RECENT TENDENCIES IN ETHICS
Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge
BY
W. R. SORLEY, M.A. HON. LL.D. EDIN.
Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy
MCMIV
PREFACE
These lectures were given to a summer meeting of clergy, held at
Cambridge in the month of July last. Some passages have been added as
they were written out for the press, and the crudities of the spoken
word have, I hope, been pruned away; but, in other respects, the
original plan of the lectures has been retained. They are now
published in the hope that they may prove of interest to those who
heard them, and to others who may desire an account, in short compass
and in popular form, of some leading features of the ethical thought
of the present day.
It is inevitable for such an account to be controversial: otherwise it
could not give a true picture of contemporary opinion. Intellectual
and social causes have conspired to accentuate traditional differences
in ethics, and to make the questions in dispute penetrate to the very
heart of morality. It has been my aim to trace the new influences
which are at work, and to estimate the value of the ethical doctrines
to which they have seemed to lead. The estimate has taken the form of
a criticism, but the criticism is in the interests of construction.
W.R. SORLEY.
CAMBRIDGE, 7th March, 1904.
CONTENTS.
I. CHARACTERISTICS
II. ETHICS AND EVOLUTION
III. ETHICS AND IDEALISM
INDEX
I.
CHARACTERISTICS.
A survey of ethical thought, especially English ethical thought,
during the last century would have to lay stress upon one
characteristic feature. It was limited in range,--limited, one may
say, by its regard for the importance of the facts with which it
had to deal. The thought of the period was certainly not without
controversy; it was indeed controversial almost to a fault. But
the controversies of the time centred almost exclusively round two
questions: the question of the origin of moral ideas, and the question
of the criterion of moral value. These questions were of course
traditional in the schools of philosophy; and for more than a century
English moralists were mainly occupied with inherited topics of
debate. They gave precision to the questions under discussion; and
their controversies defined the traditional opposition of ethical
opinion, and separated moralists into two hostile schools known as
Utilitarian and Intuitionist.
As regards the former question--that of the origin of moral ideas--the
Utilitarian School held that they could be traced to experience; and
by 'experience' they meant in the last resort sense-perceptions
and the feelings of pleasure and of pain which accompany or follow
sense-perception. All the facts of our moral consciousness,
therefore,--the knowledge of right and wrong, the judgments of
conscience, the recognition of duty and responsibility, the feelings
of reverence, remorse, and moral indignation,--all these could be
traced, they thought, to an origin in experience, to an origin which
in the last resort was sensuous, that is, due to the perceptions of
the senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany or
follow them.
With regard to the criterion or standard of morality,--the second
question to which I have to call attention,--they held that the
distinction between right and wrong depended upon the consequences of
an action in the way of pleasure and pain. That action was right which
on the whole and in the long run would bring pleasure or happiness to
those whom it affected: that action was wrong which on the whole and
in the long run would bring pain rather than pleasure to those whom it
affected.
From their view as to the origin of moral ideas, the school might more
properly be called the Empirical School. It is from their views on the
question of the standard of value, or the criterion of morality, that
it claimed, and that it received, the name Utilitarian[1]. On both
these points the Utilitarian School was opposed by an energetic but
less compact body of writers, known as Intuitionists.
[Footnote 1: It seems to have been through J.S. Mill's influence
that the term obtained currency. It was used by him as the name of a
"little society to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental
principles" which he formed in the winter of 1822-23. He "did not
invent the word, but found in one of Galt's novels, the 'Annals of the
Parish.'" "With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized
on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as
a sectarian appellation" ('Autobiography,' pp. 79, 80; cf.
'Utilitarianism,' p. 9 n.) A couple of sentences from Galt may be
quoted: "As there was at the time a bruit and a sound about universal
benevolence, philanthropy, utility, and all the other disguises with
which an infidel philosophy appropriated to itself the charity,
brotherly love, and well-doing inculcated by our holy religion, I set
myself to task upon these heads.... With well-doing, however, I went
more roundly to work. I told my people that I thought they had more
sense than to secede from Christianity to become Utilitarians, for
that it would be a confession of ignorance of the faith they deserted,
seeing that it was the main duty inculcated by our religion to do all
in morals and manners to which the new-fangled doctrine of utility
pretended." Mill is wrong in supposing that his use of the term "was
the first time that any one had taken the title of Utilitarian"; and
Galt, who represents his annalist as writing of the year 1794,
is historically justified. Writing in 1781 Bentham uses the word
'utilitarian,' and again in 1802 he definitely asserts that it is the
only name of his creed ('Works,' x. 92, 392). M. Halévy ('L'évolution
de la doctrine utilitaire,' p. 300) draws attention to the presence of
the word in Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility,' published in 1811.]
The Intuitionists maintained--to put the matter briefly--that the
moral consciousness of man could not be entirely accounted for by
experiences of the kind laid stress on by the Utilitarians. They
maintained that moral ideas were in their origin spiritual, although
they might be called into definite consciousness by the experience of
the facts to which they could be applied. Experience might call them
forth into the light of day; but it was held that they belonged, in
nature and origin, to the constitution of man's mind. On this ground,
therefore, the school was properly called Intuitional: they held that
moral ideas were received by direct vision or intuition, as it were,
not by a process of induction from particular facts.
And, in the second place, with regard to the criterion of morality,
that also (they held) was not dependent on the consequences in the
way of happiness and misery which the Utilitarians emphasised. On the
contrary, moral ideas themselves had an independent validity; they had
a worth and authority for conduct which could not be accounted for by
any consequences in which action resulted: belonging as they did to
the essence of the human spirit, they also had authority over the
conduct of man's life.
Now the ethical controversies of last century were almost entirely
about these two points and between these two opposed schools. No doubt
the two questions thus discussed did go very near to the root of the
whole matter. They pointed to the consideration of the question of
man's place in the universe and his spiritual nature as determining
the part which it was his to play in the world. They suggested, if
they did not always raise, the question whether man is entirely a
product of nature or whether he has a spiritual essence to which
nature may be subdued. But the larger issues suggested were not
followed out. Common consent seemed to limit the discussion to the two
questions described; and this limitation of the controversy tended to
a precision and clearness in method, which is often wanting in the
ethical thought of the present day, disturbed as it is by new and more
far-reaching problems.
This limitation of scope, which I venture to select as the leading
characteristic of last century's ethical enquiries, may be further
seen in the large amount of agreement between the two schools
regarding the content of morality. The Utilitarians no more than
the Intuitionists were opponents of the traditional--as we may call
it--the Christian morality of modern civilisation. They both adopted
and defended the well-recognised virtues of truth and justice, of
temperance and benevolence, which have been accepted by the common
tradition of ages as the expression of man's moral consciousness. The
Intuitionists no doubt were sometimes regarded--they may indeed have
sometimes regarded themselves--as in a peculiar way the guardians of
the traditional morality, and as interested more than their opponents
in defending a view in harmony with man's spiritual essence and
inheritance. But we do not find any attack upon the main content
of morality by the Utilitarian writers. On the contrary, they were
interested in vindicating their own full acceptance of the traditional
morality. This is, in particular, the case with John Stuart Mill, the
high-minded representative of the Utilitarian philosophy in the middle
of last century. "In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth," he says,
"we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one
would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute
the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality."[1]
[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, 9th ed., pp. 24, 25.]
No doubt Mill was a practical reformer as well as a philosophical
thinker, and he wished on certain special points to revise the
accepted code. He says that "the received code of ethics is by no
means of divine right, that mankind has still much to learn as to the
effects of actions on the general happiness."[1] He would even take
this point--the modifiability of the ordinary moral code--as a sort
of test question distinguishing his own system from that of the
intuitional moralists; and in one place he says that "the contest
between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and
that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest
of progressive morality against stationary--of reason and argument
against the deification of mere opinion and habit. The doctrine that
the existing order of things is the natural order, and that, being
natural, all innovation upon it is criminal, is as vicious in morals
as it is now at last admitted to be in physics and in society and
government."[2]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 35.]
[Footnote 2: Dissertations, ii. 472.]
A passage such as this leads us to ask, What exactly is the extent of
the modifications which Mill seeks to make in the ordinary scale of
values? Does he, for instance, wish to invert any ordinary moral
rules? Would he do away with, or in any important respect modify, the
duties of truth or justice, temperance or benevolence? Far from it He
only suggests, as many moralists of both parties have suggested, that
in the application of moral law to the details of experience certain
modifications are required. How far he goes in this direction may be
seen from his own instance, that of truth. He would admit certain
exceptions to the law of truth; he would give the less rigorous
answers to the time-honoured questions as to whether one should tell
the truth to an invalid in a dangerous illness or to a would-be
criminal. But Mill always asserts the sanctity of the general
principle; and, on this account, he holds that "in order that the
exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the
least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought
to be recognised and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the
principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for
weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking
out the region within which one or the other preponderates[1]." He
holds that there are such limits to veracity. He even thinks--though
here he is not quite correct--that such limits have been acknowledged
by all moralists[2]. He would have been correct if he had said that
they had been acknowledged by moralists of all schools: the admission
of these limits is not peculiar to Utilitarians. But he vigorously
defends the validity of the general rule, and maintains that, in
considering any possible exception, we have to take account not merely
of the present utility of the falsehood, but of its effect upon the
sanctity of the general principle in the minds of men. The Utilitarian
doctrine is expressly used by him to confirm the ordinary general laws
of the moral consciousness. Nay, these rules--such as the duties of
being temperate and just and benevolent--were, according to Mill,
themselves the result of experiences of utility on the part of our
predecessors, and from them handed down to us by the tradition of the
race. No doubt in this Mill is applying a theoretical view too easily
to a question of history. It is one thing to maintain, as he does,
that utility is the correct test of morality; it is another thing
altogether to say that our ordinary moral rules are the records or
expressions of earlier judgments of utility. The former statement
is made as a controversial statement which is admitted to be so
far doubtful that most men need to be convinced of it. The latter
statement could only be true if nobody had ever doubted the former--if
everybody in past ages had accepted utility as the standard of
morality. But, for our present purpose, his attitude to this question
is of interest only as bringing out the point that the different
schools of ethical thought during last century had a large basis of
common agreement, and that this basis of common agreement was their
acknowledgment of the validity of the moral rules recognised by the
ordinary conscience.
[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, p. 34.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 33.]
The Utilitarians no more than the Intuitionists sought to make
any fundamental change in the content of right and of wrong as
acknowledged by modern society. Their controversies were almost
entirely of what may be called an academic kind, and, however decided,
would have little effect upon a man's practical attitude. But it would
not be possible to make any such confident assertion regarding the
ethical controversies of the present day. We have no longer the same
common basis of agreement to rely upon that our predecessors had a
generation ago. There are many indications in recent literature that
the suggestion is now made more readily than it was twenty or thirty
years ago that the scale of moral values may have to be revised; and
it seems to me that the ethical controversies of the coming generation
will not be restricted to academic opponents whose disputes concern
nothing more than the origin of moral ideas and their ultimate
criterion. Modern controversy will involve these questions, but it
will go deeper and it will spread its results wider: it appears as
if it would not hesitate to call in question the received code of
morality, and to revise our standard of right and wrong. One school at
any rate has already made a claim of this sort, and the extravagance
of its teaching has not prevented it from attracting adherents.
It is on this ground, therefore,--because I believe that the ethical
question is no longer so purely an academic question as it was some
years ago, because it affects not only the philosophic thinker but the
practical man who is concerned with the problems of his day,--that I
have selected the topic for these lectures. It is not merely that many
modern writers assert some general doctrine as to the relativity of
right and wrong. So much was implied, though it was not much laid
stress upon, in the utilitarian doctrine. For the utilitarian conduct
is right according to the amount of happiness it produces: goodness
is relative to its tendency to produce happiness. But a much greater
importance may attach to the assertion of the relativity of morals
when one couples that doctrine with the idea now prevalent of the
indefinitely great changes which the progress of the race brings
about, not only in the social order but also in the structure and
faculties of man himself.
Hence it is not surprising to find that there are at the present day
some writers who ask for nothing less than a revision of the whole
traditional morality, and in whose minds that demand is connected with
the dominant doctrine of progress as it is expressed in the theory of
evolution.
Perhaps we might trace the beginnings of this controversy as to the
content of what is right and what is wrong to an older opposition
in ethical thought, an opposition which especially affects the
utilitarian doctrine--the controversy of Egoism and Altruism. If
we look at these two conceptions of egoism and altruism as the
Utilitarians did, if we regard the conception of egoism as having
to do with one's own personal happiness, and that of altruism as
describing the general happiness, the happiness of others rather than
of oneself, then obviously the questions arise whether the conduct
which produces the greatest happiness of others will or will not also
produce the greatest happiness of the individual agent, and which
should be chosen in the event of their disagreement. Is my happiness
and that which will tend to it always to be got on the same lines of
conduct as those which will bring about the greatest happiness of the
greatest number?
The Utilitarian writers of last century were of course conscious of
this problem, conscious that there was a possible discrepancy between
egoistic conduct and altruistic conduct; but they agreed to lay stress
upon altruistic results as determining moral quality. Their tendency
was to minimise the difference between the egoistic and the altruistic
effects of action, and in so far as a difference had to be allowed to
emphasise the importance of the claims of the community at large, that
is, roughly speaking, to take the altruistic standpoint. Recent and
more careful investigators have brought out more exactly the extent
and significance of the divergence. In particular this was done with
perfect clearness and precision by the late Professor Sidgwick.
He showed that the difference--although it might be easily
exaggerated--was yet real and important, that the two systems did not
mean the same thing, that we could not rely upon altruistic conduct
always being for individual benefit, that there was no 'natural
identity' between egoism and altruism. He held that morality, to
save it from an unsolved dualism, required a principle capable of
reconciling the discrepancy between the conduct in accordance with the
axiom of Benevolence and the conduct in accordance with the equally
rational axiom of Self-love.[1]
[Footnote 1: Professor Sidgwick's last words on the question are as
follows: "If then the reconciliation of duty and self-interest is to
be regarded as a hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental
contradiction in one chief department of our thought, it remains
to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for
accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of
physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically
inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any
practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on
an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our
supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are commonly
taken to be universally true, which yet seem to rest on no other
grounds than that we have a strong disposition to accept them, and
that they are indispensable to the systematic coherence of our
beliefs,--it will be more difficult to reject a similarly supported
assumption in ethics, without opening the door to universal
scepticism" ('Methods of Ethics,' 6th ed., pp. 506, 507).]
But while this question of egoism and altruism has thus been
recognised as a possible source of perplexity, affecting the ethical
standard itself, both egoists and orthodox utilitarians have commonly
agreed--though for different reasons--to insist that morality means
the same for them both, and to hold with Epicurus that "we cannot lead
a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and
justice." It is only in quite recent days that a thoroughgoing attempt
has been made to revalue all the old standards of morality. And
the attempt is made from a point of view which is certainly not
altruistic. The Utilitarian writers of last generation, if they
admitted the conflict of egoism and altruism, weighted every
consideration on the side of altruism. They emphasised therefore the
agreement between their own utilitarian doctrine and the Christian
morality in which altruism is fundamental. On the other hand, the more
recent tendency to which I refer emphasises and exalts the egoistic
side, and thus accentuates the difference between the new moral
code--if we may call it moral--and the Christian morality.
The boldest and most brilliant exponent of this tendency is Friedrich
Nietzsche[1], already the object of a cult in Germany, and an author
to be reckoned with as one of the new forces in European thought. It
is true that some of the most characteristic products of his genius
are closely akin to the insanity which clouded his later years. Yet it
is impossible to read his writings without recognising his penetrating
insight as well as his abundance of virile passion. Besides, in
spite of all his extravagances--or, perhaps, because of them--he is
symptomatic of certain tendencies of the age. Nietzsche's demand
is for nothing less than a revision of the whole moral code and a
reversal of its most characteristic provisions. And he has the rare
distinction of being a writer on morality who disclaims the title of
'moralist.'
[Footnote 1: Friedrich Nietzsche, the son of a clergyman, was born in
Saxony in 1844. In 1869 he became Professor of Classical Philology
in Basel, and held this post for ten years, though his work was
interrupted by ill-health for a long period. His first book was
published in 1871; the preface to the last was dated "on the 30th of
September 1888, the day on which the first book of the Transvaluation
of all Values was completed." He became hopelessly insane in 1889, and
died in 1900. The reader will find a luminous estimate of his work
in the essay on "The Life and Opinions of Friedrich Nietzsche" in
Pringle-Pattison's 'Man's Place in the Cosmos,' 2nd ed., 1902.]
The ideas which Nietzsche expresses go to the root of the matter. In
the first place, he drew a distinction between what he regarded as two
different types of morality. One of these he called the morality of
masters or nobles, and he called the other the morality of slaves.
Self-reliance and courage may be cited as the qualities typical of the
noble morality, for they are the qualities which tend to make the man
who possesses them a master over others, to give him a prominent and
powerful place in the world, and to help him to subjugate to his will
both nature and his fellow-men. On the other hand, there are the
qualities which form the characteristic features of Christian
morality--such as benevolence or love of one's neighbour, the
fundamental precept of the Gospels, and the humility and obedience
which have been perhaps unduly emphasised in ecclesiastical ethics.
These are the qualities which he means when he speaks of the morality
of the slave.
In the second place, therefore, what is distinctive of Nietzsche is
this: that he explicitly rejects the Christian morality, in particular
the virtues of benevolence, of obedience, of humility: these are
regarded by him as belonging to a type of morality which is to be
overcome and which he calls the servile morality. He deliberately sets
in antithesis to one another what he calls Christian and what he calls
noble virtues: meaning by the latter the qualities allied to courage,
force of will, and strength of arm, such as were manifested in certain
Pagan races, but above all in the heroes of the Roman Republic. He
would, therefore, deliberately prefer the older Pagan valuation of
conduct to the Christian valuation.
In the third place, he attempts what he calls a transvaluation of
all values. Every moral idea needs revision, every moral idea, every
suggestion of value or worth in conduct, must be tried and tested
afresh, and a new morality substituted for the old. And with this
claim for revision is connected his idea that the egoistic principle
which underlies the Pagan virtues preferred to the Christian, and the
higher development of the self-capacities to which it will lead, will
evolve a superior kind of men--"Over-men" or "Uebermenschen"--to whom,
therefore, we may look as setting the tone and giving the rule for
subsequent conduct.
Nietzsche is an unsystematic writer, though none the less powerful on
that account. He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for
system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his
aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not
inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument. It is
difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series of propositions
that would give a general idea of the complete transmutation of
morality which he demands. So far as I can make out, there is only one
point in which he still agrees with the old traditional morality, and
that point seems to cause him no little difficulty. No thinker can
afford to question the binding nature of the law of Truth, least of
all a thinker so obviously in earnest about his own prophetic message
as Nietzsche was. All his investigations presuppose the validity of
this law for his own thought; all his utterances imply an appeal to
it; and his influence depends on the confidence which others have in
his veracity. And on this one point only Nietzsche has to confess
himself a child of the older morality. "This book," he says in the
preface to one of the least paradoxical of his works, 'Dawn of Day,'
"This book ... implies a contradiction and is not afraid of it: in it
we break with the faith in morals--why? In obedience to morality! Or
what name shall we give to that which passes therein? We should prefer
more modest names. But it is past all doubt that even to us a 'thou
shalt' is still speaking, even we still obey a stern law above us--and
this is the last moral precept which impresses itself even upon
us, which even we obey: in this respect, if in any, we are still
conscientious people--viz., we do not wish to return to that which we
consider outlived and decayed, to something 'not worthy of belief,' be
it called God, virtue, truth, justice, charity; we do not approve of
any deceptive bridges to old ideals, we are radically hostile to all
that wants to mediate and to amalgamate with us; hostile to any actual
religion and Christianity; hostile to all the vague, romantic, and
patriotic feelings; hostile also to the love of pleasure and want of
principle of the artists who would fain persuade us to worship when we
no longer believe--for we are artists; hostile, in short, to the whole
European Femininism (or Idealism, if you prefer this name), which
is ever 'elevating' and consequently 'degrading.' Yet, as such
conscientious people, we immoralists and atheists of this day still
feel subject to the German honesty and piety of thousands of years'
standing, though as their most doubtful and last descendants; nay, in
a certain sense, as their heirs, as executors of their inmost will, a
pessimist will, as aforesaid, which is not afraid of denying itself,
because it delights in taking a negative position. We ourselves
are--suppose you want a formula--the consummate self-dissolution of
morals." [1]
[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, 'Werke,' iv. pp. 8, 9 (1899). The translation
is taken (with corrections) from the English version by Johanna Volz
(1903). Nietzsche has so shocked and confused the English printer that
when the author writes himself an 'immoralist' the compositor has
made him call himself an 'immortalist.' And errors of the sort do not
affect the printer only. Nietzsche's sneer at 'Femininism' is deftly
turned aside by Miss Volz, by the simple device of substituting for
it the word Pessimism. And Dr Tille, the translator of his best-known
work, 'Thus spake Zarathustra' (1896, p. xix), has been bemused in
an even more wonderful manner. He enumerates "the best known
representatives" of Anarchic tendencies in political thought as
"Humboldt, Dunoyer, Stirner, Bakounine, and Auberon Spencer"! The
vision of Mr Auberon Herbert and Mr Herbert Spencer doubled up into a
single individual is 'a thing imagination boggles at.' Perhaps it is
the translator's idea of the _Uebermensch_.]
Perhaps it is impossible to understand Nietzsche unless one admits
that his writings show traces of the disease which very soon prevented
his writing at all. But at the same time, while that is true, there is
much more in his work than the ravings of a distempered mind. There
may have been little method, but there was a great deal of genius, in
his madness. While he always overstates his case,--his colossal egoism
leads him to exaggerate any doctrine,--and while I do not think that
the actual doctrines of Nietzsche in the way he puts them will ever
gain any general acceptance, while his system of morality may not have
any chance of being the moral code of the next generation or even of
being regarded as the serious alternative to Christian morality, yet
it is not too much to say that he is symptomatic of a new tendency in
ethical thought, a tendency of which he is the greatest, if also the
most extravagant exponent, but which has its roots in certain new
influences which have come to this generation with the ideas and the
triumphs, scientific and material, of the preceding generation.
There are two quite different kinds of influence to which the
formation of an ethical doctrine may be due. In the first place, there
are the moral sentiments and opinions of the community and of the
moralist himself; and, in the second place, there are the scientific
and philosophical doctrines accepted by the writer or inspiring what
is loosely called the spirit of the time. In most ethical movements
the two kinds of influence will be found co-operating, though the
latter is almost entirely absent in some cases. The incoherence of
popular opinions about morality is a potent stimulus to reflexion, and
may of itself give rise to systematic ethical enquiry. This is more
particularly the case when a change of social conditions, or contact
with alien modes of life, force into light the inadequacy of the
conventional morality. In such a case the new ethical reflexion may
have a disintegrating effect upon the traditional code, and give
to the movement the character and importance of a revolution. The
reflective activity of the Sophists in ancient Greece--a movement of
the deepest ethical significance--was in the main of this nature.
It consisted in a radical sifting and criticism of current moral
standards, and was due almost entirely to the first class of
influences, being affected only in the slightest degree by scientific
or philosophical ideas.
Influences of the same kind combine with science and philosophy in
moulding the ethical thought of the present day. Contemporary ethical
speculation is by no means exclusively due to the thinkers who attempt
to arrive at a consistent interpretation of the nature of reality; and
it has features which constantly remind us how closely moral reflexion
is connected with the order and changes of social conditions.
Every age is no doubt apt to exaggerate its own claims to mark an
epoch. But, after a century of achievements in applied science, there
seems little risk of error in asserting that the world is now becoming
conscious as it never was before of the vast power given by material
resources when under the control of a cool intelligence. And in the
competition of nations it is not surprising that there should be an
imperious demand for the most alert and well-trained minds to utilise
these resources in war and in industry. It is not surprising; nor
would it be a fit subject for regret, did not the concentration of the
outlook upon material success tend to the neglect of 'things which
are more excellent.' Writing many years ago J.S. Mill remarked that
"hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made
have lightened the day's toil of any human being." [1]
[Footnote 1: Political Economy, Book iv. chap. vi. § 2.]
There is a further question which ought to be asked of every new
advance in material civilisation, Does it foster, or at least does
it leave unimpeded, the development of man's spiritual inheritance?
Certainly, the control of nature by mind is not necessarily hostile
to the ideals which give dignity to the arts and sciences and to man
himself. And yet it does not always favour their presence. The weak
nations of the world in arms and commerce have contributed their full
share to the higher life of the race; and the triumphs of a country on
the battlefield or in business give no security for the presence among
its people of the ideals which illumine or of the righteousness which
exalts. The history of Germany herself might point the moral. A
century ago, when she lay crushed beneath the heel of Napoleon, her
poets and philosophers were the prophets of ideals which helped to
bind her scattered states into a powerful nation, and which enriched
the mind of man. To-day we are forced to ask whether military and
industrial success have changed the national bent: for poetry seems
to have deserted her, and her philosophy betrays the dominance of
material interests.
Material success and the struggle for it are apt to monopolise the
attention; and perhaps the greatest danger of the new social order
is the growing materialisation of the mental outlook. It would
be needless to point to the evidence, amongst all classes in the
mercantile nations, of the feverish haste to be rich and to enjoy. For
to point to this has been common with the moralists of all ages. This
age like others--perhaps more than most--is strewn with the victims of
the struggle. But it can also boast a product largely its own--the new
race of victors who have emerged triumphant, with wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice of the past generation. Their interests make them
cosmopolitan; they are unrestrained by the traditional obligations of
ancient lineage; and the world seems to lie before them as something
to be bought and sold. Neither they nor others have quite realised as
yet the power which colossal wealth gives in modern conditions. And it
remains to be seen whether the multimillionaire will claim to figure
as Nietzsche's 'over-man,' spurning ordinary moral conventions, and
will play the _rôle_, in future moral discourses, which the ethical
dialogues of Plato assign to the 'tyrant,'
General literature, even in its highest forms, seems to reflect a
corresponding change of view as to what is of most worth in life.
Already the strong hold on duty and the spiritual world which Tennyson
unfalteringly displayed, even the deeper insight into motive and the
faith in goodness which are shown by Browning, are read by us as
utterances of a past age. We have grown used to a presentment of human
life such as Ibsen's in which the customary morality is regarded as
a thin veneer of convention which hardly covers the selfishness in
grain, or to the description of life as a tangled mass of animal
passions,--a description which, in spite of the genius of Zola, does
not fail to weary and disgust,--or perhaps as only a spectacle in
which what men call good and evil are the light and shade of a picture
which may serve to produce some artistic emotion. An attitude akin
to these becomes an ethical point of view in Nietzsche, the _enfant
terrible_ of modern thought, who maintains that man's life must be
interpreted physiologically only and not spiritually, and who would
replace philanthropy by a boundless egoism.
Influences of the second kind are usually more prominent than the
preceding in the case of the philosophical moralist, and they are
not always avoided by the moralist who boasts his independence of
philosophy. The former influences are more constantly at work: they
supply the facts for all ethical reflexion. Ethical thought is not
so uniformly influenced by the conceptions arrived at in science
or philosophy. But there are certain periods of history in which
conceptions regarding the truth of things--whether arrived at by
scientific methods or not--have had a profound influence upon men's
views of good and evil. At the beginning of our era, for instance, the
view of God and man introduced by Christianity, resulted in a deepened
and, to some extent, in a distinctive morality. Again, at the time of
the Renaissance, the new knowledge and new interests combined with the
weakening of the Church's and of the Empire's authority to bring about
the demand for a revision of the ecclesiastical morality, and led to
some not very successful attempts to find a firmer basis for conduct.
At the present day also it is the case that philosophers of different
schools are for the most part agreed in claiming ethical importance
for their conceptions about reality. In particular, the scientific
thought of the last generation has been reformed under the, influence
of the group of ideas which constitute the theory of evolution. There
is hardly a department of thought which this new doctrine has not
touched; and upon morality its influence may seem to be peculiarly
important and direct. The theory of evolution, as put forward by
Darwin, has established certain positions which have been regarded as
of special significance for ethics.
In the first place, it is an assertion of the unity of life. And we
must not limit the generality of this proposition. It is not merely
a denial of the fixity of species, an assertion that there are no
natural kinds so inseparable from one another that each must be the
result of a distinct creative act. It is also an assertion that human
life must be treated as a part in the larger whole of organic being,
that the mind of man is continuous with animal perception, that moral
activity is continuous with non-moral impulse. And the assertion of
the unity of life is at the same time an assertion of the progress of
life. What we call the higher forms are in all cases developments from
simpler and lower forms.
Further, the method of this progress has been described. Herein indeed
lay Darwin's most important achievement. He detected and demonstrated
the operation of a factor hitherto unsuspected. This new factor to
which he drew attention as the chief agent in organic development was
called by him 'natural selection,' The name has a positive sound and
suggests a process of active choice. But Darwin was fully aware that
the process to which he gave this name was a negative and not a
positive operation; and as such it was clearly recognised by him. The
name was, no doubt, chosen simply to bring out the fact that the
same kind of results as those which man produces by conscious and
artificial selection may be arrived at without conscious purpose by
the operation of merely natural forces. Instead of the 'fit' being
directly chosen or encouraged, what happens is simply that the 'unfit'
die out or are exterminated, so that room to live and means of life
are left for the survivors.
What may be meant by this idea of 'fitness'--which meets us in the
famous phrase that the 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for
life is the goal of evolution--is a question which brings us at once
to the consideration of the ethical significance of the theory. For
it seems to lay claim to give both an explanation of progress and an
interpretation of what constitutes worth in conduct.
II.
ETHICS AND EVOLUTION.
There are two things which are not always kept distinct,--what may be
called the 'evolution of ethics' and the 'ethics of evolution,' The
former might more correctly be called the evolution of morality,--the
account of the way in which moral customs, moral institutions, and
moral ideas have been developed and have come to take their place in
the life of mankind. Clearly these are all features of human life;
and, if the theory of evolution applies to human life, we must expect
it also to have some contribution to make to this portion of man's
development,--to the growth of the customs, institutions, and ideas
which enter into and make up his morality.
But by the 'ethics of evolution' is meant something more than the
'evolution of ethics' or development of morality. It signifies a
theory which turns the facts of evolution to account in determining
the value for man of different kinds of conduct and feeling and idea.
When one speaks of the ethics of evolution one must be understood to
mean that the evolution theory does something more than trace the
history of things, that it gives us somehow or other a standard or
criterion of moral worth or value. This additional point may be
expressed by the technical distinction between origin and validity.
Clearly there is a very great difference between showing how something
has come to be what it is and assigning to it worth or validity for
the guidance of life or thought It may be that the former enquiry has
some bearing upon the latter; but only confusion will result if the
two problems are not clearly distinguished at the outset,--as they
very seldom are distinguished by writers on the theory of evolution in
its application to ethics.
It may be said that the evolutionist writers on ethics seek to base an
ethics of evolution upon the evolution of ethics, but that they are
not always aware of the real nature and difficulties of their task.
Sometimes they seem to think that in tracing the evolution of ethics
they are also and at the same time determining and establishing a
theory of the ethics of evolution. We must avoid this error, and keep
the two problems distinct in our minds. Yet from the nature of the
case it holds true that it is only through the facts which the theory
of evolution establishes or can establish as to the development of
morality that it is able to make any contribution to the solution of
the further question as to the criterion of morality--the question,
that is to say, of moral worth or value.
We cannot, therefore, avoid dealing with the evolution of ethics. But
in what follows I am not considering it for its own sake--though it
is an interesting and important question. In order to simplify
the argument, we may allow what is claimed for it, and give the
evolutionist credit for even greater success on the field of
historical investigation--which is his own field--than he would, if
fair-minded, claim for himself. The problem I have in view lies beyond
this historical question. It is the problem how far the known facts
and probable theories regarding the development of morality can make
any contribution towards determining the standard of worth for our
ideas, our sentiments, and our conduct. Now if we read the accredited
exponents of the doctrine of evolution we shall find amongst them a
considerable variety of view regarding the bearing of the theory of
evolution upon this properly ethical problem--the problem of the
criterion or standard of goodness.
In the first place, it is desirable to characterise briefly Darwin's
own contribution to this matter. The suggestion made by him deals
almost entirely with what I have called the development of morality,
not with the ethics of evolution; and perhaps it may seem to us now
a rather obvious suggestion. But he was the first to make this
suggestion; and it comes from him as a direct application of the
theory he had established with regard to animal development. His
suggestion is simply this--that moral qualities are selected in the
struggle for existence in much the same way as purely physical or
animal excellences are selected, that is, by their contributing to the
continued and more efficient life of the organism. But Darwin saw very
clearly that the qualities which are recognised as moral are not
by any means in all cases contributory to individual success and
efficiency. They are not all of them qualities that contribute to the
success of one individual in his struggle with other individuals
for the means of subsistence. We may say that courage, prudence,
self-reliance, will have that effect, and that consequently in the
struggle for life the individuals who show such qualities will have
a better chance of survival than those without them. But what about
qualities such as sympathy, willingness to help another, obedience,
and faithfulness to a community or to a cause? Clearly, these are not
qualities which are of special assistance to the individual. But they
are qualities which are or may be of very great importance to the
tribe or community of individuals. Supposing such qualities of mutual
help, of willingness even to sacrifice oneself for others--the
qualities which are commonly grouped as expressions of the social
instinct,--supposing these to have been somehow developed in the
members of a tribe, that tribe would, other things being equal, have
an advantage in a struggle with another tribe whose members did not
possess these qualities. Now the advantage thus gained in the struggle
would be a case of the operation of natural selection: it would
exterminate or weaken the tribe without these social qualities, and it
would thus give opportunity for the growing efficiency of the tribe
that possessed them.
Put in the briefest way, this is the explanation which Darwin gave
of the growth of the social qualities in mankind; and the social
qualities make up, to a large extent at any rate, what we call moral
qualities. Darwin, however, saw further than this: he saw that, while
this might account for the development of what we may call savage and
barbarian virtues, there was in civilised mankind a development of
sympathy which went far beyond this, and which one could not with good
reason account for by asserting that it rendered assistance to the
community in its struggle for existence with other communities.
Thus, with regard to the former question, he says: "A tribe including
many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of
patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always
ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common
good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be
natural selection[1]."
[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, Part I. chap. v. p. 203 (new ed., 1901).]