CHAPTER III.--THE IDEA OF FREEDOM.

XLIX.

The Forms of Freedom.

We may now deal, more briefly, with the problem of moral capacity. It

is, in principle, the ability to conceive of an end and to be governed

in action by this conceived end. We may consider this capacity in three

aspects, as negative, as potential and as positive.

1. _Negative Aspect of Freedom._ The power to be governed in action by

the thought of some end to be reached is freedom _from_ the appetites

and desires. An animal which does not have the power of proposing ends

to itself is impelled to action by its wants and appetites just as they

come into consciousness. It is _irritated_ into acting. Each impulse

demands its own satisfaction, and the animal is helpless to rise above

the particular want. But a _person_, one who can direct his action

by conscious ends, is emancipated from subjection to the particular

appetites. He can consider their relation to the end which he has set

before himself, and can reject, modify or use them as best agrees with

the purposed end. This capacity to control and subjugate impulses by

reflection upon their relationship to a rational end is the power of

self-government, and the more distinct and the more comprehensive in

scope the end is, the more real the self-government.

2. _Potential Freedom._ The power to conceive of ends involves the

possibility of thinking of many and various ends, and even of ends

which are contrary to one another. If an agent could conceive of but

one end in some case, it would always seem to him afterwards that he

had been necessitated to act in the direction of that end; but the

power to put various ends before self constitutes "freedom of choice",

or potential freedom. After action, the agent calls to mind that there

was another end open to him, and that if he did not choose the other

end, it was because of something in his character which made him prefer

the one he actually chose.

L.

Moral Responsibility.

Here we have the basis of moral _responsibility_ or _accountability_.

There is no responsibility for any result which is not intended or

foreseen. Such a consequence is only physical, not moral. (Sec. VII).

But when any result has been foreseen, and adopted as foreseen, such

result is the outcome not of any external circumstances, nor of mere

desires and impulses, but of the agent's conception of his own end.

Now, because the result thus flows from the agent's own conception of

an end, he feels himself responsible for it.

It must be remembered that the end adopted is that which is conceived

_as satisfying self_--that, indeed, when we say end of action, we mean

only some proposed form of self-satisfaction. The adopted end always

indicates, therefore, that sort of condition which the agent considers

to be good, or self-satisfactory. It is because a result flows from the

agent's _ideal of himself_, the thought of himself which he considers

desirable or worth realizing, that the agent feels himself responsible.

The result is simply an expression of himself; a manifestation of what

he would have himself be. Responsibility is thus one aspect of the

identity of character and conduct. (Sec. VII). We are responsible for

our conduct because that conduct is ourselves objectified in actions.

The idea of responsibility is intensified whenever there have been two

contrary lines of conduct conceived, of which one has been chosen. If

the end adopted turns out not to be satisfactory, but, rather, unworthy

and degrading, the agent feels that he _might_ have chosen the other

end, and that if he did not, it was because his character was such,

his ideal of himself was such, that this other end did not appeal

to him. The actual result is felt to be the outcome of an unworthy

character manifested in the adoption of a low form of satisfaction;

and the evident contrast of this low form with a higher form, present

to consciousness but rejected, makes the sense of responsibility more

acute. As such, it is the judgment of disapprobation passed upon

conduct; the feeling of remorse and of the desert of punishment.

Freedom as the power of conceiving ends and of realizing the ideal end

in action, is thus the basis both of responsibility and of approbation

(or disapprobation).

_The Freedom of Indifference._ It is this potential

freedom, arising from the power of proposing various

ends of action, which, misinterpreted, gives rise to the

theory of a liberty of indifferent choice--the theory

that the agent can choose this or that without any

ground or motive. The real experience is the knowledge,

after the choice of one end, that since another end was

also present to consciousness that other end might have

been chosen, _if only the character had been such as to

find its satisfaction in that other end_. The theory of

indifference misconstrues this fact to mean that the agent

might just as well have chosen that other end, without any

if or qualification whatever. The theory of indifference,

moreover, defeats its own end. The point which it is

anxious to save is responsibility. It sees that if only

one course of action were ever open to an agent, without

the possibility of any _conception_ of another course, an

agent, so acting, could not be held responsible for not

having adopted that other course. And so it argues that

there must always be the possibility of indifferent or

alternate choice; the possibility of adopting this or that

line of action without any motive. But if such were the

case responsibility would be destroyed. If the end chosen

is not an expression of character, if it does not manifest

the agent's ideal of himself, if its choice is a matter

of indifference, it does not signify morally, but is mere

accident or caprice. It is because choice is _not_ a matter

of indifference, but an outcome of character that the

agent feels responsibility, and approves or disapproves.

He virtually says: "I am responsible for this outcome,

not because I could have chosen another end just as well

_without any reason_, but because I thought of another end

and rejected it; because my character was such that that

end did not seem good, and was such that this end did seem

good. My character is myself, and in this unworthy end I

stand self-condemned."

LI.

Moral Reformation.

Freedom considered as potential, depending upon the power of the agent

to frame diverse ends, is the basis not only of responsibility, but

also of the possibility of reformation, or of change in character and

conduct. All moral action is the expression of self, but the self

is not something fixed or rigid. It includes as a necessary part of

itself the possibility of framing conceptions of what it would be,

and there is, therefore, at any time the possibility of acting upon

some ideal hitherto unrealized. If conduct were the expression of

character, in a sense which identified character wholly with past

attainments, then reformation would be impossible. What a man once was

he must always continue to be. But past attainments do not exhaust all

the possibilities of character. Since conduct necessarily implies a

continuous adjustment of developing capacity to new conditions, there

is the ability to frame a changed ideal of self-satisfaction--that

is, ability to lead a new life. That the new ideal is adopted from

experience of the unworthy nature of former deeds is what we should

expect. The chosen end having proved itself unsatisfactory, the

alternative end, previously rejected, recurs to consciousness with

added claims. To sum up: The doctrine that choice depends upon

character is correct, but the doctrine is misused when taken to mean

that a man's outward conduct will always be in the same direction that

it has been. Character involves all the ideas of different and of

better things which have been present to the agent, although he has

never attempted to carry them out. And there is always the possibility

that, if the proper influences are brought to bear, some one of

these latent ideals may be made vital, and wholly change the bent of

character and of conduct.

LII.

Positive Freedom.

The _capacity_ of freedom lies in the power to form an ideal or

conception of an end. _Actual_ freedom lies in the realization of

that end which actually satisfies. An end may be freely adopted, and

yet its actual working out may result not in freedom, but in slavery.

It may result in rendering the agent more subject to his passions,

less able to direct his own conduct, and more cramped and feeble in

powers. Only that end which executed really effects greater energy and

comprehensiveness of character makes for actual freedom. In a word,

only the good man, the man who is truly realizing his individuality, is

free, in the positive sense of that word.

Every action which is not in the line of performance of functions

must necessarily result in self-enslavement. The end of desire is

activity; and it is only in fullness and unity of activity that freedom

is found. When desires are not unified--when, that is, the idea of

the exercise of function does not control conduct--one desire must

conflict with another. Action is directed now this way, now that,

and there is friction, loss of power. On account of this same lack of

control of desires by the comprehensive law of social activity, one

member of society is brought into conflict with another, with waste

of energy, and with impeded and divided activity and satisfaction of

desire. Exercise of function, on the other hand, unifies the desires,

giving each its relative, although subordinate, place. It fits each

into the others, and, through the harmonious adjustment of one to

another, effects that complete and unhindered action which is freedom.

The performance of specific function falls also into free relations

with the activities of other persons, coöperating with them, giving and

receiving what is needed, and thus constituting full liberty. Other

aspects of freedom, as the negative and the potential, are simply means

instrumental to the realization of individuality, and when not employed

toward this, their true end, they become methods of enslaving the agent.

On the subject of moral freedom, as, upon the whole, in

agreement with the view presented here: See

Green: Prolegomena to Ethics, pp. 90-117; 142-158. Bradley:

Ethical Studies, ch. I; Caird: Phil. of Kant, Vol. II, Bk.

II, ch. 3; Alexander: Moral Order and Progress, pp. 336-341.

And, for a view agreeing in part, Stephen: Science of

Ethics, pp. 278-293.

For presentations of the freedom of indifference, see,

Lotze: Practical Philosophy, ch. 3. Martineau: Op.

cit., Vol. II, pp. 34-40. Calderwood: Handbook of Moral

Philosophy.

PART II.

THE ETHICAL WORLD.

LIII.

The Reality of Moral Relations.

The habit of conceiving moral action as a certain _kind_ of action,

instead of all action so far as it really is action, leads us to

conceive of morality as a highly desirable something which somehow

ought to be brought into our lives, but which upon the whole is not.

It gives rise to the habit of conceiving morality as a vague ideal

which it is praiseworthy for the individual to strive for, but which

depends wholly for its existence upon the individual's wish in the

matter. Morality, that is, is considered as a relation existing between

something which merely _ought to be_, on one hand, and the individual's

choice, or his conscience on the other. This point of view has found

typical expression in Bishop Butler's saying: "If conscience had might

as it has right, it would rule the world."

But right is not such a helpless creature. It exists not in word but

in power. The moral world is, here and now; it is a reality apart from

the wishes, or failures to wish, of any given individual. It bears

the same relation to the individual's activity that the 'physical

world' does to his knowledge. Not till the individual has to spin the

physical world out of his consciousness in order to know it, will

it be necessary for him to create morality by his choice, before it

can exist. As knowledge is mastery in one's self of the real world,

the reproduction of it in self-consciousness, so moral action is the

appropriation and vital self-expression of the values contained in the

existing practical world.

The existence of this moral world is not anything vaguely mysterious.

Imagine a well organized factory, in which there is some comprehensive

industry carried on--say the production of cotton cloth. This is the

end; it is a common end--that for which each individual labors. Not all

individuals, however, are doing the same thing. The more perfect the

activity, the better organized the work, the more differentiated their

respective labors. This is the side of individual activity or freedom.

To make the analogy with moral activity complete we have to suppose

that each individual is doing the work because of itself, and not

merely as drudgery for the sake of some further end, as pay. Now these

various individuals are bound together by their various acts; some

more nearly because doing closely allied things, all somewhat, because

contributing to a common activity. This is the side of laws and duties.

This group of the differentiated and yet related activities is the

analogue of the moral world. There are certain wants which have

constantly to be fulfilled; certain ends which demand coöperating

activities, and which establish fixed relations between men. There is a

world of ends, a realm of definite activities in existence, as concrete

as the ends and activities in our imagined factory. The child finds,

then, ends and actions in existence when he is born. More than this: he

is not born as a mere spectator of the world; he is born _into_ it. He

finds himself encompassed by such relations, and he finds his own being

and activity intermeshed with them. If he takes away from himself, as

an agent, what he has, as sharing in these ends and actions, nothing

remains.

LIV.

Moral Institutions.

This world of purposes and activities is differentiated into various

institutions. The child is born as a member of a _family_; as he grows

up he finds that others have possessions which he must respect, that

is, he runs upon the institution of _property_. As he grows still

older, he finds persons outside of the family of whose actions he must

take account as respects his own: _society_, in the limited sense

as meaning relations of special intimacy or acquaintanceship. Then

he finds the political institutions; the city, state and nation. He

finds an educational institution, the school, the college; religious

institutions, the church, etc., etc. Everywhere he finds men having

common wants and thus proposing common ends and using coöperative modes

of action. To these organized modes of action, with their reference to

common interests and purposes, he must adjust his activities; he must

take his part therein, if he acts at all, though it be only negatively

or hostilely, as in evil conduct. These institutions _are_ morality

real and objective; the individual becomes moral as he shares in this

moral world, and takes his due place in it.

Institutions, then, are organized modes of action, on the basis of the

wants and interests which unite men. They differ as the family from the

town, the church from the state, according to the scope and character

of the wants from which they spring. They are not bare _facts_ like

objects of knowledge; they are _practical_, existing for the sake of,

and by means of the will--as execution of ideas which have interest.

Because they are expressions of common purposes and ideas, they are

not merely private will and intelligence, but, in the literal sense,

_public_ will and reason.

The moral endeavor of man thus takes the form not of isolated fancies

about right and wrong, not of attempts to frame a morality for himself,

not of efforts to bring into being some praiseworthy ideal never

realized; but the form of sustaining and furthering the moral world

of which he is a member. Since the world is one of action, and not of

contemplation like the world of knowledge, it can be sustained and

furthered only as he makes its ends his own, and identifies himself and

his satisfaction with the activities in which other wills find their

fulfillment.

This is simply a more concrete rendering of what has

already been said about the moral environment (see Sec. 33).

LV.

The Aspects of a Moral Institution.

An institution is, as we have seen the expression of unity of desires

and ideas; it is general intelligence in action, or common will. As

such common will, it is, as respects the merely private or exclusive

wants and aims of its members, absolutely _sovereign_. It must aim

to control them. It must set before them the common end or ideal and

insist upon this as the only real end of individual conduct. The ends

so imposed by the public reason are _laws_. But these laws are for the

sake of realizing the _common_ end, of securing that organized unity of

action in which alone the individual can find freedom and fullness of

action, or his own satisfaction. Thus the activity of the common will

gives freedom, or _rights_, to the various members of the institution.

Every institution, then, has its sovereignty, or authority, and

its laws and rights. It is only a false abstraction which makes us

conceive of sovereignty, or authority, and of law and of rights as

inhering only in some supreme organization, as the national state.

The family, the school, the neighborhood group, has its authority

as respects its members, imposes its ideals of action, or laws, and

confers its respective satisfactions in way of enlarged freedom, or

rights. It is true that no one of these institutions is isolated; that

each stands in relation with other like and unlike institutions. Each

minor institution is a member of some more comprehensive whole, to

which it bears the same relation that the individual bears to it. That

is to say, _its_ sovereignty gives way to the authority of the more

comprehensive organization; its laws must be in harmony with the laws

which flow from the larger activity; its rights must become aspects

of a fuller satisfaction. Only humanity or the organized activity of

all the wants, powers and interests common to men, can have absolute

sovereignty, law and rights.

But the narrower group has its relations, none the less, although, in

ultimate analysis, they flow from and manifest the wider good, which,

as wider, must be controlling. Without such minor local authorities,

rights and laws, humanity would be a meaningless abstraction, and its

activity wholly empty. There is an authority in the family, and the

moral growth of the child consists in identifying the law of his own

conduct with the ends aimed at by the institution, and in growing into

maturity and freedom of manhood through the rights which are bestowed

upon him as such a member. Within its own range this institution

is ultimate. But its range is not ultimate; the family, valuable

and sacred as it is, does not exist for itself. It is not a larger

selfishness. It exists as one mode of realizing that comprehensive

common good to which all institutions must contribute, if they are not

to decay. It is the same with property, the school, the local church,

and with the national state.

We can now translate into more concrete terms what was said, in Part

I, regarding the good, obligation and freedom. That performance of

function which is 'the good', is now seen to consist in vital union

with, and reproduction of, the practical institutions of which one is a

member. The maintenance of such institutions by the free participation

therein of individual wills, is, of itself, the common good. Freedom

also gets concreteness; it is the assured rights, or powers of action

which one gets as such a member:--powers which are not mere claims, nor

simply claims recognized as valid by others, but claims re-inforced by

the will of the whole community. Freedom becomes real in the ethical

world; it becomes force and efficiency of action, because it does not

mean some private possession of the individual, but means the whole

coöperating and organized action of an institution in securing to an

individual some power of self expression.

LVI.

Moral Law and the Ethical World.

Without the idea of the ethical world, as the unified activity of

diverse functions exercised by different individuals, the idea of the

good, and of freedom, would be undefined. But probably no one has ever

attempted to conceive of the good and of freedom in total abstraction

from the normal activity of man. Such has not been the lot of duty,

or of the element of law. Often by implication, sometimes in so many

words, it is stated that while a physical law may be accounted for,

since it is simply an abstract from observed facts, a moral law stands

wholly above and apart from actual facts; it expresses solely what

'ought to be' and not what is; that, indeed, whether anything in

accordance with it ever has existed or not, is a matter of no essential

moral importance theoretically, however it may be practically. Now it

is evident that a law of something which has not existed, does not and

perhaps never will exist, is essentially inexplicable and mysterious.

It is as against such a notion of moral law that the idea of a real

ethical world has perhaps its greatest service.

A moral law, _e. g._, the law of justice, is no more _merely_ a law of

what ought to be than is the law of gravitation. As the latter states a

certain relation of moving masses to one another, so the law of justice

states a certain relation of active wills to one another. For a given

individual, at a given time and circumstances, the law of justice may

appear as the law of something which ought to be, but is not:--is not

_for him in this respect_, that is to say. But the very fact that it

ought to be for him implies that it already is for others. It _is_ a

law of the society of which he is a member. And it is because he _is_ a

member of a society having this law, that is a law of what _should_ be

for him.

Would then justice cease to be a law for him if it were not observed

at all in the society of which he is a member? Such a question is as

contradictory as asking what would happen to a planet if the solar

system went out of existence. It is the law of justice (with other such

laws) that _makes_ society; that is, it is those active relations

which find expression in these laws that unify individuals so that they

have a common end, and thus mutual duties. To imagine the abolition of

these laws is to imagine the abolition of society; and to ask for the

law of individual conduct apart from all relationship, actual or ideal,

to society, is to ask in what morality consists when moral conditions

are destroyed. A society in which the social bond we call justice does

not obtain to some degree in the relations of man to man, is _not_

society; and, on the other hand, wherever some law of justice actually

obtains, there the law _is_ for every individual who is a member of the

society.

This does not mean that the 'is', the actual status of the moral

world, is identical with the 'ought', or the ideal relations of man to

man. But it does mean that there is no obligation, either in general

or as any specific duty, which does not _grow_ out of the 'is', the

actual relations now obtaining.[1] The ethical world at any given

time is undoubtedly imperfect, and, _therefore_, it demands a certain

act to meet the situation. The very imperfection, the very badness

in the present condition of things, is a part of the environment

with reference to which we must act; it is, thus, an element in the

_law_ of future action that it shall not exactly repeat the existing

condition. In other words, the 'is' gives the law of the 'ought', but

it is a part of this law that the 'ought' shall not be as the 'is'. It

is because the relation of justice does hold in members of a stratum of

society, having a certain position, power or wealth, but does not hold

between this section and another class, that the law of what should

be is equal justice for all. In holding that actual social relations

afford the law of what should be, we must not forget that these actual

relations have a negative as well as a positive side, and that the new

law must be framed in view of the negatives, the deficiencies, the

wrongs, the contradictions, as well as of the positive attainments. A

moral law, to sum up, is the principle of action, which, acted upon,

will meet the needs of the existing situation as respects the wants,

powers, and circumstances of the individuals concerned. It is no

far-away abstraction, but expresses the _movement_ of the ethical world.

[1] See Secs. 59, 60 and 63 for discussion of other aspects

of this question.

One example will help define the discussion. Take the case of a street

railway conductor, whose union has ordered a strike. What determines

the law of his conduct under the circumstances? Evidently the existing

ethical institutions of which he is a member, so far as he is conscious

of their needs. To determine what he should do, he does not hunt up

some law of an 'ought' apart from what is; if he should hunt for and

should find such a law he would not know what to do with it. Just

because it is apart from his concrete circumstances it is no guide, no

law for his conduct at all. He has to act not in view of some abstract

principle, but in view of a concrete situation. He considers his

present wage, its relation to its needs and abilities; his capacity

and taste for this and for that work; the reasons for the strike; the

conditions of labor at present with reference to winning the strike,

and as to the chance of getting other work. He considers his family,

their needs and developing powers; the demand that they should live

decently; that his children should be fairly educated and get a fair

start in the world; he considers his relationships to his fellow

members in the union, etc. These considerations, and such as these,

give the law to his decision in so far as he acts morally and not

instinctively. Where in this law-giving is there any separation from

facts? On the contrary, the more right the act (the nearer it comes

to its proper law), the more it will simply express and reflect the

actual concrete facts. The law, in other words, of action, is the law

of actual social forces in their onward movement, in so far as these

demand some response in the way of conduct from the individual.

We may restate from this point of view, what we have already learned:

A moral law is thoroughly individualized. It cannot be duplicated; it

cannot be for one act just what it is for another. The ethical world

is too rich in capacity and circumstance to permit of monotony; it is

too swift in its movement to allow of bare repetition. It will not hold

still; it moves on, and moral law is the law of action required from

individuals by this movement.

The consideration of specific institutions, as the family,

industrial society, civil society, the nation, etc.,

with their respective rights and laws, belongs rather to

political philosophy than to the general theory of ethics.

PART III.

THE MORAL LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL.

LVII.

Division of Subject.

We have now analyzed the fundamental moral notions--the good, duty and

freedom; we have considered their objective realization, and seen that

they are outwardly expressed in social relations, the more typical

and abiding of which we call institutions; that abstract duties are

realized in the laws created and imposed by such institutions, and

that abstract freedom is realized in the rights possessed by members

in them. We have now to consider the concrete moral life of an

individual born into this existing ethical world and finding himself

confronted with institutions in which he must execute his part, and

in which he obtains his satisfaction and free activity. We have to

consider how these institutions appeal to the individual, awakening in

him a distinct _moral_ consciousness, or the consciousness of active

relations to persons, in antithesis to the theoretical consciousness

of relations which exist in contemplation; how the individual behaves

towards these institutions, realizing them by assuming his proper

position in them, or attempting to thwart them by living in isolation

from them; and how a moral character is thus called into being. More

shortly, we have to deal (I) with the practical consciousness, or

the formation and growth of ideals of conduct; (II) with the moral

struggle, or the process of realizing ideals, and (III) with moral

character, or the virtues.

CHAPTER I.--THE FORMATION AND GROWTH OF IDEALS.

LVIII.

Analysis of Conscience.

The practical consciousness, or the recognition of ends and relations

of action, is what is usually termed _conscience_. The analysis

of conscience shows that it involves three elements, which may be

distinguished in theory, although they have no separate existence in

the actual fact of conscience itself. These three elements are (1) the

knowledge of certain specific forms of conduct, (2) the recognition of

the authority or obligatoriness of the forms, and (3) the emotional

factors which cluster about this recognition. That is to say, we often

speak (1) of conscience telling or informing us of duties; we speak of

an enlightened or unenlightened conscience; of savage, or mediæval, or

modern conscience. Here we are evidently thinking of the kind and range

of particular acts considered right or wrong. But we also speak (2) of

the authority and majesty of conscience; of the commands of conscience,

etc. Here we are thinking of the consciousness of _obligation in

general_. The savage and the civilized man may vary greatly in their

estimate of what particular acts are right or wrong, and yet agree in

the recognition that such acts as are right are absolutely obligatory.

Finally we speak of an approving or disapproving, or remorseful

conscience, of a tender or a hardened conscience, of the pangs, the

pricks of conscience, etc. Here (3) we are evidently dealing with the

responsiveness of the disposition to moral distinctions, either in

particular acts, or in the recognition of moral law in general.

LIX.

Conscience as the Recognition of Special Acts as Right or Wrong.

Conscience in this sense is no peculiar, separate faculty of mind. It

is simply intelligence dealing with a certain subject-matter. That is,

conscience is distinguished not by the kind of mental activity at work,

but by the kind of material the mind works upon. Intelligence deals

with the nature and relations of things, and we call it understanding;

intelligence deals with the relations of persons and deeds, and it is

termed conscience.

We may, with advantage, recognize these stages in the development of

intelligence as dealing with moral relationships:

1. _The Customary or Conventional Conscience._ The existing moral

world, with the types and varieties of institutions peculiar to it, is

constantly impressing itself upon the immature mind; it makes certain

demands of moral agents and enforces them with all the means in its

power--punishment, reward, blame, public-opinion, and the bestowal of

social leadership. These demands and expectations naturally give rise

to certain convictions in the individual as to what he should or should

not do. Such convictions are not the outcome of independent reflection,

but of the moulding influence of social institutions. Moreover the

morality of a time becomes consolidated into proverbs, maxims and

law-codes. It takes shape in certain habitual ways of looking at and

judging matters. All these are instilled into the growing mind through

language, literature, association and legal custom, until they leave in

the mind a corresponding habit and attitude toward things to be done.

This process may be compared to the process by which knowledge of

the world of things is first attained. Certain of the more permanent

features of this world, especially those whose observance is important

in relation to continued physical existence and well-being, impress

themselves upon the mind. Consciousness, with no reflective activity of

its own, comes to mirror some of the main outlines of the world. The

more important distinctions are fixed in language, and they find their

way into the individual mind, giving it unconsciously a certain bent

and coloring.

2. _The Loyal Conscience._ But just as the mind, which seems at

first to have the facts and features of the world poured into itself

as a passive vessel, comes in time through its own experience to

appreciate something of their meaning, and, to some extent, to verify

them for itself; so the mind in its moral relations. Without forming

any critical theory of the institutions and codes which are forming

character, without even considering whether they are what they should

be, the individual yet comes at least to a practical recognition that

it is in these institutions that he gets his satisfactions, and through

these codes that he is protected. He identifies himself, his own life,

with the social forms and ideals in which he lives, and repels any

attack upon them as he would an attack upon himself. The demands which

the existing institutions make upon him are not felt as the coercions

of a despot, but as expressions of his own will, and requiring loyalty

as such. The conventional conscience, if it does not grow into this,

tends to become slavish, while an intelligence which practically

realizes, although without continual reflection, the _significance_ of

conventional morality is _free_ in its convictions and service.

3. _The Independent or Reflective Conscience._ The intelligence may

not simply appropriate, as its own, conventions embodied in current

institutions and codes, but may _reflect_ upon them. It may ask: What

is this institution of family, property for? Does the institution

in its present form work as it should work, or is some modification

required? Does this rule which is now current embody the true needs of

the situation, or is it an antiquated expression of by-gone relations?

What is the true spirit of existing institutions, and what sort of

conduct does this spirit demand?

Here, in a word, we have the same relation to the ethical world, that

we have in physical science to the external world. Intelligence is not

content, on its theoretical side, with having facts impressed upon

it by direct contact or through language; it is not content with

coming to feel for itself the value of the truths so impressed. It

assumes an independent attitude, putting itself over against nature and

cross-questioning her. It proposes its own ideas, its own theories and

hypotheses, and manipulates facts to see if this rational meaning can

be verified. It criticises what passes as truth, and pushes on to more

adequate statement.

The correlative attempt, on the part of intelligence on its practical

side, may have a larger or a smaller scope. In its wider course

it aims to criticise and to re-form prevailing social ideals and

institutions--even those apparently most fixed. This is the work of

the great moral teachers of the world. But in order that conscience be

critical, it is not necessary that its range be so wide. The average

member of a civilized community is nowadays called upon to reflect

upon his immediate relationships in life, to see if they are what

they should be; to regulate his own conduct by rules which he follows

not simply because they are customary, but the result of his own

examination of the situation. There is no difference in kind between

the grander and the minuter work. And it is only the constant exercise

of reflective examination on the smaller scale which makes possible,

and which gives efficiency to, the deeper criticism and transformation.

LX.

Reflective Conscience and the Ethical World.

This conception of conscience as critical and reflective is one of the

chief fruits of the Socratic ethics, fructified by the new meaning

given life through the Christian spirit. It involves the 'right of

free conscience'--the right of the individual to know the good, to

know the end of action, for himself, rather than to have some good,

however imposing and however beneficent, enjoined from without. It

is this principle of subjective freedom, says Hegel, which marks the

turning-point in the distinction of modern from ancient times (Sec.

124, _Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts_, Vol. VIII of Hegel's

Works).[2]

[2] I hardly need say how largely I am indebted in the

treatment of this topic, and indeed, in the whole matter of

the 'ethical world', to Hegel.

But this notion of conscience is misinterpreted when the content as

well as the form of conscience is thought to be individual. There is

no right of private judgment, in the sense that there is not a public

source and standard of judgment. What is meant by this right is that

the standard, the source, is not the opinion of some other person,

or group of persons. It is a common, objective standard. It is that

embodied in social relationships themselves.

The conception of conscience as a private possession, to be exercised

by each one in independence of historical forms and contemporary

ideals, is thoroughly misleading. The saying "I had to follow my

own notion of what is right" has been made the excuse for all sorts

of capricious, obstinate and sentimental performance. It is of such

notions that Hegel further says: "The striving for a morality of one's

own is futile, and by its very nature impossible of attainment; in

respect of morality the saying of the wisest men of antiquity is the

only true one: To be moral is to live in accordance with the moral

tradition of one's country" (Hegel, Works, Vol. I, p. 389). And in

discussing the same question, Bradley has said that the wish to have

a morality of one's own better than that of the world is to be on the

threshold of morality (p. 180).

Yet, on the other hand, conscience should not simply repeat the

burden of existing usages and opinions. No one can claim that the

existing morality embodies the highest possible conception of personal

relations. A morality which does not recognize both the possibility

and the necessity of advance is immorality. Where then is the way out

from a capricious self-conceit, on one hand, and a dead conformity

on the other? Reflective conscience must be _based_ on the moral

consciousness expressed in existing institutions, manners and beliefs.

Otherwise it is empty and arbitrary. But the existing moral status is

never wholly self-consistent. It realizes ideals in one relation which

it does not in another; it gives rights to 'aristocrats' which it

denies to low-born; to men, which it refuses to women; it exempts the

rich from obligations which it imposes upon the poor. Its institutions

embody a common good which turns out to be good only to a privileged

few, and thus existing in self-contradiction. They suggest ends which

they execute only feebly or intermittently. Reflective intelligence

cross-questions the existing morality; and extracts from it the

ideal which it pretends to embody, and thus is able to criticise the

existing morality in the light of its _own_ ideal. It points out the

inconsistencies, the incoherencies, the compromises, the failures,

between the actual practice and the theory at the basis of this

practice. And thus the new ideal proposed by the individual is not

a product of his private opinions, but is the outcome of the ideal

embodied in existing customs, ideas and institutions.

LXI.

The Sense of Obligation.

There has been much discussion regarding the nature of the act of mind

by which obligation is recognized. A not uncommon view has been that

the sense of duty as such must be the work of a peculiar faculty of

the mind. Admitting that the recognition of this or that particular

thing as right or wrong, is the work of ordinary intelligence, it is

held that the additional recognition of the absolute obligatoriness of

the right cannot be the work of this intelligence. For our intellect is

confined to judging what is or has been; the conception of obligation,

of something which should be, wholly transcends its scope. There is,

therefore, some special moral in faculty called which affixes to the

ordinary judgments the stamp of the categorical imperative "You ought".

See for example Maurice on "Conscience". The view is

traceable historically to Kant's conception of Practical

Reason, but as the view is ordinarily advanced the function

of Practical Reason in Kant's philosophy is overlooked. The

Practical Reason is no special faculty of man's being; it

is his consciousness of himself as an acting being; that

is, as a being capable of acting from ideas. Kant never

separates the consciousness of duty from the very nature

of will as the realization of conceptions. In the average

modern presentation, this intrinsic connection of duty with

activity is absent. Conscience becomes a faculty whose

function it is to clap the idea of duty upon the existent

conception of an act; and this existent conception is

regarded as morally indifferent.

It is true that Kant's Practical Reason has a certain

separateness or isolation. But this is because of his

general separation of the rational from the sensuous

factor, and not because of any separation of the

consciousness of action from the consciousness of duty. If

Kant erred in his divorce of desire and duty, then even the

relative apartness of the Practical Reason must be given

up. The consciousness of obligation is involved in the

recognition of _any_ end of conduct, and not simply in the

end of abstract law.

Such a conception of conscience, however, is open to serious

objections. Aside from the fact that large numbers of men declare

that no amount of introspection reveals any such machinery within

themselves, this separate faculty seems quite superfluous. The real

distinction is not between the consciousness of an action with, and

without, the recognition of duty, but between a consciousness which is

and one which is not capable of conduct. Any being who is capable of

putting before himself ideas as motives of conduct, who is capable of

forming a conception of something which he would realize, is, by that

very fact, capable of a sense of obligation. The consciousness of an

end to be realized, the idea of something to be done, is, in and of

itself, the consciousness of duty.

Let us consider again the horse-car conductor (see Sec. LVI). After he

has analyzed the situation which faces him and decided that a given

course of conduct is the one which fits the situation, does he require

some additional faculty to inform him that this course is the one

which should be followed? The analysis of practical ideas, that is, of

proposed ends of conduct, is from the first an analysis of what should

be done. Such being the case, it is no marvel that the conclusion of

the reflection is: "This should (ought to) be done."

Indeed, just as every judgment about existent fact naturally takes the

form 'S _is_ P', so every judgment regarding an activity which executes

an idea takes the form, 'S ought (or ought not) to be P'. It requires

no additional faculty of mind, after intelligence has been studying

the motions of the moon, to insert itself, and affirm some objective

relation or truth--as that the moon's motions are explainable by the

law of gravitation. It is the very essence of theoretical judgment,

judgment regarding fact, to state truth--what is. And it is the very

essence of practical judgment, judgment regarding deeds, to state that

active relation which we call obligation, what _ought to be_.

The judgment as to what a practical situation _is_, is an untrue or

abstract judgment.

The practical situation is itself an _activity_; the needs, powers, and

circumstances which make it are moving on. At no instant in time is

the scene quiescent. But the agent, in order to determine his course

of action in view of this situation, has to _fix_ it; he has to arrest

its onward movement in order to tell what it is. So his abstracting

intellect cuts a cross-section through its on-going, and says 'This

_is_ the situation'. Now the judgment 'This ought to be the situation',

or 'in view of the situation, my conduct ought to be thus and so', is

simply restoring the movement which the mind has temporarily put out

of sight. By means of its cross-section, intelligence has detected the

principle, or law of movement, of the situation, and it is on the basis

of this movement that conscience declares what ought to be.

Just as the fact of moral law, or of authority, of the incumbency of

duty, needs for its explanation no separation of the 'is' from the

'ought' (see LVI), but only recognition of the law of the 'is' which

is, perforce, a law of movement, and of change;--so the consciousness

of law, 'the sense of obligation' requires no special mental faculty

which may declare what ought to be. The intelligence that is capable

of declaring truth, or what is, is capable also of making known

obligation. For obligation is only _practical_ truth, the 'is' of doing.

See upon this point, as well as upon the relation of laws

and rules to action, my article in Vol. I, No. 2, of the

International Journal of Ethics, entitled 'Moral Theory and

Practice'.

LXII.

Conscience as Emotional Disposition.

Probably no judgment is entire-free from emotional coloring and

accompaniments. It is doubtful whether the most indifferent judgment

is not based upon, and does not appeal to, some interest. Certainly

all the more important judgments awaken some response from the self,

and excite its interests to their depths. Some of them may be excited

by the intrinsic nature of the subject-matter under judgment, while

others are the results of associations more or less accidental.

The former will necessarily be aroused in every being, who has any

emotional nature at all, whenever the judgment is made, while the

latter will vary from time to time, and may entirely pass away. That

moral judgments, judgments of what should be (or should have been)

done, arouse emotional response, is therefore no cause for surprise. It

may help clear up difficulties if we distinguish three kinds of such

emotional accompaniment.

1. There are, first, the interests belonging to the sense of obligation

as such. We have just seen that this sense of obligation is nothing

separate from the consciousness of the particular act which is to

be performed. Nevertheless the consciousness of obligation, of an

authority and law, recurs with every act, while the special content of

the act constantly varies. Thus an idea of law, or of duty in general,

is formed, distinct from any special duty. Being formed, it arouses the

special emotional excitation appropriate to it. The formation of this

general idea of duty, and the growth of feeling of duty as such, is

helped on through the fact that children (and adults so far as their

moral life is immature) need to have their moral judgments constantly

reinforced by recurrence to the thought of law. That is to say, a

child, who is not capable of seeing the true moral bearings and claims

of an act, is yet continually required to perform such an act on the

ground that it is obligatory. The feeling, therefore, is natural and

legitimate. It must, however, go hand in hand with the feelings aroused

by the special moral relations under consideration. Disconnected from

such union, it necessarily leads to slavish and arbitrary forms of

conduct. A child, for example, who is constantly taught to perform acts

simply because he _ought_ to do so, without having at the same time

his intelligence directed to the nature of the act which is obligatory

(without, that is, being led to see how or why it is obligatory), may

have a strongly developed sense of obligation. As he grows up, however,

this sense of duty will be largely one of dread and apprehension; a

feeling of constraint, rather than of free service. Besides this, it

will be largely a matter of accident to what act this feeling attaches

itself. Anything that comes to the mind with the force of associations

of past education, any ideal that forces itself persistently into

consciousness from any source may awaken this sense of obligation,

wholly irrespective of the true nature of the act. This is the

explanation of strongly 'conscientious' persons, whose morality is yet

unintelligent and blundering. It is of such persons that it has been

said that a thoroughly _good_ man can do more harm than a number of bad

men.

When, however, the feeling of obligation in general is developed along

with particular moral judgments (that is, along with the habit of

considering the special nature of acts performed), it is one of the

strongest supports to morality. Acts constantly need to be performed

which are recognized as right and as obligatory, and yet with reference

to which there is no fixed habit of conduct. In these cases, the more

direct, or spontaneous, stimulus to action is wanting.

If, however, there is a strong sense of obligation in general, this may

attach itself to the particular act and thus afford the needed impetus.

In unusual experiences, and in cases where the ordinary motive-forces

are lacking, such a feeling of regard for law may be the only sure stay

of right conduct.

2. There is the emotional accompaniment appropriate to the special

content of the act. If, for example, the required act has to do with

some person, there arise in consciousness the feelings of interest, of

love and friendship, or of dislike, which belong to that person. If it

relate to some piece of work to be done, the sweeping of a room, the

taking of a journey, the painting of a picture, there are the interests

natural to such subjects. These feelings when aroused necessarily form

part of the emotional attitude as respects the act. It is the strength

and normal welling-up of such specific interests which afford the best

assurance of healthy and progressive moral conduct, as distinct from

mere sentimental dwelling upon ideals. Only interests prevent the

divorce of feelings and ideas from habits of action. Such interests are

the union of the subjective element, the self, and the objective, the

special relations to be realized (Sec. XXXIV), and thus necessarily

produce a right and healthy attitude towards moral ends. It is obvious

that in a normal moral life, the law of obligation in general, and the

specific interests in particular cases, should more and more fuse. The

interests, at their strongest, take the form of _love_. And thus there

is realized the ideal of an effective character; the union of law and

inclination in its pure form--love for the action in and of itself.

3. Emotions due to accidental associations. It is matter of common

notice that the moral feelings are rarely wholly pure; that all sorts

of sentiments, due to associations of time and place and person not

strictly belonging to the acts themselves, cluster about them. While

this is true, we should not forget the great difficulty there is in

marking off any associations as _wholly_ external to the nature of

the act. We may say that mere fear of punishment is such a wholly

external feeling, having no place in moral emotion. Yet it may be

doubted whether there is any feeling that may be called mere fear

of punishment. It is, perhaps, fear of punishment by a parent, for

whom one has love and respect, and thus the fear has partially a

genuinely moral aspect. Some writers would call the æsthetic feelings,

the feelings of beauty, of harmony, which gather about moral ends

adventitious. Yet the fact that other moralists have made all moral

feelings essentially æsthetic, as due to the perception of the fitness

and proportion of the acts, should warn us from regarding æsthetic

feelings as wholly external. About all that can be said is that

feelings which do not spring from _some_ aspect of the content of the

act itself should be extruded, with growing maturity of character, from

influence upon conduct.

LXIII.

Conscientiousness.

Conscientiousness is primarily the virtue of intelligence in regard

to conduct. That is to say, it is the formed habit of bringing

intelligence to bear upon the analysis of moral relations--the habit of

considering what ought to be done. It is based upon the recognition of

the idea first distinctly formulated by Socrates--that "an unexamined

life is not one that should be led by man". It is the outgrowth of the

customary morality embodied in usages, codes and social institutions,

but it is an advance upon custom, because it requires a meaning and

a reason. It is the mark of a "character which will not be satisfied

without understanding the law that it obeys; without knowing what

the good is, for which the demand has hitherto been blindly at work"

(Green, Op. cit., p. 270). Conscientiousness, then, is reflective

intelligence grown into character. It involves a greater and wider

recognition of obligation in general, and a larger and more stable

emotional response to everything that presents itself as duty; as well

as the habit of deliberate consideration of the moral situation and of

the acts demanded by it.

Conscientiousness is an analysis of the conditions under which conduct

takes place, and of the action that will meet these conditions;

it is a thoroughly _objective_ analysis. What is sometimes termed

conscientiousness is merely the habit of analyzing internal moods

and sentiments; of prying into 'motives' in that sense of motive

which identifies it not with the end of action, but with some

subjective state of emotion. Thus considered, conscientiousness is

morbid. We are sometimes warned against _over_-conscientiousness.

But such conscientiousness means simply over-regard of one's private

self; keeping an eye upon the effect of conduct on one's internal

state, rather than upon conduct itself. Over-conscientiousness is as

impossible as over-intelligence, since it is simply the application

of intelligence to conduct. It is as little morbid and introspective

as is the analysis of any fact in nature. Another notion which is

sometimes thought to be bound up with that of conscience, also has

nothing to do with it; namely, the notion of a precision and coldness

opposed to all large spontaneity and broad sympathy in conduct. The

reflective man of narrow insight and cramped conduct is often called

the conscientious man and opposed to the man of generous impulses. This

comes from identifying conscience with a ready-made code of rules, and

its action with the application of some such fixed code to all acts

as they come up. It is evident, on the contrary, that such a habit is

opposed to conscience. Conscience means the consideration of each case

_in itself_; measuring it not by any outside code, but in the existing

moral situation.

On conscientiousness, see Green, Op. cit., pp. 269-271

and 323-327; and Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 156-160. These

writers, however, seem to identify it too much with

internal scrutiny. Green, for example, expressly identifies

conscientiousness with a man's "questioning about himself,

whether he has been as good as he should have been, whether

a better man would not have acted otherwise than he has

done" (p. 323). He again speaks of it as "comparison of

our own practice, as we know it on the inner side in

relation to the motives and character which it expresses,

with an ideal of virtue". The first definition seems to be

misleading. Questioning as to whether the end adopted was

what it should have been, _i. e._, whether the analysis

of the situation was correctly performed, may be of great

service in aiding future decisions, but questioning

regarding the purity of one's own 'motive' does not seem of

much avail. In a man upon the whole good, such questioning

is apt to be paralyzing. The energy that should go to

conduct goes to anxiety about one's conduct. It is the view

of goodness as directed mainly towards one's own private

motives, which has led such writers as Henry James, Sr.,

and Mr. Hinton, to conceive of 'morality', the struggle

for goodness, to be in essence bad. They conceived of

the struggle for 'private goodness' as no different from

the struggle for private pleasure, although likely, of

course, to lead to better things. Nor in a bad man is such

scrutiny of 'motive', as apart from objective end, of much

value. The bad man is generally aware of the badness of

his motive without much close examination. The truth aimed

at by Green is, I think, amply covered by recognizing that

conscientiousness as a constant will to know what should

be, and to readjust conduct to meet the new insight, is the

spring of the moral life.

LXIV.

Moral Commands, Rules and Systems.

What is the part played by specific commands and by general rules

in the examination of conduct by conscience? We should note, in the

first place, that commands are not rules, and rules are not commands.

A command, to be a command, must be specific and individual. It must

refer to time, place and circumstance. 'Thou shalt do no murder' is

not strictly speaking a command, for it allows questioning as to what

is murder. Is killing in war murder? Is the hanging of criminals

murder? Is taking life in self-defense murder? Regarded simply as a

command, this command would be 'void for uncertainty'. A true command

is a specific injunction of one person to another to do or not to do

a stated thing or things. Under what conditions do commands play a

part in moral conduct? In cases where the intelligence of the agent is

so undeveloped that he cannot realize for himself the situation and

see the act required, and when a part of the agent's environment is

constituted by others who have such required knowledge, there _is_ a

moral element in command and in obedience.

This explains the moral responsibility of parents to children and of

children to parents. The soldier, too, in recognizing a general's

command, is recognizing the situation as it exists for him. Were there

simply superior force on one side, and fear on the other, the relation

would be an immoral one. It is implied, of course, in such an instance

as the parents' command, that it be so directed as to enable the child

more and more to dispense with it--that is, that it be of such a

character as to give the child insight into the situation for himself.

Here is the transition from a command to a rule.

A rule does not tell what to do or what to leave undone. The Golden

Rule, for example, does not tell me how to act in any specific case. _A

rule is a tool of analysis._ The moral situation, or capacity in its

relation to environment, is often an extremely complicated affair. How

shall the individual resolve it? How shall he pick it to pieces, so as

to see its real nature and the act demanded by it? It is evident that

the analysis will be the more truly and speedily performed if the agent

has a method by which to attack it, certain principles in the light of

which he may view it, instruments for cross-questioning it and making

it render up its meaning. Moral rules perform this service. While the

Golden Rule does not of itself give one jot of information as to what I

should do in a given case, it does, if accepted, immensely simplify the

situation. Without it I should perhaps have to act blindly; with it the

question comes to this: What should I, under the given circumstances,

like to have done to me? This settled, the whole question of what

should be done is settled.

It is obvious, then, that the value of a moral rule depends upon

its potency in revealing the inner spirit and reality of individual

deeds. Rules in the negative form, rules whose application is limited

in scope because of an attempt to be specific, are midway between

commands proper and rules. The Golden Rule, on the other hand, is

positive, and not attempting to define any specific act, covers in

its range all relations of man to man. It is indeed only a concrete

and forcible statement of the ethical principle itself, the idea of a

common good, or of a community of persons. This is also a convenient

place for considering the practical value of ethical systems. We have

already seen that no system can attempt to tell what in particular

should be done. The principle of a system, however, may be of some aid

in analyzing a specific case. In this way, a system may be regarded

as a highly generalized rule. It attempts to state some fundamental

principle which lies at the basis of moral conduct. So far as it

succeeds in doing this, there is the possibility of its practical

application in particular cases, although, of course, the mediate rules

must continue to be the working tools of mankind--on account of their

decided concrete character, and because they have themselves taken

shape under the pressure of practice rather than of more theoretical

needs.

LXV.

Development of Moral Ideals.

Thus far we have been speaking of conscience mainly as to its method of

working. We have now to speak more definitely of its content, or of the

development of ideals of action.

It is of the very nature of moral conduct to be progressive. Permanence

of _specific_ ideals means moral death. We say that truth-telling,

charity, loyalty, temperance, have always been moral ends and while

this is true, the statement as ordinarily made is apt to hide from us

the fact that the content of the various ideals (what is _meant_ by

temperance, etc.) has been constantly changing, and this of necessity.

The realization of moral ends must bring about a changed situation,

so that the repetition of the same ends would no longer satisfy. This

progress has two sides: the satisfaction of wants leads to a larger

view of what satisfaction really is, _i. e._, to the creation of new

capacities and wants; while adjustment to the environment creates wider

and more complex social relationships.

Let the act be one of intelligence. Some new fact or law is discovered.

On one hand, this discovery may arouse a hitherto comparatively

dormant mind; it may suggest the possession of capacities previously

latent; it may stimulate mental activity and create a thirst for

expanding knowledge. This readjustment of intellectual needs and

powers may be comparatively slight, or it may amount, as it has with

many a young person, to a revolution. On the other hand, the new

fact changes the intellectual outlook, the mental horizon, and, by

transforming somewhat the relations of things, demands new conduct.

All this, even when the growth of knowledge concerns only the physical

world. But development of insight into social needs and affairs has a

larger and more direct progressive influence. The social world exists

spiritually, as conceived, and a new conception of it, new perception

of its scope and bearings, is, perforce, a change of that world. And

thus it is with the satisfaction of the human want of knowledge, that

patience, courage, self-respect, humility, benevolence, all change

character. When, for example, psychology has given an increase of

knowledge regarding men's motives, political economy an increase of

knowledge regarding men's wants, when historical knowledge has added

its testimony regarding the effects of indiscriminate giving, charity

must change its content. While once, the mere supplying of food or

money by one to another may have been right as meeting the recognized

relations, charity now comes to mean large responsibility in knowledge

of antecedents and circumstances, need of organization, careful tracing

of consequences, and, above all, effort to remove the conditions which

made the want possible. The activity involved has infinitely widened.

Let the act be in the region of industrial life--a new invention. The

invention of the telephone does not simply satisfy an old want--it

creates new. It brings about the possibility of closer social

relations, extends the distribution of intelligence, facilitates

commerce. It is a common saying that the luxury of one generation

is the necessity of the next; that is to say, what once satisfied a

somewhat remote need becomes in time the basis upon which new needs

grow up. Energy previously pent up is set free, new power and ideals

are evoked. Consider again a person assuming a family relation. This

seems, at first, to consist mainly in the satisfaction of certain

common and obvious human wants. But this satisfaction, if moral,

turns out rather to be the creation of new insight into life, of new

relationships, and thus of new energies and ideals. We may generalize

these instances. The secret of the moral life is not getting or having,

it is doing and thus being. The getting and the possessing side of life

has a moral value only when it is made the stimulus and nutriment of

new and wider acting. To solve the equation between getting and doing

is the moral problem of life. Let the possession be acquiesced in for

its own sake, and not as the way to freer (and thus more moral) action,

and the selfish life has set in (see Sec. LXVII). It is essential to

moral activity that it feed itself into larger appetites and thus into

larger life.

This must not be taken to deny that there is a mechanical

side even to the moral life. A merchant, for example, may

do the same thing over and over again, like going to his

business every morning at the same hour. This is a moral

act and yet it does not seem to lead to a change in moral

wants or surroundings. Yet even in such cases it should

be noted that it is only outwardly that the act is the

_same_. In itself, that is, in its relation to the will

of the agent, it is simply one element in the whole of

character; and as character opens up, the act must change

somewhat also. It is performed somehow in a new spirit. If

this is not to some extent true, if such acts become wholly

mechanical, the moral life is hardening into the rigidity

of death.

This progressive development consists on one side in a richer and

subtler individual activity, in increased individualization, in wider

and freer functions of life; on the other it consists in increase in

number of those persons whose ideal is a 'common good', or who have

membership in the same moral community; and, further, it consists in

more complex relations between them. It is both intensive and extensive.

History is one record of growth in the sense of specific powers.

Its track is marked by the appearance of more and more internal and

distinguishing traits; of new divisions of labor and corresponding

freedom in functioning. It begins with groups in which everything

is massed, and the good is common only in the sense of being

undifferentiated for all. It progresses with the evolution of

individuality, of the peculiar gifts entrusted to each, and hence of

the specific service demanded of each.

The other side, the enlargement of the community of ends, has been

termed growth in "comprehensiveness". History is again a record of

the widening of the social consciousness--of the range of persons

whose interests have to be taken into account in action. There has

been a period in which the community was nothing more than a man's

own immediate family group, this enlarging to the clan, the city,

the social class, the nation; until now, in theory, the community of

interests and ends is humanity itself.

This growth in comprehensiveness is not simply a growth in the number

of persons having a common end. The quantitative growth reacts upon

the _nature_ of the ends themselves. For example, when the conceived

community is small, bravery may consist mainly in willingness to fight

for the recognized community against other hostile groups. As these

groups become themselves included in the moral community, courage must

change its form, and become resoluteness and integrity of purpose in

defending manhood and humanity as such. That is to say, as long as

the community is based largely upon physical facts, like oneness of

blood, of territory, etc., the ideal of courage will have a somewhat

external and physical manifestation. Let the community be truly

spiritual, consisting in recognition of unity of destiny and function

in coöperation toward an all-inclusive life, and the ideal of courage

becomes more internal and spiritual, consisting in loyalty to the

possibilities of humanity, whenever and wherever found.

On this development of moral ideals, and especially of

the growth in "comprehensiveness" as reacting upon the

intrinsic form which the ideal itself takes, see Green, Op.

cit., pp. 264-308, followed by Alexander, Op. cit., pp.

384-398. For the process of change of ideals in general,

see Alexander, pp. 271-292, and 369-371.

CHAPTER II.--THE MORAL STRUGGLE OR THE REALIZING OF IDEALS.

LXVI.

Goodness as a Struggle.

We have already seen that the bare repetition of identically the

same acts does not consist with morality. To aim at securing a

satisfaction precisely like the one already experienced, is to fail

to recognize the altered capacity and environment, and the altered

duty. Moral satisfaction prior to an act is _ideal_; ideal not simply

in the sense of being conceived, or present to thought, but ideal in

the sense that it has not been already enjoyed. Some satisfaction has

been enjoyed in a previous activity, but that very satisfaction has

so enlarged and complicated the situation, that its mere repetition

would not afford moral or active satisfaction, but only what Kant

terms 'pathological' satisfaction. Morality thus assumes the form of a

struggle. The past satisfaction speaks for itself; it has been verified

in experience, it has conveyed its worth to our very senses. We have

tried and tasted it, and know that it is good. If morality lay in the

repetition of similar satisfactions, it would not be a struggle. We

should know experimentally before hand that the chosen end would bring

us satisfaction, and should be at rest in that knowledge. But when

morality lies in striving for satisfactions which have not verified

themselves to our sense, it always requires an effort. We have to

surrender the enjoyed good, and stake ourselves upon that of which we

cannot say: We _know_ it is good. To surrender the actual experienced

good for a possible ideal good is the struggle.

We arrive, in what is termed the opposition of desire and duty, at the

heart of the moral struggle. Of course, taken strictly, there can be

no opposition here. The duty which did not awaken _any_ desire would

not appeal to the mind even as a duty. But we may distinguish between

a desire which is based on past satisfaction actually experienced, and

desire based simply upon the idea that the end is _desirable_--that it

ought to be desired. It may seem strange to speak of a desire based

simply upon the recognition that an end _should_ be desired, but the

possibility of awakening such a desire and the degree of its strength

are the test of a moral character. How far does this end awaken

response in me because I see that it is the end which is fit and due?

How far does it awaken this response although it does not fall into

line with past satisfactions, or although it actually thwart some

habitual satisfaction? Here is the opposition of duty and desire. It

lies in the contrast of a good which has demonstrated itself as such

in experience, and a good whose claim to be good rests only on the

fact that it is the act which meets the situation. It is the contrast

between a good of possession, and one of action.

From this point of view morality is a life of _aspiration_, and of

_faith_; there is required constant willingness to give up past

goods as the good, and to press on to new ends; not because past

achievements are bad, but because, being good, they have created

a situation which demands larger and more intricately related

achievements. This willingness is aspiration and it implies _faith_.

Only the old good is of sight, has verified itself to sense. The new

ideal, the end which meets the situation, is felt as good only in so

far as the character has formed the conviction that to meet obligation

is itself a good, whether bringing sensible satisfaction or not. You

can prove to a man that he ought to act so and so (that is to say,

that such an act is the one which fits the present occasion), but you

cannot _prove_ to him that the performance of that duty will be good.

Only faith in the moral order, in the identity of duty and the good,

can assert this. Every time an agent takes as his end (that is, chooses

as good) an activity which he has not already tried, he asserts his

belief in the goodness of right action as such. This faith is not a

mere intellectual thing, but it is practical--the staking of self upon

activity as against passive possession.

LXVII.

Moral Badness.

Badness originates in the contrast which thus comes about between

_having_ the repetition of former action, and _doing_--pressing

forward to the new right action. Goodness is the choice of doing; the

refusal to be content with past good as exhausting the entire content

of goodness. It is, says Green, 'in the continued effort to be better

that goodness consists'. The man, however bad his past and however

limited his range of intellectual, æsthetic and social activity, who

is dissatisfied with his past, and whose dissatisfaction manifests

itself in act, is accounted better than the man of a respectable past

and higher plane of life who has lapsed into contented acquiescence

with past deeds. For past deeds are not _deeds_, they are passive

enjoyments. The bad man, on the other hand, is not the man who loves

badness _in and for itself_. Such a man would be a mad man or a

devil. All conduct, bad as well as good, is for the sake of _some_

satisfaction, that is, some good. In the bad man, the satisfaction

which is aimed at is _simply_ the one congruent with existing

inclinations, irrespective of the sufficiency of those inclinations in

view of the changed capacity and environment: it is a good of _having_.

The bad man, that is to say, does not recognize any _ideal_ or _active_

good; any good which has not already commended itself to him as such.

This good may be good in _itself_; but, as distinguished from the good

which requires action, that which would fulfill the present capacity or

meet the present situation, it is bad.

Thus Alexander terms badness _a survival_, in part at

least, of former goodness. Hinton says (Philosophy and

Religion, p. 146), "That a thing is wrong does not mean

that it ought never to have been done or thought, but that

it ought to be left off". It will be noted that we are not

dealing with the metaphysical or the religious problem of

the nature and origin of evil, but simply with an account

of bad action as it appears in individual conduct.

Badness has four traits, all derivable from this basal fact. They are:

(1) Lawlessness, (2) Selfishness, (3) Baseness, (4) Demoralization.

1. _Lawlessness._ When desire and duty, that is, when desires based on

past having and on future acting, conflict, the bad man lets duty go.

He virtually denies that it is a good at all--it may be a good in the

abstract but not a good for him. He denies that obligation as such has

any value; that any end is to be consulted save his own state of mind.

He denies that there is law for conduct--at least any law beyond the

inclination which he happens to have at the time of action. Keeping

himself within that which has verified itself to his feeling in the

past, he abrogates all authority excepting that of his own immediate

feelings.

2. _Selfishness._ It has already been shown that the self is not

necessarily immoral, and hence that action for self is not necessarily

bad--indeed, that the true self is social and interest in it right (see

Sec. XXXV). But when a satisfaction based on past experience is set

against one proceeding from an act as meeting obligation, there grows

up a divorce in the self. The actual self, the self recognizing only

past and sensible satisfaction, is set over against the self which

recognizes the necessity of expansion and a wider environment. Since

the former self confines its action to benefits demonstrably accruing

to itself, while the latter, in meeting the demands of the situation,

necessarily contributes to the satisfaction of others, one takes the

form of a _private_ self, a self whose good is set over against and

exclusive of that of others, while the self recognizing obligation

becomes a social self--the self which performs its due function in

society. It is, again, the contrast between getting and doing.

All moral action is based upon the presupposition of the identity

of good (Sec. XL), but it by no means follows that this identity of

good can be demonstrated to the agent at the time of action. On the

contrary, it is matter of the commonest experience that the sensible

good, the demonstrable good (that is, the one visible on the line of

past satisfaction) may be contradictory to the act which would satisfy

the interests of others. The identity of interests can be proved _only

by acting upon it_; to the agent, prior to action, it is a matter of

faith. Choice presents itself then in these cases as a test: Do you

believe that the Good is simply your private good, or is the true Good,

is _your_ good, one which includes the good of others? The condemnation

passed upon the 'selfish' man is that he virtually declares that good

is essentially exclusive and private. He shuts himself up within

himself, within, that is, his past achievements, and the inclinations

based upon them. The good man goes out of himself in new action. Bad

action is thus essentially narrowing, it confines the self; good action

is expansive and vital, it moves on to a larger self.

In fine, all conduct, good and bad, satisfies the self; bad conduct,

however, aims at a self which, keeping its eye upon its private and

assured satisfaction, refuses to recognize the increasing function with

its larger social range,--the 'selfish' self.

Light is thrown upon this point by referring to what was said about

interest (Sec. XXXIV). Interest is _active_ feeling, feeling turned

upon an object, and going out toward it so as to identify it with self.

In this active and objective interest there is satisfaction, but the

satisfaction is _in_ the activity which has the object for its content.

This is the satisfaction of the good self. In the bad self, interest is

reduced to mere feeling; for the aim of life in such a self is simply

to have certain feelings as its own possession; activity and its object

are degraded into mere means for getting these sensations.

Activity has two sides; as activity, as projection or expression of

one's powers, it satisfies self; as activity, also, it has some end,

some object, for its content. The activity as such, therefore, the

activity for its own sake, must involve the realization of this object

for its own sake. But in having, in getting, there is no such creation

or maintenance of an object for itself. Objects cease to be 'ends

in themselves' when they cease to be the content of action; and are

degraded into means of private satisfaction, that is, of sensation.

3. _Baseness._ For, when we say that bad action takes account of

ideals only on the basis of possession, we say, in effect, that

it takes account only of _sensible_ satisfaction. As it is in the

progressive movement of morality that there arises the distinction of

the law-abiding and the lawless self, of the social and the selfish

self, so in the same aspect there comes into existence the distinction

of the low, degraded, sensual self, as against the higher or spiritual

self. In themselves, or naturally, there is no desire high, none low.

But when an inclination for an end which consists in possession comes

into conflict with one which includes an active satisfaction--one not

previously enjoyed--the contrast arises. It is wrong to say, with Kant,

that the bad act is simply for pleasure; for the bad act, the choice

of a past satisfaction as against the aspiration for a wider good,

may have a large content--it may be the good of one's family; it may

be scientific or æsthetic culture. Yet the moment a man begins to live

on the plane of past satisfaction as such, he has begun to live on the

plane of 'sense', or for pleasure. The refusal to recognize the ideal

good, to acknowledge activity as good, throws the agent back into a

life of dwelling upon his own sensible good, and thus he falls more and

more into a life of dwelling upon mere sensations. What made the past

good a good at all was the spirit, the activity, in it, and when it is

no longer an activity, but a mere keeping, the life is gone out of it.

The selfish life must degenerate into mere sensuality--although when

sensuality is 'refined' we call it sentimentality.

4. _Demoralization._ Morality is activity; exercise of function.

To cease this activity is not to remain on the attained level, for

that, _when attained_, was active. It is to relapse, to slip down

into badness. The moral end is always an activity. To fail in this

activity is, therefore, to involve character in disintegration. It can

be kept together only by constant organizing activity; only by acting

upon new wants and moving toward new situations. Let this activity

cease, and disorganization ensues, as surely as the body decays when

life goes, instead of simply remaining inert as it was. Bad conduct

is thus _unprincipled_; it has no center, no movement. The good man

is 'organic'; he uses his attainments to discover new needs, and to

assimilate new material. He lives from within outwards, his character

is compact, coherent; he has _integrity_. The bad man, having no

controlling unity, has no consistent line of action; his motives of

conduct contradict one another; he follows this maxim in relation to

this person, that in relation to another; character is _demoralized_.

The bad man is unstable and double-minded. He is not one person, but a

group of conflicting wills. So far as he is really bad he becomes as

many persons as he has desires. His conduct cannot be made universal.

He always makes exceptions in favor of himself. He does not want moral

relations abolished, but relaxed or deflected in his own case, while

they still hold for other men.

This is the truth at the basis of Kant's contention

regarding goodness as conduct whose maxim is capable of

generalization. See also Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 261-271.

And Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 309-312.

LXVIII.

Goodness in its Relation to the Struggle.

1. Two aspects of this we have already noted; one, that of

conscientiousness, or habitual alertness and responsiveness of

intelligence to the nature of obligation, both in general and as to

the specific acts which are obligatory. The other is that goodness,

in this relation, consists in _progressive_ adjustment, involving

aspiration as to future conduct, and correlative humility as to present

achievements of character.

2. We may state what has already been suggested, that goodness as

self-sacrifice or self-renunciation has also its place here. The moral

attitude is one of renunciation, because, on account of the constantly

growing wants and circumstances, the satisfactions which belong to

the actually realized self must be given up for active goods. That

the self-sacrifice takes largely the form of the surrender of private

interests to the welfare of the whole, is explained by what has just

been said regarding selfishness. Self-sacrifice is not in any way the

moral end or the last word. Life is lost that it may be found. The

smaller local life of the private self is given up in order that the

richer and fuller life of the social or active self may be realized.

But none the less the self-sacrifice at the time that it is made is

genuine and real. While it is involved in the very nature of morality

that moral conduct shall bring greater activity, larger life, the

motive of the agent in self-sacrifice is not to give up the lesser

satisfaction for the sake of getting a greater. It is only so far as

he is already moral that he is convinced that the new duty will bring

satisfaction, and his conviction is not one of sense, but of faith.

To the agent at the time of action, it is a real satisfaction which is

given up for one that is only ideal, and given up because the ideal

satisfaction is ethical, active--one congruent to duty, while the

actual satisfaction is only pathological; that is, congruent to the

actualized self--to the having, instead of the doing self.

3. Goodness is not remoteness from badness. In one sense, goodness is

based upon badness; that is, good action is always based upon action

good once, but bad if persisted in under changing circumstances. The

moral struggle thus presents itself as the conflict between this

"bad" and the good which would duly meet the existing situation. This

good, of course, does not involve the annihilation of the previously

attained good--the present bad--but its subordination; its use in the

new function. This is the explanation of the apparently paradoxical

statement that badness is the material of good action--a statement

literally correct when badness is understood as it is here. Evil is

simply that which goodness has to _overcome_--has to make an element of

itself.

Badness, as just spoken of, is only potential--the end is bad as

contrasted with the better. Badness may also, of course, be actual;

the bad end may be chosen, and adopted into character. Even in this

sense, goodness is not the absence of evil, or entire freedom from it.

Badness even on this basis is the material of goodness; it is to be put

under foot and made an element in good action. But how can actual evil

be made a factor of right conduct? In this way; the good man learns

from his own bad acts; he does not continue to repeat such acts, nor

does he, while recognizing their badness, simply endeavor to do right

without regard to the previous bad conduct. Perceiving the effect of

his own wrong acts, the change produced in his own capacities, and his

altered relations to other people, he acts so as to meet the situation

which his own bad act has helped to create. Conduct is then right,

although made what it is, to some degree, by previous wrong conduct.

In this connection, the introduction of Christianity made one of its

largest ethical contributions. It showed how it was possible for a man

to put his badness behind him and even make it an element in goodness.

Teaching that the world of social relations was itself an ethical

reality and a good (a redeemed world), it taught that the individual,

by identifying himself with the spirit of this ethical world, might be

freed from slavery to his past evil; that by recognizing and taking

for his own the evil in the world, instead of engaging in an isolated

struggle to become good by himself, he might make the evil a factor in

his own right action.

Moreover, by placing morality in activity and not in some thing, or in

conformity to an external law, Christianity changed the nature of the

struggle. While the old struggle had been an effort to get away from

evil to a good beyond, Christianity made the struggle itself a good.

It, then, was no longer the effort to escape to some fixed, unchanging

state; the constant onward movement was itself the goal. Virtue, as

Hegel says, is the battle, the struggle, carried to its full.

4. _The conception of merit._ This is, essentially, the idea of social

desert--the idea that an agent deserves well of others on account of

his act or his character. An action evokes two kinds of judgments:

first, that the act is right or virtuous, that it fulfills duty. This

judgment may be passed by any one; as well by the agent as by any one

else. It is simply the recognition of the moral character of the act.

But a right act may also awaken a conviction of desert; that the act is

one which furthers the needs of society, and thus is meritorious.

_This_ is _not_ a judgment which the agent can pass upon his own act.

Virtue and duty are strictly coextensive; no act can be so virtuous, so

right, as to go beyond meeting the demands of the situation. Everything

is a duty which needs to be done in a given situation; the doing of

what needs to be done is right or virtuous. While the agent may and

must approve of right action in himself, he cannot claim desert or

reward because of its virtuousness; he simply does what he should.

Others, however, may see that the act has been done in the face

of great temptation; after a hard struggle; that it denotes some

unusual qualification or executes some remarkable service. It is not

only right, but obligatory, for others to take due notice of these

qualities, of these deeds. Such notice is as requisite as it is to show

gratitude for generosity, or forgiveness to a repentant man.

Two errors are to be avoided here; both arising from the identification

of merit with virtue. One view holds that the virtue and merit consist

in doing something over and above duty. There is a minimum of action

which is obligatory; to perform this, since it is obligatory, is no

virtue. Anything above this is virtuous. The other view reverses this

and holds that since no man can do more than he ought, there is no

such thing as merit. Great excellence or heroism in one man is no

more meritorious than ordinary conduct in another; since the one man

is naturally more gifted than the other. But while one act is no more

right or virtuous than another, it may be more meritorious, because

contributing more to moral welfare or progress. To depreciate the

meritorious deed is a sign of a carping, a grudging or a mean spirit.

The respective relations of duty, virtue and merit have

been variously discussed. Different views will be found in

Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, Bk. III, ch. iv; Alexander,

Moral Order and Progress, pp. 187-195 and 242-247; Stephen,

Science of Ethics, pp. 293-303; Martineau, Types of Ethical

Theory, pp. 78-81; Laurie, Ethica, pp. 145-148.

CHAPTER III.--REALIZED MORALITY OR THE VIRTUES.

LXIX.

Goodness as Found in Character.

We have treated of the forming of moral ideals, and of the attempt

to realize them against the counter attractions of sensible desire.

We have now to treat these ideas as actual ends of conduct and thus

reacting upon the agent. The good character, considered in relation

to the moral _struggle_, is the one which chooses the right end,

which endeavors to be better. The good character _in itself_ is that

made by this choice. It is good for the self to choose a due end in

an effort caused by contrary allurements. But the very fact of the

struggle witnesses that morality is not yet the natural and spontaneous

manifestation of character. A _wholly_ good man would feel such

satisfaction in the contemplation of the ideal good that contrary

desires would not affect him. He would take pleasure only in the

right. Every accomplished moral deed tends to bring this about. Moral

realization brings satisfaction. The satisfaction becomes one with the

right act. Duty and desire grow into harmony. Interest and virtue tend

toward unity.

This is the truth aimed at, but not attained, by the hedonistic school.

In complete moral action, happiness and rightness know no divorce. And

this is true, even though the act, in some of its aspects, involves

pain. The act, so far as its quality of rightness is concerned, calls

forth unalloyed satisfaction, however bound up with pain to self and to

others in some respects. The error of hedonism is not in insisting that

right action is pleasurable, but in its failure to supply content to

the idea of happiness, in its failure to define what happiness is. In

the failure to show those active relations of man to nature and to man

involved in human satisfaction, it reduces happiness to the abstraction

of agreeable sensation.

A virtue then, in the full sense, that is as the expression of virtuous

character, and not of the struggle of character to be virtuous

against the allurements of passive goods, is an _interest_. The

system of virtues includes the various forms which interest assumes.

Truthfulness, for example, is interest in the media of human exchange;

generosity is interest in sharing any form of superior endowment with

others less rich by nature or training, etc. It is distinguished

from natural generosity, which may be mere impulse, by its being an

interest in the activity or social relation itself, instead of in some

accidental accompaniment of the relation.

Another way of getting at the nature of the virtues is to consider

them as forms of freedom. Positive freedom is the good, it is realized

activity, the full and unhindered performance of function. A virtue

is any one aspect which the free performance of function may take.

Meekness is one form of the adjustment of capacity to surroundings;

honesty another; indignation another; scientific excellence another,

and so on. In each of these virtues, the agent realizes his freedom:

Freedom from subjection to caprice and blind appetite, freedom in the

full play of activity.

LXX.

Two Kinds of Virtues.

We may recognize two types of virtuous action. These are:

1. _The Special Virtues._ These arise from special capacities or

special opportunities. The Greek sense of virtue was almost that of

"excellence", some special fitness or power of an agent. There is the

virtue of a painter, of a scientific investigator, of a philanthropist,

of a comedian, of a statesman, and so on. The special act may be

manifested in view of some special occasion, some special demand of

the environment--charity, thankfulness, patriotism, chastity, etc.

Goodness, as the realization of the moral end, is a system, and the

special virtues are the particular members of the system.

2. _Cardinal Virtues._ Besides these special members of a system,

however, the whole system itself may present various aspects. That

is to say, even in a special act the whole spirit of the man may be

called out, and this expression of the whole character is a cardinal

virtue. While the special virtues differ in content, as humility from

bravery, earnestness from compassion, the cardinal virtues have the

same content, showing only different sides of it. Conscientiousness,

for example, is a cardinal virtue. It does not have to do with an

act belonging to some particular capacity, or evoked by some special

circumstance, but with the spirit of the whole self as manifested in

the will to recognize duty--both its obligatoriness in general and the

concrete forms which it takes. Truthfulness as a special virtue would

be the desire to make word correspond to fact in some instance of

speech. As a cardinal virtue, it is the constant will to clarify and

render true to their ideal all human relations--those of man to man,

and man to nature.

LXXI.

The Cardinal Virtues.

The cardinal virtues are marked by

1. _Wholeness._ This or that virtue, not calling the whole character

into play, but only some special power, is partial. But a cardinal

virtue is not _a_ virtue, but the spirit in which all acts are

performed. It lies in the attitude which the agent takes towards duty;

his obedience to recognized forms, his readiness to respond to new

duties, his enthusiasm in moving forward to new relations. It is a

common remark that moral codes change from 'Do not' to 'Do', and from

this to 'Be'. A Mosaic code may attempt to regulate the specific acts

of life. Christianity says, 'Be ye perfect'. The effort to exhaust the

various special right acts is futile. They are not the same for any

two men, and they change constantly with the same man. The very words

which denote virtues come less and less to mean specific acts, and more

the spirit in which conduct occurs. Purity, for example, does not mean

freedom from certain limited outward forms of defilement; but comes

to signify rightness of natures as a whole, their freedom from all

self-seeking or exclusive desire for private pleasure, etc. Thus purity

of heart comes to mean perfect goodness.

2. _Disinterestedness._ Any act, to be virtuous, must of course be

disinterested, but we may now connect this disinterestedness with the

integral nature of moral action just spoken of. Immoral action never

takes account of the whole nature of an end; it deflects the end to

some ulterior purpose; it bends it to the private satisfaction of the

agent; it takes a part of it by making exceptions in favor of self. Bad

action is never 'objective'. It is 'abstract'; it takes into account

only such portion of the act as satisfies some existing need of the

private self. The immoral man shows his partial character again by

being full of casuistries, devices by which he can get the act removed

from its natural placing and considered in some other light:--this

act, for example, _would_ be dishonest, of course, if done under

certain circumstances, but since I have certain praiseworthy feelings,

certain remote intentions, it may now be considered otherwise. It is a

large part of the badness of 'good' people that instead of taking the

whole act just as it is, they endeavor to make the natural feelings

in their own mind--feelings of charity, or benevolence--do substitute

duty for the end aimed at; they excuse wrong acts on the ground that

their 'intentions' were good, meaning by intentions the prevailing

mood of their mind. It is in this sense that 'hell is paved with good

intentions.'

Now it is against this deflection, perversion and mutilating of the

act that disinterestedness takes its stand. Disinterested does not

mean without interest, but without interest in anything except _the

act itself_. The interest is not in the wonderful moods or sentiments

with which we do the act; it is not in some ulterior end to be gained

by it, or in some private advantage which it will bring, but in the

act itself--in the real and concrete relations involved. There is a

vague French saying that 'morality is the nature of things.' If this

phrase has a meaning it is that moral conduct is not a manifestation

of private feelings nor a search for some unattainable ideal, but

observance and reproduction of actual relations. And this is the mark

of a disinterested character.

CONCLUSION.

LXXII.

The Practical End of Morality.

Virtues, then, are cardinal, and character is integral, just in the

degree in which every want is a want of the whole man. So far as this

occurs, the burden of the moral struggle is transformed into freedom of

movement. There is no longer effort to bring the particular desire into

conformity with a law, or a universal, outside itself. The fitting

in of each special desire, as it arises, to the organism of character

takes place without friction, as a natural re-adjustment. There is not

constraint, but growth. On the other side, the attained character does

not tend to petrify into a fixed possession which resists the response

to needs that grow out of the enlarged environment. It is plastic to

new wants and demands; it does not require to be wrenched and wracked

into agreement with the required act, but moves into it, of itself. The

law is not an external ideal, but the principle of the movement. There

is the identity of freedom and law in the good.

This union of inclination and duty in act is the practical end. All the

world's great reformers have set as their goal this ideal, which may be

termed either the freeing of wants, or the humanizing of the moral law.

It will help summarize our whole discussion, if we see how the theories

of hedonism and of Kant have endeavored to express this same goal.

Hedonism, indeed, has this identity for its fundamental principle.

It holds strongly to the idea of moral law immanent in human wants

themselves. But its error lies in taking this identity of desire and

the good, as a direct or immediate unity, while, in reality, it exists

only in and through activity; it is a unity which can be attained only

as the result of a process. It mistakes an ideal which is realized only

in action for bare fact which exists of itself.

Hedonism, as represented by Spencer, recognizes, it is true, that

the unity of desire and duty is not an immediate or natural one; but

only to fall into the error of holding that the separation is due to

some external causes, and that when these are removed we shall have a

fixed millenium. As against this doctrine, we must recognize that the

difference between want and duty is always removed so far as conduct

is moral; that it is not an ideal in the sense of something to be

attained at some remote period, but an ideal in the sense of being

the very meaning of moral activity whenever and wherever it occurs.

The realizing of this ideal is not something to be sometime reached

once for all, but progress is itself the ideal. Wants are ever growing

larger, and thus freedom ever comes to have a wider scope (Sec. LXV).

Kant recognizes that the identity of duty and inclination is not a

natural fact, but is the ideal. However, he understands by ideal

something which ought to be, but is not. Morality is ever a struggle

to get desire into unity with law, but a struggle doomed, by its very

conditions, not to succeed. The law is the straight line of duty, which

the asymptotic curve of desire may approximate, but never touch. An

earthly taint of pleasure-seeking always clings to our wants, and makes

of morality a striving which defeats itself.

The theory that morality lies in the realization of individuality

recognizes that there is no direct, or natural, identity of desire and

law, but also recognizes that their identification is not an impossible

task. The problem is solved in the exercise of function, where the

desires, however, are not unclothed, but clothed upon. Flowing in the

channel of response to the demands of the moral environment, they

unite, at once, social service and individual freedom.

LXXIII.

The Means of Moralization.

This practical end of the unification of desire and duty, in the play

of moral interests, is reached, therefore, so far as the desires

are socialized. A want is socialized when it is not a want for its

own isolated and fixed satisfaction, but reflects the needs of the

environment. This implies, of course, that it is bound by countless

ties to the whole body of desires and capacities. The eye, in seeing

for itself, sees for the whole body, because it is not isolated but,

through its connections, an organ of a system. In this same way, the

satisfaction of a want for food, or for commercial activity, may

necessitate a satisfaction of the whole social system.

But how shall this socialization of wants be secured? It is in

answering this question that we are brought again to a point already

discussed at length: the moral bearings of intelligence. It is

intelligence that is the sole sure means of taking a want out of the

isolation of merely impulsive action. It is the passing of the desire

through the alembic of ideas that, in rationalizing and spiritualizing

it, makes it an expression of the want of the whole man, and thus of

social needs.

To know one's self was declared by Socrates, who first brought to

conscious birth the spirit of the moral life, to be the very core

of moral endeavor. This knowledge of self has taken, indeed, a more

circuitous and a more painful path, than Socrates anticipated. Man has

had, during two thousand years of science, to go around through nature

to find himself, and as yet he has not wholly come back to himself--he

oftentimes seems still lost in the wilderness of an outer world. But

when man does get back to himself it will be as a victor laden with the

spoils of subdued nature. Having secured, in theory and invention, his

unity with nature, his knowledge of himself will rest on a wide and

certain basis.

This is the final justification of the moral value of science and art.

It is because through them wants are inter-connected, unified and

socialized, that they are, when all is said and done, the preëminent

moral means. And if we do not readily recognize them in this garb,

it is because we have made of them such fixed things, that is, such

abstractions, by placing them outside the movement of human life.

INDEX.

Absolute--and relative Ethics, according to Spencer 72.

Accountability--See responsibility.

Activity--human, the subject-matter of ethics 1 ff.

--the object of desire 21 ff.

--the standard of pleasure 45; 50.

--equals exercise of function 101.

--opposed to mere possession 209; 215; 218; 220.

--two sides of 219.

--see freedom.

Æsthetic feelings--may be moral 199.

--see art.

Agent--moral, one capable of acting from ideas 3.

--see person.

Alexander, S.--quoted: on idea of sum of pleasures 46.

--referred to: 9; 46; 77; 111; 134; 158; 165; 202; 216; 221; 227.

Altruism--how identified with egoism 59.

--reconciled, by Spencer, with egoism 70 ff.

--conflicts, at present, with egoism 76.

--older moralists termed benevolence 195.

--not necessarily moral 107.

--not disguised selfishness 109.

--may equal charity 125.

Amusements--moral nature of 133.

Approbation--nature of 161.

Aristotle--quoted: on pleasure 18;

on pleasure and character 29;

on the mean 136.

--referred to: 31.

Art (and Science)--nature of interest in 111.

--distinction of fine and useful 112.

--interest in, why moral 113 ff.

--interest in, really social 118 ff.

--life an, 120.

--essentially dynamic 126.

Asceticism--means formalism 94.

--element of truth in 95.

--results when interest is excluded 106.

Aspiration--involved in morality 213; 222.

Autonomy--Kant's conception of justified 149.

Badness--of environment a factor in right action 176; 224.

--its source and factors 214.

--its relation to goodness 223.

--potential and actual 223.

--of good people 232.

Bain, A.--quoted: that pleasure is a self-evident criterion 16;

his definition of utilitarianism 53;

on obligation 140; 141.

--referred to: 17; 66; 227.

Barratt--quoted: that all pleasure is individual 14.

Baseness--why badness becomes 219.

Benevolence--see altruism.

Bentham, J.--quoted: pleasure both criterion and motive 15;

self-evident criterion 16;

all motives good 34 ff.;

hedonistic calculus 36 ff.;

identity of individual and general pleasure 57 ff.;

influence of law 59.

--referred to: 53.

Birks--referred to: 66.

Blackie, J. S.--referred to: 66.

Bradley, F. H.--quoted: on pleasure and desire 21;

scientific interest not necessarily social 122;

on merely individual conscience 189.

--referred to: 25; 26; 42; 48; 54; 91; 124; 134; 165; 221.

Browning, R.--referred to: 111.

Butler--Bishop, quoted: on conscience 167.

--referred to: 110.

Caird, E.--quoted: on collision of moral ends 88.

--referred to: 21; 82; 87; 91; 92; 93; 95; 109; 111; 149; 165.

Calderwood--referred to: 158; 166.

Capacity--its relation to environment 97.

--increased by moral action 206.

Carlyle, T.--referred to: 128.

Casuistry--inevitable, if moral end is not wholly social 119.

Character--reciprocal with conduct 9.

--the source of motive, desire and moral pleasure 26 ff.

--separated from conduct by hedonists 32 ff.

--and virtues 227 ff.

--see capacity, conduct, interests and motive.

Charity--idea of, involves social inequality 125.

Christianity--ethical influence of 224.

--has no specific ethical code 231.

Coit, S.--referred to: 28; 66.

Commands--moral value of: 203.

Common Good--an ethical ideal 51.

--not furnished by hedonism 60.

--not furnished by Kant 91.

--why necessarily involved in morality 117; 217; 222.

--demands reciprocal satisfaction of individual and society 127.

--its existence postulated by moral conduct 130.

--results from exercise of function 168.

--constituted by activity 169 ff.

--realized in institutions 173.

--development of 210.

--see institutions and society.

Comprehensiveness--growth of, in moral end 210 ff.

Conduct--defined 3.

--relation to consequences 7.

--relation to character 9.

--an individual system 133.

--a social system 136.

--how related to character 163.

--see activity, consequences, character and motive.

Conflict--of moral ends 88 ff.

--morality has an aspect of 151; 227.

Conscience--Bain's idea of 141.

--equals consciousness of action 181.

--elements in 182.

--not a special faculty 183.

--kinds of 183 ff.

--not merely individual 188.

Conscientiousness--nature of 199.

--does not equal introspection 200.

--nor application of code 201.

--a cardinal virtue 232.

Consequences--moral value of 7 ff.; 84; 114; 160.

--excluded from morality by Kantianism 13; 29.

--identified with moral value by hedonism 33.

--responsibility for 160.

Criterion--hedonistic is pleasure 15.

--criticism of hedonistic 31 ff.

--two ends to be met by every 32.

--of higher and lower pleasures 49 ff.

--when pleasure may be a 50.

--Mill's really social 63.

--Spencer's really social 73.

--Kant's nominally formal 79 ff.

--the real 132 ff.

--its elasticity 135.

Darwin, C.--referred to: 78.

Demoralization--involved in badness 220.

Desire--pleasure as end of 16; 18 ff.

--defined 19.

--how spiritualized 23.

--not purely pleasurable 27.

--an expression of character 28.

--excluded from moral motive by Kant 79.

--all or no involved in morality 94.

--relation to pleasure 83.

--particular, an abstraction 96.

--how distinguished from interest 103.

--opposed to reason by Kant 147.

--when opposed to moral action 148; 155; 213; 216.

--how socialized, 237.

Dewey, J.--referred to: 25; 78; 194.

Disinterestedness--equals full interest 107.

--an aspect of cardinal virtue 232.

Disposition--Bentham on 35.

Dualism--the Kantian 148 ff.

Duty--see obligation.

Egoism--see altruism.

Empiricism--Spencer's reconciliation with intuitionalism 69 ff.

End--moral: see common good; function; motive.

Environment--defined by relation to capacity 99 ff.

--meaning of adjustment to 115 ff.

--moral, exists in institutions 171.

--badness of, an element in right action 176; 190.

--enlarged by moral action 207.

Ethical World--discussed 167 ff.

--nature illustrated 168.

--relation to moral law 174.

--see Institutions.

Ethics--defined 1.

--divided 3.

--its object according to Spencer 68.

--see theory.

Evolution, Theory of--combined with hedonism 67 ff.

--not really hedonistic 71 ff.

--its real standard objective 72.

Faith--a factor in moral progress 123; 127 ff.

--in humanity, meaning of 129.

--why demanded in moral action 217; 222.

Feelings--natural and moral 5 ff.; 25 ff.; 87.

--sympathetic relied upon by utilitarians 57.

--necessary in moral activity 85.

--active, equal interests 102.

--moral, defined by end 108;

see also motive.

--value of 195 ff.

--moral, not too narrowly limited 199.

Freedom--is object of desire 24.

--equals exercise of function 138.

--various aspects of 158.

--of choice defined 159.

--of indifference discussed 161 ff.

--actualized in rights 172; 174.

--positive, realized in virtues 229.

Function--union of capacity and circumstance in act 103.

--freedom found in exercise of 164 ff.

Gizycki--referred to: 66.

God--an external, cannot be the source of obligation 149.

Goethe--referred to: 128.

Golden Rule--identified by Mill with principle of utilitarianism 59.

--gives no directions as to conduct 204.

--is a concrete statement of ethical postulate 205.

Green, T. H.--quoted: on desire and pleasure 21;

on sum of pleasures 43;

on nature of happiness 45;

on conscientiousness 200; 202;

on goodness 215.

--referred to: 9; 25; 42; 54; 110; 158; 165.

Grote, J.--referred to: 66; 158.

Guyau--referred to: 66; 143.

Hedonism--defined 14 ff.

--its paradox 25.

--confuses feeling and idea 26; 43 ff.

--summarized 30.

--all motives good 33.

--its calculus 36.

--fails to provide laws 39 ff.

--its contrast with Kantianism 82 ff.

--its treatment of obligation 140 ff.

--is correct in holding rightness to be pleasurable 228.

--truth and falsity in 234.

Hegel--quoted: on reflective conscience 188;

on merely individual conscience 189.

Hinton, J.--quoted: on altruism 109;

on badness 216.

--referred to: 202.

Hodgson, S. H.--referred to: 14.

Idealism--when feeble 128.

Ideals--moral, progressive, 206.

Imperative, Categorical--of Kant 147.

--of conscience 191.

Impulse--and pleasure 17.

--and desire 22.

--nature of action from 159.

--see desire.

Individuality--defined 97.

--not identical with inner side alone 98.

--evils of defining from this standpoint 110.

--made by function 131.

--realized is autonomy 150.

--realized is freedom 164.

--growth in 210.

--see freedom and rights.

Institutions--nature of 169 ff.

--sovereignty, rights and law inhere in 171 ff.

--influence of, upon conscience 184; 189.

--movement of, the source of duties, 194.

--see common good and society.

Interests--are functions on personal side 102 ff.

--classified and discussed 104 ff.

--social, involve science and art 123 ff.

--realized in institutions 170.

--their relation to conscience 198.

--pure, are virtue 228.

--the active element of 218.

--the freeing of, the moral goal 233.

James, Sr., H.--referred to: 202.

James, Wm.--quoted: on pleasure and desire 20.

--referred to: 77.

Kant--agrees with hedonism as to end of desire 79.

--his end an abstraction 84.

--his practical ideal that of Mill and Spencer 93.

--value of his theory 93.

--his theory of obligation 147.

--his conception of autonomy 149.

--his idea of duty 156.

--his conception of practical reason 191.

--quoted: on pleasure 47;

on pleasure as common good 52;

on priority of duty to good 78;

on good will 79;

his formula for right action 80;

illustrations of moral law 80 ff.

--referred to: 14; 78; 212; 221; 235.

Kantianism--compared with hedonism 82 ff.

--its practical breakdown 90.

Knowledge--moral effect of advance in 207.

--socializes wants 237.

--see art.

Laurie, S. S.--quoted: on happiness 66.

--referred to: 227.

Law--utilitarian use of 58; 61 ff.

--Kant's moral, formal 78.

--relation to desire 94.

--realized in institutions 172; 174.

--of the 'is', not merely of the 'ought' 175.

--idea of, in general 195.

--see obligation.

Lawlessness--involved in morality 216.

Leckey--referred to: 66.

Limitation--the basis of moral strength 128.

Lincoln, A.--anecdote regarding 28.

Lotze--referred to: 16; 166.

Love--the union of duty and desire 154.

Martineau, J.--quoted: on the difficulty of the hedonistic calculus 38.

--referred to: 42; 78; 158; 166; 227.

Maurice, F. D.--referred to: 191.

Merit--means social desert 225.

Mill, J. S.--criticizes Kant 91.

--his equivoke of pleasure and pleasant thing 20.

--his fallacy 56.

--introduces quality of pleasure into hedonism 42; 46.

--quoted: pleasure self-evident criterion 16;

end of desire 17;

on rules of morality 39 ff;

on moral tribunal 48;

on utilitarian standard 53;

on importance of law and education 59;

on social feeling 63 ff.

--referred to: 25; 30; 49.

Morality--sphere of as broad as conduct 2; 154.

--not dependent upon an individual's wish 167 ff.

--realized in institutions 170.

--struggle for private, bad 202.

--in the nature of things 233.

Motive--defined 5.

--two elements in 10.

--determined by character 28.

--never bad according to hedonism 33.

--formal and legislative according to Kant 80.

--not a subjective mood 232.

Norms--in philosophy 1.

Obligation--in conflict with pleasure 76 ff.

--how related to function 138.

--theories regarding 139.

--distinct from coercion 144.

--enforced, not created by power 145.

--Kantian idea of criticized 148.

--does not relate simply to what ought to be, but is not 151; 174 ff.

--relation to conscience 183.

--how made known 190 ff.

--practical value of sense of 196.

--must be individualized 197; 201.

--when opposed to desire 213; 216.

--the union with desire the moral ideal 234.

--see desire, law and universal.

Pater--referred to: 66.

Pathological--all inclination, according to Kant 86.

--opposed to active 212.

Paulsen--referred to: 67; 111.

Person--is one capable of conduct 97.

Pleasure--an element in activity 24.

--not the moving spring to action 26.

--sum of, dependent on objective conditions 44 ff.

--quality of, similarly dependent 47 ff.

--may symbolize action 51.

--general, a vague idea 62.

--fixed by social relations 65; 77.

--not a sufficient guide at present 75.

--dependent on self-realization 83.

--all right action involves 228.

--see desire and hedonism.

Postulate--moral, defined 129 ff.

--equals Golden Rule 205.

Problem--moral 3.

Progress--necessary in moral action 135 ff.

--moral, nature of 209.

Prudence--not outside moral sphere 105.

Reason--opposed to desire by Kant 147.

--Kant's conception too immediate 150.

--practical, idea of 191.

Reformation--possibility of 162 ff.

Relativity--of morals, means what 136.

Responsibility--nature of 160 ff.

--of parents and children 203.

Reverence--Kant regards as sole moral feeling 86.

Rights--exist by common will 172.

Rousseau--his influence upon Kant 148.

Royce, J.--referred to: 61; 111.

Rule--moral, not a command 204.

--a tool of analysis 204.

Satisfaction--moral, creates new wants 208.

--good and bad 217.

Science--nature of interest in 111.

--the preëminent moral means 237.

--see art.

Schurman, J. G.--referred to: 78.

Self--interest in 105 ff.

--involves sympathy 109.

--dualism in self, how arises 216.

--knowledge of 237.

Selfishness--involved in immorality 216.

Self-sacrifice--its moral nature 222.

Sentimentality--immoral 113.

--escape from, only through knowledge 120.

--results from abstract idea of duty 157.

--refined, equals sensuality 220.

Shakespeare--quoted: on common good 131.

Sidgwick, H.--quoted: on the hedonistic assumption 43;

on utilitarian standard 53;

on intuitional utilitarianism 54.

--referred to: 14; 16; 18; 66; 111; 227.

Society--its moral influence 146; 157.

--its relation to obligation 152.

--constituted by moral relationships 175.

--development of, changes moral ideals 207.

--see common good, institutions.

Socrates--author of idea of reflective conscience 188.

--initiator of modern ethical spirit 237.

Sorley--referred to: 78; 111.

Sovereignty--exists in common will and good 171.

--ultimate possessed in humanity 173.

Spencer, H.--believes in fixed social ideal 73 ff.; 235.

--quoted: on pleasure as a necessary effect 68;

not immediate object of desire 69;

egoism and altruism 70 ff.;

on ideal man 73;

equilibrium of functions 74;

on obligation 142; 143.

--referred to: 16; 67; 72; 73; 74; 75; 76; 111; 125; 235.

Stephen, L.--quoted: on feeling as universal motive 27;

on sympathy 109 ff.

--referred to: 16; 25; 67; 68; 78; 111; 165; 227.

Struggle--when morality is a 212.

--changed by Christianity into movement 225.

--see conflict.

Sully, J.--referred to: 17.

Theory--ethical and conduct 1.

--ethical, sub-divided 13.

--ethical, not casuistry 89.

--value of 186.

Universal--a, lacking in hedonism 37.

--Kant's emphasis of 80.

--Kant's, formal 80; 85; 90.

--Kant's, leads to conflict 87.

--true, equals organization, 88; 90; 96.

--bad action cannot be 221.

--means a method, not a thing 136.

--found in movement of character 234.

--see law.

Utilitarianism--is universalistic hedonism 13; 53.

--defined by Mill, Sidgwick, Bain, 53.

--criticized 54 ff.

--assumes social order 63 ff.

--combined with evolution 67.

Virtue--change in nature of 211.

--correlative to duty 225.

--distinguished from merit 226.

--is an interest of character 228.

--two types of 229.

--cardinal 230.

Wants--see desires.

Wilson (and Fowler)--referred to: 67.

Will--Kant's good will 79.

TRANSCRIBER'S CORRECTIONS

page original text correction

17 endquote missing are one and the same thing."

20 want simply sweat-meats; want simply sweet-meats;

24 so that it becoms one factor so that it becomes one factor

35 unless as a sort of suprise unless as a sort of surprise

38 but the the most conscientious but the most conscientious

38 cicumstances were such as circumstances were such as

42 sum of pleasnres sum of pleasures

47 this agreableness is. this agreeableness is.

68 Science of Ehtics, ch. IX. Science of Ethics, ch. IX.

74 endquote missing "members of a society"

83 of well as of hedonism as well as of hedonism

92 without expressily giving up without expressly giving up

124 ordinary chords and and tunes, ordinary chords and tunes,

156 just what what morality demands just what morality demands

183 LVIX. LIX.

192 seems quite superflous seems quite superfluous

251 entry Society missing from index in original