MORALITY AND PROGRESS
I have fully investigated in another book ("_Der Sinn der Geschichte_")
the problem of progress in all its details. I therefore refer the reader
to that for all particulars, and will here give only a summary of the
main points.
Progress implies motion from one point to another. This simple concept
is supplemented by others, some clear and some dim, which group
themselves round it: the conception that the point towards which motion
is directed signifies something better and more desirable than the one
from which the motion takes place, and the assumption that the motion is
due to an impulse, either inherent in the moving object or complex of
objects and an essential part of it, or else impressed upon it by
outside forces; further, that the impulse connotes a conscious image of
the goal arrived at, recognition of its higher worth and the desire for
greater perfection.
All these ideas, which are concomitants of the concept of progress, are
childish anthropomorphism when applied to the universe. To define
progress as motion from a worse point to a better one implies the
existence of a scale whereby value may be measured. Now values are
clearly determined and graded as far as human beings or any similar
creatures are concerned. Worse or better means to man less or more
pleasant, useful, pleasing; progress, therefore, is a development to a
condition which man considers more suitable and useful for him and feels
to be more harmonious and pleasanter. The universe, from this
standpoint, would make progress to prepare itself for the appearance of
man, to become more intelligible, habitable and comfortable for man, to
please and delight him. Whether it obeys its own natural disposition or
a higher intelligence, a god, in carrying out this work, in either case
it would realize progress to serve mankind. But if this ceases to exist,
there is no point in characterizing a development as progress in the
sense of amelioration, beautification and perfection. One would then
have no right to describe, for instance, the solar system with its
planets as indicating progress from the original condition of nebula,
because the latter in itself, apart from man and the conditions of his
existence, is not better or worse, not more beautiful or uglier, not
more perfect or more defective than the former; the original nebula and
the solar system are equally the result of the play of the same cosmic
forces, and the dynamic formula of the one is the same as that of the
other. But Reason rejects as nonsensical any view which declares man to
be the aim of the universe, which puts all the work of the universe at
his service, and conceives it as a huge machine functioning for his
advantage.
For reasons of formal logic, too, the idea of progress in the universe
is unthinkable. The understanding cannot conceive of the universe as
other than eternal. Now in eternity all progress, that is, all motion
from a point of departure, must have reached its goal eternities ago,
however slow the motion, however distant the goal. Eternity and progress
are two concepts which logically exclude one another.
In the universe there can be no progress in the sense of ascent, of
motion from a worse to a better thing; the only thing in the universe,
in Nature, which is comprehensible to the understanding and which
experience, derived from sense perceptions, can establish, is evolution,
an eternal, equable motion always on the same level; and human standards
of value are not applicable to its regular, successive stages. One state
is merged without a break in another, the simple becomes more manifold
until a maximum of complexity is reached; thereupon what is intricate
gradually falls to pieces, and the complicated is dissolved and returns
to the simple; then, when this point is attained, the same course begins
again, and so on for all eternity. Thus evolution in the universe is an
endless succession of cyclic movements from the simple to the intricate
and back to the simple; with a constant alternation from one point of
each single circle to the other; with the most extreme, crushing
uniformity in the totality of all cycles; with absolutely equal dignity
of all the phases of the endless course as they develop one from the
other; with a synchronism, inconceivable to man, of all forms of
evolution in numberless circles revolving side by side within the
infinite whole of the universe.
But the concept of progress, which cannot be derived from the processes
in the universe and has no sense when applied to them, becomes a
reasonable one as soon as its validity is limited to the evolution of
humanity. Here we no longer deal with conceptions of eternity and
infinity. It is a question of temporal and spacial phenomena. The
existence of man had a beginning. No doubt it will have an end. It
appeared on earth latest at the commencement of the Quaternary
geological period, but more probably towards the end of the Tertiary
period. It must necessarily disappear when the earth, owing to cold and
evaporation, becomes incapable of supporting life, a state of affairs
which, according to our present knowledge of natural laws, must
inevitably come to pass. A few million years are allotted to it in which
to fulfil its destiny, certainly a short span of time compared with the
eternity of the universe, but compared with the duration of individual
and national life, with personal destinies and historical occurrences,
an immeasurably vast prospect. Within the limits of its genesis, its
being and its disappearance, it is in a constant state of evolution. It
is impossible to deny this. Comparisons between the skulls found among
remains of the paleolithic age and those of our times, between the state
of the undeveloped tribes of central Africa and Australia and that of
the peoples of Europe and America, between the beginnings of human
speech and the present-day languages, between the thought, knowledge and
abilities of former generations and ours--all these prove this
incontrovertibly.
The purpose of this evolution is unmistakable. It is directed towards an
ever closer, ever subtler adaptation to the unalterable conditions
which are imposed on men by Nature, and which they must make the best of
if they are not to perish. And it is synonymous with progress; that is
to say, not only with change, simple motion from one point to another,
but with amelioration and improvement.
Here we may apply standards of value. The aim and object of evolution,
which we know and desire, supply us with them. Here we may judge and
appraise anthropomorphically. Not only may we do so, but we must, for it
is a question of matters which concern mankind alone. All evolution of
mankind, corporal and intellectual, the enlargement of the brain case so
as to accommodate a larger brain; the development of the muscles of the
larynx, palate and hand, and the accurate co-ordination of their
movements, which things make clearer and more emphatic speech possible
and render the hands defter; the acquisition, interpretation and storing
up of experiences leading to discoveries and inventions, all are
directed to the same end: to provide men with more reliable weapons in
the struggle for existence; to defend them from the dangers surrounding
them, the destructive forces of Nature; to render their life more
secure, longer and richer; to save them from fatigue and suffering; to
give them pleasurable emotions and possibilities of happiness. And as we
have a clear idea of the object of our evolution, as we desire this
object and continually seek to find new means whereby to reach it, we
are absolutely justified in calling every movement that brings us nearer
to the aim we have in view, and aspire to reach, a progressive step,
and in calling every stage of evolution which realizes a biggish part of
the object desired an amelioration, an improvement, an ascent.
The total amount of progress which has secured to mankind its
development we sum up in the concept of civilization. The latter,
however, is still far removed from ideal perfection. What we know is
infinitesimally small compared with the tremendous bulk of the unknown,
perhaps the unknowable, which greets our view on all sides. Our
technical achievements often leave us in the lurch and indicate no way
out of many difficulties. In the human being who knows and can do
something, too much still remains of the stupid, helpless, untamed,
primitive beast.
Nevertheless, what has been achieved is of value, and it is childish to
depreciate it. Paradoxical minds, like J. J. Rousseau and his
parrot-like imitators, may deny the use of all civilization and declare
that the so-called state of nature, the ignorance and helplessness of
undeveloped man amid all too mighty Nature, is preferable. That is an
intellectual joke which is not very amusing. We have not vanquished
death, but we have prolonged life, as the mortality statistics prove. We
cannot cure all diseases; crowded dwellings in great cities, the nature
and intensity of our occupations--civilization, in short--bring diseases
from which we should probably not suffer if we were savages; but the
cave-dwellers, too, were subject to illnesses, and our antisepsis and
hygiene effectually prevent many and grave bodily ills. Division of
labour makes the individual dependent on the whole economic organism;
it makes it easier for the favoured few to exploit the many and to be
parasites at their expense, but nevertheless the individual can more
easily satisfy his needs than if, being completely free and independent,
he alone had to provide all the objects he requires. The speed and
facility with which the exchange of goods is effected, thanks to ever
new and ever more excellent means of communication, often give rise to
artificial wants; cheap travel occasions useless restlessness, but the
emancipation of the individual from the place of his birth, the
conversion of the whole globe into one single economic domain, of which
every part with its own particular superabundance of men and products
supplies the lack of the same in other parts, has at least this
invaluable advantage, that it makes man more independent of local
hazards and makes the earth more habitable for him. Many things provided
by civilization are obtainable only by the rich, and the spectacle of
the luxury of these favoured mortals makes the lot of the poor harder to
bear, but the possibility of working one's way up into the ranks of the
fortunate is a mighty spur to strong characters, and gives rise to
efforts which are profitable to many. All the great technical
achievements of civilization can certainly not bring happiness either to
the individual or to the community, because happiness is a spiritual
state which does not depend on bodily satisfactions and, though it may
be troubled by material conditions, can never be created by them; but
the moments of happiness which the individual experiences derive an
extraordinary intensity from the instruments of civilization which
surround and serve us.
Certainly civilization has its bad points, and it requires no great
cleverness to discover them, to point them out and to exaggerate them.
Certainly many of its most boasted, supposed benefits are not really a
blessing, but either merely imaginary or else unimportant--little,
superfluous things which may be pleasant, but lacking which we can live
without great deprivation, and for which we undoubtedly pay far too
dearly. But, on the whole, it is a mighty achievement of man's
struggling intellect, an invaluable improvement of the lot of man, and
if anyone denies this he forfeits any claim to serious refutation.
Rousseau's state of nature may be a very pleasant change for a summer
holiday, but every man of sound common sense would decline it as a
permanent abode.
We may therefore freely concede the fact of progress in civilization in
so far as the latter implies greater safety, facility, order and
equability of life, deeper and more widely diffused knowledge and more
perfect adaptation of man to the natural conditions in which he finds
himself. For it is no reservation to note in the course of evolution
both individual deviations from the path which leads to the goal of
civilization, the amelioration of the constitution of mankind, and
occasional relapses into bygone barbarisms. To make use of Gumplowicz's
expression, it is not an acrochronic and acrotopic illusion (that is, a
form of self-deception which consists in thinking the time when one
lives and the place where one lives the best of all times and the most
wonderful of all places) if we place the present far above all past
ages and declare our civilization to be incomparably richer and more
perfect than anything that has preceded it. The _laudator acti_, the
cross-grained Nestor who praises the past at the expense of the present,
the enthusiast for "the good old times," is a figure that has always
been familiar. But it proves nothing. This tender love of the past is
not the outcome of objective comparison and consideration, but an
impulse of subjective psychology. It is simply the emotion and longing
which fill an old man's heart when he looks back on his youth. He
remembers the pleasurable emotions which once accompanied all his
impressions and which are now unknown to his worn-out organism, and he
thinks the world was better because he found more joy in it. The aged
man is convinced that in his youth the sky was bluer, the rose more
odorous, the women more beautiful than now, but an impartial observer
would pityingly shake his head at this.
But can the progress, which cannot reasonably be denied in civilization,
also be traced in Morality? Philosophers who are by no means negligible
have roundly replied in the negative. Buckle declares uncompromisingly
that the only progress possible to man is intellectual, and by this he
means that mankind grows in knowledge, foresight and clarity of thought,
but not at the same time in Morality, which, according to him, differs
from the intellect and understanding and is not included in them.
Buckle's unfavourable judgment has been turned into a formula which has
often been repeated. Scientifically, technically, we progress; morally
we stand still or slip back; the two orders of development move neither
in the same direction nor with the same speed. That is a view that is
widely held. Fr. Bouillier comes to the same conclusion as Buckle,
though from different considerations. He asserts that "a savage who
obeys his conscience, however ignorant this may be, can be as virtuous
as a Socrates or an Aristides; one can even go so far as to defend the
view that social progress instead of strengthening individual morality
weakens it, for society, in proportion as it is better ordered, saves
the individual the trouble of a great many virtuous actions."
However, there are other moralists who take the opposite view.
Shaftesbury cannot imagine a moral system in which there is no place for
the idea of constant progress, of continuous improvement. The great
Frenchmen of the eighteenth century are convinced of the moral rise of
humanity. "The mass of mankind," says Turgot, "advances constantly
towards an ever-growing perfection," and elsewhere: "Men taught by
experience grow in ever greater measure and in a better sense humane."
Condorcet defends no less emphatically the view that the faculty of
growing more perfect is inherent in man. This is a case of pessimism and
optimism which have their roots less in reasonable thought than in
temperament. A worn-out, weary individual, or generation, looks back and
spends the time in futile yearning and melancholy visions of the past;
but a sturdy generation, full of life, and conscious of it, looks
forward, and planning, inventing, and determined to realize its creative
ideas, it conjures up the image of the future. Pessimism regrets and
groans; optimism hopes and promises. The former, like Ovid, thinks the
Golden Age is in the past, the latter, like the fathers of the great
Revolution, looks for it in the future. In neither case do they reach
conclusions as a result of observation and logical thought, rather they
invent reasons afterwards for their conclusions, as they do
interpretations of their observations. But he who regards life neither
with bitterness nor with pride, and tries to understand it objectively,
will come to the opinion that Morality too has its fair share in the
progress of civilization.
Theological thought interprets moral perfection differently from
scientific thought. According to the former it is independent of
intellectual development and purely a matter of faith. God is the ideal
of Morality, belief in Him the necessary condition for a moral life.
Through its fall mankind withdrew from God and was left a prey to
Immorality; original sin perpetually burdened it; by redemption and
grace it has been purified from this inborn stain, led back to God and
once more rendered capable of Morality. For mankind only one kind of
progress in Morality was possible, and this took place, not gradually
and step by step, but with one sudden swift advance, by which it
immediately attained the highest degree of moral perfection possible,
and that was when the true faith was revealed to it. Before the
revelation mankind did not know real Morality, only its dim shadow, only
a vague yearning for it; by the revelation at one blow it was in full
possession of Morality, and now it is the business of every individual,
whether he will draw near to the divine example by pious efforts or
ruthlessly withdraw from it. Since the glad tidings of faith were
announced to humanity there can be no question of moral progress for
mankind as a whole; it has become a personal matter which everyone has
to deal with himself. Criticism of this dogmatism is superfluous. It is
quite enough to place it before the reader.
It is quite comprehensible, too, that those whose views permit them to
talk with Bouillier of a savage who obeys his conscience should deny
moral progress. They assume that a savage has a conscience, that
conscience is an element of human nature, that it is a quality or a
capacity like sensation or memory, that it is born with man like his
limbs and organs. In that case it might well be asserted that subjective
Morality has made no progress in historic and perhaps even in
prehistoric times, and that actually a "savage who obeys his conscience
can be just as virtuous as a Socrates or an Aristides."
It would hardly be possible to give a concrete proof of the contrary; if
for no other reason because for a long time there have been no savages
in the strict sense of the word anywhere on earth. By savages we mean
human beings in their primitive, zoological condition who have developed
solely according to the biological forms of the species and under the
influence of surrounding Nature and have taken over nothing of an
intellectual character from the group to which they belong. All savages
of whom we know form societies which for the most part are not even
loosely, but firmly, knit together, with laws that may seem nonsensical
and barbaric to us, but are none the less binding with clearly defined
duties which they impose on every member, with sanctions whose cruelty
supersedes that of any punishment permitted by civilization. A man who
is a member of a society, no matter how primitive it may be, may
certainly have a conscience, but the point is that he is not a savage,
but the contrary of a savage, namely: a social being who has received an
education from his society, who is bound to conform to its habits,
customs and views, and who in all his actions must consider its opinion.
But these conditions, as I have shown, produce a conscience, the
representative of society in the consciousness of the individual.
Conscience is no innate feature of man uninfluenced by society, it is
not a product of Nature, it is the result of education; he who possesses
a conscience is no savage, but a person formed by discipline and
subservient to it; conscience is the fruit of civilization, of a certain
civilization; in itself it represents progress compared with the
primitive state of man. Consequently it is an objectionable
contradiction to talk of conscience and at the same time deny moral
progress.
It is peculiarly arbitrary, too, to think that a savage, if he had a
conscience, could obey it to the same extent, that is, be just as
virtuous, as a Socrates or an Aristides. This would contradict all the
observations and experience from which I have derived the doctrine that
conscience works by means of inhibition, and that Morality and Virtue
from the biological point of view are inhibition. For inhibition is
developed by practice and use. Except in cases of morbid disturbance it
develops simultaneously with the understanding which manipulates it and
demands efficiency from it. There can be no two opinions about the fact
that the understanding and the faculty of inhibition in living beings
have developed progressively. There is no need to adduce any proof that
the frog is intellectually superior to the zoospore, and man to the
frog, and that as we ascend the scale of organisms we find their
reactions to stimuli are increasingly subject to individual
modification, and that there is a gradual transition from the original,
purely mechanical tropism to differentiated reflex action, which,
however, is still beyond the control of the will, and finally to
resistances which suppress every externally visible reply on the part of
the organism to the impression it has received.
In the course of this development the faculty of inhibition grows
stronger and more efficient and obeys the behests of the understanding
more and more swiftly, surely and reliably; it can reach a pitch of
invincibility against which all the revolts of instinct, all the storms
of passion, are powerless.
In the savage, or rather in man at a low stage of civilization, the
power of inhibition is far from having reached such perfect development.
It is not very robust, works defectively and often fails. Little
civilized man, if he has a conscience, cannot even with the best
intentions always obey it punctually. His instinct is stronger than his
insight. He is not master of his impulses; rather it is they that master
him. All who have described tribes of low civilization have observed
that their reactions resemble reflex movements and that they lack
self-control. Moral conduct, that is, control of their selfishness and
consideration for their fellow men, is difficult for them if it demands
effort, sacrifice and painful renunciation. However, we need not trouble
to go to the negroes of the Congo or the inhabitants of the Solomon
Islands to observe the inefficiency of the power of inhibition. We need
only look around us. We shall find enough instances among ourselves. The
uneducated, the badly educated and abnormal people on whom teaching and
example make no impression cannot follow the precepts of Morality,
although they know them. To express it as the Roman poet does, they know
the better and approve it, but they have a longing for the worse. So it
is wrong to say that a savage can be just as virtuous as a Socrates or
an Aristides. He could not, even if he would. He would lack the organic
means: a sufficiently trained intelligence to point out his moral duty,
a sufficiently developed faculty of inhibition to follow the admonition
of his intelligence. Bouillier's objection to moral progress will not
hold water. The Romantics who have invented the fairy tale of the noble
savage and who declare in Seume's words: "See, we savages are better men
after all," are out of touch with reality. Like civilization, and
simultaneously with civilization, Morality progresses towards
improvement, towards perfection.
The Kantian moralist, like the theologian, is forbidden by the logic of
his system to admit the possibility of moral progress. If the moral law
is categorical, that is, unlimited by any special purpose, if it exists
within us, eternal and immutable as the stars above us, we should be
hard put to it to say how this unalterable block, placed in our souls we
know not how or by whom, could receive an impetus to progressive
development, or in what way this development could be carried out. That
which is categorical is absolute, and the concept of progress in the
absolute, as in the infinite and the eternal, has no sense. But whoever
regards Morality from the biological and sociological point of view is
forced to assert its progress, just as the dogmatic mystic, who believes
in the categorical imperative, is forced to deny it.
Let us recapitulate the fundamental concepts. Regarded biologically
Morality is Inhibition, the development of which is of the greatest
importance to the individual, as it enables him not to waste the living
force of his cell plasm and of his organs in sterile reflex movements,
but to store it up and hold it ready for useful purposes. The stronger
his power of inhibition the better he is armed for the struggle for
existence, and the better he is armed the more efficient he is. Denial
of the progressive development of Inhibition implies a denial that
modern man can maintain himself with more ease and security against
Nature and hostile or injurious natural phenomena, and that he is more
successful in competition with other men than his predecessors on earth.
But this latter denial is obviously nonsense. The only individuals who
do not take part in progressive development are the degenerates. They
are organically inferior, their faculty of inhibition is defective or
altogether lacking, they are slaves of impulses which their will and
intelligence have no means of controlling, they are the outcome of
morbidly arrested or retrograde development, they are the victims and
refuse of a civilization too intensive, too exhausting and wearing for
some men, and they are destined to fall out of the ranks of a race
moving majestically forward and to lie helplessly by the roadside.
From the sociological point of view Morality is the bond which unites
the individuals in a community, the foundation upon which alone society
can be built up and maintained. For it implies a victory over self,
consideration for one's neighbour, recognition of his rights, concession
of his claims, even when valued possessions must unwillingly be given up
and painful renunciation of attainable satisfaction is required. This is
neighbourly kindness and the charity of the Bible, Hutcheson's and
Hume's benevolence, Adam Smith's sympathy and Herbert Spencer's
altruism; it is the necessary condition on which alone individuals can
live peaceably together and helpfully assist each other to make life
easier. If most or all individuals lack it, we have Hobbes's war of all
against all; then man is as a wolf to other men, and each one is
condemned to the state of a beast roaming in loneliness. If a few, a
minority, lack it, then the majority will not tolerate them in its
midst, but will expel them from the community as a dangerous nuisance
and deprive them of the privilege of mutual aid and of the advantage of
joint responsibility.
The species of man, like every other species of organism and like every
individual, wants to live. It can only achieve this by adapting itself
to existing natural conditions. The more suitable and perfect the
adaptation the more easily and securely it lives. Under the present
conditions of the universe and the earth a solitary human individual
could not manage to exist, let alone develop into an intelligent being.
The form his adaptation to circumstances has taken is that of union in
an organized community. For the existence of society and the adjustment
of the individual in it is the indispensable condition for the life of
the species as well as of the individual. Society can only continue to
exist if individuals learn to consider one another and practise
benevolence towards each other. Society therefore created Morality and
inculcated it in all its members, because it was its first need, the
essential condition which rendered its existence possible, just as the
species created society, because it could only continue to live as an
organized society.
Thus Morality with the strictest logical necessity has its place in the
totality of efforts which human beings had to make, and still have to
make, in order to preserve life, to make it sufficiently profound and to
enrich it with satisfactions, that is, with pleasurable emotions of
every kind, so that they may continue to have the will and the eager
desire to maintain their existence by effort and struggle; in short, in
order to make life seem worth living, even at the cost of constant toil
and moil. Without society it is impossible for the individual to exist;
without Morality it is impossible for society to exist; the instinct of
self-preservation furnishes society with habits and rules governing the
mutual relations of its members and with institutions for economizing
force; all these together we call civilization. The development and
improvement of civilization is obvious; it is proved by the fact that it
draws nearer and nearer to its goal, namely, the establishment of
satisfactory relations between individuals and groups, and the
attainment of a maximum of satisfaction with a minimum of individual
effort. But it would be incomprehensible if Morality, the essential
condition for the existence of society which creates civilization,
should have no part in the indisputable, because easily demonstrable,
progress of the latter.
Morality occupies such a large place in civilization that the mistaken
view has arisen among many moral philosophers that it is the aim of
civilization and has no aim other than itself. Closer investigation
shows this to be an error, a reversal of the true relation. Morality is
no aim, certainly no aim to itself, it is a means to an end, the most
important, most indispensable means to the one end, to bring about
civilization, to maintain and refine it, and adapt it more and more to
its task. But the task of civilization, as I have shown, is to preserve,
facilitate and enrich the life of the individual and the species.
Morality therefore is the most important form in which the instinct of
self-preservation in the species is manifested, and to deny progress to
it implies the assumption that the species does not possess the impulse
to preserve and beautify its existence, that its instinct of
self-preservation flags, that it does not recognize its aim and is
ignorant of the path leading to its goal. This assumption, however, is
contradicted by all, and supported by none, of the phenomena observable
in the life of the species--the absolute increase of the population of
the earth, the prolongation of individual life and of the age of
efficiency, the combating of every kind of harmful thing.
The steadfast self-control of civilized man compared with the
unreliability of the savage, who appears capricious and unaccountable
because he freely obeys every impulse, proves the progressive
development of the faculty of inhibition in the individual organism. The
order and definite organization of modern society, the rule of law,
men's equality before the law, the guarantee of freedom and respect for
the person, all these compared with the state of nations in earlier
times (actually anarchy under a mantle of tyranny and the unlimited
power of a few mighty ones over the helpless masses) prove the
progressive development of civilization in the social organism. But
logically the progressive development of Morality itself must correspond
to the progressive development of its instrument, inhibition, and of its
product, civilization.
The conclusion to which we are forced by theoretical considerations is
fully endorsed by observation of actual life. It is sufficient to
indicate broad facts to one who denies moral progress. Slavery, which
Aristotle thought a law of Nature, which Christianity tolerated, which
modern states, such as England, France, the United States and Brazil,
defended and protected by law, was everywhere abolished some years ago.
The objection is raised that modern hired labour is merely slavery of
the proletariat under another name, that the exploitation of workmen by
employers is a hypocritical continuation of serfdom. But that is
sophistry. The hired labourer is not bound to his contract. He can break
it. "Yes, at the price of starvation." That used to be the case, but
nowadays organized working men are no longer at the mercy of powerful
capital, and therein lies progress. They are in a position to make
conditions and not seldom to force their acceptance. They have the right
to strike, to move from place to place, to form unions. The community
has recognized the duty of mitigating, at least to some extent, the
evils to which faulty economic organization exposes the workman. It has
instituted accident and health insurance, old age pensions, and, in some
places, assistance for those who are out of work through no fault of
their own. All this is still very defective, but these are hopeful
beginnings, all the same, and, above all, it shows the awakening of a
social conscience that earlier ages did not know.
Justice is administered more and more humanely, that is, morally. It is
a century since legal torture was abolished. Society is ashamed to get
at the truth easily by torturing a suspect who after all may be
innocent. The condemned man is no longer branded or mutilated; he
suffers no corporal ill-treatment of which the results can never be
obliterated. Capital punishment is still a blot on the honour of
civilization. But for more than a century now, since the time of
Beccaria, it has been violently opposed and has already been abolished
in some states; the others will no doubt have to follow suit within a
short time. Consider that in England at the beginning of the nineteenth
century a thief was hanged if he had stolen a thing of no more value
than the rope that was to hang him, and even children of fourteen years
were condemned to this fate. To-day the judge pronounces sentence of
death, even where it is still legal, with grave misgivings and
searchings of conscience, and the execution, formerly a public
spectacle, is carried out more or less secretly, because the conviction
is gradually ripening in society that by the cold-blooded killing of a
man it is perpetrating a crime which it must keep as secret as possible.
The sentence is now almost everywhere deferred, and thus the conviction
becomes a very emphatic warning which points out the path of repentance,
of conversion and improvement to the guilty man, and leaves him the
possibility of becoming a decent human being again. Special courts for
children mitigate the stern penal code and modify it according to the
needs of unripe, youthful characters. Imprisonment for debt is a
half-forgotten thing of the past and regarded more or less as a joke.
What these changes have in common is that they one and all indicate a
deepening of the community's feeling of duty and responsibility towards
the individual, greater respect for persons on the part of the law, an
increase of the will to resist the first impulse of anger, revenge and
mercilessness. These tendencies, however, are the very essence of
Morality.
I forbear to adduce as a proof of progress that the Inquisition no
longer rules and nowhere burns its victims. For actually there is no
greater toleration of those who hold other opinions than there was
formerly. Religious toleration is explained by the fact that the
people's consciousness no longer attaches such enormous importance to
religion as in past centuries. But political, æsthetic and philosophical
antagonisms arouse as much bloodthirsty rage to-day as did formerly
heresy in religion, and opponents would unhesitatingly apply torture and
the stake to one another if the great mass of the people would develop
sufficiently enthusiastic zeal for their views to allow their raging
fanaticism to have recourse to violence, as it once permitted
domineering religious orthodoxy to do.
Other aspects of civilization, not so essential, are hardly less
encouraging than the developments on which I have hitherto dwelt.
Drunkenness, formerly an almost universal vice, is on the decrease.
Among the educated classes it is only met with exceptionally, and is
recognized as a morbid aberration; among the lower classes it
continually grows less. The statistics of the savings banks show an
ever-growing determination to save. The masses who used to rejoice in
dirt now manifest an increasingly vigorous desire for a cleanliness that
demands soap and baths. This indicates control of impulse, of the
inclination for alcoholic drinks and the tendency to squander, and an
increase of self-respect which recognizes dirt to be humiliating. These
are activities of the moral feelings, their material activities.
If, in spite of these material proofs of the progress of Morality in all
social functions and in many individual habits, serious-minded men still
maintain that it stands still or even that it shows retrogression
compared with former times, this view, which is undoubtedly a mistaken
one, is due to wrong interpretation of facts.
Bouillier's remark that "social progress instead of increasing
individual Morality weakens it, because society, in proportion as it is
better organized, saves the individual the trouble of a number of
virtuous actions" has a perfectly correct point of departure. Many tasks
of neighbourly kindness and humane joint responsibility which used to be
left to the inclination, the free choice and the noble zeal of
individuals, and could be carried out or neglected by them, are now
methodically fulfilled by the community. Saint Martin no longer needs to
divide his cloak to give half to a poor shivering man. The public
charity commission gives him winter clothes if he cannot afford to buy
any. No knights are needed to protect innocence, weakness and humility
from oppressors. The oppressed appeal successfully to the police, the
court of justice, or, by writing to the papers, to public opinion. There
is no need for Knights Templar or Knights of St. John to care for
strangers and tend the sick. Inns and public hospitals are at their
disposal. To-day there would be neither occasion nor reason for the
miracle of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who against the orders of her hard
husband took to the starving bread which was turned into roses. The poor
are regularly fed in municipal and communal kitchens. Individual deeds
of mercy are less necessary now than formerly, when, if they occurred,
they were the outcome of exceptionally noble and devout sympathy and
heroic self-sacrifice.
One is therefore inclined to believe that men are less capable of such
deeds than they were in the past. But that is doing them a grave
injustice. Dr. Barnardo, who opened a home for the little waifs and
strays of the East End of London, is not inferior to St. Vincent de Paul
who adopted and brought up forsaken children. John Brown who suffered a
martyr's death by hanging because he attempted with arms to liberate the
negro slaves of the Southern States, Henry Dumont who devoted the
efforts of a lifetime to founding the Red Cross to help those wounded in
war, Emile Zola who sacrificed his fortune, his reputation as an author,
his personal safety, and suffered persecution, calumny, exile, a
shameful condemnation in court, and violent threats to his life in order
to get justice for Captain Dreyfus who had been wrongfully accused--all
these can well compare with the saints in the Golden Legend. Virtue
exists potentially in as many cases as formerly, probably in more; and
it is actively practised whenever and wherever it is appealed to.
Another result of the long evolution of civilization and Morality is the
development of an ethical instinct in all except abnormal, degenerate
individuals, which causes men to act morally in nearly all situations
without conscious reflection, choice or effort. The individual who is
ethically well grounded, in whom moral conduct has become an organized
reflex action, does what is right without any conscious effort, and
therefore does not in so doing evoke any idea of merit either in
himself or in witnesses. But to do right habitually, carelessly and
almost without thought, as one breathes and eats, easily makes one
unjust in one's judgments. The battle between Reason and blind instinct,
between the Will and refractory Impulse, the victory of the lofty
principle, of spirituality over what is irrational and materialistic,
which give us the illusion that free humanity is superior to the
fatality of cosmic forces, have something so elevated and beautiful
about them that we are disappointed if they are absent, and practical
Morality without this dramatic setting does not appear to be real
Morality.
Nevertheless we must not give way to this æsthetic point of view. We
must always remember that Morality has a biological and sociological aim
and must soberly admit that it is all the better if this aim is realized
without in every single case depending on uncertain individual
decisions. It would be an ideal state of affairs if in a society there
were such clear knowledge of all its vital necessities, and this had
been so inculcated in all its members, that their harmonious life
together and their co-operation for the common weal would never more be
troubled by the revolt of ruthless individual selfishness against the
love of one's neighbour and willingness to sacrifice oneself for the
community. The ideal of Morality would be attained, but the concept of
Merit would be transferred from the individual to the community.
Superficial observation might object to finding in individuals no
victorious struggle against resistance, hence no virtue, and might
bemoan the stagnation, nay, the retrogression, of Morality. But whoever
views matters as a whole would have to admit that it would imply the
greatest progress in virtue if the latter from being an individual merit
had become an attribute of the community. I am far from maintaining that
we have reached this ideal state; but evolution tends unmistakably in
this direction; and this is one of the reasons why Morality may appear
to make no progress.
The very rise of the community to a higher stage of Morality may be a
fresh cause of error concerning the progress of Morality. The work of
the strongest and most clear-headed thinkers for many thousand years,
who have bequeathed as a legacy to the community their lifelong labours
for the amelioration of the lot of mankind, has developed in us an ideal
of active and passive Morality which is always present, even to the mind
of the weak or bad man who cannot or will not live up to it. By this
ideal, which is that of the community and which we bear within us, we
involuntarily judge real life as we observe it, without applying the
necessary corrections. We necessarily note a discrepancy between theory
and practice, which appears to us to be not mere inadequacy but a
contradiction of principles, not a quantitative, but a qualitative
difference, and thus he who is not forewarned easily becomes doubtful,
pessimistic, and bitterly contemptuous of mankind.
This is the theme with which light literature unweariedly deals. Novels
and the drama constantly show us types: "Pillars of society" and other
worthy men, who pretend to be honourable, who are full of good
principles, preach unctuously and condemn others with pious indignation,
but who themselves in all situations behave with the most horrible
selfishness and are sinks of iniquity. The creators of these rogues
professing virtue, of these secret sinners, think they are mightily
superior; they think they know mankind, that they are deceived by no one
and can see deep down into men's souls; they call their method realism,
and they look down with the greatest contempt upon poets who depict
good, unselfish, noble, in short, moral characters, and call them
optimists, flirts, distillers of rosewater, who are either too silly or
too dishonest to see the truth or to confess it. If realism happens to
be the fashion, the public believes these men who depict what is ugly
and disgusting, admires them, is impressed by them, and scorns the
idealists who have a better opinion of mankind.
However, realism is onesided and exaggerated, and therefore just as far
from the truth as enthusiastic idealism. It picks out certain
characteristics of human nature, generalizes from them and neglects the
others, thereby libelling mankind. The same people who in their flat,
insipid daily life unhesitatingly indulge their poor little vanities,
their naïve selfishness, their childish jealousy, their secret
sensuality and their moral cowardice because it is of no consequence,
because it alters nothing in the general constitution of society,
because the community takes good care that moral principles shall be
maintained, these same people can, on great occasions, which, however,
seldom occur, reveal virtues which they themselves never suspected and
which we gaze at in blank astonishment with reverent awe. The
hypocritical Philistines of realistic literature, rotten at the core,
when the _Titanic_ sank, during the plague in Manchuria, at the
earthquake of Messina, in the mine disaster at Courrières, and on Arctic
and Antarctic expeditions, proved to be heroes who came very near to the
theatrical ideal of Morality, if they did not quite reach it. If one
takes the valet's point of view and observes man in his dressing-gown
and slippers when he does not feel called upon to pull himself together,
one may very well form a poor opinion of him. But if one considers the
actions of the community and dwells on the loftiest deeds of
individuals, one will no longer believe that the Morality of the present
time is inferior to that of any other age.
There is one phenomenon, though, which seems to prove that those who
deny moral progress are in the right, and that is war. This is indeed
the triumph of the beast in mankind, a bestial trampling under foot of
civilization, its principles, methods and aims, and it might be adduced
as a crushing proof of the stagnation or retrogression of Morality that
to this very day its horrors can devastate the earth, as they did
hundreds and thousands of years ago, only to an incomparably greater
extent, more cruelly and more thoroughly. But this, too, would be a
false conclusion. It is certain that the men who take it upon themselves
freely, purposely and intentionally to make war are monsters; their
action is a crime that cannot be expiated. Unhesitatingly they have
recourse to massacre, robbery, fire and all other horrors in order to
satisfy their devilish self-seeking which desires the fulfilment of
their ambition, that is, of their self-love and vanity, which covets
riches, increase of power, a ruling position and its privileges. These
they pursue either for themselves or for a family or caste, and they
pretend that they wish to defend their country from its enemies, to
acquire new boundaries for it affording better protection than the old,
to promote the development of the nation by getting fresh territory, to
spread its civilization and secure a glorious future for it.
Nations, however, which allow their rulers to plunge them into a war of
aggression may be foolish and clumsy, but they need not be immoral. They
are made drunk with phrases which appeal to their noblest feelings,
which their government and its intellectual bailiffs pour out to them in
overflowing measure; they believe the shameless lies which are told them
boastfully; and this is undoubtedly a lamentable, mental weakness which
drew from Dante the bitter cry: "Often one hears the people in their
intoxication cry: 'Long live our death! Down with our life!'" But having
simply accepted these preliminary ideas the people act with such
Morality as one cannot forbear to admire. In a grand flight they rise
superior to all thought of self, raise their feeling of joint
responsibility to the pitch of heroism and martyrdom, and gladly
sacrifice to their duty to their neighbour and to the community their
possessions, their comfort, their health and their lives. That is very
great virtue whose subjective merit is no whit diminished by the fact
that it is manifested in a cause that is objectively unjust. And this
virtue on the part of nations which have been misled was never so
widespread or so real as now. The attitude of mercenaries who served the
highest bidder, the lack of ideals among the soldiers who followed
foreign conquerors at whose command they tyrannized over nations who did
not concern them at all, the cynicism of the leaders who unhesitatingly
went over to the enemy and fought against their own country and people,
these are things that are not to be found nowadays and are almost
unthinkable. No Napoleon of to-day could lead the men of Würtemberg and
Bavaria to Spain and Russia, nor could an Elector of Hesse sell recruits
to England for the conquest of North America; no Louis XIV could induce
a Bernard of Saxe-Weimar to fight his battles against German
adversaries, no Constable of Bourbon ally himself with Spain against his
native France. Leonidas, once admired and praised as an exception, is
to-day the rule. "The guards who die but do not yield" are to be found
on every battlefield nowadays.
In modern warfare a higher, more perfect Morality of the masses obtains
than was the case in the past. That war itself is the most immoral thing
does not detract from the moral worth of those who are led and misled.
The masses lack insight and judgment, their understanding is not
sufficiently developed to realize the bestiality of the rulers who put
them to such evil use; but the way they suppress their own feelings, the
way their will controls their impulses, their social discipline, in
short, their Morality, is admirable. Moreover, the conscience of mankind
revolts more and more against the wickedness of war, and the best men of
the time are striving to bring the mutual relations of nations, like
those of individuals, within the jurisdiction of Law and Morality.
Morality will doubtless at no distant date do away with war, as it has
abolished human sacrifice, slavery, blood feuds, head hunting and
cannibalism.
No phenomenon of individual worthlessness observed within a narrow
sphere can detract from the fact that the community constantly improves.
A pessimistic view of the development of Morality has no justification.
Progress of civilization implies progress of Morality, its most
important instrument in the work of adapting the race to the immutable
conditions of its existence.