power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is
called war, and such a war as is of all against all.... In such
condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is
uncertain, ... no arts, no letters, no society, and, what is worst of
all, continued fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short....
“And consequently, it is a precept, or general rule of reason, _that
every man ought to endeavor peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining
it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps
and advantages of war_.... From this fundamental law of nature, by
which men are commended to endeavor peace, is derived this second law;
_that a man be willing when others are so too, as far forth as for
peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down
this right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against
other men as he would allow other men against himself._”
Thus “the final cause, end, or design of men, who naturally love
liberty and dominion over others, in the introduction of restraint upon
themselves in which we see them live in commonwealths, is the foresight
of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that
is to say, of getting themselves out from the condition of war, which
is necessarily consequent to the natural passions of men when there is
no visible power to keep them in awe and tie them by fear of punishment
to the performance of their covenants.”
Now “the only way to erect such a common power ... is to confer all
their power and strength upon one man or upon an assembly of men that
may reduce all their wills ... unto one will, ... which is as much as
to say, to appoint one man or an assembly of men to bear their person,
and every one to own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever
he that so beareth their person shall act ... in those things which
concern the common peace and safety; and therein submit their wills
every one to his will, and their judgments to his judgment.... This
done, the multitude so united in one person is called a Commonwealth,
in Latin, Civitas. This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or
rather, to speak more reverently, of that _mortal god_ to which we owe
under immortal God our peace and defence.”
Seldom has the “generation” of an Absolute been so clearly set forth.
We do not suppose, any more than Hobbes himself did, that this word
“generation” has any historical significance. Men never lived in the
state of nature here defined, they never foregathered to reason out in
this way the advisability of organizing themselves into commonwealths.
Instead of “generation,” read, if you will, “justification,” _i.e._,
the justification in reason for the commonwealth’s existence and
dominion. Then observe that not only does this great loyalist (the
whole Leviathan is one of the loyalist documents of the Civil
Wars)--not only does he demand a reason for the loyal faith that
is in him, but in the development of this reason it turns out that
the absolute _is not another will at all_, but only one’s own will
thoughtfully dealing with others to win for itself a “more contented
life.”
Now of course it is an absurdity to try to give a reason why any will
whatever should be taken for absolute and expect to keep it so; for
the very function of this reason is to show what more ultimate end
is served by acknowledging this will as master. But if we do follow
Hobbes’s reason for bowing as deep as we do bow to Leviathan, this
reason is that our own deepest desire--or what Hobbes takes to be
such--is thereby best served. “For it is,” says he, “a voluntary act;
and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to
himself.”
Why then, that morality which promised to give us a meaning of the good
that would enable us to understand how the progress of science with
its hypothetical goods might let us stray from or even lead us away
from _the_ good, has turned out to be itself offering us a hypothetical
good, _to be itself an effort of science_,--the science of many wills
meeting in presence of but a single world. And this I take to be the
fate, not only of Hobbes’s but of all moralities: differ as they may
respecting that Other-will they take to be absolute, they all alike
recommend a sacrifice of my will to another will, not indeed for the
sacrifice’ sake, nor yet for that other will’s sake when all is said,
but that my own will may find “a more contented life thereby.”
* * * * *
Most of us have let our thoughts respecting the good of life stop
with the acceptance of those moral goods that the opinion of our time
takes to be absolute. These standard objects of loyalty, the state,
the hearth, the cause, we serve with devotion and to them make our
sacrifice. It is natural we should look with distrust, even with
hostility, upon those who have let their thought go further and have
asked, How in serving these Other-wills is our own deeper desire the
better fulfilled? And yet, if our analysis is so far correct, this is
the most intelligent, the most dignified of questions; for no historic
morality has really meant to present itself as a system of sacrifices
with no corresponding satisfactions.
But if we ask of the current morality of loyalty, What is the greater
contentment bought by each of us at the price of the sacrifices we make
in loyalty’s name? we come upon serious matters for reflection. There
have been those who maintain that current morality cannot meet the
demands of intelligence, and as there are two ways in which in buying a
thing for a price one may drive an unprofitable bargain, so there are
two critics of current morality. The one thinks the price morality asks
too high; the other esteems the thing bought of no value. Let me call
the one the _Reforming Moralist_; the other the _Amoralist_.
Now the reward morality holds out to all who make sacrifice to it
is some ideal of peace, whether it be peace on earth and good will
among men, or that peace which passeth understanding. Our reforming
moralist then holds fast to the ideal of peace as the deepest of human
desires, but questions whether current morality in its uncritical
acceptance of traditional loyalties has found the most intelligent,
_i.e._, the least sacrificial way of peace. Thus if he is not blind
to the citizen-peace that comes from living in Commonwealths to whose
Over-will we particular men make our loyal sacrifices, neither will he
accept such nationalism as refuses to sanction covenants of nation with
nation to the establishment of their more peaceful, if less autonomous,
relations. He sees in that group-will we call the national-will but an
historic device for improving the conditions of private life. He sees
nothing but unreformed, that is, atavistic and stupid morality in such
nationalism as would make the autonomy of the state an end in itself to
which private life must forever yield its contentment. There is a sense
in which he would say with Remy de Gourmont--
“The life of nations, of groups, of individuals is one struggle
against morality. Man pushes on toward liberty, and can accept only
such discipline as assures him at the cost of temporary subjection a
more agreeable and more complete exercise of this supreme good. All
discipline that is not founded in liberty is caduque, and it is for
this reason that civilization has always succeeded in surmounting
systems of morals.”[16]
But if our reforming moralist acknowledges the supreme value of peace
and would only make the pursuit of it more intelligent, our amoralist
denies that the human heart can ever rest in peace or even really wants
to. Peace, if it were complete, would mean stagnation, will-less
apathy, that ennui of life Schopenhauer judges to be worse than any
misery the war of aggressive wills can engender. In the Nietzschian
man-of-might our amoralist sees his ideal, a will that knows no
Over-will, acknowledges no loyalty, but whose motto is “Weltmacht oder
Untergang.” For him, life shall at least know nothing of ennui, no
static stagnant peace, no Nirvana.
Thus if we approach in an historian’s spirit the attempt to think out
the world-desirable to make for which is to progress in the only sense
the word can have, we find humanity divided between those who desire
peace and those who want war.
On behalf of peace the moralist points not alone to the misery war
brings to the vanquished, not alone to its cost to the victor and to
the vanity of his ephemeral winnings; but to that utter loneliness
which the war of all upon all makes the only lasting portion of each. A
solitude of struggle, without one to cheer the effort, without one to
share the joy (if joy it can then be called) of triumph--can any human
heart endure, let alone desire war?
But the amoralist, full of the _certaminis gaudia_, turns in disgust
from the hopeless state of the peaceful who having nothing more to
fear can have nothing left to hope for. Our longing for peace is an
illusion of certain moments of war-weariness, but a picture of eternal
peace, stagnant, ambitionless, dead--and yet not dead enough--who could
endure it, who could really desire peace?
Lonely ambition--peaceful acquiescence in a common lot! The history of
human relations is a struggle, more often than not a compromise between
these ideals. There is enough inspiring in each to make any man of
understanding long for it, there is enough repulsive in each to turn
any thoughtful soul against it. Wherefore the gruesome spectacle of
world war is but the outer and visible sign of the struggle that goes
on every silent moment within the heart of each, as the volcano is but
the overt violence of long sullen rumblings that have gone before. And
so things must last if and so long as we really want two irreconcilable
ideals: compromise must follow makeshift, war must punctuate peace,
world without end.
* * * * *
Into a world so distraught comes that child of God, that messenger of
heaven, the modest philosopher. His cheerful gospel is that all men’s
ills are curable by taking thought, that men suffer only for their
false philosophy. Now, of all philosophies none is so false as that
which pretends one cannot have his penny and his cake. True it may
be in the letter that I cannot keep a certain copper in my pocket
and honestly entice a sweet-meat out of the baker’s window. But I
must be a sorry philosopher if I cannot keep all the potentiality of
future enjoyment the penny stands for, and yet have all the actual
satisfaction I happen for the moment to visualize in the form of cake.
Or to put the thought in less poetic and more general terms, the heart
that thinks itself torn by conflicting desires owes its plight to the
failure of its imagination to realize that only the formulas in which
it has so far expressed its desires are in contradiction; the desires
themselves may well enough be reconciled in a larger world-view.
Take our present problem for example. It is impossible, you say, that
I should deny the ambition to conquer for the sake of the love of
my neighbor without killing what is most vital in myself. And it is
equally impossible that I should give play to my ambition to conquer
without losing my neighbor’s love and living a lonely struggle. These
things are indeed impossible in the world to which the imagination
of the past has been fettered,--this little finite earth the fulness
whereof is so easily emptied. If to have all that I can win of such
meagre fulness is the only meaning I can give to ambition, either I
must kill ambition and love my neighbor across a fence, or I must
tear down the fence and kill my neighbor. But what if the fault of
all this lay not with the darkness of reality, but with the blindness
of untrained imagination? What if we could set before ambition a
boundless prospect, so that never, far as conquest might reach, could
it find cause to weep for lack of more to conquer? What if, in the
very conquering of such a world, the gain of one, so far from being
another’s loss, were the equal spoil of all, yes, and a weapon forged
to the hand of all for new victories? Wherefore _then_ should ambition
yield or love be denied?
But perhaps you will say, this _is_ but an imagining and a dream. Our
humdrum world, the only real one, offers no such object of ambition;
and if it did, our nature, just human nature, is not such as could
understand, still less be fascinated and inspired by it.
Does it sound ridiculous to say that our world _is_ one that holds out
just such a prospect to all who will but see? Aye, and that many a
human eye has seen, and having seen remained single to this vision? I
will call the promised land the Kingdom of Nature Subdued: I will call
the vision the Vision of Science.
* * * * *
In the beginning, Man was Nature’s creature and her plaything.
Sometimes she seems to have fondled her toy and been good to it, given
it pleasant places to dwell in and let the light of her countenance
shine upon it. Those who think only of these rare moments may sing, O
bella età dell’ oro! O Paradise; O Paradise! They forget how rare were
these moments and how capriciously bestowed. Elsewhere were many griefs
of which man could not so much as guess the reason, and if he dared
raise his questioning gaze to God he was mocked for his impotence and
nothingness: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?
declare, if thou hast understanding.”
But need makes for perspicuity. Time passed, and some few caught a
glimpse of the vision of science; caught it, widened it, brightened
it and passed it on. Perhaps their lives were not very happy in a
world where they were much alone; but it is easier to tell of their
ostensible hardships than of their enthusiasms--who knows but that even
they found here their compt? Time went on, and that Nature which had
begun by being so cruel and capricious a mistress became through man’s
science more and more his slave. Human eyes were not so often turned to
the gods in supplication. A Greek slave rang out to his fellows, “Why
call ye upon the gods? Ye have hands? Wipe your own nose.”
The earth yields; step by step death itself gives ground; and shall
we think of the stars only to fear them and to read our fate in them?
Shall they forever whisper to us their old taunting questions: “Canst
thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of
Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? or canst thou
guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
canst thou set the dominion thereof on the earth?”--And shall we always
answer, Alas!
But I am dreaming a dream. Is it though so ill a thing to dream, if
one does not forget how to laugh the while? Yes, I know, the stars
are rather big for our frail hands to play with even as all Nature
once played with us. But how else am I to say that there is nothing in
Nature that can forever resist the onward march of science? What else
am I to say when the same master equations hold in heaven as on the
earth, and Arcturus with all his sons is but a falling pebble painted
large?
Let us dream then and laugh with Aesop at his frog. It is certain that
neither our laughter nor our dreams can hurt our wise neighbor very
much, and if we go the toilsome way toward the conquest we dream of,
he or one that comes after may sometime look back on us and say, Yes,
that was Progress. _The measure of man’s coöperation with man in the
conquest of nature measures progress._
X
ROYCE ON LOVE AND LOYALTY
A Footnote in Illustration
[Something we had to say, in clarifying the thought of Kant, of a
quality of human _love_ that holds its object single and unique. And
again, in estimating the part played by morality in the ideal of
progress, we had occasion to remark the unwillingness of some to admit
the finality of those sacrifices _loyalty_ calls for.
These matters are not so simple but that history, in dealing with them,
shows sharp discord where it does not uncover sheer confusion. The love
that sets its heart on _one_ has been held the highest; it has also
been put the lowest of all loves. Loyalty that lives on sacrifice has
been prized as an enduring condition of all worth; it has not escaped
disparagement as a human makeshift. Above all, “love” and “loyalty” are
so mixed in men’s minds that, although any pair of lovers could tell a
service of love from a servitude to loyalty, philosophers cannot always.
The brief discussion that follows seemed to the writer to illustrate
a difficulty it may not have removed. He considered that it could not
lack point for those who in foregoing passages on love and loyalty
have found themselves more involved than enlightened. For the rest, it
has seemed best to leave this “footnote” in the form and wording its
original occasion inspired.[17]]
* * * * *
One who like me has gone to Royce for wisdom now this long time and
never come away empty, may yet live to know that some of his receivings
are more his belongings than others. Thus, if it ever happen to me that
I find my hold on the ‘Absolute’ slackening and the thing slipping from
me, I cannot think that even in that day I shall have forgotten two
words I have heard. Love and loyalty, loyalty and love: this pair I
expect will still be singing its burden in my soul after other things
have left off singing there. But I hope that when this day comes I
shall know better than I do now whether love and loyalty are two names
for the same thing; or whether they are not the same, yet brothers
and friends; or whether in the end they are not rather enemies, of
which one can survive only if the other doesn’t. Nor do I know, though
I should very much like to, how Royce himself would answer these
questions. Sometimes the words fall in such close juxtaposition in his
writings that I wonder whether they do not express a single idea whose
peculiar quality is just unselfishness. But again I bethink me that to
be just unselfish is not enough for an absolutist, if for anyone; that
giving up can only be justified when it is a means of acquiring; and I
wonder what loyalty can have to say for itself half as convincing as
the things love could point to. Until at last I find myself speculating
whether if love had its perfect way with us there would be any place
left for loyalty in our lives, and whether we could not look back on it
then as on a virtue happily outlived.
And this may be my matter in a nutshell--is not loyalty a thing to be
outlived, and is not that which alone can enable us to live it down a
love so perfect it calls for no sacrifices? Some such thought has long
been with me, but if I am to lay my troubles before you, it is time
I put aside a language too rich in sentimental associations and took
up the idiom I love best, that of cold and, if may be, mathematical
definition.
Any definition of loyalty that could have meaning for me must assume
the existence of something many deny to have either existence or
meaning, and which I shall call in my own way the mind of a group,
or a group mind. The conception of a mind belonging to a group of
beings each one of which has a mind of its own, yet such that the
mind of the group is no more to be known from a study of its parts
than is the mentality of Peter from the psychology of Paul, is a
very old conception and perhaps for that reason supposed by some to
be old-fashioned and out-worn. It is a mere analogy, they say, and
a very thin one at that, to speak of a group of organisms as itself
an organism; it is Plato, it is Cusanus, if you will, but it is not
modern. Benedetto Croce even goes so far as to be polite about the
matter. “The State,” he writes, “is not an entity, but a fluid complex
of various relations among individuals. It may be convenient to delimit
this complex and to entify it for the sake of contrasting it with other
complexes. No doubt this is so; but let us leave to the jurist the
excogitation of this and the like distinctions--fictions, but opportune
fictions--being careful not to call his work absurd. It is enough for
us to be sure we do not forget that a fiction is a fiction.”
To Royce the group mind is far from being a fiction, though he may
prefer to call it by some other name than group mind--maybe universal
mind or universal will. But if to him it seems natural, as it does
to me, to recognize group minds, while to Croce the entity is but a
polite fiction to be pleasantly dismissed, there must be some lack of
definition befogging our issue. Nor can I think of any way in which old
issues can better be made clear than by recalling old images.
Aristotle would not have asked when and where do new _entities_ appear,
but where and when must we take account of new _forms_. Now matter was
informed for Aristotle when the behavior of some class of beings was
recognized to be predictable in terms of purpose. Thus earth, water,
air and fire sought their proper places, one below, another above, and
the others in between. But we remember how no sooner had these elements
reached their proper places than, transformed by the sun’s heat, they
were no longer at home where they found themselves, but must needs seek
their new homes anew. Thus homeward bound in opposite directions, they
collided and became entangled, so that mixtures of the four appeared,
which, as it proved, kept their proportions for a longer or shorter
while ere they lost their equilibrium and fell apart again. Among these
mixtures were vegetables and animals and men, but Aristotle is very
far from defining this new class, organisms, in terms of the quantities
of the elements that enter into their bodily composition. No, what they
have in common and all they have in common is a new purpose, that of
self-preservation (and, if we are to follow Aristotle rigorously, that
of type-preservation). But why in this class of beings does a new form
appear when there is nothing in any one of them but so much earth,
so much water and so much of the rest? Because, I take it, in order
that the purpose of the group may be realized, the purpose of each
constituent of that group must be defeated: when the earth in us finds
its way back to earth and our fire to fire, then we are no more. Which
is the fundamental difference between us and them: if we win they lose;
if they win we are done for. The whole has a purpose whose realization
is only possible if the purposes defining the parts are given up for it.
I suppose Croce would say that nothing better could be offered in
support of a modern fiction than an ancient fable; and I confess that
I can think of nothing better fitted to set forth the complex problem
of how beings of one mind can combine to form groups of another mind,
than Aristotle’s account of the way elements in the form of mechanism
combine to produce a group with that other form, life. Perhaps I
can make out the connection between old and new ideas by a single
example. I know of no fellow easier to get along with than your average
Parisian: many a time have I sat at his board, looked in his eyes,
listened to his amusing wit and wondered how the great-grandfather of
my host could have been part of the Reign of Terror. And yet I suppose
the Parisian of today is not very different from the Parisian of four
generations ago, when groups of these same Parisians were ranging the
streets of Paris crying, “A la lanterne!” However much it was in the
character of the Pierre, Paul, Jean and Jacques Bonhomme of those old
days to steer for home, their distributive tendency was contradicted by
their collective tendency. A new form, a new entity had appeared; it
was the spirit of the mob. It may be pleasant to call such new entities
fictions; but it would be a most dangerous fiction to suppose pleasant
men made pleasant mobs.