I nearly died. When very ill and not expecting to recover, I reflected
that while my own life had been made happy and strong by the faith which
had been given to me, I had done nothing to help any other human soul to
find that solution of the dread problem which had brought such peace to
me. I felt, as Mrs. Browning says, that a Truth was “like bread at
Sacrament” to be passed on. When, unexpectedly to myself, I slowly
recovered after a sojourn in Devonshire, I resolved to set about writing
something which should convey as much as possible of my own convictions
to whosoever should read it. For a time I thought of enlarging and
completing my MS. _Essay on True Religion_, written for my own
instruction; but the more I reflected the less I cared to labour to pull
down hastily the crumbling walls which yet sheltered millions of souls,
and the more I longed to build up anew on solid base a stronghold of
refuge for those driven like myself from the old ground of faith in God
and Duty. Especially I felt that as the worst dangers of such
transitions lay in the sudden snapping of the supposed bond of Morality,
and collapse of the hopes of heaven and terrors of hell which had been
used as motives of virtue and deterrents from vice; so the most urgent
need lay in the direction of a system of ethics which should base Duty
on ground absolutely apart from that of the supposed supernatural
revelation and supply sanctions and motives unconnected therewith. As it
happened at this very time, my good (orthodox) friend, Miss Felicia
Skene, had recommended me to read Kant’s _Metaphysic of Ethics_, and I
had procured Semple’s translation and found it almost dazzlingly
enlightening to my mind. It would be presumptuous for me to say that
then, or at any time, I have thoroughly mastered either this book or the
_Reinun Vernunft_ of this greatest of thinkers; but, so far as I have
been able to do so, I can say for my own individual mind (as his German
disciples were wont to do for themselves), “God said, Let there be
Light! and there was—the Kantian Philosophy.” It has been, and no doubt
will be still further, modified by succeeding metaphysicians and
sometimes it may appear to have been superseded, but I cannot think
otherwise than that Kant was and will finally be recognised to have been
the Newton of the laws of Mind.
I shall now endeavour to explain the purpose of my first book (which is
also my _magnum opus_) by quoting the Preface at some length; and, as
the third edition has long been out of print and is unattainable in
England or America, I shall permit myself to embody in this chapter a
general account of the drift of it, with extracts sufficient to serve as
samples of the whole. Looking over it now, after the lapse of just forty
years, I can see that my reading at that time had lain so much among old
books that the style is almost that of a didactic Treatise of the
seventeenth century; and the ideas, likewise, are necessarily
exclusively those of the pre-Darwinian Era. Conceptions so familiar to
us now as that of an “hereditary set of the brain,” and of the
“Capitalised experience of the tribe,” were then utterly unthought of. I
have been well aware that it would, consequently, have been
necessary,—had the book been republished any time during the last twenty
years,—to rewrite much of it and define the standpoint of an
Intuitionist as regards the theory of Evolution in its bearing on the
foundation of ethics. For this task, however, I have always lacked
leisure: and my article on “_Darwinism in Morals_” (reprinted in the
book of that name) has been the best effort I have made in such
direction. I may here, perhaps, nevertheless be allowed to say as a last
word in favour of this Essay, namely, that such as it is, it has served
me, personally, as a scaffolding for all my life-work, a key to open
most of the locks which might have barred my way. If now I feel (as men
and women are wont to do at three-score years and ten), that I hold all
philosophic opinions with less tenacious grasp, less “cocksureness” than
in earlier days, and know that the great realities to which they led,
will remain realities for me still should those opinions prove here and
there unstable,—it is not that I am disposed in any way to abandon them,
still less that I have found any other systems of ethics or theology
more, or equally, sound and self-consistent.
I wrote the “_Essay on the Theory of Intuitive Morals_” between my
thirtieth and thirty-third years. I had a great deal else to do—to amuse
and help my father (then growing old); to direct our household,
entertain our guests, carry on the feminine correspondence of the
family, teach in my village school twice a week or so, and to attend
every case of illness or other tribulation in Donabate and Balisk. My
leisure for writing and for the preliminary reading for writing, was
principally at night or in the early morning; and at last it was
accomplished. No one but my dear old friend, Harriet St. Leger, had seen
any part of the MS., and, as I have said, nobody belonging to my family
had ever (so far as I know) employed a printer or publisher before. I
took the MS. with me to London, where my father and I were fortunately
going for a holiday, and called with it in Paternoster Row, on Mr.
William Longman, to whom I had a letter of business introduction from my
Dublin bookseller. When I opened my affair to Mr. Longman, it was truly
a case of Byron’s address to Murray—
“To thee with hope and terror dumb,
The unfledged MS. authors come;
Thou printest all, and sellest some,
My Murray!”
Mr. Longman politely veiled a smile, and adopted the voice of friendly
dissuasion from my enterprise, looking no doubt on a young lady (as I
still was) as a very unpromising author for a treatise on Kantian
ethics! My spirit, however, rose with the challenge. I poured out for
some minutes much that I had been thinking over for years, and as I
paused at last, Mr. Longman said briefly, but decidedly, “_I’ll publish
your book._”
After this fateful interview, I remember going into St. Paul’s and
sitting there a long while alone.
The sheets of the book passed rapidly through the press, and I usually
took them to the British Museum to verify quotations and work quietly
over difficulties, for in the house which we occupied in Connaught
Square I had no study to myself. The foot-notes to the book (collected
some in the Museum, some from my own books and some from old works in
Archbishop Marsh’s Library) were themselves a heavy part of the work.
Glancing over the pages as I write, I see extracts, for example, from
the following:—Cudworth (I had got at some inedited MSS. of his in the
British Museum), Montesquieu, Philo, Hooker, Proclus, Thomas Aquinas,
Aristotle, Descartes, Müller, Whewell, Mozley, Leibnitz, St. Augustine,
Phillipsohn, Strabo, St. Chrysostom, Morell, Lewes, Dugald Stewart,
Mill, Oërsted, the Adée-Grunt’h (sacred book of the Sikhs), Herbert
Spencer, Hume, Maximus Tyriensis, Institutes of Menu, Victor Cousin, Sir
William Hamilton, Lucian, Seneca, Cory’s Fragments, St. Gregory the
Great, Justin Martyr, Jeremy Taylor, the Yajur Veda, Shaftesbury, Plato,
Marcus Aurelius, Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, Confucius, and many more.
There are also in the Notes sketches of the history of the doctrines of
Predestination, and of Original Sin, which involved very considerable
research.
At last the proofs were corrected, the Notes verified, and the time had
come when the Preface must be written! How was I to find a quiet hour to
compose it? Like most women I was bound hand and foot by a fine web of
little duties and attentions, which men never feel or brush aside
remorselessly, (it was only Hooker, who rocked a cradle with his foot
while he wrote the Ecclesiastical Polity!); and it was a serious
question for me when I could find leisure and solitude. Luckily, just on
the critical day, my father was seized with a fancy to go to the play,
and, equally luckily, I had so bad a cold that it was out of question
that I should, as usual, accompany him. Accordingly I had an evening all
alone, and wrote fast and hard the pages which I shall presently quote,
finishing the last sentence of my _Preface_ as I heard my father’s knock
at the hall door.
I had all along told my father (though, alas; to his displeasure), that
I was going to publish a book; of course, anonymously, to save him
annoyance. When the printing was completed, the torn and defaced sheets
of the MS. lay together in a heap for removal by the housemaid. Pointing
to this, my poor father said solemnly to me: “Don’t leave those about;
_you don’t know into whose hands they may fall_.” It was needless to
observe to him, that I was on the point of _publishing_ the “perilous
stuff”!
The book was brought out by Longmans that year (1855) and afterwards by
Crosby and Nichols in Boston, and again by Trübner in London. It was
reviewed rather largely and, on the whole, very kindly, considering it
was by an unknown and altogether unfriended author; but sometimes also
in a manner which it is pleasant to know has gone out of fashion in
these latter days. It was amusing to see that not one of my critics had
a suspicion they were dealing with a woman’s work. They all said, “_He_
reasons clearly.” “_His_ spirit and manner are particularly well suited
to ethical discussion.” “_His_ treatment of morals” (said the
_Guardian_) “is often both true and beautiful.” “It is a most noble
performance,” (said the _Caledonian Mercury_), “the work of a
_masculine_ and lofty mind.” “It is impossible,” (said the _Scotsman_),
“to deny the ability of the writer, or not to admire _his_ high moral
tone, his earnestness and the fulness of his knowledge.” But the heresy
of the book brought down heavy denunciation from the “religious” papers
on the audacious writer who, “instead of walking softly and humbly on
the firm ground and taking the Word of God as a lamp,” &c., had indulged
in “insect reasonings.” A rumour at last went out that a woman was the
author of this “able and attractive but deceptive and dangerous work,”
and then the criticisms were barbed with sharper teeth. “The writer”
(says the _Christian Observer_), “we are told, is a lady, but there is
nothing feeble or even feminine in the tone of the work.... Our dislike
is increased when we are told it is a female (!) who has propounded so
unfeminine and stoical a theory ... and has contradicted openly the true
sayings of the living God!” The _Guardian_ (November 21st, 1855) finally
had this delightful paragraph: “The author professes great admiration
for Theodore Parker and Francis Newman, but his own pages are not
disfigured by the arrogance of the one or the shallow levity of the
other” (think of the _shallow levity_ of Newman’s book of the _Soul_!).
“He writes gravely, not defiantly, as befits a man giving utterance to
thoughts which he knows _will be generally regarded as impious_.”
I shall now offer the reader a few extracts; and first from the
_Preface_:—
“It cannot surely be questioned but that we want a System of Morals
better than any of those which are current amongst us. We want a
system which shall neither be too shallow for the requirements of
thinking men, nor too abstruse for popular acceptation; but which
shall be based upon the ultimate grounds of philosophy, and be
developed with such distinctness as to be understood by every one
capable of studying the subject. We want a System of Morals which
shall not entangle itself with sectarian creeds, nor imperil its
authority with that of tottering Churches, but which shall be
indissolubly blended with a Theology fulfilling all the demands of the
Religious Sentiment—a Theology forming a part, and the one living
part, of all the theologies which ever have been or shall be. We want
a system which shall not degrade the Law of the Eternal Right by
announcing it as a mere contrivance for the production of human
happiness, or by tracing our knowledge of it to the experience of the
senses, or by cajoling us into obeying it as a matter of expediency;
but a system which shall ascribe to that Law its own sublime office in
the universe, which shall recognise in man the faculties by which he
obtains a supersensible knowledge of it, and which shall inculcate
obedience to it on motives so pure and holy, that the mere statement
of them shall awaken in every breast that higher and better self which
can never be aroused by the call of interest or expediency.
“It would be in itself a presumption for me to disclaim the ability
necessary for supplying such a want as this. In writing this book, I
have aimed chiefly at two objects. First. I have sought to unite into
one homogeneous and self-consistent whole the purest and most enlarged
theories hitherto propounded on ethical science. Especially I have
endeavoured to popularise those of Kant, by giving the simplest
possible presentation to his doctrines regarding the Freedom of the
Will and the supersensible source of our knowledge of all Necessary
Truths, including those of Morals. I do not claim however, even so far
as regards these doctrines, to be an exact exponent of Kant’s
opinions.... Secondly. I have sought (and this has been my chief aim)
to place for the first time, at the foundation of ethics, the great
but neglected truth that the End of Creation is not the Happiness, but
the Virtue, of Rational Souls. I believe that this truth will be found
to throw most valuable light, not only upon the Theory, but upon all
the details of Practical Morals. Nay, more, I believe that we must
look to it for such a solution of the ‘Riddle of the World’ as shall
satisfy the demands of the Intellect while presenting to the Religious
Sentiment that same God of perfect Justice and Goodness whose ideal it
intuitively conceives and spontaneously adores. Only with this view of
the Designs of God can we understand how His Moral Attributes are
consistent with the creation of a race which is indeed ‘groaning in
sin’ and ‘travailing in sorrow’; but by whose freedom to sin and trial
of sorrow shall be worked out at last the most blessed End which
Infinite Love could devise. With this clew, we shall also see how (as
the Virtue of each individual must be produced by himself, and is the
share committed to him in the grand end of creation) all Duties must
necessarily range themselves accordingly—the Personal before the
Social—in a sequence entirely different from that which is comformable
with the hypothesis that Happiness is ‘our being’s end and aim’; but
which is, nevertheless, precisely the sequence in which Intuition has
always peremptorily demanded that they should be arranged. We shall
see how (as the bestowal of Happiness on man must always be postponed
by God to the still more blessed aim of conducing to his Virtue) the
greatest outward woes and trials, so far from inspiring us with doubts
of His Goodness, must be taken as evidences of the glory of that End
of Virtue to which they lead, even as the depths of the foundations of
a cathedral may show how high the towers and spires will one day
ascend.”—_Pref._, pp. V.–X.
In the first chapter, entitled _What is the Moral Law?_ I take for motto
Antigone’s great speech:—
“ἄγραπτα κᾀσφαλῆ θεῶν
νόμιμα....
οὐ γἀρ τι νῦν γε κᾀχθὲς, ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε
ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ‘φάνη.
Σοφ. Ἀντιγ. 454.”
I begin by defining Moral actions and sentiments as those of Rational
Free Agents, to which alone may be applied the terms of Right or Wrong,
Good or Evil, Virtuous or Vicious. I then proceed to say:—
“This moral character of good or evil is a real, universal and eternal
distinction, existing through all worlds and for ever, wherever there
are rational creatures and free agents. As one kind of line is a
straight line, and another a crooked line, and as no line can be both
straight and crooked, so one kind of action or sentiment is right, and
another is wrong, and no action or sentiment can be both right or
wrong. And as the same line which is straight on this planet would be
straight in Sirius or Alcyone, and what constitutes straightness in
the nineteenth century will constitute straightness in the nineteenth
millennium, so that sentiment or action which is right in our world,
is right in all worlds; and that which constitutes righteousness now
will constitute righteousness through all eternity. And as the
character of straightness belongs to the line, by whatsoever hand it
may have been traced, so the character of righteousness belongs to the
sentiment or action, by what rational free agent soever it may have
been felt or performed.”
“And of this distinction language affords a reliable exponent. When we
have designated one kind of figure by the word Circle, and another by
the word Triangle, those terms, having become the names of the
respective figures, cannot be transposed without transgression of the
laws of language. Thus it would be absurd to argue that the figure we
call a circle, may not be a circle; that a ‘plane figure, containing a
point from which all right lines drawn to the circumference shall be
equal,’ may not be a circle, but a triangle. In like manner, when we
have designated one kind of sentiment or action as Right, and another
as Wrong, it becomes an absurdity to say that the kind of sentiments
or actions we call Right may, perhaps, be Wrong. If a figure be not a
circle, according to our sense of the word, it is not a circle at all,
but an Ellipse, a Triangle, Trapezium, or something else. If a
sentiment or action be not Right, according to our sense of the word,
it is not Right at all, but, according to the laws of language, must
be called Wrong.
“It is not maintained that we can commit no error in affixing the
_name_ of Circle to a particular figure, or of Right to a particular
sentiment or action. We may at a hasty glance pronounce an ellipse to
be a circle; but when we have proved the radii to be unequal, needs
must we arrive at a better judgment. Our error was caused by our first
haste and misjudgment, not by our inability to decide whether an
object presented to us bears or does not bear a character to which we
have agreed to affix a certain name. In like manner, from haste or
prejudice, we may pronounce a faulty sentiment or action to be Right;
but when we have examined it in all its bearings, we ourselves are the
first to call it Wrong.”—Pp. 4–7.
After much more on the _positive_ nature of Good, and the negative
nature of Evil, and on the relation of the Moral Law to God as
_impersonated_ in His Will, and not the result (as Ockham taught) of his
arbitrary decree,—I sum up the argument of this first chapter. To the
question, What is the Moral Law? I answer:—
“The Moral Law is the embodiment of the eternal Necessary obligation
of all Rational Free Agents to do and feel those actions and
sentiments which are Right. The identification of this law with His
will constitutes the _Holiness_ of the infinite God. Voluntary and
disinterested obedience to this law constitutes the _Virtue_ of all
finite creatures. Virtue is capable of infinite growth, of endless
approach to the Divine nature, and to perfect conformity with the law.
God has made all rational free agents for virtue, and (doubtless) all
worlds for rational free agents. The Moral Law, therefore, not only
reigns throughout His creation (its behests being finally enforced
therein by His power), but is itself the reason why that creation
exists. The material universe, with all its laws, and all the events
which result therefrom, has one great purpose, and tends to one great
end. It is that end which infinite Love has designed, and which
infinite Power shall surely accomplish,—the everlasting approximation
of all created souls to Goodness and to God.”—(Pp. 62, 63.)
The second chapter undertakes to answer the question, _Where is the
Moral Law Found?_ and begins by a brief analysis of the two great
classes of human knowledge as a preliminary to ascertaining to which of
these our knowledge of ethics belongs.
“All sciences are either Exact or Physical (or are applications of
Exact to Physical science).
“Exact sciences are deduced from axiomatic Necessary truths and
results in universal propositions, each of which is a Necessary Truth.
“Physical sciences are induced from Experimental Contingent truths,
and result in General Propositions, each of which is a contingent
truth.
“We obtain our knowledge of the Experimental Contingent Truths from
which Physical science is induced, by the united action of our bodily
senses and of our minds themselves, which must both in each case
contribute their proper quota to make knowledge possible. Every
perception necessitates this double element of sensation and
intuition,—the objective and subjective factor in combination.
“We obtain our knowledge of the axiomatic Necessary Truths from which
Exact science is deduced, by the _à priori_ operation of the mind
alone, and (_quoad_ the exact science in question) without the aid of
sensation (not, indeed, by _à priori_ operation of a mind which has
never worked with sensation, for such a mind would be altogether
barren; but of one which has reached normal development under normal
conditions; which conditions involve the continual united action
productive of perceptions of contingent truths).
“In this distinction between the sources of our knowledge lies the
most important discovery of philosophy. Into whatsoever knowledge the
element of Sensation necessarily enters as a constituent part, therein
there can be no absolute certainty of truth; the fallibility of
Sensation being recognised on all hands, and neutralising the
certainty of the pure mental element. But when we discover an order of
sciences which, without aid from sensation, are deduced by the mind’s
own operation from those Necessary truths which we hold on a tenure
marking indelibly their distinction from all contingent truths
whatsoever, then we obtain footing in a new realm....
“In the ensuing pages I shall endeavour to demonstrate that the
science of Morals belongs to the class of Exact sciences, and that it
has consequently a right to that credence wherewith we hold the truths
of arithmetic and geometry....”
The test which divides the two classes is as follows:—
“What truth soever is _Necessary_ and of universal extent is derived
by the mind from its own operation, and does not rest on observation
or experience; as, conversely, what truth or perception soever is
present to the mind with a consciousness, not of its Necessity, but of
its Contingency, is ascribable not to the original agency of the mind
itself, but derives its origin from observation and experience.”
After lengthened discussion on this head and on the supposed mistakes of
moral intuition, I go on to say:
“The consciousness of the Contingency, or the consciousness of the
Necessity (_i.e._, the consciousness that the truth _cannot_ be
contingent, but must hold good in all worlds for ever), these
consciousnesses are to be relied on, for they have their origin in,
and are the marks of, the different elements from which they have been
derived.[9] We may apply them to the fundamental truths of any
science, and by observing whether the reception of such truths into
our minds be accompanied by the consciousness of Necessity or of
Contingency, we may decide whether the science be rightfully Exact or
Physical, deductive or inductive.
“For example, we take the axioms of arithmetic and geometry, and we
find that we have distinct consciousness that they are Necessary
truths. We cannot conceive them altered any where or at any time. The
sciences which are deduced from these and from similar axioms are
then, Exact sciences.
“Again: we take the ultimate facts of geology and anatomy, and we find
that we have distinct consciousness that they are Contingent truths.
We can readily suppose them other than we find them. The sciences,
then, which are induced from these and similar facts are not Exact
sciences.
“If, then, morals can be shown to bear this test equally with
mathematics,—if there be any fundamental truths of morals holding in
our minds the status of those axioms of geometry and arithmetic of
whose Necessity we are conscious, then these fundamental truths of
morals are entitled to be made the basis of an Exact science the
subsequent theorems of which must all be deduced from them.—(P.
76.)...
“Men like Hume traverse the history of our race, to collect all the
piteous instances of aberrations which have resulted from neglect or
imperfect study of the moral consciousness; and then they cry, ‘Behold
what it teaches!’ Yet I suppose that it will be admitted that Man is
an animal capable of knowing geometry; though, if we were to go up and
down the world, asking rich and poor, Englishman and Esquimaux, what
are the ratios of solidity and superficies of a sphere, a right
cylinder and an equilateral cone circumscribed about it, there are
sundry chances that we should hear of other ratios besides the
sesquialterate.
“He who should argue that, because people ignorant of geometry did not
know the sesquialterate ratio of the sphere, cylinder and cone,
therefore no man could know it, or that because they disputed it, that
therefore it was uncertain, would argue no more absurdly than he who
urges the divergencies of half civilised and barbarian nations as a
reason why no man could know, or know with certainty, the higher
propositions of morals.”
After analysing the Utilitarian and other theories which derive Morality
from Contingent truths, I conclude that “the truths of Morals are
Necessary Truths. The origin of our knowledge of them is Intuitive, and
their proper treatment is Deductive.”