CONSCIENCE
The exact circumstances which led, in any particular line of descent, to
the final production of self-conscious altruism we cannot know. We may,
perhaps, as has been hinted, trace the whole development to the original
union of the sexes in lower, asexual species, and of mother and
offspring; and we may suppose the final self-conscious altruism to have
been led up to gradually by habit, in any case, the history of all
function being gradual evolution. Thus we may suppose it possible that,
in some cases, the care of offspring may have been preceded by a habit
of care, on the part of the female animal, for her eggs, which, as
habit, was pleasurable, but was connected with no consciousness of the
offspring produced from the eggs until some new circumstance of
environment brought them within ken. Of the development of habit in
general and of pleasure in it, we have plenty of illustrations in our
own individual experience, and we can even watch, in our own case, the
process of the increase of altruism along old lines as well as its
growth in new directions; and we may thus gain a conception of what must
have been the general nature of its earliest development, in any case.
In Volume III of "Mind," Paul Friedmann has an interesting essay on "The
Genesis of Disinterested Benevolence," in which he relates the
following: "A man had to throw away some water and, stepping out of his
house, threw it upon a heap of rubbish, where some faded plants were
nearly dying. At that moment, he paid no attention to them, took no
interest in their pitiable state. The next day, having again some water
to throw away, the man stepped out at the same place, when he remarked
that the plants had raised their stems and regained some life. He
understood that this was the result of his act of the day before, his
interest was awakened, and as he held a jar with water in his hand, he
again threw its contents over the plants. On the following day the same
took place; the benevolent feeling, the interest in the recovery and
welfare of the plants augmented, and the man tended the plants with
increasing care. When he found, one day, that the rubbish and plants had
been carted away, he felt a real annoyance. The feeling of the man was
in this case real disinterested benevolence. The plants were neither
fine nor useful, and the place where they stood was ugly and out of the
way, so that the man had no advantage from their growth. Nor had the man
a general wish to rear plants, for there were a number of other plants
sorely in want of care, but to which the man did not transfer his
affections. He had loved these individual plants." Friedmann says
further: "Formerly rather hostile to dogs, now that I have a dog myself,
I feel well inclined towards the whole canine species, but most to that
part of it which has some characteristic feature in common with my
favorite." Features of the first quotation may remind us of some former
considerations of ours in which attention and interest were found to run
parallel. We may take exception, however, to Friedmann's definition of
the extension of benevolent feeling from an individual of a class to the
whole of the class or to beings resembling them in any way as "a sort of
logical confusion." This view has already been criticised. The adult
being at least does not confuse individuals, or even if he may
occasionally do so, such confusion is not at all the distinguishing
feature of progress in altruism; it is merely an accident, not anything
that is characteristic. The recognition of old features in new objects
is the opposite of confusion; it would rather indicate a logical
confusion, a lack of intelligence, if we failed to remember that which
has formerly given us pleasure, and to find, in similar objects, some
renewal of that pleasure. It would have been just as logical, for
instance, and more truly benevolent, if the man who tended the plants
had cared also for the other plants mentioned as "sorely in want of
care," and which he seems to have left to perish.
We may often notice the growth of altruistic from egoistic as well as of
egoistic from altruistic motives, in ourselves; for retrogression as
well as progression in altruism is possible with the individual. If we
feel bitterly towards some human being, for instance, the best and
surest remedy is to perform some act of kindness towards him. We may
contemplate and carry out the deed with merely a sense of gratification
and egoistic elation at our own generosity, but we are more than likely
to experience some degree of change of feeling before we have finished.
On the other hand, our heart often seems to harden and fill with greater
animosity towards those we have injured, the longer we continue this
course of injurious action and the more positive the injury inflicted. A
certain degree of generosity must, it is true, already exist in order
that we may be able to show kindness to an enemy, just as hostility must
also be present in order that we may be able to commence a course of
injury or unkindness; but both kindly feeling and animosity increase
constantly with their exercise. We are never exactly the same after our
deeds that we are before them.
Says George Eliot: "It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our
wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we
could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the
same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over
blighted human lives."[165] And again: "The creature we help to save,
though only a half-reared linnet, bruised and lost by the wayside--how
we watch and fence it, and dote on its signs of recovery."[166]
Whatever the particular circumstances that led, in the particular line
of animal descent by which the species we distinctively term human
finally came into existence, to the extension of temporary to life-long
association, and whether this life-long association began only with man,
or earlier with his ape-like progenitors, certain it is that increase of
numbers must finally condition society. The internal, like the external
process, is a gradual one, an evolution; and we cannot, therefore,
suppose society as life-long association to have begun with the
existence of no altruistic feeling whatever. In so far, Darwin's
assertion that the social instinct led men to society contains a measure
of truth; but it is to be remembered that the social instinct at the
beginning of social life cannot have been the same with the social
instinct of present civilization, which is the product of long
development; pleasure in function, its ends, and objects, increases
_concomitantly with_ exercise. Darwin's statement is, hence, liable to
misconstruction. There is a similar truth in Rolph's criticism of
Spencer's theory that men adopted social life because they found it
advantageous, on the ground that men must first have had experience of
the advantages of association before they could have been aware of them.
But the experience which continually leads to a step in advance may not
be, at every point, for every step, the experience of the individual or
individuals taking the step; it is quite possible that some steps may be
taken from the observance of the experience of others; at least this is
possible if we suppose any degree of intelligence and reason in the
individuals taking the step. The introduction of the idea of a
calculation of advantages is, furthermore, exceedingly useful. For,
while the "social instinct," the desire for and pleasure in all the
various function connected with association with other beings, may be of
assistance in bringing about any advance in association, the selfish
instinct, already in existence before the evolution of any considerable
degree of altruistic impulse, may influence and induce the advance,
where the social instinct is not, alone, of sufficient strength. At the
beginning of social life, as at every later point of advancement,
motives are mixed, and selfishness may prepare the way for
unselfishness.
At any point of evolution, there must be, among contending species or
individuals, some who are stronger or who have, through some
circumstance, the advantage over the others; given even a moderate
number of individuals, and it is hardly possible that all should be
defeated and destroyed in any struggle, like the famous cats of
Kilkenny. This being the case, and change of organization being
continually conditioned by contact with new elements of environment,
advancement, evolution, becomes a necessity, no natural catastrophe
occurring to destroy all life. There is no mystery about evolution in
this sense. Advancement in society is still more comprehensible to us by
the fact of the element of reason involved in it; from the beginning of
life-association among human beings or their immediate progenitors, the
existence of some more intelligent individuals than the rest, who will
perceive the advantages of association, may be assumed. And thus at each
step, as the growing density of population continually renders
increasing cooeperation increasingly advantageous, we may suppose the
vanguard to be composed of the more intelligent and the more social.
Sympathy prompts not only to the conferring of pleasure, it prompts also
to the prevention of injurious conduct, on the part of others, towards
the being or beings with whom sympathy is felt. A conception of the
advantage of mutual aid may assist as a motive in this. The earliest
mutual aid was, to a great extent, one of cooeperation against enemies.
In one way and another, this mutual defence must have extended to the
compulsion of positive beneficial conduct, on the part of others,
towards the being or beings with whom sympathy was felt. Such compulsion
may be exerted by different tribes, or by different members of the same
tribe, on each other; the means of compulsion are revenges of different
sorts, benefit, assistance of some sort, being, on the other hand, often
the reward of ready compliance. This compulsion may be felt as greater
or less according to the degree of reluctance to perform any form of
action required under pain of the penalty. If the thoughts are occupied
with the possible reward, and not with the punishment, then no outer
compulsion is felt, but a choice of advantage is made. This choice again
may not be wholly one of selfish calculation; some altruistic feeling
may be involved. A form of action at first chosen with reluctance, and
merely because of the fear of punishment or revenge, may come to be
performed later without hesitation, and more under the hope of reward
than the fear of punishment; and this same form of action may come to be
performed finally with sympathy as the prominent feeling, the hope of
reward becoming more and more secondary. Each increase of sympathy,
again, reacts upon the environment as represented by other individuals,
and thus the relations and influence of men on each other become more
and more complicated. Any habit of cruelty or hostility which has been,
at former stages, united with prosperity may thus become, through the
action and reaction of increasing altruism, a disadvantage to the
individual member of any society; or it is also conceivable that a
formerly advantageous egoistic form of action may become disadvantageous
through the advent of some new influence from outside the particular
society in which it is practised. Father Phil, in Lover's story of
"Handy Andy," relates an anecdote of an engagement in Spain, in which
the dragoons of a regiment, retreating under hot fire, paused at the
crossing of a river to take up behind them some women of the
camp-followers, who had difficulty in crossing, and thereupon found
themselves followed by cheers, instead of shots, from their French foes.
I do not intend to intimate that the motive for the deed was
self-interest; but it is easy to conceive similar instances in which
humanity might become an advantage and be practised at first from
self-interest, not by individuals merely but by a whole tribe; this must
be frequently the case when less civilized peoples come in contact with
more civilized peoples. And this leads us to remark that habits of
sympathy and justice exercised within a people will be likely to
manifest themselves in relations with other peoples also, in degree as
the sympathy is real and the benevolence inward. But the attitudes of
different peoples towards each other remain long hostile, since the
partial surrender of tribal or national interests necessary to compact
often involves too great sacrifices to be acquiesced in at an early
stage of development. And the individual is necessarily influenced, to a
great extent, by the feelings of those among whom he is born, with
regard to the hostile nation. But this is retracing our analysis.
Altruism is thus increased directly by the perception and choice of
cooeperation as advantageous, by the spread of altruistic feeling and the
compulsion of the social environment, as well as by the higher means of
persuasion and affection, in which altruism itself affects the increase
of altruism; and it is also increased indirectly by the aid of natural
selection between individuals, families, neighborhoods, and groups of
all sorts, cooeperation becoming more and more advantageous with the
increased density of population.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that natural selection acts also with
regard to the egoistic or personal virtues; for these have regard,
primarily, to the preservation of the individual in the best condition
for labor and cheerfulness. It is evident that in this direction also
the moral must continually gain the advantage. Either the injurious is
perceived and avoided, or the individual failing to perceive and avoid
it suffers physical injury and deterioration, and, unless a different
course is adopted in time, brings at last destruction to himself or to
his stock. But our analysis goes further; for the egoistic virtues are
evidently not purely egoistic; and society will come with time to insist
on this fact, and to render these virtues still more advantageous and
their neglect still more disadvantageous; while the growth of the
altruistic feelings will infuse the individual with the desire to
perform his duty to others in this respect also. The purely egoistic
character of so-called personal virtues, for the assertion of which so
much has been written, is a myth. No man can make a sot of himself or
indeed injure himself in any way without reducing his power to benefit
society and harming those nearest to him. Self-preservation and the
preservation of one's own health may conflict with altruistic virtues at
times; that is to say, virtues both of which are altruistic, though the
altruistic character of one is more direct than the other, may conflict;
in which case, choice is necessary. And it is strange to note, at this
point, that just those systems which lay most stress on individual
welfare, that is, emphasize the fact that the preservation of individual
health and the development of individual capacity are advantageous to
society, are the very ones that also defend the freedom of the
individual to practise so-called personal vice. The two theories do not
well accord; surely, if the individual is of so much importance to
society, his vice cannot be without injurious results to it. Only when
egoistic care for health has become infused with the higher altruism,
does it become truly virtue; then care for self ceases to be the mere
means to isolated pleasure, and becomes the means to the happiness of
others where it was often, before, the means to their misery, and even
their destruction.
In the evolution of higher animal forms from lower, the lower do not
necessarily pass out of existence with the development of the higher; in
society, however, the contact is close and continuous, and the
competition unremitting; there is, therefore, some elimination, though a
very gradual one, of lower types. The lower forms may exist for a long
time beside the higher; in other words, society as a whole progresses
slowly on account of the immense complication of relations within it. We
find it including many grades of altruistic and egoistic virtue, and can
testify only to a progress that renders the extremes of vice and cruelty
less and less the rule and more and more the exception.
And this brings us to the further consideration of a point not long ago
touched upon, namely, the high degree of civilization attained by
certain ancient peoples. Not the whole race of man, it is evident,
advances together to higher grades of civilization, as not all
individuals or all lines of descent in the same society fall under the
same influences and advance at a like rate. At the present date, the
greater part of Africa as well as portions of other countries are
inhabited by rude and savage tribes, the rest of the world, not classed
as savage, representing very many different grades and phases of
progress. After the conquest of Greece by Rome and of Rome by the tribes
from the North, the higher degree of civilization of the conquered
nations was partly lost by them and partly acquired by their conquerors;
that is, nothing was really lost, but two different forces met and
partly neutralized each other; the resultant represented, in this case
as in all others, the complication, the algebraic sum, of the two. In
the essay before referred to, Dr. Petzoldt calls attention to the
extremely unique character of the productions of Inner-African tribes
before they have come in contact with white men, and cites Bastian's
testimony that even one short visit from a white man is often enough to
destroy the peculiarity of the type. "New tendencies are introduced, and
the stability is immediately diminished, though only to progress
gradually to a newer, higher form." The comparative sparsity of the
human race in ancient times rendered it possible for single isolated
peoples to attain to a high degree of culture while the greater part of
the earth was inhabited by the uncivilized; and the increase of the
species since that time, though necessitating wider contact and closer
relations, and so rendering the newer civilization necessarily a wider
one, has yet not been sufficient to make isolated savagery in lands not
reached by the spreading circle, impossible. The ancient civilization
was lost, but not lost in the sense that its force ever perished; it
found its full representation--but no more--in the result that arose
from blending with a lower grade. The same process is being repeated
wherever civilized man, on the borders of civilization, comes in contact
with savage or half-civilized man. The two races may dwell side by side,
separated from intimate association, but their contiguity is yet marked
by a certain amount of change on both sides,--a change the greater the
greater the degree of association and the greater the isolation of those
on the border-lands from the rest of the civilized world, and the longer
this state of things persists. We are here reminded particularly of
Fechner's formula of the process of evolution, in which the concepts of
isolation as favoring the steady advancement of the process on its own
peculiar lines, and of new contact as new disturbance from which issues
new development, are most prominent. If we regard especially the ethical
features of this contact at the borders, it may be remarked both that
savages gain gradually more humanity from contact with civilized
nations, and that white men, on the other hand, lose, in constant
contact with savages, some of the humanity which they have displayed in
the midst of their own nation. They grow used to sights of cruelty, much
of which it is impossible for them to prevent; they are roused to anger,
hatred, and retaliation by acts of deception, treachery, and cruelty,
and they find, moreover, that kindness is often mistaken for weakness by
the bloody and revengeful people with whom they have to do, who are
often used to respect only or chiefly the brute force which can compel
obedience. I do not intend here to represent the white man as the
incarnation of sympathy and humanity; even in the midst of society, as
we have already sufficiently noticed, his apparent altruism may be, to a
large degree, the outcome of selfish motives, natural tendency being
restrained through fear of punishment or hope of gain of some sort.
There are grades within societies as well as grades represented by
societies as wholes. But several things are to be taken into account in
the comparison of the white man with the savage under circumstances of
contact. In the first place, we have to remember that, while the white
man is, to a great extent, withdrawn from the control of the society to
which he belongs, secure from their judgment for the time being and with
the prospect, often, of probable security from it for all time, since
reports of his actions may never reach the ears of more civilized
societies, the individual savage is still restrained by whatever of law
and moral sentiment exists in his own tribe; his vengeance, whatever it
is, is to a great extent under the control of his chiefs. Again, the
power of the savage to inflict injury is not so great as that of the
white man, who has all the implements of advanced cooeperation at his
disposal. The mere love of power always presents a temptation, and
pleasure in demonstrating superiority is a common human emotion.
Furthermore, it must be considered that the opportunities for
selfishness afforded on the borders of civilization are likely to
attract, in the majority, just those men whose social ties and social
instinct are weakest, whose greed perceives here the opportunity of
unscrupulous gratification, and is drawn by it. And lastly, it is to be
noticed that not by any means all the individuals belonging to more
advanced societies who come in contact with savages use them with
inhumanity, or even retaliate on treachery and injury. The great
differences exhibited, under such circumstances, by persons whose
opportunities have been very similar is a strong argument in favor of
inherent, innate grades of altruism, and so of hereditary character. The
same is true of the fact that the Greeks and Romans did retain much of
their culture even in contact with lower grades of civilization, handing
it down, in a degree, to this day; and that their conquerors only in the
lapse of many generations pulled themselves up to this level, which was
attained, at last, rather in countries removed from direct contact with
it and so, we may argue, to a great extent, through their own natural
evolution. The general analysis of the amalgamation at the borders of
civilization still remains true in the long run, however individual
savages and individual white men may represent exceptions to it.
Mr. Stephen's analysis of the development of altruism from egoism, while
in the main true and one of the most minute analyses on this subject
that we possess, opens, through its ambiguity of terms, the way to
inaccuracy of thought and to errors of theory into which I am not at all
sure that the author does not himself fall at some points. Starting with
an implied definition of sympathy as actual "feeling with" other
sentient beings through the intellectual comprehension of their
emotions, and acknowledging that sympathy in this sense may not lead
directly to altruism, he uses the same word also, later in the analysis,
in the higher sense, and at some points appears to confound the two
meanings; so that, as there is a similar ambiguity in the use of the
word "idiot," or "moral idiot," in the same connection, his theory seems
to fall into the mistake of asserting the normal association of
intellectual comprehension with altruism. He writes:--
"It is not more true that to think of a fire is to revive the sensations
of warmth than it is true that to think of a man is to revive the
emotions and thoughts which we attribute to him. To think of him in any
other sense is to think of the mere doll or statue, the outside
framework, not of the organized mass of consciousness which determines
all the relations in which he is most deeply interesting to us." "The
primary sympathy is, of course, modified in a thousand ways--by the ease
or difficulty with which we can adopt his feelings; by the
attractiveness or repulsiveness of the feelings revealed; by the degree
in which circumstances force us into cooeperation or antagonism; and by
innumerable incidental associations which make it pleasant or painful to
share his feelings. _If by sympathy we mean this power of vicarious
emotion, it may give rise to antipathy, to hatred, rivalry, and
jealousy, and even to the diabolical perversion of pleasure in
another's pain._"[167] "The pain given by your pain may simply induce me
to shut my eyes. The Pharisee who passed by on the other side may have
disliked the sight of the wounded traveller as much as the good
Samaritan. Indeed, the sight of suffering often directs irritation
against the sufferer. Dives is often angry with Lazarus for exposing his
sores before a respectable mansion, and sometimes goes so far as to
think, illogically perhaps, that the beggar must have cultivated his
misery in order to irritate the nerves of his neighbors. To give the
order: 'Take away that damned Lazarus,' may be as natural an impulse as
to say: 'Give him the means of curing his ailments.'"[168] "To believe
in the existence of a sentient being is to believe that it has 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. Again, a material object has an interest only so far as it
is a condition of some kind of feeling, and, when the sympathies are not
concerned, of some feeling of my own, whether implying or not implying
any foretaste of the future. To take any interest in any material
object, except in this relation, is unreasonable, as it is unreasonable
to desire food which cannot nourish or fire which cannot warm. I want
something which has by hypothesis no relation to my wants. The same is
true of the sentient object so long, and only so long, as I do not take
its sentience into account. But to take the sentience into account is to
sympathize, or at least the sympathy is implied in the normal _or only
possible_ case. 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 have, therefore, representative
feelings. To believe in it is to feel for it, to have sympathies which
correspond to my representations, less vivid as the object is more
distant and further from the sphere of my possible influence, but still
real and therefore effective motives. Systematically to ignore these
relations, then, is to act as if I were an egoist in the extremest
sense, and held that there was 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 only ignore their
existence at the cost of losing all the intelligence which distinguishes
me from the lower animal."[169] A similar use of the word "idiot" occurs
in the following passage with regard to the relations of moral action to
conviction: "It is a simple 'objective' fact that a man acts rightly or
wrongly in a given case, and a fact which may be proved to him; and,
further, though the proof will be thrown away if he is a moral idiot,
that is, entirely without the capacities upon which morality is founded,
the proof is one which must always affect his character if we suppose
the truth to be assimilated, and not the verbal formula to be merely
learned by rote."[170] "_To learn really to appreciate the general
bearings of moral conduct is to learn to be moral in the normally
constituted man._" Here the author adds, however, "though we must always
make the condition that a certain aptitude of character exists."[171]
Again he writes: "But it remains to be admitted that there is apparently
such a thing as pleasure in the pain of others--pure malignity--which we
call 'devilish' _to mark that it is abnormal and significant of a
perverted nature_."[172] And in the same connection--where he is, at
first, seemingly intent on proving only the normal connection of pain
with the sight of suffering, admitting that this sympathetic pain may
lead to brutality instead of altruistic action towards the sufferer--he
says: "Sympathy is the natural and fundamental fact. Even the most
brutal of mankind are generally sympathetic so far as to feel rather
pain than pleasure at the sight of suffering. The scum of a civilized
population gathered to pick pockets on a race-course would be pained at
the sight of a child in danger of being run over or brutally assaulted
by a ruffian, and would be disposed to rescue it, or at least to cheer a
rescuer, unless their spontaneous emotion were overpowered by some
extrinsic sentiment."[173] And finally: "_The direct and normal case is
that in which sympathy leads to genuine altruism, or feeling in
accordance with that which it reflects_."[174]
The terms in these passages are thus evidently very loosely used, and
the charge above made is, I think, substantiated,--that the author
himself finally falls into the error following upon a confusion of the
various meanings, and comes to assert what he elsewhere distinctly
denies, namely, the normal connection of intellect and morality, of the
comprehension of suffering with that form of sympathy which issues in
altruistic action. The problem is an interesting one, and it may be well
for us to look into it a little further.
During the last few years a number of books have been written in which
the attempt has been made to prove the general physical, and especially
the cerebral, and so the intellectual inferiority of a large number of
criminals. There may be a difference of opinion as to the value of exact
weights and measures except in so far as they demonstrate an actual
nervous deformity of some sort; and it may be said that the cases
examined for distinctly cerebral defect are too few to admit of the
formation of any universal, definite, theory or law. But some degree of
importance must assuredly be attached, by the unprejudiced reader, to
the more purely psychological evidence obtained in many cases, as well
as to the evidence of the tendency to brain-disease often found in the
direct line of descent. Indeed, in the case of some of the photographs
issued with Lombroso's "L'Homme Criminel," not more than a glance is
needed to convince one that the possessors of such heads and faces
cannot be normal men and women. To this testimony from the
criminologists may be added that of many eminent specialists in mental
diseases, whose evidence goes to show the degeneration of the moral
sense in cases of brain-disease. Maudesley says, for instance, of moral
feeling: "Whoever is destitute of it is, to that extent, a defective
being; he marks the beginning of race-degeneracy; and if propitious
influence do not chance to check or to neutralize the morbid tendency,
his children will exhibit a further degree of degeneracy, and be actual
morbid varieties. Whether the particular outcome of the morbid strain
shall be vice, or madness, or crime, will depend much on the
circumstances of life." "When we make a scientific study of the
fundamental meaning of those deviations from the sound type which issue
in insanity and crime, by searching inquiry into the laws of their
genesis, it appears that these forms of human degeneracy do not lie so
far asunder as they are commonly supposed to do. Moreover, theory is
here confirmed by observation; for it has been pointed out by those who
have made criminals their study, that they oftentimes spring from
families in which insanity, epilepsy, or some allied neurosis exists,
that many of them are weak-minded, epileptic, or actually insane, and
that they are apt to die from diseases of the nervous system and from
tubercular diseases."[175] To the history proper of the Jukes, Dugdale
has appended a series of tables giving further information as to the
stock, environment, and present condition of some two hundred and
thirty-three criminals committed for various crimes, each of which
crimes heads a separate list. These lists are decidedly interesting,
particularly as affording us some considerable information with regard
to psychological characteristics and environment, under the headings:
"Neglected Children," "Orphans," "Habitual Criminals," "First
Offenders," "Reformable," "Hopeless," etc. From the table of percentages
we remark that, in the "Neurotic Stock," the highest percentage (40.47)
is reached in arson and the crimes against persons, or crimes of
impulse, as Dugdale terms them, while 23.03 is the percentage of
neurotic stock in the whole number of criminals examined. "This close
relationship between nervous disorders and crime," says Dugdale, "runs
parallel with the experience of England, where 'the ratio of insane to
sane criminals is thirty-four times as great as the ratio of lunatics to
the whole population of England, or, if we take half the population to
represent the adults which supply the convict prisons, we shall have the
criminal lunatics in excess in the high proportion of seventeen to
one.'" Dugdale further quotes from Dr. Bruce Thomson, surgeon to the
General Prison of Scotland, the following words: "On a close
acquaintance with criminals, of eighteen years' standing, I consider
that nine in ten are of inferior intellect, but that all are excessively
cunning." Dr. Thomson says also: "In all my experience, I have never
seen such an accumulation of morbid appearances as I witness in the
post-mortem examinations of the prisoners who die here. Scarcely one of
them can be said to die of one disease, for almost every organ of the
body is more or less diseased; and the wonder to me is that life could
have been supported in such a diseased frame."
But with regard to this last quotation, it may be remarked that,
although many modern students of crime tend to look upon the general
diseased condition of body among criminals as the cause of their
criminality, it is generally, as a matter of fact, a cumulative growth,
vicious acts appearing now as condition, now as result, in its increase.
Vice is directly connected with disease, and crime against others, even
where it does not itself directly involve vice, is still likely to be
connected with it, since the man who is immoral in one direction is not
likely to be restrained from immorality in what is ordinarily considered
a direction of lesser wrong; and the self-gratification of vice always
presents a temptation to the man of coarser fibre. Dugdale notices that
pauperism often appears in the younger members of a family where crime
appears in the elder branches, his explanation being that crime is a
sign of comparative vigor, pauperism of greater physical weakness.
We have found some connection between intellectual incapacity and moral
lack in the shape of crime, but the cases are extreme ones. The question
is not: Are the extremes of criminality connected with mental
incapacity? but, Is the power of intellectual comprehension, is
intelligence, always associated with sympathy and altruism? Is the
connection of these two general? Or, conversely: Is lack of sympathy and
altruism in general a sign of mental incapacity, of the power of
comprehension for another's suffering?
The individual may be supposed to be naturally endowed with a certain
basis of tendency, which, as cooerdinate with a nervous organization
that, as organization, is of definite nature, is also definite. I do not
intend, here or elsewhere, to lay especial stress on the physical, as
distinguished from the psychical; merely, it is convenient for
reference. The individual character and life must be the continual
progressive issue of this basis of tendency or capacity and the
developing and modifying factors of environment. Individuals will,
therefore, _but in very different degrees and manners_, reflect the
moral standard of the society as organization, the class, and the
family, to which they belong, the importance assumed by the class or
family relations being according to the closeness and duration of
association, and the natural aptitude of the individual for one or
another sort of influence. Aside from altruistic considerations, the
individual will find it to his advantage to conform to the standards of
these environments, at least in a considerable degree. The standards
may, however, conflict, so that there is also a conflict of advantages.
Moreover, circumstances may arise such that conformity to all or any of
these standards presents much greater disadvantage than advantage,
involving great sacrifice, which may reach even to personal destruction.
But while a single anti-social act to avert personal destruction may
involve greater advantage to the individual, as life represents an
advantage over death, and while such an act is more an advantage and
less a disadvantage as it involves less conflict with social standards
(if it is the theft of food, for instance, rather than murder), any
continued course of crime in so-called civilized society must be
attended with many risks to the evil-doer, and present gain may mean
future loss of a much higher degree. Deeds conflicting with general
social standards are punished by penalties which are larger as the
conflict is greater in the eye of the state. The individual who lays
himself liable to legal punishment or social ostracism is foolish as
well as, in very many cases, bad; of course, it is possible that his
conduct may rise above the moral standards as well as that it may fall
below them. But we are now considering cases where it is, by the
assumption, supposed to fall below them. It is easy to perceive, from
this standpoint, that great and persistent criminals are likely to be of
inferior intellect, as well as wanting in moral aptitude, although,
whatever reasoning capacity they possess being developed in the line of
their own interest in their accustomed occupation, they may appear to
the more moral, who are not practised in this direction, to possess a
high degree of cunning.
The honest man has generally a better chance than the habitual criminal,
however small his chance may be. Further, education of any sort, which
is also intellectual elevation, gives the individual better chances of
earning his own living honestly, and so renders the advantages on this
side greater, and also endows with the power of perceiving these
advantages. But these are only general truths, applying, again, to
extreme cases. There may be cases in which there seems, at least, to be
no choice left between crime and a life continually on the verge of
starvation; and though the crime means also continual risk, and higher
risk as the crime is greater and so, in general, more lucrative, the
advantage may still be reckoned by the individual as on its side. In
this case, the individual may discover, in the end, that his calculation
was mistaken; but the mistake may not be so great, the balance of
disadvantage on the side of conformity with social standards so
excessive, as to prove him below the average of intellect in his
mistaking. The wisest men make many mistakes in calculating the results
of their action. Again, the cleverer a man is, the greater is his power
to cope with the risk of detection and to avoid it. It may be objected
that the single individual cannot hope to compete continually with the
organized action of all society, and that the criminal must, at times,
submit to some degree of punishment, even if escaping its worst phases.
But if he feels no shame at the disgrace of the punishment, it may not
mean to him the greater disadvantage.
But here we come round to the altruistic and moral emotions, for shame
is present only where the individual has a desire to please, and is
pained at the disapproval of others; that is, shame implies and
requires, in the degree in which it exists, social and altruistic
capacity. Furthermore, when we come to examine the concept of
"advantage," we find that it is as relative as that of "end," and will
be judged according to the individual predilections; to the
non-sympathetic, shameless man it is an advantage to "get on" at
whatever cost to others; to the moral man no gain appears an advantage
at the expense of principle. And, as there are all degrees of altruism
in the bases of character of different individuals, so the advantage, in
any particular case, will lie at very different points according to the
individual mind reflecting on it. Only the general truths may be
asserted, that, even to the man of less than the average moral aptitude,
great punishment must appear a disadvantage, while even to the man of
considerable moral principle death for the sake of his convictions is a
thing to be hesitated at.
We may return to view the question in the light of the general facts of
social evolution. We found that only the general assertion could be
made, that the advantages of cooeperation, the disadvantages of strife
and discord, increase with the closer relations of men, and that the
adoption of cooeperation follows this line of advantage by individual
choice, and by the disadvantage under which the less social as the less
fit, labor, the latter tending gradually to disappear leaving the field
to the more social. Thus the whole progress is the result of the will of
the human being, as well as of the other forces of nature; it is only as
the individual chooses, that progress is possible. But lower types
survive long beside the more progressive, higher ones. The individual is
not so reasonable that he always perceives his own more enduring
advantage, or always chooses it even when he perceives it; he may choose
momentary gratification at the acknowledged risk, and even with the
certainty, of great future loss. Nor can it be averred that the
individual always suffers seriously from action at variance with even
the average standard; simply, the line of survival gradually changes in
favor of altruism, so that escape is less frequent and less probable;
and the lines of greatest deviation from the altruism demanded at any
period by the line of advance tend to disappear; but the altruism
demanded by any line of advance is not, up to the present time, an
absolute altruism, nor do all deviations from it result in destruction
to the individual even in extreme cases. The fact of the growing
disadvantage of selfishness, and its destructive tendency, remains,
nevertheless. It may be expressed in another form in the statement that
power of all sorts is increased by civilization, and where a cooerdinate
increase of self-restraint does not accompany the increased power, it
must lead to destruction, either in the case of the individual, or if
not so abruptly, then in the case of his descendants. The closer contact
of human beings and increased knowledge and cooeperation mean growing
opportunity of good or evil, to self and others. The destructive forces
lie as well in the workings of social organization, in the will of man,
as in nature outside man. Legal justice, public opinion, and the opinion
of the smaller circle of personal friends and acquaintances, all have
their part. Any degree of social instinct developed in the course of
social evolution only assists in rendering social punishments of all
sorts the more felt; and thus each increment of advance assists in
further advance. Men who persist in action antagonistic to social
demands, action which they themselves acknowledge to be immoral, may yet
feel the condemnation of society so much, that, even while yet
persisting, they destroy their vitality by alcoholism or other excesses
to drown regret and remorse; habit chains them, in many cases, where the
condemnation of others reaches them only late. But the whole process of
social evolution is one of very gradual assimilation, and neither in the
world as a whole, in the nation or race, or in the tribe, clan, family,
locality, or class, is it one of equal advance on all sides. The
cooeperation adopted may be, at different points, that of individuals
against individuals, of tribes against tribes, of nations against
nations, or of classes against classes.
From still another point of view, we may look upon the evolution of man
as an intellectual as well as a moral one. We may count the continual
gain of new experience, and the variation of thought, feeling, and will
in accordance with knowledge, as adjustment to new elements of the
environment, and so, as organic progress. Since, indeed, knowledge and
the application of knowledge to more and more distant and more and more
complex and general ends is just what we designate as higher reason in
man as compared with other animal species, we cannot logically regard
the further progress of this same sort in the human species itself as
other than an increase of reason. Here, again, it is strange that an
exact line of division between the human species and the rest of life
should so often be drawn; that, although we acknowledge the necessity of
an intellectual evolution having taken place from the lower species up
to man, and recognize this intellectual evolution as the concomitant of
wider adaptation, and although we recognize also man's continuing
adaptation or experience as cooerdinate with progress in knowledge, we
yet should be able to regard the human race as stationary as far as
reason, intellect, is concerned. Evolution no more stands still in man
than it did before his "advent" (if we may still use a word denoting a
definite beginning, of the evolution of a species). And the reality of
an intellectual evolution at the same time with the moral evolution
being acknowledged, it follows that the two must to some extent
coincide.[176] But we have again to remember that the evolution is not
on exactly the same lines in all individuals or parts of society, that
not all lines of descent may be called also those of progress. Sympathy
is a progressive term; there are numberless degrees of it represented by
the different individuals who form society, at their different periods
of development and in their different moods. Nor can we distinguish
between natural sympathy and "extrinsic sentiment" which may interfere
with it; since feelings are no separate entities, all sentiment that
bears on a subject is intrinsic, and the final sympathy or
non-sympathetic feeling is a fusion and not a mere mixture of the
various emotions which go to make it. We cannot assert that "genuine
altruism" is the normal case, even of the present period of social
development, and certainly not when we are considering morality as an
evolution. We may hope that the standard of future generations will come
to be as much superior to our present standard as that standard is
superior to the savage standard; but it is scarcely to be expected that
the men of that better time, although they may look back at this age
with as much horror as that with which we regard the savage children
roasting their dog for sport, will pronounce it one of general idiocy or
even of "moral idiocy." The virtue of Stephen's analysis lies in the
especial notice it takes of the different degrees and phases of that
which we term "sympathy"; its fault lies in not sufficiently
distinguishing between these phases, by definition, throughout the
argument; and this fault leads, as we have seen, to a final confusion of
the different meanings, the substitution of the one for the other, and
so the proving of the higher meaning by the lower. It is scarcely true,
even in civilized society, that a comprehension of the feelings of
others is naturally associated with a "feeling with" them, even in the
lower sense; and it is certainly not true that it is naturally
associated with genuine altruism.
The assertion that, in ignoring the sentience of living beings in
thought about them, a man is ignoring a thing of importance to himself,
is cooerdinate with the assertion that, in so doing, he is ignoring "an
essential part of the world as interesting" to him; for that which
appears of importance to a man is that which interests him; and it is
true that interest and attention are cooerdinate. But one thing may
appear to one man important, another to another. We generally consider a
thing in the relations and phases which interest us, but not all its
relations or phases always interest us. We do not follow out all the
possible lines of thought connected with a thing, we do not regard it in
all its aspects every time we think about it; we think more or less by
symbols or parts; and Stephen says that we feel by symbols also.[177] It
is by no means true of all men, or true of any man at all times, that
others are most deeply interesting to him in their relations of thought
and feeling; there are many cases where they would be quite as
interesting if they were mere automata, provided only that they could be
depended on to perform the same actions. And it is perfectly possible to
regard them in the light of their actions and the significance of these
for us, leaving quite out of account the psychical meaning of the
actions, and this also without at all "losing all the intelligence which
distinguishes one from the lower animal." Nor is sympathy cooerdinate
with interest in the thoughts and emotions of others; revenge is very
normal, yet it rejoices in just the fact that the living being can be
made to suffer.
The irritation noticed by Stephen, as sometimes directed against others
whose suffering is a source of pain, is of especial interest as bearing
on the habit of some animals--wild cattle, for instance--of setting with
fury on a wounded comrade, and putting him to a violent death. A recent
writer has attempted to explain this habit as a frantic and
unintelligent endeavor to render some assistance to a suffering friend;
but the explanation seems improbable, especially as we find a
corresponding impulse to cruelty even in human society of a higher type.
In the action of the animal, there is the possibility and even the
probability of still another impulse--that excitement and exhilaration
which seems to possess many species at the sight and smell of blood, and
which finds its counterpart in the peculiar pleasure that many men of
coarser sensibilities derive from bull-fights, prize-fights,
cock-fights, etc., and that doubtless comes down to us from a time when
the struggle for existence was continually a bloody one. Just how the
two instincts may be related in the animal, it is difficult, from a
human standpoint, to say.
Our analysis has hitherto omitted all definition of morality and
conscience. The words should properly, for some reasons, have been
defined before this. But any definition must have assumed that which
could logically be asserted only at the end of the preceding
considerations. The definitions are involved in these considerations. It
is evident that morality, as we ordinarily define it, has a very
intimate connection with the relations of individuals to each other; and
though we may conceive of a morality of the individual passing an entire
existence in solitude on a desert island devoid of animal-life, we
become aware, when we reflect on the condition of such an imaginary
personage, that many of the ordinary grounds of moral action, and moral
judgment of action, are wanting in his case. Such a person cannot, by
our assumption, beget others who may inherit his psychical and physical
qualities, and cannot injure man or beast directly or indirectly. He has
only his own welfare to consider, and if he chooses rather an animal
indulgence in such pleasures as may be within his reach, we may possibly
disapprove of his conduct, but we cannot find especial grounds for
asserting that he has not a right to his choice. It may be said that
this case is only imaginary, and that, in all actual cases of such
isolation there is no certainty that the individual may not, at some
future time, come in contact with other living animals or with human
beings. But this being admitted, we immediately come back again to the
conception of morality as dependent upon our relations to others. In
spite of all that has been said in favor of egoistic morality, of duties
to self as the source and reason of morality, it becomes evident that
altruism is a most important element of even that which we term egoistic
or personal morality. In fact, we find difficulty in distinguishing, on
a higher plane, between the duties of egoism and those of altruism; in
both we have to consider others as well as ourselves. And we begin to
suspect that we are making a mistake in separating, in a definition,
things which must be indissolubly united in actual practice; and we
surmise that such a mistake may lie at the root of the many
disagreements as to whether the preference is to be given to egoism or
to altruism in Ethics. In all evolution, the results of former
adaptation are not lost in new; merely the old assumes a higher form. So
egoism is not lost in altruism, but assumes a higher form; the care for
self becomes identical, according to the degree of altruism, with the
care for others. This fact has been utilized for the assertion that all
altruism is merely egoism. The argument commits the fallacy of using the
word "egoism" in two senses, the one of which, the higher sense, is used
to prove the other. We need to remember that the fact of development
implies degrees, and that neither egoism nor altruism is an absolute
term. A certain care of self, physically and mentally, is necessary to
cheerfulness, health, sympathy, and the due performance of labor and
kindnesses; just as, conversely, in society, the health and happiness of
the individual are dependent upon the aid of others. The antagonistic
character of the two principles is gradually modified in evolution and
disappears altogether in some cases of action; in the contemplation of
the ideal, it vanishes completely. Care for self gains a new
significance in the light of love or affection for any other being, and
in the action and reaction of character in human society, this newer
significance gradually spreads, leavening the whole of mankind. Our
analysis is unable to trace its workings and significance in all the
complicated relations of men. In like manner it is difficult to decide,
in any particular case, what the exact course is, which, in view of the
far-reaching results of an act through the action and reaction of these
relations, is the right one. The moral decision must be reached through
a consideration which should be nearer the ideal, the nearer it comes to
a consideration of all results, a due allowance being made for the
uncertainty of distant results. This uncertainty must, other things
being equal, diminish the influence of considerations of the far future
on the decision, and should properly do so; although relative importance
may, again, render the mere possibility of some one result a sufficient
reason for choosing or abstaining from an act in the face of all other
certainties and probabilities. Again, the power of calculating distant
results is increased with the growth of knowledge, and man comes, thus,
to obtain greater and greater power to shape the world about him and
mould his own life to the attainment of his ends. With this power
responsibility is also increased; the adult thief who rears children to
theft bears the chief responsibility in the beginning of their career,
and a very large share of it later on; the experienced man of the world,
who understands whither he is tending, is much more responsible than the
ignorant girl whom he seduces.
The highest morality demands, therefore, careful judgment. The factors
to be considered are the complicated relations of men in the society of
which the judge and actor himself is a member; morality may thus be
identified with justice in the highest sense of the word. The decision
is always a difficult one on account of the great complexity of the
factors concerned; this every man perceives who endeavors, with
unbiassed mind, to discover exactly what the most moral course is in any
particular case. Some one course may be evidently immoral; but that does
not necessarily decide what the moral course is, for there may be very
many courses open to choice, or there may be at least more than one
other as alternative to the manifestly immoral one. Moreover, the
necessity for action forbids that we spend all our time in reflection
and choice. Moral responsibility demands, however, that we never cease
from the endeavor to discover where justice lies.
A certain constancy in the constitution of society, and the necessity
for constancy or consistency in the action of the individual, give rise
to certain general rules of conduct that develop and change somewhat as
society changes; special rules of conduct which supplement these general
rules change constantly. In the societies of a primitive sort, held
together by only the loosest of bonds, personal retaliation is in vogue
and is considered moral. Revenge is a duty. In societies of a higher
sort retaliation is taken from the hands of the individual in all
matters of importance, at least as far as the revenge consists in
definite action, the motive of which can be demonstrated. The Englishman
may still knock down the man who insults him, but he may not avenge a
murder. Not only the negative morality of abstinence from violence is
demanded of the citizen of a so-called civilized society, a certain
reliability in the relations of cooeperation is also necessary for the
general welfare, and thus honesty comes to be encouraged and dishonesty
to be discouraged by legal punishment and social contempt. Dishonesty in
word is not so often punished directly by law as dishonesty of act, but
there are many cases where it is impossible to distinguish between the
two, and other cases where the lie is directly punishable because of the
consequences which it involves. Beyond this, society begins early to
discourage lying in some sort, though the love of and respect for truth
obviously grows with social development. Cooerdinately with the
development of cooeperation and mutual dependence, constancy in all the
multifarious directions and complex relations of that cooeperation and
dependence, becomes more and more desirable.
But constancy is not to be secured as an outward fact except as it
becomes a part of the inward character of men, a constant habit. The man
who lies occasionally is in at least some danger of developing a habit
in the direction of lying, as he is also in danger of destroying the
confidence of others if they discover that he sometimes lies; for they
have no means of knowing to exactly what extent untruthfulness is, or is
becoming, a habit in his case, or in what instances it may manifest
itself, in what not. Moreover, the distrust so engendered may lead to
anticipatory deception on their side, and so the circle of distrust and
untruthfulness spreads until it is met somewhere by determined truth
that demands truth in return. Thus, in spite of all that is said in
favor of the occasional lie, we instinctively feel the danger of it,
though we may not be able, until after much consideration, to assign
the exact reason for our feeling. We may admit that there are occasions
when the lie may be justifiable; but we feel that these occasions must,
then, be very exceptional. In general, it is desirable to discipline
ourselves to as close an approach to the truth as possible. If I lie in
a dozen instances, in what I consider a good cause, I am very likely to
lie again when the temptation of some merely personal gain presents
itself. The habit of truth or falsehood is, further than this, one of
the most subtle and intricate relations in our character: nothing is
more difficult than the facing of the exact truth with regard to
ourselves; cowardice and self-deception with regard to our own traits
and motives are very common, and only the most earnest and constant
effort can enable us to gain that moral courage that is the first
requisite of self-knowledge and so self-control. Any weakening of the
will in the contrary direction is dangerous. Truth is not an easy thing;
it is as difficult as justice; in fact, that which is justice in action
and the judgment which leads to action, is truth in the premises of
which the judgment is the issue. We have most of us known persons who
had so accustomed themselves to lying that they seemed no longer able to
distinguish between truth and falsehood, facts and mere impressions.
Certainly where matters of high importance which deeply concern the
public welfare are at stake, we cannot admit falsehood to be desirable
for the sake of any personal gain; and even though we may find excuses
for the failure of human courage in the face of mortal danger, there are
those of us who will still continue to think a Bruno's defiance of death
for the sake of his conviction the nobler and better choice. I have
heard it argued that this philosopher might have contributed more to the
world through a continuation of his life than he did through his death.
But surely it was one of the highest services that he could do mankind
to show a superstitious and dogmatic age that high moral purpose and
steadfastness were not necessarily associated with this or that
religious dogma. His death drew the attention of thoughtful and good men
as nothing else could have drawn it. But beyond this consideration, and
even leaving out of account the desirability of the habit of truth and
the necessity of its action in the single instance, it is doubtful
whether there is any other benefit we can confer on our fellow-men so
great as just the assurance that they can rely on us. The bitter cry of
human nature everywhere repeats the faithlessness of those on whom
trust has been staked; and the rescue of many a man from despair and
waste of life has been through the discovery of some one soul whose
truth and constancy were steadfast and unchangeable. Belief in others is
belief in our own possibilities; and distrust of others is distrust of
self, at least for the most thoughtful and introspective men. The
examples of such men as Socrates and Bruno stand to the world as pledges
of the power of faithfulness in humanity. They are the rocks on which
pessimism must shatter, and the betrayed and sorrowful may build their
faith. This is, I believe, the secret of our veneration for such men as
these, who died, not in an ecstasy of religious emotion or under the
hope of especial glory as a reward for martyrdom, but faithful to a calm
conviction, and sustained only by the love of truth and their
fellow-men.
And this brings us to a consideration of the sacrifice of the
individual. The cases may be few where the highest standard can demand
of a man such entire and final sacrifice as the instances we have just
noted, even though it may look upon this sacrifice as the highest. But
it is evident that some degree of self-sacrifice is often necessary to
the welfare of society, and however important we may consider the
welfare of the individual, it cannot be regarded as more important than
the welfare of the whole of society as an aggregate of many individuals,
or even as more important than the welfare of a large number of other
individuals, a considerable portion of society. The legitimate degree of
sacrifice, where interests conflict and choice is necessary between the
sacrifice of the single individual and the sacrifice of many, is a
question that can be decided only according to the particular
circumstances of the case. Everything depends upon the number of
individuals on both sides, whose interests conflict, on the nature of
the sacrifices necessary, and the results of these sacrifices to the
society as a whole, as well as, in some cases, on the character of the
individuals concerned. It is often denied that the nature of the
individuals whose interests conflict, between whom choice must be made,
can ever affect that choice if it is made under principles of justice.
And in general, doubtless, there is danger of injustice in distinctions
between individuals; but it is scarcely to be doubted that, if it were
necessary to choose between the life of a great philanthropist and that
of a persistent and hardened criminal, if, for instance, both were
drowning and it were possible to save only one, the choice of most
would fall, and fall rightly, on the philanthropist. The fact that moral
choice must take different directions under different circumstances is
sometimes construed into an argument against any fixity of moral
commandments, an argument for a narrow expediency. It certainly
establishes the rule that obedience to any rule of action should never
be blind. Nevertheless, if our preceding considerations be correct, the
uniformities in social relations admit of the establishment of certain
general rules which the moral man will follow under most circumstances.
We come finally to the definition of conscience. In humanity as a whole,
and in the single societies of which it is composed, a certain moral
evolution may be perceived which we have found reasons for believing to
be internal as well as external, a matter of heredity as well as of
instruction. In this internal sense, conscience, as innate capacity, or
tendency, may be said to be an instinct. We may not be able to explain
how the inheritance takes place in this case any more than we are able
to explain how it is possible that the chicken just from the shell may
pick at his food without instruction, and just what psychical process,
if any, accompanies the first performance of the act; or to explain how
it is that the sexual instinct appears in later life as an inheritance
of species, and why it acts uniformly. We can only say that, the proper
conditions of stimulation (which are always necessary in the case of any
instinct) being present, the action takes place. We are unable to
analyze the earliest appearance of sympathy, benevolence, and the sense
of obligation, in our individual experience, the power of self-analysis
appearing much later in life. That which, when we become capable of
reflection, we term conscience, consists in pleasure in forms of action
furthering the welfare of society--forms gradually moulded to habit with
the development of social relations,--and in a corresponding pain at the
realization of having failed of such action; the knowledge of the
demand, by society as a whole or by a part of society, of action in
accord with the general welfare, and the sense of the justice of this
demand, constituting the feeling of obligation and duty. This feeling is
early nourished in the family, the obligation we acknowledge being
towards our parents first and foremost. We have found motives to be
often of a mixed character; and this is often also the case with
remorse, the pain we experience at having failed in our duty. It may
contain an egoistic element of regret or dread at having rendered
ourselves liable to punishment or loss of some sort.
Our whole analysis of the course by which conscience is developed tends
to show the truth of that which Darwin claimed, namely, that the moral
instinct is a development and organization of many special instincts.
But there are those who claim conscience to be a special sense, and who
generally mean much more than merely that it is, at present, an
organization of subordinate instincts. A dim analogy of the special
sense organs generally has part in their conception, and religious
reference is often made to "the original constitution of man." But
evolution knows nothing of an original constitution of man; it knows
only of a gradual development of the human. And it must be remembered
that, in evolution, that may become inherent which was not so before.
Any theory which regards even an organization of special instincts as a
special sense may, moreover, be objected to on the same grounds on which
the old idea of special faculties of thought, feeling, and will was
criticized. The old argument, used to prop the belief in conscience as
an original, higher gift, and so, in the original creation of fixed
species,--the argument that the same fundamental rules of moral conduct
are to be found in all societies,--has already been answered in the
demonstration that uniformities of human nature and necessary
similarities in all social constitution render the fundamental rules of
forbearance, aid, honesty, and truth necessary to all societies alike;
while our analysis of the course of development by which social
organization grows more and more complex, shows the necessity as well as
the reality of progress in outward and inward observance of these rules.
Du Prel argues that even life on any of the heavenly bodies, supposing
such to exist, must have some points of resemblance to our own, although
the differences due to different planetary conditions may be great; but
resemblances must assuredly be considerable where there is a common
basis of species.
The Utilitarians are doubtless right in asserting that all rules of
morality may be traced to utility. However, there is considerable
ambiguity about the word "utility." Mr. Spencer's earlier objections to
Utilitarianism, given in "Social Statics,"--namely, that we cannot make
the greatest good of the greatest number our object because it is
impossible to perceive, without omniscience, where the greatest good
lies, and because the standard of utility is a changing one, cannot be
regarded as apposite, for we might as well say that a man cannot
endeavor to secure his own health, or that it is not well for him to do
so, because he does not possess a knowledge of all the intricate
workings of the organs of his body and so may make mistakes, or that he
cannot seek it to-day because the conditions necessary to secure it will
have changed by to-morrow; but Mr. Spencer's later objections to
Utilitarianism touch an important truth. He says, for instance, in his
"Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals": "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." Stephen has another
pertinent criticism of Utilitarianism, namely that the utilitarian, in
his anxiety to have his feet on solid earth, and to assign definite and
tangible grounds for every conclusion, is likely to favor the prosaic
rather than the poetical, and to leave out of account, or rank as of
little importance, finer sorts of pleasure.[178] The utilitarian is, in
fact, liable to fall into a similar error to that already noticed on the
part of those who claim that egoism is the foundation of all morality,
present as past. While accepting the theory of evolution, the
utilitarian fails to perceive, in many cases, that this lends to his
terms a progressive and increasingly complex meaning. The error has its
source, doubtless, in the fact that the utilitarian school represents a
recoil from the older, superstitious Intuitionalism, which not only
defended a doctrine of conscience as a sort of supernatural or
half-supernatural instinct, on a plane above ordinary instinct, but,
relying upon it as of such character, practically denied to reason any
authority in matters of morality. In the strong reaction from these
ideas, and under the fear of ceding any ground of advantage to the
enemy, Utilitarianism has gone to an equally inadmissible extreme of
disregarding "mere impulses" of sympathy, and has tended to reject all
conceptions of morality where it was not possible to unravel, beyond the
criticism of opponents, the intricate web of social conditions. It is
for this reason also that Utilitarianism is often egoistic; in the
endeavor to analyze back to tangible grounds of action, it was much
easier to adopt the evidently original basis of sympathy and
altruism--that is, egoism--as the present basis also, than to trace out
later developments in the many-sided organization of society. In
rejecting instinct, it was but consistent and natural to overlook also
the significance of habit in matters of morality; and thus the poet, the
moral enthusiast, the martyr, and the rigid adherent of truth, came to
be looked at askance. I do not mean to aver that all Utilitarianism has
fallen into these errors, though the tendency is distinctly in this
direction; neither the connection of a theory of utility with a
disregard of the finer sorts of happiness, and the more distant and
complex workings of social forces, nor the connection of a theory of
moral instinct with superstition, is a necessary one.
A re-reaction against this bald Utilitarianism has set in; but some of
the forms which it takes on can no more be indorsed by the consistent
evolutionist than can the system from which it is a revolt. When
Sidgwick defends Intuitionalism with the argument that the rightness of
some kinds of action is known without consideration of ulterior
consequences, we may answer that it is true that tradition furnishes us
with many rules that we may follow without consideration of the
consequences of our acts, but that it is very doubtful whether we act
with the highest degree of morality in so doing. As to the "knowing" of
the rightness of the acts, this is surely a matter of judgment, must,
therefore, involve the considerations of consequences in some form,
though the course of reasoning followed to the attainment of what is
often termed "knowledge" in this sense may not be elaborate, and may,
indeed, go no farther than a reflection on the approval and disapproval
of society.
The terms "higher" and "lower" have been used in our previous
considerations with regard to pleasures. The legitimacy of their use in
this connection has often been questioned. From an evolutional
standpoint, however, either they are legitimate here, or else objection
may be made, on similar grounds, to their application to man as
distinguished from the brutes or even from the original protoplasmic
cell with which evolution began. The later developments of the desires,
the newer social ends, are as much higher as the human species is higher
than the species from which it has been evolved through continued
adaptation. As, in the attainment of altruism, egoism is not lost in
the sense that the individual no longer seeks that which is most
pleasurable to him, but simply reaches a higher plane, so the
fundamental animal desires and instincts still move us, but in a quite
different form, being closely interwoven, in their later development,
with all the ideals and aspirations with which social life has supplied
us. The advocates of a "return to nature" make, therefore, a fundamental
mistake in theory. Human development is also natural. The same mistake
is made when we are told that we must be animals in practice because we
are animals by nature, or that we must "copy nature" because we are a
part of it. The former assertion ordinarily commits the fallacy of using
the word "animal" in two senses. The latter assertion involves the
fallacy of first making man a part of the nature, which he is to copy,
in order, then, to prove that he must regard himself as something
outside nature and must, therefore, slavishly follow. But if man is
himself a part of the nature he must copy, one may question why he may
not simply copy himself rather than any other part; for obviously he is
unable to copy all parts, there being many antagonisms in nature. I have
heard the argument used in defence of cruelty to animals; nature is
cruel, therefore man must be cruel. But as a matter of fact, there is no
more reason why man should copy any other part of nature, than there is
reason why the horse should imitate the habits of the hog, or
turtle-doves take example by the tiger. Necessity may sometime compel a
choice between two cruelties, to which there is no third alternative;
but this is a different argument; let us say, in this case, that we are
so compelled (if, indeed, there is no other alternative; for this
argument, like the other, is often used as a convenient excuse for mere
selfishness, where there are alternatives); let us not employ a wholly
fallacious and misleading argument which opens the way to the free
exercise of selfish disposition.
Objections are often made to theories of the development of higher moral
qualities from egoism, on the ground that such a derivation is degrading
to that which is best in man. Some color is lent to this view by
arguments like that just noticed. But we may question whether facts can
be logically chosen or rejected according to their agreeableness, or
even their moral utility, in any case. And, again, some of us may fail
to discover any degradation in this theory of evolution. The flower may
grow from carrion, but we do not find it the less beautiful, the less
pleasing to our various senses. And we should have exactly as good
reason to regard the carrion as elevated by its office as to regard the
flower as degraded by the source of its life. As a matter of fact, we
merely find the flower pleasing and the carrion abhorrent. We are used
to this particular connection of the pleasing with the abhorrent, and
accept it as we accept much that may be to us disagreeable in our own
physical organization; but we have not yet accustomed ourselves to the
ideas of mental and moral evolution, and our recoil from them is an
illustration of the displeasing character of the wholly New. The same
argument of degradation was at first brought forward also against the
theory of an evolution of the human form from that of lower species, and
of the "purely intellectual faculties" from the animal mind.
The question as to whether struggle is an essential element of virtue
has been so thoroughly answered by Gizycki, Stephen, and others, that it
would be superfluous to say much about it here; however, our analysis
would not be complete without some consideration of it. "The man is the
strongest," writes Stephen, "who can lift the heaviest weight or who can
lift a given weight with the greatest ease. But (and it is a proof of
the loose argument which has often been accepted in ethical disputes)
the two cases have sometimes been confounded. It would plainly be absurd
to say, 'The man is strongest who lifts the greatest weight, therefore
the man who makes the greatest effort; therefore the man who makes the
greatest struggle to lift a given weight.' But it has occasionally been
said that a man is most virtuous who resists the greatest temptation;
therefore the man who has the greatest struggle; therefore the man who
has the greatest difficulty in resisting a given temptation. Though the
fallacy does not occur in this bare form, it is not infrequently implied
in the assumption that the effort, taken absolutely, is the measure of
merit.... We are thus led to excuse a man for the very qualities which
make him wicked. True, he committed a murder, but he was so spiteful
that he could not help it; or he was exceedingly kind, but he is so
good-natured that it cost him no effort."[179]
The difficulty lies in the fact that the struggle arising in any
particular case may result from any one of several general conditions of
character, between which it is often difficult to distinguish. An
absence of struggle may mean simply a general weakness of character
which makes a man ready to yield to any and almost all momentary
influences, good or evil; the agreement with another's argument may
signify absence of the power to reason for oneself; but, on the other
hand, it may mean the highest intellectual power of unbiassed judgment;
the act that follows such agreement as its result may mean will-power,
or it may mean vacillating weakness that, if led by a good influence at
the present moment, will be as easily or nearly as easily swayed by an
evil one, the next. We are all acquainted with persons who invariably
agree with all sides, and shilly-shally in a corresponding manner in
their action, accomplishing little or no positive good in any direction,
though often positive evil. For the reason of this frequent weakness of
character in what we call the "good-natured" person, the term
"good-natured" has come to have a certain idea of mental and moral
inferiority connected with it. In a similar manner, some men who are
generally called "good" are swayed to a greater extent by tradition and
lack of courage to act for themselves than by strong desire to know and
do the right, and thus, very unfortunately, the excellent word "good"
even comes to be looked upon with a certain degree of disdain. On the
other hand, a man may find much difficulty in doing right in a certain
instance, because of the strength of emotions that would be, under
ordinary circumstances, morally desirable and are, in themselves,
admirable even in the moment of his temptation, although a yielding to
this temptation would, nevertheless, involve great wrong. No one could
blame the agony and struggle of the switchman who, in the moment when he
is about to rescue a passenger-train from imminent collision by
switching it to another track, suddenly perceives his baby-girl seated
upon the rails. Strong and ennobling love between man and woman may
involve, under certain conditions, temptation and struggle; even the
best of our impulses may not always be followed, if we desire to act
morally. Few, if any persons could refuse admiration and respect to the
love between Phillip Tredennis and Mrs. Amory in Mrs. Burnett's "Through
one Administration." But not all strong feeling is of an admirable
nature; the revengefulness of the murderer, the vicious lust of a Joseph
Phillippe, the impatience of the constitutionally belligerent man, are
not to be praised, but condemned. Stephen's argument, therefore, that
struggle is adjudged an element of virtuous character in many cases
because its absence would show "a defect in some faculty of enjoyment,"
includes too much; for Jack the Ripper, and others who especially
delight in crime, possess faculties of enjoyment the entire absence of
which in other men we do not look upon as a defect.[180] Stephen
restates his position in another form, saying that "If a man resists any
inducement because it has no charms for him, his act does not prove
virtue unless the inducement be such as to appeal only to the wicked."
It is only because, incidentally, those qualities moulded in human
society, and therefore fundamentally good, may come into conflict with
each other, that we fall into the habit of connecting the idea of
struggle with morality; in face of the fact that readier response to
moral stimulus must constitute all moral advancement.
And these reflections lead us to remark on the common fallacy that
strength of emotion means necessarily a lack of the moral direction of
emotion, and that conversely moral self-direction argues weakness of
emotional capacity. The direction of emotion is changed with evolution,
as we have seen, but this does not mean that emotion is lessened in
force. In the man of highest morality, the emotions are merely moulded
to a greater harmony with social needs, a harmony that is not weakness
but strength, not mere narrow reaction upon momentary impulse or
one-sided sympathy with a few to the exclusion of the many, but, in
contrast to this lower impulsiveness, an all-sidedness that is the
result of reflection and choice. I say this all-sidedness is "the
result" of reflection; for I do not mean to intimate that the moral man
is less impulsive than the immoral man, or that he is obliged to
consider long before every act. Merely his impulsiveness is of a higher
sort; in it both racial and individual adjustments to social needs find
expression; and reason always stands, figuratively speaking, in the
background, ready to suppress the spontaneity where the conditions are
such that it ceases to be moral. It has been part of our whole analysis
to show that reason and instinct, thought and feeling, are by no means
antagonistic. Simply, feeling may take one direction in one man, another
in another; in the criminal, it is developed in the direction of
anti-social acts; in the profligate, it takes the same direction, but in
a less degree; the original savage is stronger in him than in the moral
man, who belongs to a later and higher type, and finds his pleasure in
acts in accordance with the welfare of his fellow-men and fellow-women.
As the human being is a higher development than other species because he
is adapted to a wider circle of nature, so just as truly the moral man
is a higher human development, because function is, in him, adjusted to
a wider circle of conditions--to complex social requirements which
represent the happiness of his fellow-men. Altruism is not, because a
later development, "artificial," as Barratt calls it, any more than man
is artificial in comparison with the ape, or the ape is artificial in
comparison with original protoplasm. Nor can virtue consist, as Barratt
conceives, in a yielding to all emotions,[181] as long as man has not
yet attained the highest summit of morality where all emotions follow
moral directions, without conflicts and without constraint. But neither
can morality be distinguished as "a constraining power opposed to
instinct and emotion in general,"[182] as Stephen at one point defines
it. Struggle and constraint are not necessarily elements of moral
action; kind and moral action often follows upon impulse with no effort
whatever; and, on the other hand, the basest characters may know
struggle of an extreme nature when the directions of self-interest
conflict.
We have already noticed the origin of punishment in revenge, which is
the outcome of a fundamental, egoistic instinct of self-defence; and we
have traced its development up to the monopolization of its extremer
forms by society as a whole through state organization. It is impossible
for analysis to give any adequate representation of the workings of
Reward and Punishment in society, except as we draw an exact line
between legal and other forms. But such a distinction, however
convenient for particular purposes, is obviously scientifically
injustifiable in a general theory of social morals. The constraint of
family disinheritance and social ostracism, of threats of all sorts, of
vituperation, of disapproval and coldness, are only higher forms of
revenge or punishment, by which men influence each other's action, as
savages influence each other through physical suffering and the fear of
it, in a more primitive and less humane manner; and state reward for
services, praise, and approval, are all forms of encouragement, by which
men similarly incite each other not merely to a negative abstention from
undesirable acts, but to a positive performance of desirable acts. With
the development of sympathy, punishment tends to become less brutal on
the one side, while, on the other, the less brutal forms come to have as
great influence as the more brutal ones formerly had. Furthermore, the
distinct calculation of the attainment of egoistic ends gives place to
the impulsive reaction of the sense of justice on the one hand, and, on
the other, to the readier response to disapproval and to the desires of
others, through social predispositions and affections which are more
altruistic than egoistic.
But there are two diametrically opposed schools, neither of which
perfectly agrees with the theory of will as stated in a preceding
chapter of this work, and both of which may therefore take exception to
the theory of recompense which follows naturally upon that theory. The
one, the school which asserts Free Will not in a natural, but in a
supernatural, or half supernatural sense, may object to the grounds for
punishment assumed in our analysis; this school is answered by the
demonstration of the actual course of development taken by reward and
punishment. The other school maintains, on the ground that man is a part
of nature, that there is no merit in conscientiousness, and that
evil-doing, being as much dependent upon organization and social
environment as disease, cannot, on scientific grounds, be punishable. It
is to be noticed, however, that many of the advocates of the theory that
state punishment is injustifiable yet inflict punishment upon their own
children; and we may remind them, in this connection, that they can
scarcely claim the will of the child to be freer or less the result of
general social conditions than that of the adult, and that, moreover,
they themselves are the most immediate links in the chain of conditions
producing this will. Furthermore, they are inconsistent in their
practice if they visit any blame on evil-doers or criminals; they are
logically restricted to, at most, an "I differ with you in opinion," to
Jack-the-Ripper, to the cruelest of slave hunters, or to the Chinese who
are said to have regarded with indifference the burning of their
fellow-men on the ship "Shanghai," while they exerted themselves to
secure the wreckage. Nor, if punishment and blame are inadmissible, on
the ground of the determination of the will, can they consistently show
greater consideration to benevolent than to malevolent men, no matter
how great the public benefits these men have conferred, or what aid they
have given to the advancement of society? If it is unjust to punish
criminals because their acts are determined, then it is also wholly
unjust to the rest of mankind to praise a Bruno, or a dying Sir Philip
Sidney giving the cup of water offered him to another. If good men might
be criminals, had they the criminal organization, it is equally true
that ordinary and selfish men might be Brunos and Sir Philip Sidneys if
they had the organization of Brunos and Sir Philip Sidneys; why then do
ordinary men the injustice of praising and admiring such nobility of
character? Nor can a theory of determinism which refuses to blame the
individual consistently lay the blame of crime and badness on society as
a whole, as it often does; for society as a whole is composed of
individuals, all of whom are equally determined in their action. Or, if
we choose to regard society as a unit, then it may be said that it is as
much the product of nature as a whole as the individual is its product.
If it be objected that we do not blame nature as a whole because it is
soulless, we may inquire what is meant by soulless; society has no
composite soul, no soul except in its individuals. The real significance
of the objection is that we cannot influence nature, by our blame, to
the production of better characters; but it is also true that we cannot
influence society except through the individuals composing it; and here
we have, again, in a nutshell, the real reason and justification of
punishment and blame.
The Socialists have been prominent of late in disclaiming the right of
the state to punish, on the ground that society as a whole is
responsible for the evil of individual characters. But it is not
noticeable that all Socialists refrain from blaming non-socialistic and
conservative individuals, although it is obviously true that these are
quite as much determined, and as irresponsible from a deterministic
point of view, as are the criminals. Moreover, even the mildest
Socialists advocate the measure of denying food to the man who can work
but will not do so. By what right do these determinists make use of the
expression "can but will not"? And what right have they, on their own
showing, to administer this chastisement to the lazy man? Surely sloth
cannot be interpreted as preeminently a power of will, which no other
man possesses; and surely sloth is, as much as criminality, the product
of social conditions. If it be objected that this denial of food is no
punishment but merely a letting alone, we may inquire whether the
starvation which used to be inflicted on prisoners for some offences was
not a positive form of punishment. And if it be said that the slothful
man has it in his power, at any time, to escape starvation by beginning
to work, we may answer that the state says to the criminal, also, that
he has nothing to do with its penalties as long as he abstains from the
acts for which they are imposed. Why should the vindictive man, the
Joseph Phillippes, the Jukes, and Eyrauds of the future receive
sustenance, care, and kindness, in homes set apart for their especial
use, while the man who is merely indolent is driven to solitude and the
roots and herbs of the forest for the support of existence? Perhaps, in
such case, the indolent man may claim society's greater indulgence by
taking to crime.
These determinists are sometimes heard to make the assertion that the
punishment of criminals is wrong, but that punishment of children must
still be resorted to for their own sake as well as for that of society,
since their character can be disciplined and bettered by it. When we
arrive at this inconsistency, we get at the root of the whole objection
to state punishment of criminals. There is a growing dissatisfaction
with present methods of punishment, and this dissatisfaction,
insufficiently analyzed, takes the form of objection to punishment
altogether. Benevolence is progressing beyond present laws, and demands
their change; that is the gist of the whole matter.
In the light of our analysis of the evolution of morality, we may repeat
the inquiry, left unanswered at the beginning of this work, as to
whether, in the province of morals more than in other provinces, we find
a supernatural element or an element which, in any way, gives us an
intimation of the supernatural or transcendental. The question must be
replied to in the negative. If it be objected that we must not expect to
find the supernatural in the natural, we may reply that that is just
what we have not expected to do. The fallacy of such an expectation does
not lie with us. Nature gives us no intimation of a supernature, when we
cease to see it with the uncomprehending eye of the untutored savage.
Nor can the gross, cruel, and superstitious savage be regarded as, in
contrast to more social and humane man, better fitted to be the medium
of spiritual truth.
And this brings us to the discussion of the presence or absence of
conscience in lower animal species. We have found that some species have
social organization quite as elaborate as that of many savage tribes,
and even more elaborate than that of some tribes. We are able to view
these organizations only in their external features; we cannot, however,
in most cases, suppose the species to be devoid of consciousness of some
sort, and consciousness involves, in any case, pleasure in accustomed
function and in its constantly experienced results; the two, action and
experience of its results, are, in fact, both functional. The argument
of inconstancy, and of inconstancy at points at which it is not found
among men, has been shown to be absolutely valueless as directed against
any theory of the existence of sympathy and "social instinct" among
other animal species. We too are inconstant in our altruism; and habits
of altruistic action do not necessarily take the same course with other
species that they do with us, differences in social organization
rendering differences of habit necessary. If other species fall below us
in self-sacrifice for the community in some respects, they often surpass
us in others. We may conclude, then, that habits of mutual assistance,
habits which we perceive to be externally altruistic, must also be
supposed to be connected in many cases with some internal corresponding
feelings of the same nature as those which we term, in man, altruistic
and social. I do not see how we can avoid this conclusion unless we deny
all consciousness to other species; for consciousness must involve, on
any plane, feeling as pleasure and pain. And on the supposition of
memory, and of the connection in memory of those things and events which
are constantly connected in experience, we must suppose the seeking of
ends, also, though they are, probably, in most cases, much nearer ends
than our human ones. It may be true, as Professor Morgan thinks, that
animals have no general concept of ends and means; but a general concept
of ends and means is not necessary to the recognition of the fact that
this or that particular form of action will have this or that particular
result. It is not necessary to apply the terms "ends" and "means" to
events in order to understand their connection as following upon each
other with constancy. Moreover, we are accustomed to count only our own
ends as ends proper, and so, only our own wisdom as wisdom; and thus we
term other species stupid for not understanding just our wisdom and
acting on a line with us; but certainly there are plenty of human beings
whom we do not term wanting in reasoning powers who seek their own
destruction or harm much more stupidly than many animals; and, on the
other hand, there are many animals who act much more consistently for
their own and others' welfare than a large number of mankind do. If the
failure of other species to comprehend our language and understand our
action is to be termed stupid, then what shall we term our failure to
understand their methods of communication and motives of action? It is
time for us to emancipate ourselves from this narrow anthropomorphism in
which we are accustomed to live, and to realize and acknowledge that
there may be other consciousness than our own, with quite other
thoughts, feelings, habits, ends, and motives. It is a part of our
customary egoism that we prefer to exalt ourselves; it is more
gratifying to our vanity, as well as more convenient to our conscience,
to regard other species as half-automatic and beneath our sympathy; we
thus have excuse for using them as we like. So we call the tiger cruel
because he is carnivorous as we ourselves are; we call the fox cunning
and sly for lying in ambush for his prey; but when we go out to take, by
similar means, our special prey, we call our action a triumph of
superior reason. We term the fox a thief, too, when he takes again from
us what we are continually taking, and what we took originally, from the
beasts. What we regard as right and justifiable and even admirable in
ourselves we regard as wrong, cruel, mean, selfish, underhanded,
abhorrent, and worthy of all punishment in the animals. As for the
faithfulness unto death displayed by many animals, we do not regard that
as heroism or worthy our admiration, although we might often take
pattern from it. How should we understand other species? We are not
accustomed to associate this or that feeling of pleasure in ourselves
with a pricking up of ears or a wagging of tail, or our deepest
despondency and pain at repulse with this or that peculiar posture or
animal cry. A faint trembling of the human hand from fear or pain will
stir us with the most profound sympathy; but the sensitive quiver of the
whole body in some helpless, hopeless animal, that cannot speak its fear
or crave for mercy in the human tongue, touches but seldom an answering
chord in our hearts. Shame on our vanity and our hard-heartedness!
The whole of our analysis has tended to lay emphasis on habit. And this
leads us to comment on a certain disdain and contempt for habit and
custom which is continually arising in some quarters. The whole history
of mankind is the history of the formation, gradual change, and spread
of the change, of habit, and of custom as the social form of the latter.
With the progress of society, habits and customs grow old and must be
discarded; but only careful consideration can show us when change is
desirable. It is, therefore, both stupid and foolish to inveigh against
a habit merely because it is habit or because it is of long standing.
Originality, intellectual superiority, does not consist in a contempt
for custom merely as custom, but in the power to weigh all sides, to
view a matter in all lights, without regard to its age or newness, and
to decide on its worth according to its inherent merits or defects. In
the rebellion from the slavery to tradition as such, the opposite,
equally unreasonable extreme of denunciation of all existing custom is
often reached. Thus, some followers of Socrates, adhering slavishly to
the word of their master but failing to comprehend its inner meaning,
dispensed with all the social usages of their nation, and despised its
laws. Of late patriotism is denounced as mere race-prejudice founded on
habit and association. But all our affections are matters of habit and
association. Doubtless, patriotism may often involve narrowness and
injustice; so also may a mother's love for her child, or any other of
the forms of the preference of affection. However, it does not follow,
therefore, that mother-love is to be denounced and rejected; what we
need is not less mother-love, or father-love, but a counterbalancing
sympathy for other human beings outside the family, also. And so too we
do not want less love of country, but the infusion of it with a broader
humanity and justice. The love of a mother need not render her less, but
may, on the contrary, render her more, sympathetic; and the love of
country may be combined with a wide-reaching regard for the welfare of
other men outside the nation to which the patriot belongs. In fact, the
mother who is incapable of peculiar love for her own child is not likely
to be capable of deep sympathy with other human beings; and I am
inclined to believe that there must be something lacking in a man's
general moral constitution when he feels no peculiar regard for the land
to which he belongs. If it is foolish, as is sometimes asserted, to love
one country more than another, simply because we happen to have been
born in it, then it is also equally foolish to love our mother simply
because she happens to be our mother. There may be other lands as good
as ours, and possibly there may be other mothers as good as ours; but
affection does not reason thus.
Is social development the cause of an increase in sympathy, or is the
increase of sympathy the cause of social progress and prosperity? Or is
increase of population the cause of both by forcing men to
companionship? Or is not, rather, increase of population the effect of
prosperity? In his work on "Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy,
and Morals," Herbert Spencer writes of the altruistic sentiments: "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 have 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;" and in an essay on "Progress," the author writes: "Social
progress is supposed to consist in the produce of a greater quantity and
variety of the articles required for satisfying men's wants; in the
increasing security of person and property; in widening freedom of
action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those
changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these
consequences." The two paragraphs appear contradictory of each other,
the first laying emphasis upon outer conditions as cause of inner
change, the second seeming to emphasize inner conditions as cause; but
the terms of the second quotation are somewhat ambiguous. As to the
first, to do Mr. Spencer full justice, he corrects this a little farther
down, where he says that "sympathy is the concomitant of gregariousness,
the two having all along increased by reciprocal aid."
The root of the whole difficulty, with regard to our theories of cause
and effect in social development, as with regard to our theories of
cause and effect in other parts of nature, lies in our desire for unity
and simplicity. Instead of attempting to unravel the intricate web of
the conditions, we fix our attention on some one feature or side of the
process, and regard the whole development as revolving round this pivot.
It is easy to find examples, in the history of science and opinion, of
the errors into which the concepts of cause and effect have led men,
and of the repeated recurrence of uncertainty to which the unveiling of
these errors in the further march of knowledge, has led. For instance,
we find some writers on nervous diseases adhering to the view that
insanity is sometimes the effect of a weak yielding to a violent
disposition; more contending that the violence is itself the effect of
incipient insanity; and still others opining that both violence of
disposition and insanity are the effect of a general diseased state of
the system. Ancient schools of medicine traced all diseases to the
blood, and so drained off the fluid; and the patent medicines of to-day
generally select some one organ as the source of all disease. I once
heard the assertion that a certain woman had died with grief contested
by a physician on the ground that the cause of her death was
consumption; he added that deaths from sudden mental shock were known to
medicine, but the cases were rare; another medical man suggested that
the system might not have been in a perfectly healthy condition at the
time of the shock, in those cases; and the first man seemed a little
puzzled when a third person suggested that there was doubtless a
physical basis in every case.
FOOTNOTES:
[165] "Adam Bede."
[166] "Daniel Deronda."
[167] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 238, 239. The italics are mine.
[168] Ibid. pp. 242, 243.
[169] As above, pp. 255, 256. The italics are mine.
[170] Ibid. p. 443.
[171] Ibid. p. 441. The italics are mine.
[172] Ibid. p. 236. The italics are mine.
[173] Ibid. p. 237.
[174] Ibid. p. 239. The italics are here also mine.
[175] "The Pathology of Mind," 102 _et seq._
[176] In this general and limited sense, but only in this general and
limited sense, does Spencer's assertion that more moral conduct shows a
greater adjustment of means to ends, correspond to the facts.
[177] See "The Science of Ethics," p. 62.
[178] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 375, 376.
[179] "The Science of Ethics," p. 300.
[180] "The Science of Ethics," p. 301.
[181] See Part I, this book, p. 117.
[182] "The Science of Ethics," p. 310.