The questions which are here to be considered are especially and
peculiarly everybody's questions. It is not everybody's business to
be an engineer, or a doctor, or a carpenter, or a soldier; but it
is everybody's business to be a citizen. The doctrines and precepts
which guide the practice of the good engineer are of interest to him
who uses them and to those whose business it is to investigate them by
mechanical science; the rest of us neither obey nor disobey them. But
the doctrines and precepts of morality, which guide the practice of
the good citizen, are of interest to all; they must be either obeyed
or disobeyed by every human being who is not hopelessly and forever
separated from the rest of mankind. No one can say, therefore, that in
this inquiry we are not minding our own business, that we are meddling
with other men's affairs. We are in fact studying the principles of
our profession, so far as we are able; a necessary thing for every
man who wishes to do good work in it.
Along with the character of universal interest which belongs to
our subject there goes another. What is everybody's practical
business is also to a large extent what everybody knows; and it
may be reasonably expected that a discourse about Right and Wrong
will be full of platitudes and truisms. The expectation is a just
one. The considerations I have to offer are of the very oldest and
the very simplest commonplace and common sense; and no one can be
more astonished than I am that there should be any reason to speak of
them at all. But there is reason to speak of them, because platitudes
are not all of one kind. Some platitudes have a definite meaning
and a practical application, and are established by the uniform and
long-continued experience of all people. Other platitudes, having
no definite meaning and no practical application, seem not to be
worth anybody's while to test; and these are quite sufficiently
established by mere assertion, if it is audacious enough to begin
with and persistent enough afterward. It is in order to distinguish
these two kinds of platitude from one another, and to make sure that
those which we retain form a body of doctrine consistent with itself
and with the rest of our beliefs, that we undertake this examination
of obvious and widespread principles.
First of all, then, what are the facts?
We say that it is wrong to murder, to steal, to tell lies, and that it
is right to take care of our families. When we say in this sense that
one action is right and another wrong, we have a certain feeling toward
the action which is peculiar and not quite like any other feeling. It
is clearly a feeling toward the action and not toward the man who does
it; because we speak of hating the sin and loving the sinner. We might
reasonably dislike a man whom we knew or suspected to be a murderer,
because of the natural fear that he might murder us; and we might like
our own parents for taking care of us. But everybody knows that these
feelings are something quite different from the feeling which condemns
murder as a wrong thing, and approves parental care as a right thing. I
say nothing here about the possibility of analyzing this feeling, or
proving that it arises by combination of other feelings; all I want
to notice is that it is as distinct and recognizable as the feeling
of pleasure in a sweet taste or of displeasure at a toothache. In
speaking of right and wrong, we speak of qualities of action which
arouse definite feelings that everybody knows and recognizes. It is
not necessary, then, to give a definition at the outset; we are going
to use familiar terms which have a definite meaning in the same sense
in which everybody uses them. We may ultimately come to something
like a definition; but what we have to do first is to collect the
facts and see what can be made of them, just as if we were going to
talk about limestone, or parents and children, or fuel.
It is easy to conceive that murder and theft and neglect of the young
might be considered wrong in a very simple state of society. But
we find at present that the condemnation of these actions does not
stand alone; it goes with the condemnation of a great number of other
actions which seem to be included with the obviously criminal action,
in a sort of general rule. The wrongness of murder, for example,
belongs in a less degree to any form of bodily injury that one man
may inflict on another; and it is even extended so as to include
injuries to his reputation or his feelings. I make these more refined
precepts follow in the train of the more obvious and rough ones,
because this appears to have been the traditional order of their
establishment. 'He that makes his neighbor blush in public,' says
the Mishna, 'is as if he had shed his blood.' In the same way the
rough condemnation of stealing carries with it a condemnation of
more refined forms of dishonesty: we do not hesitate to say that it
is wrong for a tradesman to adulterate his goods, or for a laborer
to scamp his work. We not only say that it is wrong to tell lies,
but that it is wrong to deceive in other more ingenious ways; wrong
to use words so that they shall have one sense to some people and
another sense to other people; wrong to suppress the truth when that
suppression leads to false belief in others. And again, the duty of
parents toward their children is seen to be a special case of a very
large and varied class of duties toward that great family to which we
belong--to the fatherland and them that dwell therein. The word duty
which I have here used, has as definite a sense to the general mind
as the words right and wrong; we say that it is right to do our duty,
and wrong to neglect it. These duties to the community serve in our
minds to explain and define our duties to individuals. It is wrong to
kill any one; unless we are an executioner, when it may be our duty
to kill a criminal; or a soldier, when it may be our duty to kill the
enemy of our country; and in general it is wrong to injure any man in
any way in our private capacity and for our own sakes. Thus if a man
injures us, it is only right to retaliate on behalf of other men. Of
two men in a desert island, if one takes away the other's cloak, it
may or may not be right for the other to let him have his coat also;
but if a man takes away my cloak while we both live in society, it
is my duty to use such means as I can to prevent him from taking away
other people's cloaks. Observe that I am endeavoring to describe the
facts of the moral feelings of Englishmen, such as they are now.
The last remark leads us to another platitude of exceedingly ancient
date. We said that it was wrong to injure any man in our private
capacity and for our own sakes. A rule like this differs from all the
others that we have considered, because it not only deals with physical
acts, words and deeds which can be observed and known by others, but
also with thoughts which are known only to the man himself. Who can
tell whether a given act of punishment was done from a private or from
a public motive? Only the agent himself. And yet if the punishment
was just and within the law, we should condemn the man in the one
case and approve him in the other. This pursuit of the actions of
men to their very sources, in the feelings which they only can know,
is as ancient as any morality we know of, and extends to the whole
range of it. Injury to another man arises from anger, malice, hatred,
revenge; these feelings are condemned as wrong. But feelings are not
immediately under our control, in the same way that overt actions are:
I can shake anybody by the hand if I like, but I cannot always feel
friendly to him. Nevertheless we can pay attention to such aspects
of the circumstances, and we can put ourselves into such conditions,
that our feelings get gradually modified in one way or the other; we
form a habit of checking our anger by calling up certain images and
considerations, whereby in time the offending passion is brought into
subjection and control. Accordingly we say that it is right to acquire
and to exercise this control; and the control is supposed to exist
whenever we say that one feeling or disposition of mind is right and
another wrong. Thus, in connection with the precept against stealing,
we condemn envy and covetousness; we applaud a sensitive honesty which
shudders at anything underhand or dishonorable. In connection with the
rough precept against lying, we have built up and are still building
a great fabric of intellectual morality, whereby a man is forbidden
to tell lies to himself, and is commanded to practice candor and
fairness and open-mindedness in his judgments, and to labor zealously
in pursuit of the truth. In connection with the duty to our families,
we say that it is right to cultivate public spirit, a quick sense of
sympathy, and all that belongs to a social disposition.
Two other words are used in this connection which it seems necessary
to mention. When we regard an action as right or wrong for ourselves,
this feeling about the action impels us to do it or not to do it,
as the case may be. We may say that the moral sense acts in this case
as a motive; meaning by moral sense only the feeling in regard to an
action which is considered as right or wrong, and by motive something
which impels us to act. Of course there may be other motives at work at
the same time, and it does not at all follow that we shall do the right
action or abstain from the wrong one. This we all know to our cost. But
still our feeling about the rightness or wrongness of an action does
operate as a motive when we think of the action as being done by us;
and when so operating it is called conscience. I have nothing to do
at present with the questions about conscience, whether it is a result
of education, whether it can be explained by self-love, and so forth;
I am only concerned in describing well-known facts, and in getting
as clear as I can about the meaning of well-known words. Conscience,
then, is the whole aggregate of our feelings about actions as being
right or wrong, regarded as tending to make us do the right actions and
avoid the wrong ones. We also say sometimes, in answer to the question,
'How do you know that this is right or wrong?' 'My conscience tells me
so.' And this way of speaking is quite analogous to other expressions
of the same form; thus if I put my hand into water, and you ask me how
I know that it is hot, I might say, 'My feeling of warmth tells me so.'
When we consider a right or a wrong action as done by another
person, we think of that person as worthy of moral approbation or
reprobation. He may be punished or not; but in any case this feeling
toward him is quite different from the feeling of dislike toward a
person injurious to us, or of disappointment at a machine which will
not go.
Whenever we can morally approve or disapprove a man for his action, we
say that he is morally responsible for it, and vice versâ. To say that
a man is not morally responsible for his actions is the same thing as
to say that it would be unreasonable to praise or blame him for them.
The statement that we ourselves are morally responsible is somewhat
more complicated, but the meaning is very easily made out; namely,
that another person may reasonably regard our actions as right or
wrong, and may praise or blame us for them.
We can now, I suppose, understand one another pretty clearly in using
the words right and wrong, conscience, responsibility; and we have
made a rapid survey of the facts of the case in our own country at
the present time. Of course I do not pretend that this survey in any
way approaches to completeness; but it will supply us at least with
enough facts to enable us to deal always with concrete examples instead
of remaining in generalities; and it may serve to show pretty fairly
what the moral sense of an Englishman is like. We must next consider
what account we can give of these facts by the scientific method.
But first let us stop to note that we really have used the scientific
method in making this first step; and also that to the same extent
the method has been used by all serious moralists. Some would have
us define virtue, to begin with, in terms of some other thing which
is not virtue, and then work out from our definition all the details
of what we ought to do. So Plato said that virtue was knowledge,
Aristotle that it was the golden mean, and Bentham said that the
right action was that which conduced to the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. But so also, in physical speculations, Thales said
that everything was Water, and Heraclitus said it was All-becoming,
and Empedocles said it was made out of Four Elements, and Pythagoras
said it was Number. But we only began to know about things when people
looked straight at the facts, and made what they could out of them;
and that is the only way in which we can know anything about right
and wrong. Moreover, it is the way in which the great moralists have
set to work, when they came to treat of verifiable things and not of
theories all in the air. A great many people think of a prophet as a
man who, all by himself, or from some secret source, gets the belief
that this thing is right and that thing wrong. And then (they imagine)
he gets up and goes about persuading other people to feel as he does
about it; and so it becomes a part of their conscience, and a new duty
is created. This may be in some cases, but I have never met with any
example of it in history. When Socrates puzzled the Greeks by asking
them what they precisely meant by Goodness and Justice and Virtue,
the mere existence of the words shows that the people, as a whole,
possessed a moral sense, and felt that certain things were right and
others wrong. What the moralist did was to show the connection between
different virtues, the likeness of virtue to certain other things,
the implications which a thoughtful man could find in the common
language. Wherever the Greek moral sense had come from, it was there in
the people before it could be enforced by a prophet or discussed by a
philosopher. Again, we find a wonderful collection of moral aphorisms
in those shrewd sayings of the Jewish fathers which are preserved in
the Mishna or oral law. Some of this teaching is familiar to us all
from the popular exposition of it which is contained in the three
first Gospels. But the very plainness and homeliness of the precepts
shows that they are just acute statements of what was already felt
by the popular common sense; protesting, in many cases, against the
formalism of the ceremonial law with which they are curiously mixed
up. The Rabbis even show a jealousy of prophetic interference, as if
they knew well that it takes not one man, but many men, to feel what
is right. When a certain Rabbi Eliezer, being worsted in argument,
cried out, 'If I am right, let heaven pronounce in my favor!' there
was heard a Bath-kol or voice from the skies, saying, 'Do you venture
to dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, who is an authority on all religious
questions?' But Rabbi Joshua rose and said, 'Our law is not in heaven,
but in the book which dates from Sinai, and which teaches us that in
matters of discussion the majority makes the law.' [2]
One of the most important expressions of the moral sense for all time
is that of the Stoic philosophy, especially after its reception among
the Romans. It is here that we find the enthusiasm of humanity--the
caritas generis humani--which is so large and important a feature in
all modern conceptions of morality, and whose widespread influence
upon Roman citizens may be traced in the Epistles of St. Paul. In
the Stoic emperors, also, we find probably the earliest example of
great moral principles consciously applied to legislation on a large
scale. But are we to attribute this to the individual insight of
the Stoic philosophers? It might seem at first sight that we must,
if we are to listen to that vulgar vituperation of the older culture
which has descended to us from those who had everything to gain by
its destruction. [3] We hear enough of the luxurious feasting of
the Roman capital, how it would almost have taxed the resources of a
modern pastry-cook; of the cruelty of gladiatorial shows, how they
were nearly as bad as autos-da-fé, except that a man had his fair
chance and was not tortured for torture's sake; of the oppression of
provincials by people like Verres, of whom it may even be said that if
they had been the East India Company they could not have been worse;
of the complaints of Tacitus against bad and mad emperors (as Sir
Henry Maine says); and of the still more serious complaints of the
modern historian against the excessive taxation [4] which was one great
cause of the fall of the empire. Of all this we are told a great deal;
but we are not told of the many thousands of honorable men who carried
civilization to the ends of the known world, and administered a mighty
empire so that it was loved and worshiped to the furthest corner of
it. It is to these men and their common action that we must attribute
the morality which found its organized expression in the writings of
the Stoic philosophers. From these three cases we may gather that
Right is a thing which must be done before it can be talked about,
although after that it may only too easily be talked about without
being done. Individual effort and energy may insist upon getting that
done which was already felt to be right; and individual insight and
acumen may point out consequences of an action which bring it under
previously known moral rules. There is another dispute of the Rabbis
that may serve to show what is meant by this. It was forbidden by
the law to have any dealings with the Sabæan idolaters during the
week preceding their idolatrous feasts. But the doctors discussed the
case in which one of these idolaters owes you a bill; are you to let
him pay it during that week or not? The school of Shammai said 'No;
for he will want all his money to enjoy himself at the feast.' But
the school of Hillel said, 'Yes, let him pay it; for how can he enjoy
his feast while his bills are unpaid?' The question here is about the
consequences of an action; but there is no dispute about the moral
principle, which is that consideration and kindness are to be shown
to idolaters, even in the matter of their idolatrous rites.
It seems, then, that we are no worse off than anybody else who has
studied this subject, in finding our materials ready made for us;
sufficiently definite meanings given in the common speech to the
words right and wrong, good and bad, with which we have to deal;
a fair body of facts familiarly known, which we have to organize and
account for as best we can. But our special inquiry is, what account
can be given of these facts by the scientific method? to which end
we cannot do better than fix our ideas as well as we can upon the
character and scope of that method.
Now the scientific method is a method of getting knowledge by
inference, and that of two different kinds. One kind of inference is
that which is used in the physical and natural sciences, and it enables
us to go from known phenomena to unknown phenomena. Because a stone is
heavy in the morning, I infer that it will be heavy in the afternoon;
and I infer this by assuming a certain uniformity of nature. The sort
of uniformity that I assume depends upon the extent of my scientific
education; the rules of inference become more and more definite as we
go on. At first I might assume that all things are always alike; this
would not be true, but it has to be assumed in a vague way, in order
that a thing may have the same name at different times. Afterward I
get the more definite belief that certain particular qualities, like
weight, have nothing to do with the time of day; and subsequently
I find that weight has nothing to do with the shape of the stone,
but only with the quantity of it. The uniformity which we assume,
then, is not that vague one that we started with, but a chastened
and corrected uniformity. I might go on to suppose, for example,
that the weight of the stone had nothing to do with the place where
it was; and a great deal might be said for this supposition. It would,
however, have to be corrected when it was found that the weight varies
slightly in different latitudes. On the other hand, I should find that
this variation was just the same for my stone as for a piece of iron
or wood; that it had nothing to do with the kind of matter. And so I
might be led to the conclusion that all matter is heavy, and that the
weight of it depends only on its quantity and its position relative to
the earth. You see here that I go on arriving at conclusions always
of this form; that some one circumstance or quality has nothing
to do with some other circumstance or quality. I begin by assuming
that it is independent of everything; I end by finding that it is
independent of some definite things. That is, I begin by assuming
a vague uniformity. I always use this assumption to infer from some
one fact a great number of other facts; but as my education proceeds,
I get to know what sort of things may be inferred and what may not. An
observer of scientific mind takes note of just those things from which
inferences may be drawn, and passes by the rest. If an astronomer,
observing the sun, were to record the fact that at the moment when
a sun-spot began to shrink there was a rap at his front door, we
should know that he was not up to his work. But if he records that
sun-spots are thickest every eleven years, and that this is also
the period of extra cloudiness in Jupiter, the observation may or
may not be confirmed, and it may or may not lead to inferences of
importance; but still it is the kind of thing from which inferences
may be drawn. There is always a certain instinct among instructed
people which tells them in this way what kinds of inferences may be
drawn; and this is the unconscious effect of the definite uniformity
which they have been led to assume in nature. It may subsequently be
organized into a law or general truth, and no doubt becomes a surer
guide by that process. Then it goes to form the more precise instinct
of the next generation.
What we have said about this first kind of inference, which goes
from phenomena to phenomena, is shortly this. It proceeds upon an
assumption of uniformity in nature; and this assumption is not fixed
and made once for all, but is a changing and growing thing, becoming
more definite as we go on.
If I were told to pick out some one character which especially colors
this guiding conception of uniformity in our present stage of science,
I should certainly reply, Atomism. The form of this with which we are
most familiar is the molecular theory of bodies; which represents
all bodies as made up of small elements of uniform character, each
practically having relations only with the adjacent ones, and these
relations the same all through--namely, some simple mechanical
action upon each other's motions. But this is only a particular
case. A palace, a cottage, the tunnel of the underground railway,
and a factory chimney, are all built of bricks; the bricks are alike
in all these cases, each brick is practically related only to the
adjacent ones, and the relation is throughout the same, namely, two
flat sides are stuck together with mortar. There is an atomism in the
sciences of number, of quantity, of space; the theorems of geometry
are groupings of individual points, each related only to the adjacent
ones by certain definite laws. But what concerns us chiefly at present
is the atomism of human physiology. Just as every solid is built up
of molecules, so the nervous system is built up of nerve-threads and
nerve-corpuscles. We owe to Mr. Lewes our very best thanks for the
stress which he has laid on the doctrine that nerve-fiber is uniform
in structure and function, and for the word neurility, which expresses
its common properties. And similar gratitude is due to Dr. Hughlings
Jackson for his long defense of the proposition that the element
of nervous structure and function is a sensori-motor process. In
structure, this is two fibers or bundles of fibers going to the same
gray corpuscle; in function it is a message traveling up one fiber or
bundle to the corpuscle, and then down the other fiber or bundle. Out
of this, as a brick, the house of our life is built. All these simple
elementary processes are alike, and each is practically related only
to the adjacent ones; the relation being in all cases of the same kind,
viz., the passage from a simple to a complex message, or vice versâ.
The result of atomism in any form, dealing with any subject, is that
the principle of uniformity is hunted down into the elements of things;
it is resolved into the uniformity of these elements or atoms, and of
the relations of those which are next to each other. By an element or
an atom we do not here mean something absolutely simple or indivisible,
for a molecule, a brick, and a nerve-process are all very complex
things. We only mean that, for the purpose in hand, the properties of
the still more complex thing which is made of them have nothing to do
with the complexities or the differences of these elements. The solid
made of molecules, the house made of bricks, the nervous system made
of sensori-motor processes, are nothing more than collections of these
practically uniform elements, having certain relations of nextness,
and behavior uniformly depending on that nextness.
The inference of phenomena from phenomena, then, is based upon an
assumption of uniformity, which in the present stage of science may
be called an atomic uniformity.
The other mode of inference which belongs to the scientific method is
that which is used in what are called the mental and moral sciences;
and it enables us to go from phenomena to the facts which underlie
phenomena, and which are themselves not phenomena at all. If I pinch
your arm, and you draw it away and make a face, I infer that you have
felt pain. I infer this by assuming that you have a consciousness
similar to my own, and related to your perception of your body as
my consciousness is related to my perception of my body. Now is this
the same assumption as before, a mere assumption of the uniformity of
nature? It certainly seems like it at first; but if we think about it
we shall find that there is a very profound difference between them. In
physical inference I go from phenomena to phenomena; that is, from the
knowledge of certain appearances or representations actually present
to my mind I infer certain other appearances that might be present to
my mind. From the weight of a stone in the morning--that is, from my
feeling of its weight, or my perception of the process of weighing
it, I infer that the stone will be heavy in the afternoon--that is,
I infer the possibility of similar feelings and perceptions in me at
another time. The whole process relates to me and my perceptions, to
things contained in my mind. But when I infer that you are conscious
from what you say or do, I pass from that which is my feeling or
perception, which is in my mind and part of me, to that which is
not my feeling at all, which is outside me altogether, namely, your
feelings and perceptions. Now there is no possible physical inference,
no inference of phenomena from phenomena, that will help me over
that gulf. I am obliged to admit that this second kind of inference
depends upon another assumption, not included in the assumption of
the uniformity of phenomena.
How does a dream differ from waking life? In a fairly coherent dream
everything seems quite real, and it is rare, I think, with most
people to know in a dream that they are dreaming. Now, if a dream is
sufficiently vivid and coherent, all physical inferences are just
as valid in it as they are in waking life. In a hazy or imperfect
dream, it is true, things melt into one another unexpectedly and
unaccountably; we fly, remove mountains, and stop runaway horses
with a finger. But there is nothing in the mere nature of a dream to
hinder it from being an exact copy of waking experience. If I find
a stone heavy in one part of my dream, and infer that it is heavy
at some subsequent part, the inference will be verified if the dream
is coherent enough; I shall go to the stone, lift it up, and find it
as heavy as before. And the same thing is true of all inferences of
phenomena from phenomena. For physical purposes a dream is just as
good as real life; the only difference is in vividness and coherence.
What, then, hinders us from saying that life is all a dream? If the
phenomena we dream of are just as good and real phenomena as those
we see and feel when we are awake, what right have we to say that the
material universe has any more existence apart from our minds than the
things we see and feel in our dreams? The answer which Berkeley gave
to that question was, No right at all. The physical universe which
I see and feel, and infer, is just my dream and nothing else; that
which you see is your dream; only it so happens that all our dreams
agree in many respects. This doctrine of Berkeley's has now been so
far confirmed by the physiology of the senses, that it is no longer
a metaphysical speculation, but a scientifically established fact.
But there is a difference between dreams and waking life, which is of
far too great importance for any of us to be in danger of neglecting
it. When I see a man in my dream, there is just as good a body as if I
were awake; muscles, nerves, circulation, capability of adapting means
to ends. If only the dream is coherent enough, no physical test can
establish that it is a dream. In both cases I see and feel the same
thing. In both cases I assume the existence of more than I can see and
feel, namely, the consciousness of this other man. But now here is a
great difference, and the only difference--in a dream this assumption
is wrong; in waking life it is right. The man I see in my dream is
a mere machine, a bundle of phenomena with no underlying reality;
there is no consciousness involved except my consciousness, no feeling
in the case except my feelings. The man I see in waking life is more
than a bundle of phenomena; his body and its actions are phenomena,
but these phenomena are merely the symbols and representatives in my
mind of a reality which is outside my mind, namely, the consciousness
of the man himself which is represented by the working of his brain,
and the simpler quasi-mental facts, not woven into his consciousness,
which are represented by the working of the rest of his body. What
makes life not to be a dream is the existence of those facts which we
arrive at by our second process of inference; the consciousness of men
and the higher animals, the sub-consciousness of lower organisms and
the quasi-mental facts which go along with the motions of inanimate
matter. In a book which is very largely and deservedly known by heart,
'Through the Looking-glass,' there is a very instructive discussion
upon this point. Alice has been taken to see the Red King as he
lies snoring; and Tweedledee asks, 'Do you know what he is dreaming
about?' 'Nobody can guess that,' replies Alice. 'Why, about you,'
he says triumphantly. 'And if he stopped dreaming about you, where do
you suppose you'd be?' 'Where I am now of course,' said Alice. 'Not
you,' said Tweedledee, 'you'd be nowhere. You are only a sort of thing
in his dream.' 'If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum,
'you'd go out, bang! just like a candle.' Alice was quite right in
regarding these remarks as unphilosophical. The fact that she could
see, think, and feel was proof positive that she was not a sort
of thing in anybody's dream. This is the meaning of that saying,
Cogito ergo sum, of Descartes. By him, and by Spinoza after him,
the verb cogito and the substantive cogitatio were used to denote
consciousness in general, any kind of feeling, even what we now call
sub-consciousness. The saying means that feeling exists in and for
itself, not as a quality or modification or state or manifestation
of anything else.
We are obliged in every hour of our lives to act upon beliefs which
have been arrived at by inferences of these two kinds; inferences based
on the assumption of uniformity in nature, and inferences which add to
this the assumption of feelings which are not our own. By organizing
the 'common sense' which embodies the first class of inferences, we
build up the physical sciences; that is to say, all those sciences
which deal with the physical, material, or phenomenal universe,
whether animate or inanimate. And so by organizing the common sense
which embodies the second class of inferences, we build up various
sciences of mind. The description and classification of feelings, the
facts of their association with each other, and of their simultaneity
with phenomena of nerve-action,--all this belongs to psychology,
which may be historical and comparative. The doctrine of certain
special classes of feelings is organized into the special sciences
of those feelings; thus the facts about the feelings which we are now
considering, about the feelings of moral approbation and reprobation,
are organized into the science of ethics and the facts about the
feeling of beauty or ugliness are organized into the science of
æsthetics, or, as it is sometimes called, the philosophy of art. For
all of these the uniformity of nature has to be assumed as a basis
of inference; but over and above that it is necessary to assume
that other men are conscious in the same way that I am. Now in these
sciences of mind, just as in the physical sciences, the uniformity
which is assumed in the inferred mental facts is a growing thing which
becomes more definite as we go on, and each successive generation of
observers knows better what to observe and what sort of inferences
may be drawn from observed things. But, moreover, it is as true of
the mental sciences as of the physical ones that the uniformity is in
the present stage of science an atomic uniformity. We have learned to
regard our consciousness as made up of elements practically alike,
having relations of succession in time and of contiguity at each
instant, which relations are in all cases practically the same. The
element of consciousness is the transference of an impression into
the beginning of action. Our mental life is a structure made out of
such elements, just as the working of our nervous system is made out
of sensori-motor processes. And accordingly the interaction of the
two branches of science leads us to regard the mental facts as the
realities or things-in-themselves, of which the material phenomena are
mere pictures or symbols. The final result seems to be that atomism is
carried beyond phenomena into the realities which phenomena represent;
and that the observed uniformities of nature, in so far as they can
be expressed in the language of atomism, are actual uniformities of
things in themselves.
So much for the two things which I have promised to bring together; the
facts of our moral feelings, and the scientific method. It may appear
that the latter has been expounded at more length than was necessary
for the treatment of this particular subject; but the justification for
this length is to be found in certain common objections to the claims
of science to be the sole judge of mental and moral questions. Some
of the chief of these objections I will now mention.
It is sometimes said that science can only deal with what is,
but that art and morals deal with what ought to be. The saying is
perfectly true, but it is quite consistent with what is equally true,
that the facts of art and morals are fit subject-matter of science. I
may describe all that I have in my house, and I may state everything
that I want in my house; these are two very different things, but they
are equally statements of facts. One is a statement about phenomena,
about the objects which are actually in my possession; the other is
a statement about my feelings, about my wants and desires. There are
facts, to be got at by common sense, about the kind of thing that a
man of a certain character and occupation will like to have in his
house, and these facts may be organized into general statements on the
assumption of uniformity in nature. Now the organized results of common
sense dealing with facts are just science and nothing else. And in the
same way I may say what men do at the present day, how we live now,
or I may say what we ought to do, namely, what course of conduct,
if adopted, we should morally approve; and no doubt these would be
two very different things. But each of them would be a statement of
facts. One would belong to the sociology of our time; in so far as
men's deeds could not be adequately described to us without some
account of their feelings and intentions, it would involve facts
belonging to psychology as well as facts belonging to the physical
sciences. But the other would be an account of a particular class of
our feelings, namely, those which we feel toward an action when it is
regarded as right or wrong. These facts may be organized by common
sense on the assumption of uniformity in nature just as well as any
other facts. And we shall see farther on that not only in this sense,
but in a deeper and more abstract sense, 'what ought to be done'
is a question for scientific inquiry.
The same objection is sometimes put into another form. It is said
that laws of chemistry, for example, are general statements about
what happens when bodies are treated in a certain way, and that such
laws are fit matter for science; but that moral laws are different,
because they tell us to do certain things, and we may or may not obey
them. The mood of the one is indicative, of the other imperative. Now
it is quite true that the word law in the expression 'law of nature,'
and in the expressions 'law of morals,' 'law of the land,' has two
totally different meanings, which no educated person will confound; and
I am not aware that any one has rested the claim of science to judge
moral questions on what is no better than a stale and unprofitable
pun. But two different things may be equally matters of scientific
investigation, even when their names are alike in sound. A telegraph
post is not the same thing as a post in the War Office, and yet the
same intelligence may be used to investigate the conditions of the
one and the other. That such and such things are right or wrong,
that such and such laws are laws of morals or laws of the land,
these are facts, just as the laws of chemistry are facts; and all
facts belong to science, and are her portion forever.
Again, it is sometimes said that moral questions have been
authoritatively settled by other methods; that we ought to accept this
decision, and not to question it by any method of scientific inquiry;
and that reason should give way to revelation on such matters. I
hope before I have done to show just cause why we should pronounce on
such teaching as this no light sentence of moral condemnation: first,
because it is our duty to form those beliefs which are to guide our
actions by the two scientific modes of inference, and by these alone;
and, secondly, because the proposed mode of settling ethical questions
by authority is contrary to the very nature of right and wrong.
Leaving this, then, for the present, I pass on to the most formidable
objection that has been made to a scientific treatment of ethics. The
objection is that the scientific method is not applicable to human
action, because the rule of uniformity does not hold good. Whenever
a man exercises his will, and makes a voluntary choice of one out of
various possible courses, an event occurs whose relation to contiguous
events cannot be included in a general statement applicable to all
similar cases. There is something wholly capricious and disorderly,
belonging to that moment only; and we have no right to conclude
that if the circumstances were exactly repeated, and the man himself
absolutely unaltered, he would choose the same course.
It is clear that if the doctrine here stated is true, the ground is
really cut from under our feet, and we cannot deal with human action
by the scientific method. I shall endeavor to show, moreover, that in
this case, although we might still have a feeling of moral approbation
or reprobation toward actions, yet we could not reasonably praise or
blame men for their deeds, nor regard them as morally responsible. So
that, if my contention is just, to deprive us of the scientific method
is practically to deprive us of morals altogether. On both grounds,
therefore, it is of the greatest importance that we should define
our position in regard to this controversy; if, indeed, that can be
called a controversy in which the practical belief of all mankind
and the consent of nearly all serious writers are on one side.
Let us in the first place consider a little more closely the connection
between conscience and responsibility. Words in common use, such as
these two, have their meanings practically fixed before difficult
controversies arise; but after the controversy has arisen each party
gives that slight tinge to the meaning which best suits its own view
of the question. Thus it appears to each that the common language
obviously supports their own view, that this is the natural and primary
view of the matter, and that the opponents are using words in a new
meaning and wrestling them from their proper sense. Now this is just
my position. I have endeavored so far to use all words in their common
every-day sense, only making this as precise as I can; and, with two
exceptions, of which due warning will be given, I shall do my best
to continue this practice in future. I seem to myself to be talking
the most obvious platitudes; but it must be remembered that those who
take the opposite view will think I am perverting the English language.
There is a common meaning of the word 'responsible,' which though
not the same as that of the phrase 'morally responsible,' may throw
some light upon it. If we say of a book, 'A is responsible for the
preface and the first half, and B is responsible for the rest,'
we mean that A wrote the preface and the first half. If two people
go into a shop and choose a blue silk dress together, it might be
said that A was responsible for its being silk and B for its being
blue. Before they chose, the dress was undetermined both in color
and in material. A's choice fixed the material, and then it was
undetermined only in color. B's choice fixed the color; and if we
suppose that there were no more variable conditions (only one blue
silk dress in the shop), the dress was then completely determined. In
this sense of the word we say that a man is responsible for that part
of an event which was undetermined when he was left out of account,
and which became determined when he was taken account of. Suppose
two narrow streets, one lying north and south, one east and west,
and crossing one another. A man is put down where they cross, and
has to walk. Then he must walk either north, south, east, or west,
and he is not responsible for that; what he is responsible for is the
choice of one of these four directions. May we not say in the present
sense of the word that the external circumstances are responsible for
the restriction on his choice? We should mean only that the fact of
his going in one or other of the four directions was due to external
circumstances, and not to him. Again, suppose I have a number of
punches of various shapes, some square, some oblong, some oval, some
round, and that I am going to punch a hole in a piece of paper. Where
I shall punch the hole may be fixed by any kind of circumstances;
but the shape of the hole depends on the punch I take. May we not say
that the punch is responsible for the shape of the hole, but not for
the position of it?
It may be said that this is not the whole of the meaning of the word
'responsible,' even in its loosest sense; that it ought never to be
used except of a conscious agent. Still this is part of its meaning;
if we regard an event as determined by a variety of circumstances,
a man's choice being among them, we say that he is responsible for
just that choice which is left him by the other circumstances.
When we ask the practical question, 'Who is responsible for
so-and-so?' we want to find out who is to be got at in order that
so-and-so may be altered. If I want to change the shape of the hole
I make in my paper, I must change my punch; but this will be of
no use if I want to change the position of the hole. If I want the
color of the dress changed from blue to green, it is B, and not A,
that I must persuade.
We mean something more than this when we say that a man is morally
responsible for an action. It seems to me that moral responsibility
and conscience go together, both in regard to the man and in regard
to the action. In order that a man may be morally responsible for an
action, the man must have a conscience, and the action must be one in
regard to which conscience is capable of acting as a motive, that is,
the action must be capable of being right or wrong. If a child were
left on a desert island and grew up wholly without a conscience, and
then were brought among men, he would not be morally responsible for
his actions until he had acquired a conscience by education. He would
of course be responsible, in the sense just explained, for that part
of them which was left undetermined by external circumstances, and
if we wanted to alter his actions in these respects we should have
to do it by altering him. But it would be useless and unreasonable
to attempt to do this by means of praise or blame, the expression of
moral approbation or disapprobation, until he had acquired a conscience
which could be worked upon by such means.
It seems, then, that in order that a man may be morally responsible
for an action, three things are necessary:--
1. He might have done something else; that is to say, the action was
not wholly determined by external circumstances, and he is responsible
only for the choice which was left him.