(DARWIN AND MORALITY)
A free spirit acts according to his impulses, i.e., intuitions, which
his thought has selected out of the whole world of his ideas. For an
unfree spirit, the reason why he singles out a particular intuition
from his world of ideas, in order to make it the basis of an action,
lies in the perceptual world which is given to him, i.e., in his
past experiences. He recalls, before making a decision, what some
one else has done, or recommended as proper in an analogous case,
or what God has commanded to be done in such a case, etc., and he
acts on these recollections. A free spirit dispenses with these
preliminaries. His decision is absolutely original. He cares as
little what others have done in such a case as what commands they have
laid down. He has purely ideal (logical) reasons which determine him
to select a particular concept out of the sum of his concepts, and
to realise it in action. But his action will belong to perceptible
reality. Consequently, what he achieves will coincide with a definite
content of perception. His concept will have to be realised in a
concrete particular event. As a concept it will not contain this
event as particular. It will refer to the event only in its generic
character, just as, in general, a concept is related to a percept,
e.g., the concept lion to a particular lion. The link between concept
and percept is the idea (cp. pp. 104 ff). To the unfree spirit this
intermediate link is given from the outset. Motives exist in his
consciousness from the first in the form of ideas. Whenever he intends
to do anything he acts as he has seen others act, or he obeys the
instructions he receives in each separate case. Hence authority is most
effective in the form of examples, i.e., in the form of traditional
patterns of particular actions handed down for the guidance of the
unfree spirit. A Christian models his conduct less on the teaching than
on the pattern of the Saviour. Rules have less value for telling men
positively what to do than for telling them what to leave undone. Laws
take on the form of universal concepts only when they forbid actions,
not when they prescribe actions. Laws concerning what we ought to
do must be given to the unfree spirit in wholly concrete form. Clean
the street in front of your door! Pay your taxes to such and such an
amount to the tax-collector! etc. Conceptual form belongs to laws
which inhibit actions. Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit
adultery! But these laws, too, influence the unfree spirit only by
means of a concrete idea, e.g., the idea of the punishments attached
by human authority, or of the pangs of conscience, or of eternal
damnation, etc.
Even when the motive to an action exists in universal conceptual form
(e.g., Thou shalt do good to thy fellow-men! Thou shalt live so that
thou promotest best thy welfare!), there still remains to be found,
in the particular case, the concrete idea of the action (the relation
of the concept to a content of perception). For a free spirit who
is not guided by any model nor by fear of punishment, etc., this
translation of the concept into an idea is always necessary.
Concrete ideas are formed by us on the basis of our concepts by
means of the imagination. Hence what the free spirit needs in order to
realise his concepts, in order to assert himself in the world, is moral
imagination. This is the source of the free spirit's action. Only those
men, therefore, who are endowed with moral imagination are, properly
speaking, morally productive. Those who merely preach morality,
i.e., those who merely excogitate moral rules without being able to
condense them into concrete ideas, are morally unproductive. They are
like those critics who can explain very competently how a work of art
ought to be made, but who are themselves incapable of the smallest
artistic production.
Moral imagination, in order to realise its ideas, must enter into
a determinate sphere of percepts. Human action does not create
percepts, but transforms already existing percepts and gives them a
new character. In order to be able to transform a definite object of
perception, or a sum of such objects, in accordance with a moral idea,
it is necessary to understand the object's law (its mode of action
which one intends to transform, or to which one wants to give a new
direction). Further, it is necessary to discover the procedure by which
it is possible to change the given law into the new one. This part of
effective moral activity depends on knowledge of the particular world
of phenomena with which one has got to deal. We shall, therefore,
find it in some branch of scientific knowledge. Moral action, then,
presupposes, in addition to the faculty of moral concepts [8] and of
moral imagination, the ability to alter the world of percepts without
violating the natural laws by which they are connected. This ability
is moral technique. It may be learnt in the same sense in which science
in general may be learnt. For, in general, men are better able to find
concepts for the world as it is, than productively to originate out
of their imaginations future, and as yet non-existing, actions. Hence,
it is very well possible for men without moral imagination to receive
moral ideas from others, and to embody these skilfully in the actual
world. Vice versa, it may happen that men with moral imagination lack
technical skill, and are dependent on the service of other men for
the realisation of their ideas.
In so far as we require for moral action knowledge of the objects upon
which we are about to act, our action depends upon such knowledge. What
we need to know here are the laws of nature. These belong to the
Natural Sciences, not to Ethics.
Moral imagination and the faculty of moral concepts can become
objects of theory only after they have first been employed by the
individual. But, thus regarded, they no longer regulate life, but have
already regulated it. They must now be treated as efficient causes,
like all other causes (they are purposes only for the subject). The
study of them is, as it were, the Natural Science of moral ideas.
Ethics as a Normative Science, over and above this science, is
impossible.
Some would maintain the normative character of moral laws at least
in the sense that Ethics is to be taken as a kind of dietetic which,
from the conditions of the organism's life, deduces general rules, on
the basis of which it hopes to give detailed directions to the body
(Paulsen, System der Ethik). This comparison is mistaken, because
our moral life cannot be compared with the life of the organism. The
behaviour of the organism occurs without any volition on our part. Its
laws are fixed data in our world; hence we can discover them and
apply them when discovered. Moral laws, on the other hand, do not
exist until we create them. We cannot apply them until we have created
them. The error is due to the fact that moral laws are not at every
moment new creations, but are handed down by tradition. Those which
we take over from our ancestors appear to be given like the natural
laws of the organism. But it does not follow that a later generation
has the right to apply them in the same way as dietetic rules. For
they apply to individuals, and not, like natural laws, to specimens
of a genus. Considered as an organism, I am such a generic specimen,
and I shall live in accordance with nature if I apply the laws of my
genus to my particular case. As a moral agent I am an individual and
have my own private laws. [9]
The view here upheld appears to contradict that fundamental doctrine of
modern Natural Science which is known as the Theory of Evolution. But
it only appears to do so. By evolution we mean the real development of
the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. In the
organic world, evolution means that the later (more perfect) organic
forms are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have
grown out of them in accordance with natural laws. The upholders
of the theory of organic evolution believe that there was once a
time on our earth, when we could have observed with our own eyes
the gradual evolution of reptiles out of Proto-Amniotes, supposing
that we could have been present as men, and had been endowed with
a sufficiently long span of life. Similarly, Evolutionists suppose
that man could have watched the development of the solar system
out of the primordial nebula of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, if he
could have occupied a suitable spot in the world-ether during that
infinitely long period. But no Evolutionist will dream of maintaining
that he could from his concept of the primordial Amnion deduce that
of the reptile with all its qualities, even if he had never seen
a reptile. Just as little would it be possible to derive the solar
system from the concept of the Kant-Laplace nebula, if this concept
of an original nebula had been formed only from the percept of the
nebula. In other words, if the Evolutionist is to think consistently,
he is bound to maintain that out of earlier phases of evolution later
ones really develop; that once the concept of the imperfect and that
of the perfect have been given, we can understand the connection. But
in no case will he admit that the concept formed from the earlier
phases is, in itself, sufficient for deducing from it the later
phases. From this it follows for Ethics that, whilst we can understand
the connection of later moral concepts with earlier ones, it is not
possible to deduce a single new moral idea from earlier ones. The
individual, as a moral being, produces his own content. This content,
thus produced, is for Ethics a datum, as much as reptiles are a datum
for Natural Science. Reptiles have evolved out of the Proto-Amniotes,
but the scientist cannot manufacture the concept of reptiles out
of the concept of the Proto-Amniotes. Later moral ideas evolve out
of the earlier ones, but Ethics cannot manufacture out of the moral
principles of an earlier age those of a later one. The confusion is due
to the fact that, as scientists, we start with the facts before us,
and then make a theory about them, whereas in moral action we first
produce the facts ourselves, and then theorise about them. In the
evolution of the moral world-order we accomplish what, at a lower
level, Nature accomplishes: we alter some part of the perceptual
world. Hence the ethical norm cannot straightway be made an object of
knowledge, like a law of nature, for it must first be created. Only
when that has been done can the norm become an object of knowledge.
But is it not possible to make the old a measure for the new? Is
not every man compelled to measure the deliverances of his moral
imagination by the standard of traditional moral principles? If he
would be truly productive in morality, such measuring is as much an
absurdity as it would be an absurdity if one were to measure a new
species in nature by an old one and say that reptiles, because they
do not agree with the Proto-Amniotes, are an illegitimate (degenerate)
species.
Ethical Individualism, then, so far from being in opposition to
the theory of evolution, is a direct consequence of it. Haeckel's
genealogical tree, from protozoa up to man as an organic being, ought
to be capable of being worked out without a breach of natural law,
and without a gap in its uniform evolution, up to the individual
as a being with a determinate moral nature. But, whilst it is quite
true that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly grown
out of those of his ancestors, it is also true that the individual
is morally barren, unless he has moral ideas of his own.
The same Ethical Individualism which I have developed on the basis
of the preceding principles, might be equally well developed on the
basis of the theory of evolution. The final result would be the same;
only the path by which it was reached would be different.
That absolutely new moral ideas should be developed by the moral
imagination is for the theory of evolution no more inexplicable than
the development of one animal species out of another, provided only
that this theory, as a Monistic world-view, rejects, in morality as
in science, every transcendent (metaphysical) influence. In doing
so, it follows the same principle by which it is guided in seeking
the causes of new organic forms in forms already existing, but not
in the interference of an extra-mundane God, who produces every new
species in accordance with a new creative idea through supernatural
interference. Just as Monism has no use for supernatural creative ideas
in explaining living organisms, so it is equally impossible for it
to derive the moral world-order from causes which do not lie within
the world. It cannot admit any continuous supernatural influence
upon moral life (divine government of the world from the outside),
nor an influence either through a particular act of revelation at
a particular moment in history (giving of the ten commandments), or
through God's appearance on the earth (Divinity of Christ [10]). Moral
processes are, for Monism, natural products like everything else that
exists, and their causes must be looked for in nature, i.e., in man,
because man is the bearer of morality.
Ethical Individualism, then, is the crown of the edifice that Darwin
and Haeckel have erected for Natural Science. It is the theory of
evolution applied to the moral life.
Anyone who restricts the concept of the natural from the outset to an
artificially limited and narrowed sphere, is easily tempted not to
allow any room within it for free individual action. The consistent
Evolutionist does not easily fall a prey to such a narrow-minded
view. He cannot let the process of evolution terminate with the ape,
and acknowledge for man a supernatural origin. Again, he cannot
stop short at the organic reactions of man and regard only these as
natural. He has to treat also the life of moral self-determination
as the continuation of organic life. The Evolutionist, then,
in accordance with his fundamental principles, can maintain only
that moral action evolves out of the less perfect forms of natural
processes. He must leave the characterisation of action, i.e.,
its determination as free action, to the immediate observation of
each agent. All that he maintains is only that men have developed
out of non-human ancestors. What the nature of men actually is must
be determined by observation of men themselves. The results of this
observation cannot possibly contradict the history of evolution. Only
the assertion that the results are such as to exclude their being due
to a natural world-order would contradict recent developments in the
Natural Sciences. [11]
Ethical Individualism, then, has nothing to fear from a Natural
Science which understands itself. Observation yields freedom as the
characteristic quality of the perfect form of human action. Freedom
must be attributed to the human will, in so far as the will realises
purely ideal intuitions. For these are not the effects of a necessity
acting upon them from without, but are grounded in themselves. When
we find that an action embodies such an ideal intuition, we feel it
to be free. Freedom consists in this character of an action.
What, then, from the standpoint of nature are we to say of the
distinction, already mentioned above (p. 8), between the two
statements, "To be free means to be able to do what you will,"
and "To be able, as you please, to strive or not to strive is the
real meaning of the dogma of free will"? Hamerling bases his theory
of free will precisely on this distinction, by declaring the first
statement to be correct but the second to be an absurd tautology. He
says, "I can do what I will, but to say I can will what I will is an
empty tautology." Whether I am able to do, i.e., to make real, what
I will, i.e., what I have set before myself as my idea of action,
that depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill
(cp. p. 200). To be free means to be able to determine by moral
imagination out of oneself those ideas (motives) which lie at the
basis of action. Freedom is impossible if anything other than I myself
(whether a mechanical process or God) determines my moral ideas. In
other words, I am free only when I myself produce these ideas, but
not when I am merely able to realise the ideas which another being
has implanted in me. A free being is one who can will what he regards
as right. Whoever does anything other than what he wills must be
impelled to it by motives which do not lie in himself. Such a man is
unfree in his action. Accordingly, to be able to will, as you please,
what you consider right or wrong means to be free or unfree as you
please. This is, of course, just as absurd as to identify freedom with
the faculty of doing what one is compelled to will. But this is just
what Hamerling maintains when he says, "It is perfectly true that the
will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that on
this ground it is unfree; for a greater freedom can neither be desired
nor conceived than the freedom to realise oneself in proportion to
one's own power and strength of will." On the contrary, it is well
possible to desire a greater freedom and that a true freedom, viz.,
the freedom to determine for oneself the motives of one's volitions.
Under certain conditions a man may be induced to abandon the execution
of his will; but to allow others to prescribe to him what he shall
do--in other words, to will what another and not what he himself
regards as right--to this a man will submit only when he does not
feel free.
External powers may prevent me from doing what I will, but that is
only to condemn me to do nothing or to be unfree. Not until they
enslave my spirit, drive my motives out of my head, and put their
own motives in the place of mine, do they really aim at making
me unfree. That is the reason why the church attacks not only the
mere doing, but especially the impure thoughts, i.e., motives of my
action. And for the church all those motives are impure which she
has not herself authorised. A church does not produce genuine slaves
until her priests turn themselves into advisers of consciences, i.e.,
until the faithful depend upon the church, i.e., upon the confessional,
for the motives of their actions.