[_First published in_ The Fortnightly Review _for April,_ 1871.]
If a writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet
thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy.
Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for
executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I
have made it a policy to avoid controversy as much as possible, even at
the cost of being seriously misunderstood. Hence it resulted that when
in _Macmillan's Magazine_, for July, 1869, Mr. Richard Hutton published,
under the title "A Questionable Parentage for Morals," a criticism on a
doctrine of mine, I decided to let his misrepresentations pass unnoticed
until, in the course of my work, I arrived at the stage where, by a full
exposition of this doctrine, they would be set aside. It did not occur
to me that, in the meantime, these erroneous statements, accepted as
true statements, would be repeated by other writers, and my views
commented upon as untenable. This, however, has happened. In more
periodicals than one, I have seen it asserted that Mr. Hutton has
effectually disposed of my hypothesis. Supposing that this hypothesis
has been rightly expressed by Mr. Hutton, Sir John Lubbock, in his
_Origin of Civilisation_, &c., has been led to express a partial
dissent; which I think he would not have expressed had my own
exposition been before him. Mr. Mivart, too, in his recent _Genesis of
Species_, has been similarly betrayed into misapprehensions. And now Sir
Alexander Grant, following the same lead, has conveyed to the readers of
the _Fortnightly Review_ another of these conceptions, which is but very
partially true. Thus I find myself compelled to say as much as will
serve to prevent further spread of the mischief.
* * * * *
If a general doctrine concerning a highly-involved class of phenomena
could be adequately presented in a single paragraph of a letter, the
writing of books would be superfluous. In the brief exposition of
certain ethical doctrines held by me, which is given in Professor Bain's
_Mental and Moral Science_, it is stated that they are--
"as yet, nowhere fully expressed. They form part of the more
general doctrine of Evolution which he is engaged in working out;
and they are at present to be gathered only from scattered
passages. It is true that, in his first work, _Social Statics_, he
presented what he then regarded as a tolerably complete view of one
division of Morals. But without abandoning this view, he now
regards it as inadequate--more especially in respect of its basis."
Mr. Hutton, however, taking the bare enunciation of one part of this
basis, deals with it critically; and, in the absence of any exposition
by me, sets forth what he supposes to be my grounds for it, and proceeds
to show that they are unsatisfactory.
If, in his anxiety to suppress what he doubtless regards as a pernicious
doctrine, Mr. Hutton could not wait until I had explained myself, it
might have been expected that he would use whatever information was to
be had concerning it. So far from seeking out such information, however,
he has, in a way for which I cannot account, ignored the information
immediately before him.
The title which Mr. Hutton has chosen for his criticism is, "A
Questionable Parentage for Morals." Now he has ample means of knowing
that I allege a primary basis of Morals, quite independent of that
which he describes and rejects. I do not refer merely to the fact that
having, when he reviewed _Social Statics_,[33] expressed his very
decided dissent from this primary basis, he must have been aware that I
alleged it; for he may say that in the many years which have since
elapsed he had forgotten all about it. But I refer to the distinct
enunciation of this primary basis in that letter to Mr. Mill from which
he quotes. In a preceding paragraph of the letter, I have explained
that, while I accept utilitarianism in the abstract, I do not accept
that current utilitarianism which recognizes for the guidance of conduct
nothing beyond empirical generalizations; and I have contended 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 recognised as laws of conduct;
and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of
happiness or misery."
Nor is this the only enunciation of what I conceive to be the primary
basis of morals, contained in this same letter. A subsequent paragraph
separated by four lines only from that which Mr. Hutton extracts,
commences thus:--
"Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of
compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual re-adjustment
of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social
arrangements: to which end, both elements of the compromise must be
kept in view. If it is true that pure rectitude prescribes a system
of things far too good for men as they are, it is not less true that
mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of
things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality
owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into
Utopian absurdities, expediency is indebted to absolute morality for
all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested
in ascertaining what is _relatively right_, it still follows that we
must first consider what is _absolutely right_; since the one
conception presupposes the other."
I do not see how there could well be a more emphatic assertion that
there exists a primary basis of morals independent of, and in a sense
antecedent to, that which is furnished by experiences of utility; and
consequently, independent of, and, in a sense antecedent to, those moral
sentiments which I conceive to be generated by such experiences. Yet no
one could gather from Mr. Hutton's article that I assert this; or would
even find reasons for a faint suspicion that I do so. From the reference
made to my further views, he would infer my acceptance of that empirical
utilitarianism which I have expressly repudiated. And the title which
Mr. Hutton gives to his paper clearly asserts, by implication, that I
recognize no "parentage for morals" beyond that of the accumulation and
organization of the effects of experience. I cannot believe that Mr.
Hutton intended to convey this erroneous impression. He was, I suppose,
too much absorbed in contemplating the proposition he combats to
observe, or, at least, to attach any weight to, the propositions which
accompany it. But I am sorry he did not perceive the mischief he was
likely to do me by spreading this one-sided statement.
* * * * *
I pass now to the particular question at issue--not the "parentage for
morals," but the parentage of moral sentiments. In describing my view on
this more special doctrine, Mr. Hutton has similarly, I regret to say,
neglected the data which would have helped him to draw an approximately
true outline of it. It cannot well be that the existence of such data
was unknown to him. They are contained in the _Principles of
Psychology_; and Mr. Hutton reviewed that work when it was first
published.[34] In a chapter on the Feelings, which occurs near the end
of it, there is sketched out a process of evolution by no means like
that which Mr. Hutton indicates; and had he turned to that chapter he
would have seen that his description of the genesis of moral sentiments
out of organized experiences is not such a one as I should have given.
Let me quote a passage from that chapter.
"Not only are those emotions which form the immediate stimuli to
actions, thus explicable; but the like explanation applies to the
emotions that leave the subject of them comparatively passive: as,
for instance, the emotion produced by beautiful scenery. The
gradually increasing complexity in the groups of sensations and
ideas co-ordinated, ends in the co-ordination of those vast
aggregations of them which a grand landscape excites and suggests.
The infant taken into the midst of mountains, is totally unaffected
by them; but is delighted with the small group of attributes and
relations presented in a toy. The child can appreciate, and be
pleased with, the more complicated relations of household objects
and localities, the garden, the field, and the street. But it is
only in youth and mature age, when individual things and small
assemblages of them have become familiar and automatically
cognizable, that those immense assemblages which landscapes present
can be adequately grasped, and the highly aggregated states of
consciousness produced by them, experienced. Then, however, the
various minor groups of states that have been in earlier days
severally produced by trees, by fields, by streams, by cascades, by
rocks, by precipices, by mountains, by clouds, are aroused
together. Along with the sensations immediately received, there are
partially excited the myriads of sensations that have been in times
past received from objects such as those presented; further, there
are partially excited the various incidental feelings that were
experienced on all these countless past occasions; and there are
probably also excited certain deeper, but now vague combinations of
states, that were organized in the race during barbarous times,
when its pleasurable activities were chiefly among the woods and
waters. And out of all these excitations, some of them actual but
most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a fine
landscape produces in us."
It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here indicated are not
to be taken as intellectual processes--not as processes in which
recognized relations between pleasures and their antecedents, or
intelligent adaptations of means to ends, form the dominant elements.
The state of mind produced by an aggregate of picturesque objects is not
one resolvable into propositions. The sentiment does not contain within
itself any consciousness of causes and consequences of happiness. The
vague recollections of other beautiful scenes and other delightful days
which it dimly rouses, are not aroused because of any rational
co-ordinations of ideas that have been formed in bygone years. Mr.
Hutton, however, assumes that in speaking of the genesis of moral
feelings as due to inherited experiences of the pleasures and pains
caused by certain modes of conduct, I am speaking of reasoned-out
experiences--experiences consciously accumulated and generalized. He
overlooks the fact that the genesis of emotions is distinguished from
the genesis of ideas in this; that whereas the ideas are composed of
elements that are simple, definitely related, and (in the case of
general ideas) constantly related, emotions are composed of enormously
complex aggregates of elements that are never twice alike, and which
stand in relations that are never twice alike. The difference in the
resulting modes of consciousness is this:--In the genesis of an idea the
successive experiences, be they of sounds, colours, touches, tastes, or
be they of the special objects which combine many of these into groups,
have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely
thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an
emotion the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when
it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar,
but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests
benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their
special natures, though they have a certain community in general nature.
Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous,
confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of
combination among the impressions received from without, there is a
vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of
ideal feelings of pleasure or pain which were associated with these. We
have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to
recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them
being able to say why they have grown up; though analysis,
nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected
experiences. The familiar fact that a kind of jam which was, during
childhood, repeatedly taken after medicine, may become, by simple
association of sensations, so nauseous that it cannot be tolerated in
after-life, illustrates clearly the way in which repugnances may be
established by habitual association of feelings, without any belief in
causal connexion; or rather, in spite of the knowledge that there is no
causal connexion. Similarly with pleasurable emotions. The cawing of
rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound: musically considered, it is
very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces in
people feelings of a grateful kind--feelings which most of them suppose
to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are
given to self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable
to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest
gratifications--with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with
Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer
holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were
replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny
mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief
from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all
these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated
with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of
these delights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming into
the house can be heard without suddenly raising a wave of that feeling
that has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship. If we are to
understand the genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the
race, we must take account of this all-important process. Mr. Hutton,
however, apparently overlooking it, and not having reminded himself, by
referring to the _Principles of Psychology_, that I insist upon it,
represents my hypothesis to be that a certain sentiment results from the
consolidation of intellectual conclusions! He speaks of me as believing
that "what seems to us now the 'necessary' intuitions and _a priori_
assumptions of human nature, are likely to prove, when scientifically
analysed, nothing but a similar conglomeration of our ancestors' _best
observations and most useful empirical rules_." He supposes me to think
that men having, in past times, come to _see_ that truthfulness was
useful, "the habit of approving truth-speaking and fidelity to
engagements, which was first based on this ground of utility, became so
rooted, that the utilitarian ground of it was forgotten, and _we_ find
ourselves springing to the belief in truth-speaking and fidelity to
engagements from an inherited tendency." Similarly throughout, Mr.
Hutton has so used the word "utility," and so interpreted it on my
behalf, as to make me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out
of _conscious generalizations_ respecting what is beneficial and what
detrimental. Were such my hypothesis, his criticisms would be very much
to the point; but as such is not my hypothesis, they fall to the ground.
The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered,
not as distinctly recognized connexions between certain kinds of acts
and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered
in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often
recurred together, though the relation between them has not been
consciously generalized--associations the origin of which may be as
little perceived as is the origin of the pleasure given by the sounds of
a rookery; but which, nevertheless, have arisen in the course of daily
converse with things, and serve as incentives or deterrents.
In the paragraph which Mr. Hutton has extracted from my letter to Mr.
Mill, I have indicated an analogy between those effects of emotional
experiences out of which I believe moral sentiments have been developed,
and those effects of intellectual experiences out of which I believe
space-intuitions have been developed. Rightly considering that the first
of these hypotheses cannot stand if the last is disproved, Mr. Hutton
has directed part of his attack against this last. But would it not have
been well if he had referred to the _Principles of Psychology_, where
this last hypothesis is set forth at length, before criticising it?
Would it not have been well to give an abstract of my own description of
the process, instead of substituting what he _supposes_ my description
must be? Any one who turns to the _Principles of Psychology_ (first
edition, pp. 218-245), and reads the two chapters, "The Perception of
Body as presenting Statical Attributes", and "The Perception of Space",
will find that Mr. Hutton's account of my view on this matter has given
him no notion of the view as it is expressed by me; and will, perhaps,
be less inclined to smile than he was when he read Mr. Hutton's account.
I cannot here do more than thus imply the invalidity of such part of Mr.
Hutton's argument as proceeds upon this incorrect representation. The
pages which would be required for properly explaining the doctrine that
space-intuitions result from organized experiences may be better used
for explaining this analogous doctrine at present before us. This I will
now endeavour to do; not indirectly by correcting misapprehensions, but
directly by an exposition which shall be as brief as the extremely
involved nature of the process allows.
An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some
vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft
caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an
angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. The smile disappears, the
features contract into an expression of pain, and, beginning to cry, it
turns away its head, and makes such movements of escape as are possible.
What is the meaning of these facts? Why does not the frown make it
smile, and the mother's laugh make it weep? There is but one answer.
Already in its developing brain there is coming into play the structure
through which one cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites
pleasurable feelings, and the structure through which another cluster of
visual and auditory impressions excites painful feelings. The infant
knows no more about the relation existing between a ferocious expression
of face, and the evils which may follow perception of it, than the young
bird just out of its nest knows of the possible pain and death which may
be inflicted by a man coming towards it; and as certainly in the one
case as in the other, the alarm felt is due to a partially-established
nervous structure. Why does this partially-established nervous structure
betray its presence thus early in the human being? Simply because, in
the past experiences of the human race, smiles and gentle tones in those
around have been the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable feelings;
while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less remote, have been
continually associated with the impressions received from knit brows,
and set teeth, and grating voice. Much deeper down than the history of
the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connexions.
The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread,
indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological
accompaniments of destructive action--some of them common to man and
inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior mammals, as
every puppy shows us. What we call the natural language of anger, is due
to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call
into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over
the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of
these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of
pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling:
this, too, has a physiological interpretation.[35]
Let us pass now from the infant in arms to the children in the nursery.
What have the experiences of each been doing in aid of the emotional
development we are considering? While its limbs have been growing more
agile by exercise, its manipulative skill increasing by practice, its
perceptions of objects growing by use quicker, more accurate, more
comprehensive; the associations between these two sets of impressions
received from those around, and the pleasures and pains received along
with them, or after them, have been by frequent repetition made
stronger, and their adjustments better. The dim sense of pain and the
vague glow of delight which the infant felt, have, in the urchin,
severally taken shapes that are more definite. The angry voice of a
nursemaid no longer arouses only a formless feeling of dread, but also a
specific idea of the slap that may follow. The frown on the face of a
bigger brother, along with the primitive, indefinable sense of ill,
brings the ideas of ills that are definable as kicks, and cuffs, and
pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, looking now
sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be respectively associated with
multitudinous forms of gratification and multitudinous forms of
discomfort or privation. Hence these appearances and sounds, which imply
amity or enmity in those around, become symbolic of happiness and
misery; so that eventually, perception of the one set or the other can
scarcely occur without raising a wave of pleasurable feeling or of
painful feeling. The body of this wave is still substantially of the
same nature as it was at first; for though in each of these
multitudinous experiences a special set of facial and vocal signs has
been connected with a special set of pleasures or pains; yet since these
pleasures or pains have been immensely varied in their kinds and
combinations, and since the signs that preceded them were in no two
cases quite alike, it results that even to the end the consciousness
produced remains as vague as it is voluminous. The thousands of
partially-aroused ideas resulting from past experiences are massed
together and superposed, so as to form an aggregate in which nothing is
distinct, but which has the character of being pleasurable or painful
according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference
between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant
being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now
be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the
particular circumstances suggest as likely.
What must be the working of this process under the conditions of
aboriginal life? The emotions given to the young savage by the natural
language of love and hate in the members of his tribe, gain first a
partial definiteness in respect to his intercourse with his family and
playmates; and he learns by experience the utility, in so far as his own
ends are concerned, of avoiding courses which call from others
manifestations of anger, and taking courses which call from them
manifestations of pleasure. Not that he consciously generalizes. He does
not at that age, probably not at any age, formulate his experiences in
the general principle that it is well for him to do things which bring
smiles, and to avoid doing things which bring frowns. What happens is
that having, in the way shown, inherited this connexion between the
perception of anger in others and the feeling of dread, and having
discovered that certain acts of his bring on this anger, he cannot
subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of
the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He
has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the
deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that
may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown
out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and
if we ask why this dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall
habitually find that it is because the forbidden act entails pain
somewhere--is negatived by utility. On passing from domestic injunctions
to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these
emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in
experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions
which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up
incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other
class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring
deeds of his chief--hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces
glowing with admiration. From time to time also he listens while some
one's cowardice is described in tones of scorn, and with contemptuous
metaphors, and sees him meet with derision and insult whenever he
appears. That is to say, one of the things that come to be associated in
his mind with smiling faces, which are symbolical of pleasures in
general, is courage; and one of the things that come to be associated in
his mind with frowns and other marks of enmity, which form his symbol of
unhappiness, is cowardice. These feelings are not formed in him because
he has reasoned his way to the truth that courage is useful to the
tribe, and, by implication, to himself, or to the truth that cowardice
is a cause of evil. In adult life he may perhaps see this; but he
certainly does not see it at the time when bravery is thus joined in his
consciousness with all that is good, and cowardice with all that is bad.
Similarly there are produced in him feelings of inclination or
repugnance towards other lines of conduct that have become established
or interdicted, because they are beneficial or injurious to the tribe;
though neither the young nor the adults know why they have become
established or interdicted. Instance the praiseworthiness of
wife-stealing, and the viciousness of marrying within the tribe.
We may now ascend a stage to an order of incentives and restraints
derived from these. The primitive belief is that every dead man becomes
a demon, who is often somewhere at hand, may at any moment return, may
give aid or do mischief, and has to be continually propitiated. Hence
among other agents whose approbation or reprobation are contemplated by
the savage as consequences of his conduct, are the spirits of his
ancestors. When a child he is told of their deeds, now in triumphant
tones, now in whispers of horror; and the instilled belief that they may
inflict some vaguely-imagined but fearful evil, or give some great help,
becomes a powerful incentive or deterrent. Especially does this happen
when the story is of a chief, distinguished for his strength, his
ferocity, his persistence in that revenge on enemies which the
experiences of the savage make him regard as beneficial and virtuous.
The consciousness that such a chief, dreaded by neighbouring tribes, and
dreaded, too, by members of his own tribe, may reappear and punish those
who have disregarded his injunctions, becomes a powerful motive. But it
is clear, in the first place, that the imagined anger and the imagined
satisfaction of this deified chief, are simply transfigured forms of the
anger and satisfaction displayed by those around; and that the feelings
accompanying such imaginations have the same original root in the
experiences which have associated an average of painful results with the
manifestation of another's anger, and an average of pleasurable results
with the manifestation of another's satisfaction. And it is clear, in
the second place, that the actions thus forbidden and encouraged must be
mostly actions that are respectively detrimental and beneficial to the
tribe; since the successful chief is usually a better judge than the
rest, and has the preservation of the tribe at heart. Hence experiences
of utility, consciously or unconsciously organized, underlie his
injunctions; and the sentiments which prompt obedience are, though very
indirectly and without the knowledge of those who feel them, referable
to experiences of utility.
This transfigured form of restraint, differing at first but little from
the original form, admits of immense development. Accumulating
traditions, growing in grandeur as they are repeated from generation to
generation, make more and more superhuman the early-recorded hero of the
race. His powers of inflicting punishment and giving happiness become
ever greater, more multitudinous, and more varied; so that the dread of
divine displeasure, and the desire to obtain divine approbation, acquire
a certain largeness and generality. Still the conceptions remain
anthropomorphic. The revengeful deity continues to be thought of in
terms of human emotions, and continues to be represented as displaying
these emotions in human ways. Moreover, the sentiments of right and
duty, so far as they have become developed, refer mainly to divine
commands and interdicts; and have little reference to the natures of the
acts commanded or interdicted. In the intended offering-up of Isaac, in
the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, and in the hewing to pieces of
Agag, as much as in the countless atrocities committed from religious
motives by various early historic races, as by some existing savage
races, we see that the morality and immorality of actions, as we
understand them, are at first little recognized; and that the feelings,
chiefly of dread, which serve in place of them, are feelings felt
towards the unseen beings supposed to issue the commands and interdicts.
Here it will be said that, as just admitted, these are not the moral
sentiments properly so called. They are simply sentiments that precede
and make possible those highest sentiments which do not refer either to
personal benefits or evils to be expected from men, or to more remote
rewards and punishments. Several comments are, however, called forth by
this criticism. One is, that if we glance back at past beliefs and their
correlative feelings, as shown in Dante's poem, in the mystery-plays of
the middle ages, in St. Bartholomew massacres, in burnings for heresy,
we get proof that in comparatively modern times right and wrong meant
little else than subordination or insubordination--to a divine ruler
primarily, and under him to a human ruler. Another is, that down to our
own day this conception largely prevails, and is even embodied in
elaborate ethical works--instance the _Essays on the Principles of
Morality_, by Jonathan Dymond, which recognizes no ground of moral
obligation save the will of God as expressed in the current creed. And
yet a further is, that while in sermons the torments of the damned and
the joys of the blessed are set forth as the dominant deterrents and
incentives, and while we have prepared for us printed instructions "how
to make the best of both worlds," it cannot be denied that the feelings
which impel and restrain men are still largely composed of elements like
those operative on the savage: the dread, partly vague, partly specific,
associated with the idea of reprobation, human and divine, and the sense
of satisfaction, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea
of approbation, human and divine.
But during the growth of that civilization which has been made possible
by these ego-altruistic sentiments, there have been slowly evolving the
altruistic sentiments. Development of these has gone on only as fast as
society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly
peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy; and
sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of
being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which
conferred direct and indirect benefits: the pains inflicted being mainly
incidental and indirect. Adam Smith made a large step towards this truth
when he recognized sympathy as giving rise to these superior controlling
emotions. His _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, however, requires to be
supplemented in two ways. The natural process by which sympathy becomes
developed into a more and more important element of human nature has to
be explained; and there has also to be explained the process by which
sympathy produces the highest and most complex of the altruistic
sentiments--that of justice. Respecting the first process, I can here do
no more than say that sympathy may be proved, both inductively and
deductively, to be the concomitant of gregariousness: the two having all
along-increased by reciprocal aid. Multiplication has ever tended to
force into an association, more or less close, all creatures having
kinds of food and supplies of food that permit association; and
established psychological laws warrant the inference that some sympathy
will inevitably result from habitual manifestations of feelings in
presence of one another, and that the gregariousness being augmented by
the increase of sympathy, further facilitates the development of
sympathy. But there are negative and positive checks upon this
development--negative, because sympathy cannot advance faster than
intelligence advances, since it presupposes the power of interpreting
the natural language of the various feelings, and of mentally
representing those feelings; positive, because the immediate needs of
self-preservation are often at variance with its promptings, as, for
example, during the predatory stages of human progress. For explanations
of the second process, I must refer to the _Principles of Psychology_ (Sec.
202, first edition, and Sec. 215, second edition) and to _Social Statics_,
part ii. chapter v.[36] Asking that in default of space these
explanations may be taken for granted, let me here point out in what
sense even sympathy, and the sentiments that result from it, are due to
experiences of utility. If we suppose all thought of rewards or
punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is
clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid
representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is
restrained, not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine
of utility, but by the painful association established in him. And it is
clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has
felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his
acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the
restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts:
repetitions of kind deeds, and experiences of the sympathetic
gratifications that follow, tend continually to make stronger the
association between such deeds and feelings of happiness.
Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there
may result a deliberate pursuit of sympathetic gratifications. There may
also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter
results, kind and unkind conduct, are respectively beneficial and
detrimental--that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate
personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster;
and then there may become current such summations of experience as
"honesty is the best policy." But so far from regarding these
intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral
sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions
of utility, and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly
resulting in experience from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had
first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting
incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise
the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely
beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still
longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that
they are socially beneficial or detrimental. When, however, the remote
effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are
expressed in current maxims, and lead to injunctions having the
religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and
check unsympathetic ones are immensely strengthened by their alliances.
Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in
thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The
commands of the creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social
conduct, unitedly enforce them; and every child as it grows up, daily
has impressed on it by the words and faces and voices of those around
the authority of these highest principles of conduct. And now we may see
why there arises a belief in the special sacredness of these highest
principles, and a sense of the supreme authority of the altruistic
sentiments answering to them. Many of the actions which, in early social
states, received the religious sanction and gained public approbation,
had the drawback that such sympathies as existed were outraged, and
there was hence an imperfect satisfaction. Whereas these altruistic
actions, while similarly having the religious sanction and gaining
public approbation, bring a sympathetic consciousness of pleasure given
or of pain prevented; and, beyond this, bring a sympathetic
consciousness of human welfare at large, as being furthered by making
altruistic actions habitual. Both this special and this general
sympathetic consciousness become stronger and wider in proportion as the
power of mental representation increases, and the imagination of
consequences, immediate and remote, grows more vivid and comprehensive.
Until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question
the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled
unchallenged. They prompt resistance to laws that do not fulfil the
conception of justice, encourage men to brave the frowns of their
fellows by pursuing a course at variance with customs that are perceived
to be socially injurious, and even cause dissent from the current
religion; either to the extent of disbelief in those alleged divine
attributes and acts not approved by this supreme moral arbiter, or to
the extent of entire rejection of a creed which ascribes such attributes
and acts.
Much that is required to make this hypothesis complete must stand over
until, at the close of the second volume of the _Principles of
Psychology_, I have space for a full exposition. What I have said will
make it sufficiently clear that two fundamental errors have been made in
the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been
construed in senses much too narrow. Utility, convenient a word as it is
from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading
implications. It vividly suggests uses, and means, and proximate ends,
but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are
the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are
alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of
means and ends--implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a
perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation,
connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in
observed relations, and is not taken to include the connexions formed in
consciousness between states that recur together, when the relation
between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest
senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest
to every one who reads the _Principles of Psychology;_ and it is in
their widest senses that I have used them in the letter to Mr. Mill. I
think I have shown above that, when they are so understood, the
hypothesis briefly set forth in that letter is by no means so
indefensible as is supposed. At any rate, I have shown--what seemed for
the present needful to show--that Mr. Hutton's versions of my views must
not be accepted as correct.