Whewell.

It will be seen that neither Reid nor Stewart offers more than a very

meagre and tentative contribution to that ethical science by which, as

they maintain, the received rules of morality may be rationally deduced

from self-evident first principles. A more ambitious attempt in the same

direction was made by Whewell in his _Elements of Morality_ (1846).

Whewell's general moral view differs from that of his Scottish

predecessors chiefly in a point where we may trace the influence of

Kant--viz. in his rejection of self-love as an independent rational and

governing principle, and his consequent refusal to admit happiness,

apart from duty, as a reasonable end for the individual. The moral

reason, thus left in sole supremacy, is represented as enunciating five

ultimate principles,--those of benevolence, justice, truth, purity and

order. With a little straining these are made to correspond to five

chief divisions of Jus,--personal security (benevolence being opposed to

the ill-will that commonly causes personal injuries), property,

contract, marriage and government; while the first, second and fourth,

again, regulate respectively the three chief classes of human

motives,--affections, mental desires and appetites. Thus the list, with

the addition of two general principles, "earnestness" and "moral

purpose," has a certain air of systematic completeness. When, however,

we look closer, we find that the principle of order, or obedience to

government, is not seriously intended to imply the political absolutism

which it seems to express, and which English common sense emphatically

repudiates; while the formula of justice is given in the tautological or

perfectly indefinite proposition "that every man ought to have his own."

Whewell, indeed, explains that this latter formula must be practically

interpreted by positive law, though he inconsistently speaks as if it

supplied a standard for judging laws to be right or wrong. The principle

of purity, again, "that the lower parts of our nature ought to be

subject to the higher," merely particularizes that supremacy of reason

over non-rational impulses which is involved in the very notion of

reasoned morality. Thus, in short, if we ask for a clear and definite

fundamental intuition, distinct from regard for happiness, we find

really nothing in Whewell's doctrine except the single rule of veracity

(including fidelity to promises); and even of this the axiomatic

character becomes evanescent on closer inspection, since it is not

maintained that the rule is practically unqualified, but only that it is

practically undesirable to formulate its qualifications.

Intuitional and utilitarian schools.

On the whole, it must be admitted that the doctrine of the intuitional

school of the 18th and 19th centuries has been developed with less care

and consistency than might have been expected, in its statement of the

fundamental axioms or intuitively known premises of moral reasoning. And

if the controversy which this school has conducted with utilitarianism

had turned principally on the determination of the matter of duty, there

can be little doubt that it would have been forced into more serious and

systematic effort to define precisely and completely the principles and

method on which we are to reason deductively to particular rules of

conduct.[39] But in fact the difference between intuitionists and

utilitarians as to the method of determining the particulars of the

moral code was complicated with a more fundamental disagreement as to

the very meaning of "moral obligation." This Paley and Bentham (after

Locke) interpreted as merely the effect on the will of the pleasures or

pains attached to the observance or violation of moral rules, combining

with this the doctrine of Hutcheson that "general good" or "happiness"

is the final end and standard of these rules; while they eliminated all

vagueness from the notion of general happiness by defining it to consist

in "excess of pleasure over pain"--pleasures and pains being regarded as

"differing in nothing but continuance or intensity." The utilitarian

system gained an attractive air of simplicity by thus using a single

perfectly clear notion--pleasure and its negative quantity pain--to

answer both the fundamental questions of mortals, "What is right?" and

"Why should I do it?" But since there is no logical connexion between

the answers that have thus come to be considered as one doctrine, this

apparent unity and simplicity has really hidden fundamental

disagreements, and caused no little confusion in ethical debate.

Paley.

In Paley's _Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy_[40] (1785),

the link between general pleasure (the standard) and private pleasure or

pain (the motive) is supplied by the conception of divine legislation.

To be "obliged" is to be "urged by a violent motive resulting from the

command of another"; in the case of moral obligation, the command

proceeds from God, and the motive lies in the expectation of being

rewarded and punished after this life. The commands of God are to be

ascertained "from scripture and the light of nature combined." Paley,

however, holds that scripture is given less to teach morality than to

illustrate it by example and enforce it by new sanctions and greater

certainty, and that the light of nature makes it clear that God wills

the happiness of his creatures. Hence, his method in deciding moral

questions is chiefly that of estimating the tendency of actions to

promote or diminish the general happiness. To meet the obvious

objections to this method, based on the immediate happiness caused by

admitted crimes (such as "knocking a rich villain on the head"), he lays

stress on the necessity of general rules in any kind of legislation;[41]

while, by urging the importance of forming and maintaining good habits,

he partly evades the difficulty of calculating the consequences of

particular actions. In this way the utilitarian method is freed from the

subversive tendencies which Butler and others had discerned in it; as

used by Paley, it merely explains the current moral and jural

distinctions, exhibits the obvious basis of expediency which supports

most of the received rules of law and morality and furnishes a simple

solution, in harmony with common sense, of some perplexing casuistical

questions. Thus (e.g.) "natural rights" become rights of which the

general observance would be useful apart from the institution of civil

government; as distinguished from the no less binding "adventitious

rights," the utility of which depends upon this institution. Private

property is in this sense "natural" from its obvious advantages in

encouraging labour, skill, preservative care; though actual rights of

property depend on the general utility of conforming to the law of the

land by which they are determined. We observe, however, that Paley's

method is often mixed with reasonings that belong to an alien and older

manner of thought; as when he supports the claim of the poor to charity

by referring to the intention of mankind "when they agreed to a

separation of the common fund," or when he infers that monogamy is a

part of the divine design from the equal numbers of males and females

born. In other cases his statement of utilitarian considerations is

fragmentary and unmethodical, and tends to degenerate into loose

exhortation on rather trite topics.

Bentham and his school.

In unity, consistency and thoroughness of method, Bentham's

utilitarianism has a decided superiority over Paley's. He considers

actions solely in respect of their pleasurable and painful consequences,

expected or actual; and he recognizes the need of making a systematic

register of these consequences, free from the influences of common moral

opinion, as expressed in the "eulogistic" and "dyslogistic" terms in

ordinary use. Further, the effects that he estimates are all of a

definite, palpable, empirically ascertainable quality; they are such

pleasures and pains as most men feel and all can observe, so that all

his political or moral inferences lie open at every point to the test of

practical experience. Every one, it would seem, can tell what value he

sets on the pleasures of alimentation, sex, the senses generally,

wealth, power, curiosity, sympathy, antipathy (malevolence), the

goodwill of individuals or of society at large, and on the corresponding

pains, as well as the pains of labour and organic disorders;[42] and can

guess the rate at which they are valued by others; therefore if it be

once granted that all actions are determined by pleasures and pains, and

are to be tried by the same standard, the art of legislation and private

conduct is apparently placed on an empirical, basis. Bentham, no doubt,

seems to go beyond the limits of experience proper in recognizing

"religious" pains and pleasures in his fourfold division of sanctions,

side by side with the "physical," "political," and "moral" or "social";

but the truth is that he does not seriously take account of them, except

in so far as religious hopes and fears are motives actually operating,

which therefore admit of being observed and measured as much as any

other motives. He does not himself use the will of an omnipotent and

benevolent being as a means of logically connecting individual and

general happiness. He thus undoubtedly simplifies his system, and avoids

the doubtful inferences from nature and Scripture in which Paley's

position is involved; but this gain is dearly purchased. For in answer

to the question that immediately arises, How then are the sanctions of

the moral rules which it will most conduce to the general happiness for

men to observe, shown to be always adequate in the case of all the

individuals whose observance is required? he is obliged to admit that

"the only interests which a man is at all times sure to find adequate

motives for consulting are his own." Indeed, in many parts of his work,

in the department of legislative and constitutional theory, it is rather

assumed that the interests of some men will continually conflict with

those of their fellows, unless we alter the balance of prudential

calculation by a readjustment of penalties. But on this assumption a

system of private conduct on utilitarian principles cannot be

constructed until legislative and constitutional reform has been

perfected. And, in fact, "private ethics," as conceived by Bentham, does

not exactly expound such a system; but rather exhibits the coincidence,

_so far as it extends_, between private and general happiness, in that

part of each man's conduct that lies beyond the range of useful

legislation. It was not his place, as a practical philanthropist, to

dwell on the defects in this coincidence;[43] and since what men

generally expect from a moralist is a completely reasoned account of

what they ought to do, it is not surprising that some of Bentham's

disciples should have either ignored or endeavoured to supply the gap in

his system. One section of the school even maintained it to be a

cardinal doctrine of utilitarianism that a man always gains his own

greatest happiness by promoting that of others; another section,

represented by John Austin, apparently returned to Paley's position, and

treated utilitarian morality[44] as a code of divine legislation;

others, with Grote, are content to abate the severity of the claims made

by "general happiness" on the individual, and to consider utilitarian

duty as practically limited by reciprocity; while on the opposite side

an unqualified subordination of private to general happiness was

advocated by J.S. Mill, who did more than any other member of the school

to spread and popularize utilitarianism in ethics and politics.

Varieties of utilitarian doctrine.

J.S. Mill.

The fact is that there are several different ways in which a utilitarian

system of morality may be used, without deciding whether the sanctions

attached to it are always adequate. (1) It may be presented as practical

guidance to all who choose "general good" as their ultimate end, whether

they do so on religious grounds, or through the predominance in their

minds of impartial sympathy, or because their conscience acts in harmony

with utilitarian principles, or for any combination of these or any

other reasons; or (2) it may be offered as a code to be obeyed not

absolutely, but only so far as the coincidence of private and general

interest may in any case be judged to extend; or again (3) it may be

proposed as a standard by which men may reasonably agree to praise and

blame the conduct of others, even though they may not always think fit

to act on it. We may regard morality as a kind of supplementary

legislation, supported by public opinion, which we may expect the

public, when duly enlightened, to frame in accordance with the public

interest. Still, even from this point of view, which is that of the

legislator or social reformer rather than the moral philosopher, our

code of duty must be greatly influenced by our estimate of the degrees

in which men are normally influenced by self-regard (in its ordinary

sense of regard for interests not sympathetic) and by sympathy or

benevolence, and of the range within which sympathy may be expected to

be generally effective. Thus, for example, the moral standard for which

a utilitarian will reasonably endeavour to gain the support of public

opinion must be essentially different in quality, according as he holds

with Bentham that nothing but self-regard will "serve for diet," though

"for a dessert benevolence is a very valuable addition"; or with J.S.

Mill that disinterested public spirit should be the prominent motive in

the performance of all socially useful work, and that even hygienic

precepts should be inculcated, not chiefly on grounds of prudence, but

because "by squandering our health we disable ourselves from rendering

services to our fellow-creatures."

Not less important is the interval that separates Bentham's polemical

attitude towards the moral sense from Mill's conciliatory position, that

"the mind is not in a state conformable to utility unless it loves

virtue as a thing desirable in itself." Such love of virtue Mill holds

to be in a sense natural, though not an ultimate and inexplicable fact

of human nature; it is to be explained by the "Law of Association" of

feelings and ideas, through which objects originally desired as a means

to some further end come to be directly pleasant or desirable. Thus, the

miser first sought money as a means to comfort, but ends by sacrificing

comfort to money; and similarly though the first promptings to justice

(or any other virtue) spring from the non-moral pleasures gained or

pains avoided by it, through the link formed by repeated virtuous acts

the performance of them ultimately comes to have that immediate

satisfaction attached to it which we distinguished as moral. Indeed, the

acquired tendency to virtuous conduct may become so strong that the

habit of willing it may continue, "even when the reward which the

virtuous man receives from the consciousness of well-doing is anything

but an equivalent for the sufferings he undergoes or the wishes he may

have to renounce." It is thus that the before-mentioned self-sacrifice

of the moral hero is conceived by Mill to be possible and actual. The

moral sentiments, on this view, are not phases of self-love as Hobbes

held; nor can they be directly identified with sympathy, either in

Hume's way or in Adam Smith's; in fact, though apparently simple they

are really derived in a complex manner from self-love and sympathy

combined with more primitive impulses. Justice (e.g.) is regarded by

Mill as essentially resentment moralized by enlarged sympathy and

intelligent self-interest; what we mean by injustice is harm done to an

assignable individual by a breach of some rule for which we desire the

violator to be punished, for the sake both of the person injured and of

society at large, including ourselves. As regards moral sentiments

generally, the view suggested by Mill is more definitely given by the

chief living representative of the associationist school, Alexander

Bain; by whom the distinctive characteristics of conscience are traced

to "education under government or authority," though prudence,

disinterested sympathy and other emotions combine to swell the mass of

feeling vaguely denoted by the term moral. The combination of

antecedents is somewhat differently given by different writers; but all

agree in representing the conscience of any individual as naturally

correlated to the interests of the community of which he is a member,

and thus a natural ally in enforcing utilitarian rules, or even a

valuable guide when utilitarian calculations are difficult and

uncertain.

Association and evolution.

This substitution of hypothetical history for direct analysis of the

moral sense is really older than the utilitarianism of Paley and

Bentham, which it has so profoundly modified. The effects of association

in modifying mental phenomena were noticed by Locke, and made a cardinal

point in the metaphysic of Hume; who also referred to the principle

slightly in his account of justice and other "artificial" virtues. Some

years earlier, Gay,[45] admitting Hutcheson's proof of the actual

disinterestedness of moral and benevolent impulses, had maintained that

these (like the desires of knowledge or fame, the delight of reading,

hunting and planting, &c.) were derived from self-love by "the power of

association." But a thorough and systematic application of the principle

to ethical psychology is first found in Hartley's _Observations on Man_

(1748). Hartley, too, was the first to conceive association as

producing, instead of mere cohesion of mental phenomena, a

quasi-chemical combination of these into a compound apparently different

from its elements. He shows elaborately how the pleasures and pains of

"imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, theopathy, and the

moral sense" are developed out of the elementary pleasures and pains of

sensation; by the coalescence into really complex but apparently single

ideas of the "miniatures" or faint feelings which the repetition of

sensations contemporaneously or in immediate succession tends to produce

in cohering groups. His theory assumes the correspondence of mind and

body, and is applied _pari passu_ to the formation of ideas from

sensations, and of "compound vibratiuncules in the medullary substance"

from the original vibrations that arise in the organ of sense.[46] The

same general view was afterwards developed with much vigour and

clearness on the psychical side alone by James Mill in his _Analysis of

the Human Mind_. The whole theory has been persistently controverted by

writers of the intuitional school, who (unlike Hartley) have usually

thought that this derivation of moral sentiments from more primitive

feelings would be detrimental to the authority of the former. The chief

argument against this theory has been based on the early period at which

these sentiments are manifested by children, which hardly allows time

for association to produce the effects ascribed to it. This argument has

been met in recent times by the application to mind of the physiological

theory of heredity, according to which changes produced in the mind

(brain) of a parent, by association of ideas or otherwise, tend to be

inherited by his offspring; so that the development of the moral sense

or any other faculty or susceptibility of existing man may be

hypothetically carried back into the prehistoric life of the human race,

without any change in the manner of derivation supposed. At present,

however, the theory of heredity is usually held in conjunction with

Darwin's theory of natural selection; according to which different kinds

of living things in the course of a series of generations come gradually

to be endowed with organs, faculties and habits tending to the

preservation of the individual or species under the conditions of life

in which it is placed. Thus we have a new zoological factor in the

history of the moral sentiments; which, though in no way opposed to the

older psychological theory of their formation through coalescence of

more primitive feelings, must yet be conceived as controlling and

modifying the effects of the law of association by preventing the

formation of sentiments other than those tending to the preservation of

human life. The influence of the Darwinian theory, moreover, has

extended from historical psychology to ethics, tending to substitute

"preservation of the race under its conditions of existence" for

"happiness" as the ultimate end and standard of virtue.

Free-will.

Before concluding this sketch of the development of English ethical

thought from Hobbes to the thinkers of the 19th century, it will be well

to notice briefly the views held by different moralists on the question

of free-will,--so far, that is, as they have been put forward as

ethically important. We must first distinguish three meanings in which

"freedom" is attributed to the will or "inner self" of a human being,

viz. (1) the general power of choosing among different alternatives of

action without a motive, or against the resultant force of conflicting

motives; (2) the power of choice between the promptings of reason and

those of appetites (or other non-rational impulses) when the latter

conflict with reason; (3) merely the quality of acting rationally in

spite of conflicting impulses, however strong, the _non posse peccare_

of the medieval theologians.[47] It is obvious that "freedom" in this

third sense is in no way incompatible with complete determination; and,

indeed, is rather an ideal state after which the moral agent ought to

aspire than a property which the human will can be said to possess. In

the first sense, again, as distinct from the second, the assertion of

"freedom" has no ethical significance, except in so far as it introduces

a general uncertainty into all our inferences respecting human conduct.

Even in the second sense it hardly seems that the freedom of a man's

will can be an element to be considered in examining what it is right or

best for him to do (though of course the clearest convictions of duty

will be fruitless if a man has not sufficient self-control to enable him

to act on them); it is rather when we ask whether it is just to punish

him for wrong-doing that it seems important to know whether he could

have done otherwise. But in spite of the strong interest taken in the

theological aspect of this question by the Protestant divines of the

17th century, it does not appear that English moralists from Hobbes to

Hume laid any stress on the relation of free-will either to duty

generally or to justice in particular. Neither the doctrine of Hobbes,

that deliberation is a mere alternation of competing desires, voluntary

action immediately following the "last appetite," nor the hardly less

decided Determinism of Locke, who held that the will is always moved by

the greatest present uneasiness, appeared to either author to require

any reconciliation with the belief in human responsibility. Even in

Clarke's system, where Indeterminism is no doubt a cardinal notion, its

importance is metaphysical rather than ethical; Clarke's view being

that the apparently arbitrary particularity in the constitution of the

cosmos is really only explicable by reference to creative free-will. In

the ethical discussion of Shaftesbury and sentimental moralists

generally this question drops naturally out of sight; and the cautious

Butler tries to exclude its perplexities as far as possible from the

philosophy of practice. But since the reaction, led by Price and Reid,

against the manner of philosophizing that had culminated in Hume,

free-will has been generally maintained by the intuitional school to be

an essential point of ethics; and, in fact, it is naturally connected

with the judgment of good and ill desert which these writers give as an

essential element in their analysis of the moral consciousness. An

irresistible motive, it is forcibly said, palliates or takes away guilt;

no one can blame himself for yielding to necessity, and no one can

properly be punished for what he could not have prevented. In answer to

this argument some necessarians have admitted that punishment can be

legitimate only if it be beneficial to the person punished; others,

again, have held that the lawful use of force is to restrain lawless

force; but most of those who reject free-will defend punishment on the

ground of its utility in deterring others from crime, as well as in

correcting or restraining the criminal on whom it falls.

French influence on English ethics.

Helvetius.

In the preceding sketch we have traced the course of English ethical

speculation without bringing it into relation with contemporary European

thought on the same subject. And in fact almost all the systems

described, from Hobbes downward, have been of essentially native growth,

showing hardly any traces of foreign influence. We may observe that

ethics is the only department in which this result appears. The physics

and psychology of Descartes were much studied in England, and his

metaphysical system was certainly the most important antecedent of

Locke's; but Descartes hardly touched ethics proper. So again the

controversy that Clarke conducted with Spinoza, and afterwards with

Leibnitz, was entirely confined to the metaphysical region. Catholic

France was a school for Englishmen in many subjects, but not in

morality; the great struggle between Jansenists and Jesuits had a very

remote interest for them. It was not till near the close of the 18th

century that the impress of the French revolutionary philosophy began to

manifest itself in England; and even then its influence was mostly

political rather than ethical. It is striking to observe how even in the

case of writers such as Godwin, who were most powerfully affected by the

French political movement, the moral basis, on which the new social

order of rational and equal freedom is constructed, is almost entirely

of native origin; even when the tone and spirit are French, the forms of

thought and manner of reasoning are still purely English. In the

derivation of Benthamism alone--which, it may be observed, first becomes

widely known in the French paraphrase of Dumont--an important element is

supplied by the works of a French writer, Helvetius; as Bentham himself

was fully conscious. It was from Helvetius that he learnt that, men

being universally and solely governed by self-love, the so-called moral

judgments are really the common judgments of any society as to its

common interests; that it is therefore futile on the one hand to propose

any standard of virtue, except that of conduciveness to general

happiness, and on the other hand useless merely to lecture men on duty

and scold them for vice; that the moralist's proper function is rather

to exhibit the coincidence of virtue with private happiness; that,

accordingly, though nature has bound men's interests together in many

ways, and education by developing sympathy and the habit of mutual help

may much extend the connexion, still the most effective moralist is the

legislator, who by acting on self-love through legal sanctions may mould

human conduct as he chooses. These few simple doctrines give the ground

plan of Bentham's indefatigable and lifelong labours.

Comte.

So again, in the modified Benthamism which the persuasive exposition of

J.S. Mill afterwards made popular in England, the influence of Auguste

Comte (_Philosophie positive_, 1829-1842, and _Systeme de politique

positive_, 1851-1854) appears as the chief modifying element. This

influence, so far as it has affected moral as distinct from political

speculation, has been exercised primarily through the general conception

of human progress; which, in Comte's view, consists in the ever-growing

preponderance of the distinctively human attributes over the purely

animal, social feelings being ranked highest among human attributes, and

highest of all the most universalized phase of human affection, the

devotion to humanity as a whole. Accordingly, it is the development of

benevolence in man, and of the habit of "living for others," which Comte

takes as the ultimate aim and standard of practice, rather than the mere

increase of happiness. He holds, indeed, that the two are inseparable,

and that the more _altruistic_ any man's sentiments and habits of action

can be made, the greater will be the happiness enjoyed by himself as

well as by others. But he does not seriously trouble himself to argue

with egoism, or to weigh carefully the amount of happiness that might be

generally attained by the satisfaction of egoistic propensities duly

regulated; a supreme unquestioning self-devotion, in which all personal

calculations are suppressed, is an essential feature of his moral ideal.

Such a view is almost diametrically opposed to Bentham's conception of

normal human existence; the newer utilitarianism of Mill represents an

endeavour to find the right middle path between the two extremes.

It is to be observed that, in Comte's view, devotion to humanity is the

principle not merely of morality, but of religion; i.e. it should not

merely be practically predominant, but should be manifested and

sustained by regular and partly symbolical forms of expression, private

and public. This side of Comte's system, however, and the details of his

ideal reconstruction of society, in which this religion plays an

important part, have had but little influence either in England or

elsewhere. It is more important to notice the general effect of his

philosophy on the method of determining the particulars of morality as

well as of law (as it ought to be). In the utilitarianism of Paley and

Bentham the proper rules of conduct, moral and legal, are determined by

comparing the imaginary consequences of different modes of regulation on

men and women, conceived as specimens of a substantially uniform and

unchanging type. It is true that Bentham expressly recognizes the

varying influences of climate, race, religion, government, as

considerations which it is important for the legislator to take into

account; but his own work of social construction was almost entirely

independent of such considerations, and his school generally appear to

have been convinced of their competence to solve all important ethical

and political questions for human beings of all ages and countries,

without regard to their specific differences. But in the Comtian

conception of social science, of which ethics and politics are the

practical application, the knowledge of the laws of the evolution of

society is of fundamental and continually increasing importance;

humanity is regarded as having passed through a series of stages, in

each of which a somewhat different set of laws and institutions, customs

and habits, is normal and appropriate. Thus present man is a being that

can only be understood through a knowledge of his past history; and any

effort to construct for him a moral and political ideal, by a purely

abstract and unhistorical method, must necessarily be futile; whatever

modifications may at any time be desirable in positive law and morality

can only be determined by the aid of "social dynamics." This view

extends far beyond the limits of Comte's special school or sect, and has

been widely accepted.

German influence on English ethics.

When we turn from French philosophy to German, we find the influence of

the latter on English ethical thought almost insignificant until a very

recent period. In the 17th century, indeed, the treatise of Pufendorf on

the _Law of Nature_, in which the general view of Grotius was restated

with modifications, partly designed to effect a compromise with the

doctrine of Hobbes, seems to have been a good deal read at Oxford and

elsewhere. Locke includes it among the books necessary to the complete

education of a gentleman. But the subsequent development of the theory

of conduct in Germany dropped almost entirely out of the cognizance of

Englishmen; even the long dominant system of Wolff (d. 1754) was hardly

known. Nor had Kant any serious influence in England until the second

quarter of the 19th century. We find, however, distinct traces of

Kantian influence in Whewell and other writers of the intuitional

school, and at a later date it became so strong that its importance on

subsequent ethical thought can scarcely be over-estimated.

Kant.

Categorical Imperative.

The English moralist with whom Kant has most affinity is Price; in fact,

Kantism, in the ethical thought of modern Europe, holds a place somewhat

analogous to that formerly occupied by the teaching of Price and Reid

among English moralists. Kant, like Price and Reid, holds that man as a

rational being is unconditionally bound to conform to a certain rule of

right, or "categorical imperative" of reason. Like Price he holds that

an action is not good unless done from a good motive, and that this

motive must be essentially different from natural inclination of any

kind; duty, to be duty, must be done for duty's sake; and he argues,

with more subtlety than Price or Reid, that though a virtuous act is no

doubt pleasant to the virtuous agent, and any violation of duty painful,

this moral pleasure (or pain) cannot strictly be the motive to the act,

because it follows instead of preceding the recognition of our

obligation to do it.[48] With Price, again, he holds that rightness of

intention and motive is not only an indispensable condition or element

of the rightness of an action, but actually the sole determinant of its

moral worth; but with more philosophical consistency he draws the

inference--of which the English moralist does not seem to have

dreamt--that there can be no separate rational principles for

determining the "material" rightness of conduct, as distinct from its

"formal" rightness; and therefore that all rules of duty, so far as

universally binding, must admit of being exhibited as applications of

the one general principle that duty ought to be done for duty's sake.

This deduction is the most original part of Kant's doctrine. The

dictates of reason, he points out, must necessarily be addressed to all

rational beings as such; hence, my intention cannot be right unless I am

prepared to will the principle on which I act to be a universal law. He

considers that this fundamental rule or imperative "act on a maxim which

thou canst will to be law universal" supplies a sufficient criterion for

determining particular duties in all cases. The rule excludes wrong

conduct with two degrees of stringency. Some offences, such as making

promises with the intention of breaking them, we cannot even conceive

universalized; as soon as every one broke promises no one would care to

have promises made to him. Other maxims, such as that of leaving persons

in distress to shift for themselves, we can easily conceive to be

universal laws, but we cannot without contradiction will them to be

such; for when we are ourselves in distress we cannot help desiring that

others should help us.

Another important peculiarity of Kant's doctrine is his development of

the connexion between duty and free-will. He holds that it is through

our moral consciousness that we know that we are free; in the cognition

that I ought to do what is right because it is right and not because I

like it, it is implied that this purely rational volition is possible;

that my action can be determined, not "mechanically," through the

necessary operation of the natural stimuli of pleasurable and painful

feelings, but in accordance with the laws of my true, reasonable self.

The realization of reason, or of human wills so far as rational, thus

presents itself as the absolute end of duty; and we get, as a new form

of the fundamental practical rule, "act so as to treat humanity, in

thyself or any other, as an end always, and never as a means only." We

may observe, too, that the notion of freedom connects ethics with

jurisprudence in a simple and striking manner. The fundamental aim of

jurisprudence is to realize external freedom by removing the hindrances

imposed on each one's free action through the interferences of other

wills. Ethics shows how to realize internal freedom by resolutely

pursuing rational ends in opposition to those of natural inclination. If

we ask what precisely are the ends of reason, Kant's proposition that

"all rational beings as such are ends in themselves for every rational

being" hardly gives a clear answer. It might be interpreted to mean that

the result to be practically sought is simply the development of the

rationality of all rational beings--such as men--whom we find to be as

yet imperfectly rational. But this is not Kant's view. He holds, indeed,

that each man should aim at making himself the most perfect possible

instrument of reason; but he expressly denies that the perfection of

others can be similarly prescribed as an end to each. It is, he says, "a

contradiction to regard myself as in duty bound to promote the

perfection of another, ... a contradiction to make it a duty for me to

do something for another which no other but himself can do." In what

practical sense, then, am I to make other rational beings my ends?

Kant's answer is that what each is to aim at in the case of others is

not Perfection, but Happiness, i.e. to help them to attain those purely

subjective ends that are determined for each not by reason, but by

natural inclination. He explains also that to seek one's own happiness

cannot be prescribed as a duty, because it is an end to which every man

is inevitably impelled by natural inclination: but that just because

each inevitably desires his own happiness, and therefore desires that

others should assist him in time of need, he is bound to make the

happiness of others his ethical end, since he cannot _morally_ demand

aid from others, without accepting the obligation of aiding them in like

case. The exclusion of private happiness from the ends at which it is a

duty to aim contrasts strikingly with the view of Butler and Reid, that

man, as a rational being, is under a "manifest obligation" to seek his

own interest. The difference, however, is not really so great as it

seems; since in another part of his system Kant fully recognizes the

reasonableness of the individual's regard for his own happiness. Though

duty, in his view, excludes regard for private happiness, the _summum

bonum_ is not duty alone, but happiness combined with moral worth; the

demand for happiness as the reward of duty is so essentially reasonable

that we must postulate a universal connexion between the two as the

order of the universe; indeed, the practical necessity of this postulate

is the only adequate rational ground that we have for believing in the

existence of God.

Hegel.

Before the ethics of Kant had begun to be seriously studied in England,

the rapid and remarkable development of metaphysical view and method of

which the three chief stages are represented by Fichte, Schelling and

Hegel respectively had already taken place; and the system of the latter

was occupying the most prominent position in the philosophical thought

of Germany.[49] Hegel's ethical doctrine (expounded chiefly in his

_Philosophie des Rechts_, 1821) shows a close affinity, and also a

striking contrast, to Kant's. He holds, with Kant, that duty or good

conduct consists in the conscious realization of the free reasonable

will, which is essentially the same in all rational beings. But in

Kant's view the universal content of this will is only given in the

formal condition of "only acting as one can desire all to act," to be

subjectively applied by each rational agent to his own volition; whereas

Hegel conceives the universal will as objectively presented to each man

in the laws, institutions and customary morality of the community of

which he is a member. Thus, in his view, not merely natural inclinations

towards pleasures, or the desires for selfish happiness, require to be

morally resisted; but even the prompting of the individual's conscience,

the impulse to do what seems to him right, if it comes into conflict

with the common sense of his community. It is true that Hegel regards

the conscious effort to realize one's own conception of good as a higher

stage of moral development than the mere conformity to the jural rules

establishing property, maintaining contract and allotting punishment to

crime, in which the universal will is first expressed; since in such

conformity this will is only accomplished accidentally by the outward

concurrence of individual wills, and is not essentially realized in any

of them. He holds, however, that this conscientious effort is

self-deceived and futile, is even the very root of moral evil, except it

attains its realization in harmony with the objective social relations

in which the individual finds himself placed. Of these relations the

first grade is constituted by the family, the second by civil society,

and the third by the state, the organization of which is the highest

manifestation of universal reason in the sphere of practice.

Hegelianism appears as a distinct element in modern English ethical

thought; but the direct influence of Hegel's system is perhaps less

important than that indirectly exercised through the powerful stimulus

which it has given to the study of the historical development of human

thought and human society. According to Hegel, the essence of the

universe is a process of thought from the abstract to the concrete; and

a right understanding of this process gives the key for interpreting the

evolution in time of European philosophy. So again, in his view, the

history of mankind is a history of the necessary development of the free

spirit through the different forms of political organization: the first

being that of the Oriental monarchy, in which freedom belongs to the

monarch only; the second, that of the Graeco-Roman republics, in which a

select body of free citizens is sustained on a basis of slavery; while

finally in the modern societies, sprung from the Teutonic invasion of

the decaying Roman empire, freedom is recognized as the natural right of

all members of the community. The effect of the lectures (posthumously

edited) in which Hegel's "Philosophy of History" and "History of

Philosophy" were expounded, has extended far beyond the limits of his

special school; indeed, the predominance of the historical method in all

departments of the theory of practice is not a little due to their

influence. (H. S.; X.)

D. _Ethics since 1879._--Ethical controversies, like most other

speculative disputes, have, during the latter part of the 19th and the

beginning of the 20th century, centred round Darwinian theories. The

chief characteristic of English moral philosophy in its previous history

has been its comparative isolation from great movements, sometimes

contemporary movements, of philosophical or scientific thought. Ethics

in England no less than on the continent of Europe suffered until the

time of Bacon from the excessive domination of theological dogma and the

traditional scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy. But the moral

philosophy of the 18th century, freed from scholastic trammels, was a

genuine native product, arising out of the real problem of conduct and

reaching its conclusions, at least ostensibly, by an analysis of, and an

appeal to, the facts of conduct and the nature of morality. Even at the

beginning of the 19th century, when the main interest of writers who

belonged to the Utilitarian school was mainly political, the influence

of political theories upon contemporary moral philosophy was upon the

whole an influence of which the moral philosophers themselves were

unconscious; and from the nature of things moral and political

philosophy have a tendency to become one and the same inquiry. Mill, it

is true, and Comte both encouraged the idea that society and conduct

alike were susceptible of strictly scientific investigation. But the

attempt not only to treat ethics scientifically, but actually to

subordinate the principles of conduct to the principles of existing

biological science or group of sciences biological in character, was

reserved for post-Darwinian moral philosophers. That attempt has not, in

the opinion of the majority of critics, been successful, and perhaps

what is most permanent in the contribution of modern times to ethical

theory will ultimately be attributed to philosophers antagonistic to

evolutionary ethics. Nevertheless the application of the historical

method to inquiries concerning the facts of morality and the moral

life--itself part of the great movement of thought to which Darwin gave

the chief impetus--has caused moral problems to be presented in a novel

aspect; while the influence of Darwinism upon studies which have

considerable bearing upon ethics, e.g. anthropology or the study of

comparative religion, has been incalculable.

The other great movement in modern moral philosophy due to the influence

of German, and especially Hegelian, idealism followed naturally for the

most part from the revival of interest in metaphysics noticeable in the

latter half of the 19th century.

But metaphysical systems of ethics are no novelty even in England, and,

while the increased interest in ultimate issues of philosophy has

enormously deepened and widened men's appreciation of moral problems and

the issues involved in conduct, the actual advance in ethical theory

produced by such speculations has been comparatively slight. What is of

lasting importance is the re-affirmation upon metaphysical grounds of

the right of the moral consciousness to state and solve its own

difficulties, and the successful repulsion of the claims of particular

sciences such as biology to include the sphere of conduct within their

scope and methods. And both evolutionary and idealistic ethics agree in

repudiating the standpoint of narrow individualism, alike insist upon

the necessity of regarding the self as social in character, and regard

the end of moral progress as only realizable in a perfect society.

It is perhaps too much to hope that the long-continued controversy

between hedonists and anti-hedonists has been finally settled. But

certainly few modern moral philosophers would be found in the present

day ready to defend the crudities of hedonistic psychology as they

appear in Bentham and Mill. A certain common agreement has been reached

concerning the impossibility of regarding pleasure as the sole motive

criterion and end of moral action, though different opinions still

prevail as to the place occupied by pleasure in the summum bonum, and

the possibility of a hedonistic calculus.

The failure of "laissez-faire" individualism in politics to produce that

common prosperity and happiness which its advocates hoped for caused men

to question the egoistic basis upon which its ethical counterpart was

constructed. Similarly the comparative failure of science to satisfy

men's aspirations alike in knowledge and, so far as the happiness of the

masses is concerned, in practice has been largely instrumental in

producing that revolt against material prosperity as the end of conduct

which is characteristic of idealist moral philosophy. To this revolt,

and to the general tendency to find the principle of morality in an

ideal good present to the consciousness of all persons capable of acting

morally, the widespread recognition of reason as the ultimate court of

appeal alike in religion or politics, and latterly in economics also,

has no doubt contributed largely. In the main the appeal to reason has

followed the traditional course of such movements in ethics, and has

reaffirmed in the light of fuller reflection the moral principles

implicit in the ordinary moral consciousness. It is only in the present

day that there are noticeable signs of dissatisfaction with current

morality itself, and a tendency to substitute or advocate a new morality

based ostensibly upon conclusions derived from the facts of scientific

observation.

Darwin.

Darwin himself seems never to have questioned, in the sceptical

direction in which his followers have applied his principles, the

absolute character of moral obligation. What interested him chiefly, in

so far as he made a study of morality, was the development of moral

conduct in its preliminary stages. He was principally concerned to show

that in morality, as in other departments of human life, it was not

necessary to postulate a complete and abrupt gap between human and

merely animal existence, but that the instincts and habits which

contribute to survival in the struggle for existence among animals

develop into moral qualities which have a similar value for the

preservation of human and social life. Regarding the social tendency as

originally itself an instinct developed out of parental or filial

affection, he seems to suggest that natural selection, which was the

chief cause of its development in the earlier stages, may very probably

influence the transition from purely tribal and social morality into

morality in its later and more complex forms. But he admits that natural

selection is not necessarily the only cause, and he refrains from

identifying the fully developed morality of civilized nations with the

"social instinct." Moreover, he recognizes that qualities, e.g. loyalty

and sympathy, which may have been of great service to the tribe in its

primitive struggle for existence, may become a positive hindrance to

physical efficiency (leading as they do to the preservation of the

unfit) at a later stage. Nevertheless to check our sympathy would lead

to the "deterioration of the noblest part of our nature," and the

question, which is obviously of vital importance, whether we should obey

the dictates of reason, which would urge us only to such conduct as is

conducive to natural selection, or remain faithful to the noblest part

of our nature at the expense of reason, he leaves unsolved.

Spencer.

It was in Herbert Spencer, the triumphant "buccinator novi temporis,"

that the advocates of evolutionary ethics found their protagonist.

Spencer looked to ideas derived from the biological sciences to provide

a solution of all the enigmas of morality, as of most other departments

of life; and he conceived it "to be the business of moral science to

deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds

of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and what kinds to

produce unhappiness." It is clear, therefore, that any moral science

which is to be of value must wait until the "laws of life" and

"conditions of existence" have been satisfactorily determined,

presumably by biology and the allied sciences; and there are few more

melancholy instances of failure in philosophy than the paucity of the

actual results attained by Spencer in his lifetime in his application of

the so-called laws of evolution to human conduct--a failure recognized

by Spencer himself. His own contribution to ethics was vitiated at the

outset by the fact that he never shook himself free from the trammels of

the philosophy which his own system was intended to supersede. He began

by disclaiming any affinity to Utilitarianism on the part of his own

philosophy. He pointed out that the principle of the greatest happiness

of the greatest number is a principle without any definite meaning,

since men are nowhere unanimous in their standard of happiness, but

regard the conception of happiness rather as a problem to be solved than

a test to be applied. Universal happiness would require omniscience to

legislate for it and the "normal" or, as some would say, "perfect" man

to desire it; neither of these conditions of its realization is at

present in existence. Further, the principle that "everybody is to count

for one, nobody for more than one," is equally unsatisfactory. It may be

taken to imply that the useless and the criminal should be entitled to

as much happiness as the useful and the virtuous. While it gives no rule

for private as distinct from public conduct, it provides no real

guidance for the legislator. For neither happiness, nor the concrete

means to happiness, nor finally the conditions of its realization can be

distributed; and in the end "not general happiness becomes the ethical

standard by which legislative action is to be guided, but universal

justice." Yet the implications of this latter conclusion Spencer never

fully thought out. He accepted bodily without farther questioning the

hedonistic psychology by which the Utilitarians sought to justify their

theory while he rejected the theory itself. Good, e.g. defined by him

"as conduct conducive to life," is also further defined as that which is

"conducive to a surplus of pleasures over pains." Happiness, again, is

always regarded as consisting in feeling, ultimately in pleasant

feeling, and there is no attempt to apply the same principles of

criticism which he had successfully applied to the Utilitarians'

"happiness" to the conception of "pleasure." And, though he maintains as

against the Utilitarians the existence of certain fundamental moral

intuitions which have come to be quite independent of any present

conscious experience of their utility, he yet holds that they are the

results of accumulated racial experiences gradually organized and

inherited. Finally, side by side with a theory of the nature of moral

obligation thus fundamentally empirical and a posteriori in its outlook,

he maintains in his account of justice the existence of the idea of

justice as distinct from a mere sentiment, carrying with it an a priori

belief in its existence and identical in its a priori and intuitive

character with the ultimate criterion of Utilitarianism itself. The fact

is that any close philosophical analysis of Spencer's system of ethics

can only result in the discovery of a multitude of mutually conflicting

and for the most part logically untenable theories. It is frequently

impossible to discover whether he wishes by an appeal to evolutionary

principles to reinforce the sanctions and emphasize the absolute

character of the traditional morality which in the main he accepts

without question from the current opinions about conduct of his age, or

whether he wishes to discredit and disprove the validity of that

morality in order to substitute by the aid of the biological sciences a

new ethical code. The argument, for instance, that intuitive and a

priori beliefs gain their absolute character from the fact that they are

the result of continued transmission and accumulation of past nervous

modifications in the history of the race would, if taken seriously, lead

us to the belief that ultimate ethical sanctions are to be sought, not

by an appeal to the moral consciousness, but by the investigation of

brain tissue and the relation of man's bodily organism to its

environment. Yet such a view would be totally at variance with much that

Spencer says (especially in his treatment of justice) concerning the

trustworthiness and inevitable character of men's constant appeal to the

intuitions of their moral consciousness. Moreover, the very fact itself

of the possibility of inheriting acquired moral characteristics is still

hotly debated by those biologists with whom should rest the ultimate

verdict. Again, the argument that "conduct is good or bad according as

its total effects are pleasurable or painful," and that ultimately

"pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts," seems to involve

Spencer in a multitude of unverified assumptions and contradictory

theories. In the first place it is never clear whether Spencer regards

the fact that a particular course of conduct is accompanied by a feeling

of pleasure as a test of its life-preserving and life-sustaining

character, or whether he wishes us to use as our criterion of what is

pleasant in conduct the fact that the conduct in question seems

conducive to the continued existence of man's organic life. He

apparently passes from one criterion to the other as best suits the

purpose of the moment. He does not prove the coincidence of

life-sustaining and pleasant activities. He assumes throughout that the

pleasant is the opposite of what is painful, and seems unaware of the

difficulty of determining by means of terms so highly abstract the

specific character of moral action. We find in his theory no

satisfactory attempt to discriminate between the pleasure aimed at by

the altruist and the immediate pleasure of egoistic action. Similarly he

disregards the distinction between pleasant feeling as an immediate

motive of conduct and the idea of the attainment of future pleasure

whether by the race or by the individual. Spencer is involved in effect

in most of the confusions and contradictions of hedonistic psychology.

Nor is his attempt to construct a scientific criterion out of data

derived from the biological sciences productive of satisfactory results.

He is hampered by a distinction between "absolute" and "relative" ethics

definitely formulated in the last two chapters of The _Data of Ethics_.

Absolute ethics would deal with such laws as would regulate the conduct

of ideal man in an ideal society, i.e. a society where conduct has

reached the stage of complete adjustment to the needs of social life.

Relative ethics, on the other hand, is concerned only with such conduct

as is advantageous for that society which has not yet reached the end of

complete adaptation to its environment, i.e. which is at present

imperfect. It is hardly necessary to say that Spencer does not tell us

how to bring the two ethical systems into correlation. And the actual

criteria of conduct derived from biological considerations are almost

ludicrously inadequate. Conduct, e.g., is said to be more moral in

proportion as it exhibits a tendency on the part of the individual or

society to become more "definite," "coherent" and "heterogeneous." Or,

again, we should recognize as a test of the "authoritative" character of

moral ideas or feelings the fact that they are complex and

representative, referring to a remote rather than to a proximate good,

remembering the while that "the sense of duty is transitory, and will

diminish as fast as moralization increases." In fact, no acceptable

scientific criterion emerges, and the outcome of Spencer's attempt to

ascertain the laws of life and the conditions of existence is either a

restatement of the dictates of the moral consciousness in vague and

cumbrous quasi-scientific phraseology, or the substitution of the

meaningless test of "survivability" as a standard of perfection for the

usual and intelligible standards of "good" and "right."

Leslie Stephen.

A similar criticism might fairly be passed upon the majority of

philosophers who approach ethics from the standpoint of evolution. Sir

Leslie Stephen, for instance, wishes to substitute the conception of

"social health" for that of universal happiness, and considers that the

conditions of social health are to be discovered by an examination of

the "social organism" or of "social tissue," the laws of which can be

studied apart from those laws by which the individuals composing society

regulate their conduct. "The social evolution means the evolution of a

strong social tissue; the best type is the type implied by the strongest

tissue." But on the important question as to what constitutes the

strongest social tissue, or to what extent the analogy between society

as at present constituted and organic life is really applicable, we are

left without certain guidance. The fact is that with few exceptions

evolutionary moral philosophers evade the choice between alternatives

which is always presented to them. They begin, for the most part, with a

belief that in ethics as in other departments of human knowledge "the

more developed must be interpreted by the less developed"--though

frequently in the sequel complexity or posteriority of development is

erected as a standard by means of which to judge the process of

development itself. They are not content to write a _history_ of moral

development, applying to it the principles by which Darwinians seek to

explain the development of animal life. But the search of origins

frequently leads them into theories of the nature of that moral conduct

whose origin they are anxious to find quite at variance with current and

accepted beliefs concerning its nature. The discovery of the so-called

evolution of morality out of non-moral conditions is very frequently an

unconscious subterfuge by which the evolutionist hides the fact that he

is making a priori judgments upon the value of the moral concepts held

to be evolved. To accept such theories of the origin of morality would

carry with it the conviction that what we took for "moral" conduct was

in reality something very different, and has been so throughout its

history. The legitimate inference which should follow would be the

denial of the validity of those moral laws which have hitherto been

regarded as absolute in character, and the substitution for all

customary moral terms of an entirely new set based upon biological

considerations. But it is precisely this, the only logical inference,

which most evolutionary philosophers are unwilling to draw. They cannot

give up their belief in customary morality. Professor Huxley maintained,

for example, in a famous lecture that "the ethical progress of society

depends not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away

from it, but in combating it" (_Romanes Lecture, ad fin_.). And very

frequently arguments are adduced by evolutionists to prove that men's

belief in the absolute character of moral precepts is one of the

necessary means adopted by nature to carry out her designs for the

social welfare of mankind. Yet the other alternative, to which such

reasoning points, they are reluctant to accept. For the belief that

moral obligation is absolute in character, that it is alike impossible

to explain its origin and transcend its laws, would make the search for

a scientific criterion of conduct to be deduced from the laws of life

and conditions of existence meaningless, if not absurd.

Nietzsche.

Perhaps the one European thinker who has carried evolutionary principles

in ethics to their logical conclusion is Friedrich Nietzsche. Almost any

system of morality or immorality might find some justification in

Nietzsche's writings, which are extraordinarily chaotic and full of the

wildest exaggerations. Yet it has been a true instinct which has led

popular opinion as testified to by current literature to find in

Nietzsche the most orthodox exponent of Darwinian ideas in their

application to ethics. For he saw clearly that to be successful

evolutionary ethics must involve the "transvaluation of all values," the

"demoralization" of all ordinary current morality. He accepted frankly

the glorification of brute strength, superior cunning and all the

qualities necessary for success in the struggle for existence, to which

the ethics of evolution necessarily tend. He proclaimed himself, before

everything else, a physiologist, and looked to physiology to provide the

ultimate standard for everything that has value; and though his own

ethical code necessarily involves the disappearance of sympathy, love,

toleration and all existing altruistic emotions, he yet in a sense finds

room for them in such altruistic self-sacrifice as prepares the way for

the higher man of the future. Thus, after a fashion, he is able to

reconcile the conflicting claims of egoism and altruism and succeed

where most apostles of evolution fail. The Christian virtues, sympathy

for the weak, the suffering, &c., represent a necessary stage to be

passed through in the evolution of the _Ubermensch_, i.e. the stage when

the weak and suffering combine in revolt against the strong. They are to

be superseded, not so much because all social virtues are to be scorned

and rejected, as because in their effects, i.e. in their tendency to

perpetuate and prolong the existence of the weak and those who are least

well equipped and endowed by nature, they are anti-social in character

and inimical to the survival of the strongest and most vigorous type of

humanity. Consequently Nietzsche in effect maintains the following

paradoxical position: he explains the existence of altruism upon

egoistical principles; he advocates the total abolition of all altruism

by carrying these same egoistical principles to their logical

conclusion; he nevertheless appeals to that moral instinct which makes

men ready to sacrifice their own narrow personal interests to the higher

good of society--an instinct profoundly altruistic in character--as the

ultimate justification of the ethics he enunciates. Such a position is a

_reductio ad absurdum_ of the attempt to transcend the ultimate

character of those intuitions and feelings which prompt men to

benevolence. Thus, though incidentally there is much to be learned from

Nietzsche, especially from his criticism of the ethics of pessimism, or

from the strictures he passes upon the negative morality of extreme

asceticism or quietism, his system inevitably provides its own

refutation. For no philosophy which travesties the real course of

history and distorts the moral facts is likely to commend itself to the

sober judgment of mankind however brilliant be its exposition or

ingenious its arguments. Finally, the conceptions of strength, power and

masterfulness by which Nietzsche attempts to determine his own moral

ideal, become, when examined, as relative and unsatisfactory as other

criteria of moral action said to be deduced from evolutionary

principles. Men desire strength or power not as ends but as means to

ends beyond them; Nietzsche is most convincing when the _Ubermensch_ is

left undefined. Imagined as ideal man, i.e. as morality depicts him, he

becomes intelligible; imagined as Nietzsche describes him he reels back

into the beast, and that distinction which chiefly separates man from

the animal world out of which he has emerged, viz. his unique power of

self-consciousness and self-criticism, is obliterated.

T.H. Green.

It was upon this crucial difficulty, i.e. the transition in the

evolution of morality from the stage of purely animal and unconscious

action to specifically human action,--i.e. action directed by

self-conscious and purposive intelligence to an end conceived as

good,--that the polemic of T.H. Green and his idealistic followers

fastened. And it is perhaps unfortunate that metaphysical doctrines

enunciated chiefly for the purposes of criticism not in themselves

vitally necessary to the theory of morality propounded should have been

regarded as the main contribution to ethical theory of idealist writers,

and as such treated severely by hostile critics. Green's principal

objection to evolutionary moral philosophy is contained in the argument

that no merely "natural" explanation of the facts of morality is

conceivable. The knowing consciousness,--i.e. so far as conduct is

concerned the moral consciousness,--can never become an object of

knowledge in the sense in which natural phenomena are objects of

scientific knowledge. For such knowledge implies the existence of a

knowing consciousness as a relating and uniting intelligence capable of

distinguishing itself from the objects to which it relates. And more

particularly the existence of the moral consciousness implies "the

transition from mere want to consciousness of wanted object, from

impulse to satisfy the want to effort for the realization of the wanted

objects, implies the presence of the want to a subject which

distinguishes itself from it." Consequently the facts of moral

development imply with the emergence of human consciousness the

appearance of something qualitatively different from the facts with

which physiology for instance deals, imply a stratum as it were in

development which no examination of animal tissues, no calculation of

consequences with regard to the preservation of the species can ever

satisfactorily explain. However far back we go in the history of

humanity, if the presence of consciousness be admitted at all, it will

be necessary to admit also the presence to consciousness of an ideal

which can be accepted or rejected, of a power of looking before and

after, and aiming at a future which is not yet fully realized. But

unfortunately the temporary exigencies of criticism made it necessary

for Green to emphasize the metaphysic of the self, i.e. to insist upon

the necessity of a critical examination of the pre-requisites of any

form of self-consciousness and especially of the knowing consciousness,

to such an extent that critics have lost sight of the real dependence of

his metaphysic upon the direct evidence of the moral consciousness. The

philosophic value, the sincerity, the breadth and depth of his treatment

of moral facts and institutions have been fully recognized. What has not

been adequately realized is that the metaphysical basis of his system of

ethics--the argument, for example, contained in the introduction to the

_Prolegomena_--is unfairly treated if divorced from his treatment of

morals as a whole, and that it can be justly estimated only if

interpreted as much as the conclusion as the starting-point of moral

theory. The doctrine of the eternity of the self, for instance, against

which much criticism (e.g. Taylor, _The Problem of Conduct_, chap. ii.)

has been directed, though it is chiefly expressed in the language of

epistemology, has its roots nevertheless in the direct testimony of

moral experience. For morality implies a power in the individual of

rising above the interests of his own narrower self and identifying

himself in the pursuit of a universal good with the true interests of

all other selves. Similarly the conception of the self as a moral unity

arises naturally out of the impossibility of finding the summum bonum in

a succession of transient states of consciousness such as hedonism for

example postulates. Good as a true universal can only be realized by a

true self, and both imply a principle of unity not wholly expressible in

terms of the particulars which it unifies. But whether the idealistic

interpretation of the nature of universal good be the true one, i.e.

whether we are justified in identifying that self-consciousness which is

capable of grasping the principle of unity with the principle of unity

which it grasps is a metaphysical and theistic problem comparatively

irrelevant to Green's moral theory. It would be quite possible to accept

his criticisms of naturalism and hedonism while rejecting many of the

metaphysical inferences which he draws. A somewhat similar answer might

be returned to those critics who find Green's use of the term

"self-realization" or "self-development" as characteristic of the moral

ideal unsatisfactory. It is quite easy to exhibit the futility of such a

conception if understood formally for the practical purposes of moral

philosophy. If the phrase be understood to mean the realization of some

capacities of the self it does not appear to discriminate sufficiently

between the good and bad capacities; while the realization under present

conditions of all the capacities of a self is impossible. And to aim so

far as is possible at all-round development would again ignore the

distinction between vice and virtue. But used in the sense in which

Green habitually uses it self-realization implies, as he puts it, the

fulfilment by the good man of his rational capacity or the idea of a

best that is in time, i.e. the distinction between the good and the bad

self is never ignored, but is the fundamental assumption of his theory.

And if it be urged that the expression is in any case tautological, i.e.

that the good is defined in terms of self-realization and

self-realization in terms of the good, it may be doubted whether any

rational system of ethics can avoid a similar imputation. Green would

admit that in a certain sense the conception of "good" is indefinable,

i.e. that it can only be recognized in the particulars of conduct of

which it is the universal form. Only, therefore, to those philosophers

who believe in the existence of a criterion of morality, i.e. a

universal test such as that of pleasure, happiness and the like, by

which we can judge of the worth of actions, will Green's position seem

absurd; since, on the contrary, such conceptions as those of

"self-development" or "self-realization" seem to have a definite and

positive value if they call attention to the metaphysical implications

of morality and accurately characterize the moral facts. What ambiguity

they possess arises from the ambiguity of morality itself. For moral

progress consists in the actualization of what is already potentially in

existence. The striking merit of Green's moral philosophy is that the

idealism which he advocates is rooted and grounded in moral habits and

institutions: and the metaphysic in which it culminates is based upon

principles already implicitly recognized by the moral consciousness of

the ordinary man. Nothing could be farther from Green's teaching than

the belief that constructive metaphysics could, unaided by the

intuitions of the moral consciousness, discover laws for the regulation

of conduct.

Taylor.

But although Green's loyalty to the primary facts of the moral

consciousness prevented him from constructing a rationalistic system of

morals based solely upon the conclusions of metaphysics, it was perhaps

inevitable that the revival of interest in metaphysics so prominent in

his own speculations should lead to a more daring criticism of ethical

first principles in other writers. Bradley's _Ethical Studies_ had

presented with great brilliancy an idealist theory of morality not very

far removed from that of Green's _Prolegomena_. But the publication of

_Appearance and Reality_ by the same author marked a great advance in

philosophical criticism of ethical postulates, and a growing

dissatisfaction with current reconciliations between moral first

principles and the conclusions of metaphysics. _Appearance and Reality_

was not primarily concerned with morals, yet it inevitably led to

certain conclusions affecting conduct, and it was no very long time

before these conclusions were elaborated in detail. Professor A.E.

Taylor's _Problem of Conduct_ (1901) is one of the most noteworthy and

independent contributions to Moral Philosophy published in recent years.

But it nevertheless follows in the main Bradley's line of criticism and

may therefore be regarded as representative of his school. There are two

principal positions in Professor Taylor's work:--(1) a refusal to base

ethics upon metaphysics, and (2) the discovery of an irreconcilable

dualism in the nature of morality which takes many shapes, but may be

summarized roughly as consisting in an ultimate opposition between

egoism and altruism. With regard to the first of these Taylor says (_op.

cit._ p. 4) that his object is to show that "ethics is as independent of

metaphysical speculation for its principles and methods as any of the

so-called 'natural sciences'; that its real basis must be sought not in

philosophical theories about the nature of the Absolute or the ultimate

constitution of the Universe, but in the empirical facts of human life

as they are revealed to us in our concrete everyday experience of the

world and mankind, and sifted and systematized by the sciences of

psychology and sociology.... Ethics should be regarded as a purely

'positive' or 'experimental' and not as a 'speculative' science." With

regard to the second position one quotation will suffice (_op. cit._ p.

183). "Altruism and egoism are divergent developments from the common

psychological root of primitive ethical sentiment. Both developments are

alike unavoidable, and each is ultimately irreconcilable with the other.

Neither egoism nor altruism can be made the sole basis of moral theory

without mutilation of the facts, nor can any higher category be

discovered by the aid of which their rival claims may be finally

adjusted."

Professor Taylor expounds these two theories with great brilliance of

argument and much ingenuity, yet neither of them will perhaps carry

complete conviction to the minds of the majority of his critics. It is

curious, in the first place, to find the independence of moral

philosophy upon metaphysics supported by metaphysical arguments. For

whatever may be the real character of the interrelation of moral and

metaphysical first principles it is obvious that Taylor's own

dissatisfaction with current moral principles arises from an inability

to believe in their ultimate rationality, i.e. a belief that they are

untenable from the standpoint of ultimate metaphysics; and perhaps the

most interesting portion of his book is the chapter entitled "Beyond

Good and Bad," in which the highest and final form of the ethical

consciousness of mankind is subjected to searching criticism. But

further, it is becoming increasingly apparent that psychology (upon

which Taylor would base morality) itself involves metaphysical

assumptions; its position in fact cannot be stated except as a

metaphysical position, whether that of subjective idealism or any other.

And the need which most philosophers have felt for some philosophical

foundation for morality arises, not from any desire to subordinate moral

insight to speculative theory, but because the moral facts themselves

are inexplicable except in the light of first principles which

metaphysics alone can criticize.

Taylor himself attempts to find the roots of ethics in the moral

sentiments of mankind, the moral sentiments being primarily feelings or

emotions, though they imply and result in judgments of approval and

disapproval upon conduct. But it may be doubted whether he succeeds in

clearly distinguishing ethical feelings from ethical judgments, and if

they are to be treated as synonymous it seems difficult to avoid the

conclusion that the implications of moral "judgment" must involve a

reference to metaphysics.

Moreover, it is obvious that a great part of Taylor's quarrel with

current moral ideals arises from the fact that they do not commend

themselves to the moral judgment, i.e. from the standpoint of real

goodness they are unsatisfactory, being tainted with evil. Hence it

appears difficult to reconcile what is in effect a belief in the

validity of the judgments of the moral consciousness with a belief that

the real source and justification of that consciousness are to be found

in the very sentiments and vague mass of floating feelings upon which it

pronounces. Scepticism seems to be the only possible result of such a

position. Taylor's polemic against metaphysical systems of ethics is

based throughout upon an alleged discrepancy and separation between the

facts of moral "experience," the judgments of the moral consciousness,

and theories as to the nature of these which the philosophers whom he

attacks would by no means accept. There is no doubt a distinction

between morality as a form of consciousness and reflection upon that

morality. But such a distinction neither corresponds to, nor testifies

to, the existence of a distinction between morality as "experience" and

morality as "theory" or "idea."

Taylor is more persuasive when he is developing his second main

thesis--that of the alleged existence of an ultimate dualism in the

nature of morality. His accounts of the genesis of the conceptions of

obligation and responsibility as of most of the ultimate conceptions

with which moral philosophy deals will be accepted or rejected to the

extent to which the main contention concerning the psychological basis

of ethics commends itself to the reader. But in his exposition of the

fundamental contradiction involved in morality elaborated with much care

and illustrative argument he appeals for the most part to facts familiar

to the unphilosophical moral consciousness. He begins by finding an

ultimate opposition between the instincts of self-assertion and

instincts which secure the production and protection of the coming

generation even in the infra-ethical world with which biology deals. He

traces this opposition into the forms in which it appears in the social

life of mankind (as, e.g., in the difficulty of reconciling the

conflicting claims of individual self-development and self-culture and

social service), and finds "a hidden root of insincerity and hypocrisy

beneath all morality" (p. 243), inasmuch as it is not possible to pursue

any one type of ideal without some departure from singleness of purpose.

And he finds all the conceptions by which men have hoped to reconcile

admitted antagonisms and divergencies between moral ideals claiming to

be ultimate and authoritative alike unsatisfactory (p. 285). Progress is

illusory; there is no satisfactory goal to which moral development

inevitably tends; religion in which some take refuge when distressed by

the inexplicable contradictions of moral conduct itself "contains and

rests upon an element of make believe" (p. 489).

With Taylor's presentation of the difficulties with which morality is

expected to grapple probably few would be found seriously to disagree,

though they might consider it unduly pessimistic. But when he turns what

is in effect a statement of certain forms of moral difficulty into an

attack upon the logical and coherent character of morality itself, he is

not so likely to command assent. For the difficulty all men meet with in

realizing goodness, or in being moral, is not in itself evidence of an

inherent contradiction in the nature of goodness as such. And what

perhaps would first strike an unprejudiced critic in Taylor's examples

of conflicting ideals or antagonistic yet ultimate moral judgments would

be the perception that they are not necessarily moral ideas or judgments

at all, and hence necessarily not ultimate.

The claims of self-culture and of social service may when considered in

the abstract or in some hypothetical case appear antagonistic and

irreconcilable. But when they present themselves to the individual moral

consciousness it may be safely asserted (1) that there can be only one

moral choice possible, i.e. that their opposition (where they are

opposed) involves no conflict of duties; and (2) that whichever ideal is

in the end preferred, opportunities will nevertheless be provided within

its realization for the concurrent realization of activities and

capacities ordinarily associated with the ideal alleged to be

contradictory. For just as there is no self-realization which does not

involve self-sacrifice, so there is no room for that species of egoism

within the confines of morality which is incompatible with social

service.

It will be clear from the foregoing account of Taylor's work that the

tendency of his thought, as of that of Bradley, is by no means directed

to the confirmation or re-establishment of those principles of conduct

recognized by the ordinary moral consciousness. Psychology or

metaphysics tend in their systems to usurp the place of authority

formerly assigned to ethics proper.

Martineau.

It would be true on the whole to assert that evolutionary systems of

ethics such as those of Herbert Spencer, Sir Leslie Stephen or Professor

S. Alexander (_Moral Order and Progress_, 1899), together with the

metaphysical theories of morals of which T.H. Green and Bradley and

Taylor are the chief representatives, have dominated the field of

ethical speculation since 1870. Nevertheless it is only necessary to

mention such a work as Martineau's _Types of Ethical Theory_ to dispel

the notion that the type of moral philosophy most characteristically

English, i.e. consisting in the patient analysis of the form and nature

of the moral consciousness itself, has given way or is likely to give

way to more ambitious and constructive efforts. Martineau's chief

endeavour was, as he himself says, to interpret, to vindicate, and to

systematize the moral sentiments, and if the actual exhibition of what

is involved, e.g., in moral choice is the vindication of morality

Martineau may be said to have been successful. It is with his

interpretation and systematization of the moral sentiments that most of

Martineau's critics have found fault. It is impossible, e.g., to accept

his ordered hierarchy of "springs of action" without perceiving that the

real principle upon which they can be arranged in order at all must

depend upon considerations of circumstances and consequences, of

stations and duties, with which a strict intuitionalism such as that of

Martineau would have no dealing.[50] Similarly the notion of Conscience

as a special faculty giving its pronouncements immediately and without

reflection cannot be maintained in the face of modern psychological

analysis and is untrue to the nature of moral judgment itself. And

Martineau is curiously unsympathetic to the universal and social aspect

of morality with which evolutionary and idealist moral philosophers are

so largely occupied. Nevertheless there have been few moral philosophers

who have, apart from the idiosyncrasies of their special prepossessions,

set forth with clearer insight or with greater nobility of language the

essential nature of the moral consciousness.

Sidgwick.

Equal in importance to Martineau's work is Professor Sidgwick's _Methods

of Ethics_ which appeared in 1874. The two works are alike in loftiness

of outlook and in the fact that they are devoted to the re-examination

of the nature of the moral consciousness to the exclusion of alien

branches of inquiry. In most other respects they differ. Martineau is

much more in sympathy with idealism than Sidgwick, whose work consists

in a restatement from a novel and independent standpoint of the

Utilitarian position. And Sidgwick has been far more successful than any

other moral philosopher with the exception of T.H. Green and Bradley in

founding a school of thought. Many of his most acute critics would be

the first to admit how much they owe to his teaching. Chief among the

more recent of these is G.E. Moore, whose book _Principia Ethica_ is an

important original contribution to ethical thought. And although Dr

Hastings Rashdall (_The Theory of Good and Evil_ Oxford, 1907) is not in

agreement with Sidgwick's own particular type of hedonistic theory in

his own philosophical position, he occupies a point of view somewhat

similar to that of Sidgwick's main attitude of Rational Utilitarianism.

Rashdall's two volumes exhibit also a welcome return on the part of

English thought to the proper business of the moral philosopher--the

examination of the nature of moral conduct. Other works, such as

Professor L.T. Hobhouse's _Morals in Evolution_ or Professor E.A.

Westermarck's _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, testify to a

continued interest in the history of morality and in the anthropological

inquiries with which moral philosophy is closely connected.

Much that is of importance for moral philosophy has recently been

written upon problems that more properly belong to the philosophy of

religion and the theory of knowledge. J.F. M'Taggart's _Studies in

Hegelian Cosmology_, and his later work, _Some Dogmas of Religion_,

contain interesting contributions to the theory of pleasure and of the

problem of free will and determinism. A notable instance of this

tendency is seen in the developments of the theory of pragmatism (q.v.),

for which F.C.S. Schiller has proposed the general term "humanism." Such

aspects as concern ethics include, for example, the limited

indeterminism involved in the theory, the attitude of the religious

consciousness expressed by William James (_Will to Believe_ and

_Pragmatism_), and the pragmatic conception of the good. And the

widespread interest in social problems has produced a revival of

speculation concerning questions partly political and party ethical in

character, e.g. the nature of justice. Finally it has become apparent

that many problems hitherto left for political economy to solve belong

more properly to the moralist, if not to the moral philosopher, and it

may be confidently expected that with the increased complexity of social

life and the disappearance of many sanctions of morality hitherto

regarded as inviolable, the future will bring a renewed and practical

interest in the theory of conduct likely to lead to fresh developments

in ethical speculation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The literature of the subject is so large in all

languages that only a small selection can be given here. For further

works reference may be made to subsidiary articles. See also Baldwin's

_Dict. of Philos. and Psychol._ vol. iii. (1905), pp. 812 foll.

(bibliography).

I. _Historical._--Sir L. Stephen, _History of English Thought in the

18th Century_ (1876, 3rd ed. 1892); W.E.H. Lecky, _History of European

Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne_ (1869, many editions); works of

Ed. Zeller (q.v.); G.H. Lewes, _History of Philosophy_ (1880); W.

Gass, _Geschichte der christlichen Ethik_ (1881); A.W. Benn, _The

Greek Philosophers_ (1882); F. Jodl, _Geschichte der Ethik in der

neueren Philos_. (2 vols., 1882-1889); L. Schmidt, _Ethik der alten

Griechen_ (1882); E. Howley, _The Old Morality traced Historically_

(1885); J. Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_ (Oxford, 1885, 3rd ed.

1891); Th. Ziegler, _Gesch. d. christl. Ethik_ (1886); Ch.

Letourneaux, _L'Evolution de la morale_ (1887); K. Kostlin, _Gesch.

der Ethik_ (1887); C.E. Luthardt, _Die antike Ethik in ihrer

geschichtlichen Entwicklung_ (1887), and _Hist. of Christian Ethics_

(1888); C.M. Williams, _A Review of the Systems of Ethics founded on

the Theory of Evolution_ (1893); J. Watson, _Hedonistic Theories from

Aristippus to Spencer_ (1895); L.A. Selby-Bigge, _British Moralists_

(1897); R. Mackintosh, _From Comte to Benjamin Kidd_ (1899); S.

Patten, _The Development of English Thought_ (1899); A.B. Bruce, _The

Moral Order of the World in Ancient and Modern Thought_ (1899); Sir L.

Stephen, _The English Utilitarians_ (1901); Henry Sidgwick, _Outlines

of the History of Ethics_ (5th ed., 1902); Paul Janet, _History of the

Problems of Philosophy_ (1902-1903), Eng. trans. Ada Monahan, vol. ii.

"Ethics"; W.R. Sorley, _Recent Tendencies in Ethics_ (1904).

II. _Constructive and Critical._--Besides the works mentioned above

the following may be mentioned:--J.M. Guyau, _La Morale anglaise_

(1879), _Education et heredite_ (1889; Eng. trans. Greenstreet, with

introd. by G.F. Stout, 1891), _Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation

ni sanction_ (Eng. trans., 1898); G.H. Lewes, _Problems of Life and

Mind_ (1879); Sir L. Stephen, _Science of Ethics_ (1882); P. Janet,

_The Theory of Morals_ (Eng. trans., 1884); W.R. Sorley, _On the

Ethics of Naturalism_ (1885); W.L. Courtney, _Constructive Ethics_

(1886); Wilson and Fowler, _Principles of Morals_ (1886); H. Hoffding,

_Ethik_ (1888), _Psychologie_ (1882, 1892; trans. Lowndes, 1892); W.

Wundt, _Ethik_ (1886; trans. Titchener and others, 1897); F. Paulsen,

_Ethik_ (1889, 1893; trans. Thilly, 1899); H. Sidgwick, _Method of

Ethics_ (1890); J.T. Bixby, _The Crisis in Morals: An Examination of

Rational Ethics_ (1891); J. Seth, _Freedom an Ethical Postulate_

(1891); J.H. Muirhead, _Elements of Ethics_ (1892); G. Simnel,

_Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft_ (1892, 1893); T. Ziegler,

_Social Ethics_ (1892); T.H. Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics_ (1893); W.

Knight, _The Christian Ethic_ (1893); J.S. Mackenzie, _Manual of

Ethics_ (1893); F. Ryland, _Ethics_ (1893); J. Seth, _A Study of

Ethical Principles_ (1894, 6th ed. 1902); C.F. D'Arcy, _Short Study of

Ethics_ (1895); J.H. Hyslop, _The Elements of Ethics_ (1895); J. Kidd,

_Morality and Religion_ (1895); Sir L. Stephen, _Social Rights and

Duties_ (1896); J.M. Baldwin, _Social and Ethical Interpretations in

Mental Development_ (1897); Th. Ribot, _Psychology of Emotions_

(1897); A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, _Man's Place in the Cosmos_ (1897);

H.R. Marshall, _Instinct and Reason_ (1898); W. Wallace, _Natural

Theology and Ethics_ (1898); F. Paulsen, _Partei-politik und Moral_

(1900); A.E. Taylor, _Problem of Conduct_ (1901); G.T. Ladd,

_Philosophy of Conduct_ (1902); H. Sidgwick, _Ethics of Green,

Spencer, Martineau_ (1902); D. Irons, _Study in Psychology of Ethics_

(1903); G.E. Moore, _Principia Ethica_ (1903); R. Eucken, _Geistige

Stromungen der Gegenwart_ (1904), and other works (see EUCKEN,

RUDOLF); works of A. Fouillee (q.v.); G. Santayana, _Life of Reason_

(1905); E.A. Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_

(1906); George Gore, _Scientific Basis of Morality_ (1899), and _New

Scientific Basis of Morality_ (1906), containing an interesting if

unconvincing attempt to explain ethics on purely physical principles.

(H. H. W.)