in the restiveness and restlessness of the aspirations of civilisation.
It is the same with it as with that spontaneous, involuntary impulse
to movement that leads to the use of forces and of the members merely
because sufficient energy is present, without their use being guided
by the consideration of a more valuable end, so that the results are
accidental. The effort that goes with civilisation may lead in part
to over-exertion, to an overstraining of forces; in part (in the case
of extreme differentiation) to a one-sided direction of effort; and
partly to isolation, to the fragmentary elimination of individual
activities. In the single individual certain faculties are fostered
(in the one intelligence, in the other physical power for work) at the
cost of other faculties; the harmony, the capacity of feeling oneself
as totality and unity is lacking. By such one-sidedness the individual
becomes of value only as a wheel in a great machine: he serves merely
as a means, not as an end. And such a one-sided individual development
is connected with a one-sided social development. The suppression of
certain features of the nature of the individual goes hand in hand
with the suppression of single estates and classes of society. If we
identify civilisation and ethics, without qualification, and regard
progress as a safer criterion than welfare, we should overlook the fact
that there exists also a _social question_. The social question is an
ethical question and at the same time a question of the correction of
civilisation,—both by means of the principle of welfare. Would it be
right that the products of material and ideal civilisation should only
fall to the share of a small minority, while all the rest should not be
able to participate therein? This would clash completely with the ideal
of society that flows from the principle of welfare. For the greatest
welfare is present when every single individual so develops himself
in an independent manner that just by this independent development of
his own he assists others to a similar development from their point
of view. Then does there exist _a harmonious society of independent
personalities_. The idea of such a society is the highest ethical idea
that flows from the principle of welfare. Every individual is then a
little world for himself and yet stands in the most intimate reciprocal
connection with the great world of which he is a part. The individual
serves the race and the race serves the individual. Every position of
isolation, every inequality in the distribution of possessions and of
employments must be founded in the demands of the various circumstances
and problems of life, and the faculties and impulses of each individual
shall be developed as fully and richly as is compatible with the
conditions of life of the whole race.
6) It follows from the considerations presented, that it is by no means
always easy to apply the principle of welfare in individual cases. The
particular relations of the affairs in question can be so complicated
that we are not able to take a broad survey of them and foresee the
results of our interference. We cannot deduce _a priori_ from the
principle of welfare any system of particular acts, any determinate
order of society, any civilisation. Its value (like that of the
principle of causality in the theoretical field) is to present and to
formulate problems, and to serve as a guide to their treatment. It is
regulative, not constructive. It presumes the immediate involuntary
life of the individual and of society, and its function does not begin
until the conscious discussion and treatment occurs of the value on the
one hand of that which has thus been developed, and on the other of
the manner in which the development shall be conducted in the future.
All ethics thus acquires an _historical_ character. We never—either in
our own individuality or in society—commence from the very beginning,
but are always obliged to start with a definite foundation and to work
our way further under the guidance of the principles and ideals that
spring from our nature.
III.
1) In the previous remarks I have essayed a discussion of the principle
of welfare which may perhaps make clearer what was not so distinct in
my former expositions ("Ethik," Chapters III and VII). The difficulty
always occurs in the enunciation of a principle, that a direct
demonstration of its validity cannot be given. Of so much greater
significance is it then if an indirect proof can be adduced by showing
that the very ones who contest it are themselves forced to employ it
and actually to employ it without being aware of it.
I maintain now that Dr. Paul Carus in his book "The Ethical Problem,"
in which he combats the principle of welfare, has not been able to
avoid giving such an indirect confirmation of the validity of this
principle. Before attempting to show this in detail I shall make a few
remarks concerning the criticism of my "Ethics" which Dr. Carus wrote
in the first number of _The Monist_, and which in an abbreviated form
is also embodied in the treatise above mentioned.
Dr. Carus thinks that I have practically surrendered the principle of
welfare when I define welfare to consist in activity. His words are:
"If welfare is to be interpreted as activity, work,
development; if this kind of active welfare is the greatest
good, whatever admixture of pain and whatever absence of
pleasurable feeling it may have; if the greatest amount of a
state of continuous pleasurable feeling is not welfare in an
ethical sense, what becomes of the utilitarian definition of
welfare as pleasurable feeling? If, however, welfare is 'the
state of a continuous pleasurable feeling,' how can we declare
that the life of a pessimistic philosopher is preferable to
that of a joyful fool?"
To this I answer, that _if_ it could be proved that increasing pain
followed necessarily on _all_ advancement of civilisation (without
this pain being compensated for, as Clara's philosophy demanded, by
new and proportionately greater feelings of pleasure), in that case
it would be impossible to combine civilisation and welfare. But only
a pessimistic dogmatism—which is just as current in the atmosphere
of to-day as optimistic dogmatism—could assert this. What experience
teaches us is this, that we find ourselves amid a development, in
a line of tendencies the final results of which we cannot foresee
but which hitherto have evoked at many points new forces and have
thereby opened new sources of satisfaction. Everything that arouses
our greatest and most permanent pleasurable feeling has arisen within
this development. This justifies our courage and our hope in behalf of
further progress, although conflict and pain will as we may foresee
not be wanting, and although the way leads through many deserts.
Experience alone can show how far we shall be able to get. I agree
with Dr. Carus that "this world of ours is not a world suited to the
taste of a pleasure-seeker," if we understand by pleasure passive
sensual enjoyment, an enjoyment which is not united with the rest and
nourishment with which not only an immediate pleasurable feeling is
connected but whereby power is also gathered for continued endeavor.
If so many pleasure-seekers go through life without having their eyes
opened to its true significance and purpose, this fact is precisely one
of the things that clash with the principle of welfare, for the latter
claims all faculties and powers, and demands that they that sleep be
awakened,—that is if they really possess useful faculties. For perhaps
the "joyful fool" cannot accomplish more than he does. Wherefore then
disturb him, if his pleasure harms neither himself nor others and if
his awakening will only lead to unrest and pain for himself and perhaps
also for others? I pointed out the fact in my "Ethics,"[128] that we
can determine by the principle of welfare alone in what cases we are to
destroy a state of equilibrium or shatter an illusion.
[128] Danish edition, p. 94. German edition, p. 109.
I have admitted the _possibility_ of a conflict between civilisation
and welfare. Wherever such a conflict arises, there, according to my
conception, appears an ethical problem, which must be determined by the
principle of welfare, since any order of things or any development that
brought with it permanent and everlasting pain would be in effect a
dissolution of life itself. Such pain, however, (as even pessimistic
philosophers are optimistic enough to hope,) would destroy the will
to live. If we live in spite of pain it is because there is always a
surplus of satisfaction.
I give the idea of welfare no arbitrary extension when I deny that
it should be limited to denote a passive condition produced once
for all time. For our nature is at no stage wholly complete; no one
condition can stand therefore as definitive. The future, and the new
horizons opened, will make new demands on our capacities and our will,
and in the testing of any state of things it must accordingly be a
necessary point of view to establish whether in addition to the direct
satisfaction which it probably affords it at the same time prepares the
capacities and the possibilities of a continued development answering
to the new relations. It may be necessary to choose some arduous
employment which later necessarily brings with it long continued rest
and inactivity. Darwin's struggle with his feeble health is a good
example. The man who from love of country or to save a fellow-being
risks his life, prefers the active satisfaction of a single moment
(the satisfaction, namely, which he feels beforehand at the thought of
saving his country or a human life) to the passive joys of years and
years. It was such a moment in which Faust saw himself living in mind
"Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volk"
and which thereby made life of value to him, which all the earthly
gratifications that the demon was able to obtain for him could not
accomplish. In the face of the pleasure that such a moment can produce
the thought of pain and death vanishes. Thus alone is self-sacrifice
psychologically intelligible.
2) While I cannot see that Dr. Carus has pointed out a contradiction
in my theory of welfare, I may further assert that he himself cannot
without a self-contradiction escape recognising the principle of
welfare. Dr. Carus indeed, in a certain sense, himself enunciates this
very principle. He says, in the preface to "The Ethical Problem," page
iii, "The aim of ethics is neither the welfare of self nor that of
other individuals, but of those interests that are superindividual."
The aim therefore is to be welfare, not however the welfare of
individuals but of "superindividual interests." This strange expression
is defined in certain subsequent passages of the book. Dr. Carus
speaks, namely, later on, of "that superindividual soul-life which
we call society."[129] It is admitted in this, that when we speak of
welfare we speak impliedly of soul-life. But how can we give to society
as such a soul-life that is different from the soul-life of the single
individuals that have their existence simultaneously and successively
in that society? This is merely a mythical and mystical personification
of society, which may have arisen in the comparison, in many respects
instructive, between society and an organism, which however can possess
at best a poetical, but no scientific, value. The idea of society, if
it is to be scientifically employed, must always be so applied that at
every point the definite group of individuals which it represents may
be established. The great importance of this idea consists in the fact
that it expresses the common and permanent interests of individuals
simultaneously and successively existing, in opposition to the
interests of single individuals, or of a smaller group, or of a limited
period of time. Ethical perception, (unless it starts from the point
of view of egoistical individualism,) must apply its test from the
point of view of society. It leads in this case to the consideration
of our own and others' actions not only with respect to our own
individual circumstances but _sub specie æterni_ so to speak, that is
with respect to their relation to the great whole of which not only
we, but also other human beings are parts. Along with the educative
power of authorities, it is due to the sympathy in virtue of which the
individual causes to re-echo in his own bosom the feelings of others,
that ethical ideals have been formed in the human mind. But as soon as
it is made impossible to transpose the idea of society into the idea
of individuals that live under certain definite conditions, this idea
contains no instruction for us in ethical respects. No ethical norms
can in this case be deduced from it. Emotional mysticism takes the
place of ethical thought and volition.
[129] Pages 33, 38, and 40.
Such a mysticism has of course its value. Powerful emotion leads
naturally to a state in which all definite ideas recede, the mind
becoming entirely occupied by emotional feeling. It will furthermore be
difficult to represent by any adequate conception the great multitude
of human characters on which our conduct in given circumstances can
acquire decisive influence. The expression 'society,' or 'race,'
characterises very well the unconcluded and the unsurveyable in so
many of the consequences of human methods of action and order of
life, and it will therefore not be possible to dispense with it. But
transposition into concrete conceptions must always be possible. A
welfare that at one or another stage is not the welfare of definite
individuals is a self-contradiction, and any act that at one period or
another does not lead to the welfare of definite individuals has no
value.
In Wundt's "Ethics," pages 429 to 431, the same line of thought is
found as this of Dr. Carus. Public well-being and progress, according
to Wundt, do not consist in the well-being of the greatest possible
number of individuals: for the individual is ephemeral! "However richly
blest and however perfect the individual existence may be, it is but a
drop in the ocean of life. What can individual happiness and individual
pain mean to the world?" I should say to this: Yes, it is true, the
ocean does not exist for the sake of the individual drops; but what is
an ocean that does not consist of drops? And is not the whole ocean
clear if every single drop is clear? And only then is it _wholly_ clear.
Just as there are people who cannot see the woods for the trees, so
there are also people who cannot see the trees for the woods. In
ethics this method of conception leads to the consideration of human
aspiration as the means of superhuman ends. Every ethics that seeks to
stand on a basis of experience and remain within the possibility of
progressive verification, must cling to the standpoint of "man with
men." It need not for this reason overlook the fact, that ethical
conduct, like all unfolding of power, is connected with the universal
world-process.
3) Dr. Carus also approaches the principle of welfare upon another,
less mystical path. He maintains, with great emphasis, that ethics must
be based on facts, on insight into the real, the actual, order of
nature. Our ideals—this is the opinion of Dr. Carus—arise through the
wants which the relations of reality awaken in us, and must be realised
by the means which the relations of reality supply.
"The new ethics is based upon facts and is applied to facts"
(p. 18).
"Man wants something, so he conceives the idea how good it
would be if he had it.... Only by studying facts will he be
enabled to realise his ideals" (pp. 19 and 20).
"If you wish to exist, obey reason. Reason teaches us how to
regulate our actions in conformity with the order of natural
laws. If we do regulate them in conformity with the order of
natural laws, they will stand; otherwise not. In the former
case they will be good, they will agree with the cosmical
conditions of existence; in the latter case they are bad, they
will not agree with the cosmical conditions of existence;
therefore they will necessarily produce disorder and evil"
(pp. 31, 32).
It appears to me clear from this, that the reason why we must regulate
our actions to conform with natural laws, must be the fact that
otherwise they cannot "stand," which is explained more in detail in
what follows, to mean that they are constituted to produce "disorder
and evil,"—which in its turn must be surely understood as meaning
that disorder is itself an evil. If disorder were no evil, and if no
further evils resulted from actions which are not "in conformity with
the order of natural laws," what foundation would Dr. Carus in that
case be able to give his ethics? I wholly agree with Dr. Carus that our
conduct if it is to be ethical must support itself upon as profound
a comprehension of the relations of reality as physical science,
psychology, and social science alone can furnish. But _this requirement
can only be made good through and by the principle of welfare_. It has
validity only for the person who wills that his conduct shall "stand"
and produce no evil, either in extended or in limited circles. If pain
and death were not evils, this requirement would have no validity.
To judge from his somewhat indefinite expressions one might suspect in
Dr. Carus here a votary of egoistic hedonism, were it not that a number
of other passages in his book exclude this suspicion.
However, it seems quite clear to me that his final criterion must
coincide with the principle of welfare. His ethics is an ethics of
expediency, in that his ultimate criterion is the influence of actions
on the life of mankind.
4) Dr. Carus justly emphasises the relation of ethics to our
world-conception at large. But this connection does not mean that
ethics can be derived by deduction from a philosophical system
previously given. Ethics is an independent discipline which starts
from its own peculiar assumptions (which cannot of course stand in
contradiction to other established assumptions), although it is obliged
to make much use of the results furnished by other sciences. Ethics
has an independent foundation in the laws of feeling and volitional
life, just as the theory of knowledge has its foundation in the laws
of sensations and perceptions. In conformity with the law of economy,
(which must prevail in science even though it should not prevail in
nature,) we must restrict the established postulates of the single
sciences to the least possible limit. If after doing this agreement
between the single sciences finally occurs, this result will be all the
more valuable.
According to Dr. Carus ethics is to be derived now from a philosophical
total world-conception, as according to his view ("The Ethical
Problem," p. 71) it originally arose through the influence of the
positive religions.[130] Very weighty objections can be made in my
opinion against this latter assumption. It is a fact that the lower
a religion stands the less ethical character it possesses, and
the very lowest religions it is probable possess no ethical value
whatever. The question then arises how religion gradually acquired
its ethical character. The ethical ideas which were perceived in the
nature of the deity must have had a natural origin, and this origin
can be sought only in the life of man with men. The ethical norms and
ideas developed themselves here spontaneously and have been just as
spontaneously projected or hypostatised as the attributes of divinity.
In the history of the religion of Greece we can see clearly exhibited
the development of gods as powers of nature to gods as the expression
of an ethical order of nature. Compare for instance, the Dodonæan
and the Homeric Zeus with the Zeus that appears in the ideal belief
of Æschylus. The experiences are made in human life that lead to the
formation of divine ideals. Gods grow better and more gentle according
as men themselves grow better and gentler. Religious conceptions are
idealised experiences. If religion is a factor in the development of
ethics it is because man conceives and represents his essential ideals
in a religious form. The movement proceeds therefore from experience
to experience; that which acts on nature is, as Shakespeare says,
always an art that has been produced by nature itself. How could man
understand the meaning of the ethical qualities attributed to his
deities if he were not acquainted to some extent with these qualities
through experience?
[130] Dr. Carus expresses himself differently in _The Open
Court_ (1890, p. 2549), where religion and ethics are called
twins; whereas in _The Ethical Problem_ the latter is the
daughter of the former.
That which distinguishes philosophical from theological ethics is
not the fact that the former is constructed on the basis of some
philosophical system and the latter upon ecclesiastical dogmatism, but
the fact that philosophical ethics brings out into full consciousness
the psychological basis upon which ethical life has actually always
more or less indirectly builded, and draws all the consequences
implied in this. In this it furnishes an independent contribution to a
philosophical system.
5) It seems to me to be perfectly justified, that the distinguished
men who lead the Ethical Societies keep these institutions as
independent as possible not only of all definite dogmatic tendency
of thought but also of all unnecessary philosophical hypotheses and
speculations. With respect to what concerns the first principles of
ethics itself, it is not necessary for the practical ethicist to occupy
any definite point of view, although it would be very fortunate if he
were acquainted with the discussion of these principles and could take
part in an independent manner in the same. He who proposes to teach
applied mathematics or employ it in practice need not begin with a
definite position with respect to the nature and origin of mathematical
principles. So also in ethics there is a complete group of ideas and
endeavors which are independent of the manner in which the first
principles are conceived. The essential thing for the Ethical Societies
is, (as Dr. Stanton Coit has said in his beautiful book "Die Ethische
Bewegung in der Religion,") agreement as to the methods of development
of character and as to the type of character to be developed.
Dr. Carus can have really nothing to object to in this method of
conception, inasmuch as it is his conviction that in the passage from
the supernatural to the natural establishment of ethics the "substance
of our morality" will not be changed. In an article in _The Open
Court_, at page 2575, he says: "The most important moral rules are
not to be altered.... Some of them will be altered as little as our
arithmetical table can be changed." In this passage less importance
for the _contents_ of ethics is attributed to the various points of
view than I should be obliged to assign. Yet all the sooner should Dr.
Carus really admit that the Ethical Societies have added to their other
services that of holding a proper course between the different dogmatic
and philosophical systems.
6) This last dispute it appears to me also testifies to the expediency
of distinguishing between the different ethical problems. By so doing
Dr. Carus would also have been more just in his position with regard to
utilitarianism. The latter has not arisen so much from the impulse to
supply a _motive_ for ethical conduct as from the impulse to acquire
an absolute criterion. It is true the powerful influence of Hobbes and
Locke brought it about that many of the later utilitarians embraced the
egoistic theory; but by their side marched another group of utilitarian
ethicists (among the earlier, Bacon, Cumberland, Shaftesbury, and
Hutcheson) who did not subscribe to this theory. So far as I know,
Hutcheson was the first with whom the formula occurs: "The greatest
happiness of the greatest number." These very historical facts show how
important it is in the treatment of ethical problems to apply the maxim
"Divide et impera!" I have therefore prefaced this my apology for the
principle of welfare by calling attention to the relative and mutual
independence of ethical problems.
HARALD HÖFFDING.
THE CRITERION OF ETHICS AN OBJECTIVE REALITY.
I. TWO DEFINITIONS OF GOOD.
While Mr. Herbert Spencer in his "Data of Ethics" may be considered as
the most persuasive and popular, Prof. Harald Höffding, it appears to
me, is the most scholarly and learned expounder of that ethical theory
which bases morality upon the principle of the greatest happiness
for the greatest number. _The Monist_ No. 1 contained (pp. 139-141)
a criticism of Professor Höffding's work on Ethics, and Professor
Höffding's article in this number is in part a further exposition of
his views, and in part an answer to the criticism of _The Monist_.