or restricted meaning of goodness. For the former it is enough that
existence be "_found_ to be in accordance with the idea"; for the
latter, it is necessary that the idea itself produce the fact.[1]
In the former sense "beauty, truth, pleasure, and sensation are all
things that are good,"[2] quite irrespective of their origin; in the
latter sense, only that is good which the idea has produced, or in
which it has realised itself, which is the work, therefore, of some
finite soul. In this narrower meaning goodness is the result of will:
"the good, in short, will become the realised end or completed will.
It is now an idea which not only _has_ an answering content in fact,
but, in addition also, has _made_, and has brought about, that
correspondence.... Goodness thus will be confined to the realm of
ends, or of self-realisation. It will be restricted, in other words,
to what is commonly called the sphere of morality,"[3] Even in its
more general meaning, as we have seen, Mr Bradley has not succeeded in
giving an objective account of good. For the correspondence of idea
and existence in which it is said to consist is defined in relation
to desire, and to some kind of feeling on the part of the conscious
subject. Nor was his account successful in distinguishing good from
evil: to that distinction feeling is a blind guide. When he goes on
to discuss goodness in the narrower sense, in which it belongs to the
results of finite volition, he adopts, as expressing the nature of
goodness, that conception of 'self-realisation' which, as put forward
by Green, has been found inadequate. The same conception was used by
Mr Bradley, in his first work, as "the most general expression for the
end in itself," "May we not say," he asked, "that to realise self is
always to realise a whole, and that the question in morals is to find
the true whole, realising which will practically realise the true
self?"[4] It is easy to make the distinction between good and evil
depend upon this, that in the former the true self is realised, and
that what is realised in the latter is only a false self. But it is
equally easy to see that this is only to substitute one unexplained
distinction for another. This short and easy method is not that which
Mr Bradley adopts in his later work. He has something of much greater
interest to say regarding the nature of the self-realisation in which
goodness is made to consist; and upon it he lays stress, "solely with
a view to bring out the radical vice of all goodness."[5] Goodness,
it is said, is self-realisation; and Reality--it was assumed at the
outset--is harmonious and all-comprehensive. These last characters are
also criteria of degrees of reality, and consequently of degrees
of self-realisation. There are, therefore, two marks of
self-realisation--harmony and extent; and these two may and do
diverge. No doubt "in the end," they will come together; but "in that
end goodness, as such, will have perished."[6] "We must admit," says
Mr Bradley, "that two great divergent forms of moral goodness exist.
In order to realise the idea of a perfect self a man may have to
choose between two partially conflicting methods. Morality, in short,
may dictate either self--sacrifice or self--assertion,"[7] "The
conscious duplicity of the hypocrite," according to an outspoken
adherent of Mr Bradley's, is "but the natural exaggeration of the
unconscious duplicity which resides in the very heart of morality."[8]
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 412.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 410.]
[Footnote 3: Appearance and Reality, pp. 412, 413.]
[Footnote 4: Ethical Studies (1876), pp. 59, 63.]
[Footnote 5: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
[Footnote 6: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 415.]
[Footnote 8: A.E. Taylor, Problem of Conduct (1901), p. 65.]
It is worth while considering this view of the contradictions inherent
in morality. To start with, goodness was defined by relation to
desire: the good was said to be what satisfies desire. Desire is
plainly a mental state in which idea and existence are separated. As
such it cannot be attributed to the Absolute Reality. It will involve
a contradiction, therefore, if we identify goodness with Absolute
Reality; for goodness implies a distinction (between idea and
existence) which cannot find place in the Absolute. But if "degrees"
of reality be asserted, we must admit stages short of the Absolute,
and goodness may belong to such a stage in which process or
development is allowed as a fact. But Mr Bradley will have it not only
that it is a contradiction to identify this process with the Absolute,
but also that the conception of goodness is itself contradictory. "A
satisfied desire," he says, "is, in short, inconsistent with itself.
For, so far as it is quite satisfied, it is not a desire; and, so far
as it is a desire, it must remain at least partly unsatisfied."[1] Of
course, if the desire is satisfied, it ceases. It was and it is not.
But there is no more contradiction here than in any other case of
temporal succession. A satisfied desire is, it is true, no longer a
desire. But the phrase is contradictory only in appearance; for it
means that the desire has been satisfied and in its satisfaction has
ceased to exist as a desire. A much more important discrepancy is
asserted when it is said that "two great divergent forms of moral
goodness exist." The fight for moral goodness is 'under two
flags'--self-assertion and self-sacrifice. And the allies "seem
hostile to one another," "at least in some respects and with some
persons."[2] We have here the time-honoured opposition of egoism and
altruism, with a difference. Mr Bradley's most notable adherent in the
region of ethical enquiry prefers to overlook the difference and
to return to the older opposition of conflicting ideals.[3] But Mr
Bradley himself declines to rate the social factor in conduct so
high. It is not altruism or social activity which is the opponent of
self-assertion or egoism, but self-sacrifice; and both self-assertion
and self-sacrifice are kinds of self-realisation: in the former the
self seeks its realisation by perfecting its harmony; in the latter,
by increasing its extent. It is not in content that the two modes of
self-realisation differ: social factors, for instance, may enter into
both; it is in the diverse uses made of the contents:[4] 'system' is
aimed at in the one; 'width' in the other.[5] The harmony of these two
methods is attained only when both morality and the individual self
are "transcended and submerged."[6]
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 410.]
[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 415.]
[Footnote 3: Taylor, Problem of Conduct, p. 179 ff.]
[Footnote 4: Appearance and Reality, p. 416.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 414.]
[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 419.]
This discrepancy of aim, and then coming together of the hostile
factors only in the annulling and disappearance of both, is a process
quite in accordance with the general dialectic of Mr Bradley. But two
things may be noted with regard to it. In the first place the effort
after system is called self-assertion, and the effort after width or
expansion is called self-sacrifice. Perhaps the author may claim a
right to give what names he likes to the processes he describes. But
in this case the names have a recognised meaning in the literature of
morals, and no hint is given that they are used here in any meaning
other than the ordinary. And surely the term 'self-sacrifice' is an
inappropriate term for describing the conduct which seeks expansion by
multiplying the objects of desire--by the pursuit of whatever offers a
chance of widened interests, whether social or intellectual, aesthetic
or sensual,--even although "my individuality suffers loss" thereby,
and "the health and harmony of my self is injured."[1] Loss may be the
result; but aggrandisement is what is sought, though the effort fails
through lack of organisation or system. And again 'self' is not the
only possible centre for the systematisation of conduct. System in
conduct may be realised in other ways than as self-assertion. It is
sought as truly by the man of science who gives up everything for
the pursuit of truth or by the philanthropist who forgets himself in
promoting the social welfare. Such modes of life as these--and not
merely self-assertive conduct--may become centres of a moral activity
which aims at system.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p, 417.]
The second remark which has to be made on this final point is, that
neither on the method of system and self-assertion nor on the method
of expansion and self-sacrifice has the author given or suggested any
criterion for the distinction of good and evil. He has cast his net
so wide as to include all conduct within it without discrimination of
moral worth. His own result is that "the good is, as such, transcended
and submerged."[1] But this result loses all significance if it is the
case, as our enquiry seems to prove, that the good as such has
never been reached at all, nor any tenable suggestion offered for
distinguishing it from evil.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 419.]
This is the fundamental question for any philosophy of ethics; but it
receives no answer at all from the prevailing school of metaphysical
thought. This school offers no solution of the problem which was found
insoluble by the type of philosophy whose aim is to co-ordinate the
results of science. A comparison of the purposes and results of the
two schools may be instructive.
Mr Herbert Spencer has told us that since the time of his first essay,
"written as far back as 1842," his "ultimate purpose, lying behind all
proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right
and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis.... Now that moral
injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred
origin, the secularisation of morals is becoming imperative. Few things
can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative
system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has
grown up to replace it.... Those who believe that the vacuum can be
filled, and that it must be filled, are called on to do something in
pursuance of their belief."[1] But more than fifty years after the
publication of this first essay, as, with the completion of the
'Principles of Ethics,' his whole system of philosophy lay unrolled
before him, he made the significant and pathetic confession that "the
doctrine of evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had
hoped.... Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man,
living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society,
evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of definite
conclusions throughout its entire range."[2] And the lack of confidence
which the author himself felt in these parts, there is good reason to
extend to the whole structure of evolutionary ethics.
[Footnote 1: Preface to Data of Ethics, 1879.]
[Footnote 2: Preface to Principles of Ethics, vol. ii., 1893.]
Neither the purpose of their structure nor its collapse is so
explicitly proclaimed by the metaphysicians with whom this lecture has
dealt. But we hardly need to read between the lines in order to see
the prominence of the moral interest in all that Green wrote; and it
was after he had shown the inadequacy of the empirical method in the
hands of Hume to give any criterion or ideal for conduct that he made
his significant appeal to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty" to leave
"the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent amongst us" and take up
"the study of Kant and Hegel."[1] His call to speculation has been
widely responded to; but, if we turn to the most important product of
this speculative movement, we have to extract what enlightenment we
can from the dictum that, in the only sense in which the Absolute
is good, it "manifests itself in various degrees of goodness and
badness."[2]
[Footnote 1: Green, Introduction to Hume's Treatise (1874), ii. 71.]
[Footnote 2: Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
The most notable recent systems of philosophy, idealist as well as
naturalist, are thus presented to us, almost confessedly, as void of
application to conduct. This result, and foresight of this result,
have led to a widespread suspicion of any attempt at ethical
construction which is based upon a theory of reality. In consequence,
recourse is sometimes had to a purely empirical treatment of morality
such as that indicated at the close of the second lecture. Such an
account, however, can never rise from the description of conduct to
setting up an ideal for life. And accordingly some thinkers have
remained convinced of the necessity of ideals for the moral life,
although unable to find an adequate ground for these ideals in their
system of reality.
This attitude was adopted by F.A. Lange, who, at the close of his
History of Materialism, declared that there was need for an Ideal of
Worth to supplement the deficiencies of the facts of being. "One thing
is certain," he said, "that man needs to supplement reality by an
Ideal World of his own creation, and that in such creations the
highest and noblest functions of his mind co-operate. But must this
free act of the mind bear ever and ever again the deceptive form of
demonstrative science? If it does so, materialism will always reappear
and destroy the over-bold speculations."[1] It would thus seem that
moral life postulates an ideal which the mind is able to frame, but
for which it can establish no connexion with the world of reality.
[Footnote 1: Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed., p. 545 f.]
More recently a brilliant French writer, who has attempted to
establish a system of "morality without obligation or sanction," has
suggested that the place of the categorical law of duty may be taken
by a speculative hypothesis, and that hope may serve where there is no
ground for belief. "The speculative hypothesis is a risk taken in the
sphere of thought; action in accordance with this hypothesis is a
risk taken in the sphere of will; and that being is higher who will
undertake and risk the more whether in thought or action."[1] Thus,
"for example, if I would perform an act of charity pure and simple,
and wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal
Charity at the ground of things and of myself, I must objectify the
sentiment which leads to my action; and here the moral agent plays
the same _rôle_ as the artist.... In every human action there is
an element of error, of illusion": and it is conjectured that this
element increases as the action rises above the commonplace: "the most
loving hearts are the most often deceived, in the highest geniuses the
greatest incoherences are often found."[2]
[Footnote 1: Guyau, Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction
(1885) p. 250.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 226, 227.]
This solution can hardly be regarded as other than a counsel of
despair. Its ethical value is merely apparent. What is of importance
for ethics is not so much the presence of some ideal: it is the kind
of ideal that matters. It is possible to have an ideal of selfishness
as well as an ideal of love, a sensual ideal as well as a spiritual.
Nietzsche's over-man is an ideal; the Mohammedan paradise is an ideal;
and conduct can be modelled on them. But it is not enough to have
system in conduct, irrespective of the worth of the ideal which
determines the system. Some criterion is needed for deciding between
competing ideals. As long as they are looked upon as mere illusions,
as expressions of doubt, or as a hazard staked on the unknowable,
caprice takes the place of law; where all is equally uncertain there
is no security for the worth of the ideal itself.
Unsatisfactory as they are in this form, the opinions referred to are
echoes of a pregnant doctrine of Kant's--the doctrine that the moral
consciousness brings us into closer touch with reality than the merely
theoretical reason can reach. Various lines of recent thought may
be said to have been suggested by this view. Almost every idealist
metaphysician has tended to look upon thought itself as constituting
the inmost reality of the universe which it conceives or understands;
and Kant's doctrine may make us pause and ask whether this tendency is
not simply an assumption without warrant.
Again, the psychological analysis of knowledge has brought out the
fact of its constant dependence upon practical interests. It is the
need to perform or attain something, which is the motive that leads
to the understanding of things; and the understanding of things with
which alone we are satisfied is commonly that which helps us so to
describe our experience as to be able to control some practical
result. 'Knowledge is power'; and not only so, but in its early stages
and in most of its later developments, knowledge is _for_ power: it is
for purposes of his own that man becomes the 'interpreter of nature.'
It is to men of science rather than to philosophers that we owe the
'descriptive theory' of scientific concepts which, within the last
few years, has gone far to revolutionise the prevailing attitude of
philosophy to science. Concepts, such as 'mass,' 'energy,' and the
like, are no longer held to express realities the denial of which
would be treason to science; they are simply descriptive notions whose
truth consists in their utility: that is to say, in their ability to
comprehend all the relevant facts in a simple description. And, in the
same way, scientific principles are of the nature of postulates, whose
justification is no necessary law of thought, but must rather be
sought in the results of scientific investigation.
These three doctrines--the descriptive theory of science, the
practical nature of knowledge as it is brought out by psychological
analysis, and the special claims of the moral consciousness--have
combined to bring about a tendency strongly opposed to the older
idealist tradition, the tendency to regard practical results as the
sole test of truth.
This conception is put forward now in philosophical literature as
a new and independent point of view. The point of view is only in
process of being hardened into a theory; but, under the name
of Pragmatism, it has already become the subject of a vigorous
propaganda. With the value of this doctrine as a general theory of
reality we need not at present concern ourselves. In spite of the high
claims it makes for the theoretical significance of moral ideas, its
adherents have not as yet devoted much attention to the question of
the worth of these moral ideas and the criteria by which that worth
may be determined. Yet this surely is the fundamental question for
ethical theory. On the other hand, as against a merely theoretical
interpretation of the universe, into which the moral element enters
only as a sort of loosely-connected appendix, the pragmatists are
amply justified. Practical ends are prior to theoretical explanations
of what happens. But practical ends vary, and some measure of their
relative values is needed.
There is one thing which all reasoning about morality assumes and
must assume; and that is morality itself. The moral concept--whether
described as worth or as duty or as goodness--cannot be distilled out
of any knowledge about the laws of existence or of occurrence. Nor
will speculation about the real conditions of experience yield it,
unless adequate recognition be first of all given to the fact that the
experience which is the subject-matter of philosophy is not merely a
sensuous and thinking, but also a moral, experience. The approval
of the good, the disapproval of the evil, and the preference of
the better: these would seem to be basal facts for an adequate
philosophical theory: and they imply the striving for a best--however
imperfect the apprehension of that best may always remain. Only
when these facts--the characteristic facts of moral experience--are
recognised as constituents of the experience which is our
subject-matter, are we in a position profitably to enquire what is
good and what evil, and how the best is to be conceived.
The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would
be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not
only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be
found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians. It seems
to have been assumed that moral principles can be reached by the
application of scientific generalisations or of the results of a
metaphysical analysis which has started by overlooking the facts
of the moral consciousness. Even as a metaphysic this procedure is
inadequate; and the interpretations of reality to which it has led
have erred by over-intellectuality.
The systems of naturalism and of idealism, whose ethical consequences
have been passed in review, have one feature in common; and it is
a feature which from of old has been regarded as a mark of genuine
philosophy. They both seek the One in the many; but they seek it on
different roads. For the naturalist the most comprehensive description
of things may be the conception of mass-points in motion; or it may be
some more recondite conception to which physical analysis points. In
either case the unity reached will be mechanical. For the idealist,
on the other hand, reason may be said to be the central principle of
things: the unity of reality is a rational unity. I have contended in
these lectures that neither the mechanical unity of the naturalists
nor the rational unity of the idealists has succeeded in comprehending
within its unifying principle the essential nature of morality with
its deep-going dualism of good and evil. But while I have maintained
that even the conception of reality as the reproduction of itself by
an eternal self-consciousness is an inadequate conception, it is still
possible to hold that reality is a connected whole, and that its true
principle of unity is an ethical principle.
If I were asked what is meant by an ethical unity, I should answer, in
the first place, that it implies purpose. The unity of reality is not
exhibited by a description of its present or past conditions or even
by an account of its causal connexions. These modes of description are
all affected by the fragmentariness which always belongs to temporal
apprehension. But, when things are seen in the light of a purpose, a
view of them as a whole becomes possible, and the fragmentariness of
time is transcended. And, in the second place, I should say that an
ethical unity implies the presence within itself of different finite
centres of conscious activity, whose freedom is not inconsistent with
their relation to one another and to the Whole.
In his own life, so far as it is a moral life, each individual seeks
system or unity. And this unity is realised on three different
levels--as we may call them--which may be distinguished for clearness'
sake, though it is not possible actually to separate them. On each
level morality is realised through system, and system is brought about
by the rule of the morally higher and the submission of the morally
lower: in this goodness lies, in the opposite evil. If we isolate the
individual and consider him apart, he may be said to attain goodness
by the due ordering and control of his sensuous and passional
nature by rational or spiritual ends. The result may be described,
negatively, as the suppression of sensualism. But the positive
description remains imperfect until we can say what the rational
or spiritual principle is which is to weld all man's 'particular
impulses' into an organic whole.