ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY
I
At the historical stage reached by human consciousness in Christianity,
moral life reveals itself as a universal and all-embracing _task_.
Before going on to discuss its concrete historical setting, we must
consider the view which, on principle, rejects morality as a historical
problem or as the work of collective man, and entirely reduces it to
the subjective moral impulses of individuals. This view arbitrarily
puts such narrow limits to the human good as in reality it has never
known. Strictly speaking, morality never has been solely the affair of
personal feeling or the rule of private conduct. At the patriarchal
stage the moral demands of reverence, pity, and shame were inseparably
connected with the duties of the individual to his kinsmen. The
‘moral’ was not distinguished from the ‘social,’ or the individual
from the collective. And if the result was a morality of rather a
low and limited order, this was not due to the fact of its being a
collective morality, but to the generally low level and narrow limits
of the tribal life, which expressed merely the rudimentary stage of
the historical development. It was low and limited, however, only by
comparison with the further progress of morality, and certainly not by
comparison with the morality of savages living in caves and in trees.
When the state came into being, and the domestic life became to a
certain extent a thing apart, morality in general was still determined
by the relation between individuals and the collective whole to which
they belonged--henceforth a wider and a more complex one. It was
impossible to be moral apart from a definite and positive relation to
the state; morality was in the first place a civic virtue. And the
reason that this _virtus antiqua_ no longer satisfies us, is not that
it was a _civic_ and not merely a _domestic_ virtue, but that the civic
life itself was too remote from the true social ideal, and was merely a
transition from the barbarous to the truly human culture. Morality was
rightly taken to consist in honourably serving the social whole--the
state, but the state itself was based upon slavery, constant wars,
etc.; what is to be condemned is not the social character of morality,
but the immoral character of the social whole. In a similar way we
condemn the ecclesiastical morality of the Middle Ages, not of course
because it was ecclesiastical, but because the Church itself was then
far from being a truly moral organisation, and was responsible for evil
as well as for good--the terrible evil of religious persecutions and
torture--thus violating the unconditional principle of morality in its
own inner domain.
Christianity as the ‘Gospel of the Kingdom’ proclaims an ideal that is
unconditionally high, demands an absolute morality. Is this morality
to be _subjective only_, limited to the inner states and individual
actions of the subject? The question contains its own answer; but to
make the matter quite clear, let us first grant all that is true in
the exclusively-subjective interpretation of Christianity. There is no
doubt that a perfect or absolute moral state must be inwardly fully
experienced or felt by the subject--must become _his own_ state, the
content of his life. If perfect morality were recognised as subjective
in this sense, the difference would be purely verbal. But something
else is really meant. The question is, how is this moral perfection to
be attained by the individual? Is it enough that each should strive to
make himself inwardly better and act accordingly, or is it attained
_with the help of_ a certain social process the effects of which are
collective as well as individual? The adherents of the former theory,
which reduces everything to individual moral activity, do not reject,
of course, either the social life or the moral improvement of its
forms. They believe, however, that such improvement is simply the
inevitable consequence of the personal moral progress: like individual,
like society. As soon as each person understands and reveals to
others his own true nature, and awakens good feelings in his soul,
the earth will become paradise. Now it is indisputable that without
good thoughts and feelings there can be neither individual nor social
morality. It is equally indisputable that _if_ all individual men were
good, society would be good also. But to think that the actual virtue
of the few best men is _sufficient_ for the moral regeneration of
all the others, is to pass into the world where babies are born out
of rose-bushes, and where beggars, for lack of bread, eat cakes. The
question we are mainly concerned with is not whether the individual’s
moral efforts are sufficient to make _him_ perfect, but whether those
unaided individual efforts can induce _other people_, who are making no
moral efforts at all, to _begin_ to make them.
II
The insufficiency of the subjective good and the necessity for a
collective embodiment of it is unmistakably proved by the whole course
of human history. I will give one concrete illustration.
At the end of Homer’s _Odyssey_ it is related, with obvious sympathy,
how this typical hero of the Hellenes re-established justice and order
in his house, having overcome at last the enmity of gods and men and
destroyed his rivals. With his son’s help he executed those of his
servants who, during his twenty years’ absence, when everybody had
given him up for dead, sided with Penelope’s suitors and did not oppose
the latter making themselves at home in Odysseus’s house:
“Now when they had made an end of setting the hall in order, they
led the maidens forth from the stablished hall, and drove them up in
a narrow space between the vaulted room and the goodly fence of the
court, whence none might avoid; and wise Telemachus began to speak
to his fellows, saying: ‘God forbid that I should take these women’s
lives by a clean death, these that have poured dishonour on my head
and on my mother, and have lain with the wooers.’ With that word he
tied the cable of a dark-prowed ship to a great pillar and flung it
round the vaulted room, and fastened it aloft, that none might touch
the ground with her feet. And even as when thrushes, long of wing, or
doves fall into a net that is set in a thicket, as they seek to their
roosting-place, and a loathly bed harbours them, even so the women held
their heads all in a row, and about all their necks nooses were cast,
that they might die by the most pitiful death. And they writhed with
their feet for a little space, but for no long while. Then they led out
Melanthius through the doorway and the court and cut off his nostrils
and his ears with the pitiless sword, and drew forth his vitals for
the dogs to devour raw, and cut off his hands and feet in their cruel
anger” (_Odyssey_, xxii. 457-477).
Odysseus and Telemachus were not monsters of inhumanity; on the
contrary, they represented the highest ideal of the Homeric epoch.
Their personal morality was irreproachable, they were full of piety,
wisdom, justice, and all the family virtues. Odysseus had, into the
bargain, an extremely sensitive heart, and in spite of his courage and
firmness in misfortune, shed tears at every convenient opportunity.
This very curious and characteristic feature attaches to him throughout
the poem. As I have not in literature come across any special reference
to this peculiar characteristic of the Homeric hero, I will allow
myself to go into some detail.
At his first appearance in the _Odyssey_ he is represented as weeping:--
“Odysseus ... sat weeping on the shore even as aforetime, straining
his soul with tears and groans and griefs, and as he wept he looked
wistfully over the unharvested deep” (v. 82-84; also 151, 152, 156-158).
In his own words: “There I abode for seven years continually, and
watered with my tears the imperishable raiment that Calypso gave me”
(vii. 259-260).
He wept at the thought of his distant native land and family, and also
at remembering his own exploits:--
“... The Muse stirred the minstrel to sing the songs or famous men....
The quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, son of Peleus.... This song
it was that the famous minstrel sang; but Odysseus caught his great
purple cloak with his stalwart hands, and drew it down over his head,
and hid his comely face, for he was ashamed to shed tears beneath his
brows in presence of the Phaeacians” (viii. 73-86).
Further:--
“This was the song that the famous minstrel sang. But the heart of
Odysseus melted, and the tear wet his cheeks beneath the eyelids. And
as a woman throws herself wailing about her dead lord, who hath fallen
before his city and the host, warding from his town and his children
the pitiless day ... even so pitifully fell the tears beneath the brows
of Odysseus” (viii. 521-525).
He weeps on being told by Circe of the journey--though a perfectly safe
one--he has to make to Hades:--
“Thus spake she, but as for me, my heart was broken, and I wept as I
sat upon the bed, and my soul had no more care to live and to see the
sunlight” (x. 496-499).
It is no wonder that Odysseus weeps when he sees his mother’s shadow
(xi. 87), but he is affected just as much by the shadow of the worst
and most worthless of his followers, of whom “an evil doom of some god
was the bane and wine out of measure” (xi. 61).
“There was one, Elpenor, the youngest of us all, not very valiant in
war, neither steadfast in mind. He was lying apart from the rest of my
men on the housetop of Circe’s sacred dwelling, very fain of the cool
air, as one heavy with wine. Now when he heard the noise of the voices
and of the feet of my fellows as they moved to and fro, he leaped up
of a sudden and minded him not to descend again by the way of the tall
ladder, but fell right down from the roof, and his neck was broken from
the bones of the spine, and his spirit went down to the house of Hades”
(x. 552-561).
“At the sight of him I wept and had compassion on him” (xi. 55).
He weeps, too, at the sight of Agamemnon:--
“Thus we twain stood sorrowing, holding sad discourse, while the big
tears fell fast” (xi. 465-466).
He weeps bitterly at finding himself at last in his native Ithaca
(xiii. 219-221), and still more so on beholding his son:--
“... In both their hearts arose the desire of lamentation. And they
wailed aloud, more ceaselessly than birds, sea-eagles or vultures
of crooked claws, whose younglings the country folk have taken from
the nest, ere yet they are fledged. Even so pitifully fell the tears
beneath their brows” (xvi. 215-220).
Odysseus shed tears, too, at the sight of his old dog Argus:--
“Odysseus looked aside and wiped away a tear that he easily hid from
Eumaeus” (xvii. 304-305).
He weeps before assassinating the suitors, he weeps as he embraces the
godlike swine-herd Eumaeus, and the goodly cow-herd Philoetius (xxi.
225-227), and also after the brutal murder of the twelve maid-servants
and the goat-herd Melanthius:--
“A sweet longing came upon him to weep and to moan, for he remembered
them every one” (xxii. 500-501).
The last two chapters of the _Odyssey_ also have, of course, an
abundant share of the hero’s tears:--
“... in his heart she stirred yet a greater longing to lament, and he
wept as he embraced his beloved wife and true” (xxiii. 231-232).
And further:--
“Now when the steadfast goodly Odysseus saw his father thus wasted with
age and in great grief of heart, he stood still beneath a tall pear
tree and let fall a tear” (xxiv. 233-235).
So far as the personal, subjective feeling is concerned Odysseus was
obviously quite equal to the most developed and highly-strung man of
our own day. Speaking generally, Homeric heroes were capable of all the
moral sentiments and emotions of the heart that we are capable of--and
that not only in relation to their neighbours in the narrow sense of
the term, _i.e._ to men immediately connected with them by common
interests, but also in relation to people remote and distant from
them. The Phaeacians were strangers to the shipwrecked Odysseus, and
yet what kindly human relations were established between him and them!
And if, in spite of all this, the heroes of antiquity performed with a
clear conscience deeds which are now morally impossible for us, this
was certainly not due to their lack of personal, subjective morality.
These men were certainly as capable as we are of good human feelings
towards both neighbours and strangers. What then is the difference
and what is the ground of the change? Why is it that virtuous, wise,
and _sentimental_ men of the Homeric age thought it permissible and
praiseworthy to hang frivolous maid-servants like thrushes and to
chop unworthy servants as food for the dogs, while at the present day
such actions can only be done by maniacs or born criminals? Reasoning
in an abstract fashion one might suppose that although the men of
that distant epoch had good mental feelings and impulses, they had
no conscious good _principles_ and rules. Owing to the absence of a
formal criterion between right and wrong, or a clear consciousness of
the distinction between good and evil, morality was purely empirical
in character, and even the best of men, capable of the finest moral
emotions, could indulge unchecked in wild outbursts of brutality. In
truth, however, we find no such formal defect in the thought of the
ancients.
Men of antiquity, just like ourselves, both had their good and bad
qualities as a natural fact, and drew the distinction of principle
between good and evil, recognising that the first was to be preferred
unconditionally to the second. In those same poems of Homer which often
strike us by their ethical barbarisms, the idea of moral duty appears
with perfect clearness. Certainly Penelope’s mode of thought and
expression does not quite coincide with that of Kant; nevertheless the
following words of the wife of Odysseus contain a definite affirmation
of the moral good as an eternal, necessary, and _universal_ principle:--
“Man’s life is brief enough! And if any be a hard man and hard at
heart, all men cry evil on him for the time to come, while yet he
lives, and all men mock him when he is dead. But if any be a blameless
man and blameless of heart, his guests spread abroad his fame over _the
whole earth_, and many people call him noble” (xix. 328-334).
III
The _form_ of moral consciousness, the idea, namely, of the good as
absolutely binding and of evil as absolutely unpermissible, was present
in the mind of the ancients as it is in our own. It might be thought,
however, that the important difference between us and them in the
moral valuation of the same actions is due to the change in the actual
_content_ of the moral ideal. There can be no doubt that the Gospel
has raised our ideal of virtue and holiness and made it much higher
and wider than the Homeric ideal. But it is equally certain that this
perfect ideal of morality, when it has no objective embodiment and is
accepted purely in the abstract, produces no change whatever either in
the life or in the actual moral _consciousness_ of men, and does not
in any way raise their practical _standards_ for judging their own and
other people’s actions.
It is sufficient to refer once more to the representatives of mediæval
Christianity, who treated the supposed enemies of their Church with
greater cruelty than Odysseus treated the enemies of his family--and
did so with a clear conscience, and even with the conviction of
fulfilling a moral duty. At a time more enlightened and less remote the
American planters who belonged to the Christian faith, and therefore
stood under the sign of an unconditionally high moral ideal, treated
their black slaves on the whole no better than the pagan Odysseus
treated his faithless servants, and, like him, considered themselves
_right_ in doing so. So that not only their actions but even their
practical consciousness remained unaffected by the higher truth which
they theoretically professed in the abstract.
I. I. Dubasov’s _Historical Sketches of the Tambov District_ contain an
account of the exploits of K., a landowner in the district of Yelatma,
who flourished in the ’forties of the present century. The Commission
of Inquiry established that many serfs (children especially) had been
tortured by him to death, and that on his estate there was not a single
peasant who had not been flogged, and not a single serf-girl who had
not been outraged. But more significant than this ‘misuse of power’
was the relation of the public to it. When cross-examined, most of the
gentry in the district spoke of K. as ‘a true gentleman.’ Some added,
“K. is a true Christian and observes all the rites of the Church.”
The Marshal of Nobility wrote to the Governor of the province: “All
the district is alarmed by the _troubles_ of Mr. K.” In the end the
‘true Christian’ was excused from legal responsibility, and the local
gentry could set their hearts at rest.[108] The same sympathy from
men of his own class was enjoyed by another and still more notorious
Tambov landowner, Prince U. N. G--n, of whom it was written with good
reason to the Chief of the Police: “Even animals on meeting U. N.
instinctively seek to hide wherever they can.”[109]
Some three thousand years elapsed between the heroes of Homer and the
heroes of Mr. Dubasov, but no essential and stable change had taken
place in the conduct and the moral consciousness of men with regard to
the enslaved part of the population. The same inhuman relations that
were approved of by the ancient Greeks in the Homeric age were regarded
as permissible by the American and Russian slave-owners in the first
half of the nineteenth century. These relations are revolting to us
now, but our ethical standards have been raised not in the course
of the three thousand years, but only of the last _thirty years_ (in
our case and that of the Americans, and a few dozens of years earlier
in Western Europe). What, then, had happened so recently? What has
produced in so short a period the change which long centuries of
historical development were unable to accomplish? Has some new moral
conception, some new and higher ideal of morality appeared in our day?
There has been and there could have been nothing of the kind. No ideal
can be conceived higher than that revealed eighteen hundred years
ago. That ideal was known to the ‘true Christians’ of the American
States and the Russian provinces. They could learn no new idea in this
respect; but they _experienced a new fact_. The idea restricted to
the subjective sphere of personal morality could not during thousands
of years bear the fruit which it bore in the course of the few years
when it was embodied as a social force, and became the _common task_.
Under very different historical conditions the organised social whole
invested with power decided, both in America and in Russia, to put an
end to the too glaring violation of Christian justice--both human and
divine--in the life of the community. In America it was attained at
the price of blood, through a terrible civil war; in Russia--by the
authoritative action of the Government. It is owing to this fact alone
that the fundamental demands of justice and humanity, presupposed by
the supreme ideal though not exhaustive of it, were transferred from
the narrow and unstable limits of subjective feeling to the wide and
firm ground of objective reality and transformed into a universally
binding law. And we see that this external political act immediately
raised the standard of our inner consciousness, that is, achieved a
result which millenniums of moral preaching alone could not achieve.
The social movement and the action of the Government were of course
themselves conditioned by the previous moral preaching, but that
preaching had effect upon the majority, upon the social environment as
a whole, only when _embodied_ in measures organised by the Government.
Owing to external restraint, brutal instincts were no longer able to
find expression; they had to pass into a state of inactivity, and
were gradually _atrophied_ from lack of exercise; in most people they
disappeared altogether and were no longer passed on to the generations
that followed. At present even men who openly sigh for the serfdom
make _sincere_ reservations with regard to the _abuse_ of the owners’
power, while forty years ago that abuse was regarded as compatible with
‘true nobility,’ and even with ‘true Christianity.’ And yet there is no
reason to believe that the fathers were intrinsically worse than the
sons.
Let it be granted that the heroes of Mr. Dubasov’s chronicle, whom the
Tambov gentry defended simply from class interests, were really below
the average of the society around them. But apart from them there
was a multitude of perfectly decent men, free from all brutality,
who _conscientiously_ felt they had a right to make full use of the
privileges of their class--for instance, to sell their serfs like
cattle, retail or wholesale. And if such things are now impossible even
for scoundrels,--however much they might wish for them,--this objective
success of the good, this concrete improvement of life cannot possibly
be ascribed to the progress of personal morality.
The moral nature of man is unchangeable in its inner subjective
foundations. The relative number of good and bad men also, probably,
remains unchanged. It would hardly be argued by any one that there are
now more righteous men than there were some hundreds or thousands of
years ago. Finally, there can be no doubt that the highest moral ideas
and ideals, taken in the abstract, do not as such produce any stable
improvement in life and in moral consciousness. I have referred to
an indisputable and certain fact of history: the same and even worse
atrocities which were committed by a virtuous pagan of the Homeric poem
with the approval of the community were done thousands of years after
him by the champions of Christian faith--the Spanish inquisitors, and
by Christian slave-owners, also with the approval of the community, and
this in spite of the fact that a higher ideal of individual morality
has meanwhile been evolved. In our day such actions are only possible
for lunatics and professional criminals. And this sudden progress is
solely due to the fact that the organised social force was inspired by
moral demands and transformed them into an objective law of life.
IV
The principle of the perfect good revealed in Christianity does
not abolish the external structure of human society, but uses it
as a form and an instrument for the embodiment of its own absolute
moral content. It demands that human society should become morally
_organised_. Experience unmistakably proves that when the social
environment is not morally organised, the subjective demands of the
good in oneself and in others are inevitably lowered. It is not, then,
really a choice between personal or subjective and social morality,
but between weak and strong, realised and unrealised morality. At
every stage the moral consciousness inevitably strives to realise
itself both in the individual and in the society. The final stage
differs from the lower stages, not, of course, by the fact that
morality at its highest remains for ever subjective, _i.e._ powerless
and unrealised--this, indeed, would be a strange advantage!--but by
the fact that the realisation must be full and _all-embracing_, and
therefore requires a far more difficult, long, and complex process
than was necessary in the case of the former collective embodiments of
morality. In the patriarchal life the degree of the good of which it
is capable becomes realised freely and easily--without any _history_.
The formation of extensive nationally political groups, which is to
realise a greater sum and a higher grade of the good, fills many
centuries with its history. The moral task left us by Christianity--to
form the environment for the actual realisation of _absolute_ and
_universal_ good--is infinitely more complex. The positive conception
of this good embraces the totality of human relations. Humanity morally
regenerated cannot be poorer in content than natural humanity. The
task then consists not in abolishing the already existing social
distinctions, but in bringing them into right, good, or moral relation
with one another. When the higher animal forms came to be evolved in
the course of the cosmical process, the lower form--that of worm--was
not excluded as intrinsically unworthy, but received a new and more
fitting position. It ceased to be the sole and obvious foundation of
life, but decently clothed it still exists within the body in the form
of the alimentary canal--a subservient part of the organism. Other
forms, predominant at the lower stages, were also preserved, both
materially and formally, as subordinate constituent parts and organs of
a higher whole. In a similar way, Christian humanity--the highest form
of collective spiritual life--finds realisation not by destroying the
different forms of the social life evolved in the course of history,
but by bringing them into due relation to itself and to each other, in
harmony with the unconditional principle of morality.
The demand for such harmony deprives moral subjectivism, based on
the wrongly conceived view of the autonomy of the will, of all
justification. The moral will must be determined to action solely
through itself; any subordination of it to an _external_ rule or
command violates its autonomy and must therefore be recognised as
unworthy--this is the _true_ principle of moral autonomy. But the
organisation of social environment in accordance with the principle
of the _absolute good_ is not a limitation but a _fulfilment_ of
the personal moral will--it is the very thing which it desires.
As a moral being I _want_ the good to reign upon earth, I _know_
that alone I cannot bring this to pass, and I _find_ a collective
organisation intended for this purpose of mine. It is clear that such
an organisation does not in any sense limit me but, on the contrary,
removes my individual limitations, widens and strengthens my moral
will. Every one, in so far as his will is moral, inwardly participates
in this universal organisation of morality, and it is clear that
relative external limitations, which may follow therefrom for the
individual persons, are sanctioned by their own higher consciousness
and consequently cannot be opposed to moral freedom. For the moral
individual one thing only is important in this connection, namely,
that the collective organisation should be _really_ dominated by the
_unconditional principle of morality_, that the social life should
_indeed_ conform to moral standards--to the demands of justice and
mercy in all human affairs and relations--that the individually-social
environment should _really_ become _the organised good_. It is clear
that in subordinating himself to a social environment which is itself
subordinate to the principle of the absolute good and conformable to
it, the individual cannot lose anything. Such a social environment is
from the nature of the case incompatible with any arbitrary limitation
of personal rights and still less with rude violence or persecution.
_The degree of subordination of the individual to society must
correspond to the degree of subordination of society to the moral
good_, apart from which social environment has no claim whatever upon
the individual. Its rights arise simply from the moral satisfaction
which it gives to _every person_. This aspect of moral universalism
will be further developed and explained in the next chapter.
As to the autonomy of the _bad will_, no organisation of the good
can prevent conscious evil-doers from desiring evil for its own
sake and from acting in that direction. The organisation of the
good is concerned merely with external limitations of the evil
reality--limitations that inevitably follow from the nature of man
and the meaning of history. These objective limits to objective evil,
necessarily presupposed by the organisation of the good but not by any
means exhaustive of it, will be discussed later on in the chapters on
punishment and on the relation between legal justice and morality.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] _Ocherki iz istorii Tambovskago Kraia_, by I. I. Dubasov, vol.
i., Tambov, 1890, pp. 162-167.
[109] _Ibid._ p. 92.