Fourlians, was the assassination of Usbek. “This Usbek had been to the
last moment Alcheic’s intimate friend, had laid many high obligations
upon him, had even saved his life on a certain occasion, and had,
by his will, which was found after the murder, made him heir to a
considerable part of his fortune. Alcheic, it seems, conspired with
about twenty or thirty more, most of them also Usbek’s friends; and
falling all together on that unhappy man when he was not aware, they
had torn him with a hundred wounds, and given him that reward for
all his past favors and obligations.” Usbek “had many great and good
qualities; ... but this action of Alcheic’s sets him far above Usbek in
the eyes of all judges of merit; and is one of the noblest that ever
perhaps the sun shone upon.”
Other splendid achievements of this gentleman are recounted, and the
list might have been longer had not the narrator interrupted his
friend. “Pray,” said he, “Palamedes, when you were at Fourli, did you
also learn the art of turning your friends into ridicule by telling
them strange stories, and then laughing at them if they believed you?”
“I assure you,” replied the traveller, “had I been disposed to learn
such a lesson there was no place in the world more proper. My friend
did nothing from morning to night but sneer and banter and rally;
and you could scarcely ever distinguish whether he were in jest or
earnest. But you think, then, that my story is improbable, and that I
have used, or rather abused, the privilege of a traveller?”
“To be sure,” said I, “you were but in jest. Such barbarous and
savage manners are not only incompatible with a civilized intelligent
people, such as you said those were; but are scarcely compatible with
human nature. They exceed all we ever read among the Mingrelians and
Topinamboues.”
“Have a care,” cried Palamedes, “have a care! You are not aware that
you are speaking blasphemy, and are abusing your favorites, the Greeks,
especially the Athenians, whom I have couched all along under these
bizarre names I employed. If you consider aright, there is not one
stroke of the foregoing character which might not be found in the
man of highest merit at Athens.... The amours of the Greeks, their
marriages (the laws of Athens allowed a man to marry his sister by
the father), and the exposing of their children cannot but strike
you immediately. The death of Usbek is an exact counterpart to that
of Caesar,”--and so the parallel runs on until Palamedes concludes
triumphantly, “I think I have fairly made it appear that an Athenian
man of merit might be ... incestuous, a parricide, an assassin,
an ungrateful perjured traitor, and something else too abominable
to be named and having lived in this manner, his death might be
entirely suitable; he might conclude the scene by a desperate act of
self-murder, and die with the most absurd blasphemies in his mouth. And
notwithstanding this he shall have statues, if not altars, erected to
his memory.”
I need hardly say that Hume has in the “Dialogue” from which I quote
made use of a pleasant artifice to force on the reader’s attention the
nature and difficulty of his problem: to find, namely, a common meaning
for the words “virtue” and “vice,” by whomsoever used; in spite of the
fact that nearly kindred civilizations will be the one confident it has
found virtue, where the other is certain it has found vice. “How shall
we pretend to fix a standard for judgments of this nature?” he finally
puts the question. “By tracing matters,” he answers himself, “a little
higher.... The Rhine flows north, the Rhone south; yet both spring from
the _same_ mountain, and are also actuated in their opposite directions
by the _same_ principle of gravity. The different inclinations of the
ground on which they run cause all the differences of their courses.”
And one by one with admirable skill, he takes up the virtues of our
friend Alcheic, which to us are such conspicuous vices, to show that
under the conditions of Greek life most had a quality in common with
those perhaps directly opposite acts, which, under the conditions of
our life we should commend, and that quality, which is the keynote of
all Hume’s ethics, is “utility.”
“It appears,” he puts it, “that there never was any quality recommended
by anyone as a virtue or moral excellence, but on account of its being
_useful_ or _agreeable_, to a man _himself_ or to _others_. For what
other reason can ever be assigned for praise or approbation? Or where
would be the sense of extolling a _good_ character or action, which at
the same time is allowed to be _good for nothing_? All the differences,
therefore, in morals may be reduced to this one general foundation, and
may be accounted for by the different views which people take of these
circumstances.”
* * * * *
Given Hume’s world-view, it is evident that the only ones whom we have
a right to count in estimating the agreeable or disagreeable effects of
our actions are such other sentient beings as experience reveals to us:
to wit, our fellow humans and perhaps the higher animals. Moreover, the
only period which we have a right to consider as containing a life’s
measure of happiness and unhappiness is that which experience confirms
to us: to wit, that bounded by birth and death.
Thus defined, the calculus of utility involved in judging the merit
of an act may be difficult, but is possible of an empirical solution.
There remains only one question of human destiny to be settled, but
it is an important one. What, namely, is the relation between the
happiness experience gives me a right to expect, and the virtue of
my conduct? For Hume’s ethics are not egoistic. The utility that
measures the excellence of my act is not merely, nor even primarily,
its agreeableness to me; but also, and perhaps in larger measure, its
agreeableness to others. How for this large element of altruism in all
good actions am I, the actor, to be paid, if paid I am to be? To this
question Hume gives an elaborate reply in a section of his “Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals” entitled “Why Utility Pleases.”
The answer is simple enough. There is in the human heart a sentiment
we call sympathy, or, to use Hume’s favorite word, “humanity.” To
possess this sentiment is to rejoice in another’s joy, grieve with
another’s grief. To possess such a sentiment is to possess the reward
of all altruism; for happiness bestowed upon another is bread cast
upon the waters that returns to us after days as few or as many as may
be required to produce in our own soul the sympathetic image of the
happiness we have wrought in another’s.
Such is the theory of human duty and of human destiny which Hume
has worked out by the method of Empiricism, which pretends not to
a knowledge of God, nor of a system of things broader than the
world of our experience. We may allow his own words to contrast the
resulting attitude toward life and duty with the theological: “I
deny a providence, you say, and supreme governor of the world, who
guides the course of events and punishes the vicious with infamy and
disappointment, and rewards the virtuous with honor and success in
all their undertakings. But surely I deny not the course itself of
events, which lies open to every one’s enquiry and examination. I
acknowledge that in the present order of things virtue is attended with
more peace of mind than vice and meets with a more favorable reception
from the world. I am sensible that according to the past experience
of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life, and moderation
the only source of tranquillity and happiness. I never balance between
the virtuous and the vicious course of life but am sensible that to a
well-disposed mind every advantage is on the side of the former. And
what can you say more, allowing all your suppositions and reasonings?”
V
IMMANUEL KANT
1724-1804
The religion of Immanuel Kant can be put in one phrase, “We cannot
know that there is a God; but we ought to live as though there were
one”--the difficulty lies in interpreting the phrase.
That we cannot know there is a God is a conclusion to which we have
seen the decline of rationalism and the growth of empiricism slowly
tending. But that we ought to live as though there were a God--what can
such a phrase mean? What manner of life does it prescribe? Above all,
what sort of an _ought_ is this and how does it bind us?
There is no deeper interest for Kant than that which invites one to
consider the meaning of the word “ought.” I say, _the_ meaning of
“ought,” yet it may be that the word has more than one meaning. For
compare these two examples of its use,--first this: If you want to
bisect a line you ought to describe certain arcs and draw a certain
straight line. And then this: “You ought to speak the truth.”
We notice at once a rhetorical difference in these two uses of the
_ought_. In the first, a certain procedure is commanded _if_ and only
_if_ we want to bisect a line. Leave out the condition this _if_
introduces, and the _ought_ with all that follows on it loses its
meaning. No decalogue could be imagined to contain among its commands
an injunction to describe arcs and draw lines. Let us call this use
of the _ought_ the hypothetical use, let us call the command such an
_ought_ introduces a hypothetical command or in Kant’s own phrase a
“_hypothetical imperative_.” An _ought_ that is inseparable from an
_if_ is a hypothetical imperative.
On the other hand when I say, “You ought to speak the truth,” “You
ought not to steal,” I seem to be using the _ought_ in a sense that
needs no _if_ to make its meaning clear. More than that, attempts to
supply an _if_, so far from making the meaning of the _ought_ clearer,
have more often than not the effect of changing, of travestying the
meaning we instinctively see in it. Truthful speaking and honest
dealing be indeed useful devices for getting along in the world, but
one who is honest because honesty is the best policy seems to us hardly
honest--at all events he seems to have missed the point that honesty is
enjoined on us without _ifs_ or _buts_. The obligation to be honest is
an unconditional command, a “_categorical imperative_.” It is of such
stuff as decalogues are made on--it is so the voice of duty speaks in
us.
It needs no pointing out that so far as our examples go, the
hypothetical ought has no moral flavor. No sin attaches to one who has
left undone the things he ought to have done _if_ he aimed at bisecting
a line. Sin does attach to one who has done what he ought not to have
done in the way of lying, no matter what end seemed to justify the
means. This hypothetical _ought_ finds its reason in pure science, this
categorical in pure morality.
All this is true, and yet one would form a poor opinion of Kant’s
thoroughness if one represented him as having rushed from one or two
examples to the generalization: All hypothetical uses of the _ought_
are scientific and non-moral; all categorical uses are moral and
non-scientific. To such a generalization Kant does indeed come, and to
it he clings through difficulties more than enough to discourage one
in whom the conviction of its truth were less a matter of heart than
it was to Kant. But however it fitted in with Kant’s character to view
the command of duty as sternly categorical, it was equally part of his
character patiently to seek a reason for the faith that was in him.
If Kant had wished to establish no more than that there must be
_something_ categorical about the moral _ought_ distinguishing it
from the many _oughts_ that suggest nothing of morality, his task
would not have been hard. For suppose that to every command there
was really a hidden condition attached; suppose that the categorical
was really a hypothetical imperative in disguise. Then the goodness
of the act commanded could mean no more than its fitness to bring
about a certain result. But what of the result? Is it, too, good? The
question can obviously have no meaning, for only the way can be good;
the goal cannot. And yet we seem to revolt against such meaning of
goodness: there is a difference to us between a good way of cheating
one’s neighbor and a way of being good. Either then there is some way
of defining a good end--an end which justifies the means--or else
there must be a moral excellence that belongs to certain types of act
irrespective of what they may lead to, if indeed they lead to aught in
common. In either case we come upon the categorical _ought_--the end
that ought to be pursued for its own sake, or else the type of act that
ought to be followed for its own sake with no view to consequences.
The first interpretation of the moral ought would be illustrated in a
theory that pointed, as did Hume’s, to the happiness of the community
as an end imposed without condition, while it defined good actions to
be such as were well calculated to bring about this end. The second
interpretation is in the spirit of the Decalogue, or of the classic
saying, Let justice be done though the heavens fall. It is not the
business of the actor to consider the consequences of his just dealing;
if the world is so divinely ordered that not the heavens but heaven’s
blessing fall on the just man, this is a truth to be independently
established. Duty first, consequences after!
No theory of the moral _ought_ can escape a recognition of a
categorical command; but we must choose between the end and the act as
that to which the _ought_ applies. If we are sometimes doubtful whether
Kant abides at all points by the decision he first makes in this
matter, there can be no doubt that he comes to a decision at once in
favor of the view that the moral ought applies to a type of act, not to
an end this type of act might be calculated to bring about. We should
still know our duty if we knew of no such end, we ought still to follow
duty if there were no such end. It is in trying to carry through this
idea, which we may call the Decalogue idea, of the categorical _ought_,
that Kant meets his most serious difficulties. Yet the motives which
made him accept and cling to such an interpretation are such as the
simplest may grasp--yes, the simpler one is of heart, the more easily
may one sympathize with them.
In the first place a scientific insight into the means best calculated
to bring about an end is obtainable only by study and thought. Even the
simple device by which a line may be bisected is not at every one’s
disposal, while the highest science has but imperfect means to suggest
for accomplishing the ends we most crave. But it seemed to Kant that
duty must make a universal appeal, to the poor understanding as clearly
as to the richly endowed; morality must be no privilege of the high,
but a treasure of the humble. “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be
clever,” is a word of homely counsel that has crept into our language
to show how good a Kantian the plain man may be.
Or again--but really it is the same thought differently expressed--duty
ought to make no hesitating uncertain appeal. No one should have a
chance to excuse himself on the ground that he was ignorant of the
law. But ignorance of scientific law is the portion of all of us.
Alas, if we should have to grope after goodness as we do after wisdom!
The intellectuality of pagan Greece might and did contemplate such a
state of affairs with equanimity or even with favor. The spirit of
Christianity expressed the deep desire of the unintellectual that at
least virtue might be theirs for the willing.
Kant had a name for any law that was thus universal (that is, applying
to everybody) and necessary (that is, free from uncertainty). He
called such laws _a priori_; that is, not dependent for their authority
upon the slow uncertain gathering of experimental evidence. To him
then, the one chance of possessing a moral law _a priori_ lay in the
recognition that such a law must in decalogue fashion prescribe a
type of act, not an end which might be uncertainly tried for now by
truth-telling, now by lying--not an end in short which justified the
means so dubiously that it might be taken to justify any means.
* * * * *
To us mortals wandering in the mazes of life and perplexed--we think
honestly perplexed--by the way issues of right and wrong present
themselves, the possession of an indubitable law of duty whose
authority was higher than any consideration of consequences would be a
godsend. Yet because such a thing is desirable, it does not follow that
it is possible, and we are quite prepared to find Kant at this point
setting up as the deepest problem of ethics the question, “How is a
categorical imperative possible?” That is, what sort of a world would
it be in which men recognized the authority of such an _ought_ and were
free and willing to obey it?
An image of one such world is the common possession of our race.
God created this world, and the beings that dwell in it. On these
beings he lays certain commands in the form of a decalogue, and their
authority rests on the will of God regarded now as King. If God had
purpose in laying these commands on his subjects, their duty to
God’s will must not wait on their insight into his purpose and their
acceptance of it as theirs. Man has been created free to obey or not to
obey God’s commands, and is told that happiness will be meted out to
him in the measure of his obedience, unhappiness in the measure of his
disobedience. But to deserve reward, he must not only obey God’s law,
but do it uniquely because it is God’s will. He must conceive himself
as prepared to obey without promise of reward or threat of punishment.
Moreover, it is not pretended that this justice will accomplish itself
within the limits of human life on this earth, but in a future life and
in another world whose existence must be taken on faith. Here then we
have an image of a world in which a categorical imperative in the form
of a decalogue is possible, and not only is possible, but has exactly
the relations to purpose and to happiness that Kant required of such an
imperative. Duty may serve a purpose; but the assurance we have of this
is no part of the authority duty has for us. The performance of duty
may bring happiness; but duty would remain authoritative if we knew
nothing of any happiness it would bring.[4]
This world, we might call it the Old Testament World, is then exactly
the kind of a world in which morality as Kant defines morality could
and would exist. Moreover Kant is prepared to show that it is the
only kind of a world in which true morality could exist. If we are to
have such a thing as a command of duty, we must have the three things
characteristic of our Old Testament world-image: the freedom of man,
the immortality of the soul, the ruling power of God. If we take these,
as well we may, to be the essential beliefs of religion, then it
appears that for Kant morality is inseparable from religion.
I say that Kant is prepared to prove that without these three
assumptions, God, freedom and immortality, no categorical imperative
is possible; but I am far from asserting that a conscientious thinker
will be prepared to follow Kant in every step of this proof. It is in
most parts a tortured process of reasoning at once over subtle and over
simple, and back of it all, one feels that Kant’s deepest motives for
arriving at his conclusions are the instinctive demands of his heart,
which demands a marvelous intellect is made to serve as best it may.
However, the first step is obvious enough: unless there is a sense in
which the being on whom a duty is laid is free to follow or not to
follow its command, there is no sense in which duty is possible. This
ought ye to do; but alas you cannot! This ought ye to do, and besides
you can’t help doing it! These expressions equally rob the ought of
meaning. We can quite see that without freedom, duty is meaningless.
Yet the beings on whom the commands of duty are laid are men like
you and me, and in such beings we notice that what freedom they have
is limited in a peculiar way. We are in the habit of attributing to
each a certain nature or character that we try to regard as working
itself out--if not in all--yet in many and various situations. But
in this attempt to explain conduct in terms of character and its
expression, we are constantly baffled by what seems to us a duality or
even multiplicity of characters in the same individual. In this man
we explain a certain part of his conduct as the outcome of a strong
imperious animality; but another part shows his passion restrained by
motives of honor, kindness, sympathy. Two natures are at war in him,
and as we are likely to think of one of these as more really his than
the other, we represent him as struggling to conquer himself.
Well, this warfare of a man with himself is one of the commonest things
in life, and life itself shows that a higher or better self may often
enough win the victory over and free itself from a baser and lower
disposition. But life shows too that the struggle is long and bitter,
so long that a lifetime is too short a span in which to secure a
complete victory. Just in proportion as the higher self is high, does
the struggle grow hard and lengthen itself out. If we conceive the self
whose struggles we are watching to be the moral self as Kant describes
it, all the love and lust of life seem to be arrayed against it. If it
is to free itself, that is if we are to become completely moral agents,
not a lifetime, nor a century, nor a million years, but the whole of
eternity must be allowed us for our battling. But this means that the
actor must be immortal, and so it is that for Kant the possibility of a
completely moral being, free to act out his moral nature, presupposes
immortality.
The existence of a moral being then involves the acceptance of him as
a free immortal being. But though these are important traits of the
Old Testament world image which Kant is trying to show to be the only
image that makes morality possible, yet the recognition of a man’s
freedom and immortality is not peculiar to it, but may be found in
many philosophies. Both, for example, have a place in Spinoza’s system
which is as far as possible from giving us an Old Testament account of
reality.
When we add a third condition, the ruling power of God, we have
a difference indeed, but also a difficulty in understanding the
necessity of the assumption. To be sure, if we add the idea of justice
to that of moral worth, if we require that worth should be rewarded
with proportional happiness, then indeed we should have to go beyond
experience to convince ourselves that such justice obtains, and we
might very well identify the ideal of justice with the idea of a
God-governed world. But Kant has insisted throughout that the idea of
right and the idea of reward are independent, why then are they not
separable? Why in order that there may be a thing that we ought to
do, must there be an assurance that we shall be happy in the doing or
because of the doing of it?
It is easy to give Kant’s answer to this question--it is difficult to
make sure that one has understood it. His answer is simply that while
morality may be the _highest_ desire of the human heart, it cannot be
its _whole_ desire. It _must_ desire happiness as well as virtue.
Kant defines the happy man as one whose desires are satisfied. But if
we think of this desire as being directed toward a _type_ of object,
any attempt to interpret Kant’s motives for introducing a God into his
system must meet the obvious difficulty that since morality is the
highest type of desire and since it is admitted that all are free to
be moral, then the Stoic happiness in virtue is assured quite without
reference to a divine government of the world.
The only way we can hope to explain in what sense the will to do one’s
duty cannot be a complete definition of the object of human desire is
to understand that happiness depends upon our obtaining, not a type
of thing,--morality or wealth or power or science--but an individual
thing. Our demand for moral satisfaction may be realized in one
situation as well as another. “To tell the truth,” if that be all we
want, lays no conditions on the particular circumstances under which
we tell the truth. We want to follow a principle, and principles are
abstract enough. But is it not true that the kind of desire of which
finite beings have the deepest experience is bent on just those things
that cannot be generalized nor made abstract? What we want in them, and
that on which our happiness depends, seems to be offered but this once
in all possible life, and nothing like it could be imagined that would
meet our desires just as well.