The Scope of Ethics 332
THE DATA OF ETHICS.
CHAPTER I.
CONDUCT IN GENERAL.
§ 1. The doctrine that correlatives imply one another--that a father
cannot be thought of without thinking of a child, and that there can be
no consciousness of superior without a consciousness of inferior--has
for one of its common examples the necessary connection between the
conceptions of whole and part. Beyond the primary truth that no idea of
a whole can be framed without a nascent idea of parts constituting it,
and that no idea of a part can be framed without a nascent idea of some
whole to which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that there can
be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of the correlative
whole. There are several ways in which inadequate knowledge of the one
involves inadequate knowledge of the other.
If the part is conceived without any reference to the whole, it
becomes itself a whole--an independent entity; and its relations to
existence in general are misapprehended. Further, the size of the part
as compared with the size of the whole must be misapprehended unless
the whole is not only recognized as including it, but is figured in
its total extent. And again, the position which the part occupies in
relation to other parts, cannot be rightly conceived unless there is
some conception of the whole in its distribution as well as in its
amount.
Still more when part and whole, instead of being statically related
only, are dynamically related, must there be a general understanding
of the whole before the part can be understood. By a savage who has
never seen a vehicle, no idea can be formed of the use and action of a
wheel. To the unsymmetrically-pierced disk of an eccentric, no place or
purpose can be ascribed by a rustic unacquainted with machinery. Even
a mechanician, if he has never looked into a piano, will, if shown a
damper, be unable to conceive its function or relative value.
Most of all, however, where the whole is organic, does complete
comprehension of a part imply extensive comprehension of the whole.
Suppose a being ignorant of the human body to find a detached arm. If
not misconceived by him as a supposed whole, instead of being conceived
as a part, still its relations to other parts, and its structure, would
be wholly inexplicable. Admitting that the co-operation of its bones
and muscles might be divined, yet no thought could be framed of the
share taken by the arm in the actions of the unknown whole it belonged
to; nor could any interpretation be put upon the nerves and vessels
ramifying through it, which severally refer to certain central organs.
A theory of the structure of the arm implies a theory of the structure
of the body at large.
And this truth holds not of material aggregates only, but of immaterial
aggregates--aggregated motions, deeds, thoughts, words. The moon's
movements cannot be fully interpreted without taking into account the
movements of the Solar System at large. The process of loading a gun
is meaningless until the subsequent actions performed with the gun are
known. A fragment of a sentence, if not unintelligible, is wrongly
interpreted in the absence of the remainder. Cut off its beginning and
end, and the rest of a demonstration proves nothing. Evidence given
by a plaintiff often misleads until the evidence which the defendant
produces is joined with it.
§ 2. Conduct is a whole; and, in a sense, it is an organic whole--an
aggregate of inter-dependent actions performed by an organism. That
division or aspect of conduct with which Ethics deals, is a part of
this organic whole--a part having its components inextricably bound
up with the rest. As currently conceived, stirring the fire, or
reading a newspaper, or eating a meal, are acts with which Morality
has no concern. Opening the window to air the room, putting on an
overcoat when the weather is cold, are thought of as having no ethical
significance. These, however, are all portions of conduct. The behavior
we call good and the behavior we call bad, are included, along with
the behavior we call indifferent, under the conception of behavior at
large. The whole of which Ethics forms a part, is the whole constituted
by the theory of conduct in general; and this whole must be understood
before the part can be understood. Let us consider this proposition
more closely.
And first, how shall we define conduct? It is not co-extensive with the
aggregate of actions, though it is nearly so. Such actions as those of
an epileptic in a fit are not included in our conception of conduct:
the conception excludes purposeless actions. And in recognizing this
exclusion, we simultaneously recognize all that is included. The
definition of conduct which emerges is either acts adjusted to ends, or
else the adjustment of acts to ends, according as we contemplate the
formed body of acts, or think of the form alone. And conduct in its
full acceptation must be taken as comprehending all adjustments of acts
to ends, from the simplest to the most complex, whatever their special
natures and whether considered separately or in their totality.
Conduct in general being thus distinguished from the somewhat larger
whole constituted by actions in general, let us next ask what
distinction is habitually made between the conduct on which ethical
judgments are passed and the remainder of conduct. As already said,
a large part of ordinary conduct is indifferent. Shall I walk to the
waterfall to-day? or shall I ramble along the sea-shore? Here the
ends are ethically indifferent. If I go to the waterfall, shall I go
over the moor or take the path through the wood? Here the means are
ethically indifferent. And from hour to hour most of the things we do
are not to be judged as either good or bad in respect of either ends or
means.
No less clear is it that the transition from indifferent acts to acts
which are good or bad is gradual. If a friend who is with me has
explored the sea-shore, but has not seen the waterfall, the choice
of one or other end is no longer ethically indifferent. And if, the
waterfall being fixed on as our goal, the way over the moor is too
long for his strength, while the shorter way through the wood is not,
the choice of means is no longer ethically indifferent. Again, if a
probable result of making the one excursion rather than the other,
is that I shall not be back in time to keep an appointment, or if
taking the longer route entails this risk while taking the shorter
does not, the decision in favor of one or other end or means acquires
in another way an ethical character; and if the appointment is one of
some importance, or one of great importance, or one of life-and-death
importance, to self or others, the ethical character becomes
pronounced. These instances will sufficiently suggest the truth that
conduct with which Morality is not concerned, passes into conduct which
is moral or immoral, by small degrees and in countless ways.
But the conduct that has to be conceived scientifically before we can
scientifically conceive those modes of conduct which are the objects
of ethical judgments, is a conduct immensely wider in range than that
just indicated. Complete comprehension of conduct is not to be obtained
by contemplating the conduct of human beings only; we have to regard
this as a part of universal conduct--conduct as exhibited by all
living creatures. For evidently this comes within our definition--acts
adjusted to ends. The conduct of the higher animals as compared with
that of man, and the conduct of the lower animals as compared with that
of the higher, mainly differ in this, that the adjustments of acts to
ends are relatively simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other
cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the
less developed. Just as, fully to understand the part of conduct which
Ethics deals with, we must study human conduct as a whole; so, fully
to understand human conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part
of that larger whole constituted by the conduct of animate beings in
general.
Nor is even this whole conceived with the needful fullness, so long
as we think only of the conduct at present displayed around us. We
have to include in our conception the less-developed conduct out of
which this has arisen in course of time. We have to regard the conduct
now shown us by creatures of all orders, as an outcome of the conduct
which has brought life of every kind to its present height. And this
is tantamount to saying that our preparatory step must be to study the
evolution of conduct.
CHAPTER II.
THE EVOLUTION OF CONDUCT.
§ 3. We have become quite familiar with the idea of an evolution of
structures throughout the ascending types of animals. To a considerable
degree we have become familiar with the thought that an evolution of
functions has gone on _pari passu_ with the evolution of structures.
Now, advancing a step, we have to frame a conception of the evolution
of conduct, as correlated with this evolution of structures and
functions.
These three subjects are to be definitely distinguished. Obviously the
facts comparative morphology sets forth, form a whole which, though it
cannot be treated in general or in detail without taking into account
facts belonging to comparative physiology, is essentially independent.
No less clear is it that we may devote our attention exclusively to
that progressive differentiation of functions, and combination of
functions, which accompanies the development of structures--may say no
more about the characters and connections of organs than is implied
in describing their separate and joint actions. And the subject of
conduct lies outside the subject of functions, if not as far as this
lies outside the subject of structures, still, far enough to make it
substantially separate. For those functions which are already variously
compounded to achieve what we regard as single bodily acts, are
endlessly recompounded to achieve that co-ordination of bodily acts
which is known as conduct.
We are concerned with functions in the true sense, while we think of
them as processes carried on within the body; and, without exceeding
the limits of physiology, we may treat of their adjusted combinations,
so long as these are regarded as parts of the vital _consensus_. If we
observe how the lungs aërate the blood which the heart sends to them;
how heart and lungs together supply aërated blood to the stomach, and
so enable it to do its work; how these co-operate with sundry secreting
and excreting glands to further digestion and to remove waste matter;
and how all of them join to keep the brain in a fit condition for
carrying on those actions which indirectly conduce to maintenance
of the life at large; we are dealing with functions. Even when
considering how parts that act directly on the environment--legs, arms,
wings--perform their duties, we are still concerned with functions in
that aspect of them constituting physiology, so long as we restrict our
attention to internal processes, and to internal combinations of them.
But we enter on the subject of conduct when we begin to study such
combinations among the actions of sensory and motor organs as are
externally manifested. Suppose that instead of observing those
contractions of muscles by which the optic axes are converged and the
foci of the eyes adjusted (which is a portion of physiology), and
that instead of observing the co-operation of other nerves, muscles
and bones, by which a hand is moved to a particular place and the
fingers closed (which is also a portion of physiology), we observe
a weapon being seized by a hand under guidance of the eyes. We now
pass from the thought of combined internal functions to the thought of
combined external motions. Doubtless, if we could trace the cerebral
processes which accompany these, we should find an inner physiological
co-ordination corresponding with the outer co-ordination of actions.
But this admission is consistent with the assertion, that when we
ignore the internal combination and attend only to the external
combination, we pass from a portion of physiology to a portion of
conduct. For though it may be objected that the external combination
instanced is too simple to be rightly included under the name conduct,
yet a moment's thought shows that it is joined with what we call
conduct by insensible gradations. Suppose the weapon seized is used to
ward off a blow. Suppose a counter-blow is given. Suppose the aggressor
runs and is chased. Suppose there comes a struggle and a handing him
over to the police. Suppose there follow the many and varied acts
constituting a prosecution. Obviously the initial adjustment of an
act to an end, inseparable from the rest, must be included with them
under the same general head; and obviously from this initial simple
adjustment, having intrinsically no moral character, we pass by degrees
to the most complex adjustments and to those on which moral judgments
are passed.
Hence, excluding all internal co-ordinations, our subject here is the
aggregate of all external co-ordinations; and this aggregate includes
not only the simplest as well as the most complex performed by human
beings, but also those performed by all inferior beings considered as
less or more evolved.
§ 4. Already the question: What constitutes advance in the evolution of
conduct, as we trace it up from the lowest types of living creatures to
the highest? has been answered by implication. A few examples will now
bring the answer into conspicuous relief.
We saw that conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by
excluding purposeless actions; but during evolution this distinction
arises by degrees. In the very lowest creatures most of the movements
from moment to moment made, have not more recognizable aims than have
the struggles of an epileptic. An infusorium swims randomly about,
determined in its course not by a perceived object to be pursued or
escaped, but, apparently, by varying stimuli in its medium; and its
acts, unadjusted in any appreciable way to ends, lead it now into
contact with some nutritive substance which it absorbs, and now
into the neighborhood of some creature by which it is swallowed and
digested. Lacking those developed senses and motor powers which higher
animals possess, ninety-nine in the hundred of these minute animals,
severally living for but a few hours, disappear either by innutrition
or by destruction. The conduct is constituted of actions so little
adjusted to ends, that life continues only as long as the accidents of
the environment are favorable. But when, among aquatic creatures, we
observe one which, though still low in type, is much higher than the
infusorium--say a rotifer--we see how, along with larger size, more
developed structures, and greater power of combining functions, there
goes an advance in conduct. We see how by its whirling cilia it sucks
in as food these small animals moving around; how by its prehensile
tail it fixes itself to some fit object; how by withdrawing its outer
organs and contracting its body, it preserves itself from this or that
injury from time to time threatened; and how thus, by better adjusting
its own actions, it becomes less dependent on the actions going on
around, and so preserves itself for a longer period.
A superior sub-kingdom, as the Mollusca, still better exemplifies this
contrast. When we compare a low mollusc, such as a floating ascidian,
with a high mollusc, such as a cephalopod, we are again shown that
greater organic evolution is accompanied by more evolved conduct.
At the mercy of every marine creature large enough to swallow it,
and drifted about by currents which may chance to keep it at sea, or
may chance to leave it fatally stranded, the ascidian displays but
little adjustment of acts to ends in comparison with the cephalopod;
which, now crawling over the beach, now exploring the rocky crevices,
now swimming through the open water, now darting after a fish, now
hiding itself from some larger animal in a cloud of ink, and using
its suckered arms at one time for anchoring itself and at another
for holding fast its prey; selects and combines and proportions its
movements from minute to minute, so as to evade dangers which threaten,
while utilizing chances of food which offer: so showing us varied
activities which, in achieving special ends, achieve the general end of
securing continuance of the activities.
Among vertebrate animals we similarly trace up, along with advance in
structures and functions, this advance in conduct. A fish roaming about
at hazard in search of something to eat, able to detect it by smell
or sight only within short distances, and now and again rushing away
in alarm on the approach of a bigger fish, makes adjustments of acts
to ends that are relatively few and simple in their kinds; and shows
us, as a consequence, how small is the average duration of life. So few
survive to maturity that, to make up for destruction of unhatched young
and small fry and half-grown individuals, a million ova have to be
spawned by a cod-fish that two may reach the spawning age. Conversely,
by a highly-evolved mammal, such as an elephant, those general actions
performed in common with the fish are far better adjusted to their
ends. By sight as well, probably, as by odor, it detects food at
relatively great distances; and when, at intervals, there arises a
need for escape, relatively great speed is attained. But the chief
difference arises from the addition of new sets of adjustments. We
have combined actions which facilitate nutrition--the breaking off of
succulent and fruit-bearing branches, the selecting of edible growths
throughout a comparatively wide reach; and, in case of danger, safety
can be achieved not by flight only, but, if necessary, by defence
or attack: bringing into combined use tusks, trunk and ponderous
feet. Further, we see various subsidiary acts adjusted to subsidiary
ends--now the going into a river for coolness, and using the trunk as a
means of projecting water over the body; now the employment of a bough
for sweeping away flies from the back; now the making of signal sounds
to alarm the herd, and adapting the actions to such sounds when made
by others. Evidently, the effect of this more highly-evolved conduct
is to secure the balance of the organic actions throughout far longer
periods.
And now, on studying the doings of the highest of mammals, mankind,
we not only find that the adjustments of acts to ends are both more
numerous and better than among lower mammals, but we find the same
thing on comparing the doings of higher races of men with those of
lower races. If we take any one of the major ends achieved, we see
greater completeness of achievement by civilized than by savage;
and we also see an achievement of relatively numerous minor ends
subserving major ends. Is it in nutrition? The food is obtained more
regularly in response to appetite; it is far higher in quality; it is
free from dirt; it is greater in variety; it is better prepared. Is
it in warmth? The characters of the fabrics and forms of the articles
used for clothing, and the adaptations of them to requirements from
day to day and hour to hour, are much superior. Is it in dwellings?
Between the shelter of boughs and grass which the lowest savage
builds, and the mansion of the civilized man, the contrast in aspect
is not more extreme than is the contrast in number and efficiency
of the adjustments of acts to ends betrayed in their respective
constructions. And when with the ordinary activities of the savage
we compare the ordinary civilized activities--as the business of the
trader, which involves multiplied and complex transactions extending
over long periods, or as professional avocations, prepared for by
elaborate studies, and daily carried on in endlessly varied forms, or
as political discussions and agitations, directed now to the carrying
of this measure and now to the defeating of that--we see sets of
adjustments of acts to ends, not only immensely exceeding those seen
among lower races of men in variety and intricacy, but sets to which
lower races of men present nothing analogous. And along with this
greater elaboration of life produced by the pursuit of more numerous
ends, there goes that increased duration of life which constitutes the
supreme end.
And here is suggested the need for supplementing this conception of
evolving conduct. For besides being an improving adjustment of acts to
ends, such as furthers prolongation of life, it is such as furthers
increased amount of life. Reconsideration of the examples above given
will show that length of life is not by itself a measure of evolution
of conduct; but that quantity of life must be taken into account. An
oyster, adapted by its structure to the diffused food contained in the
water it draws in, and shielded by its shell from nearly all dangers,
may live longer than a cuttle-fish, which has such superior powers
of dealing with numerous contingencies; but then, the sum of vital
activities during any given interval is far less in the oyster than
in the cuttle-fish. So a worm, ordinarily sheltered from most enemies
by the earth it burrows through, which also supplies a sufficiency of
its poor food, may have greater longevity than many of its annulose
relatives, the insects; but one of these during its existence as larva
and imago, may experience a greater quantity of the changes which
constitute life. Nor is it otherwise when we compare the more evolved
with the less evolved among mankind. The difference between the average
lengths of the lives of savage and civilized is no true measure of
the difference between the totalities of their two lives, considered
as aggregates of thought, feeling and action. Hence, estimating life
by multiplying its length into its breadth, we must say that the
augmentation of it which accompanies evolution of conduct, results from
increase of both factors. The more multiplied and varied adjustments of
acts to ends, by which the more developed creature from hour to hour
fulfills more numerous requirements, severally add to the activities
that are carried on abreast, and severally help to make greater the
period through which such simultaneous activities endure. Each further
evolution of conduct widens the aggregate of actions while conducing to
elongation of it.
§ 5. Turn we now to a further aspect of the phenomena, separate from,
but necessarily associated with, the last. Thus far we have considered
only those adjustments of acts to ends which have for their final
purpose complete individual life. Now we have to consider those
adjustments which have to their final purpose the life of the species.
Self-preservation in each generation has all along depended on
the preservation of offspring by preceding generations. And in
proportion as evolution of the conduct subserving individual life is
high, implying high organization, there must previously have been a
highly-evolved conduct subserving nurture of the young. Throughout
the ascending grades of the animal kingdom, this second kind of
conduct presents stages of advance like those which we have observed
in the first. Low down, where structures and functions are little
developed, and the power of adjusting acts to ends but slight, there
is no conduct, properly so named, furthering salvation of the species.
Race-maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining conduct, arises
gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct: adjusted actions
are preceded by unadjusted ones.
Protozoa spontaneously divide and sub-divide, in consequence of
physical changes over which they have no control; or, at other times,
after a period of quiescence, break up into minute portions which
severally grow into new individuals. In neither case can conduct be
alleged. Higher up, the process is that of ripening, at intervals,
germ-cells and sperm-cells, which, on occasion, are sent forth into
the surrounding water and left to their fate: perhaps one in ten
thousand surviving to maturity. Here, again, we see only development
and dispersion going on apart from parental care. Types above these,
as fish which choose fit places in which to deposit their ova, or as
the higher crustaceans which carry masses of ova about until they are
hatched, exhibit adjustments of acts to ends which we may properly call
conduct, though it is of the simplest kind. Where, as among certain
fish, the male keeps guard over the eggs, driving away intruders, there
is an additional adjustment of acts to ends; and the applicability of
the name conduct is more decided.
Passing at once to creatures far superior, such as birds, which,
building nests and sitting on their eggs, feed their broods for
considerable periods, and give them aid after they can fly; or such as
mammals which, suckling their young for a time, continue afterward to
bring them food or protect them while they feed, until they reach ages
at which they can provide for themselves; we are shown how this conduct
which furthers race-maintenance evolves hand-in-hand with the conduct
which furthers self-maintenance. That better organization which makes
possible the last, makes possible the first also.
Mankind exhibit a great progress of like nature. Compared with brutes,
the savage, higher in his self-maintaining conduct, is higher too in
his race-maintaining conduct. A larger number of the wants of offspring
are provided for; and parental care, enduring longer, extends to the
disciplining of offspring in arts and habits which fit them for their
conditions of existence. Conduct of this order, equally with conduct of
the first order, we see becoming evolved in a still greater degree as
we ascend from savage to civilized. The adjustments of acts to ends in
the rearing of children become far more elaborate, alike in number of
ends met, variety of means used, and efficiency of their adaptations;
and the aid and oversight are continued throughout a much greater part
of early life.
In tracing up the evolution of conduct, so that we may frame a true
conception of conduct in general, we have thus to recognize these two
kinds as mutually dependent. Speaking generally, neither can evolve
without evolution of the other; and the highest evolutions of the two
must be reached simultaneously.
§ 6. To conclude, however, that on reaching a perfect adjustment of
acts to ends subserving individual life and the rearing of offspring,
the evolution of conduct becomes complete, is to conclude erroneously.
Or rather, I should say, it is an error to suppose that either of these
kinds of conduct can assume its highest form, without its highest form
being assumed by a third kind of conduct yet to be named.
The multitudinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth, cannot
live wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in presence
of one another--are interfered with by one another. In large measure
the adjustments of acts to ends which we have been considering, are
components of that "struggle for existence" carried on both between
members of the same species and between members of different species;
and, very generally, a successful adjustment made by one creature
involves an unsuccessful adjustment made by another creature, either
of the same kind or of a different kind. That the carnivore may live
herbivores must die; and that its young may be reared the young of
weaker creatures must be orphaned. Maintenance of the hawk and its
brood involves the deaths of many small birds; and that small birds
may multiply, their progeny must be fed with innumerable sacrificed
worms and larvæ. Competition among members of the same species has
allied, though less conspicuous, results. The stronger often carries
off by force the prey which the weaker has caught. Monopolizing certain
hunting grounds, the more ferocious drive others of their kind into
less favorable places. With plant-eating animals, too, the like holds:
the better food is secured by the more vigorous individuals, while the
less vigorous and worse fed, succumb either directly from innutrition
or indirectly from resulting inability to escape enemies. That is to
say, among creatures whose lives are carried on antagonistically, each
of the two kinds of conduct delineated above, must remain imperfectly
evolved. Even in such few kinds of them as have little to fear from
enemies or competitors, as lions or tigers, there is still inevitable
failure in the adjustments of acts to ends toward the close of life.
Death by starvation from inability to catch prey, shows a falling short
of conduct from its ideal.
This imperfectly-evolved conduct introduces us by antithesis to conduct
that is perfectly evolved. Contemplating these adjustments of acts
to ends which miss completeness because they cannot be made by one
creature without other creatures being prevented from making them,
raises the thought of adjustments such that each creature may make
them without preventing them from being made by other creatures. That
the highest form of conduct must be so distinguished, is an inevitable
implication; for, while the form of conduct is such that adjustments
of acts to ends by some necessitate non-adjustments by others, there
remains room for modifications which bring conduct into a form avoiding
this, and so making the totality of life greater.
From the abstract let us pass to the concrete. Recognizing men as the
beings whose conduct is most evolved, let us ask under what conditions
their conduct, in all three aspects of its evolution, reaches its
limit. Clearly while the lives led are entirely predatory, as those of
savages, the adjustments of acts to ends fall short of this highest
form of conduct in every way. Individual life, ill carried on from
hour to hour, is prematurely cut short; the fostering of offspring
often fails, and is incomplete when it does not fail; and in so far
as the ends of self-maintenance and race-maintenance are met, they
are met by destruction of other beings of different kind or of like
kind. In social groups formed by compounding and re-compounding
primitive hordes, conduct remains imperfectly evolved in proportion as
there continue antagonisms between the groups and antagonisms between
members of the same group--two traits necessarily associated; since
the nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression
of individuals on one another. Hence the limit of evolution can be
reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies. That perfect
adjustment of acts to ends in maintaining individual life and rearing
new individuals, which is effected by each without hindering others
from effecting like perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition,
shown to constitute a kind of conduct that can be approached only as
war decreases and dies out.
A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further
advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves
his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the
members of a society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends.
And if, either indirectly by industrial co-operation, or directly
by volunteered aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one another
the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still
higher phase of evolution; since whatever facilitates the making of
adjustments by each, increases the totality of the adjustments made,
and serves to render the lives of all more complete.
§ 7. The reader who recalls certain passages in _First Principles_, in
the _Principles of Biology_, and in the _Principles of Psychology_,
will perceive above a restatement, in another form, of generalizations
set forth in those works. Especially will he be reminded of the
proposition that Life is "the definite combination of heterogeneous
changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with
external co-existences and sequences;" and still more of that abridged
and less specific formula, in which Life is said to be "the continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external relations."
The presentation of the facts here made differs from the presentations
before made, mainly by ignoring the inner part of the correspondence
and attending exclusively to that outer part constituted of visible
actions. But the two are in harmony; and the reader who wishes
further to prepare himself for dealing with our present topic from
the evolution point of view, may advantageously join to the foregoing
more special aspect of the phenomena, the more general aspects before
delineated.
After this passing remark, I recur to the main proposition set forth in
these two chapters, which has, I think, been fully justified. Guided
by the truth that as the conduct with which Ethics deals is part of
conduct at large, conduct at large must be generally understood before
this part can be specially understood; and guided by the further truth
that to understand conduct at large we must understand the evolution of
conduct, we have been led to see that Ethics has for its subject-matter
that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages
of its evolution. We have also concluded that these last stages in
the evolution of conduct are those displayed by the highest type of
being, when he is forced, by increase of numbers, to live more and
more in presence of his fellows. And there has followed the corollary
that conduct gains ethical sanction in proportion as the activities,
becoming less and less militant and more and more industrial, are such
as do not necessitate mutual injury or hinderance, but consist with,
and are furthered by, co-operation and mutual aid.
These implications of the Evolution-Hypothesis, we shall now see
harmonize with the leading moral ideas men have otherwise reached.
CHAPTER III.
GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT.
§ 8. By comparing its meanings in different connections and observing
what they have in common, we learn the essential meaning of a word; and
the essential meaning of a word that is variously applied, may best be
learned by comparing with one another those applications of it which
diverge most widely. Let us thus ascertain what good and bad mean.
In which cases do we distinguish as good, a knife, a gun, a house?
And what trait leads us to speak of a bad umbrella or a bad pair of
boots? The characters here predicted by the words good and bad, are
not intrinsic characters; for apart from human wants, such things
have neither merits nor demerits. We call these articles good or bad
according as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends.
The good knife is one which will cut; the good gun is one which carries
far and true; the good house is one which duly yields the shelter,
comfort, and accommodation sought for. Conversely, the badness alleged
of the umbrella or the pair of boots, refers to their failures in
fulfilling the ends of keeping off the rain and comfortably protecting
the feet, with due regard to appearances.
So is it when we pass from inanimate objects to inanimate actions. We
call a day bad in which storms prevent us from satisfying certain of
our desires. A good season is the expression used when the weather has
favored the production of valuable crops.
If from lifeless things and actions we pass to living ones, we
similarly find that these words in their current applications refer
to efficient subservience. The goodness or badness of a pointer or a
hunter, of a sheep or an ox, ignoring all other attributes of these
creatures, refer in the one case to the fitness of their actions for
effecting the ends men use them for, and in the other case to the
qualities of their flesh as adapting it to support human life.
And those doings of men which, morally considered, are indifferent,
we class as good or bad according to their success or failure. A good
jump is a jump which, remoter ends ignored, well achieves the immediate
purpose of a jump; and a stroke at billiards is called good when the
movements are skillfully adjusted to the requirements. Oppositely,
the badness of a walk that is shuffling and an utterance that is
indistinct, is alleged because of the relative non-adaptations of the
acts to the ends.
Thus recognizing the meanings of good and bad as otherwise used, we
shall understand better their meanings as used in characterizing
conduct under its ethical aspects. Here, too, observation shows that
we apply them according as the adjustments of acts to ends are, or are
not, efficient. This truth is somewhat disguised. The entanglement of
social relations is such that men's actions often simultaneously affect
the welfares of self, of offspring, and of fellow-citizens. Hence
results confusion in judging of actions as good or bad; since actions
well fitted to achieve ends of one order, may prevent ends of the other
orders from being achieved Nevertheless, when we disentangle the three
orders of ends, and consider each separately, it becomes clear that the
conduct which achieves each kind of end is regarded as relatively good;
and is regarded as relatively bad if it fails to achieve it.
Take first the primary set of adjustments--those subserving individual
life. Apart from approval or disapproval of his ulterior aims, a man
who fights is said to make a good defense, if his defense is well
adapted for self-preservation; and, the judgments on other aspects
of his conduct remaining the same, he brings down on himself an
unfavorable verdict, in so far as his immediate acts are concerned, if
these are futile. The goodness ascribed to a man of business, as such,
is measured by the activity and ability with which he buys and sells
to advantage; and may co-exist with a hard treatment of dependents
which is reprobated. Though, in repeatedly lending money to a friend
who sinks one loan after another, a man is doing that which, considered
in itself is held praiseworthy; yet, if he does it to the extent of
bringing on his own ruin, he is held blameworthy for a self-sacrifice
carried too far. And thus is it with the opinions we express from hour
to hour on those acts of people around which bear on their health and
personal welfare. "You should not have done that;" is the reproof
given to one who crosses the street amid a dangerous rush of vehicles.
"You ought to have changed your clothes;" is said to another who has
taken cold after getting wet. "You were right to take a receipt;" "you
were wrong to invest without advice;" are common criticisms. All such
approving and disapproving utterances make the tacit assertion that,
other things equal, conduct is right or wrong according as its special
acts, well or ill adjusted to special ends, do or do not further the
general end of self-preservation.
These ethical judgments we pass on self-regarding acts are ordinarily
little emphasized; partly because the promptings of the self-regarding
desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral enforcement, and
partly because the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less
strong, and often overridden, do need moral enforcement. Hence results
a contrast. On turning to that second class of adjustments of acts
to ends which subserve the rearing of offspring, we no longer find
any obscurity in the application of the words good and bad to them,
according as they are efficient or inefficient. The expressions good
nursing and bad nursing, whether they refer to the supply of food, the
quantity and amount of clothing, or the due ministration to infantine
wants from hour to hour, tacitly recognize as special ends which ought
to be fulfilled, the furthering of the vital functions, with a view
to the general end of continued life and growth. A mother is called
good who, ministering to all the physical needs of her children, also
adjusts her behavior in ways conducive to their mental health; and
a bad father is one who either does not provide the necessaries of
life for his family or otherwise acts in a manner injurious to their
bodies or minds. Similarly of the education given to them, or provided
for them. Goodness or badness is affirmed of it (often with little
consistency, however) according as its methods are so adapted to
physical and psychical requirements, as to further the children's lives
for the time being, while preparing them for carrying on complete and
prolonged adult life.
Most emphatic, however, are the applications of the words good and bad
to conduct throughout that third division of it comprising the deeds
by which men affect one another. In maintaining their own lives and
fostering their offspring, men's adjustments of acts to ends are so apt
to hinder the kindred adjustments of other men, that insistance on the
needful limitations has to be perpetual; and the mischiefs caused by
men's interferences with one another's life-subserving actions are so
great that the interdicts have to be peremptory. Hence, the fact that
the words good and bad have come to be specially associated with acts
which further the complete living of others and acts which obstruct
their complete living. Goodness, standing by itself, suggests, above
all other things, the conduct of one who aids the sick in re-acquiring
normal vitality, assists the unfortunate to recover the means of
maintaining themselves, defends those who are threatened with harm in
person, property, or reputation, and aids whatever promises to improve
the living of all his fellows. Contrariwise, badness brings to mind, as
its leading correlative, the conduct of one who, in carrying on his own
life, damages the lives of others by injuring their bodies, destroying
their possessions, defrauding them, calumniating them.
Always, then, acts are called good or bad according as they are well
or ill adjusted to ends; and whatever inconsistency there is in our
uses of the words arises from inconsistency of the ends. Here, however,
the study of conduct in general, and of the evolution of conduct,
have prepared us to harmonize these interpretations. The foregoing
exposition shows that the conduct to which we apply the name good,
is the relatively more evolved conduct; and that bad is the name
we apply to conduct which is relatively less evolved. We saw that
evolution, tending ever toward self-preservation, reaches its limit
when individual life is the greatest, both in length and breadth;
and now we see that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the
conduct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct tending
to self-destruction. It was shown that along with increasing power
of maintaining individual life, which evolution brings, there goes
increasing power of perpetuating the species by fostering progeny, and
that in this direction evolution reaches its limit when the needful
number of young, preserved to maturity, are then fit for a life that is
complete in fullness and duration; and here it turns out that parental
conduct is called good or bad as it approaches or falls short of this
ideal result. Lastly, we inferred that establishment of an associated
state, both makes possible and requires a form of conduct such that
life may be completed in each and in his offspring, not only without
preventing completion of it in others, but with furtherance of it in
others; and we have found above, that this is the form of conduct most
emphatically termed good. Moreover, just as we there saw that evolution
becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves
the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow
men; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the conduct
conceived as best, when it fulfills all three classes of ends at the
same time.
§ 9. Is there any postulate involved in these judgments on conduct?
Is there any assumption made in calling good the acts conducive to
life, in self or others, and bad those which directly or indirectly
tend toward death, special or general? Yes; an assumption of extreme
significance has been made--an assumption underlying all moral
estimates.
The question to be definitely raised and answered before entering on
any ethical discussion, is the question of late much agitated: Is life
worth living? Shall we take the pessimist view? or shall we take the
optimist view? or shall we, after weighing pessimistic and optimistic
arguments, conclude that the balance is in favor of a qualified
optimism?
On the answer to this question depends entirely every decision
concerning the goodness or badness of conduct. By those who think life
is not a benefit but a misfortune, conduct which prolongs it is to be
blamed rather than praised; the ending of an undesirable existence
being the thing to be wished, that which causes the ending of it must
be applauded; while actions furthering its continuance, either in self
or others, must be reprobated. Those who, on the other hand, take an
optimistic view, or who, if not pure optimists, yet hold that in life
the good exceeds the evil, are committed to opposite estimates; and
must regard as conduct to be approved that which fosters life in self
and others, and as conduct to be disapproved that which injures or
endangers life in self or others.
The ultimate question, therefore, is: Has evolution been a mistake;
and especially that evolution which improves the adjustment of acts
to ends in ascending stages of organization? If it is held that there
had better not have been any animate existence at all, and that the
sooner it comes to an end the better; then one set of conclusions with
respect to conduct emerges. If, contrariwise, it is held that there
is a balance in favor of animate existence, and if, still further, it
is held that in the future this balance may be increased; then the
opposite set of conclusions emerges. Even should it be alleged that
the worth of life is not to be judged by its intrinsic character, but
rather by its extrinsic sequences--by certain results to be anticipated
when life has passed--the ultimate issue reappears in a new shape. For
though the accompanying creed may negative a deliberate shortening of
life that is miserable, it cannot justify a gratuitous lengthening of
such life. Legislation conducive to increased longevity would, on the
pessimistic view, remain blameable, while it would be praiseworthy on
the optimistic view.
But now, have these irreconcilable opinions anything in common? Men
being divisible into two schools differing on this ultimate question,
the inquiry arises--Is there anything which their radically opposed
views alike take for granted? In the optimistic proposition, tacitly
made when using the words good and bad after the ordinary manner;
and in the pessimistic proposition overtly made, which implies that
the words good and bad should be used in the reverse senses; does
examination disclose any joint proposition--any proposition which,
contained in both of them, may be held more certain than either--any
universally asserted proposition?
§ 10. Yes, there is one postulate in which pessimists and optimists
agree. Both their arguments assume it to be self-evident that life
is good or bad, according as it does, or does not, bring a surplus
of agreeable feeling. The pessimist says he condemns life because
it results in more pain than pleasure. The optimist defends life
in the belief that it brings more pleasure than pain. Each makes
the kind of sentiency which accompanies life the test. They agree
that the justification for life as a state of being, turns on this
issue--whether the average consciousness rises above indifference-point
into pleasurable feeling or falls below it into painful feeling. The
implication common to their antagonist views is, that conduct should
conduce to preservation of the individual, of the family, and of the
society, only supposing that life brings more happiness than misery.
Changing the venue cannot alter the verdict. If either the pessimist,
while saying that the pains of life predominate, or the optimist,
while saying that the pleasures predominate, urges that the pains
borne here are to be compensated by pleasures received hereafter; and
that so life, whether or not justified in its immediate results, is
justified in its ultimate results; the implication remains the same.
The decision is still reached by balancing pleasures against pains.
Animate existence would be judged by both a curse, if to a surplus of
misery borne here were added a surplus of misery to be borne hereafter.
And for either to regard animate existence as a blessing, if here its
pains were held to exceed its pleasures, he must hold that hereafter
its pleasures will exceed its pains. Thus there is no escape from the
admission that in calling good the conduct which subserves life, and
bad the conduct which hinders or destroys it, and in so implying that
life is a blessing and not a curse, we are inevitably asserting that
conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable
or painful.
One theory only is imaginable in pursuance of which other
interpretations of good and bad can be given. This theory is that men
were created with the intention that they should be sources of misery
to themselves; and that they are bound to continue living that their
creator may have the satisfaction of contemplating their misery.
Though this is not a theory avowedly entertained by many--though
it is not formulated by any in this distinct way; yet not a few do
accept it under a disguised form. Inferior creeds are pervaded by the
belief that the sight of suffering is pleasing to the gods. Derived
from bloodthirsty ancestors, such gods are naturally conceived as
gratified by the infliction of pain: when living they delighted in
torturing other beings; and witnessing torture is supposed still to
give them delight. The implied conceptions long survive. It needs but
to name Indian fakirs who hang on hooks, and Eastern dervishes who
gash themselves, to show that in societies considerably advanced are
still to be found many who think that submission to anguish brings
divine favor. And without enlarging on facts and penances, it will
be clear that there has existed, and still exists, among Christian
peoples, the belief that the Deity whom Jephthah thought to propitiate
by sacrificing his daughter, may be propitiated by self-inflicted
pains. Further, the conception accompanying this, that acts pleasing
to self are offensive to God, has survived along with it, and still
widely prevails; if not in formulated dogmas, yet in beliefs that are
manifestly operative.
Doubtless, in modern days such beliefs have assumed qualified forms.
The satisfactions which ferocious gods were supposed to feel in
contemplating tortures, has been, in large measure, transformed into
the satisfaction felt by a deity in contemplating that self-infliction
of pain which is held to further eventual happiness. But clearly
those who entertain this modified view, are excluded from the class
whose position we are here considering. Restricting ourselves to this
class--supposing that from the savage who immolates victims to a
cannibal god, there are descendants among the civilized, who hold that
mankind were made for suffering, and that it is their duty to continue
living in misery for the delight of their maker, we can only recognize
the fact that devil-worshipers are not yet extinct.
Omitting people of this class, if there are any, as beyond or beneath
argument, we find that all others avowedly or tacitly hold that the
final justification for maintaining life can only be the reception from
it of a surplus of pleasurable feeling over painful feeling; and that
goodness or badness can be ascribed to acts which subserve life or
hinder life only on this supposition.
And here we are brought round to those primary meanings of the words
good and bad, which we passed over when considering their secondary
meanings. For on remembering that we call good and bad the things which
immediately produce agreeable and disagreeable sensations, and also
the sensations themselves--a good wine, a good appetite, a bad smell,
a bad headache--we see that by referring directly to pleasures and
pains, these meanings harmonize with those which indirectly refer to
pleasures and pains. If we call good the enjoyable state itself, as a
good laugh--if we call good the proximate cause of an enjoyable state,
as good music--if we call good any agent which conduces immediately or
remotely to an enjoyable state, as a good shop, a good teacher--if we
call good considered intrinsically, each act so adjusted to its end as
to further self-preservation and that surplus of enjoyment which makes
self-preservation desirable--if we call good every kind of conduct
which aids the lives of others, and do this under the belief that life
brings more happiness than misery; then it becomes undeniable that,
taking into account immediate and remote effects on all persons, the
good is universally the pleasurable.
§ 11. Sundry influences--moral, theological, and political--conspire
to make people disguise from themselves this truth. As in narrower
cases so in this widest case, they become so pre-occupied with the
means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the
end. Just as money, which is the means of satisfying wants, comes to
be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the
wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because
most conducive to happiness has come to be thought of as intrinsically
preferable, not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be),
but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate
end. And yet cross-examination quickly compels every one to confess
the true ultimate end. Just as the miser, asked to justify himself, is
obliged to allege the power of money to purchase desirable things, as
his reason for prizing it; so the moralist who thinks this conduct
intrinsically good and that intrinsically bad, if pushed home, has
no choice but to fall back on their pleasure-giving and pain-giving
effects. To prove this it needs but to observe how impossible it would
be to think of them as we do, if their effects were reversed.
Suppose that gashes and bruises caused agreeable sensations, and
brought in their train increased power of doing work and receiving
enjoyment; should we regard assault in the same manner as at present?
Or suppose that self-mutilation, say by cutting off a hand, was both
intrinsically pleasant and furthered performance of the processes by
which personal welfare and the welfare of dependents is achieved;
should we hold as now, that deliberate injury to one's own body is to
be reprobated? Or again, suppose that picking a man's pocket excited
in him joyful emotions, by brightening his prospects; would theft be
counted among crimes, as in existing law-books and moral codes? In
these extreme cases, no one can deny that what we call the badness of
actions is ascribed to them solely for the reason that they entail
pain, immediate or remote, and would not be so ascribed did they entail
pleasure.
If we examine our conceptions on their obverse side, this general
fact forces itself on our attention with equal distinctness. Imagine
that ministering to a sick person always increased the pains of
illness. Imagine that an orphan's relatives who took charge of it,
thereby necessarily brought miseries upon it. Imagine that liquidating
another man's pecuniary claims on you redounded to his disadvantage.
Imagine that crediting a man with noble behavior hindered his social
welfare and consequent gratification. What should we say to these
acts which now fall into the class we call praiseworthy? Should we not
contrariwise class them as blameworthy?
Using, then, as our tests, these most pronounced forms of good and bad
conduct, we find it unquestionable that our ideas of their goodness
and badness really originate from our consciousness of the certainty
or probability that they will produce pleasures or pains somewhere.
And this truth is brought out with equal clearness by examining the
standards of different moral schools; for analysis shows that every
one of them derives its authority from this ultimate standard. Ethical
systems are roughly distinguishable according as they take for their
cardinal ideas (1) the character of the agent; (2) the nature of
his motive; (3) the quality of his deeds; and (4) the results. Each
of these may be characterized as good or bad; and those who do not
estimate a mode of life by its effects on happiness, estimate it by
the implied goodness or badness in the agent, in his motive, or in
his deeds. We have perfection in the agent set up as a test by which
conduct is to be judged. Apart from the agent we have his feeling
considered as moral. And apart from the feeling we have his action
considered as virtuous.
Though the distinctions thus indicated have so little definiteness that
the words marking them are used interchangeably, yet there correspond
to them doctrines partially unlike one another; which we may here
conveniently examine separately, with the view of showing that all
their tests of goodness are derivative.
§ 12. It is strange that a notion so abstract as that of perfection,
or a certain ideal completeness of nature, should ever have been
thought one from which a system of guidance can be evolved; as it was
in a general way by Plato and more distinctly by Jonathan Edwardes.
Perfection is synonymous with goodness in the highest degree; and,
hence, to define good conduct in terms of perfection, is indirectly
to define good conduct in terms of itself. Naturally, therefore, it
happens that the notion of perfection like the notion of goodness can
be framed only in relation to ends.
We allege imperfection of any inanimate thing, as a tool, if it
lacks some part needful for effectual action, or if some part is so
shaped as not to fulfill its purpose in the best manner. Perfection
is alleged of a watch if it keeps exact time, however plain its case;
and imperfection is alleged of it because of inaccurate time-keeping,
however beautifully it is ornamented. Though we call things imperfect
if we detect in them any injuries or flaws, even when these do not
detract from efficiency; yet we do this because they imply that
inferior workmanship, or that wear and tear, with which inefficiency
is commonly joined in experience: absence of minor imperfections being
habitually associated with absence of major imperfections.
As applied to living things, the word perfection has the same meaning.
The idea of perfect shape in a race-horse is derived by generalization
from those observed traits of race-horses which have usually gone
along with attainment of the highest speed; and the idea of perfect
constitution in a race-horse similarly refers to the endurance which
enables him to continue that speed for the longest time. With men,
physically considered, it is the same: we are able to furnish no other
test of perfection than that of complete power in all the organs to
fulfill their respective functions. That our conception of perfect
balance among the internal parts, and of perfect proportion among
the external parts, originates thus, is made clear by observing that
imperfection of any viscus, as lungs, heart, or liver, is ascribed
for no other reason than inability to meet in full the demands which
the activities of the organism make on it; and on observing that the
conception of insufficient size, or of too great size, in a limb, is
derived from accumulated experiences respecting that ratio among the
limbs which furthers in the highest degree the performance of all
needful actions.
And of perfection in mental nature we have no other measure. If
imperfection of memory, of judgment, of temper, is alleged, it is
alleged because of inadequacy to the requirements of life; and to
imagine a perfect balance of the intellectual powers and of the
emotions, is to imagine that proportion among them which ensures an
entire discharge of each and every obligation as the occasion calls for
it.
So that the perfection of man considered as an agent, means the being
constituted for effecting complete adjustment of acts to ends of
every kind. And since, as shown above, the complete adjustment of
acts to ends is that which both secures and constitutes the life that
is most evolved, alike in breadth and length; while, as also shown,
the justification for whatever increases life is the reception from
life of more happiness than misery; it follows that conduciveness to
happiness is the ultimate test of perfection in a man's nature. To be
fully convinced of this it needs but to observe how the proposition
looks when inverted. It needs but to suppose that every approach toward
perfection involved greater misery to self, or others, or both, to
show by opposition that approach to perfection really means approach to
that which secures greater happiness.
§ 13. Pass we now from the view of those who make excellence of being
the standard to the view of those who make virtuousness of action
the standard. I do not here refer to moralists who, having decided
empirically or rationally, inductively or deductively, that acts of
certain kinds have the character we call virtuous, argue that such
acts are to be performed without regard to proximate consequences:
these have ample justification. But I refer to moralists who suppose
themselves to have conceptions of virtue as an end, underived from any
other end, who think that the idea of virtue is not resolvable into
simpler ideas.
This is the doctrine which appears to have been entertained by
Aristotle. I say, appears to have been, because his statements are far
from consistent with one another. Recognizing happiness as the supreme
end of human endeavor, it would at first sight seem that he cannot be
taken as typical of those who make virtue the supreme end. Yet he puts
himself in this category by seeking to define happiness in terms of
virtue, instead of defining virtue in terms of happiness. The imperfect
separation of words from things, which characterizes Greek speculation
in general, seems to have been the cause of this. In primitive thought
the name and the object named are associated in such wise that the
one is regarded as a part of the other--so much so, that knowing a
savage's name is considered by him as having some of his being, and a
consequent power to work evil on him. This belief in a real connection
between word and thing, continuing through lower stages of progress,
and long surviving in the tacit assumption that the meanings of words
are intrinsic, pervades the dialogues of Plato, and is traceable even
in Aristotle. For otherwise it is not easy to see why he should have
so incompletely disassociated the abstract idea of happiness from
particular forms of happiness.
Naturally where the divorcing of words as symbols, from things as
symbolized, is imperfect, there must be difficulty in giving to
abstract words a sufficiently abstract meaning. If in the first stages
of language the concrete name cannot be separated in thought from the
concrete object it belongs to, it is inferable that in the course of
forming successively higher grades of abstract names, there will have
to be resisted the tendency to interpret each more abstract name in
terms of some one class of the less abstract names it covers. Hence,
I think, the fact that Aristotle supposes happiness to be associated
with some one order of human activities, rather than with all orders of
human activities. Instead of including in it the pleasurable feelings
accompanying actions that constitute mere living, which actions he says
man has in common with vegetables; and instead of making it include
the mental states which the life of external perception yields, which
he says man has in common with animals at large, he excludes these
from his idea of happiness, and includes in it only the modes of
consciousness accompanying rational life. Asserting that the proper
work of man "consists in the active exercise of the mental capacities
conformably to reason," he concludes that "the supreme good of man
will consist in performing this work with excellence or virtue: herein
he will obtain happiness." And he finds confirmation for his view in
its correspondence with views previously enunciated; saying, "our
notion nearly agrees with theirs who place happiness in virtue; for we
say that it consists in the action of virtue; that is, not merely in
the possession, but in the use."
Now the implied belief that virtue can be defined otherwise than in
terms of happiness (for else the proposition is that happiness is
to be obtained by actions conducive to happiness) is allied to the
Platonic belief that there is an ideal or absolute good, which gives
to particular and relative goods their property of goodness; and
an argument analogous to that which Aristotle uses against Plato's
conception of good, may be used against his own conception of virtue.
As with good so with virtue--it is not singular but plural: in
Aristotle's own classification, virtue, when treated of at large, is
transformed into virtues. Those which he calls virtues must be so
called in consequence of some common character that is either intrinsic
or extrinsic. We may class things together either because they are made
alike by all having in themselves some peculiarity, as we do vertebrate
animals because they all have vertebral columns; or we may class them
together because of some community in their outer relations, as when we
group saws, knives, mallets, harrows, under the head of tools. Are the
virtues classed as such because of some intrinsic community of nature?
Then there must be identifiable a common trait in all the cardinal
virtues which Aristotle specifies, "Courage, Temperance, Liberality,
Magnanimity, Magnificence, Meekness, Amiability or Friendliness,
Truthfulness, Justice." What now is the trait possessed in common
by Magnificence and Meekness? and if any such common trait can be
disentangled, is it that which also constitutes the essential trait
in Truthfulness? The answer must be, No. The virtues, then, not being
classed as such because of an intrinsic community of character, must
be classed as such because of something extrinsic; and this something
can be nothing else than the happiness which Aristotle says consists in
the practice of them. They are united by their common relation to this
result; while they are not united by their inner natures.
Perhaps still more clearly may the inference be drawn thus: If virtue
is primordial and independent, no reason can be given why there should
be any correspondence between virtuous conduct and conduct that is
pleasure-giving in its total effects on self, or others, or both; and
if there is not a necessary correspondence, it is conceivable that
the conduct classed as virtuous should be pain-giving in its total
effects. That we may see the consequence of so conceiving it, let us
take the two virtues considered as typically such in ancient times
and in modern times--courage and chastity. By the hypothesis, then,
courage, displayed alike in self-defence and in defence of country,
is to be conceived as not only entailing pains incidentally, but as
being necessarily a cause of misery to the individual and to the
state; while, by implication, the absence of it redounds to personal
and general well-being. Similarly, by the hypothesis, we have to
conceive that irregular sexual relations are directly and indirectly
beneficial--that adultery is conducive to domestic harmony and the
careful rearing of children; while marital relations, in proportion
as they are persistent, generate discord between husband and wife and
entail on their offspring, suffering, disease and death. Unless it
is asserted that courage and chastity could still be thought of as
virtues though thus productive of misery, it must be admitted that
the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of
happiness-producing conduct; and that as this holds of all the virtues,
however otherwise unlike, it is from their conduciveness to happiness
that they come to be classed as virtues.
§ 14. When from those ethical estimates which take perfection of
nature, or virtuousness of action, as tests, we pass to those which
take for test rectitude of motive, we approach the intuitional theory
of morals; and we may conveniently deal with such estimates by a
criticism on this theory.
By the intuitional theory I here mean, not that which recognizes
as produced by the inherited effects of continued experiences, the
feelings of liking and aversion we have to acts of certain kinds; but
I mean the theory which regards such feelings as divinely given, and
as independent of results experienced by self or ancestors. "There
is, therefore," says Hutcheson, "as each one by close attention and
reflection may convince himself, a natural and immediate determination
to approve certain affections and actions consequent upon them;" and
since, in common with others of his time, he believes in the special
creation of man, and all other beings, this "natural sense of immediate
excellence" he considers as a supernaturally derived guide. Though
he says that the feelings and acts thus intuitively recognized as
good, "all agree in one general character, of tending to the happiness
of others;" yet he is obliged to conceive this as a pre-ordained
correspondence. Nevertheless, it may be shown that conduciveness to
happiness, here represented as an incidental trait of the acts which
receive these innate moral approvals, is really the test by which these
approvals are recognized as moral. The intuitionists place confidence
in these verdicts of conscience simply because they vaguely, if not
distinctly, perceive them to be consonant with the disclosures of that
ultimate test. Observe the proof.
By the hypothesis, the wrongness of murder is known by a moral
intuition which the human mind was originally constituted to yield; and
the hypothesis, therefore, negatives the admission that this sense of
its wrongness arises, immediately or remotely, from the consciousness
that murder involves deduction from happiness, directly and indirectly.
But if you ask an adherent of this doctrine to contrast his intuition
with that of the Fijian, who, considering murder an honorable action,
is restless until he has distinguished himself by killing some one;
and if you inquire of him in what way the civilized intuition is to
be justified in opposition to the intuition of the savage, no course
is open save that of showing how conformity to the one conduces to
well-being, while conformity to the other entails suffering, individual
and general. When asked why the moral sense which tells him that it is
wrong to take another man's goods, should be obeyed rather than the
moral sense of a Turcoman, who proves how meritorious he considers
theft to be by making pilgrimages to the tombs of noted robbers
to make offerings, the intuitionist can do nothing but urge that,
certainly under conditions like ours, if not also under conditions like
those of the Turcomans, disregard of men's claims to their property
not only inflicts immediate misery, but involves a social state
inconsistent with happiness. Or if, again, there is required from him
a justification for his feeling of repugnance to lying, in contrast
with the feeling of an Egyptian, who prides himself on skill in lying
(even thinking it praiseworthy to deceive without any further end
than that of practicing deception), he can do no more than point to
the social prosperity furthered by entire trust between man and man,
and the social disorganization that follows universal untruthfulness,
consequences that are necessarily conducive to agreeable feelings and
disagreeable feelings respectively.
The unavoidable conclusion is, then, that the intuitionist does not,
and cannot, ignore the ultimate derivations of right and wrong from
pleasure and pain. However much he may be guided, and rightly guided,
by the decisions of conscience respecting the characters of acts, he
has come to have confidence in these decisions because he perceives,
vaguely but positively, that conformity to them furthers the welfare
of himself and others, and that disregard of them entails in the long
run suffering on all. Require him to name any moral-sense judgment by
which he knows as right some kind of act that will bring a surplus of
pain, taking into account the totals in this life and in any assumed
other life, and you find him unable to name one: a fact proving that
underneath all these intuitions respecting the goodness or badness
of acts there lies the fundamental assumption that acts are good or
bad according as their aggregate effects increase men's happiness or
increase their misery.
§ 14. It is curious to see how the devil-worship of the savage,
surviving in various disguises among the civilized, and leaving as
one of its products that asceticism which in many forms and degrees
still prevails widely, is to be found influencing in marked ways men
who have apparently emancipated themselves, not only from primitive
superstitions but from more developed superstitions. Views of life and
conduct which originated with those who propitiated deified ancestors
by self-tortures enter even still into the ethical theories of many
persons who have years since cast away the theology of the past, and
suppose themselves to be no longer influenced by it.
In the writings of one who rejects dogmatic Christianity, together
with the Hebrew cult which preceded it, a career of conquest costing
tens of thousands of lives is narrated with a sympathy comparable to
that rejoicing which the Hebrew traditions show us over destruction
of enemies in the name of God. You may find, too, a delight in
contemplating the exercise of despotic power, joined with insistance
on the salutariness of a state in which the wills of slaves and
citizens are humbly subject to the wills of masters and rulers--a
sentiment also reminding us of that ancient Oriental life which
biblical narratives portray. Along with this worship of the strong
man--along with this justification of whatever force may be needed for
carrying out his ambition--along with this yearning for a form of
society in which supremacy of the few is unrestrained and the virtue
of the many consists in obedience to them, we not unnaturally find
repudiation of the ethical theory which takes, in some shape or other,
the greatest happiness as the end of conduct: we not unnaturally find
this utilitarian philosophy designated by the contemptuous title of
"pig-philosophy." And then, serving to show what comprehension there
has been of the philosophy so nicknamed, we are told that not happiness
but blessedness must be the end.
Obviously, the implication is that blessedness is not a kind of
happiness; and this implication at once suggests the question--What
mode of feeling is it? If it is a state of consciousness at all, it is
necessarily one of three states--painful, indifferent, or pleasurable.
Does it leave the possessor at the zero point of sentiency? Then it
leaves him just as he would be if he had not got it. Does it not leave
him at the zero point? Then it must leave him below zero or above zero.
Each of these possibilities may be conceived under two forms. That
to which the term blessedness is applied may be a particular state
of consciousness--one among the many states that occur; and on this
supposition we have to recognize it as a pleasurable state, an
indifferent state, or a painful state. Otherwise, blessedness is
a word not applicable to a particular state of consciousness, but
characterizes the aggregate of its states; and in this case the average
of the aggregate is to be conceived as one in which the pleasurable
predominates, or one in which the painful predominates, or one in which
pleasures and pains exactly cancel one another. Let us take in turn
these two imaginable applications of the word.
"Blessed are the merciful;" "Blessed are the peacemakers;" "Blessed is
he that considereth the poor;" are sayings which we may fairly take
as conveying the accepted meaning of blessedness. What now shall we
say of one who is, for the time being, blessed in performing an act
of mercy? Is his mental state pleasurable? If so the hypothesis is
abandoned: blessedness is a particular form of happiness. Is the state
indifferent or painful? In that case the blessed man is so devoid
of sympathy that relieving another from pain, or the fear of pain,
leaves him either wholly unmoved, or gives him an unpleasant emotion.
Again, if one who is blessed in making peace receives no gratification
from the act, then seeing men injure each other does not affect him
at all, or gives him a pleasure which is changed into a pain when he
prevents the injury. Once more, to say that the blessedness of one who
"considereth the poor" implies no agreeable feeling, is to say that his
consideration for the poor leaves him without feeling or entails on him
a disagreeable feeling. So that if blessedness is a particular mode of
consciousness temporarily existing as a concomitant of each kind of
beneficent action, those who deny that it is a pleasure, or constituent
of happiness, confess themselves either not pleased by the welfare of
others or displeased by it.
Otherwise understood, blessedness must, as we have seen, refer to the
totality of feelings experienced during the life of one who occupies
himself with the actions the word connotes. This also presents the
three possibilities--surplus of pleasures, surplus of pains, equality
of the two. If the pleasurable states are in excess, then the blessed
life can be distinguished from any other pleasurable life only by
the relative amount, or the quality, of its pleasures: it is a life
which makes happiness of a certain kind and degree its end; and the
assumption that blessedness is not a form of happiness, lapses. If
the blessed life is one in which the pleasures and the pains received
balance one another, so producing an average that is indifferent; or
if it is one in which the pleasures are outbalanced by the pains, then
the blessed life has the character which the pessimist alleges of life
at large, and therefore regards it as cursed. Annihilation is best, he
will argue, since if an average that is indifferent is the outcome of
the blessed life, annihilation at once achieves it; and if a surplus of
suffering is the outcome of this highest kind of life called blessed,
still more should life in general be ended.
A possible rejoinder must be named and disposed of. While it is
admitted that the particular kind of consciousness accompanying conduct
that is blessed, is pleasurable, it may be contended that pursuance
of this conduct and receipt of the pleasure, brings by the implied
self-denial, and persistent effort, and perhaps bodily injury, a
suffering that exceeds it in amount. And it may then be urged that
blessedness, characterized by this excess of aggregate pains over
aggregate pleasures, should nevertheless be pursued as an end, rather
than the happiness constituted by excess of pleasures over pains. But
now, defensible though this conception of blessedness may be when
limited to one individual, or some individuals, it becomes indefensible
when extended to all individuals; as it must be if blessedness is taken
for the end of conduct. To see this we need but ask for what purpose
are these pains in excess of pleasures to be borne. Blessedness being
the ideal state for all persons, and the self-sacrifices made by each
person in pursuance of this ideal state, having for their end to
help all other persons in achieving the like ideal state, it results
that the blessed though painful state of each, is to be acquired by
furthering the like blessed though painful states of others: the
blessed consciousness is to be constituted by the contemplation of
their consciousnesses in a condition of average suffering. Does any
one accept this inference? If not, his rejection of it involves the
admission that the motive for bearing pains in performing acts called
blessed, is not the obtaining for others like pains of blessedness, but
the obtaining of pleasures for others, and that thus pleasure somewhere
is the tacitly implied ultimate end.
In brief, then, blessedness has for its necessary condition of
existence, increased happiness, positive or negative, in some
consciousness or other, and disappears utterly if we assume that the
actions called blessed are known to cause decrease of happiness in
others as well as in the actor.
§ 15. To make clear the meaning of the general argument set forth in
this chapter, its successive parts must be briefly summarized.
That which in the last chapter we found to be highly-evolved conduct,
is that which, in this chapter, we find to be what is called good
conduct; and the ideal goal to the natural evolution of conduct there
recognized we here recognize as the ideal standard of conduct ethically
considered.
The acts adjusted to ends which, while constituting the outer visible
life from moment to moment further the continuance of life, we saw
become, as evolution progresses, better adjusted, until finally they
make the life of each individual entire in length and breadth, at the
same time that they efficiently subserve the rearing of young, and do
both these, not only without hindering other individuals from doing
the like, but while giving aid to them in doing the like. And here
we see that goodness is asserted of such conduct under each of these
three aspects. Other things equal, well-adjusted, self-conserving acts
we call good; other things equal, we call good the acts that are well
adjusted for bringing up progeny capable of complete living; and other
things equal, we ascribe goodness to acts which further the complete
living of others.
This judging as good, conduct which conduces to life in each and all,
we found to involve the assumption that animate existence is desirable.
By the pessimist, conduct which subserves life cannot consistently
be called good: to call it good implies some form of optimism. We
saw, however, that pessimists and optimists both start with the
postulate that life is a blessing or a curse, according as the average
consciousness accompanying it is pleasurable or painful. And since
avowed or implied pessimists, and optimists of one or other shade,
taken together constitute all men, it results that this postulate
is universally accepted. Whence it follows that if we call good the
conduct conducive to life, we can do so only with the implication that
it is conducive to a surplus of pleasures over pains.
The truth that conduct is considered by us as good or bad, according
as its aggregate results, to self or others or both, are pleasurable
or painful, we found on examination to be involved in all the
current judgments on conduct: the proof being that reversing the
applications of the words creates absurdities. And we found that every
other proposed standard of conduct derives its authority from this
standard. Whether perfection of nature is the assigned proper aim, or
virtuousness of action, or rectitude of motive, we saw that definition
of the perfection, the virtue, the rectitude, inevitably brings us down
to happiness experienced in some form, at some time, by some person, as
the fundamental idea. Nor could we discover any intelligible conception
of blessedness, save one which implies a raising of consciousness,
individual or general, to a happier state; either by mitigating pains
or increasing pleasures.
Even with those who judge of conduct from the religious point of view,
rather than from the ethical point of view, it is the same. Men who
seek to propitiate God by inflicting pains on themselves, or refrain
from pleasures to avoid offending him, do so to escape greater ultimate
pains or to get greater ultimate pleasures. If by positive or negative
suffering here, they expected to achieve more suffering hereafter, they
would not do as they do. That which they now think duty they would not
think duty if it promised eternal misery instead of eternal happiness.
Nay, if there be any who believe that human beings were created to
be unhappy, and that they ought to continue living to display their
unhappiness for the satisfaction of their creator, such believers are
obliged to use this standard of judgment; for the pleasure of their
diabolical god is the end to be achieved.
So that no school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a
desirable state of feeling called by whatever name--gratification,
enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being
or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception. It is as much
a necessary form of moral intuition as space is a necessary form of
intellectual intuition.
CHAPTER IV.
WAYS OF JUDGING CONDUCT.
§ 17. Intellectual progress is by no one trait so adequately
characterized as by development of the idea of causation, since
development of this idea involves development of so many other ideas.
Before any way can be made, thought and language must have advanced
far enough to render properties or attributes thinkable as such,
apart from objects; which, in low stages of human intelligence, they
are not. Again, even the simplest notion of cause, as we understand
it, can be reached only after many like instances have been grouped
into a simple generalization; and through all ascending steps, higher
notions of causation imply wider notions of generality. Further, as
there must be clustered in the mind concrete causes of many kinds
before there can emerge the conception of cause, apart from particular
causes, it follows that progress in abstractness of thought is implied.
Concomitantly, there is implied the recognition of constant relations
among phenomena, generating ideas of uniformity of sequence and of
co-existence--the idea of natural law. These advances can go on only as
fast as perceptions and resulting thoughts are made definite by the use
of measures, serving to familiarize the mind with exact correspondence,
truth, certainty. And only when growing science accumulates examples
of quantitative relations, foreseen and verified, throughout a
widening range of phenomena, does causation come to be conceived as
necessary and universal. So that though all these cardinal conceptions
aid one another in developing, we may properly say that the conception
of causation especially depends for its development on the development
of the rest; and therefore is the best measure of intellectual
development at large.
How slowly, as a consequence of its dependence, the conception of
causation evolves, a glance at the evidence shows. We hear with
surprise of the savage who, falling down a precipice, ascribes the
failure of his foothold to a malicious demon; and we smile at the
kindred notion of the ancient Greek, that his death was prevented by
a goddess who unfastened for him the thong of the helmet by which his
enemy was dragging him. But daily, without surprise, we hear men who
describe themselves as saved from shipwreck by "divine interposition,"
who speak of having "providentially" missed a train which met with a
fatal disaster, and who called it a "mercy" to have escaped injury
from a falling chimney-pot--men who, in such cases, recognize physical
causation no more than do the uncivilized or semi-civilized. The Veddah
who thinks that failure to hit an animal with his arrow resulted
from inadequate invocation of an ancestral spirit, and the Christian
priest who says prayers over a sick man in the expectation that the
course of his disease will so be stayed, differ only in respect of the
agent from whom they expect supernatural aid and the phenomena to be
altered by him: the necessary relations among causes and effects are
tacitly ignored by the last as much as by the first. Deficient belief
in causation is, indeed, exemplified even in those whose discipline
has been specially fitted to generate this belief--even in men of
science. For a generation after geologists had become uniformitarians
in Geology, they remained catastrophists in Biology: while recognizing
none but natural agencies in the genesis of the earth's crust, they
ascribed to supernatural agency the genesis of the organisms on its
surface. Nay more--among those who are convinced that living things
in general have been evolved by the continued interaction of forces
everywhere operating, there are some who make an exception of man; or
who, if they admit that his body has been evolved in the same manner
as the bodies of other creatures, allege that his mind has been not
evolved but specially created. If, then, universal and necessary
causation is only now approaching full recognition, even by those whose
investigations are daily re-illustrating it, we may expect to find it
very little recognized among men at large, whose culture has not been
calculated to impress them with it; and we may expect to find it least
recognized by them in respect of those classes of phenomena amid which,
in consequence of their complexity, causation is most difficult to
trace--the psychical, the social, the moral.
Why do I here make these reflections on what seems an irrelevant
subject? I do it because on studying the various ethical theories I am
struck with the fact that they are all characterized either by entire
absence of the idea of causation, or by inadequate presence of it.
Whether theological, political, intuitional, or utilitarian, they all
display, if not in the same degree, still, each in a large degree, the
defects which result from this lack. We will consider them in the order
named.
§ 18. The school of morals properly to be considered as the still
extant representative of the most ancient school, is that which
recognizes no other rule of conduct than the alleged will of God. It
originates with the savage whose only restraint beyond fear of his
fellow man, is fear of an ancestral spirit; and whose notion of moral
duty as distinguished from his notion of social prudence, arises from
this fear. Here the ethical doctrine and the religious doctrine are
identical--have in no degree differentiated.
This primitive form of ethical doctrine, changed only by the gradual
dying out of multitudinous minor supernatural agents and accompanying
development of one universal supernatural agent, survives in great
strength down to our own day. Religious creeds, established and
dissenting, all embody the belief that right and wrong are right and
wrong simply in virtue of divine enactment. And this tacit assumption
has passed from systems of theology into systems of morality; or
rather let us say that moral systems in early stages of development,
little differentiated from the accompanying theological systems, have
participated in this assumption. We see this in the works of the
Stoics, as well as in the works of certain Christian moralists. Among
recent ones I may instance the _Essays on the Principles of Morality_,
by Jonathan Dymond, a Quaker, which makes "the authority of the Deity
the sole ground of duty, and His communicated will the only ultimate
standard of right and wrong." Nor is it by writers belonging to so
relatively unphilosophical a sect only that this view is held; it is
held with a difference by writers belonging to sects contrariwise
distinguished. For these assert that in the absence of belief in a
deity, there would be no moral guidance; and this amounts to asserting
that moral truths have no other origin than the will of God, which, if
not considered as revealed in sacred writings, must be considered as
revealed in conscience.
This assumption, when examined, proves to be suicidal. If there are
no other origins for right and wrong than this enunciated or intuited
divine will, then, as alleged, were there no knowledge of the divine
will, the acts now known as wrong would not be known as wrong. But if
men did not know such acts to be wrong because contrary to the divine
will, and so, in committing them, did not offend by disobedience;
and, if they could not otherwise know them to be wrong, then they
might commit them indifferently with the acts now classed as right:
the results, practically considered, would be the same. In so far as
secular matters are concerned, there would be no difference between
the two; for to say that in the affairs of life any evils would arise
from continuing to do the acts called wrong, and ceasing to do the
acts called right, is to say that these produce in themselves certain
mischievous consequences and certain beneficial consequences; which is
to say there is another source for moral rules than the revealed or
inferred divine will: they may be established by induction from these
observed consequences.
From this implication I see no escape. It must be either admitted or
denied that the acts called good and the acts called bad, naturally
conduce, the one to human well-being and the other to human ill-being.
Is it admitted? Then the admission amounts to an assertion that the
conduciveness is shown by experience; and this involves abandonment
of the doctrine that there is no origin for morals apart from divine
injunctions. Is it denied that acts classed as good and bad differ in
their effect? Then it is tacitly affirmed that human affairs would go
on just as well in ignorance of the distinction; and the alleged need
for commandments from God disappears.
And here we see how entirely wanting is the conception of cause. This
notion that such and such actions are made respectively good and bad
simply by divine injunction, is tantamount to the notion that such and
such actions have not in the nature of things such and such kinds of
effects. If there is not an unconsciousness of causation there is an
ignoring of it.
§ 19. Following Plato and Aristotle, who make State enactments the
sources of right and wrong; and following Hobbes, who holds that there
can be neither justice nor injustice till a regularly constituted
coercive power exists to issue and enforce commands; not a few modern
thinkers hold that there is no other origin for good and bad in conduct
than law. And this implies the belief that moral obligation originates
with acts of parliament, and can be changed this way or that way by
majorities. They ridicule the idea that men have any natural rights,
and allege that rights are wholly results of convention: the necessary
implication being that duties are so too. Before considering whether
this theory coheres with outside truths, let us observe how far it is
coherent within itself.
In pursuance of his argument that rights and duties originate with
established social arrangements, Hobbes says:
"Where no covenant hath proceeded, there hath no right been
transferred, and every man has a right to everything; and
consequently, no action can be unjust. But when a covenant is made,
then to break it is _unjust_; and the definitions of _injustice_
is no other than _the not performance of covenant_. And whatsoever
is not unjust, is _just_. Therefore, before the names of just and
unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel
men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of
some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of
their covenant."[A]
In this paragraph the essential propositions are: justice is
fulfillment of covenant; fulfillment of covenant implies a power
of enforcing it: "just and unjust _can_ have no place" unless men
are compelled to perform their covenants. But this is to say that
men _cannot_ perform their covenants without compulsion. Grant that
justice is performance of covenant. Now suppose it to be performed
voluntarily: there is justice. In such case, however, there is justice
in the absence of coercion; which is contrary to the hypothesis. The
only conceivable rejoinder is an absurd one--voluntary performance of
covenant is impossible. Assert this, and the doctrine that right and
wrong come into existence with the establishment of sovereignty is
defensible. Decline to assert it, and the doctrine vanishes.
From inner incongruities pass now to outer ones. The justification
for his doctrine of absolute civil authority as the source of rules
of conduct, Hobbes seeks in the miseries entailed by the chronic war
between man and man which must exist in the absence of society; holding
that under any kind of government a better life is possible than in
the state of nature. Now whether we accept the gratuitous and baseless
theory that men surrendered their liberties to a sovereign power of
some kind, with a view to the promised increase of satisfactions;
or whether we accept the rational theory, inductively based, that a
state of political subordination gradually became established through
experience of the increased satisfactions derived under it; it equally
remains obvious that the acts of the sovereign power have no other
warrant than their subservience to the purpose for which it came into
existence. The necessities which initiate government, themselves
prescribe the actions of government. If its actions do not respond to
the necessities, they are unwarranted. The authority of law is, then,
by the hypothesis, derived; and can never transcend the authority of
that from which it is derived. If general good, or welfare, or utility,
is the supreme end, and if State enactments are justified as means to
this supreme end, then, State enactments have such authority only as
arises from conduciveness to this supreme end. When they are right,
it is only because the original authority endorses them; and they are
wrong if they do not bear its endorsement. That is to say, conduct
cannot be made good or bad by law; but its goodness or badness is to
the last determined by its effects as naturally furthering, or not
furthering, the lives of citizens.
Still more when considered in the concrete, than when considered in
the abstract, do the views of Hobbes and his disciples prove to be
inconsistent. Joining in the general belief that without such security
for life as enables men to go fearlessly about their business, there
can be neither happiness nor prosperity, individual or general, they
agree that measures for preventing murder, manslaughter, assault,
etc., are requisite; and they advocate this or that penal system as
furnishing the best deterrents: so arguing, both in respect of the
evils and the remedies, that such and such causes will, by the nature
of things, produce such and such effects. They recognize as inferable
_à priori_, the truth that men will not lay by property unless they
can count with great probability on reaping advantages from it; that
consequently where robbery is unchecked, or where a rapacious ruler
appropriates whatever earnings his subjects do not effectually hide,
production will scarcely exceed immediate consumption; and that
necessarily there will be none of that accumulation of capital required
for social development, with all its aids to welfare. In neither case,
however, do they perceive that they are tacitly asserting the need
for certain restraints on conduct as deducible from the necessary
conditions to complete life in the social state; and are so making the
authority of law derivative and not original.
If it be said by any belonging to this school that certain moral
obligations, to be distinguished as cardinal, must be admitted to have
a basis deeper than legislation, and that it is for legislation not to
create but merely to enforce them--if, I say, admitting this, they go
on to allege a legislative origin for minor claims and duties; then
we have the implication that whereas some kinds of conduct do, in the
nature of things, tend to work out certain kinds of results, other
kinds of conduct do not, in the nature of things, tend to work out
certain kinds of results. While of these acts the naturally good or
bad consequences must be allowed, it may be denied of those acts that
they have naturally good or bad consequences. Only after asserting
this can it be consistently asserted that acts of the last class
are made right or wrong by law. For if such acts have any intrinsic
tendencies to produce beneficial or mischievous effects, then these
intrinsic tendencies furnish the warrant for legislative requirements
or interdicts; and to say that the requirements or interdicts make them
right or wrong is to say that they have no intrinsic tendencies to
produce beneficial or mischievous effects.
Here, then, we have another theory betraying deficient consciousness
of causation. An adequate consciousness of causation yields the
irresistible belief that from the most serious to the most trivial
actions of men in society, there must flow consequences which, quite
apart from legal agency, conduce to well-being or ill-being in greater
or smaller degrees. If murders are socially injurious whether forbidden
by law or not--if one man's appropriation of another's gains by force
brings special and general evils, whether it is or is not contrary
to a ruler's edicts--if non-fulfillment of contract, if cheating, if
adulteration, work mischiefs on a community in proportion as they are
common, quite irrespective of prohibitions; then, is it not manifest
that the like holds throughout all the details of men's behavior? Is
it not clear that when legislation insists on certain acts which have
naturally beneficial effects, and forbids others that have naturally
injurious effects, the acts are not made good or bad by legislation;
but the legislation derives its authority from the natural effects of
the acts? Non-recognition of this implies non-recognition of natural
causation.
§ 20. Nor is it otherwise with the pure intuitionists, who hold that
moral perceptions are innate in the original sense--thinkers whose view
is that men have been divinely endowed with moral faculties; not that
these have resulted from inherited modifications caused by accumulated
experiences.
To affirm that we know some things to be right and other things to be
wrong, by virtue of a supernaturally given conscience; and thus tacitly
to affirm that we do not otherwise know right from wrong; is tacitly to
deny any natural relations between acts and results. For if there exist
any such relations, then we may ascertain by induction, or deduction,
or both, what these are. And if it be admitted that because of such
natural relations, happiness is produced by this kind of conduct, which
is therefore to be approved, while misery is produced by that kind
of conduct, which is therefore to be condemned; then it is admitted
that the rightness or wrongness of actions are determinable, and must
finally be determined, by the goodness or badness of the effects that
flow from them; which is contrary to the hypothesis.
It may, indeed, be rejoined that effects are deliberately ignored
by this school; which teaches that courses recognized by moral
intuition as right, must be pursued without regard to consequences.
But on inquiry it turns out that the consequences to be disregarded
are particular consequences, and not general consequences. When,
for example, it is said that property lost by another ought to be
restored, irrespective of evil to the finder, who possibly may, by
restoring it, lose that which would have preserved him from starvation,
it is meant that in pursuance of the principle, the immediate and
special consequences must be disregarded, not the diffused and remote
consequences. By which we are shown that though the theory forbids
overt recognition of causation, there is an unavowed recognition of it.
And this implies the trait to which I am drawing attention. The
conception of natural causation is so imperfectly developed that there
is only an indistinct consciousness that throughout the whole of human
conduct necessary relations of causes and effects prevail, and that
from them are ultimately derived all moral rules, however much these
may be proximately derived from moral intuitions.
§ 21. Strange to say, even the utilitarian school, which, at first
sight, appears to be distinguished from the rest by recognizing natural
causation, is, if not so far from complete recognition of it, yet very
far.
Conduct, according to its theory, is to be estimated by observation
of results. When, in sufficiently numerous cases, it has been found
that behavior of this kind works evil while behavior of that kind
works good, these kinds of behavior are to be judged as wrong and
right respectively. Now though it seems that the origin of moral
rules in natural causes, is thus asserted by implication, it is but
partially asserted. The implication is simply that we are to ascertain
by induction that such and such mischiefs or benefits _do_ go along
with such and such acts; and are then to infer that the like relations
will hold in future. But acceptance of these generalizations and the
inferences from them does not amount to recognition of causation in
the full sense of the word. So long as only _some_ relation between
cause and effect in conduct is recognized, and not _the_ relation,
a completely scientific form of knowledge has not been reached. At
present, utilitarians pay no attention to this distinction. Even when
it is pointed out they disregard the fact that empirical utilitarianism
is but a transitional form to be passed through on the way to rational
utilitarianism.
In a letter to Mr. Mill, written some sixteen years ago, repudiating
the title anti-utilitarian, which he had applied to me (a letter
subsequently published in Mr. Bain's work on _Mental and Moral
Science_), I endeavored to make clear the difference above indicated;
and I must here quote certain passages from that letter.
The view for which I contend is, that Morality, properly
so-called--the science of right conduct--has for its object to
determine _how_ and _why_ certain modes of conduct are detrimental,
and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot
be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution
of things; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science
to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence,
what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and
what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions
are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to
irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.
Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its
early stages, planetary Astronomy consisted of nothing more than
accumulated observations respecting the positions and motions of
the sun and planets; from which accumulated observations it came
by-and-by to be empirically predicted, with an approach to truth,
that certain of the heavenly bodies would have certain positions at
certain times. But the modern science of planetary Astronomy consists
of deductions from the law of gravitation--deductions showing why
the celestial bodies _necessarily_ occupy certain places at certain
times. Now, the kind of relation which thus exists between ancient
and modern Astronomy is analogous to the kind of relation which, I
conceive, exists between the Expediency-Morality and Moral Science,
properly so called. And the objection which I have to the current
Utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of
Morality--does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of
Moral Science.
Doubtless if utilitarians are asked whether it can be by mere chance
that this kind of action works evil and that works good, they will
answer--No: they will admit that such sequences are parts of a
necessary order among phenomena. But though this truth is beyond
question; and though if there are causal relations between acts and
their results, rules of conduct can become scientific only when they
are deduced from these causal relations; there continues to be entire
satisfaction with that form of utilitarianism in which these causal
relations are practically ignored. It is supposed that in future, as
now, utility is to be determined only by observation of results: and
that there is no possibility of knowing, by deduction from fundamental
principles, what conduct _must_ be detrimental and what conduct _must_
be beneficial.
§ 22. To make more specific that conception of ethical science here
indicated, let me present it under a concrete aspect, beginning with a
simple illustration and complicating this illustration by successive
steps.
If, by tying its main artery, we stop most of the blood going to
a limb, then, for as long as the limb performs its function, those
parts which are called into play must be wasted faster than they
are repaired: whence eventual disablement. The relation between due
receipt of nutritive matters through its arteries, and due discharge
of its duties by the limb is a part of the physical order. If, instead
of cutting off the supply to a particular limb, we bleed the patient
largely, so drafting away the materials needed for repairing not one
limb but all limbs, and not limbs only but viscera, there results both
a muscular debility and an enfeeblement of the vital functions. Here,
again, cause and effect are necessarily related. The mischief that
results from great depletion, results apart from any divine command, or
political enactment, or moral intuition. Now advance a step. Suppose
the man to be prevented from taking in enough of the solid and liquid
food containing those substances continually abstracted from his blood
in repairing his tissues: suppose he has cancer of the esophagus and
cannot swallow--what happens? By this indirect depletion, as by direct
depletion, he is inevitably made incapable of performing the actions
of one in health. In this case, as in the other cases, the connection
between cause and effect is one that cannot be established, or altered,
by any authority external to the phenomena themselves. Again, let
us say that instead of being stopped after passing his mouth, that
which he would swallow is stopped before reaching his mouth; so that
day after day the man is required to waste his tissues in getting
food, and day after day the food he has got to meet this waste, he is
forcibly prevented from eating. As before, the progress toward death
by starvation is inevitable--the connection between acts and effects
is independent of any alleged theological or political authority. And
similarly if, being forced by the whip to labor, no adequate return
in food is supplied to him, there are equally certain evils, equally
independent of sacred or secular enactment.
Pass now to those actions more commonly thought of as the occasions
for rules of conduct. Let us assume the man to be continually robbed
of that which was given him in exchange for his labor, and by which he
was to make up for nervo-muscular expenditure and renew his powers.
No less than before is the connection between conduct and consequence
rooted in the constitution of things; unchangeable by State-made law,
and not needing establishment by empirical generalization. If the
action by which the man is affected is a stage further away from the
results, or produces results of a less decisive kind, still we see the
same basis for morality in the physical order. Imagine that payment
for his services is made partly in bad coin; or that it is delayed
beyond the date agreed upon; or that what he buys to eat is adulterated
with innutritive matter. Manifestly, by any of these deeds which we
condemn as unjust, and which are punished by law, there is, as before,
an interference with the normal adjustment of physiological repair
to physiological waste. Nor is it otherwise when we pass to kinds of
conduct still more remotely operative. If he is hindered from enforcing
his claim, if class-predominance prevents him from proceeding, or if
a bribed judge gives a verdict contrary to evidence, or if a witness
swears falsely, have not these deeds, though they affect him more
indirectly, the same original cause for their wrongness?