasure. It is well, in most cases, to follow the general moral

rules we have attained to through previous reflection. In cases of

doubt, we need to appeal to our highest criterion. Often such doubt may

be caused by selfishness, by the hidden desire to act, after all, for

our own benefit; we need, therefore, to put to ourselves the question:

How would we judge the action of another in our own position? Thus we

arrive at the highest moral commandment, which is: So act that thy

conduct, if made general, would be for the good of mankind. And the

force of example is here one of the factors to be considered.

It has been asked what right one has to assert the rule that each one is

to count for one, and no one for more than one, in moral decisions. May

not one human being's capacity for happiness be greater than another's,

and his happiness, therefore, more to be considered? It may be answered

that bad men have never been embarrassed for an excuse for selfishness,

but that the arrogance of regarding one's own happiness as of greater

worth than that of others has brought incalculable harm into the world,

and that the only safe method of calculation for the purpose of

furthering the general welfare, is the rule above given,--that each one

shall count as one and no more.

The rule that the greatest possible happiness of _all_ is to be striven

for, is an assertion that the happiness of every one is to be

considered, that not that of the lowest human being is to be interfered

with unless such interference is _necessary_ in order to prevent still

greater harm to others; and that no such interference shall be greater

than is positively necessary in accordance with this aim. The highest

moral law is thus nothing more than the Christian commandment of love to

all men. And the rule "To count each as one, no more," may receive the

restrictive clause "in so far as the good of the whole of society is not

diminished by so doing."

Some Darwinians are inclined to regard the preservation of existence as

the criterion by which to judge the moral quality of action. "Aim for

the preservation of the species" would be, from their standpoint, the

moral law. But mere existence is not happiness; that is shown by the

fact of suicide. However, it is true that health is one of the

conditions of happiness. Pessimists are generally men of an unhappy

temperament, often of morbid physical constitution; medical science

must, in its progress, help to prevent the development of such morose

dispositions. Want of love may also be a cause of pessimism; most

pessimists have been lonely men. And want of employment may also lead to

pessimism. If we follow Rousseau's advice not to listen to those who are

in exceptional abnormal positions, but appeal to those who constitute

the great majority, we shall conclude that, in general, the happiness of

men greatly exceeds their misery. The increase of suicide is often used

as an argument that civilization has not caused an increase, but a

decrease, of happiness. To this argument it may be answered that the

religious scruples which formerly withheld men from this extreme step

have diminished, that men have grown more self-conscious and independent

in action; and that, moreover, our age is one of unrest, a

transition-period such as no other period has been. When we examine the

lives of tribes on a low plane of civilization, we find their existence

full of uncertainty and of superstitious fear, and at the mercy of the

forces of nature. Without doubt, much misery exists; a great part of it,

however, is caused by the disappointment of too extreme demands for

happiness; the individual must not require that life shall be continuous

rapture.

The recognition of what right action is, is not its accomplishment. Pain

and pleasure determine the will,--the pain and pleasure of the person

who wills, since he cannot feel with the feelings of others or will with

their will any more than he can move with their limbs. He may have a

conception of the welfare or suffering of others, but a mere mental

image does not determine the will. Only when such a conception arouses

pleasure or pain in the subject himself, are will and action possible.

Love consists in joy in the thought of the beloved person, with joy in

his joy, and pain in his pain. He who seeks to render happy one whom he

loves does not, as a rule, consider the fact that he will himself have a

joy in the happiness of that other; his aim is to give pleasure, not to

himself, but to the other. But the thought of doing for him is combined

with pleasure, the thought of not doing for him is combined with pain;

and these present feelings determine the will.

That which distinguishes the moral from the immoral man is that,

in the former, the notions of the right and good rouse strong

feelings,--feelings of pain at the thought of acting contrary to them,

of pleasure at the thought of acting in accordance with them, feelings

which may overpower all others; while in the immoral man these

conceptions call forth no feelings or only such weak ones as offer no

sufficient opposition to the influence of other feelings. Both men act

from feeling, but not from the same feelings.

Do we, by proving that the moral, as well as the immoral man is

determined in his action by feelings, show that the one approximates to,

or is identical with the other? By no means. In that case, the proof

that both the moral man and the immoral man will with their own will,

and act through their own limbs, that both possess arms, hands, senses,

feelings, understanding, in short, that both are human beings, must

show, in the same manner, an approximation of the moral to the immoral

man. A perceptive, intellectual, objective side, and an emotional,

inner, subjective side are to be distinguished in all action; and only

the confusion of the two has led to the fancy that, with the proof that

all action proceeds from the pain or pleasure of the person who wills,

it is shown that all action, every human being, is selfish, and that

unselfishness is a figment of the imagination. It is not the expected

pleasure that moves the will; it is only when the conception of future

happiness or misery awakens present feelings stronger than other present

feelings which would move the will in another direction, that willing

and action can follow in accordance with that conception. Hence, there

is nothing so remarkable in the sacrifice of one's own happiness. It is

not morally desirable that self-love should be weak, but only that

conscience and general benevolence should be stronger still.

Many who have recognized the reality of sympathy and benevolence have

not regarded them as primary but as evolved from egoism. However, if the

word egoism is to have a distinct meaning, it must be interpreted as the

conscious preference of one's own good to that of others. But with

self-consciousness is likewise developed the consciousness of other

beings, and the latter, as the former, clothes itself with