seems, at first sight, inconsistent with a right to such ruling
authority. If its discernment of duty in particular relations may
not be fully clear and is liable to be misled, how can it be justly
regarded as having this authoritative office? If its applicatory
judgments are often found erroneous and need to be revised and
superseded by better judgments, can we fairly hold it as charged
with such regulative function? In different men, as already stated,
it exhibits differing and even conflicting directions. In different
nations and times its indications of duty fail to agree. Advance
in civilization, knowledge and culture is marked by higher ethical
standards, modifying, if not reversing, former judgments. But this
large fact, so unquestionable and, apparently, so formidable, becomes,
when analyzed, easily reconcilable with the position of authority
given to the conscience-discernments and imperatives. For a faculty
may be highest in human nature, and yet, like every other capacity,
limited. Its functional action may be comparatively undeveloped, or
may be strengthened and clarified. In its applicatory judgments, for
fixing the ethical law of right in all the varied and complex relations
and conditions of human life, it is dependent on all the subordinate
faculties for the requisite light. Whatever limitations may rest on
its ability, whatever partialness may mark its development, whatever
complications may perplex it in adjusting duty to all the actual
situations in human life, it yet remains the faculty through which
the law of duty is disclosed to view, and if duty is not indicated
through it, it is not indicated through any human insight at all. But
no faculty loses its own particular special authority in its own place
by its natural limitations and liability to error. Authority must not
be confounded with infallibility. Despite its fallibility every faculty
of the soul carries the authority for its own psychical office--the
intellect for knowledge, the sensibility for feeling, the will for
choices. The sense-perception has decisive authority for phenomena
about us, the logical faculty for just conclusions from given data,
the memory for recall of past experiences, the intuitional reason for
axiomatic truths and first principles. If the liability to error in
the psychic functions and their application to the myriad conditions
in which their immediate data are used, does not vacate their place of
authority in their spheres, no more does the similar liability vacate
the unique authority of the conscience, which it has by its action in
the supreme realm of the right and of moral obligation. Its position
of authority in its sphere remains, and remains supreme, because the
sphere of its action and discernments is, as pointed out, the supreme
sphere of eternal righteousness and obligation.
But a further question arises at this point. If it is sometimes in
error and, like an imperfect watch, gives an incorrect indication,
should the conscience always be followed? Does not this fact, if it
does not wholly take away its right to supremacy, at least modify the
positiveness of our duty to follow its dictates? This has sometimes
been a perplexing casuistic question. But the perplexity arises from
failure to keep in mind the precise points involved in the problem, and
to take account of the whole process through which particular duties
become apparent and obligatory. Since the decision of the conscience,
when rightly and fully reached, is, at the time it is given and as to
the point it decides, the soul's conviction as to what is right and
duty, to violate or disregard it becomes necessarily the very essence
of the immoral spirit and conduct. To go contrary to what the soul
sees as duty, through the only capacity it has for knowing it, is
essentially moral rottenness. Whewell's statement: "To disobey the
commands and prohibitions of conscience, under any circumstances, is
utterly immoral: it is the very essence of immorality,"[25] is hardly
too emphatic. To some writers this has seemed extravagant, in view
of the fact that some of the greatest wrongs and foulest crimes of
history, such as the burning of Latimer and Ridley, the St. Bartholomew
massacre, the gun-powder plot, might be palliated or even justified
under the plea of conscientiousness in the perpetrators.[26] But the
reconciliation of this seeming conflict between conscience and real
duty is made plain by remembering two things:
First, that the conscience, being a complex faculty or power, its
particular judgments of duty in particular cases, being judgments
of application of the principle of rightness, are reached often
through very complex processes, in which the obscuration of imperfect
information, or misconception of the relations involved, or the
misleading effect of prejudice created by wrong training, or some
falsely imagined divine authority, may leave not only a state of doubt
as to duty, but throw the decision into error. Examples of the process
occur in daily experience. A question of duty is presented. We come to
it with sincere, honest mind, and study it by taking into consideration
all the facts and relations concerned. We get all the light we can,
and we decide what the moral principle requires of us. This is the
course that fair dealing with ourselves and duty requires us to pursue.
But suppose that, after all this, in the fallibility of the applicatory
judgments, we are thus led to do the very thing that "ought not" to be
done, and violate instead of fulfil the duty which the actual relations
call for from us. The following of conscience may thus have put "wrong"
conduct, objectively viewed, in place of the "right" conduct which was
due from us in the case. The deed, in its external form and bearing,
may have been unfitting and one that ought not to have been done. But
this is not the whole view or full account of the matter. For though,
while in obeying our fallible conscience, we have thus failed to bring
our whole outward action in the case into harmony with full duty, or
have even done what to others about us or to God above us was wrong,
we have maintained our own subjective personal moral integrity, in
maintaining that which is the fundamental and essential element of
all morality, the right intention and effort. This is the prime and
the grandest element of all moral character, and is itself more than
"four-fifths of conduct." There is such a thing as being innocent
even when we have done what, viewed objectively, ought not to have
been done. The aim, in genuine integrity of moral purpose, was to do
right. The deed was a mistake. The moral status in which we may thus be
placed as a result of following our conscience, is, ethically, at the
opposite pole from that which we make ours when we disregard duty as
fixed for us in and by our own moral judgments. This is disobedience to
obligations as perceived and felt--an attitude in its nature immoral.
Secondly, the crimes and wrongs often attributed to obeying the
conscience are, probably, not fairly credited to the action of
conscience at all. We must distinguish what men, even conscientious
men, have done or do in the name of conscience, and what the moral
judgment itself has pointed out and urged as duty. It is safe to
affirm that nearly all these crimes have come not by the light and
dictates of the conscience, but by its suppression. There are, as all
history, observation and experience testify, many other strong and
bad motive-forces in human nature. The appetites and passions, the
lusts of ambition, the desire of wealth and power, the striving for
place and fame, the willfulness of selfishness and prejudice, are
forever suggesting their objects, filling the soul with their varied
and plausible pleadings, until life is driven hither and thither under
the restless forces. In some men these forces hardly allow any place
for the conscience to act. Not from the intuition of the moral sense
or the force of conscience, but from the suggestion and direction of
other motives, come the crimes that are credited to zeal inspired by
conscience. Conscience is not at the helm in this business. The wrongs
are a result of failure to consult its dictates--of the force and
direction of other elements and tendencies of action in human nature.
It was not conscience that burnt Latimer and Ridley, but intolerant
fanatical hate, hot passion ruling the hour. It was not conscience
that made St. Bartholomew's day full of cruelty, blood and horror,
but prejudice, hatred, the unreasoning rush of excited passions. It
may, indeed, seem plausible to say "that day was made by the Church's
conscience asserting the duty of repressing or overthrowing heresy."
And it is conceivable that that conscience should testify against
the evil of heresy, and the duty of endeavoring to overcome it. But
the suggestion of torture, blood and slaughter as the means of such
repression, was not the work of conscience. Its guidance was thrust
aside in that conduct. For this use of violence, cruelty and murder,
with all their repulsive horrors, conscience did not give the command,
even as God did not.
The truth with respect to the authority of conscience may be summed
up as its right to control our lives in all things involving moral
quality or character. Specifically: (1) In the regulation of our
physical appetencies; (2) In the use to which we put our intellectual
endowments and capacities; (3) In the direction and relations in which
we use our emotional and affectional capacities, embracing our natural
disposition, desires and aims; (4) In deciding our choices or the way
we use our power of free self-determination, covering our intentions
and aims; and (5) In the use we make of our capacities for physical
action by which thought, feeling and the preferences of choice are
turned into conduct which either fulfils or violates the duties which
are evolved by our relations to being around us or above us.
The authority of conscience touches at each and all of these different
points, because at each and all human life is taking shape in moral
character, as either conformed to duty or variant from it. Our personal
life is, in its deepest reality, a single self-conscious unit, and
the action of all its capacities and powers needs to be rhythmically
adjusted to the morally good. But the imperative of the conscience
addresses itself pre-eminently and peculiarly to the will, or the
personal self as free in choosing, and thus capable of directing and
using all the personal capacities and functions. It is upon the self
as free-will, as the self-determining and directive power, that the
responsibility for the conduct of life is thrown, and through it, if at
all, the responsibility is to be met.
And this authority becomes supreme not by any arbitrary right of one
subjective faculty over another or over all the rest, but from the fact
of the supremacy of what the conscience discerns and discloses, the
authority of right over wrong, the obligation to eternal righteousness.
Righteousness is king.
CHAPTER VI.
MORAL AGENCY.
Our consideration of the great truth of the distinction between right
and wrong which marks human life in all ages and places, and of the
existence and nature of the moral faculty discerning and enforcing
this distinction, leads up to an inquiry into the aggregate complex of
endowments which are essential to moral agency. The great fact of moral
agency is implied and made certain in what has already been brought
into view. But the pre-supposition of such moral agency is manifestly
the moral agent, with all the requisite endowments for the sublime
reality of ethical life. What are the constituents of the moral nature,
in which man rises to the lofty grade of moral agency?
There are two special reasons for examining and fixing the truth on
this point. First, it is needful in order to complete the scientific
ethical view. Such view must be comprehensive enough to include the
sum total of the powers or faculties concerned in living the moral
life. The view remains faulty if any parts or features of the actual
constitution are omitted or their relations to each other and to the
whole are misconceived. Secondly, false and confusing representations
have often been made on this point. For instance, because all the moral
life moves so closely about the conscience there has been a tendency
to think of the conscience and the moral nature as the same. In the
eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Dr. Alexander taught:
"The moral nature of man is summed up in the word conscience. Moral
nature and conscience are two names for the same thing. An analysis of
conscience, therefore, will unfold man's moral nature." This resolves
the whole of our moral nature into this one particular faculty. A
full and correct statement must make it embrace much more. Though the
conscience may be the culminating thing, it is by no means all that
is requisite to endow a being with the capacities necessary for moral
agency.
The truth of this is easily made clear. It is self-evident that all
the essentials for moral action must be embraced in the moral nature.
Some of these, manifestly, are not identical with the faculty of
conscience, however closely allied to it they may be. For example,
the general function of knowing is not the same as the conscience,
yet it is necessary to moral action. The faculty of choice is not
itself conscience or a part of conscience. Still moral action is
impossible without it. Some of these essential elemental functions may
in themselves possess no moral character whatever. For instance, "to
know" is not itself a moral act, yet it is necessary for moral agency.
The faculty of feeling is not _per se_ moral. The emotions arise
necessarily or at least spontaneously from acts of knowledge, and may
be neither meritorious nor blameworthy. Yet the emotional function,
through which thought passes into action and conduct, is involved in
meeting the obligations of life. Thus it becomes plainly evident that
besides the conscience by which the ethical quality and obligation
are perceived, other powers by which conduct may be conformed to
this obligation are requisite to fit beings for the responsibilities
of moral agency. In other words, our moral nature is not only the
conscience by which we approve and condemn, but also all the other
endowments by which we originate or work out what is approvable or
condemnable. Illustrations of this appear in our lives every day.
Conscience does not love, yet love of what is good is a moral act or
temper. Conscience does not care for the sick or feed the hungry, yet
such charities are acts of the moral life.
We must, therefore, mark the constituents which together form man's
moral constitution.
==Rational Intelligence.==
=1.= The first and fundamental thing, unquestionably, is his rational
intelligence. A being incapable of knowledge is incapable of the
idea or sense of duty. In a world in which creative production
should present no creature able to know or think, there could be no
moral agency whatever. Between rocks and trees and irrational living
organisms no moral relations can exist nor duties be developed.
Rational intelligence, which is the basal reality of personality, is
the first essential for moral agency. And this must be understood to
mean the whole intellectual endowment, embracing self-consciousness,
perception, memory, imagination, intuitional insight, and the varied
powers of reflection and the discursive understanding. Since, as will
hereafter appear (Chapter IX), duties are developed by the relations in
which men stand in the system of which they are made to form a part, a
knowledge of themselves and of their relations is clearly essential to
a discharge of these duties. Their very constitution carries also an
adaptation to an end which they must know, in order to meet their duty
to themselves and others.
This dependence of ethical life upon knowledge makes itself
impressively clear in the experiences and course of common life and
the lessons of history. While the absence of rational intelligence,
as in the case of idiocy, annuls all possibility of character and
responsibility, the lower the grade of men and races in mental
development, the poorer is their equipment for the demands of the full
ethical standard of conduct. It is almost axiomatic that we should not
look for as high grade of moral ideals and rules among ignorant people
and savage tribes as in the life of intelligent civilizations. Though
the principle of duty is not always turned into character in proportion
to the measure of mental development and secular culture, yet
experience and history affirm a clear tendency in increased knowledge
to bring better sense of obligation and more prevalent rectitude of
life. So well established is the recognition of this relation between
intelligence and conduct, that the advocates of the evolutionist origin
of man with one consent represent the emergence of intelligence as
conditional for the appearance of moral agency. A knowledge of one's
self and of his relations to the world around him and God above him,
and the destiny to which his powers appoint him, is thus fundamental in
the constitution of a nature for the sphere and reality of moral life.
==The Conscience.==
=2.= The conscience--resting in the general rational intelligence and
rising into the peculiar discernments and judgments which mark it--is
another constituent. This is universally conceded by moral philosophy.
There is, therefore, need here only to recall the place and relations
of this special power in the total organism of psychical powers. The
conscience, in its essential perceptions and judgments, as appears from
the analysis already given, is part of the rational intelligence. It
designates the power and function of the intelligent _ego_, or personal
self, for discernment in the sphere of right and duty--for insight
into the reality of ethical law and obligation which belong to good
conduct among rational, self-directing beings. It expresses, therefore,
the highest ascent of the rational intelligence, where, overlooking
the whole realm of existence and relations known in other forms of
knowledge, it sees, and through the emotional nature, feels, how to
live as life ought to be lived.
Further, while thus the summit point in the rational intelligence,
the conscience employs for its perceptions and judgments the data of
all the other functions of the mind. Its discernments are made in the
light of all the truth which in any way illuminates the understanding.
This explains why and how the conscience is educable. It is dependent
on all the other intellectual powers for a knowledge of the relations
of life which develop duties and in view of which every duty is to
be determined and judged. The very position of the conscience, as
highest of all the powers of the intelligence, makes it, not the most
independent, but the most dependent of all. All knowledge should
supply light for the right conduct of life. The clearer the light,
other things being equal, the clearer and more correct will be the
ethical judgments. Ignorance is a darkened atmosphere to see duty in.
The advance of general civilization, the progress of knowledge, the
widening of the realm of science, the supernatural information given by
special divine revelation, are all, therefore, if used as they should
be, factors in developing the faculty of conscience into its best
ability for insight into duty and for practical morality.
==Free Will.==
=3.= Free-will. The only truly satisfactory psychological account of
the will is that which presents it as the soul's power of causation
for choices. It is the capacity of the personal _ego_ or self for
real choosing or free election. As in intellectual action the soul
is causal for knowing or thinking, and in the sensibility it is
causal for feeling or really feels, so in will the _ego_ or rational
self is acting as the cause of the choices which it makes. Using the
term for this capacity of the personal self to choose, the will is
self-determining. It originates movement. It is creative of its own
acts. It is causal of its volutions. Morality consists in deliberate
self-submission to the law of rectitude. Duty must be freely chosen;
and the autonomy of the will, _i. e._ of the personal self, is
involved in the very conception of virtue. Freedom must, therefore,
be a prime characteristic of a moral nature. The whole fabric of
obligation and responsibility is built upon it. It is this, as well
as rational intelligence, that lifts man above the order and ongoing
of material nature and makes him amenable to the claims of right and
duty. It is essential to personality and its presence or absence
makes and marks the deepest difference between persons and "things."
We can imagine intellectual automatism; but the most brilliant
intellectuality, a corruscation of mental mechanism, without reaching
up into a capacity for free choice and voluntary action, would,
manifestly, not make a free agent or exalt into the high realm of
ethical life. The idea of duty is inapplicable except in the sphere of
freedom. Moral responsibility is inconceivable without it.
In this, more than in anything else, the whole aggregation of
human endowments comes to its crown. In it man becomes, in a real
sense, a supra-natural being, endowed with the lofty distinction of
self-direction, self-dominion and self-rulership in the presence of
the great realities of right and obligation. He becomes capable of
character and answerable for his conduct, as he shapes that character
and determines that conduct.
And this freedom cannot be merely the freedom of simple spontaneity or
voluntariness. It must be the capacity of alternative choice.[27] There
could not be real choice without capacity and room to elect between
different possibilities. It is a well known definition: "Free will is
possessed when, the conditions of doing something being given, one can
either do or not do it."[28] A capacity simply to act, even though it
should be through intelligence and consciousness, in a way that can
have no alternative and allows no choice or option, could not open a
field of personal virtue or responsibility. Where only one thing is
really made possible in action, and that one possible thing is already
somehow necessitated, there can be no place for choice. It presents
no sphere for the exercise of election--even though the faculty of
election should exist. A field of choice and the faculty of choice
imply and call for each other. Both are necessary for the freedom
implied in responsibility. Human responsibility rests on the possession
of a real capacity to make decision between real alternatives. Without
these there could be no more place for morality among men than there is
among the atoms or molecules of the chemical elements in their behavior
in the laboratory.
The proof of free-will, in this sense, might be left to rest upon the
fact that it is a necessary pre-supposition to the very conception of
morality and of actual accountability. This accountability, recognized
in conscience and exacted by the constitution of the world, is an
omnipresent and inerasable reality. So must free-will also be. Freedom
is part of the moral idea, and the idea falls apart and lapses into
contradiction and confusion without it. The same necessity that obliges
us to accept the truth of morality itself, obliges us to assert
free-will as an attribute of a moral nature and a condition of moral
agency.
But the truth of freedom is sustained by other proofs. It is proper to
recall and fix clearly in mind several of these.
(1) The testimony of consciousness. This is clear and explicit. We
are directly conscious of free choice. And there can be no evidence
more immediate and authoritative than that of consciousness. It is the
form of evidence in which all psychical facts, activities, powers, and
laws, are made known and stand certified in our knowledge. It is the
certifying element for both the form and reality of all our knowing. It
is that in which we "know that we know," and without which there can be
no knowledge. It is, therefore, the foundation certitude. Our systems
of science, our conclusions in philosophy, our intuitions into first
truths and laws, and all the confidence with which we accept truth in
all these great realms of mental life, rest back on the observations,
reasonings and conclusions for whose reality and order consciousness
is our most fundamental voucher. To its tests and verifications all
the processes of knowing must submit. No truth is even visible except
in the light in which consciousness holds all our acts and forms
of intelligence. No form of our knowing can be surer than this.
To discredit it is to discredit that without whose help not a step
in knowledge can be taken. Upon this fundamental and unsurpassable
evidence rests the great fact of free-will. No person, in the simple
light of his unperverted and unperplexed consciousness, doubts his
free-will. He finds himself in exercise and use of it every day and
every hour. He knows himself to be perpetually making decisions within
his own liberty, if he knows anything. The witness to it is direct, and
he holds himself, and others hold him, responsible for his choices and
the deeds he does in carrying them out. He deliberately and consciously
elects his way through clearly seen open alternative possibilities. If
he is to believe that in reality he does not do so, he must believe
that his consciousness is a perpetual fraud upon him. But thus the
authority for the reality of all his psychical capacities and acts is
overthrown, and he does not "know that he knows" in any of his knowing.
It is not a sufficient answer to all this, when it is said that in
this way of proof we are making the testimony of consciousness reach
further than it actually does. Some psychologies undertake to limit
consciousness to a disclosure of simply the actual volition, or other
psychical acts, and not of acts or volitions which we imagine might
have been but were not. Thus, it is said, the proof of another possible
choice, as an alternative to that of the actual volition, fails to be
covered by the consciousness. The supposed act is outside of its reach
of purview and testimony. But such a psychology is untrue to the full
deliverance of the consciousness. A just and full account of it, as
is clearly seen in our experience, must hold it as covering not only
the act of choice, but the _power to choose_. The human consciousness
is a self-consciousness, and in it we truly know the personal self
as the power for the various forms of activity which it reveals. Not
more truly are we conscious of the power really to think or feel than
really to choose, among diverse possibilities. We have direct knowledge
of the power of electing in the very act of election. And thus, not
only the untutored consciousness, but one trained to the sharpest and
deepest self-inspection, will be found a full witness to free-will as a
capacity of alternative choice.
(2) The implications of the natural constitution of the world. Mankind
are in fact framed into and held under the principle of freedom. The
whole system of which man forms a part answers to the testimony of
consciousness. Bishop Butler, in his immortal Analogy, has shown with
resistless clearness and force that in the constitutional organism
of society and the experiences of actual life free-will is assumed
for human nature.[29] Both by natural and moral law men are governed
as free agents. The physical order of the earth, as a place where
bodily and moral welfare are conditioned on obedience to discoverable
relations and principles, pre-supposes human intelligence and
liberty. Nature in her ongoings requires every individual to adjust
himself carefully to its laws of health, safety and happiness. There
is an incessant appeal to him to use his intelligence and liberty
in accordance with the demands of his ever-changing conditions and
relations in life. The idea that everything takes place by necessity is
not only at variance with his sense of freedom, but is found utterly
inapplicable in practical living. A youth, if such a case be supposed,
trained under the notion that he must not be held responsible for
his acts, since they take place by necessity, would soon find his
dream of irresponsibility disturbed and disallowed. At every turn he
would find the inexorable forces of nature and society refusing to
recognize his claim. Government, law, administration, all the various
functions through which human affairs are held together in orderly
movement, assume the individual's power and obligation to determine
his conduct and hold him chargeable with consequences. Though supposed
speculatively true, the doctrine proves false in practice. It is in
fact untrue to the constitution of human life. "The thing here insisted
on," says Butler, "is that under the present natural government of the
world we find ourselves treated and dealt with as if we were free,
prior to all consideration whether we are or not. Were this opinion,
therefore, of necessity admitted to be ever so true, yet such is in
fact our condition and the natural course of things, that whenever we
apply it to life and practice, this application of it always misleads
us, and cannot but mislead us, in a most dreadful manner, with
regard to our present interests." Beyond all question, as is evident
to every thoughtful person, mankind deal one with another on the
pre-supposition and principle of freedom, and of the responsibility
which is ethically unthinkable except on that freedom. Personal,
social, and governmental relations are framed upon this principle,
and are a perpetual expression of it. Men universally treat each
other--and under the actual inter-relations of life cannot but treat
each other--as free beings. The inference is direct and necessary that
they are such, unless we concede that human life is organized into a
necessary order of living that is false to their real nature and unjust
in its penalties.
(3) It is to be further noted that while freedom rests thus on the
direct and positive evidence of consciousness and the actual order of
life, the contrary doctrine of necessity or determinism arises only
from assumptions or implications of speculative thought. This is a fact
that needs to be clearly and fully fixed in mind. Necessitarianism
is without any direct witness of consciousness, and is not forced or
even suggested by the natural sense of mankind. It is not required as
a working theory for the business or natural conduct of life. It is
only a product of speculation or ideal theorizing. It is constructed
from different standpoints of thought. In some speculation it rests
simply on certain ontological assumptions, sometimes pantheistic as in
Spinozism, sometimes materialistic as in non-theistic evolutionism.
In both these cases freedom disappears in the absoluteness with
which the substance of the universe unfolds into all its products
and manifestations.[30] In some other speculations it appears as a
conclusion from certain metaphysical views of the law of causation and
its supposed application in the realm of psychical activity. In this
form of theory every volition is viewed as standing in the relation
of a mere effect to a cause which determines the will to it, in fixed
connection and force of antecedence and consequence. The volition
comes, it is represented, as the necessary result--not as a real choice
by self-determining personality, but produced by environment, mental
structure, and disposition. Not the _ego_ or personal self, as free
spirit endowed with capacity for real election, but the environment,
motives, and disposition decide and fix the volition for the person,
which by an illusion of consciousness appears as done by himself. In
still other speculation necessitarianism comes as an inference from
conceptions formed as to the divine sovereignty and the absoluteness
with which it must direct creature movement. The doctrine thus has its
plausibility, not from the conscious working of the human mind or the
natural order of conduct and welfare, but as theoretical conclusions
from certain forms of speculative thinking. It is therefore the product
of metaphysical theorizing. It is not a datum of pure psychology. It
is not taught by life. It is not known as a fact. It is not called
for by the practical needs of daily self-direction. It has only
secondary forms of suggestion and support--the precarious evidence
from special theorizing in ontology and metaphysics. And it introduces
more difficulties than it shuts off, while it collides with the moral
consciousness of mankind and its sense of responsibility for conduct
and the formation of character. In the light of these truths it ought
not to be regarded as having any validity. It is surely incredible that
the doctrine of necessity should be true when the actual constitution
of human life, in all its personal, social, and governmental relations,
requires us to treat it as false, being practically inapplicable.
Utterly beyond belief is it that while the inexorable necessities of
daily behavior bind us to the principle of freedom and responsibility,
there should be in the real constitution of the world no actual freedom
in deciding on choices or determining our conduct.[31] Moral agency
must be free agency, in open alternatives of choice. It involves both
the subjective capacity to choose and a realm for its exercise in
diverse possibilities.
==Sensibility and Actions.==
=4.= Powers of sensibility and action, by which the dictates of
conscience may be turned into actual conduct and character, complete
the moral constitution.
(1) It has already been seen (pages 44-47) that in the complex action
of the conscience itself the sensibility awakened in the form of
emotion, as a feeling of obligation arising from a perception of
obligation. This has already shown the sensibility to be a part of the
moral organization. Conscience itself includes emotion. Duty perceived
becomes duty felt, if the moral life is normal; and the feeling is
motive-force for the choice and the fulfillment of duty. Emotional
powers are thus constituent in the structure of man's moral nature. The
moral emotions are occasions for ethical choices and deeds.
(2) But, further, the movements of the sensibilities are themselves
either morally good or evil, and form a sphere of personal life
to which moral quality belongs. Man's affections and desires, his
loves and hatreds, his enjoyments and aversions, constitute a domain
where the ethical distinctions are to be applied. They hold and
exhibit elements of character. We may not, indeed, say that a being
of pure intellect, void of all emotion, would be utterly incapable
of character and irresponsible, but we are compelled to think that
the moral life in such case would be without what forms the highest
ethical excellence and glory of character, viz.: love, benevolence,
delight in righteousness and joy in pure affection. The regulation of
the affections and passions, the purification of the inmost "thoughts"
of what the sacred scriptures call "the heart" is vital to right
character. The capacity to love is an equipment for the moral life. It
is virtuous to love what ought to be loved. The capacity to hate is
also such an equipment--the obligation being to hate what ought to be
hated as morally wrong. Benevolence may not be, as some have contended
it is, the essence or ground of all virtue, but, unquestionably, it
is a virtue of highest rank, and the capacity for it is a prominent
element in man's moral organization. The same is true of the whole
emotional and affectional capacity in the human soul. It is part of the
constitution for true character and life.
(3) Still further, man's powers of action, in which the ethical
distinctions and choices are wrought out into their proper deeds, are
part of his organization for the true moralities of life. However
deeply the foundations of ethics may be laid in personal individuality,
the ethical life concerns more than self, and finds its largest
field in inter-human relations. Human solidarity is as real as human
individuality. Humanity is an organism, in which each person has his
place and mission. The individual's sphere of duty is not simply his
own soul, but the broad reach of all his relations to the world about
him, in which duties are developed and right conduct is required. In
all this wide sphere obligation can be met only through his endowment
with power to carry into effect, in action, his moral judgments and
convictions of right. Moral science must consider man not merely as a
knower and contemplator or lover of the right, but also as a doer of it
in righteous deeds. Hence man's moral nature, as his endowment for the
moral life, is not all brought under review until it is seen to include
the realm of his feelings and those executive powers which turn the
ethical discriminations and choices into righteous conduct.
We thus sum up the constituents of man's moral nature: intelligence,
the conscience, free-will, and capacities for affection and doing.
Where these are united the subject is organized for knowing duty
and fulfilling it. But a final fact, of profound import, needs yet
to be added, not as a further faculty, but rather as a consequence
resultant from the union and co-action of these endowments, viz.:
that this organism of faculties presents not simply a capacity as a
possibility of the moral life, but a positive, vital motive adjustment
and organic pre-disposition toward it. It is not simply framed to it
as an articulation of dead timber, but is adapted to it as a complex
of living forces for normal movement. The moral constitution, if not
disordered or wrecked, carries thus a living trend or impulse toward
knowing duty and doing it. This impulse, seemingly pervading, if
not standing behind, the whole mental activity, as a sub-conscious
pre-disposition, appears as an original aptitude or incorporated
purpose in the total human psychical organization. Hence human nature,
if normal, is not indifferent to right and wrong. Its true life is
one of positive affinity for the good. If, under internal disorder
or particular circumstances, counter-tendencies appear and prevail,
this does not disprove the fundamental and normal set of humanity for
the moral life. Man is made for the right as he is made for God. This
conception of the positiveness of his total moral organization is
necessary to complete the view of man as a moral agent.[32]
CHAPTER VII.
THE REALITY OF RIGHT AND WRONG.
In this chapter we pass the dividing line between the two great
parts of ethics. Thus far we have considered only the facts and
manifestations of our moral nature. We have traced the unquestionable
phenomena of moral distinctions and obligation in human thinking,
feeling, and conviction. We have found the explanation of these
phenomena in the action of a faculty or complex of faculties of the
human soul, that discerns and affirms these distinctions. We have
studied this power and marked its data from its initial perception of
the ethical distinction through its further discernments, emotions and
judgments to its full assertion of moral responsibility. We have seen
its unique authority explained by the supremacy of the law of right
and duty which it reveals, and have noted the aggregate of endowments
belonging to man's moral agency.
But the mere registry of these moral phenomena is not the full
explanation of them. We must examine yet what they imply. From the
faculty that perceives we must turn to look at the nature of that which
is perceived. We may call the part already traversed the science of
ethics, as dealing with and systematizing the facts of experience.
The part that remains takes us into the metaphysics of ethics, as
exhibiting the abiding verities so perceived and to which we find
ourselves so responsibly related--not what is in us, but what is above
and over us to which our moral consciousness corresponds. Having
visited "the moral consciousness in its own home" and listened to its
story of "right" and "duty" and "responsibility," we must go forth
and explore the realm that answers to that story. This realm is the
objective moral system to which human conduct is to be adjusted.
The precise question of this chapter is whether the distinction
of right or wrong, subjectively and psychologically made, is also
objectively true and real, marking an actual qualitative difference in
the deeds and intentions of men, or is a mere appearance, a fiction
and illusion of our own minds. Is the principle of duty a reality for
right life, as something belonging to the constitution of the world, or
only an idea which our minds have manufactured--only our own thought
reflected back upon us, as is our face that seems so real in the mirror?
It would seem that the very asking of this question should be itself
a sufficient answer. But doubt has been raised by speculative
metaphysics. Hence we must examine it.
==Source of Doubt.==
=1.= The doubt comes from misleading representations of the relativity
of knowledge. Unquestionably there is a sense in which our knowledge
may justly be said to be "relative." It is not absolute, unconditioned
or unlimited. We can know only as we have facilities for knowing,
and under the conditions and aspects in which objects are presented
to them. We are restricted to the modes and degrees of our given
capacities. There are probably many realities about us of which we can
know nothing. We have no organs for their perception. Even the things
that we do know reach off into transcendent relations. Philosophy
has long confessed the relative character of our knowledge. Even the
percepts of sense-experience, say for instance, of sight or hearing,
when analyzed in physical science are found to be, in their objective
cause or material conditions, somewhat different from the simple
report of the organ of sense--color being the subjective sensation
of light-rays on the retina of the eye, and sound the effect of
vibrations of the atmosphere upon the sensorium. But in recent times
various theories have represented our knowing faculties as largely
untrustworthy and their data as invalid in spheres where their
functions appear most certain and explicit. Locke gave basis for a
movement in this direction by teaching that the immediate objects of
the mind are not things, but "ideas." Berkeley's idealism repudiated
the sufficiency of sense-perception to prove the objective existence
of the material world. Hume questioned the substantial existence of
both matter and mind. In the view of Kant human knowledge reaches only
to "phenomena," the appearance of things, while the things as they are
"in themselves" can not be known. The mind projects and imposes its own
subjective forms of thought upon the universe. Sir Wm. Hamilton, Dean
Mansel, J. S. Mill, Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer have developed
theories, variously modified but agreeing in this, that even our
necessary forms of rational perception are not to be held as standing
for more than relative truth, _i. e._ subjective impressions in our
minds in the presence of environment. Doubt is cast upon the point
whether what is true to our necessary or actual thought is also really
true for the objective world.
The teaching will be best understood by several quotations. Sir Wm.
Hamilton, though a natural realist, influenced by the speculations of
Kant, while acknowledging an underlying reality for phenomena, taught
that we can never know them except "under modifications determined by
our own faculties."[33]
J. S. Mill, going further, says: "Our knowledge of objects, and even
our fancies about objects, consist in nothing but the sensations
they excite, or which we imagine them exciting in ourselves.... This
knowledge is merely phenomenal.... The object is known to us only in
one special relation, namely, as that which produces, or is capable of
producing certain impressions on our senses; and all that we really
know is these impressions."[34]
Herbert Spencer asserts the relativity of all knowledge, and says:
"Clearly as we seem to know it, our apparent knowledge proves on
examination to be utterly irreconcilable with itself. Ultimate
religious ideas and ultimate scientific ideas, alike turn out to be
merely symbols of the actual, not cognitions of it."[35]
Plainly these theories do not make our knowledge a genuine apprehension
of reality, but merely internal and unreliable mental states. It is
only a subjective phenomenon. We cannot know that it stands for the
real truth of things. Rather, we are told, it does not. It is but an
effect within the mind, determined, it may be, by things without, but
modified, if not created, by the constitution and action of the mind
itself. The receiving mind, like the receiving lens, determines the
shape and color of the apprehended phenomenon. If there be any reality
behind it and correspondent to it, we can never assure ourselves
of it. The theory thoroughly discredits the trustworthiness of our
faculties, both of sense-perception and of reason. They do not report
the things of the world as they really are, but merely as they affect
us. Our necessary conceptions, such as time, space, beauty, cause,
moral law, cannot be proved to be anything else than phenomena within
us. The conclusion is well stated in the language of Mr. Grote in his
explanation of the views of the Greek sophists: "As things appear to
me, so they are to me; as they appear to you, so they are to you."[36]
It is altogether a subjective matter. We can have only a relative
morality--not conformed to an objective and universal standard, but to
the particular impressions we find within us.
Evidently this doctrine of relativity lands us in universal
intellectual skepticism. It gives us agnosticism. Nothing is sure in a
single department of knowledge. If our minds are forever presenting to
us internal "forms of thought" that stand not really for the "forms
of being" in the real world, if they are actually creating or painting
for us what we seem to perceive and what appear to be realities
objective to our faculties and existing independently of them, there
is no possibility of reaching truth of any kind. But in the domain of
morals this theory would prove peculiarly destructive. If the qualities
of right and wrong be not in very truth real, if they be not verities
of conduct in the constituted relations of human life, if the ideas
answer not to a true distinction set before us for our recognition
and conformity, then virtue is a dream, obligation an illusion, and
conscience a fraud.
Over against this false we must place the true conception of the
relativity of knowledge. We must hold, as the spontaneous sense of
mankind and the best sustained psychology and philosophy of the
centuries affirm, that our cognitive powers are genuine faculties
for discerning the truth of things, that, while not infallible nor
unlimited, they give us substantially correct knowledge, as far as it
goes, of the realities of the natural and moral world in which we are
placed. These powers of intelligence are not set to act delusively and
imprison us in phantasmagoria or a factitious system false to that
which actually exists. The correct theory, the only one that is really
rational and can be lived out, must ever be that, as far as we have
faculties to know at all and use them loyally, we know what is and
because it is. The true reason of our knowing is the real existence of
knowable realities.[37] Instead of knowing only appearances, we know
the very things that appear--not perfectly, or without possibility
of mistake, but yet truly. The end of knowledge is not to give us a
phantasmagorical world for endless illusion, but the actual world, with
its divine constitution and movement, in which we are to live, and with
whose facts and laws, physical and moral, we are to harmonize our lives.
=2.= The false conception of the relativity of knowledge being thus
set aside, and the psychological law, that the correlate of knowing
is reality, being recognized, we are prepared to see the truth on the
point of inquiry in this chapter, as follows:
==Objective Reality.==
(1) The qualities of right and wrong, involved in the ethical
distinction, are not merely subjective impressions or appearances,
imposed on conduct by the human mind, but are objective, belonging to
the external world of relations and action, real for apprehension and
conformity. They are without us as well as within us. And they come
within us because they are realities without us for us to know and
observe. The moral qualities, as real features of required behavior
of free beings in their given relations to each other, belong to the
constitution of the world as well as to the faculties of the human
mind. They are real qualities of action and motives to action whether
men perceive or take note of them or not. As truly as the starry sky
is above us, before we open our eyes to see it, so the principle
of righteousness is established for life before we enter it or our
faculties awake to discover it. The principle of moral law is framed
into the constitution of the world and human life. It is back of
the discernment of it, imbedded in the demand which the constituted
relations of nature make for proper behavior of free, intelligent
beings. The law of duty is fixed in these relations. It abides there to
be recognized and fulfilled by all beings endowed with moral perception
and freedom. Moral law is a profounder and broader thing than a
simple uncertain mental fiction in personal thinking. It belongs to
the immense, almost infinite realm of creature inter-relations of the
universe.
The reality, however, is not to be thought of as a material entity or
substantive essence, but solely as a quality of the intentions and
conduct demanded by and in the relations sustained by men and other
moral beings. It is the reality of an established obligation. It
belongs to character.
The right, as moral law, has ever been venerated as something
supersensible, absolute, and divine. The early Egyptian teaching
represented its home as in Deity. Buddhistic philosophy conceives of
it as an imperishable dominion over gods and men. Christianity has
enforced it as based in the very nature of God, and as a principle of
order ordained for the whole universe of personal life and behavior.
Not more real are the solid rocks of the mountain or the strong
waves of the sea. Not more real for the material realm is the law of
gravitation than is the law of ethical righteousness for the spiritual
realm, the realm of free conduct. And the latter is superior and of
higher value than the former. This truth speaks in the old apothegm:
"_fiat justitia, ruat cœlum_."
==Not Dependent on Organization.==
(2) The qualities of right and wrong in conduct are not dependent
on the peculiar mental organization or temperament of the race.
This results from the objectivity of the law of obligation. Only
the perception of them is so dependent, while the moral qualities
are abidingly real for all beings high enough in the scale of being
to discern them. Just as we must believe that the sun exists as an
extended body independently of our eyes or minds, and would have to
be so apprehended by any inhabitant of Neptune or Jupiter endowed
with capacity to perceive it as it is, so we must believe that truth
and love and kindness are right, and falsehood, injustice, malignity
and ingratitude are wrong, not as made so by our peculiar personal
constitution, but _per se_, in any inhabited world of the stellar
heavens; and that the only subjective condition for their so appearing
is the possession of the faculty for perception of moral quality.
There may, indeed, be a doubt among finite moral agents, with limited
knowledge, how far a certain thing may be true or false, kind or
malignant, just or unjust, but the quality of truth or falsehood,
kindness or malignity, justice or injustice being perceived in it,
it is impossible that such truth, kindness and justice should not
be judged right and their opposites wrong. The ethical distinction,
objectively viewed, is an ethical difference, perceived as such, if
perceived at all.
==Immutable and Eternal.==
(3) The moral distinctions, with the moral qualities involved, being
thus objective, and not the product of a special temporary organization
of the percipient, are immutable and eternal. This is involved in the
very nature of the qualities themselves. By eternal necessity of what
they are, justice and love must be unchangeably and forever right. They
are not thus right because we think or feel them so, but we think and
feel them so because they are so, because of the immutable and enduring
nature of justice and love themselves. They hold and carry the kind of
motive and action that ought to prevail in the relations of intelligent
personal life, everywhere and in all time. So malignity, injustice,
falsehood, and cruelty are wrong by the very nature of the qualities
that make and mark them; and the personal intentions and conduct that
hold them can never be right any more than a thing can be itself and
yet other than itself.
Men's judgments as to whether particular conduct is fair or just or
kind or honest, may change and do change. Different nations and ages
class certain acts and ways of men very differently. But these are only
judgments of application, and so only secondary ethical judgments. This
has already been pointed out in Chap. IV, pp. 67-68. They depend on the
degree to which the moral qualities of the conduct may be discerned
amid the complicated relations and obscurities that often perplex a
right understanding of it. But while men change their judgments of
the justice, benevolence, or truth of particular forms of behavior,
they do not change their judgments that justice, love and truth are
right--necessarily and immutably so. The behests of duty are imbedded
in the necessary relations of intelligent free beings. Virtue is no
shifting subjective illusion, shaped by our inner mental mould. No
change of the percipient's intellectual constitution can change the
realities of right and wrong. No removal from world to world can change
them. No distant age in eternity can reverse them, and discover virtue
to be wrong or sin right, or either as without moral quality. The
distinction is eternal, and no future can arrest our responsibility
with respect to it. God calls us to identify ourselves with what
is right and shun all wrong, as realities with which we stand in
immutable, unending relation, for good or evil.
==Grandeur of Moral Law.==
=3.= The truth thus reached on this point is one of exceeding
importance. It brings to view the grandeur of the moral law. It shows
this law to be truly transcendental, belonging not to transient
material forms or physiological structure, nor to special psychical
constitutions of men or races, nor organized instinct, nor subjective
mental illusion, nor peculiar hereditary experience, nor transformed
sense of realized or supposed utility, nor any local adventitious
circumstances and training, but to the supreme super-sensible realm
of universal and necessary ideas and truth, in which the universe of
rational thought and divine order lives and moves and has its being and
welfare. In this truth, therefore, the moral law begins to appear in
its true greatness and value, in its universal dominion and infinite
importance. It comes down upon us with a mighty impression. It thrills
us into enthusiasm. As long as the moral idea is accounted a mere
product of environment and biological evolution or experienced utility,
a blind hereditary instinct, an organized impulse, a fiction of
education, or a temporary behest of individual or racial organization,
it is a thing of but little dignity and of limited moment. It is worthy
of no more reverence than a form of protoplasm or a passing mental
impression. Not reflecting an objective reality of universal, supreme
and permanent validity, but only a special phenomenon of the human
organization and this transient life, it can inspire but small respect.
Only in the truth here reached does the authority of the moral law
stand out in its majesty and illimitable range and sweep. Only in it
can that law be rightly effective for the good conduct of men and the
safe formation of character in the mould of immortal excellence.
==Reality is Dividing Line.==
=4.= The recognition of the objective validity of the moral
distinctions marks one of the chief dividing lines between true and
false theories of moral philosophy. A failure to recognize this point
not only leaves the point itself a blank, but usually means error
both in the conception of the nature and function of conscience
and of the grounds and claims of right and virtue. With respect to
conscience the failure reduces it from a power of true discernment
of what is, into an instinct acting blindly or a make-believe of
obligation through judgments indistinguishable from those of utility,
pleasure or advantage, or into a passing product of racial experience
or education. So instead of explaining the unique authority of the
conscience it undermine and dissolves that authority into non-moral
elements. Obligation itself becomes but a synonym for an impulse toward
certain forms of pleasure or advantage. As to the grounds and claims
of right, these are thus caused to disappear in the non-moral elements
into which right and wrong are dissolved. The ethical distinctions, the
great moral phenomena of the ages, with all the interests of practical
morality, instead of being explained and justified, are explained
away. If, therefore, ethical theory is to exhibit the metaphysical
validity of the moral consciousness of men, no view can reasonably
be regarded as correct that dissipates the very reality which the
conscience assumes to see and without which the moral judgments lose
their rational foundations. For if the objective and transcendent
character of the ethical distinction be denied, morality necessarily
drops down into, at best, a temporary biological provision for the
utilities of this ephemeral life, or, at worst, into a deep fraud of
our faculties, estopping the use of our freedom by a phantom bugbear
of moral distinctions. If, therefore, virtue is not to be disrobed of
its honor, if righteousness is not to be cast down from the supreme
place which the reason of mankind has ever accorded it, if the idea of
duty is not to be belittled, invalidated and overthrown, ethical theory
must recognize and emphasize the objective and permanent reality of the
moral law as an unchanging law of obligation and responsibility for
the conduct of free agents. Otherwise the so-called ethical theory is
not a theory of the ethical reality, but one that sinks the supposed
ethical reality into non-moral elements and illusion. To vindicate the
authority of conscience, the immutable foundations of righteousness
must be maintained, not dissolved.
==Relation to Evolution.==
=5.= The relation of this truth to the wide-spread hypothesis of
the evolutionary origin of man dare not be ignored at this place.
Frank admission has already been made that this hypothesis, as
setting forth a mere mode of creation by God, does not appear to be
necessarily inconsistent with the existence of conscience. Any mode
that can produce a faculty of mental power capable of perceiving
or making the ethical distinction, suffices on that point--though
grave difficulties stand in the way of accounting for it under any
evolutionist explanation thus far given. But how is it with respect to
the supersensible reality of the moral law, as the reality perceived by
the conscience? Can evolution account for it, or even allow any place
for it?
==Theistic Evolution.==
To these questions, the answer must be, first, that evolution, in the
theistic conception, if supposed capable of developing the faculty of
conscience, must also be regarded as consistent with existence and
place of the moral law. The infinite intelligence and purpose back of
the creative evolution, and through it originating a power for ethical
perception, must be conceded to be equally capable, in that method of
forming the universe, of establishing the principle and law of duty in
the relations in which rational and self-determining creatures are to
live. Provided only that a rational first cause be assumed and the
plan of the world be viewed as laid in aims of divine order, a moral
system as well as moral agents may, surely, be created by slow advance
of life no less completely than by instantaneous fiat of power. The
theistic theory of evolution, assuming the cosmic system to be grounded
in the will and power of God and filled with his ever-working presence
does not necessarily bring any trouble into the question of fixed moral
law. The moral law, resting in the same divine source whence arise the
laws that are revealed in physical nature, comes into play as soon as
moral agents are created in relations which call for right sentiments
and conduct. The rational purpose which ordained physical laws, in
necessity, for material order, ordains moral law for order of personal
agents acting in freedom. The question, therefore, with respect to this
kind of evolution need not embarrass the question of the reality of
immutable moral law--at least when the theory of evolution is so shaped
as to give its fundamental assumptions full and consistent place and
force.
==Atheistic Evolution.==
But, secondly, on the other hand, answer must be made, that under no
theory of atheistic and merely materialistic and naturalistic evolution
can the objective existence of moral law be logically or rationally
maintained. This kind of evolutionism is not only helpless before the
task of accounting for it, but logically excludes the possibility of
it. For any theory that presents the cosmos as a pure naturalism of
matter, or is agnostic as to an intelligent author of nature, furnishes
no realm or materials for moral law. This becomes evident, beyond
doubt, from the following considerations:
(1) According to the hypothesis "the potency of all things" is in
matter with its energy and modes of motion. This is the "all and
the one" τὸ πᾶν καὶ ἕν ([Greek: to pan kai hen]) of the universe,
at once the only essence and ground of its existence and ongoing.
No intelligent first cause is assumed, no creative reason to begin
or determine the evolution. There is no ordering mind or purpose in
it--for its origin, in the process, or as to its end. It is avowedly
a purely mechanical theory of the universe--matter and force acting
in self-contained energy without design. All rational, purposive,
or teleological idea is wanting. Now it is evident that this pure
mechanism of matter and energy must be not only without any moral
element whatever, but necessarily incapable of evolving the moral. It
is an infinite and endless automatism. Though it should run on æon
after æon it is still only a mechanism of atoms in eternally unfree
material movement. The unmoral elements can never produce moral law;
and, _ex hypothesi_, there is no intelligent free moral being behind or
in the movement to create or establish moral law through it.
(2) Further, this form of evolutionism, returning, as it does, to the
ancient notion of the universe as a perpetual flux, even if imagined to
be able to evolve the moral out of non-moral elements, could present
no permanent and stable ethical law. In such evolution, without
beginning and without end, all things are only a continual becoming,
"an eternal process moving on." There is and can be nothing fixed,
whether of forms or relations, but only a shifting, necessitated,
everlasting scene of aimless beginnings and disappearances. Could we
even conceive--which we cannot, because the concept is possible only
in connection with purpose and ideal order--that the ethical "ought"
should momentarily appear, it would soon be broken up and passed by,
like the bubble on a stream,
"A moment here, then gone forever."
Manifestly, this perpetual motion, forever changing and superseding its
own forms and products, cannot be considered father to even a rational
stable conscience, much less a sure abiding moral law for its steady
recognition and eternally reverent regard. "The child of contingency
remains contingent." And so the advocates of this empirical,
materialistic, and atheistic evolutionism consistently maintain that
there is no absolute moral law, and that what seems so is only shifting
hereditary judgments generated by experience and utility or some
instinct formed by biological processes.
(3) But further. In this merely naturalistic evolution all the
essential presuppositions of moral law are wanting and excluded. This
is easily seen. (_a_) It has already been pointed out that the action
of conscience is theistic, its authority arising from its perception
of a law of duty imposed on it and representing a moral law-giver (See
Chap. IV, pp. 79-80; Chap. V, pp. 87-88). So moral law, as a rule of
ethical righteousness, is necessarily theistic. It is thinkable only
as a requirement made by rational intelligence for fitting conduct
among personal agents. It rests in a world-system of rational ends
and ideal requirements. The standard is established by intelligence.
Should it be objected, that we may regard the standard as made by the
mind of men only, and altogether a human and subjective thing, it is
enough to remind the reader that according to the hypothesis, there is
no human mind as a different entity from matter, the only "mentality"
left being merely particular effects of molecular or brain activity,
and therefore only successive passive products, simply revealing what,
if it exists at all, must exist as the molecular matter behind them.
The autocratic moral law which the conscience finds, but does not
make, is conceivable therefore, only as part of intelligent ordering
in a rational world-system. But according to the hypothesis no moral
reason has framed or regulates the order of the physical forces that
create the relations of life. (_b_) Moral law, with responsibility, is
inconceivable except in connection with personal freedom in the subject
of it. But in this kind of evolutionism, everything is reduced to the
mechanism of matter; and its supporters agree that our personal freedom
is an illusion. There can be no more morality in the thoughts, aims and
conduct of men than in the digestion of food or the growth and decay of
a tree.
While, therefore, theistic evolution does not present anything
inconsistent with the reality and recognition of moral law, every
hypothesis which exhibits the world, in its ground and processes,
as the mere mechanism of material forces, stands in logical and
irreconcilable antagonism. This antagonism, however, is not to be
taken as overthrowing or even weakening the truth set forth in this
chapter. Rather, the antagonistic hypothesis, which fails in so many
other respects to meet the necessities of a rational or scientific
account of the phenomena of the universe, discredits itself still
further by its incongruity on this great point.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GROUND OF RIGHT.
This topic carries the inquiry concerning moral law one step further
than that determined in the last chapter. It being settled that that
law is objectively and permanently real, for the recognition of
conscience, we must yet seek some explanation of the basis of the
reality. Why are some things right and others wrong? What is the reason
of the difference? On what is the law of right grounded? We seek the
explanation of its existence and the obligation it imposes.
It must be remembered that even those who hold the moral behests
to be merely subjective, products in some way of the psychological
constitution, nevertheless endeavor to account for them in some
relations or forces back of themselves. These accounts, as will
appear, are exceedingly varied. Inasmuch, therefore, as nearly all the
differing ethical theories seek to give some explanation and ground
for moral obligation, the inquiry now before us presents the point
about which the chief contests of moral philosophy have been waged.
The different answers have been the main determinants of the different
systems.
Our examination must include three things: a clear definition of the
point of inquiry; some notice of the leading theories; and a positive
statement of the ground as demanded by reason and the interests of
moral life.
==The Question Defined.==
I. Definition. This is necessary because it has sometimes been
confounded with the question: What is the ground of obligation?[38]
We must distinguish between the "ground of right" and the "ground of
obligation." The point before us is not why we are under obligation
to do a right act, but why the act is right. Manifestly the rightness
of the proposed action is the ground of the obligation to do it; that
is, the obligation is grounded on the right. The exact inquiry is--and
must be, in order to reach the real and abiding moral foundations--on
what is the right, whose perception obligates, grounded? A quest after
the ground of the "obligation" simply, might satisfy those who reduce
conscience to a mere instinct or sentiment, and the moral standard to
a mere internal product of association, education or of biological
organization. To them it might seem enough to give an explanation of
the felt obligation. In such case they might plausibly, as they often
do, affirm that the moral bond, being thus organically insured and
fixed in the moral consciousness, must remain the same, no matter
what theories, even though purely materialistic, may be formed of its
genesis and nature. But so soon as the ethical reality is seen in its
cosmic place and transcendental character we want an explanation not
only of the ground of obligation to right conduct, but also of the
ground of the right which evokes the sense of obligation.
==Various Theories.==
II. Leading Theories. We must include, in this review, both the
theories which offer only an explanation of the phenomenon of
obligation and those that seek an elucidation of the principle of
righteousness as objective moral law. In the long continued discussion
of the subject these theories have been immensely varied and modified,
but the differences thus noted divide all explanations into two
classes, viz., those which make the moral stand in something subjective
and those that find it objective. In the cursory rehearsal of them,
here needed, we will present them in chronological order, irrespective
of their belonging to one class or the other, noting, however, their
relation to this distinction which divides them. Such historical glance
will give an outline of the development of thought on the subject, and
help us to reach and appreciate the true conclusion.
==Egyptian Teaching.==
=1.= Egypt's golden age was in the morning of the world's historical
period, and we must look far back for its best ethical thought.
With the Egyptians morality and religion were closely identified.
The ethical view was united with the theological and determined by
it. They, however, dealt with the subject of duty only in separate
maxims and precepts, without framing a theory of obligation. But the
purity and elevation of these precepts have been a wonder to many in
our modern days. It is, however, easily explained. Their religion
was monotheistic. God was a good and righteous Being, with power and
rulership, the source of all things for man. The Egyptians connected
all that was pure and good with God and recognized their dependence
on Him and their duty to live according to His will. Thus their moral
consciousness rose above the function of a mere subjective instinct
or a feeling of responsibility to their fellow-men, and included a
sense of direct amenability to divine authority. The goal of the moral
endeavor, ever overcoming evil, was regarded as attained, not in this,
but in a future life of blessedness under the divine approval. Their
view grounded all duty objectively, and practically identified it with
piety.[39]
==Chinese Teaching.==
=2.= Chinese teaching, too, was theological. The theology was
essentially monotheistic, but overgrown with superstitions and
idolatrous practices. It taught that man is the creature of God, and
was endowed by heaven with a nature for the practice of good, a nature
that, if followed properly--_i. e._ in the "golden mean"--invariably
leads men aright. The path indicated by nature is the will of God
concerning duty. "What heaven has conferred is called the nature; an
accordance with this nature is called the path of duty; the regulation
of this path is called instruction."[40] The chief contribution to
the Chinese teaching by the sage Confucius (B. C. 551-478) was his
proclamation of the principle of "reciprocity," _i. e._ doing as we
would have others do to us. Though the elements of the moral problem
were thus included fairly well for ordinary conduct, they were not
framed into a distinct philosophy of the ground of right.
==Views in India.==
=3.= India's sacred books abound in moral maxims and counsels.
Brahmanism is substantially a philosophy of life rather than a
religion. But its pantheism and doctrine of the pre-existence and
transmigration of souls have distorted and misdirected the moral idea.
Its pantheism confounds the human with the divine, both in its origin
and destination. Its belief in transmigration, with its perpetual
succession of rebirths into conditions of woeful individual life unless
the soul's unhappy agitations and unrest should be composed by virtue,
shapes the moral task mainly, not only into restraint of the appetites
and passions, but into such austerity and stern self-abnegation as
may prepare the soul, on the death of the body, to attain the perfect
repose of Nirvana the complete extinction of human passions, or,
as Buddhism represents, annihilation of conscious individuality in
reabsorption into the absolute existence. In this system the aim
of morality is not "the right," but the desired good of tranquil
happiness, or the final goal of merging self-conscious personality back
again into the Great All from which it arose. The ground of the moral
striving--it can hardly be called obligation--is the adaptedness of it
to secure this result.[41]
==Persian Teaching.==
=4.= Zoroastrianism (Mazdæism), from about B. C. 1500-1000, confessedly
presents an ethical teaching that, among oriental views, is second
only to that of the Hebrews. Its theological dualism, which seems
to have encroached upon an earlier purer monotheism, of two eternal
principles or powers, Ormuzed (Ahura Mazda) the good power, and Ahriman
(Angra Mainyou) the evil power, manifestly arose from the effort to
solve the dread problem of evil in the world. Zoroastrian teaching
represents Ormuzed as the all-knowing and the holy creator of the
world. He cannot create evil. He is the source of all purity, order and
righteousness. Wrong and misery have come into the world from Ahriman,
the opposite contending power in the universe. Zoroastrianism thus
gives the world-system a moral foundation and law of order. The moral
life is a holy conflict with the forces of evil within human nature and
assailing it. The supreme end of life is to increase the ascendency
of righteousness and establish its everlasting reign of truth and
goodness. The goal of it comes in a future life of blessedness. The
ground of righteousness is thus placed in the nature and will of the
eternal creator, to whom obedience is due, against the influences of
the malign power of evil.[42]
==Greek Theories.==
=5.= Among the Greeks ethical philosophy began with Socrates. Their
earlier writers dealt with the subject of duty but little in a
speculative way. When the philosophy of it came to be sought the
theories mainly connected it closely with "the good" or "the highest
good," the _summum bonum_ of life. This designation was ambiguous.
"The good" (τὸ ἀγαθόν, τὰ ἀγαθά [Greek: to agathon], [Greek: ta
agatha]) might be conceived of as either intellectual or sensuous
good, as consisting in one's intrinsic state or in outward condition,
as either happiness or personal well-being. And because this method
failed to distinguish clearly and fully between this indefinite
"good"--having at best no more authority than "the beautiful"--and "the
right" which forms the true essence of the ethical principle, their
explanations failed to become clear, and stopped short of being actual
explanations of the ground of right. Hence their theories, though not
always consistently exhibited, and variously interpreted by expounders
of them, were substantially _eudæmonistic_[43] and _utilitarian_.
Specifically:
(1) Socrates made all virtue consist in knowledge, especially self
knowledge or wisdom, leading men to proper self-regulation and
happiness. He put emphasis upon man's rational nature as essentially
good, and to this rational nature belonged the office of self-mastery
and control of all appetites, dispositions, and passions. The life
in knowledge became the good and happy life. Though this great sage
maintained that the world is governed by a supreme intelligence, he
failed to connect clearly and closely the moral law with this high
source, and rested the moral life simply subjectively.
(2) Plato developed his view substantially on the basis of that of
Socrates. He identified the highest good with the intellect rather than
the sensibility, and looked upon all virtues as united in _knowledge_,
not only as guiding the soul in acting out its proper destination,
but, according to some statements, even as in itself all-sufficing.
Though Plato's speculative view of the universe contains the elements
for the construction of a sublime immutable ethical standard, and he
even suggests God-likeness as the goal of man's moral life,[44] the
implications of his view are not consistently carried out; and when he
comes to apply his ideas to life in his ideal Republic he lapses into
what seems a caricature of his better thought, and is content to rest
morality simply on the authority and laws of the state.[45]
(3) Aristotle, in whom Plato's theistic view of the world receded into
the background, made the "chief good" consist in happiness or felt
well-being, which depends on man's living according to his rational
nature. Such living includes both the activities of the mind and
habitual conduct. The reason must not only develop its own energies,
but rule the lower powers and passions. On this double requirement
he founded two kinds of virtue, the intellectual (dianoetic) and the
practical. The one consists in "knowledge" or "wisdom," the other in
formed "habits" or "character." The moral life, therefore, consists
in the true use, without abuse, of our rational nature. The rule
for it, as taught by Aristotle, is to avoid extremes and pursue the
golden mean. The theory thus rests morality wholly on subjective good
and identifies it with the calculations of prudence. It is simply
secularistic, without religious element or appeal.[46]
(4) In Epicurus (B. C. 341-270) and his followers eudæmonism descended
into hedonism. The supreme good is happiness in the sense of personal
enjoyment, pleasure. The universe, without theistic ground, was
regarded as eternal, forever evolving in fortuitous concourse of atoms.
It is without rational order, design, or government. The human soul is
material, and at death men cease to be. The good of life consists in
the avoidance of pain and the securing of pleasure. The pleasure may
be intellectual or sensuous and gross, as men may prefer. The pursuit
of it is the highest virtue and best wisdom. Enjoyment is the end of
life. The whole question of ethics thus came to be a calculation and
balancing of pains and pleasures, and the cardinal virtue prudent
selfishness. It was complete subjectivism.
(5) In Stoicism (founded by Zeno of Citium, about 308 B. C.) we have
a view that, in its principal features, was in strong contrast with
Epicureanism. It arose in close relation to the teaching of Socrates.
But it taught that "happiness" was not necessary, and should never be
made the end of endeavor. Virtue itself was the highest good, and to
be sought for its own sake. Itself was sufficient for happiness--not
because it could make men insensible to pain or pleasure, but because
it made them superior to it. Virtue was immutably excellent in itself,
a permanent reality for man's realization, and subordinated everything
else. It consisted essentially in living "according to nature,"[47]
_i. e._ not simply in harmony with one's self, but with the nature of
the universe, with the whole constitution of the world as ordained and
ruled by God, of which a man's own nature forms a part. The stress
was not at all to be laid on self, but upon the great total of being.
Man exists for society, and virtue is impossible apart from the
social state. So Stoic teaching inculcated subordination of self to
more general interests--to family, country, mankind. It taught that
all creatures are "children of one father,"[48] and duty was owed
to all. We may hardly, however, speak of this as "altruism," in the
sense of unselfish benevolence or self-sacrificing goodness; since,
in the general Stoic philosophy, not the sentiment of sympathetic
helpfulness, but of victorious superiority to pain, was the temper
fostered. Love was almost submerged in the stern spirit of duty. The
blessedness of virtue was to stand independent of the sufferings which
befell men. In fact the dreadful inexorableness of fate (εἱμαρμένῃ
[Greek: heimarmenê]), conceived by the Stoic philosophy as eternally
embracing the life of both God and nature, gave to virtue, not so much
the temper of free, loving obedience to either God or righteousness,
as the sternness of a proud intellectual resoluteness in yielding, for
virtue's sake, to the inevitable in the fate-bound universe. Under
this conception the Stoic moral obedience could never rise to the free
joyousness that belongs to the obedient life under the light of the
Christian truth that God is love--eternal love, ruling in absolute
freedom and desiring to exalt His children to the perfect holiness to
which alone happiness forever belongs.
All these Greek theories, except the Stoic, are thus seen to have been
marked by two features. First, they dissolved "the right," which alone
has direct authority and forms moral law, into "the good," which is
simply something offered to us as an object of desire, but which has
no "imperative" for the conscience, and may be innocently foregone.
Secondly, despite the clear better implications supplied to them in
their accepted theistic conceptions of the world, they failed to define
distinctly any grounding of the moral law on anything higher or more
permanent than the subjective elements of the human constitution. For,
even Plato's objective basing of it, for citizen duty, on the law of
the state, assumed only a subjective basis in the person of the ruler
himself. The Stoic theory, however, had glimpses of some higher and
broader ground, though it failed to see it truly.
==Roman Teaching.==
=6.= The Roman moralists adopted substantially the doctrine of the
Greek Stoics. This was finely exhibited and commended, especially by
Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. But we have no new theory among
the Roman philosophers.
After the establishment of Christianity, whose progress thenceforward
determined and marked the intellectual activity and advancing
philosophy and culture of mankind, the discussion of ethics became
simply a part of theology. And according to the spirit and method of
theology in the early Church and during the middle ages, even down to
modern times, the discussion was not philosophical, but biblical. It
was concerned simply to set forth human duty, especially the duties
of the Christian life, as taught in the scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments. Resting the moral law upon revealed divine authority, it
paid small attention to the question of its metaphysical validation.
But when modern philosophy began its investigations, it of necessity
soon came upon this point, and inquired after the natural basis or
ultimate ground of the great law whose unique authority both the sacred
Scriptures and the moral consciousness of men agreed in asserting.
==Divine Absolutism.==
=7.= Modern theories begin with that of Divine absolutism--making the
moral law, like physical laws, only a product of God's will. It makes
it rest absolutely optional in His sovereignty of choice. It not only
seeks no ulterior reason, or logical _prius_, for his choice, but
distinctly disconnects it from any. God's will is not the expression or
revelation, but the originator, of the moral distinction, constituting
it, with its obligatoriness, as He has done, when He might have
constituted it otherwise, even the very contrary. He determined "the
right" according to no norm, but as creating and establishing a norm.
Whether there should be any moral distinction and what it should be,
was a matter of the divine choice. The view is a one-sided conception
of God's sovereignty. It was set forth by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and
René Descartes (1596-1650), and has found prominent advocacy frequently
since. But it collides with both sound theology and an adequate moral
philosophy.
(1) It fails to recognize any eternal essential moral character in
God Himself. The interests of both morality and religion require
faith in Him as Himself eternally the righteous and holy creator
and moral ruler, in His immutable nature. The morally good can not
be something "contingent," but must be absolute, irrepealable and
irreversible even by God. We need for both religion and character, to
hold fast to the great truth which represents God in His moral will
as choosing righteousness as righteousness, loving the "morally good
as good"[49]--not as by mere will originating the moral distinction
and fixing a code of conduct upon arbitrary ordination. For real moral
character in God we must go even further and regard Him as loving
righteousness, not simply as good in Himself, but as good in itself,
good by the immutable quality of its own nature. For a moral government
we must have a moral governor. And God can be such, not by enforcing
responsibility to an arbitrary code, but by ruling according to
distinctions that are _per se_ supreme in eternal reason--enforcing not
a mere rule of power but of essential rightness.
(2) Further, the action of the conscience itself, in discerning right
and wrong where it has received no information as to the will of God,
implies that the distinction is rationally based. To discern it is not
always conditioned on such information. Reason itself--the human in the
image of the divine--in some degree reveals the right. So clear is this
discernment, and so independent of all "contingency" does the right
appear, that even pagan writers have been wont to make virtue superior
even to the displeasure of the gods, nobly standing self-approved.[50]
(3) The true relation between the will of God and the ethically good
must be conceived of as, indeed, involving a profound and indissoluble
identity--what He wills being always and necessarily right, though He
wills it in perfect freedom--but yet as moving in the logical order of
thought, that right is not made right by His willing it, but that He
wills it because it is right.
==Civil Authority.==
=8.= Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), holding the natural state of man as
utterly selfish and a state of war, gave to civil government, as
necessary to the social order, supreme authority, and asserted that the
basis of all moral obligation was positive law issued by the sovereign.
Duty rested on the legal statute, whose direction was final. It knew no
higher law. The theory was a repetition of the travesty of ethics in
Plato's Republic. It has had no following, and needs no confutation.
But a theory that thus ignored individual conscience and essential
right, reducing morality to civic obedience, with no other foundation
than the positive enactment of a monarch, at once and strongly re-acted
in strengthening the conviction of the necessity and truth of the
intuitional view of the moral faculty, and of the importance of finding
a better basis for the ethical principle, both in the constitution of
mankind and in the author of nature.
==The Sympathetic Theory.==
=9.= The Sympathetic Theory is naturally associated with that
conception of conscience which makes it consist fundamentally, not in
intellect, but in instinct or feeling. Taking the suggestion from Hume,
the theory was elaborated by Adam Smith (1723-1790). It explained moral
obligation as produced by the special action of our nature in which
we spontaneously sympathize with certain intentions or conduct of our
fellow-men--this sympathy taking the form of approval. The bond to duty
was viewed as thus formed by these instinctive sentiments pointing
out what is morally good and obligating to corresponding behavior. Of
course the individual's sympathetic appreciation had to be broadened
and trained by the standard of general sentiment. And the explanation
was helped out by noting the adaptation of this rule of conduct to
promote personal and social happiness. But a theory resting duty on a
basis so thoroughly subjective, and so uncertain and changeful as are
men's unguided feelings, likely often to be in sympathy with evil,
could not commend itself to wide acceptance. It presented neither the
ground of right nor a safe rule.
==Utilitarianism.==
=10.= The theory of Utilitarianism had its prototypes in the teachings
of Socrates, Aristotle, and the Epicureans. Its modern forms have been
greatly varied, but they all agree in founding the morally good in
utility. That which experience shows to be useful, as promotive of
personal or social interests and happiness, becomes thereby right,
or the norm of moral choices and conduct. The theory, in all its
modifications, is a "goods" theory,[51] interpreting obligation as
simply the behest to conform life to the attainment of the various
forms of good, even the chief, as happiness or enjoyment, provided for
in man's nature and condition. Named from the object or objects sought,
it is eudæmonism; named from the way or means of its attainment, it
is utilitarianism. Sometimes the good is simply happiness, sometimes
personal well-being, sometimes social welfare. Sometimes it is purely
selfish, sometimes altruistic or in some sense benevolent. But a
few examples will make plain both its general character and chief
variations.
(1) William Paley (1743-1805), adopting eudæmonistic principles, rested
all obligation to duty on its tendency to secure everlasting happiness.
He says: "Actions are to be estimated by their tendency. Whatever is
expedient is right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone, which
constitutes the obligation to it."[52] "The will of God" is accepted
as "the rule of virtue," seemingly not, however, as the direct ground
of it, but rather as the sure guide as to what has the "tendency" to
gain for us "everlasting happiness." For, Paley explains: "Such is the
divine character that what promotes the general happiness is required
by the will of God." This view makes the spirit of duty, even in
religion, supreme selfishness. It places the self-regarding impulses on
the throne.
(2) Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the chief apostle of modern
utilitarianism, gave it great popularity by making it distinctly
altruistic. Adopting suggestions in this direction by Shaftsbury
(1713), Hutcheson, Butler, and Hume, he measurably lifted its aim above
the individual's care of his own interests, and made the principle of
right authoritative because promotive of "the greatest happiness of the
greatest number." This seemed to subordinate, without excluding, the
individual's advantage to that of the many, and the selfish instinct
to the higher and nobler aims of love. It developed a rule by which
the brotherhood of man could have place, and character could rise and
broaden into magnanimity and worth. It gave an objective standing and
broadly human aim to the principle of obligation. James Mill, J. S.
Mill and Alexander Bain have been conspicuous recent representatives of
this general view, while modifying some particular features of it.
It must be added, however, that this modern "altruism," when analyzed
to its final view, does not become "disinterested benevolence." For
the greatest general good is viewed as conditioning the best good of
each individual, and the individual is to include it for the sake of
his own share. So this so-called "altruism," after all, is still ruled
by the self-regarding aim, and stands only for the broadest and most
successful utilitarianism.
(3) Evolutionist Utilitarianism. This is its recent and present
most characteristic form. The variety of types of evolutionism,
however, has prevented the bringing of it, thus far, into a definite
universally accepted formulation. Although, as already stated,[53]
monistic evolutionism, whether materialistic or pantheistic, by
excluding freedom from the universe, leaves no place for moral action
or responsibility, it still continues to speak about obligation and
the reality of personal character. In this case the "obligation" can
be only acquiescence in the fatalistic onward evolution of nature with
its inevitable events. Theistic evolution, however, holding itself as
only the mode of the divine creation, though it has difficulties in
explaining the genesis of an authoritative conscience, maintains both
its existence in some sense and a ground for the obligation which it
urges. Its utilitarianism differs from earlier forms in substituting an
historical and biological explanation of the origin and force of the
moral sentiments for the purely psychological one. These sentiments
are declared to be "the results of accumulated experiences of utility,
gradually organized and inherited."[54] In its better forms of
statement this process of organizing a guiding instinct or intuition is
represented as the divine work of transferring the moral law over us
into our subjective consciousness--a process, however, that moves on
the principle of utility and is always incomplete.[55]
Against the whole utilitarian theory, as a widely urged explanation
of the ground of right and the sense of obligation, the following
considerations are decisive:
First, the idea of right is generically distinct and different from
that of happiness or utility. However closely related they refuse
to be identified and must not be confounded. In reference to any
particular act or to any general course of conduct, beyond the question
of pleasure or advantage arises the further question: Is it right?
Every day of their lives men are required to forego enjoyment and the
forwarding of what appears to be their interests, in order to do right
and follow their conscience. Perceived adaptations to happiness are not
the same as the obligation to right. Utilitarianism stands apart from
the moral idea, in a by-play with the idea of profit.[56]
Secondly, as a matter of fact, clear in our consciousness, we do not,
in deciding the right or wrong of purposes and conduct, go through the
process of first determining the question of utility or adaptedness to
secure the greatest happiness to the greatest number or even our own
greatest happiness. In actual moral experience, the first fact is the
notion of right and duty. Even when pleasure or advantage is making an
appeal, duty is decided by the further question: Is it right? If it be
claimed that the process of calculation has become largely unnecessary
through the experience which has been teaching lessons and training
into judgments so spontaneous as to seem almost intuitive, there are
still cases enough where the right is a distinct issue, irrespective of
advantage, and where it is chosen in the face of loss and suffering.
This fact shows that right is a distinct principle and higher than
pleasure. To do right rather than seek sensitive good is the noblest
exaltation of character.
It is especially in evolutionist utilitarianism that the absence of
such conscious calculating of advantage in questions of duty, is
supposed to be explained. The enjoyment of the useful is represented as
gradually organized and transformed into moral approbation, and through
hereditary descent appears, as Herbert Spencer says, in "certain
emotions responding to right and wrong, which have no apparent basis in
the individual experiences of utility." But philosophy fails to explain
how the idea of the useful can thus become identical with the idea of
the right, or even explanatory of it. If a lifetime's experience of
utility does not suffice to transmute the idea of one into the other,
why should we think a longer time would do it? If duty does not become
the same as happiness or as the tendency of conduct to promote it, in
the ascending steps of individual evolution, what warrant have we to
assume that it did so in some period far back of the consciousness of
the present individuals of the race?
Thirdly, utilitarianism is inconsistent with the authority which
belongs to right, as witnessed in the moral consciousness. It is
the distinctive peculiarity of conscience that it reveals a law or
principle of obligation, not of our own making, and which our wills
cannot displace. Manifestly this authority is not of the faculty
itself, but belongs to the law of right which it discloses. It
is right, therefore, that is authoritative, with and through the
conscience, because right is a revelation of that absolute authority
not ourselves which makes for righteousness in the world and the whole
universe. It represents the perfections and will of God. No theory of
obligation is adequate which does not square with this fact of unique
authority in right, as recognized and enforced by the moral imperative.
But neither happiness nor the utilities that tend to promote it,
possess it. They are not obligatory in the peculiar sense in which
the ethical behest binds to righteousness. They are offered to our
enjoyment, as sensitive good, but we may forego them or neglect to seek
them, without direct criminality. Duty may, and often does, require us
not to make them a controlling object of desire.
Among pleasures, some are higher or larger than others, and appeal to
some persons more strongly than to others. We can innocently choose
between them. To seek the greater instead of the smaller, or indeed
to neglect them all, is a prudential characteristic, not a moral one.
Where a person has simply foregone pleasure, he may regret it as
an error, but not repent of it as a sin. Considered with respect to
the individual alone, and free from relations that may incidentally
involve other points than his own personal pleasure, a man's happiness
may be regarded as his own free concern. If he chooses to neglect its
pursuit, or sacrifice it to other aims, so far as it is only and purely
a question as between greater or less enjoyment, his choice cannot
be challenged as guilty, but only as poor economy. Unquestionably it
ought to be believed that God desires men to be happy, and has provided
the needful conditions for happiness, but its enjoyment is an offer
of His love, and not a requirement of law. Happiness is a thing to be
gratefully appreciated; right is a thing we are bound to. Happiness
is a thing the less likely to be enjoyed the more covetously it is
sought after; right claims our unforgetful and completest loyalty.
Utilitarianism, therefore, assuming to ground right, which has direct
authority in the moral consciousness, upon happiness which in itself
has none, necessarily falls short of being an adequate theory of the
ethical reality. It attempts to deduce the moral from the non-moral.
This difference between questions of right and questions of utility
easily solves a supposed difficulty in the moral freedom of the
will. If choices were simply between greater or less degrees of
pleasure or advantage, it might easily be imagined that the will
would be necessarily determined by the greater pleasure. As between
inducements of the same kind, the larger would prevail. But the ethical
choices have their place in the presence of motives of different
_kinds_, between right and enjoyment, duty or gain; and here there is
unquestionable room for free ethical choices. The question of freedom
in moral life is at once relieved by taking it out of the utilitarian
view into the clear atmosphere where the profitable is no longer
confounded with the right.
Fourthly, utilitarianism inverts the true relation between right and
utility. Unquestionably the connection between them is very close. In a
moral system true happiness belongs to righteousness. Man cannot attain
his true welfare in sin. Whatever uncertainties and inequalities the
abuse of free agency may bring temporarily into human enjoyment, in
the long run right in its very nature promotes the happiness which has
been intended for us. But the logical order of relations is, not that
an act is right because it is useful, but useful because right. Under a
moral government happiness, in the highest and fullest sense, comes as
the legitimate fruit of righteousness, as wrong-doing, also, brings its
true consequences in suffering, pain and misery. Right is the quality
of highest rank, and all blessedness comes into unity and harmony under
it. Their rightness gives to actions their quality of usefulness, which
cannot, therefore, ground the right. Utilitarianism inverts the real
relation.
This true relation explains how it is that the right stands the very
highest in the grade of values, without its becoming right by its
profitableness. It is of supreme worth, the greatest good, but it is so
by what it is in itself. Its good consequences spring from its nature.
But while utilitarianism is thus utterly inadequate as a statement of
the ground of right, it nevertheless, especially in its altruistic
form, brings to view some genuine and profound principles of the
philosophy of duty. This has given it its plausibility and wide
acceptance. It is proper, therefore, to mark and recognize the truth
that belongs to the theory.
(1) The tendencies of conduct to promote true happiness, or the
contrary, furnish, in fact, a valuable practical rule in questions
of right and duty. For, by the moral constitution of the world,
right-doing, despite the disorders that temporarily obstruct and
confuse the real law of consequences, is the way of true welfare.
Happiness, in the true, though not hedonistic sense, is an end of our
being, and virtue is conducive to it. "The way of the transgressor
is hard," under the law of natural cause and effect. The utilitarian
theory therefore justly appeals to the great lessons of experienced
utility to show the way of duty and guide conduct into righteousness.
So that while utility does not explain why an act is right, it becomes,
if correctly interpreted, a principle of great value in determining the
right.
(2) It is unquestionably true that the altruistic principle of "the
greatest good to the greatest number" presents a principle of genuine
moral authority. It opens to view the whole realm of obligation to
beneficent activity and self-sacrifice. It points to deeds that are
noblest in life and highest in ethical character. It even gives a
reason for their obligatoriness. In this form the theory no longer
bases duty simply on one's own personal enjoyment or advantage,
identifying morality with supreme selfishness, but lifts it into the
sphere of benevolence and doing good. For, in altruism individual
enjoyment and interests are necessarily subordinated to the well-being
of the many. And when utility is thus put into the service of love
or good-will, it carries the quality of right into wide ranges of
purpose and conduct. It will be observed, however, that the theory
thus obtains its appearance of explaining the foundation of right and
duty only after "utility" has been itself changed and identified with
the virtue of active good-will or beneficence which, of course, is
right and obligatory to the degree of every man's ability. In other
words, only when it ceases to be purely and really a utilitarian
theory, and stands in the name and rights of benevolence--getting
ethical authority surreptitiously from the quality of love instead of
"profitableness"--does it also get the plausibility that it seems to
possess.
(3) It is true, too, that a person's opportunities to promote his
own happiness and true interests involve a degree of obligation to
do so, as far as this may be consistent with other duties. A proper
self-regard is right. In general, on the one hand, we may justly make,
as we have done, a distinction between enjoyment, which is offered
to our option, and right, which is required by moral law. Were there
no considerations involved but that of one's own happiness, this
distinction would be unqualified. On the other hand, it must, at
the same time, be confessed that the moral consciousness of mankind
often condemns the conduct of men reckless of their own happiness
or well-being, not simply as "poor economy," but also as morally
wrong. Except in benevolent sacrifice no man can innocently throw away
his own happiness. The explanation of this is easy. There are other
considerations involved than his own happiness. To understand the whole
truth at this point the underlying fact must be borne in mind, that man
is created for two great ends, primarily for excellence of character,
secondarily and consequently for happiness. In moral order the way
to the latter is in and through the former. Character stands as the
irrepealable condition of reaching man's proper and true happiness.
And it is, therefore, true that in throwing away his happiness a man
may be guilty of more than "poor economy," but only in case he does
this by violating the law of right in surrendering his nature to vice.
It is not the consent to surrender enjoyment in itself that involves
guilt. For, one may innocently and virtuously forego this for the sake
of doing right. He may sacrifice pleasure or present happiness to serve
the good of others. In such disregard and sacrifice of enjoyment to do
good, there is no sin against the law of right; for we are not bound to
enjoyment as we are to right. Nor is there in it any sin against the
divine provision for happiness in our own nature; for under the rule of
moral order righteousness and happiness must finally coincide. While,
therefore, there is a sense in which to throw away one's happiness is
morally wrong, as well as bad policy, it is only when it is thrown away
by conduct that is first a violation of the law of right.
There are two other profound ethical facts which help to explain how
men are bound to regard their own happiness, although right is not
grounded in it. One is, that every man sustains relations to the
welfare of his fellow-men, being a unit in the solidarity of social
humanity, making it impossible to separate his own happiness from
the well-being and rights of others. The other is that he sustains
also relations to an intended possible personal destiny. In the first
of these he is bound in duty to his fellow-men. In the second he is
obligated in duty to God. In the former case, he cannot wantonly trifle
with his own interests without wrong and injury to those to whom he is
bound in the relationships of life. In this way a moral wrong comes
in. In the latter case, as God has rights in His plan for each man's
worthy and happy destiny, it is a sin against Him when men make their
own welfare inferior by failure to observe the moral principle which
conditions true happiness in righteousness. Sacrifice of happiness
by such disregard of moral principle is not to be confounded with
sacrifice of it through loyalty to right and holy self-denial in doing
good.
It thus, however, becomes evident, even in this discussion and
exhibition of the truth which utilitarianism has in its favor, that the
theory fails to present the real ground of right. For in its primary
and fundamental form, viewing conduct as right because promotive of
our personal interests and happiness, it plainly resolves morality
into mere calculation of selfishness. It presents supreme egoism. And
in its altruistic form it either maintains its selfish character, by
explaining that only by the rule of "the greatest good to the greatest
number" can the common interest, and consequently each man's share be
fully secured, implying that he is to contribute to the common welfare
for the sake of his own larger portion; or by subordinating the idea
of "utility" to that of "good-will" actively seeking the interests of
others, it practically confesses that it must seek some other ground
than mere utility or the consequences of conduct, in which to find
the principle of right. And this good-will, benevolence or love, thus
added, also fails. For since good-will is a virtue, it cannot be
placed as the ground of virtue, both in itself and in all virtues. The
moral law is by no means exhausted in benevolence; it must include
also justice, purity, veracity and many other duties. A benevolence
that would be unaccompanied by condemnation of the evil-doer and his
wrongs, might quickly go astray. It has often been pointed out that
good-will itself throws no light as to the right methods of realizing
even itself. Itself needs a guide as to how it may proceed--the very
principle of right after whose basis we are inquiring. Love, unless
united with reprobation of evil-doing, is as likely to act immorally as
morally. Benevolent endeavor, however excellent in itself, must subject
its methods to the fundamental principles of right. And not until we
find the relations that require both benevolence and its utilities, do
we reach the ground of right and obligation.
==Theory of Relations.==
=11.= The Theory of _Relations_ is variously modified. As expressed by
Dr. Samuel Clarke, right is based on "the fitness of things." Wollaston
grounded it on "the truth of things," wrong action being in all cases
out of harmony with the realities of existence. Jouffroy found it in
the demands of "universal order," the particular good and duty of each
man being elements or parts of an absolute good and universal order
appearing to reason as obligatory. Dr. Wayland makes right rest upon
"conformity of action to the relations which man sustains in life."[57]
We shall come upon the essential features of this theory in our next
chapter, in our positive account of the development and basis of right.
==Spiritual Excellence Theory.==
=12.= As defined by Dr. Hickok: "The ground in which the ultimate rule
of right is seen, is the intrinsic excellency of spiritual being."...
"Every man has consciously the bond upon him to do that and that only
which is due to his spiritual excellency."[57] But it is a plain matter
of fact that men do not go through a process of correlating their
proposed conduct with the spiritual excellency of their nature, before
deciding on its moral character. And even if they did so, it would give
them but a self-centred rule. Dr. Gregory well says of this attempt to
put one's own spiritual excellency as the principle of right: "It is
only by a self-deification, by making man a god to himself, that it can
be made a supreme end."[58]
==Theory of Intuitions.==
=13.= Some writers search for no ground beyond the immediate intuition.
This view forbears to seek for any basis behind the immediate
affirmation of the moral sense. Right is ultimate in its own intuition.
"The intuition creates law." This seems to be the teaching of Cudworth,
Kant, Coleridge, Calderwood, and others.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GROUND OF RIGHT--CONTINUED.
The review of theories in the last chapter prepares us to apprehend the
real ground of right. All the subjective theories fail, because the
moral quality is objectively real to the percipient conscience. The
endæmonistic and utilitarian explanations are at fault, because they
attempt to deduce the moral from the unmoral and can give no account of
the unique authority which is the characteristic mark of moral law.
The full ground of right, as the essential elements of the problem have
made clearly apparent, must be regarded as twofold, embracing, first,
the proximate or immediate ground, and secondly, the ultimate ground.
==Proximate Ground Stated.==
I. The proximate ground--as becomes easily manifest if we keep our
view close to the witness of consciousness in actual experience--is in
a rational conformity of conduct to the relations which men sustain
to one another and to other beings in the divinely constituted system
of the world. These relations immediately call for fitting conduct.
They create the _ought_ of moral law. The right is found in conforming
to the requirements which they develop and impose. Duty consists in
fulfilling the demands which they involve and express to the moral
reason.
This, it will be noticed, accords with the fundamental principle
already referred to, that the conception of moral law allies itself
normally only with the theistic view of the world, and the truth that
the constituted human relations have been framed under a rational
ideal of order and welfare. These relations form a rational system
in which intelligent free activity is to actualize a divine plan of
excellence and well-being. They require conduct in accordance with
themselves and with the ends of well-being and happiness to which they
have been adapted. The human reason reads the meaning of the relations,
and the moral discernment recognizes the obligation to correspondent
sentiment and action. Moral conduct thus becomes simply the conduct
that actualizes the ideas of divine order to which the framework of
human relations has been constituted. What is right springs immediately
from the relations, as what is due in ideal moral order. The relations
themselves exhibit a moral constitution as the immediate environment
of the human moral personality. They bring the ethical requirement
which they contain to the recognizing capacity of the reason and the
obedience of the will.
It is to be noticed, further, that the term "relations" is to be
understood here in its most comprehensive sense and applicability. It
embraces all relations with respect to which the human personality
in its freedom has to determine and harmonize itself--relations
individual, social, and divine. Social relationship has often been
absurdly mistaken as the only sphere of moral obligation; and the
individual, if contemplated as alone and perfectly isolated, has
sometimes been supposed to be entirely without ethical bonds. In what
concerns himself only, he is imagined to be unbound. But this is an
unwarrantable limitation of the term. For the individual, even viewed
utterly apart from his race, yet sustains relations to the adaptations
and intentions in his own nature. As in society he owes something to
the humanity around him, even alone he would still owe something to
the humanity committed to his own keeping. He cannot absolve himself
from the bond that binds him to that--as in fact he cannot from that
which unites him to his fellow-men. Mere pleasures or enjoyments which
are apart from his essential character he may, indeed, disregard, but
not what concerns its intended excellence and honor. It has been well
said: "Robinson Crusoe did not become a non-moral being when thrown on
the desert island; for he still owed respect to his own humanity."[59]
Many a deed is wrong, not as injuring others, but as violative of the
agent's relation to the purposes lodged in his own constitution. This
is as real as are those that connect him with his fellow-men around him
or with God above him. And it is very superficial thought that finds
no relations but those that are objective. Sometimes, strangely, in
popular thinking, man's relation to God is also omitted from a place
in morality, by a relegation of it to the sphere of religion. But this
relation is the most fundamental and vital of all human relations and
most replete with moral obligations and responsibilities.
This view of the immediate ground of right is fully established by the
following additional considerations:
==Sustained by Moral Consciousness.==
=1.= It is directly sustained by the moral consciousness itself, in
constant experience. As a question of psychological metaphysics the
point must be settled in harmony with the testimony of consciousness.
Appealing to this, there can be no doubt that these relations do
develop and call for the duties which the conscience is constantly
discerning and enforcing. This is simply a fact--a fact which
speculations about the origin of conscience or the education of its
judgments, must not be allowed to obscure. It assures that actual
morality is no abstraction, but concrete conduct rightly answering
to each person's relations in real life. Beyond all question, as
thus witnessed in the universal moral consciousness, these relations
from the most general, that of man to man, down through all special
connections, as between parents and children, husband and wife,
brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, rulers and citizens,
employer and employé, rich and poor, capable and helpless, and all the
other human interrelations in their thousands of diversified forms,
do determine and impose both general and specific duties. The duties
come into view as developed by the relations, and change as they are
modified and changed. This basing of what is right and obligatory
for men on their relations to one another, to God, and to appointed
ends, is not a mere theory, but an unquestionable reality in their
consciousness.
And this accords with the best cosmic philosophy. For this holds all
these relations as parts of a rationally designed system of world-order
for universal well-being, and the moral reason as capacitated to
discern, with more or less clearness and fulness, the moral requirement
which they involve and present for observance. We know of no morality
that exists, or can exist, in human life, apart from them. Strike them
all away, and all duties disappear. Take, as illustration, the most
generic virtue of all the virtues recognized by the ethical judgments,
that of good-will or love. The moral reason recognizes this as resting,
according to eternal fitness, in the broadest and most generic of all
relations, that of one intelligent sentient being to another. In the
inter-human connection it is based in the brotherhood of man. And this
generic good-will, thus required in ideal moral right by the generic
relation, becomes differentiated and modified in thousands of special
types and forms by the endlessly diversified particular relations of
life.
==Presuppositions in Responsibility.==
=2.= It is implied in the logical presuppositions to all moral
responsibility. Among such presuppositions, as conceded by all, are
intelligence to know, and freedom to conform to these relations. These
prerequisites are essential to the very conception of moral action and
amenability. It is the universal sense of the race that creatures that
cannot know themselves and the relations they sustain, and are without
free-will to fulfil them, are morally irresponsible and incapable of
virtue or vice. To them the moral realm becomes a blank, and the moral
judgments become impossible. And equally universal is the admission
that the moral insight is helped and responsibility increased by every
increase of light giving larger and truer knowledge of the complex and
intricate connections of human life. With every broadened and clarified
vision of these connections fresh obligations appear. "A defective
apprehension of the relations in which we stand to God and to our
fellow-men, will prevent our seeing our specific duties."[60] This fact
furnishes direct evidence that right conduct must be held as a certain
intelligent adjustment to the relations sustained.
The value of this point is magnified when we remind ourselves how
it explains and illuminates the sometimes troublesome phenomenon of
different and even conflicting moral judgments in the same case by
different persons, and the fact of progress in moral standards as
civilization and culture advance. Differing apprehension of one or
more of the many elements or factors converging, with confusing force,
into almost every situation which calls for duty, easily accounts
for most of the perplexing diversity. The relations are seen from
different angles, and interpreted in different light. And the advance
of civilizations, with their science and philosophy, brings truer and
completer views of man's place and relations. The moral ideas of the
human reason are, indeed, essentially identical in all men and all
ages, and when human relations are apprehended in the same light,
with equal clearness and fulness, the moral judgments substantially
agree. But the progress of knowledge, throwing increasing light on
these relations, leads the onward civilizations up into truer and
better application of the principles of right in life. The different
codes do not mean a change of primary moral ideas, but merely reflect
and illustrate the changed and advancing apprehension of man's true
relations to which these unchanging ideas are, and are forever to be,
applied.
Another and kindred fact is explained, adding still further
confirmation of the correctness of this theory. With perfect intentions
men fulfil objective duty only in measure. Duty is only approximately
accomplished, in varying degrees, from very faulty success to high
grades of accuracy and completeness. A correct view of the ground of
right must necessarily allow a consistent explanation of this fact.
Sometimes the fact has been looked upon as inconsistent with any
absolute dividing line between right and wrong, on one or the other
side of which every action must fall. Not all good acts are perfect
or faultless; not all evil ones are equally violations of duty. Of
right actions some measure up better than others toward all that full
duty requires. Dr. Martineau, partly in order to account for this
scope of variety in moral correctness, urges a special definition of
right and wrong: "Every action is right, which, in presence of a lower
principle, follows a higher; every action is wrong, which, in presence
of a higher principle, follows a lower."[61] By the great difference in
the rank of moral motives the reason of men's differing grades in the
ascending or descending scale of character seems to come into view.
But while the definition furnishes a rule frequently serviceable for
guidance in questions of duty, it fails to define the ground of right;
for it leaves unsettled the very point in this question, viz.: why one
principle (as a motive) _is_ morally "higher" or "lower" than another,
or why some intentions or actions are right or wrong in any degree.
And the offered explanation is unnecessary; for the unquestionable
principle of moral requirement developed in relations, and discerned
by the intuitive insight of the conscience fully explains the variety,
when we remember the various degrees of accuracy and fulness with
which these relations are understood and estimated. Every relation
calling for duty is composite and complex, the various parts being
often so connected as to come only partially or one-sidedly into view,
preventing full insight of the moral demand, or accurate adjustment of
sentiment and conduct to it. Rarely is any relation simple and alone.
Often, indeed commonly, conscience has to decide duty as a resultant
obligation out of very complicated and even antagonistic relationships.
All this is amply sufficient to explain the different degrees in which
the conduct meets duty. It is the necessary result of the impossibility
of exactly fitting the moral sentiment or act to the demands of the
moral relations. And the transparent explanation which this theory
furnishes of the fact of such degrees strongly corroborates its
scientific correctness.
==Verified in Moral Concepts.==
=3.= It is verified, further, in the character of the various virtues,
and their opposite immoralities. In their very conceptions these
imply relations. They are moulded by them, and carry the shaping thus
received. Justice, for example, in inter-human affairs, is absolute
equity between man and man--exact reciprocity. Veracity expresses
something that is due from one to another among beings whose welfare
requires them to live according to the truth of things. The duty to
speak the truth answers to the need and right of each one to know it.
Love, or good-will, has already been shown to express the feeling
which, in eternal fitness, is due from one sentient rational being
to another, in the most generic relationship. Honesty means seeking
equality of values in dealings one with another. Sincerity signifies
genuineness in the temper and way we relate ourselves to those about
us. We might run through all the precepts of the Christian decalogue
and note that every one is based on some general or special relation,
either of man to God or of men to their fellow-men. No virtue can get
away from relations. The very concept of every one is moulded by them,
and carries the shaping which they enstamp upon it as the coin does
that of the die.