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A HANDBOOK OF ETHICAL THEORY
BY GEORGE STUART FULLERTON
To
MY WIFE
PREFACE
We are all amply provided, with moral maxims, which we hold with more or
less confidence, but an insight into their significance is not attained
without reflection and some serious effort. Yet, surely, in a field in
which there are so many differences of opinion, clearness of insight and
breadth of view are eminently desirable.
It is with a view to helping students of ethics in our universities and
outside of them to a clearer comprehension of the significance of morals
and the end of ethical endeavor, that this book has been written.
I have, in the Notes appended to it, taken the liberty of making a few
suggestions to teachers, some of whom have fewer years of teaching behind
them than I have. I make no apology for writing in a clear and
untechnical style, nor for reducing to a minimum references to
literatures in other tongues than our own. These things are in accord
with the aim of the volume.
I take this opportunity of thanking Professor Margaret F. Washburn, of
Vassar College, and Professor F. J. E. Woodbridge, of Columbia
University, for kind assistance, which I have found helpful.
G. S. F. New York, 1921.
CONTENTS
PART I
_THE ACCEPTED CONTENT OF MORALS_
CHAPTER I. IS THERE AN ACCEPTED CONTENT?
1. The Point in Dispute.
2. What Constitutes Substantial Agreement?
3. Dogmatic Assumption.
CHAPTER II. THE CODES OF COMMUNITIES
4. The Codes of Communities: Justice.
5. The Codes of Communities: Veracity.
6. The Codes of Communities: the Common Good.
CHAPTER III. THE CODES OF THE MORALISTS
7. The Moralists.
8. Epicurean and Stoic.
9. Plato; Aristotle; the Church.
10. Later Lists of the Virtues.
11. The Stretching of Moral Concepts.
12. The Reflective Mind and the Moral Codes.
PART II
_ETHICS AS SCIENCE_
CHAPTER IV. THE AWAKENING TO REFLECTION
13. The Dogmatism of the Natural Man.
14. The Awakening.
CHAPTER V. ETHICAL METHOD
15. Inductive and Deductive Method.
16 The Authority of the "Given."
CHAPTER VI. THE MATERIALS OF ETHICS
17. How the Moralist should Proceed.
18. The Philosopher as Moralist.
CHAPTER VII. THE AIM OF ETHICS AS SCIENCE
19. The Appeal to Reason.
20. The Appeal to Reason Justified.
PART III
_MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT_
CHAPTER VIII. MAN'S NATURE
21. The Background of Actions.
22. Man's Nature.
23. How Discover Man's Nature?
CHAPTER IX. MAN'S MATERIAL ENVIRONMENT
24. The Struggle with Nature.
25. The Conquests of the Mind.
26. The Conquest of Nature and the Well-being of Man.
CHAPTER X. MAN'S SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
27. Man is Assigned his Place.
28. Varieties of the Social Order.
29. Social Organization.
30. Social Order and Human Will.
PART IV
_THE REALM OF ENDS_
CHAPTER XI. IMPULSE, DESIRE, AND WILL
31. Impulse.
32. Desire.
33. Desire of the Unattainable.
34. Will.
35. Desire and Will not Identical.
36. The Will and Deferred Action.
CHAPTER XII. THE PERMANENT WILL
37. Consciously Chosen Ends.
38. Ends not Consciously Chosen.
39. The Choice of Ideals.
CHAPTER XIII. THE OBJECT IN DESIRE AND WILL
40. The Object as End to be Realized.
41. Human Nature and the Objects Chosen.
42. The Instincts and Impulses of Man.
43. The Study of Man's Instincts Important.
44. The Bewildering Multiplicity of the Objects of Desire, and the Effort
to Find an Underlying Unity.
CHAPTER XIV. INTENTION AND MOTIVE
45. Complex Ends.
46. Intention.
47. Motive.
48. Ethical Significance of Intention and Motive.
CHAPTER XV. FEELING AS MOTIVE
49. Feeling.
50. Feeling and Action.
51. Feeling as Object.
52. Freedom as Object.
CHAPTER XVI. RATIONALITY AND WILL
53. The Irrational Will.
54. One View of Reason.
55. Dominant and Subordinate Desires.
56. The Harmonization of Desires.
57. Varieties of Dominant Ends.
58. An Objection Answered.
59. This View of Reason Misconceived.
60. Another View of Reason.
PART V
_THE SOCIAL WILL_
CHAPTER XVII. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOCIAL WILL
61. What is the Social Will?
62. Social Will and Social Habits.
63. Social Will and Social Organization.
64. The Social Will and Ideal Ends.
65. The Permanent Social Will.
CHAPTER XVIII. EXPRESSIONS OF THE SOCIAL WILL
66. Custom.
67. The Ground for the Authority of Custom.
68. The Origin and the Persistence of Customs.
69. Law.
70. Public Opinion.
CHAPTER XIX. THE SHARERS IN THE SOCIAL WILL
71. The Community.
72. The Community and the Dead.
73. The Community and the Supernatural.
74. Religion and the Community.
75. The Spread of the Community.
PART VI
_THE REAL SOCIAL WILL_
CHAPTER XX. THE IMPERFECT SOCIAL WILL
76. The Apparent and the Real Social Will.
77. The Will of the Majority.
78. Ignorance and Error and the Social Will.
79. Heedlessness and the Social Will.
80. Rational Elements in the Irrational Will.
81. The Social Will and the Selfishness of the Individual.
CHAPTER XXI. THE RATIONAL SOCIAL WILL
82. Reasonable Ends.
83. An Objection Answered.
84. Reasonable Social Ends.
85. The Ethics of Reason.
86. The Development of Civilization.
CHAPTER XXII. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIAL WILL
87. Man's Multiple Allegiance.
88. The Appeal to Reason.
89. The Ethics of Reason and the Varying Moral Codes.
PART VII
_THE SCHOOLS OF THE MORALISTS_
CHAPTER XXIII. INTUITIONISM
90. What is it?
91. Varieties of Intuitionism.
92. Arguments for Intuitionism.
93. Arguments against Intuitionism.
94. The Value of Moral Intuitions.
CHAPTER XXIV. EGOISM
95. What is Egoism?
96. Crass Egoisms.
97. Equivocal Egoism?
98. What is Meant by the Self?
99. Egoism and the Broader Self.
100. Egoism not Unavoidable.
101. Varieties of Egoism.
102. The Arguments for Egoism.
103. The Argument against Egoism.
104. The Moralist's Interest in Egoism.
CHAPTER XXV. UTILITARIANISM
105. What is Utilitarianism?
106. Bentham's Doctrine.
107. The Doctrine of J. S. Mill.
108. The Argument for Utilitarianism.
109. The Distribution of Happiness.
110. The Calculus of Pleasures.
111. The Difficulties of Other Schools.
112. Summary of Arguments for Utilitarianism.
113. Arguments against Utilitarianism.
114. Transfigured Utilitarianism.
CHAPTER XXVI. NATURE, PERFECTION, SELF-REALIZATION
I. _Nature_
115. Human Nature as Accepted Standard.
116. Human Nature and the Law of Nature.
117. Vagueness of the Law of Nature.
118. The Appeal to Nature and Intuitionism.
II. _Perfection_
119. Perfection and Type.
120. More and Less Perfect Types.
121. Perfectionism and Intuitionism.
III. _Self-realization_
122. The Self-realization Doctrine.
123. The Doctrine Akin to that of Following Nature.
124. Is the Doctrine More Egoistic?
125. Why Aim to Realize Capacities?
126. The Problem of Self-sacrifice.
127. Self-satisfaction and Self-sacrifice.
128. Can Moral Self-sacrifice be a Duty?
129. Self-sacrifice and the Identity of Selves.
130. Questions which Seem to be Left Open.
CHAPTER XXVII. THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION
131. The Significance of the Title.
132. Evolution and the Schools of the Moralists.
133. The Ethics of Individual Evolutionists.
CHAPTER XXVIII. PESSIMISM
134. The Philosophy of the Pessimist.
135. Comment on the Ethics of Pessimism.
CHAPTER XXIX. KANT, HEGEL AND NIETZSCHE
136. Kant.
137. Hegel.
138. Nietzsche.
PART VIII
_THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL WILL_
CHAPTER XXX. ASPECTS OF THE ETHICS OF REASON
139. The Doctrine Supported by the Other Schools.
140. Its Method of Approach to Problems.
141. Its Solution of Certain Difficulties.
142. The Cultivation of Our Capacities.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE MORAL LAW AND MORAL IDEALS
143. Duties and Virtues.
144. The Negative Aspect of the Moral Law.
145. How Can One Know the Moral Law?
CHAPTER XXXII. THE MORAL CONCEPTS
146. Good and Bad; Right and Wrong.
147. Duty and Obligation.
148. Reward and Punishment.
149. Virtues and Vices.
150. Conscience.
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE ETHICS OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
151. What is Meant by the Term?
152. The Virtues of the Individual.
153. Conventional Morality.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE ETHICS OF THE STATE
154. The Aim of the State.
155. Its Origin and Authority.
156. Forms of Organization.
157. The Laws of the State.
158. The Rights and Duties of the State.
CHAPTER XXXV. INTERNATIONAL ETHICS
159. What is Meant by the Term.
160. Our Method of Approach to the Subject.
161. Some Problems of International Ethics.
162. The Other Side of the Shield.
163. The Solution.
164. The Necessity for Caution.
CHAPTER XXXVI. ETHICS AND OTHER DISCIPLINES
165. Sciences that Concern the Moralist.
166. Ethics and Philosophy.
167. Ethics and Religion.
168. Ethics and Belief.
169. The Last Word.
NOTES
INDEX
PART I
THE ACCEPTED CONTENT OF MORALS
CHAPTER I
IS THERE AN ACCEPTED CONTENT?
1. THE POINT IN DISPUTE.--Is there an accepted content of morals? Can we
use the expression without going on to ask: Accepted where, when, and by
whom?
To be sure, certain eminent moralists have inclined to maintain that men
are in substantial agreement in regard to their moral judgments. Joseph
Butler, writing in the first half of the eighteenth century, came to the
conclusion that, however men may dispute about particulars, there is an
universally acknowledged standard of virtue, professed in public in all
ages and all countries, made a show of by all men, enforced by the
primary and fundamental laws of all civil constitutions: namely, justice,
veracity, and regard to common good. [Footnote: _Dissertation on the
Nature of Virtue._] Sir Leslie Stephen, writing in the latter half of
the nineteenth, tells us that "in one sense moralists are almost
unanimous; in another they are hopelessly discordant. They are unanimous
in pronouncing certain classes of conduct to be right and the opposite
wrong. No moralist denies that cruelty, falsity and intemperance are
vicious, or that mercy, truth and temperance are virtuous." [Footnote:
_The Science of Ethics_, chapter i, Sec. 1.]
In other words, these writers would teach us that men are, on the whole,
agreed in approving, explicitly or implicitly, some standard of conduct
sufficiently definite to serve as a code of morals. But that there is
such a substantial agreement among men has not impressed all observers to
the same degree. Locke, who wrote before Butler, based his arguments
against the existence of innate moral maxims upon the wide divergencies
found among various classes of men touching what is right and what is
wrong. [Footnote: _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_, Book I,
chapter iii.] The historian, the anthropologist and the sociologist
reinforce his reasonings with a wealth of illustration not open to the
men of an earlier time. They present us with codes, not a code; with
multitudinous standards, not a single standard; with what has been
accepted here or there, at this time or at that; and we may well ask
ourselves where, amid this profusion, we are to find the one and
acceptable code.
2. WHAT CONSTITUTES SUBSTANTIAL AGREEMENT?--To be sure, we may be very
generous in our interpretation of what constitutes substantial agreement;
we may deny significance to all sorts of discrepancies by relegating them
to the unimpressive class of "disputes about particulars." Such an
impressionistic indifference to detail may leave us with something on our
hands as little serviceable as a composite photograph made from
individual objects which have little in common, a blur lacking all
definite outline and not recognizable as any object at all. No man can
guide his conduct by the common core of many or of all moral codes. Taken
in its bald abstraction, it is not a code or anything like a code. Who
can walk, without walking in some particular way, in some direction, at
some time? Who can mind his manners without being mannerly in accordance
with the usages of some race or people?
Those who content themselves with enunciating very general moral
principles may, it is true, be of no little service to their fellow-men;
but that is only because their fellow-men are able to supply the details
that convert the blur into a picture. Some twenty-four hundred years ago
Heraclitus told his contemporaries "to act according to nature with
understanding"; we are often told today that the rule of our lives should
be "to do good." Had the ancient Greek not possessed his own notions of
what might properly be meant by nature and by understanding, did we not
ourselves have some rather definite conception of what actions may
properly fall under the caption of doing good, such admonitions could not
lead to the stirring of a finger. Who would appeal to his physician for
advice as to diet, if he expected from him no more than the counsel to
eat, at the proper hours, enough, but not too much, of suitable food?
If, then, we confine our admonitions to the group of abstractions which
constitute the universally acknowledged standard of virtue when all the
individual differences which characterize different codes have been
ignored, we preach what, taken alone, no man can live by, and no
community of men has ever attempted to live by. If we leave it to our
hearers to drape our naked abstractions with concrete details, each will
set to work in a different way. The method of the composite photograph
seems unprofitable in attempting to solve the problem of morals.
3. DOGMATIC ASSUMPTION.--There is, however, a second way by which the
variations which characterize different codes may come to be relegated to
a position of relative insignificance. We may assume that our own code is
the ultimate standard by which all others are to be judged, and we may
set down deviations from it to the account of the ignorance or the
perversity of our fellowmen. So regarded, they are aberrations from the
normal, and only true code of conduct; interesting, perhaps, but little
enlightening, for they can have little bearing upon our conception of
what we ought to do.
A presumption against this arbitrary assumption that we have the one and
only desirable code is suggested the unthinking acceptance of the
traditional by those who are lacking in enlightenment and in the capacity
reflection. Is it not significant that a contact with new ways of
thinking has a tendency, at least, to make men broaden their horizon and
to revise some of their views?
In other fields, we hope to attain to a capacity for self-criticism. We
expect to learn from other men. Why should we, in the sphere of morals,
lay claim to the possession of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth? Why should we refuse to learn from anyone? Such a position
seems unreasoning. It puts moral judgments beyond the pale of argument
and intelligent discussion. It is an assumption of infallibility little
in harmony with the spirit of science. The fact that a given standard of
conduct is in harmony with our traditions, habits of thought, and
emotional responses, does not prove to other men that it is, not one of a
number of accepted codes, but in a quite peculiar sense acceptable, a
thing to put in a class by itself--the class into which each mother puts
her own child, as over against other children.
Moreover, such an unreasoned assumption of superiority must make one
little sympathetic in one's attitude toward the moral life of other
peoples. Into the significance of their social organization, of their
customs, their laws, one can gain no insight. Their hopes, their fears,
their strivings, their successes and their failures, their approval and
disapproval of their fellows, their peace of conscience and their
remorse, must leave us cold and aloof.
It is not profitable for us to assume at the outset that the differences
exhibited in the moral judgments of individuals or of peoples are of
minor significance. They are facts to be dealt with in the light of some
theory. An ethical theory which ignores them must rest upon a narrow and
insecure foundation. It is exposed to assault from many quarters. It may,
in default of better means of defence, be compelled to take refuge behind
the blind wall of dogmatic assertion. On the other hand, a theory which
gives them frank recognition, and strives to exhibit their real
significance in the life of the individual and of the race, may be able
to show lying among them the golden cord of reason which saves them from
the charge of being incoherent facts. It may even lead us back to a
conservatism no longer unreasoning, but rationally defensible and
conscious of its proper limits. The blindly conservative man seems to be
faced with the alternative of stagnation or revolution. The rationally
conservative may regard the development of the moral life as a Pilgrim's
Progress, not without its untoward accidents, but, in spite of them, a
gradual advance toward a desirable goal.
CHAPTER II
THE CODES OF COMMUNITIES
4. THE CODES OF COMMUNITIES: JUSTICE.--In view of the existing tendency
in the average man, and even in some philosophers, to pass lightly over
the diversities exhibited by different codes, it is well to cast a brief
preliminary glance at the content of morals as accepted, both by
communities of men, and by their more reflective spokesmen, the
moralists. Let us first take a look at the codes of communities.
We have seen that Butler viewed justice, veracity and regard to common
good as virtues accepted among men everywhere. But we may also see, if we
look into his pages, that he neglected to point out that there may be the
widest divergencies in men's notions of what constitutes justice,
veracity and common good. And men differ widely on the score of the
degree of emphasis to be laid upon their observance.
Take justice. Where men possess a code, written or unwritten, that may
properly be called moral, we expect of them the judgment that guilt
should be punished. But what shall be accounted guilt? What shall be the
measure of retribution? Who shall be fixed upon as guilty?
As to what constitutes guilt. We have only to remind ourselves that the
Dyak head-hunter is not condemned by his fellows, but is admired;
[Footnote: WESTERMARCK, _The Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas_, London, 1906, I, chapter xiv.] that the fattening and eating
of a slave may, in a given primitive community, be accounted no crime;
[Footnote: WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._ II, chapter xlvi.] that
infanticide has been most widely approved, and that not merely in
primitive communities, for Greece and Rome, when they were far from
primitive, practiced certain forms of it with a view to the good of the
state; [Footnote: _Ibid._, I, chapter xvii.] that the holding of a
fellow-creature in bondage, and exploiting him for one's own advantage,
even under the lash, was, until recently, not a crime in the eye of the
law even in the most civilized states. On the other hand, it may be a
crime to eat a female opossum. [Footnote: _Ibid._, I, chapter iv, p.
124.] The impressive imperative: Thou shalt not! appears to bear
unmistakable reference to time and circumstance.
And what is the natural and proper measure of punishment? The ancient and
primitive rule of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth suggests the
figure of the scales, the impartially meting out to each man of his due.
It is obviously a rule that cannot be applied in all cases. One cannot
take the tooth of a toothless man, or compel a thievish beggar to restore
fruit which he has eaten. We should be horrified were any serious attempt
made to make the rule the basis of legislation in any civilized state
today, but men have not always been so fastidious. Approximations to it
have been incorporated into the laws of various peoples.
But all have modified it to some degree, and the modifications have taken
many forms--the punishment of someone not the criminal, compensation in
money or in goods, incarceration, and what not. Nor have the
modifications been made solely on account of the difficulty of applying
the rule baldly stated. Other influences have been at work.
Thus, in the famous Babylonian code, the man who struck out the eye of a
patrician lost his own eye in return, and his tooth answered for the
tooth of an equal--but the rule was not made general. [Footnote: 5
HOBHOUSE, _Morals in Evolution,_ I, chapter iii, Sec 3; New York,
1906.] In state after state it has been found just to treat differently
the patrician, the plebeian, the slave, the man, the woman, the priest.
In the very state to which Butler belonged, benefit of clergy could be
claimed, up to relatively recent times, by those who could read. The
educated criminal escaped hanging for offences for which his illiterate
neighbor had to swing. [Footnote: _Ibid.,_ Sec. 11.]
Nor is there any clear concensus of opinion touching the question of who
shall be selected as the bearer of punishment. If a man has injured
another unintentionally, shall he be held to make amends? It has seemed
just to men that he should. [Footnote: WESTERMARCK, chapter ix.] That one
man should be made responsible for the misdeeds of another, under the
principle of collective responsibility, has commended itself as just to a
multitude of minds. Not merely the sins of the fathers, but those of the
most distant relations, those of neighbors, of fellow-tribesmen, of
fellow-citizens, have been visited upon those whose sole guilt lay in
such a connection with the directly guilty parties. This is not a
sporadic phenomenon. Among the ancient Hebrews, in Babylonia, in Greece,
in the later legislation of Rome, in medieval and even in modern Europe,
the principle of collective responsibility has been accepted and has
seemed acceptable. Asia, Africa and Oceania have cast votes for it. So
have the Americas. [Footnote: WESTERMARCK, I, chapter ii; DEWEY AND
TUFTS, _Ethics_, New York, 1919, Part I, chapter ii.]
5. THE CODES OF COMMUNITES: VERACITY.--As to veracity: It has undoubtedly
been valued to some degree, and with certain limitations, by tribes and
nations the most diverse in their degrees of culture. Did men never speak
the truth they might well never speak at all. But to maintain that
absolute veracity has at all times been greatly valued would be an
exaggeration. The lie of courtesy, the clever lie, the lie to the
stranger, have been and still are, in many communities both uncivilized
and more advanced, not merely condoned, but approved. With the defence
which has been made of the doctrines of mental reservation and pious
fraud students of church history are familiar. In diplomacy and in war
today highly civilized nations find deceptions of many sorts profitable
to them, nor are such generally condemned. [Footnote: WESTERMARCK, II,
chapters xxx and xxxi.]
What modern government does not employ secret service agents, and value
them in proportion to the degree of skill with which they manage to
deceive their fellows, while limiting the exercise of professional good
faith to their intercourse with their paymaster? The secret service agent
of transparent frankness, who could not bear to deceive his neighbor,
would not hold his post for a day. He would be a subject for Homeric
laughter.
Moreover, if the question may be raised: what constitutes justice? may
one not equally well ask: what constitutes veracity or its opposite?
Where does the silence of indifference shade into purposed concealment,
and the latter into what is unequivocally deception? At what point does
deception blossom out into the unmistakable lie? One may take advantage
of an accidental misunderstanding of what one has said; one may use
ambiguous language; one may point instead of speaking. Between going
about with a head of glass, with all one's thoughts displayed as in a
show-case to every comer, and the settled purpose to deceive by the
direct verbal falsification, there is a long series of intermediate
positions. The commercial maxim that one is not bound to teach the man
with whom one is dealing how to conduct his business, and the lawyer's
dictum that the advocate is under no obligation to put himself in the
position of the judge, obviously, will bear much stretching.
6. THE CODES OF COMMUNITIES: THE COMMON GOOD.--Nor are the facts which
confront us less perplexing when we turn to that "regard to the common
good" which Butler finds to be acknowledged and enforced by the primary
and fundamental laws of all civil constitutions. Whether we look at the
past or view the present, whether we study primitive communities or
confine ourselves to civilized nations, we see that common good is not,
apparently, conceived as the good of all men, however much the words
"justice" and "humanity" may be upon men's lips.
Has any modern state as yet succeeded in incorporating in its civil
constitution such provisions as will ensure to all classes of its
subjects any considerable share in the common good? Slaves and animals,
said Aristotle, have no share in happiness, nor do they live after their
own choice. [Footnote: _Politics_, iii, 9.] The pervading unrest of
the modern economic community is due to the widespread conviction that
the existing organization of society does not sufficiently make for the
happiness of all. Some states with a high degree of culture have not even
made a pretence of having any such aim. They have deliberately legislated
for the few. [Footnote: The "citizens" of the ancient Greek state were a
privileged class who legislated in their own interest. Let the reader
look into Plato's _Laws_ and Aristotle's _Politics_ and see how
inconceivable the cultivated Greek found what is now the ideal of a
modern democracy. "Citizens" should own landed property, and work it by
slaves, barbarians and servants. They should not be "ignoble" mechanics
or petty traders. Compare the spirit of Froissart's _Chronicles_, in
the Middle Ages. See what Bryce (_South America_, New York, 1918,
chapters xi and xv) says about the position of the Negro in our Southern
states, and of the Indians in South American republics.]
Even where the avowed aim is the common good of all, states have assumed
that some must be sacrificed for others. Certain individuals are selected
to die in the trenches in the face of the enemy, that others may be
guaranteed liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Grotius, the famous
jurist of the seventeenth century, has been criticized for holding that a
beleaguered town might justly deliver up to the enemy a small number of
its citizens in order to purchase immunity for the rest. How far do the
cases differ in principle? "Among persons variously endowed," wrote
Hegel, "inequality must occur, and equality would be wrong." [Footnote:
Hegel, _The Philosophy of Right_, translated by Dyde, London, 1896,
p. 56.] Commonwealths of many degrees of development have recognized
inequalities of many sorts, and have treated their subjects accordingly.
"For diet," said Bentham with repellent frankness, "nothing but self-
regarding affection will serve." Benevolence he considered a valuable
addition "for a dessert." He had in mind the individual, and he did
injustice to individuals in certain of their relations. But how do things
look when we turn our attention to the relations between states? Does any
state actually make it a practice to treat its neighbor as itself? Would
its citizens approve of its doing so?
The Roman was compelled to formulate a _jus gentium_, a law of
nations, to deal with those who held, to him, a place beyond the pale of
law as he knew it. [Footnote: See SIR HENRY MAINE, _Ancient Law_,
chapter iii.] Many centuries have elapsed since pagan philosophers taught
the brotherhood of man, and since Christian divines began to preach it
with passionate fervor. Yet civilized nations today are still seeking to
find a _modus vivendi_, which may put an end to strife and enable
them to live together. The _jus gentium_, or its modern equivalent,
is, alas! still in its rudiments.
To obviate misunderstanding at this point, it is well to state that, in
adducing all the above facts, I do not mean to argue that it is abnormal
and an undesirable thing that the scales of justice should, at times, be
weighted in divers ways. I am not maintaining that the distribution of
common good should proceed upon the principle of strict impartiality.
What is possible and is desirable in this field is not something to be
decided off-hand. But the facts suffice to illustrate the truth that the
discrepancies to be found in the codes of different communities can
scarcely be dismissed as unimportant details. They are something far too
significant for that.
CHAPTER III
THE CODES OF THE MORALISTS
7. THE MORALISTS.--If, from the codes, or the more or less vague bodies
of opinion, which have characterized different communities, we turn to
the moralists, we find similar food for thought.
But who are the moralists? Can we put into one class those who preach a
short-sighted selfishness or a calculating egoism and those who urge upon
us the law of love? Those who recommend a contempt of mankind, and those
who inculcate a reverence for humanity? Those who incline to leave us to
our own devices, telling us to listen to conscience, and those who draw
up for us elaborate sets of rules to guide conduct? The histories of
ethics are rather tolerant in herding together sheep and goats. And not
without reason. Those whom they include have been in a sense the
spokesmen of their fellows. Their words have found an echo in the souls
of many. They are concerned with a rule of life, and their rule of life,
such as it is, rests upon some principle which has impressed men as being
not wholly unreasonable.
In taking a glance at what they have to offer us, I shall not go far
afield, and shall exercise a brevity compatible with the purpose of mere
illustration. To the moralists of ancient Greece, and, to a lesser
degree, to those of the Roman Empire, to the Christian teachers who
succeeded to their heritage in the centuries which followed, and to the
more or less independent thinkers who made their appearance after the
Reformation, we can trace our ethical pedigree. For our purpose we need
seek no wider field. Here we may find sufficiently notable contrasts of
opinion to disturb the dogmatic slumber of even an inert mind. The most
cursory glance makes us inclined to accept with some reserve Stephen's
claim that "the difference between different systems is chiefly in the
details and special application of generally admitted principles."
8. EPICUREAN AND STOIC.--Thus, Aristippus of Cyrene advised men to grasp
the pleasure of the moment rather than to await the more uncertain
pleasure of the future; but he also counselled, for prudential reasons,
the avoidance of a conflict with the laws. Such advice takes cognizance
of the self-love of the individual, and is not self-love reasonable?
Nevertheless, such advice might be given by a discouraged criminal of a
reflective turn of mind, on his release from prison, to a comrade not yet
chastened by incarceration. Epicurus praises temperance and fortitude,
but only as measures of prudence. He praises justice, but only in so far
as it enables us to escape harm, and frees us from that dread of
discovery that haunts the steps of the evil-doer. His more specific
maxims, do not fall in love with a woman, become the father of a family,
or, generally, go into politics, smack strongly of the rule of life
recommended to Feuillet's hero, Monsieur de Camors, by his worldly-wise
and cynical father.
Contrast with these men the Stoics, whose rule of life was to follow
Nature, and to eschew the pursuit of pleasure. Man's nature, said
Epictetus, is social; wrongdoing is antisocial; affection is natural.
[Footnote: _Discourses_, Book I, chapter xxiii--a clever answer to
Epicurus.] Said Marcus Aurelius, it is characteristic of the rational
soul for a man to love his neighbor. The cautious bachelor imbued with
Epicurean principles would find strange and disconcerting the Stoic
position touching citizenship: "My nature is rational and social; and my
city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am
a man, it is the world. The things then which are useful to these cities
are alone useful to me." [Footnote: _Thoughts_, Book VI, 44;
translated by GEORGE LONG.]
9. PLATO; ARISTOTLE; THE CHURCH.--No more famous classification of the
virtues--those qualities of character which it is desirable for a man to
have, and which determine his doing what it is desirable that he should
do--has ever been drawn up than that offered us by Plato: Wisdom,
Courage, Temperance and Justice. [Footnote: For PLATO's account of the
virtues see the _Republic_, Book IV, and the _Laws_, Book I.]
It is interesting to lay beside it the longer list drawn up by Aristotle,
and to compare both with that which commended itself to the mind of the
mediaeval churchman.
With Aristotle, the virtues are made to include: [Footnote:
_Ethics_; I refer the reader to the admirable exposition and
criticism by SIDGWICK, _History of Ethics_, London, 1896, chapter
ii, Sec 10-12; compare ZELLER, _Aristotle and the Earlier
Peripatetics_, English translation London, 1897, Volume II, chapter
xii.]
Wisdom
High-mindedness
Justice
Ambition
Courage
Gentleness
Temperance
Friendliness
Liberality
Truthfulness
Magnificence
Decorous Wit
and it is suggested that, although scarcely a virtue, a sense of shame is
becoming in youth.
We find the Christian teachers especially recommending: [Footnote: See
SIDGWICK'S sympathetic account of the Churchman's view of the virtues,
_loc_. _cit_., chapter iii.]
Obedience
Patience
Benevolence
Purity
Humility
Alienation from the "World"
Alienation from the "Flesh"
and their lists of the "deadly sins" they select from the following:
Pride
Arrogance
Anger
Gluttony
Unchastity
Envy
Vain-Glory
Gloominess
Languid Indifference.
Could there be a more striking contrast than that between the mediaeval
code and those of the great Greek thinkers? Plato recommended as virtues
certain general characteristics of character much admired by the Greek of
his day. Aristotle accepted them and added to them. He has painted much
more in detail the gifts and graces of a well-born and well-situated
Greek gentleman as he conceived him. The personage would cut a sorry
figure in the role of a mediaeval saint; the mediaeval saint would wear a
tarnished halo if endowed with the Aristotelian virtues.
The one ideal, the Greek, breathes an air of self-assertion; the other
one of self-abnegation. Benevolence, Purity, Humility and Unworldliness
are not to be found in the former; Justice, Courage and Veracity appear
to be missing in the latter. Wisdom, insight, has given place to the
Obedience appropriate to a man clearly conscious of a Law, not man-made,
to which man feels himself to be subject.
Indeed, the discrepancy between the ideals is such that Aristotle's
virtuously high-minded man would have been conceived by the mediaeval
churchman to be living in deadly sin, as the very embodiment of pride and
arrogance. We find him portrayed as neither seeking nor avoiding danger,
for there are few things about which he cares; as ashamed to accept
favors, since that implies inferiority; as sluggish and indifferent
except when stimulated by some great honor to be gained or some great
work to be performed; as frank, for this is characteristic of the man who
despises others; as admiring little, for nothing is great to him. His
pride prevents him from harboring resentment, from seeking praise, and
from praising others. This Nietzschean hero would attract attention upon
any stage: "The step of the high-minded man is slow, his voice deep, and
his language stately, for he who feels anxiety about few things is not
apt to be in a hurry; and he who thinks highly of nothing is not
vehement." [Footnote: _Ethics_, Book IV, chapter in, 19, translation
by R. W. BROWNE, London, 1865.]
To be sure, virtues not on a given list may be found in, or read into,
some of the writings of the man who presents it. It would be absurd to
maintain that the mediaeval churchman had no regard for justice, courage
and veracity, as he would define them, or that Plato and Aristotle were
wholly deaf to the claims of benevolence. Nevertheless, the variations in
the emphasis laid on this virtue or on that, or in the conception of what
constitutes this virtue or that, may yield ideals of character and of
conduct which bear but a slight family resemblance. Imagine St. Francis
of Assisi lowering his voice, slowing his step, and cultivating "high-
mindedness," or striving to make himself a pattern of decorous wit.
10. LATER LISTS OF THE VIRTUES.--The codes proposed by the moralists of a
later time are numerous and widely scattering. It is impossible to do
justice to them in any brief compass. A very few instances, selected from
among those most familiar to English readers, must suffice to indicate
the diversity of their nature.
Hobbes [Footnote: _Leviathan_, chapter xv.], deeply concerned to
discover some _modus vivendi_ which should put a check upon strife
between man and his fellow-man, and save us from a life "solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish and short," recommends among other virtues:
Justice
Equity
Requital of benefits
Sociability
A moderate degree of forgiveness
The avoidance of pride and arrogance.
Locke [Footnote: _Essay_, Book IV, chapter iii, Sec. 18; _Of Civil
Government_, Book II, chapter ii.], who believes that moral principles
must be intuitively evident to one who contemplates the nature of God and
the relations of men to Him and to each other, thinks it worth while to
set down such random maxims as:
No government allows absolute liberty.
Where there is no property there is no injustice.
All men are originally equal.
Men ought not to harm one another.
Parents have a right to control their children.
Hume, [Footnote: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Sec 6,
Part I] whose two classes of virtues comprise the qualities immediately
agreeable or useful to ourselves and those immediately agreeable or
useful to others, offers us an extended list. He puts into the first
class:
Discretion
Caution
Enterprise
Industry
Frugality
Economy
Good Sense, etc.
Temperance
Sobriety
Patience
Perseverance
Considerateness
Secrecy
Order, etc.
In the second class he includes:
Benevolence
Justice
Veracity
Fidelity
Politeness
Wit
Modesty
Cleanliness.
Manifestly, the lists may be indefinitely prolonged. Why not add to the
first class the pachydermatous indifference to rebuffs which is of such
service to the social climber, and, to the second, taste in dress and the
habit of not repeating stories?
Thomas Reid lays stress upon the deliverances of the individual
conscience, when consulted in a quiet hour. Nevertheless he proposes five
fundamental maxims: [Footnote: _On the Active Powers of Man_, Essay
V, chapter i.]
We ought to exercise a rational self-love, and prefer a greater to a
lesser good.
We should follow nature, as revealed in the constitution of man.
We should exercise benevolence.
Right and wrong are the same for all in the same circumstances.
We should venerate and obey God.
With such writers we may contrast the Utilitarians and the adherents of
the doctrine of Self-realization, [Footnote: These will be discussed
below, chapters xxv and xxvi.] who lay little stress upon lists of
virtues or duties, but aim, respectively, at the greatest happiness of
the greatest number, and at the harmonious development of the faculties
of man, regarding as virtues such qualities of character as make for the
attainment, in the long run, of the one or the other of these ends.
11. THE STRETCHING OF MORAL CONCEPTS.--The instances given suffice to
show that the moralists speak with a variety of tongues. The code of one
age is apt to seem strange and foreign to the men of another. Even where
there is apparent agreement, a closer scrutiny often reveals that it has
been attained by a process of stretching conceptions. Take for example
the so-called "cardinal" virtues [Footnote: From _cardo_, a hinge.
These virtues were supposed to be fundamental. The name given to them was
first used by AMBROSE in the fourth century A.D. See SIDGWICK, _History
of Ethics_, chap, ii, p. 44.] dwelt upon by Plato. The Stoics, who
made use of his list, changed its spirit. Cicero stretches justice so as
to make it cover a watery benevolence. St. Augustine finds the cardinal
virtues to be different aspects of Love to God. The great scholastic
philosopher of the thirteenth century, St. Thomas, places in the first
rank the Christian graces of Faith, Hope and Charity, but still finds it
convenient to use the Platonic scheme in ordering a list of the self-
regarding virtues taken from Aristotle. Thus may the pillars of a pagan
temple be utilized as structural units in, or embellishments of, a
Christian church.
Our own age reveals the same tendency. Thomas Hill Green, the Oxford
professor, follows Plato. But with him we find wisdom stretched to cover
artistic creation; we see that courage and temperance have taken on new
faces; and justice appears to be able to gather under its wings both
benevolence and veracity. [Footnote: _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book
III, chapter iii, and Book IV, chapter v.] A still wider divergence from
the original understanding of the cardinal virtues is that of Dewey, who
conceives of them as "traits essential to all morality." He treats, under
temperance, of purity and reverence; he makes courage synonymous with
persistent vigor; he extends justice so as to include love and sympathy;
he transforms wisdom into conscientiousness. [Footnote: DEWEY AND TUFTS,
_Ethics_, pp. 404-423.]
This variation in the content of moral concepts may be illustrated from
any quarter in the field of ethics. Cicero's circumspect "benevolence"
advances the doctrine that "whatever one can give without suffering loss
should be given even to an entire stranger." Among such obligations he
reckons: to prohibit no one from drinking at a stream of running water;
to permit anyone who wishes to light fire from fire; to give faithful
advice to one who is in doubt; which things, as he naively remarks, "are
useful to the receiver and do no harm to the giver." [Footnote: De
Officiis, Book I, chapter xvi.]
Compare with this the admonition to love one's neighbor as oneself;
Sidgwick's "self-evident" proposition that "I ought not to prefer my own
lesser good to the greater good of another;" [Footnote: The Methods of
Ethics, Book III, chapter xiii, Sec 3.] Bentham's utilitarian formula,
"everybody to count for one, and nobody for more than one." The
admonition, "be benevolent," may mean many things.
12. THE REFLECTIVE MIND AND THE MORAL CODES.--Even the cursory glance we
have given above to the moral codes of different communities and those
proposed by individual moralists must suffice to bring any thoughtful man
to the consciousness that they differ widely among themselves, and that
the differences can scarcely be dismissed as insignificant. A little
reflection will suffice to convince him, furthermore, that to treat all
other codes as if they were mere pathological variations from his own is
indefensibly dogmatic.
On the other hand, the differences between codes should not be unduly
emphasized. The core of identity is there, and, although in its bald
abstractness it is not enough to live by, it is vastly significant,
nevertheless. If there were not some congruity in the materials, they
would never be brought together as the subject of one science. Unless
"good," "right," "obligation," "approval," etc., or the rudimentary
conceptions which foreshadow them in the mind of the most primitive human
beings, had a core of identity which could be traced in societies the
most diverse, there would be no significance in speaking of the
enlightened morality of one people and the degraded and undeveloped
morality of another. There could be no history of the development of the
moral ideas. Collections of disparate and disconnected facts do not
constitute a science, nor are they the proper subject of a history.
As a matter of fact, we all do speak of degraded moral conceptions, of a
perverted conscience, of a lofty morality, of a fine sense of duty; we do
not hesitate to compare, i. e., to treat as similar and yet dissimilar,
the customs, laws and ethical maxims of different ages and of different
races. This means that we have in our minds some standard, perhaps
consciously formulated, perhaps dimly apprehended, according to which we
rate them. The unreflective man is in danger of taking as this standard
his own actual code, such as it is; of accepting, together with such
elements of reason as it may contain, the whole mass of his inherited or
acquired prejudices; the more reflective man will strive to be more
rationally critical.
PART II
ETHICS AS SCIENCE
CHAPTER IV
THE AWAKENING TO REFLECTION
13. THE DOGMATISM OF THE NATURAL MAN.--In morals and in politics it
seems natural for man to be dogmatic, to take a position without
hesitation, to defend it vehemently, to maintain that others are in the
wrong.
This is not surprising. We are born into a moral environment as into an
all-embracing atmosphere. From the cradle to the grave, we walk with our
heads in a cloud of exhortations and prohibitions. From our earliest
years we have been urged to make decisions and to act, and we have been
furnished with general maxims to guide our action. When, therefore, we
approach the solution of a moral problem, we do not, as a rule, acutely
feel our fitness to solve it, even though we may be judged quite unfit by
others.
This unruffled confidence in one's possession of an adequate supply of
indubitable moral truth may be found in men who differ widely in their
degree of intelligence and in the extent of their information. Some
individuals seem born to it. We may come upon it in the ethical
philosopher; we may meet it in the man of science, who knows that it has
taken him a quarter of a century to fit himself to be an authority in
matters chemical or physical, but who wanders in his hours of leisure
into the field of ethics and has no hesitation in proposing radical
reforms. But it is more natural to look for the unwavering confidence
which knows no questionings among persons of restricted outlook, who have
been brought into contact with but one set of opinions. It is
characteristic of the child, of the uncultivated classes in all
communities, of whole communities primitive in their culture and
relatively unenlightened.
14. THE AWAKENING.--Manifestly, even the beginnings of ethical science
are an impossibility where such a spirit prevails. Where there are no
doubts, no questionings, there can be no attempt at rational
construction.
Fortunately for the cause of human enlightenment there are forces at work
which tend to arouse men from this state of lethargy. Horizons are
broadened, new ideas make their appearance, there is a conflict of
authorities, the birth of a doubt, and, finally, a more or less
articulate appeal to Reason.
Even a child is capable of seeing that paternal and maternal injunctions
and reactions are not wholly alike, and it sets them off against each
other. Nor have all the children in the home precisely the same nature.
One is temperamentally frank and open, but unsympathetic; another is
affectionate, and prone to lying as the sparks fly upward. The virtues
and vices are not spontaneously arranged in the same order of importance
by children, and differences of opinion may arise. Nor does it take the
child long to discover that the law of its own home is not identical with
that of the house next door. At school the experience is repeated on a
larger scale; many homes are represented, and, besides that, two codes of
law claim allegiance, the code of the schoolboy and that of the master.
They may be by no means in accord.
And when, in college, the student for the first time seriously addresses
himself to the task of the study of ethics as science, he comes to it by
no means wholly unprepared. He has had rather a broad experience of the
contrasts which obtain between different codes. He is familiar with the
code of the home, of the school, of the social class, of the religious
community, of the civil community. There sit on the same benches with him
the sensitively conscientious student who doubts whether it is a
permissible deception of one's neighbor to apply a patch to an old
garment so skillfully that it will escape detection; the sporting
character who takes it to be the mutual understanding among men that
truth shall not be demanded of those who deal in horses and dogs; the
youth from Texas who claims that the French philosopher, Janet, cannot be
an authority on morals, since he asserts that he who cheats at cards must
feel a burning shame. With the ethics of the ancient Hebrews, of the
Greeks, of the Romans, our young moralist has had the opportunity to
acquire some familiarity, and he can compare them, if he will, with the
Christian ethics of his own day. He knows something of history and
biography; he has read books of travel, and has some acquaintance with
the manners and customs of other peoples. Were he given to reflection, it
ought not to surprise him to find a Portuguese sea-cook maintaining that
it is wrong to steal, except from the rich; or to learn that a Wahabee
saint rated the smoking of tobacco as the worst possible sin next to
idolatry, while maintaining that murder, robbery, and such like, were
peccadilloes which a merciful God might properly overlook.
Material for reflection he has in abundance--and he often remains
relatively dogmatic and unplagued by doubt. But only relatively so; and
only so long as the claims of conflicting authorities are not forced upon
his attention, rendered importunate in the light of discussion, made so
familiar as to seem real and substantial. It is the tendency of the
widening of the horizon to arouse men to reflection, to stimulate to
criticism. From such criticism the science of ethics has its birth.
What is true of the individual is true of men in the mass. The blind life
of social classes long laid in chains by custom and tradition may come to
be illuminated by new ideas, and passive acquiescence may give way to
active participation in social endeavor. Nor can primitive peoples remain
wholly primitive except in isolation. With the increased intercourse
between races and peoples, men are brought to a clear consciousness that
the accepted in morals is manifold and diverse; the next step is to
question whether it is, in any given instance, of unquestionable
authority; thus do men become ripe for the search for the
_acceptable_.
CHAPTER V
ETHICAL METHOD
15. INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD.--Professor Henry Sidgwick has defined
a method of ethics as "any rational procedure by which we determine what
is right for individual human beings to do, or to seek to realize by
voluntary action." [Footnote: _The Methods of Ethics_, Book I,
chapter i, Sec I.]
He points out that many methods are natural and are habitually used, but
claims that only one can be rational. By which he means that the several
methods of determining right conduct urged by the different schools of
the moralists must be reconciled, or all but one must be rejected.
[Footnote: _Ibid_., chapter i, Sec 3.]
In this chapter I shall not discuss in detail the schools of the
moralists and the specific methods which characterize them. I am here
concerned only with the general distinction between the scientific
methods of deduction and induction, and its bearing upon ethical
investigations.
How do we discover that, in an isosceles triangle, the sides which
subtend the equal angles are equal? We do not go about collecting the
opinions of individuals upon the subject, nor do we consult the records
of other peoples, past or present. We do not measure a great number of
triangles and arrive at our conclusion after a calculation of the
probable error of our measurements. The appeal to authorities does not
interest us; that measurements are always more or less inaccurate, and
that all actual triangles are more or less irregular, we freely admit,
but we do not regard such facts as significant. We use a single triangle
as an illustration, and from what is given in, or along with, that
individual instance, we deduce certain consequences in which we have the
highest confidence. Here we follow the method of deduction. We accept a
"given," with its validity we do not concern ourselves; our aim is the
discovery of what may be gotten out of it.
In the inductive sciences the individual instance has an importance of
quite a different sort. It is not a mere illustration, unequivocally
embodying a general truth to which we may appeal directly, treating the
instance as a mere vehicle, in itself of little significance. Individual
instances are observed and compared; uniformities are searched for; it is
sought to establish general truths, not directly evident, but whose
authority rests upon the particular facts that have been observed and
classified.
It is a commonplace of logic that both induction and deduction may be
employed in many fields of science. We may attain by inductive inquiry to
more or less general truths, which we no longer care to call in question,
and which we accept as a "given," to be exploited and carried out in its
consequences. Indeed, we need not betake ourselves to science to have an
illustration of this method of procedure. In everyday life men have
maxims by which they judge of the probable actions of their fellow-men
and in the light of which they direct their dealings with them. Such
maxims as that men may be counted upon to consult their own interests
have certainly not been adopted independently of an experience of what,
on particular occasions, men have shown themselves to be. But, once
adopted, they may be treated as, for practical purposes, unquestionable;
men are concerned to apply them, not to substantiate them. In so far, men
reason from them deductively and pass from the general rule to the
particular instance.
16. THE AUTHORITY OF THE "GIVEN."--Obviously the "given," in the sense
indicated, may possess, in certain cases, a very high degree of
authority, and, in others, a very low degree.
In the case of the mathematical truth referred to above, men do not, in
fact, find it necessary to call in question the "given," though they may
be divided in their notions touching the general nature of mathematical
evidence and whence it draws its apparently indisputable authority. In
certain of the inductive sciences, as in mechanics, physics and
chemistry, generalizations have been attained in which even the critical
repose much confidence. In other fields men are constantly making general
statements which are promptly contradicted by their fellows, and are
drawing from them inferences the justice of which is in many quarters
disallowed. There are axioms and axioms, maxims and maxims. The
confidence felt by a given individual in a particular "given" does not
guarantee its acceptance by all men of equal intelligence. Where,
however, the evidence upon which a disputed "given" is based is
forthcoming, there is, at least, ground for rational discussion.
Not a few famous writers have treated moral truths as analogous to
mathematical. [Footnote: See the chapter on "Intuitionism," Sec 90, note.]
To take here a single instance. Sidgwick, in his truly admirable work on
"The Methods of Ethics," maintains [Footnote: Book III, chapter xiii, Sec
3.] that "the propositions, 'I ought not to prefer a present lesser good
to a future greater good,' and 'I ought not to prefer my own lesser good
to the greater good of another,' do present themselves as self-evident;
as much (_e.g._) as the mathematical axiom that 'if equals be added
to equals the wholes are equals.'"
But it is one thing to claim that we are in possession of a "given" with
ultimate and indisputable authority; it is another to convince men that
we really do possess it. Locke's efforts at deduction fall lamentably
short of the model set by Euclid. "Professor Sidgwick's well-known moral
axiom, 'I ought not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of
another,' would," writes Westermarck, [Footnote: _Op_. _cit.,_
Volume I, chapter i, p. 12.] "if explained to a Fuegian or a Hottentot,
be regarded by him, not as self-evident, but as simply absurd; nor can it
claim general acceptance even among ourselves. Who is that 'Another' to
whose greater good I ought not to prefer my own lesser good? A fellow-
countryman, a savage, a criminal, a bird, a fish--all without
distinction?" To Bentham's "everybody to count for one and nobody for
more than one" may be opposed Hartley's preference of benevolent and
religious persons to the rest of mankind. [Footnote: _Observations on
Man_, Part II, chapter iii, 6.]
The fact that men eminent for their intellectual ability and for the
breadth of their information are, in morals, inclined to accept, as
ultimate, principles not identical, and thus to found different schools,
would seem to indicate that, to one who aims at treating ethics as a
science, principles, as well as the deductions from them, should be
objects of closest scrutiny. They should not be taken for granted. The
history of ethical theory appears to make it clear that the "given" of
the moralist is not of the same nature as that of the geometer.
The ethical philosopher cannot, hence, confine himself to developing
deductively the implications of some principle or principles assumed
without critical examination. He must establish the validity even of his
principles. This we should bear in mind when we approach the study of the
different ethical schools.
CHAPTER VI
THE MATERIALS OF ETHICS
17. HOW THE MORALIST SHOULD PROCEED.--The above reflections on method
suggest the materials of which the moralist should avail himself in
rearing the edifice of his science.
(1) Evidently he should reflect upon the moral judgments which he finds
in himself, the moral being with whom he is best acquainted. He should
endeavor to render consistent and luminous moral judgments which, as he
finds, have too often been inconsistent and more or less blind.
(2) He should take cognizance of his own setting--of the social
conscience embodied in the community in which he lives.
(3) And since, as we have seen, the significance, either of the
individual conscience, or of the social conscience revealed in custom,
law and public opinion, can hardly become apparent to one who does not
bring within his horizon many consciences individual and social, he
should enlarge his view so as to include such. The moralists, in our day,
show an increasing tendency to pay serious attention to this mass of
materials. They do not confine their attention to the moral standard
which this man or that has accepted as authoritative for him, nor to that
accepted as authoritative in a given community. They study _man_--
man in all stages of his development and in material and social settings
the most diverse.
(4) Nor should the student of ethics overlook the work which has been
done by those moralists who have gone before him. He who has studied
descriptive anatomy is aware of the immense service which has been done
him by the unwearied observations of his predecessors; observations which
have been put on record, and which draw his attention to numberless
details of structure that would, without such aid, certainly escape his
attention. Ethics is an ancient discipline. It has fixed the attention of
acute minds for many centuries. He who approaches the subject naively,
without an acquaintance with the many ethical theories which have been
advanced and the acute criticisms to which they have been subjected, will
almost certainly say what someone has said before, and said, perhaps,
much better. The valor of ignorance will involve him in ignominious
defeat.
(5) It is evident that the moralist must make use of materials offered
him by workers in many other fields of science. The biologist may have
valuable suggestions to make touching the impulses and instincts of man.
The psychologist treats of the same, and exhibits the work of the
intellect in ordering and organizing the impulses. He studies the
phenomena of desire, will, habit, the formation of character. The
anthropologist and the sociologist are concerned with the codes of
communities and with the laws of social development. The fields of
economics, politics and comparative jurisprudence obviously march with
that cultivated by the student of ethics.
18. THE PHILOSOPHER AS MORALIST.--In all these sciences at once it is not
possible for the moralist to be an adept. The mass of the material they
furnish is so vast that the ethical writer who starts out to master it in
all its details may well dread that he may be overcome by senility before
he is ready to undertake the formulation of an ethical theory.
It does not follow, however, that he should leave to those who occupy
themselves professionally with any of these fields the task of framing a
theory of morals. He must have sufficient information to be able to
select with intelligence what has some important bearing upon the problem
of conduct, but there are many details into which he need not go. It is
well to note the following points:
(1) A multitude of details may be illustrative of a comparatively small
number of general principles. It is with these general principles that
the moralist is concerned. The anthropologist may regard it as his duty
to spend much labor in the attempt to discover why this or that act, this
or that article of food, happens in a given community to be taboo to
certain persons. The student of ethics is not bound to take up the
detailed investigation of such matters. Human nature, in its general
constitution, is much the same in different races and peoples. The
influence of environment is everywhere apparent. There are significant
uniformities to be discovered even by one who has a limited amount of
detailed information. "Those who come after us will see nothing new,"
said Antoninus, "nor have those before us seen anything more, but in a
manner he who is forty years old; if he has any understanding at all, has
seen by virtue of the uniformity which prevails all things which have
been and all that will be." [Footnote: _Thoughts_, XI, 1. London,
1891, translated by GEORGE LONG.] Which is, to be sure, an overstatement
of the case, but one containing a germ of truth.
(2) We find, by looking into their books, that men most intimately
acquainted with the facts of the moral life as revealed in different
races and peoples may differ widely in the ethical doctrine which they
are inclined to base upon them. Not all men, even when endowed with no
little learning, are gifted with the clearness of vision which can detect
the significance of given facts; nor are all equally capable of weaving
relevant facts into a consistent and reasonable theory. The keenness and
the constructive genius of the individual count for much. And breadth of
view counts for much also. We have seen that ethics touches many fields
of investigation, and the philosopher is supposed, at least, to let his
vision range over a broad realm, and to grasp the relations of the
different sciences to each other. He is, moreover, supposed to be trained
in reflective analysis, and of this ethical theory appears to stand in no
little need.
(3) Finally, the mere fact that ethics has for so many centuries been
regarded as one of the disciplines falling within the domain of the
philosopher is not without its significance. One may deplore the tendency
to base ethics upon this or that metaphysical doctrine, and desire to see
it made an independent science; and yet one may be compelled to admit
that it is not easy to comprehend and to estimate the value of many of
the ethical theories which have been evolved in the past, without having
rather an intimate acquaintance with the history of philosophy. The
ethical teachings of Plato, of Aristotle, of St. Thomas, of Kant, of
Hegel, of Green, lose much of their meaning when taken out of their
setting. The history of ethical theory is blind when divorced from the
history of philosophy, and with the history of ethical theory the
moralist should be acquainted.
The philosopher has no prescriptive right to preempt the field of ethics.
Many men may cultivate it with profit. Nevertheless, he, too, should
cultivate it, not independently and with a disregard of what has been
done by others, but in a spirit of hearty cooperation, thankfully
accepting such help as is offered him by his neighbors.
CHAPTER VII
THE AIM OF ETHICS AS SCIENCE
19. THE APPEAL TO REASON.--The proper aim of the scientific study of
ethics appears to be suggested with sufficient clearness by what has been
said in the chapters on the accepted content of morals.
Where individuals take up unreflectively the maxims which are to control
their conduct, human life can scarcely be said to be under the guidance
of reason. Where, moreover, the codes of individuals clash with each
other or with the social conscience of their community, and where the
codes of different communities are disconcertingly diverse, planful
concerted action with a view to the control of conduct appears to be
impracticable. Historical accident, blind impulse and caprice, cannot
serve as guides for a rational creature seeking to live, along with
others, a rational life.
"The aim of ethics," says Sidgwick, [Footnote: _The Methods of
Ethics_, Book I, chapter vi, Sec 1.] "is to render scientific--i.e.,
true, and as far as possible systematic--the apparent cognitions that
most men have of the rightness or reasonableness of conduct, whether the
conduct be considered as right in itself, or as the means to some end
conceived as ultimately reasonable." The use here of the word
"cognitions" calls our attention to the fact that, when men say, "this is
right, that is wrong," they mean no more than, "this I like, that I do
not like"; and the use of the word "apparent" indicates that the
judgments expressed may be approved by the man who makes them, and yet be
erroneous. The appeal is to an objective standard; there is a demand for
proof.
That most men recognize, in some cases dimly, in some cases clearly and
explicitly, that the appeal to such a standard is justifiable, can
scarcely be denied. Between "I choose" and "I ought to choose," between
"the community demands," and "the community ought to demand," men
generally recognize a distinction when they have attained to a capacity
for reflection.
It has, however, been denied that the appeal is justifiable, and denied
by no mean authority. "The presumed objectivity of moral judgments,"
writes Westermarck, [Footnote: 2 _The Origin and Development of the
Moral Ideas_, chapter i, p. 17.] "being a chimera, there can be no
moral truth in the sense in which this term is generally understood. The
ultimate reason for this is, that the moral concepts are based upon
emotions, and that the contents of an emotion fall entirely outside the
category of truth. But it may be true or not that we have a certain
emotion, it may be true or not that a given mode of conduct has a
tendency to evoke in us moral indignation or moral approval. Hence a
moral judgment is true or false according as its subject has or has not
that tendency which the predicate attributes to it. If I say that it is
wrong to resist evil, and yet resistance to evil has no tendency whatever
to call forth in me an emotion of moral disapproval, then my judgment is
false." The conclusion drawn from this is that there are no general moral
truths, and that "the object of scientific ethics cannot be to fix rules
for human conduct"; it can only be "to study the moral consciousness as a
fact."
20. THE APPEAL TO REASON JUSTIFIED.--The words of so high an authority
should not be passed over lightly. One is impelled to seek for their
proper appreciation and their reconciliation with the judgment of other
moralists. Such can be found, I think, by turning to two truths dwelt
upon in what has preceded: the truth that the moralist should not assume
that he is possessed of a "given" analogous to that of the geometer--a
standard in no need of criticism; and the equally important truth that
the moralist cannot hope to frame a code which will simply replace the
codes of individual communities and will prescribe the details of human
conduct while ignoring such codes altogether.
But it does not seem to follow that, because the moralist may not set up
an arbitrary code of this sort, he is also forbidden to criticize and
compare moral judgments, to arrange existing codes in a certain order as
lower and higher, to frame some notion of what constitutes progress. He
may hold before himself, in outline, at least, an ideal of conduct, and
not one taken up arbitrarily but based upon the phenomena of the moral
consciousness as he has observed them. And in the light of this ideal he
may judge of conduct; his appeal is to an objective standard.
Thus, he who says that it is false that it is right to reduce to slavery
prisoners taken in war may, if he be sufficiently unreflective, have no
better reason for his judgment than a feeling of repugnance to such
conduct. But, if he has risen to the point of taking broad views of men
and their moral codes, he may very well assert the falsity of the
statement even when he feels no personal repugnance to the holding of
certain persons as slaves. His appeal is, in fact, to such a standard as
is above indicated, and his condemnation of certain forms of conduct is
based upon their incompatibility with it.
Hence, a man may significantly assert that certain conduct is objectively
desirable, although it may not be desired by himself or by his community.
He may judge a thing to be wrong without _feeling_ it to be wrong.
Whether anything would actually be judged to be wrong, if no one ever had
any emotions, is a different question. With it we may class the question
whether anything would be judged to be wrong if no one were possessed of
even a spark of reason. There is small choice between having nothing to
see and not being able to see anything. [Footnote: That, in the citation
above given, WESTERMARCK'S attention was concentrated upon the extreme
position taken by some moralists touching the function of the reason in
moral judgments seems to me evident. He is far too able an observer to
overlook the significance of the diversity of moral codes and the meaning
of progress. He writes: "Though rooted in the emotional side of our
nature, our moral opinions are in a large measure amenable to reason. Now
in every society the traditional notions as to what is good or bad,
obligatory or indifferent, are commonly accepted by the majority of
people without further reflection. By tracing them to their source it
will be found that not a few of these notions have their origin in
sentimental likings and antipathies, to which a scrutinizing and
enlightened judge can attach little importance; whilst, on the other
hand, he must account blamable many an act and omission which public
opinion, out of thoughtlessness, treats with indifference." Vol. I, pp.
2-3. See also his appeals to reason where it is a question of the
attitude of the community toward legal responsibility on the part of the
young, toward drunkenness, and toward the heedless production of
offspring doomed to misery and disease, pp. 269 and 310.]
An appeal, thus, from the actual to the ideal appears to be possible.
And, since the natural man, unenlightened and unreflective, is not more
inclined to show himself to be a reasonable being in the sphere of morals
than elsewhere, it seems that there is no little need of ethical science.
Its aim is to bring about the needed enlightenment. Its value can only be
logically denied by those who maintain seriously that it is easy to know
what it is right to do. Do men really hold this, if they are thoughtful?
PART III
MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT
CHAPTER VIII
MAN'S NATURE
21. THE BACKGROUND OF ACTIONS.--In estimating human actions we take into
consideration both the doer and the circumstances under which the deed
was done. Actions may be desirable or undesirable, good or bad, according
to their setting. How shall we judge of the blow that takes away human
life? It may be the involuntary reaction of a man startled by a shock; it
may be a motion of justifiable self-defence; it may be one struck at the
command of a superior and in the defence of one's country; it may be the
horrid outcome of cruel rapacity or base malevolence.
Nor are the emotions, torn out of their context, more significant than
actions without a background. They are mental phenomena to be observed
and described by the psychologist; to the moralist they are, taken alone,
as unmeaning as the letters of the alphabet, but, like them, capable in
combination of carrying many meanings. Anger, fear, wonder, and all the
rest are, as natural emotions, neither good nor bad; they are colors,
which may enter into a picture and in it acquire various values.
In morals, when men have attained to the stage of enlightenment at which
moral estimation is a possible process, they always consider emotions,
intentions, and actions in the light of their background. We do not
demand a moral life of the brutes; we do not look for it in the
intellectually defective and the emotionally insane; nor do we expect a
savage caught in the bush to harbor the same emotions, or to have the
same ethical outlook, as the missionary with whom we may confront him.
The concepts of moral responsibility, of desert, of guilt, are emptied of
all significance, when we lose sight of the nature, inborn or acquired,
of the creature haled before the bar of our judgment, and of the
environment, which on the one hand, impels him to action, and, on the
other, furnishes the stage upon which the drama of his life must be
played out to the end.
Hence, he who would not act as the creature of blind impulse or as the
unthinking slave of tradition, but would exercise a conscious and
intelligent control over his conduct, seems compelled to look at his life
and its setting in a broad way, to scrutinize with care both the nature
of man and the environment without which that nature could find no
expression. When he does this, he only does more intelligently what men
generally do instinctively and somewhat at haphazard. He seeks a rational
estimate of the significance of conduct, and a standard by which it may
be measured.
22. MAN'S NATURE.--Moralists ancient and modern have had a good deal to
say about the nature of man. To some of them it has seemed rather a
simple thing to describe it. Its constitution, as they have conceived it,
has furnished them with certain principles which should guide human
action. Aristotle, who assumed that every man seeks his own good,
conceived of his good or "well-being" as largely identical with "well-
doing." This "well-doing" meant to him "fulfilling the proper functions
of man," or in other words acting as the nature of man prescribes.
[Footnote: _Politics_, i, 2. See, further, on _Man's Nature_,
chapter xxvi.] To the Stoic man's duty was action in accordance with his
nature. [Footnote: MARCUS AURELIUS, _Thoughts_, v, 1.] Butler,
[Footnote: _Sermons on Human Nature_, ii] many centuries later,
found in man's nature a certain "constitution," with conscience naturally
supreme and the passions in a position of subordination. This
"constitution" plainly indicated to him the conduct appropriate to a
human being.
Such appeals to man's nature we are apt to listen to with a good deal of
sympathy. Manifestly, man differs from the brutes, and they differ, in
their kind, from each other. To each kind, a life of a certain sort seems
appropriate. The rational being is expected to act rationally, to some
degree, at least. In our dealings with creatures on a lower plane, we
pitch our expectations much lower.
And the behavior we expect from each is that appropriate to its kind. The
bee and the ant follow unswervingly their own law, and live their own
complicated community life. However the behavior of the brute may vary in
the presence of varying conditions, the degree of the variation seems to
be determined by rather narrow limits. These we recognize as the limits
of the nature of the creature. It dictates to itself, unconsciously, its
own law of action, and it follows that law simply and without revolt.
When we turn to man, "the crown and glory of the universe," as Darwin
calls him, we find him, too, endowed with a certain nature in an
analogous sense of the word. He has capacities for which we look in vain
elsewhere. The type of conduct we expect of him has its root in these
capacities. Human nature can definitely be expected to express itself in
a human life,--one lower or higher, but, in every case, distinguishable
from the life of the brute. It means something to speak of the physical
and mental constitution of man, that mysterious reservoir from which his
emotions and actions are supposed to flow. We feel that we have a right
to use the expression, even while admitting that the brain of man is, as
far as psychology is concerned, almost unexplored territory, and that the
relation of mind to brain is, and is long likely to remain, a subject of
dispute with philosophers and psychologists.
23. HOW DISCOVER MAN'S NATURE?--Nevertheless, in speaking of the nature
of any living creature, we are forced to remind ourselves that the
original endowment of the creature studied can never be isolated and
subjected to inspection independently of the setting in which the subject
of our study is found. Who, by an examination of the brain of a bee or of
an ant, could foresee the intricate organized industry of the hive or the
anthill? The seven ages of man are not stored ready-made in the little
body of the infant. At any rate, they are beyond the reach of the most
penetrating vision. In the case of the simple mechanisms which can be
constructed by man a forecast of future function is possible on the basis
of a general knowledge of mechanics. But there is no living being of
whose internal constitution we have a similar knowledge. From the
behavior of the creature we gather a knowledge of its nature; we do not
start with its nature as directly revealed and infer its behavior. That
there are differences in the internal constitution of beings which react
to the same environment in different ways, we have every reason to
believe. What those differences are in detail we cannot know. And our
knowledge of the capacities inherent in this or that constitution will be
limited by what we can observe of its reaction to environment.
Sometimes the reaction to environment is relatively simple and uniform.
In this case we feel that we can attain without great difficulty to what
may be regarded as a satisfactory knowledge of the nature of the creature
studied. The conception of that nature appears to be rather definite and
unequivocal. When it is once attained, we speak with some assurance of
the way in which the creature will act in this situation or in that. If,
however, the capacities are vastly more ample, and the environment to
which this creature is adjusted is greatly extended, the difficulty of
describing in any unequivocal way the nature of the creature becomes
indefinitely greater.
Is it possible to contemplate man without being struck with the breadth
and depth of the gulf which separates the primitive human being from the
finished product of civilization? What a difference in range of emotion,
in reach of intellect, in stored information, in freedom of action,
between man at his lowest and man at his highest! Can we describe in the
same terms what is natural to man everywhere and always?
For the filthy and ignorant savage, absorbed in satisfying his immediate
bodily needs, standing in the simplest of social relations, taking
literally no thought for the morrow, profoundly ignorant of the world in
which he finds himself, possessing over nature no control worthy of the
name, the sport and slave of his environment, it is natural to act in one
way. For enlightened humanity, acquainted with the past and forecasting
the future, developed in intellect and refined in feeling, rich in the
possession of arts and sciences, intelligently controlling and directing
the forces of nature, socially organized in highly complicated ways, it
is natural to act in another way. And to each of the intermediate stages
in the evolution of civilization some type of conduct appears to be
appropriate and natural.
Whither, then, shall we turn for our conception of man's nature? Shall we
merely draw up a list of the instincts and impulses which may be
observable in all men? Shall we say no more than that man is gifted with
an intelligence superior to that of the brutes? To do this is, to be
sure, to give some vague indication of man's original endowment. But it
can give us little indication of what it is possible for man, with such
an endowment, and in such an environment as makes his setting, to become.
And what man becomes, that he is.
If man's nature can be revealed only through the development of his
capacities, it is futile to seek it in a return to undeveloped man. The
nature of the chicken is not best revealed in the egg. And, as man can
develop only in interaction with his environment, we must, to understand
him, study his environment also.
CHAPTER IX
MAN'S MATERIAL ENVIRONMENT
24. THE STRUGGLE WITH NATURE.--It is not possible to disentangle from
each other and to consider quite separately the diverse elements which
enter into the environment of man and which influence his development.
His environment is two-fold, material and social; but his material
setting may affect his social relations, and it is social man, not the
individual as such, that achieves a conquest over nature. However, it is
possible, and it is convenient, to direct attention successively upon the
one and the other aspect of his environment.
At every stage of his development, man must have food, shelter, some
means of defense. If they are not easily obtainable, he must strain every
nerve to attain them. Are his powers feeble and his intelligence
undeveloped, it may tax all his efforts to keep himself alive and to
continue the race in any fashion. The rules which determine his conduct
seem rather the dictates of a stern necessity than the products of
anything resembling free choice.
He who is lashed by hunger and haunted by fear, who cannot provide for
the remote future, but must accept good or ill fortune as the accident of
the day precipitates his lot upon him, lives and must live a life at but
one remove from that of the brute. In such a life the instincts of man
attain to a certain expression, but intelligence plays a feeble part. The
man remains a slave, under dictation, and moved by the dread of immediate
disaster. For an interest in what is remote in time and place, for the
extension of knowledge for its own sake, for the development of
activities which have no direct bearing upon the problem of keeping him
alive and fed, there can be little place. One must be assured that one
can live, and live in reasonable security and physical well-being, before
the problem of enriching and embellishing life can fairly present itself
as an important problem. One must be set free before one can deliberately
set out to shape one's life after an ideal.
Not that a severe struggle with physical nature is necessarily and of
itself a curse. It may call out man's powers, stimulate to action, and
result in growth and development. Where a prodigal nature amply provides
for man's bodily necessities without much effort on his part, the result
may be, in the absence of other stimulating influences giving rise to new
wants, a paralyzing slothfulness, an animal passivity and content. This
may be observed in whole peoples highly favored by soil and climate, and
protected by their situation from external dangers. It may be observed in
certain favored classes even in communities which, by long and strenuous
effort, have conquered nature and raised themselves high in the scale of
civilization. The idle sons of the rich, relieved from the spur of
necessity, may undergo the degeneration appropriate to parasitic life. In
the midst of a strenuous activity adapted to call out the best
intellectual and moral powers of man, they may remain unaffected by it,
incapable of effort, unintelligent, slothful, the weak and passive
recipients of what is brought to them by the labor of others.
But the struggle with physical nature, sometimes a spur to progress and
issuing in triumph, may also issue in defeat. Nature may be too strong
for man, or, at least, for man at an early stage of his development. She
may thwart his efforts and dwarf his life. It was through no accident
that the Athenian state rose and flourished upon the shores of the
Aegean; no such efflorescence of civilization could be looked for among
the Esquimaux of the frozen North.
25. THE CONQUESTS OF THE MIND.--Physical environment counts for much, but
the physical environment of man is the same as that of the creatures
below him who seem incapable of progress. It is as an intelligent being
that he succeeds in bringing about ever new and more complicated
adjustments to his environment.
From the point of view of his animal life in many respects inferior to
other creatures--less strong, less swift, less adequately provided with
natural means of defense, less protected by nature against cold, heat and
the inclemencies of the weather, endowed with instincts less unerring,
less prolific, through a long period of infancy helpless and dependent--
man nevertheless survives and prospers.
He has conquered the strong, overtaken the swift, called upon his
ingenuity to furnish him with means of defence. He has defied cold and
heat, and we find him, with appliances of his own devising, successfully
combating the rigors of Arctic frosts and the torrid sun of the tropics.
Intelligence has supplemented instinct and has guaranteed the survival of
the individual and of the race.
It has even protected man against himself, against the very dangers
arising out of his immunity from other dangers. A gregarious creature,
increasing and multiplying, he would be threatened with starvation did
not his intelligent control over nature furnish him with a food-supply
which makes it possible for vast numbers of human beings to live and
thrive on a territory of limited extent. Moreover, he has compassed those
complicated forms of social organization which reveal themselves in
cities and states, solving problems of production, transportation and
distribution before which undeveloped man would stand helpless.
And from the problem of living at all he has passed to that of living
well. He has created new wants and has satisfied them. He has built up
for himself a rich and diversified life, many of the activities of which
appear to have the remotest of bearings upon the mere struggle for
existence, but the exercise of which gives him satisfaction. Thus, the
primitive instinct of curiosity, once relatively aimless and
insignificant, has developed into the passion for systematic knowledge
and the persistent search for truth; the rudimentary aesthetic feeling
which is revealed in primitive man, and traces of which are recognizable
in creatures far lower in the scale, has blossomed out in those elaborate
creations, which, at an enormous expense of labor and ingenuity, have
come to enrich the domains of literature, music, painting, sculpture,
architecture. Civilized man is to a great extent occupied with the
production of what he does not need, if need be measured by what his
wants are at a lower stage of his development. But these same things he
needs imperatively, if we measure his need by his desires when they have
been multiplied and their scope indefinitely widened.
26. THE CONQUEST OF NATURE AND THE WELL-BEING OF MAN.--It is evident that
the successful exploitation of the resources of material nature is of
enormous significance to the life of man. It may bring emancipation; it
offers opportunity. One is tempted to affirm, without stopping to
reflect, that the development of the arts and sciences, the increase of
wealth and of knowledge, must in the nature of things increase human
happiness.
One is tempted, further, to maintain that an advance in civilization must
imply an advance in moralization. Man has a moral nature which exhibits
itself to some degree at every stage of his development. What more
natural to conclude than that, with the progressive unfolding of his
intelligence, with increase in knowledge, with some relaxation of the
struggle for existence which pits man against his fellow-man, and
subordinates all other considerations to the inexorable law of self-
preservation, his moral nature would have the opportunity to show itself
in a fuller measure?
When we compare man at his very lowest with man at his highest such
judgments appear to be justified. But man is to be found at all sorts of
intermediate stages.
His knowledge may be limited, the development of the arts not far
advanced, his control over nature far from complete, and yet he may live
in comparative security and with such wants as he has reasonably well
satisfied. His competition with his fellows may not be bitter and
absorbing. The simple life is not necessarily an unhappy life, if the
simplicity which characterizes it be not too extreme. In judging broadly
of the significance for human life of the control over nature which is
implied in the advance of civilization, one must take into consideration
several points of capital importance:
(1) The multiplication of man's wants results, not in happiness, but in
unhappiness, unless the satisfaction of those wants can be adequately
provided for.
(2) The effort to satisfy the new wants which have been called into being
may be accompanied by an enormous expenditure of effort. Where the effort
is excessive man becomes again the slave of his environment. His task is
set for him, and he fulfills it under the lash of an imperious necessity.
The higher standard may become as inexorable a task-master as was the
lower.
(3) It does not follow that, because a given community is set free from
the bondage of the daily anxiety touching the problem of living at all,
and may address itself deliberately to the problem of living well, it
will necessarily take up into its ideal of what constitutes living well
all those goods upon which developed man is apt to set a value. A
civilization may be a grossly material one, even when endowed with no
little wealth. With wealth comes the opportunity for the development of
the arts which embellish life, but that opportunity may not be embraced.
Man may be materially rich and spiritually poor; he may allow some of his
faculties to lie dormant, and may lose the enjoyments which would have
been his had they been developed. The Athenian citizen two millenniums
ago had no such mastery over the forces of nature as we possess today.
Nevertheless, he was enabled to live a many-sided life beside which the
life of the modern man may appear poor and bare. It is by no means self-
evident that the good of man consists in the multitude of the material
things which he can compel to his service.
(4) Moreover, it does not follow that, because the sum of man's
activities, his behavior, broadly taken, is vastly altered, by an
increase in his control over his material environment, the result is an
advance in moralization. An advance in civilization--in knowledge, in the
control over nature's resources, in the evolution of the industrial and
even of the fine arts--does not necessarily imply a corresponding ethical
advance on the part of a given community. New conditions, brought about
by an increase of knowledge, of wealth, of power, may result in ethical
degeneration.
What constitutes the moral in human behavior, what marks out right or
wrong conduct from conduct ethically indifferent, we have not yet
considered. But no man is wholly without information in the field of
morals, and we may here fall back upon such conceptions as men generally
possess before they have evolved a science of morals. In the light of
such conceptions a simple and comparatively undeveloped culture may
compare very favorably with one much higher in the scale of civilization.
In the simplest groups of human beings, justice, veracity and a regard to
common good may be conspicuous; the claim of each man upon his fellow-man
may be generally acknowledged. In communities more advanced, the growth
of class distinctions and the inequalities due to the amassing of wealth
on the part of individuals may go far to nullify the advantage to the
individual of any advance made by the community as a whole. The social
bonds which have obtained between members of the same group may be
relaxed; the devotion to the common good may be replaced by the selfish
calculation of profit to the individual; the exploitation of man by his
fellow-man may be accepted as natural and normal. It is not without its
significance that the most highly civilized of states have, under the
pressure of economic advance, come to adopt the institution of slavery in
its most degraded forms; that the problem of property and poverty may
present itself as most pressing and most difficult of solution where
national wealth has grown to enormous proportions. The body politic may
be most prosperous from a material point of view, and at the same time,
considered from the point of view of the moralist, thoroughly rotten in
its constitution.
It is well to remember that, even in the most advanced of modern
civilizations, whatever the degree of enlightenment and the power enjoyed
by the community as a whole, it is quite possible for the individual to
be condemned to a life little different in essentials from that of the
lowest savage. He whose feverish existence is devoted to the nerve-
racking occupation of gambling in stocks, who goes to his bed at night
scheming how he may with impunity exploit his fellow-man, and who rises
in the morning with a strained consciousness of possible fluctuations in
the market which may overwhelm him in irretrievable disaster, lives in
perils which easily bear comparison with those which threaten the
precarious existence of primitive man. To masses of men in civilized
communities the problem of the food supply is all-absorbing, and may
exclude all other and broader interests. The factory-worker, with a mind
stupefied by the mechanical repetition of some few simple physical
movements of no possible interest to him except as resulting in the wage
that keeps him alive, has no share in such light as may be scattered
about him.
The control of the forces of nature brings about great changes in human
societies, but it may leave the individual, whether rich or poor, a prey
to dangers and anxieties, engaged in an unequal combat with his
environment, absorbed in the satisfaction of material needs, undeveloped,
unreflective and most restricted in his outlook. Of emancipation there
can here be no question.
And a civilization in which the control of the forces of nature has been
carried to the highest pitch of development may furnish a background to
the darkest of passions. It may serve as a stage upon which callous
indifference, greed, rapacity, gross sensuality, play their parts naked
and unashamed. That some men sunk in ignorance and subject to such
passions live in huts and have their noses pierced, and others have taken
up from their environment the habit of dining in evening dress, is to the
moralist a relatively insignificant detail. He looks at the man, and he
finds him in each case essentially the same--a primitive and undeveloped
creature who has not come into his rightful heritage.
CHAPTER X
MAN'S SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
27. MAN IS ASSIGNED HIS PLACE.--The old fable of a social contract, by
virtue of which man becomes a member of a society, agreeing to renounce
certain rights he might exercise if wholly independent, and to receive in
exchange legal rights which guarantee to the individual the protection of
life and property and the manifold advantages to be derived from
cooperative effort, points a moral, like other fables.
The contract in question never had an existence, but neither did the
conversation between the grasshopper and the ant. In each case, a truth
is illustrated by a play of the imagination. Contracts there have been in
plenty, between individuals, between families, between social classes,
between nations; but they have all been contracts between men already in
a social state of some sort, capable of choice and merely desirous of
modifying in some particular some aspect of that social state. The notion
of an original contract, lying at the base of all association of man with
man, is no more than a fiction which serves to illustrate the truth that
the desires and wills of men are a significant factor in determining the
particular forms under which that association reveals itself.
No man enters into a contract to be born, or to be born a Kaffir, a
Malay, a Hindoo, an Englishman or an American. He enters the world
without his own consent, and without his own connivance he is assigned a
place in a social state of some sort. The reception which is accorded to
him is of the utmost moment to him. He may be rejected utterly by the
social forces presiding over his birth. In which case he does not start
life independently, but is snuffed out as is a candle-flame by the wind.
And if accepted, as he usually is in civilized communities, he takes his
place in the definite social order into which he is born, and becomes the
subject of education and training as a member of that particular
community.
28. VARIETIES OF THE SOCIAL ORDER.--The social order into which he is
thus ushered may be most varied in character. He may find himself a
member of a small and primitive group of human beings, a family standing
in more or less loose relations to a limited number of other families; he
may belong to a clan in which family relationship still serves as a real
or fictive bond; his clan may have its place in a confederation; or the
body politic in which he is a unit may be a nation, or an empire
including many nationalities.
His relations to his fellow-man will naturally present themselves to him
in a different light according to the different nature of the social
environment in which he finds himself. The community of feeling and of
interests which defines rights, determines expectations, and prescribes
duties, cannot be the same under differing conditions. Social life
implies cooperation, but the limits of possible cooperation are very
differently estimated by man at different stages of his development. To a
few human beings each man is bound closely at every stage of his
evolution. The family bond is everywhere recognized. But, beyond that,
there are wider and looser relationships recognized in very diverse
degrees, as intelligence expands, as economic advance and political
enlightenment make possible a community life on a larger scale, as
sympathy becomes less narrow and exclusive.
It is not easy for a member of a community at a given stage of its
development even to conceive the possibility of such communities as may
come into existence under widely different conditions. The simple,
communistic savage, limited in his outlook, thinks in terms of small
numbers. A handful of individuals enjoy membership in his group; he
recognizes certain relations, more or less loose, to other groups, with
which his group comes into contact; beyond is the stranger, the natural
enemy, upon whom he has no claim and to whom he owes no duty.
At a higher level there comes into being the state, including a greater
number of individuals and internally organized as the simpler society is
not. But even in a highly civilized state much the same attitude towards
different classes of human beings may seem natural and inevitable. To
Plato there remained the strongly marked distinctions between the
Athenian, the citizen of another Hellenic community, and the barbarian.
War, when waged against the last, might justifiably be merciless; not so,
when it was war between Greek states. [Footnote: Republic, Book V.] Into
such conceptions of rights and duties men are born; they take them up
with the very air that they breathe, and they may never feel impelled to
subject them to the test of criticism.
It is instructive to remark that neither the speculative genius of a
Plato nor the acute intelligence of an Aristotle could rise to the
conception of an organized, self-governing community on a great scale. To
each it seemed evident that the group proper must remain a comparatively
small one. Plato finds it necessary to provide in his "Laws" that the
number of households in the State shall be limited to five thousand and
forty. Aristotle, less arbitrarily exact, allows a variation within
rather broad limits, holding that a political community should not
comprise a number of citizens smaller than ten, nor one greater than one
hundred thousand. [FOOTNOTE: PLATO, _Laws_, v. ARISTOTLE,
_Ethics_, ix, 10.] That a highly organized state, a state not
composed of a horde of subjects under autocratic control, but one in
which the citizens are, in theory, self-governing, should spread over
half a continent and include a hundred millions of souls, would have
seemed to these men of genius the wildest of dreams. Yet such a dream has
been realized.
29. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.--The social body of which man becomes, by the
accident of birth, an involuntary member, may stand at any point in the
scale of economic evolution. It may be a primitive group living from hand
to mouth by the chase, by fishing or by gathering such food as nature
spontaneously produces. It may be a pastoral people, more or less
nomadic, occupied with the care of flocks and herds. It may be an
agricultural community, rooted to the soil, looking forward from seed-
time to harvest, capable of foresight in storing and distributing the
fruits of its labors. It may combine some of the above activities; and
may, in addition, have arrived at the stage at which the arts and crafts
have attained to a considerable development. In its life commerce may
have come to play an important role, bringing it into peaceful relations
with other communities and broadening the circle of its interests. That
human societies at such different stages of their development should
differ greatly in their internal organization, in their relations to
other communities, and in the demands which they make upon the
individuals who compose them, is to be expected. Some manner of life,
appropriate to the status of the community, comes to be prescribed. The
ideal of conduct, whether unconsciously admitted or consciously embraced
and inculcated, is not the same in different societies. The virtues which
come to be prized, the defects which are disapproved, vary with their
setting.
Moreover, the process of inner development results in differentiation of
function. Clearly marked social classes come into existence, standing in
more or less sharply defined relations to other social classes, endowed
with special rights and called to the performance of peculiar duties.
Man is not merely born into this or that community; he is born into a
place in the community. In very primitive societies that place may differ
little from other places, save as such are determined by age or sex. But
in more highly differentiated societies it may differ enormously, entail
the performance of widely different functions, and prescribe distinct
varieties of conduct.
"What will be the manner of life," said Plato, [Footnote: Laws, vii.]
"among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided
for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts
to others, and whose husbandry, committed to slaves paying a part of the
produce, brings them a return sufficient for living temperately?"
His ideal leisure class is patterned after what he saw before him in
Athens. He conceives those who belong to it to be set free from sordid
cares and physical labors, in order that they may devote themselves to
the perfecting of their own minds and bodies and to preparation for the
serious work of supervising and controlling the state. Their membership
in the class defined their duties and prescribed the course of education
which should fit them to fulfill them. It is not conceived that the
functions natural and proper to one human being are also natural and
proper to another in the same community.
The flat monotony which obtains in those simplest human societies,
resembling extended families, where there is scarcely a demarcation of
classes, a distinction of occupations and a recognition of private
property in any developed sense, has given place in such a state to sharp
contrasts in the status of man and man. Such contrasts obtain in all
modern civilized communities. Man is not merely a subject or citizen; he
is a subject or citizen of this class or of that, and the environment
which molds him varies accordingly.
30. SOCIAL ORDER AND HUMAN WILL.--We have seen that the material
environment of a man, the extent of his mastery over nature and of his
emancipation from the dictation of pressing bodily needs, is a factor of
enormous importance in determining what he shall become and what sort of
a life he shall lead. That his social setting is equally significant is
obvious. What he shall know, what habits he shall form, what emotions he
shall experience in this situation and in that, what tasks he shall find
set before him, and what ideals he shall strive to attain, are largely
determined for him independently of his choice.
To be sure, it remains true that man is man, endowed with certain
instincts and impulses and gifted with human intelligence. Nor are all
men alike in their impulses or in the degree of their intelligence.
Within limits the individual may exercise choice, reacting upon and
modifying his environment and himself. But a moment's reflection reveals
to us that the new departure is but a step taken from a vantage-ground
which has not been won by independent effort. The information in the
light of which he chooses, the situation in the face of which he acts,
the emotional nature which impels him to effort, the habits of thought
and action which have become part of his being--these are largely due to
the larger whole of which he finds himself a part. He did not build the
stage upon which he is to act. His lines have been learned from others.
He may recite them imperfectly; he may modify them in this or in that
particular. But the drama from which, and from which alone, he gains his
significance, is not his own creation.
The independence of the individual in the face of his material and social
environment makes itself more apparent with the progressive development
of man. But man attains his development as a member of society, and in
the course of a historical evolution. It was pointed out many centuries
ago that a hand cut off from the human body cannot properly be called a
hand, for it can perform none of the functions of one. And man, torn from
his setting, can no longer be considered man as the proper subject of
moral science.
It is as a thinking and willing creature in a social setting that man
becomes a moral agent. To understand him we must make a study of the
individual and of the social will.
PART IV
THE REALM OF ENDS
CHAPTER XI
IMPULSE, DESIRE, AND WILL
31. IMPULSE.--Commands and prohibitions address themselves to man as a
voluntary agent. But it seems right to treat as willed by man much more
than falls under the head of conscious and deliberate volition. We do not
hesitate to make him responsible for vastly more; and yet common sense
does not, when enlightened, regard men as responsible for what is
recognized as falling wholly beyond the direct and indirect control of
their wills.
Motions due to even the blindest of impulses are not to be confounded
with those brought about by external compulsion. They may have the
appearance of being vaguely purposive, although we would never attribute
purpose to the creature making them. The infant that cries and struggles,
when tormented by the intrusive pin, the worm writhing in the beak of a
bird,--these act blindly, but it does not appear meaningless to say that
they act. The impulse is from within.
Some impulses result in actions very nicely adjusted to definite ends.
Such are winking, sneezing, swallowing. These reflexes may occur as the
mechanical response to a given stimulus. They may occur without our being
conscious of them and without our having willed them.
Yet such responses to stimuli are not necessarily unconscious and cut off
from voluntary control. He who winks involuntarily when a hand is passed
before his eyes may become conscious that he has done so, and may, if he
chooses, even acquire some facility in controlling the reflex. One may
resist the tendency to swallow when the throat is dry, may hold back a
sneeze, or may keep rigid the hand that is pricked by a pin. That is to
say, actions in their origin mechanical and independent of choice may be
raised out of their low estate, made the objects of attention, and
brought within the domain of deliberate choice.
Furthermore, many actions which, at the outset, claimed conscious
attention and were deliberately willed may become so habitual that the
doer lapses into unconsciousness or semi-unconsciousness of his deed.
They take on the nature of acquired reflexes. The habit of acting appears
to have been acquired by the mind and then turned over to the body, that
the mind may be free to occupy itself with other activities. The man has
become less the doer than the spectator of his acts; perhaps he is even
less than that, he is the stage upon which the action makes its
appearance, while the spectator is his neighbor. The complicated bodily
movements called into play when one bites one's nails had to be learned.
It requires no little ingenuity to accomplish the act when the nails are
short. Yet one may come to the stage of perfection at which one bites
one's nails when one is absorbed in thought about other things. And one
may learn to slander one's neighbor almost as mechanically and
unthinkingly as one swallows when the throat is dry.
When we speak of man's impulses, we are using a vague word. There are
impulses which will never be anything more. There are impulses which may
become something more. There are impulses which are no longer anything
more. Impulses have their psychic aspect. At its lower limit, impulse may
appear very mechanical; at its upper, one may hesitate to say that desire
and will are wholly absent. It is not wise to regard impulse as lying
wholly beyond the sphere of will.
32. DESIRE.--At its lower limit, desire is not distinguished by any sharp
line from mere impulse. Is the infant that stretches out its hands toward
a bright object conscious of a desire to possess it? Or does the motion
made follow the visual sensation as the wail follows the wound made by
the pin? At a certain stage of development the phenomena of desire become
unmistakable. The idea of something to be attained, the notion of means
to the attainment of an end, the consciousness of tension, may stand out
clearly. The analysis of the psychologist, which finds in desire a
consciousness of the present state of the self, an idea of a future
state, and a feeling of tension towards the realization of the latter,
may represent faithfully the elements present in desire in the higher
stages of its development, but it would be difficult to find those
elements clearly marked in desire which has just begun to differentiate
itself from impulse. There may be a desire where there can scarcely be
said to be a self as an object of consciousness; one may desire where
there is no clear consciousness of a future state as distinct from a
present one.
Moreover, the consciousness of desire may be faint and fugitive, as it
may be intense and persistent. Desire is the step between the first
consciousness of the object and the voluntary release of energy which
works toward its attainment. This step may be passed over almost
unnoticed. The thought of shifting my position when I feel uncomfortable
may be followed by the act with no clear consciousness of a tension and
its voluntary release. The mere thought, itself but faintly and
momentarily in consciousness, appears to be followed at once by the act,
and desire and will to be eliminated. It does not follow that they are
actually eliminated; they may be present as fleeting shadows which fail
to attract attention.
If, however, the desire fails to find its immediate fruition, if it is
frustrated, consciousness of it may become exceedingly intense. There is
the constant thought of the object, a vivid feeling of tension, of a
striving to attain the object. Desire may become an obsession, a torment
filling the horizon, and the volition in which it finds its fruition
stands forth as a marked relief. This condition of things may be brought
about by the inhibition occasioned by the physical impossibility of
attaining the object; but it may also be brought about by the struggle of
incompatible desires among themselves. The man is drawn in different
directions, he is subject to various tensions, and he becomes acutely
conscious that he is impelled to move in several ways and is moving in
none.
I have used the word "tension" to describe the psychic fact present in
desire. I have done so for want of a better word. Of the physical basis
of desire, of what takes place in the brain, we know nothing. With the
psychic fact, the feeling of agitation and unrest, we are all familiar.
Of the tendency of desire to discharge itself in action we are aware. A
desire appears to be an inchoate volition--that which, if ripened
successfully and not nipped in the bud, would become a volition. It may
be looked upon as the first step toward action--a step which may or may
not be followed by others. It does not seem out of place to call it a
state of tension, of strain, of inclination. In speaking, thus, we use
physical metaphors, but they do not appear out of place.
33. DESIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE.--But if a desire may be regarded as an
unripe act of will, an inchoate volition, how is it that we can desire
the unattainable, a sufficiently common experience? I may bitterly regret
some act of my own in the past; I may earnestly wish that I had not
performed it. But the past is irrevocable. Hence, the desire for the
attainment of what is in this case the object, a different past, can
hardly be regarded as even a preparatory step toward attainment.
In this case it can not, and were all desires directed upon what is in
the nature of the case wholly unattainable by effort, it would occur to
no one to speak of desire as a first step toward action. But normally and
usually desires are not of this nature. They usually do constitute a link
in the chain of occurrences which end in action. Did they not, they would
have little significance in the life-history of the creature desiring.
With the appearance of free ideas, with an extension of the range of
memory and imagination, objects may be held before the mind which are not
properly objects to be attained. Yet such objects are of the kind which
attract or repel, i.e., of the kind which men endeavor to realize in
action. They cannot be realized; we do not will to realize them; but we
should will to do so were they realizable. The psychic factor, the
strain, the tension, is unmistakably present. Real desire is revealed,
and common speech, as well as the language of science, recognizes the
fact.
This general attraction or repulsion exercised by objects, in spite of
the fact that the objects may not appear to be realizable, is not without
significance. The hindrance to realization may be an accidental one; it
may not be wholly insuperable. The presence of a persistent desire may
result in persistent effort, which may ultimately be crowned by success.
Or it may show itself as a permanent readiness for effort. Were every
frustrated desire at once dismissed from consciousness, the result would
show itself in a passivity detrimental to action in general. Where the
object is intrinsically an impossible one, persistent desire is, of
course, futile. The dog baying at the cat in the tree is the prey of such
a desire, but he does not realize it, or he might discontinue his
inefficacious leaps. The man tormented by his unworthy act in the past is
quite aware of the futility of his longings. His condition is
psychologically explicable, but to a rational being, in so far as
rational, it is not normal.
Normally, desire is the intermediate step between the recognition of an
object and the will to attain it. The most futile of desires may be
harbored. The imaginative mind may range over a limitless field, and give
itself up to desires the most extravagant. But indulgence in this habit
serves as a check to action serviceable to the individual and to the
race. As a matter of fact, desire is usually for what seems conceivably
within the limit of possible attainment. The man desires to catch a
train, to run that he may attain that end; his mind is little occupied
with the desire to fly, nor does his longing center upon the carpet of
Solomon. To the desirability of dismissing from the mind futile desires
current moral maxims bear witness.
34. WILL.--The natural fruition of a desire is, then, an act of will; the
tension is normally followed by that release of energy which makes for
the attainment of the object or end of the desire.
The question suggests itself, may there not be present, even in blindly
impulsive action, something faintly corresponding to desire and will?
That there should be an object in the sense of something aimed at, held
in view as an idea to be realized, appears to be out of the question. But
may there not be a more or less vague and evanescent sense of tension,
and some psychic fact which may be regarded as the shadowy forerunner of
the consciousness of the release of tension which, on a higher plane,
reveals itself as the consciousness of will? There may be: introspection
is not capable of answering the question, and one is forced to fall back
upon an argument from analogy. Blindly impulsive action and action in
which will indubitably and consciously plays a part are not wholly
unlike, but they differ by a very wide interval. The interval is not an
empty gap, however, for, as we have seen, all volitions do not stand out
upon the background of our consciousness with the same unmistakable
distinctness. There are volitions no one would hesitate to call such. And
there are phenomena resembling volition which we more and more doubtfully
include under that caption as we pass own on the descending scale.
Naturally, in describing desire and volition we do not turn to the
twilight region where all outlines are blurred and indistinct. We fix our
attention upon those instances in which the phenomena are clearly and
strongly marked. They are most clearly marked where desire does not, at
once and unimpeded, discharge itself in action, but where action is
deferred, and a struggle takes place between desires.
The man is subject to various tensions, he is impelled in divers
directions, he hesitates, deliberates, and he finally makes a decision.
During this period of deliberation he is apt to be vividly conscious of
desire as such--as a tension not yet relieved, as an alternation of
tensions as the attention occupies itself, first with one desirable
object, then with another. And the decision, which puts an end to the
strife, is clearly distinguished from the desires as such.
In the reflective mind, which turns its attention upon itself and its own
processes, the distinction between desire and will seems to be a marked
one. But it is not merely the developed and reflective mind which is the
seat of deliberation. The child deliberates between satisfying its
appetite and avoiding possible punishment; it reaches for the forbidden
fruit, and withdraws its hand; it wavers, it is moved in one direction as
one desire becomes predominant, and its action is checked as the other
gains in ascendency. Deliberation this unmistakably is. And deliberation
we may observe in creatures below the level of man; in the sparrow,
hopping as close as it dares to the hand that sprinkles crumbs before it;
in the dog, ready to dart away in pursuance of his private desires, but
restrained by the warning voice of his master. This is deliberation. Such
deliberation as we find in the developed and enlightened human being it
is not. That, however, there is present even in these humble instances,
some psychic fact corresponding to what in the higher mind reveals itself
as desire and volition, we have no reason to doubt.
35. DESIRE AND WILL NOT IDENTICAL.--I have had occasion to remark that
the modern psychologist draws no such sharp line between desire and
volition as the psychologist of an earlier time. That some distinction
should be drawn seems palpable. It is not without significance that
immemorial usage sanctions this distinction. The ancient Stoic's quarrel
was with the desires, not with the will. The will was treated as a master
endowed with rightful authority; the desires were subjects, often in
rebellion, but justly to be held in subjection. And from the days of the
Stoic down almost to our own, the will has been treated much as though it
were an especial and distinct faculty of man, not uninfluenced by desire,
but in no sense to be identified with it,--above it, its law-giver,
detached, independent, supreme. This tendency finds its culmination in
that impressive modern Stoic, Immanuel Kant, who desires to isolate the
will, and to emancipate it altogether from the influence of desire.
Recently the pendulum has swung in the other direction. It has been
recognized that will is the natural outcome of desire, and that without
desire there would be no will at all. It has even been maintained that
will _is_ desire, the desire "with which the self identifies
itself." [Footnote: See, for example, GREEN, _Prolegomena to
Ethics_, Sec 144-149.]
To this last form of expression objection may be made on the score of its
vagueness. What does it mean for the self to "identify" itself with a
desire? And if such an identification is necessary to will, can there be
volition or anything resembling volition where self-consciousness has not
yet been developed? It is very imperfectly developed in young children,
and in the lower animals still less developed, if at all; and yet we see
in them the struggle of desires and the resultant decision emerging in
action. If we call a volition in which consciousness of the self has
played its part "volition proper," it still remains to inquire how
volitions on a lower plane are to be distinguished from mere desires.
What happens in a typical case of deliberation and decision? Two or more
objects are before the mind and the attention occupies itself with them
successively. Tensions alternate, wax strong and die away, only to
recover their strength again. Finally the attention fixes upon one object
to the exclusion of others, the strife of desires come to an end, and
there is an inception of action in the direction of the realization of
that particular desire. The desire itself is not to be confounded with
the decision; the tension, with its release. The psychic fact is in the
two cases different. The decision brings relief from the strain. It
cannot properly be called a desire, not even a triumphant desire,
although in it a desire attains a victory and its realization has begun.
Such a victory not all desires, even when most intense and prolonged, are
able to attain. We have seen that the desire for the unattainable may
amount to an obsession, and yet it will not ripen into an act of
volition. The release of the tension in incipient action does not come.
The bent bow remains bent. From the sense of strain in such a case one
may be freed, as one is freed from the desires which succumb during the
process of deliberation, by the occupation of the attention with other
things. But the desire has been forgotten, not satisfied. It may at any
time recur in all its strength.
We cannot more nearly describe the psychic fact called decision. Just as
we cannot more nearly describe the psychic fact to which we have given
the name "tension." Although the nervous basis of the phenomena of desire
and will are unknown, we can easily conceive that, during desire, and
before desire has resulted in the release of energy which is the
immediate forerunner of action, the cerebral occurrence should be
different from that which is present when that release takes place. Nor
should it be surprising that the psychical fact corresponding to each
should be different.
The view here set forth does not confuse desire and will, making will
indistinguishable from desire, or, at least, from certain desires. On the
other hand, it does not separate them, as though they could not be
brought within the one series of occurrences which may properly be
regarded as a unit. It has the advantage of making comprehensible the
mutual relations of impulse, desire, and will. Blind impulse discharges
itself in action seemingly without the psychic accompaniments which
distinguish desire and will. But all impulse is not blind impulse, and
desiring and willing admit of many degrees of development. To deny will
to creatures lower than man, as some writers have done, is to misconceive
the nature of the process that issues in action. We are tempted to do it
only when we compare will in its highest manifestations with those
rudimentary foreshadowings of it which stand at the lower end of the
scale. But even in man we can discern blind impulse, dimly conscious
desires which ripen into as dimly recognized decisions, and, at the very
top of the scale, conscious decisions which follow deliberation, and are
the resultant of a struggle between many desires.
For ethical science it is of no little importance to apprehend clearly
the relation of decision to desire. Moral rules aim to control human
conduct, and conduct is the expression of the whole man. If we have no
clear conception of the desires which struggle for the mastery within
him, and of the relation of his decisions to those desires, in vain will
we endeavor to influence him in the direction in which we wish him to
move.
36. THE WILL AND DEFERRED ACTION.--It remains to speak briefly of one
point touching the nature of will. It has been suggested that the
decision is the psychic fact corresponding to the release of nervous
energy which relieves the tension of desire. It is the beginning of
action, of realization. But what shall we say of resolves which cannot at
once be carried out in action? Of decisions the realization of which is
deferred? I may long debate the matter and then determine to pay a bill
when it comes due next month. The decision is made; but, for a time, at
least, nothing happens. How can I here speak of the beginning of action?
The action does not at once begin, yet it is, in a sense, initiated. The
struggle of conflicting considerations has ceased; the man is "set" for
action in a certain direction. For the time being the matter is settled,
and only an external circumstance prevents the resolve from being carried
out. The psychic factor is widely different from that of mere desire, and
is not recognized to be different from that present in volition which at
once issues in action.
CHAPTER XII
THE PERMANENT WILL
37. CONSCIOUSLY CHOSEN ENDS.--Our volitions, deliberate, less deliberate,
and those verging upon what scarcely deserves the name of volition, weave
themselves into complicated patterns, which find their expression in long
series of the most varied activities. The nature of the pattern as a
whole may be determined by the deliberate selection of an end, and to
that the other choices which enter into the complex may be subordinate.
Thus, a man may decide that he can afford to give himself the pleasure of
a long walk through the country before taking the train at the next town.
During the course of the ramble he may make a number of more or less
conscious decisions not incompatible with the purpose he originally
embraced--to take this bit of road or that, to loiter in the shade, to
climb a hill that he may enjoy a view, to hasten lest he find himself too
late in arriving at his destination. These decisions may require little
deliberation; they spring into being at the call of the moment, are not
preceded by deliberation, and leave little trace in the memory. They may
be made semi-consciously, and while the mind is largely occupied with
other things, with thoughts of the past or the future, with other scenes
suggested by the landscape, or with the flowers which skirt the road.
Nevertheless, we would not hesitate to call them decisions.
May we apply the word in speaking of the single steps made by the
traveler as he advances? His feet seem to move of themselves and to make
no demands at all upon his attention.
Yet it is not strictly true to say that they move of themselves. They are
under control, and the successive steps follow upon each other not
without direction. They serve as expressions of the will to take the
walk, and they are adjusted to the end consciously held in view. That
attention is not fixed upon the individual steps does not remove them
from the sphere of the voluntary, in a proper sense of the words. They
are expressions of the man's will, even if they be not the result of a
conscious series of deliberations and decisions. Whether we shall use the
term decision in connection with the single step is rather a question of
verbal usage than of the determination of fact. We have seen that
decisions shade down gradually, from those quite unmistakable and
characteristic, to occurrences far less characteristic and more
disputable. The consciousness of deliberation and decision does not
disappear abruptly at some point in the series. It fades away, as the
light of day gradually passes, through twilight, into the shades of
night. And actions not directly recognizable as consciously voluntary may
be obviously under voluntary control. They weave themselves, with actions
more palpably voluntary and higher in the scale, into those complicated
patterns determined by the conscious selection of an end. As long as they
serve their purpose, and require no effort, they may remain inconspicuous
and unconsidered. But, as soon as a check is met with, attention is
directed upon them and they become the subject of conscious voluntary
control.
38. ENDS NOT CONSCIOUSLY CHOSEN.--In the above illustration the end
which determines the character of a long chain of actions has been
deliberately chosen. It is a consciously selected end. When, however, we
contemplate critically the lives of our fellow-men, we seem to become
aware of the fact that many of them act in unconsciousness of the
ultimate end upon which their actions converge. The attention is taken up
with minor decisions, and takes no note of the permanent trend of the
will.
Thus, the selfish man may be unaware of the significance of the whole
series of choices which he makes in a day; the malicious man may not
realize that he is animated by the settled purpose to injure his
neighbors; one may be law-abiding without ever having resolved to obey
the laws through the course of a life. If called upon to account for this
or that subordinate decision, each may exhaust his ingenuity in assigning
false causes, while ignoring the permanent attitude of the will revealed
in the series of decisions as a whole and giving them what consistency
they possess.
Hence, the choice of ends, as well as the adoption of means to the
attainment of ends, may reveal itself either in conscious deliberate
decisions, or in the working of obscure impulses which do not emerge into
the light. Even in the latter case, we have not to do with what is wholly
beyond the sphere of intelligent voluntary control. The selfish man may
be made aware that he is selfish; the malicious man, that he is
malicious; and each may deliberately take steps to remedy the defect
revealed.
When we understand the word "will" in the broad sense indicated in the
preceding pages, we see that a man's habits may justly be regarded as
expressions of the man's will. That, through repetition, his actions have
become almost automatic does not remove them from the sphere of the
volitional. That he does not clearly see, or that he misconceives, the
significance of his habits, and may acquiesce in them even though they be
injurious to him, does not make them the less willed, so long as he
follows them. It is only when he actively endeavors to control or modify
a habit that he may be said to will its opposite.
39. THE CHOICE OF IDEALS.--Nor is it too much to bring under the head of
willing the attitudes of approval and disapproval taken by man in
contemplating certain occurrences, actual or possible, which lie beyond
the confines of the field within which he can exercise control. The field
of control, direct and indirect, is as we have seen a broad one, but it
has its limits, and many of the things he would like to see accomplished
or prevented lie without it.
A man's will may be set upon the preservation of his health, he may
strive to attain that end, and circumstances may condemn him to a life of
invalidism. He would be healthy if he could, but his strivings are
overruled. Or he may earnestly pursue the attainment of wealth, and may
end in bankruptcy. He has the will to be rich, but that will is
frustrated.
It is the same when we consider his attitude toward the decisions and
actions of other men. By mere willing he cannot condition another's
choice. But by willing he can often influence indirectly the volitions of
his fellows. He can enlighten or misinform, persuade or threaten, reward
or punish. In many ways he can weight the scale of his neighbor's mind.
But such influences are not all-powerful, and only within limits can we
bend other wills to follow a course prescribed for them by our own.
Nevertheless, even beyond those limits, the attitude of a man's mind
toward the actions of his neighbor may be a volitional one. His will may
be for them or against them; he may approve or disapprove, command or
prohibit. We know quite well that commands and prohibitions laid upon
children and servants will not always be effective, yet we issue general
commands and prohibitions, as though assuming unlimited control. It is
quite in accordance with usage to speak of a man as willing an end, even
where it is clearly recognized that the will to attain does not guarantee
attainment. The man does what he can; could he do more he would do so; in
his helplessness the attitude of the will persists unchanged.
It is obvious that, in this large sense of the word "will," we may speak
of a man as continuing to will or to approve a given end, even when he is
not willing or approving anything, in a narrower sense of the words, at
this or that moment. We speak of a man as inspired by the permanent will
to be rich, although at many times during the day, and certainly during
his hours of sleep, no act of volition with such an end in view has an
actual existence.
No man always thinks of the permanent ends which he has selected as
controls to his actions. They are selected, they pass from his mind, and,
when they recur to it again, the selection is reaffirmed. But, whether he
is actually thinking about the ends in question or not, the settled trend
of his will is expressed in them.
This settled trend of the will, even when scarcely recognized by the man
himself, may be vastly more significant than the passing individual
decision, although the latter be accompanied by clear consciousness. In
certain cases the latter is a true exponent of character, but not
infrequently it is not. It may be the result of a whim, of an irrational
impulse little congruous with a man's nature. It may be the outcome of
some misconception and in contradiction with what the man would will, if
enlightened. The individual volition appears only to disappear; it may
leave no apparent trace. The permanent will indicates a habit of mind, a
way of acting, which may be expected to make its influence felt with the
persistency of that which exerts a steady pressure. To refuse it the name
of will seems arbitrary and unjustifiable.
In the permanent will is expressed the _character_ of the man. This
character is reflected in his _ideals_. Sometimes ideals are clearly
recognized and deliberately chosen. Sometimes a man is little aware of
the nature of the ideals which control his strivings. He may be said to
choose, but to choose more or less blindly. But, whether he chooses with
clear vision or without it, he may choose well or ill.
CHAPTER XIII
THE OBJECT IN DESIRE AND WILL
40. THE OBJECT AS END TO BE REALIZED.--The expression "the object before
the mind in desiring and willing" is not free from ambiguity. It may be
used in referring to the idea, the psychic fact, which is present when
one desires or wills. Or it may be used to indicate the future fact which
is the realization of the idea, that which the idea points to as its end.
The idea and the end are, of course, not identical, but they are related.
The idea mirrors the end, foreshadows it. In the attempt to explain a
voluntary act we may turn either to the one or to the other; we may
regard the idea as the efficient cause which has resulted in the act, or
we may account for the act by pointing out the end it was purposed to
attain. There is no reason why we should not recognize both the efficient
cause and the final cause, or end.
The latter has been the subject of more or less mystification. How, it
has been asked, can an end, which does not, as yet, exist, be a cause
which sets in motion the apparatus that brings about its own existence?
[Footnote: See JANET, _Les Causes Finales_, Paris, 1901, p. 1, ff.]
The difficulty is a gratuitous one. It lies in the confusion of the final
cause or end, with the efficient cause. When we realize that the
expression "final cause" means simply that which is purposed, or accepted
as an end, objections to it fall away. That, in desire and will, in all
their higher manifestations, at least, there is consciousness of an end,
there can be no question.
If we attempt to give more than a vague physical explanation of actions
due to blind impulse, we are compelled to refer to the idea, the psychic
fact present, as efficient cause. Not so when we are concerned with
actions of a higher order. We constantly refer such actions to the ends
they have in view. We regard them as satisfactorily explained when we
have pointed out the end upon which they are directed.
To the moralist it is of the utmost importance to know what ends men
actually choose, and what they may be induced to choose. He is concerned
with conduct, which is intelligent and purposive action. Conduct may be
studied without entering upon an investigation of the efficient causes,
whether physical or mental, which are the antecedents of action of any
kind. Such matters one may leave to the physiologist and the
psychologist.
Accordingly, when I speak of "the object" in desiring and willing, I
shall use the word to indicate the end held in view, that toward which
the creature desiring or willing strives.
41. HUMAN NATURE AND THE OBJECTS CHOSEN.--What objects do men actually
desire and will to attain? To give a detailed account of them appears to
be a hopeless and profitless task.
I take up my pen, I write, I turn to a book; I look at my watch, change
my position, stretch, walk up and down, speak to some one who is present,
smile or give vent to irritation; I sit down to a meal, eat of this dish
rather than of that, go out to visit a place of amusement, respond to the
appeal of the beggar in the street--in short, I fill my day with a
thousand actions the most diverse, which follow each other without
intermission.
Each of these actions may be the object of desire and will. No novel,
however realistic, however prolix in its descriptions, can give us more
than the barest outlines of the course of life followed by the personages
it attempts to portray. A touch here, a touch there, and a character is
indicated. No more, for more would be intolerable.
It is significant, however, that the few points touched upon can serve to
give an idea of a character. Not-withstanding their diversity, volitions
fall into classes; it is quite possible to indicate in a general way the
kind of choices a given creature may be impelled to make. They are a
revelation of the nature of the creature choosing. That beings differing
in their nature should be impelled to different courses of action can
surprise no one. Cats have no temptation to wander in herds; the
exhibition of pugnacity in a sheep would strike us with wonder.
To every kind of creature its nature: and, although individuals within a
kind differ more or less from one another, we look for approximation to a
type. So it is with man. The expression "human nature," so much in the
mouths of certain moralists ancient and modern, although somewhat vague,
is not without its significance. To it we refer in passing a judgment
upon individual human beings, and we regard as abnormal those who vary
widely from the type.
42. THE INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF MAN.--In sketching for us the outlines
of this distinctively human nature, the psychologist proceeds to an
enumeration of the fundamental instincts and general innate tendencies of
man, and he draws up a list of the emotions which correspond to them. He
mentions the instincts of flight, repulsion, curiosity, pugnacity, self-
abasement, self-assertion, the parental instinct, the instinct of sex,
the instinct for food, that for acquisition, etc. He points out that man
is by nature open to sympathy, is suggestible, and has the impulse to
play. In such instincts and inborn general tendencies, blending and
reinforcing or opposing and inhibiting one another, he sees the forces
which give their direction to desire and will; which select, out of all
possible objects, those which are to become objects for man.
It is not necessary here to discuss the nature of instinct, to
distinguish between an instinct and a more general inborn tendency, or to
attempt a complete list of the instincts and inborn tendencies of man.
Nor need I ask whether every choice made by a human being can be traced,
directly or indirectly, to one or more of the instincts and other
tendencies given in the above or in any similar list. In explaining the
individual choices which men make, or the desires to which they are
subject, there is much scope for the ingenuity of the psychologist.
But of the significance for human life of the impulses mentioned there
can be no question. What would the life of a man be if he could feel no
fear or repulsion? Could there be a development of knowledge in the
absence of curiosity? How long would the race endure if the parental
instinct were wholly lacking? What would become of a man who never
desired food? Could a human society of any sort exist if there were no
sympathy or tender feeling, no impulse to seek the company of other men?
It is men, such as they are, endowed with the qualities which distinguish
man, who associate themselves into communities, and the customs and laws
of such reflect the fundamental impulses in which they had their origin.
43. THE STUDY OF MAN'S INSTINCTS IMPORTANT.--That a careful study of
human nature is of the utmost importance to the moralist is palpable. He
must not prescribe for man a rule of conduct which it is not in man to
follow. He must not set before him, as inducements to actions, objects
which it is impossible for him to desire and, hence, to choose.
To be sure, the main traits of human nature were pretty well recognized
many centuries before the modern science of psychology had its birth. Had
they not been, man could not have had rational dealings with his fellow-
man; could not effectively have persuaded and threatened, rewarded and
punished, and, in short, set in motion all the machinery which is at the
service of one man when he wants to influence the conduct of another. But
moralists ancient and modern have made serious blunders through an
imperfect understanding of the impulses natural to man; and the modern
psychologist, without claiming to be a wholly original or an infallible
guide, may be of no little service in helping us to detect them.
Thus, it was possible for as shrewd an observer of man as Aristotle to
explain the affection of a man for his child by regarding it as an
extension of self-love, the child being, in a sense, a part of the
parent. [Footnote: _Ethics_, Book VIII, chapter xii.] Aristotle's
quaint explanation of the fact that maternal affection is apt to be
stronger than paternal is an error of a kindred nature. [Footnote:
_Ibid_., Book IX, chapter vii.] And the ancient egoists, [Footnote:
See the answer to Epicurus in the _Discourses of Epictetus_,
translated by LONG, London, 1890, pp. 69-70.] in setting before man their
selfish and anti-social ideal of human conduct, made their appeal, not to
the whole man, but only to a part of him. The normal man, whether savage
or civilized, whether ancient or modern, cannot desire a life filled only
with the objects which they set before him. Nor is the modern moralist,
or as he prefers to style himself, "immoralist," Nietzsche, [Footnote: A
sketch of Nietzsche's doctrine is given later, see chapter xxix.] guilty
of less gross a blunder. He rails at morality as commonly understood,
calling it "the morality of the herd," and he recommends isolation, the
repression of sympathy, and a contempt for one's fellows. To be sure, the
"herd" is a scornful, rhetorical expression,--what Bentham would have
called a "question-begging epithet,"--for men do not, properly speaking,
live in herds; but they do normally live in human societies of some sort,
and they have the instincts and impulses which fit them to do so. The
repression of such instincts and impulses does violence to their nature,
and he who advocates other than a social morality should advocate it for
some creature other than man. Man is a social creature, and, among the
objects of his desire and will, he must give a prominent place to some
which are distinctively social.
44. THE BEWILDERING MULTIPLICITY OF THE OBJECTS OF DESIRE, AND THE EFFORT
TO FIND AN UNDERLYING UNITY.--The mere enumeration of the characteristics
which have been adduced as instincts or fundamental innate tendencies of
man is enough to reveal the truth that man is not merely the subject of
_desire_, but of _desires_; that is to say, his impulses are
directed upon objects widely different from each other.
And when we call to mind that the concepts of the instincts and
fundamental tendencies of human nature, as thus enumerated, are products
of abstraction and generalization--are general notions gathered from the
numberless concrete instances of desire and will furnished by our
observation--we are forced to realize that the objects which individual
men set before themselves in desiring and willing are really endlessly
varied.
All men are not equally moved by fear, anger, repulsion, tender emotion,
or sympathy. Nor do all men find the same things the objects of their
fear, anger, repulsion, and the rest. The desire for food is an
abstraction; in the concrete, this man eagerly accepts an oyster, and
that one turns from it in disgust. In order to deal successfully with our
fellow-man, we must not merely know man. We must know men.
Furthermore, not only do individuals set their affections upon different
objects, but the same person at different stages of his development
desires widely different things. What is a temptation to the boy has no
attraction for the man. What fills the savage with longings may inspire
in the product of a high civilization no other feeling than repulsion.
And what is true of the individual is true of men in the mass. The
objects of desire and of endeavor are not the same in communities of all
orders. Each kind of man has its own nature, which differs in some
respects from that of each other kind, and dictates what shall be, for
this or that man, an object of desire and will. No two men desire
precisely the same thing in all particulars. Yet each is a man, and is
endowed with the usual complement of human instincts.
The process of abstraction and generalization which resulted in the
above-mentioned list of the elements which enter into the constitution of
human nature is, nevertheless, not without its uses. It serves to order,
to some extent, at least, the bewildering variety of the phenomena
presented to us when we view the broad field of the desires and volitions
of all sorts and conditions of men. Men's choices fall into _kinds_;
there is similiarity in difference. We do not approach an unknown man
with the feeling that he is a wholly unknown quantity. He is, at least, a
man, and we know something of men. We have _some_ notion how to go
at him.
But the ordering of the motley multiplicity of men's desires by a
reference to the fundamental instincts of man stops far short of a
complete unification. We are left with a number of distinct and
apparently irreducible impulses and tendencies on our hands. If it is
useful to go so far, may it not be much more useful to go still farther?
Aristotle divided things eligible into those eligible in themselves and
those eligible for the sake of something else. How it would illuminate
the field of action, if it were discovered that men ultimately desire but
one thing, and choose all other things on account of it! Would the
discovery not facilitate immensely our dealings with our fellows,
suggesting new possibilities of control? A notorious instance of the
attempt to conjure away the bewildering diversity in men's desires and
choices lies in the selection of pleasure as the one thing eligible in
itself, the unique ultimate object of human action. Of this object we
have, so far, taken no account.
CHAPTER XIV
INTENTION AND MOTIVE
45. COMPLEX ENDS.--I may desire to clear my throat and may do so. The
action is a trivial one, is over in a moment, and is forgotten. On the
other hand, I may desire to spend my summer on the sea-coast, to grow
rich in business, to attain to high social position, or to satisfy
political ambition.
When the object is of this complicated description, there may easily be
elements in it which, considered alone, I should not desire at all.
The summer on the New Jersey coast may make for health. But it may entail
mosquitoes, uncomfortable rooms, unaccustomed food, the lack of wonted
occupations, and a distasteful association at close quarters with
neighbors not of one's choosing. The road to wealth is an arduous one.
The envied social station may imply the swallowing of many rebuffs. The
way of the politician is hard.
One may desire, _on the whole_, one of these objects, or a thousand
like them; but there are, obviously, many things comprised in the whole,
or unavoidably bound up with it, that cannot attract, and are not
eligible for their own sake.
46. INTENTION.--An object chosen and realized may bring in its train an
indefinite series of consequences foreseen or unforeseen.
The striking of a match to light a candle may result in an unforeseen and
disastrous conflagration. The overmastering desire to grow rich may have
its fruit in an excessive application to business, the neglect of the
family and of the duties of citizenship, and in hard and, perhaps,
unscrupulous dealings. These things may be foreseen and accepted as
natural accompaniments of the end chosen. But there may also be entailed
shattered health, overwhelming anxieties, and the distress of seeing
one's sons, brought up in luxury and without incentive to effort, victims
to the dangers which menace the idle rich.
Whether such consequences might have been foreseen and provided against
or not, it is true that they are frequently not foreseen with clearness.
They certainly form no part of the intention of the man who bends his
energies to the attainment of wealth. He does not deliberately intend to
injure his health, to lose the affection of his family, to leave behind
him degenerate children. He does intend to get rich, if he can.
How many of the elements contained in the object chosen, or so bound up
with it that they must be accepted along with it, may fairly be said to
fall within the intention of the chooser? There may easily be dispute
touching the latitude with which the word intention may be used. Some
things a man sees clearly to be inseparably connected with the object of
his choice; some he is less conscious of; some he overlooks altogether.
It does not seem unwarranted to maintain that the first of the three
classes of things, at least, may be said to be intended. When Dr.
Katzenberger, in his desire to get across the road without sinking in the
mire, used as a stepping-stone his old servant Flex, who had fallen down,
his complete intention was not simply to cross the road unmuddied. It was
to cross the road unmuddied by stepping on Flex.
Evidently the intention--the whole object--gives some revelation of the
character of a man. Many men may will to avoid the mud; but not all of
these can will to avoid it by stepping upon a fellow-man.
47. MOTIVE.--The stepping upon a fellow-man with whom one is on good
terms can scarcely be regarded as a thing desirable in itself. If it is
desired, it is because of the complex in which it is an element. Some
other element or elements may exert the whole attractive force which
moves desire and will. In other words, some things are chosen for the
sake of others.
When we have discovered that for the sake of which any object is chosen,
we have come upon the _Motive_. The intention may be said to embrace
the whole object as foreseen. The motive embraces only a part of it, but
the vital part, the part without which the object would not be desired
and willed.
48. ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF INTENTION AND MOTIVE.--There has been much
dispute among moralists as to the ethical significance of intention and
motive. Bentham maintains that "from one and the same motive, and from
every kind of motive, may proceed actions that are good, others that are
bad, and others that are indifferent." He gives the following
illustration: [Footnote: _Principles of Morals and Legislation_,
chapter x, Sec 3.]
"1. A boy, in order to divert himself, reads an inspiring book; the
motive is accounted, perhaps, a good one; at any rate, not a bad one. 2.
He sets his top a-spinning: the motive is deemed at any rate not a bad
one. 3. He sets loose a mad ox among a crowd: his motive is now, perhaps,
termed an abominable one. Yet in all three cases the motive may be the
very same: it may be neither more nor less than curiosity."
In criticizing this citation I must point out that curiosity is not,
properly speaking, an object of choice at all. I have used the word
"object" to indicate what is chosen, not to indicate the psychic fact
present at the time of the choice. And I have said that the motive is the
vital part of the object.
Hence curiosity should not be called the motive. No man chooses curiosity
as an object, either in the abstract or in the concrete. Curiosity is a
fundamental impulse of human nature; we may elect to satisfy the impulse
in any given instance; in other words, we may choose the appropriate
object.
In the case of the boy letting loose the bull in the crowd, the object is
to see what will happen under the given circumstances. This is what
appeals to the boy. Something else might have appealed to him in
performing the action. He might have had the deliberate wish to injure
certain persons present against whom he harbored resentment. Or his
sympathies might have been with the bull, which had been the victim of
bad treatment, and to which he wished to grant its liberty. Were the
crowd in question a band of ruffians intent upon lynching, he might have
been moved by the desire to assist, in a somewhat irregular way, in the
re-establishment of law and order. But even if his real object is only to
see what will happen, there is no reason to put it on a par with the
object in view when a boy spins a top. "To see what will happen" is the
vaguest of phrases, and covers a multitude of disparate objects. He who
does things to see what will happen has, at least, a very general
knowledge of the kind of thing likely to happen, if a given experiment is
made. A boy does not hold his finger in the candle-flame to see what will
happen. He who does things to see what will happen, in really complete
ignorance of what is likely to happen, may be set down as too much of a
fool to be the subject of moral judgments.
It is obvious that an act may be done with many different objects in
view--I mean real objects, motives. I give money to a beggar whose case
is one to inspire pity. My motive, my "vital" object, may be to relieve
the man. But it may equally well be to get rid of him, to gratify my
self-feeling by becoming the dispenser of bounty, or to inspire
admiration in the onlooker. The intention, as I have used the word above,
is to relieve the beggar, with such consequences of the act as may be
foreseen at the time. Within the limits of this intention, the motive may
vary widely, and may, in a given instance, be either admirable or
contemptible.
It may be claimed, in answer to this, that the real intention is, in
every case, what I have called the motive; that, in the first case, it
was to relieve suffering; in the second, to get rid of an annoyance; in
the third to satisfy vanity; in the fourth, to be admired.
The word "intention," thus used, is equivalent to "motive." Popular usage
gives some sanction to this confusion of the words. We say of a man who
has done a questionable act: "His intentions were good," or, "His motives
were good." Still, popular usage does not always regard the two
expressions as equivalent. To revert to the case of the unhappy Flex. It
does not seem inappropriate to say that the use of a man as a stepping-
stone was a part of his master's intention. It does appear inappropriate
to call it the motive or a part of the motive of the whole transaction.
Intention and motive are convenient words to designate the whole object
chosen and the part of the object which accounts for the choice of the
whole. That it is important to distinguish between the two is palpable.
The intention gives some indication of character. We know something about
a man when we know what kinds of objects he will probably set before
himself as aims. But we know more when we know why he chooses these
objects rather than others; when we can analyze the complex and can
discover just what elements in it attract him.
With an increase of our knowledge comes an increased power of control.
Until we know a man's motives, we do not really know the man; and until
we know the man, our efforts to influence him must be rather blind.
The search for motives appears to carry us in the direction of the
systematization and simplification of the embarrassing wealth of objects
which are actually the goal of human desires and volitions. Man may
desire a boundless variety of objects. His motives in desiring them may,
conceivably, be comparatively few.
It should be apparent that both intention and motive have ethical
significance. We have our opinion of men capable of harboring certain
intentions. But we recognize that some men may harbor them with better
motives than others. And we can see that a man's intention may be bad,
and yet his motive, considered in itself, be good. How we are to rate the
man, morally, becomes rather a nice question.
CHAPTER XV
FEELING AS MOTIVE
49. FEELING. [Footnote: See the notes on this chapter at the end of this
volume.]--Two men may recognize with equal clearness the presence of a
danger. That recognition may evoke in the one a violent emotion of fear,
and in the other little or no emotion. Two men may be treated with
indignity. The one fumes with rage; the other remains calm. It is well
recognized that men may be susceptible to emotion in general, or to
certain specific emotions, in varying degrees. Knowledge is not always
accompanied by a marked manifestation of emotion. Thoughts may be clear,
but cold. There are, however, natures whose intellectual processes are
steeped in emotion. Such men live in an atmosphere of agitation.
Lists of the emotions which correspond to the instincts and fundamental
impulses of man have been drawn up. In them we find mentioned fear,
disgust, wonder, anger, elation, tender feeling, and so forth; phenomena
which, by earlier writers, were classified as "passions," and to which we
may conveniently give the name "feeling." We constantly speak of our
emotions as our "feelings," and we contrast the man of feeling with the
coldly intellectual mind in which emotion is at a minimum.
But it is not alone to such specific emotions as those above-mentioned
that we apply the term feeling. Thoughts are agreeable or disagreeable,
pleasurable or painful. So are emotions. The agreeableness or
disagreeableness, pleasantness or painfulness, which are the
accompaniments of thoughts and emotions, have been called by modern
psychologists their feeling-tone. It is not out of harmony with common
usage to give them the name of feelings. In so doing we contrast them
with knowledge and assimilate them to emotion.
Whether every sensation and every thought gives rise to an emotion of
some sort is matter for dispute, as is also the question whether every
sensation, thought and emotion is tinged with some degree of pleasurable
or painful feeling. In the absence of conclusive evidence, it is open to
us to assume that some feeling is always present where there is mental
activity of any kind. The feeling may be so faint and evanescent as to
escape detection, but this does not prove that it is absent.
50. FEELING AND ACTION.--Emotions and feelings of pleasure and pain are
the normal accompaniments of the exercise of the instincts and impulses
of creatures that desire and will. Within limits, we appear to be able to
take them as an index of the strength of the desire and the vigor of the
effort at attainment.
An act of cruelty is perpetrated. I see it, and it leaves me, perhaps,
cold and unmoved. In such case, it is hardly expected of me that I should
take energetic measures to have the evil-doer punished. The man whose
face flushes, whose brows descend, whose teeth come together, whose fists
clench, whose heart beats thickly, at the recognition of an insult, is,
as a rule, the man from whom we look for vigorous efforts at retaliation.
The apathetic creature who _feels_ no resentment is usually expected
to swallow the indignity. The child who jumps for joy at the sight of a
new doll is supposed to desire it eagerly, and to be ready to make
efforts to obtain it.
But it is only within limits that this relation between feeling and
action holds. Men of little emotion may be resolute and prompt to action.
Their desires, as evinced by their actions, may be persistent and
effective. Nor need the individual fix his choice upon the particular
object that arouses in him the most feeling. A man may see his fellow-
creature destitute, and may shed tears over his pitiable lot. But he will
not bequeath his money to him. He will leave it to his son, for whom,
perhaps, he has no respect and has come to have little affection. And he
may leave it to him with regret, knowing that it will be dissipated in
ways which he cannot approve. It has been pointed out with justice that
the exercise of many instincts may be accompanied with little feeling;
and we are all aware of the fact that, as action becomes habitual,
emotion tends to evaporate and the pleasure of effort and attainment is
apt to be reduced to a minimum.
51. FEELING AS OBJECT.--It is well to keep in mind the distinction
between feeling as a psychic fact present in the mind of the creature
desiring and willing, and feeling as the object of desire and will. A man
in a rage is the victim of a storm of feeling. The thought of the injury
he has received and the desire for retaliation by no means exhaust the
contents of his mind. But the passion which shakes him is not his
_object_; that object is revengeful action.
Nevertheless, feeling may be made the object of desire and will. One may
attend a religious or political meeting with the deliberate view of
arousing in one's self certain complex emotions. Poe's gruesome tales are
read for the sake of the thrill which is produced by the perusal.
Probably the desire for excitement, for the experiencing of certain vivid
emotions, has no little to do with the attraction exercised by certain
criminal professions. The burglar desires the booty, but he may desire
something more.
Emotions have, as we have seen, their "tone" of pleasure or pain. They
are agreeable or the reverse, and it is palpable that men do not, as a
rule, deliberately make them the object of desire and will in
indifference to the fact that they are pleasant or are painful. We do not
normally wish to attain to states of mind in which remorse plays a
prominent part; we do not aim to revel in shame; we do not seek to be
haunted with fear. Pleasurable emotions are desired, where desire is set
on emotions at all; and painful emotions are regarded by the mind as
unwelcome guests. At any rate, this appears to be the rule, and to
characterize the man whom we regard as normal.
This being the case, it seems natural to ask whether, when we embrace the
_intention_ of producing in ourselves a given emotion, our
_motive_ may not be narrower in scope, namely, the attainment of
pleasure? and, when we wish to rid the mind of any emotion, our
_motive_ may not be the avoidance of pain?
The adoption of this view would give to the feelings of pleasure and pain
a unique importance. They would be accepted as the only ultimate objects
of desire and will. By many they have been thus accepted. It has been
insisted that objects of every description are chosen only as they arouse
some feeling; and that those which promise pleasant feeling are sought
and those which entail pain are avoided. The general recognition of the
primacy of pleasure and pain over our other feelings, over the specific
emotions mentioned above, is indicated by the fact that ethical writers
of eminence sometimes make pleasure and pain synonymous with feeling in
general, passing over other feelings, as though it were not important for
the moralist to take them into consideration. The dispute whether the
proper course for human action to take is prescribed by reason or is
dictated by feeling often resolves itself into the problem whether we
should be guided by reason, or by a consideration of pleasure to be
attained or pain to be avoided.
52. FREEDOM AS OBJECT.--The acceptance of pleasure and pain as the
ultimate motives of human action seems, at first sight, to be of
inestimable assistance to us in threading our way through the labyrinth
of diverse choices made by creatures that desire and will.
But only at first sight. Even if it be true that every creature seeks
only to attain pleasure and to avoid pain, and uses the means it finds to
hand in the attainment of these ends, the endless diversity of the means
remains as a thing to reckon with. The knowledge that all men desire
pleasure does not help us a whit in dealing with men, unless we know what
things will give pleasure to this man or to that. All men may desire
pleasure; but it remains true that what gives pleasure to the spendthrift
gives pain to the miser; what appeals to the glutton disgusts a man of
refined tastes. If all men were alike and precisely alike, and if their
natures were very simple and remained unchanged, the problem of the
distribution of pleasures would be vastly simplified.
Whether the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain may be regarded
as the only ultimate ends proper to man will be discussed later.
[Footnote: See chapter xxv.] Here, it is important to insist that so
general a formula gives us little useful information touching the set of
the will either of classes of men or of individuals. This we can attain
to only as a result of the study of the complex nature of man as revealed
in the choices which he actually makes. The ends of man are many and
various; some of these ends are accidental, palpably means for the
attainment of other ends more fundamental, and for them other means of
attaining the same ends may be substituted. But other ends, and they are
by no means to be reduced to a single class, appear to belong to the very
nature of man. In seeking them he is giving expression to the impulses
which make him what he is.
In so far as these impulses find an unimpeded expression the man is free;
otherwise he is under restraint. Without rendering here a final decision
upon the importance of the role played in human life by pleasure and
pain, one feels impelled to ask the question whether the goal of a man's
endeavors may not best be described as _freedom_? Not freedom in the
abstract, freedom to do anything and everything, but freedom to live the
life appropriate to him as man, and as a man of a given type. That this
freedom is limited in a variety of ways, by his material environment, by
the clashing of impulses within himself, by the conflict of his desires
with the will of the social organism in which he finds his place, is
sufficiently palpable.
CHAPTER XVI
RATIONALITY AND WILL
53. THE IRRATIONAL WILL.--As dreams do not consist of an insignificant
medley of elements drawn from the experiences of waking life, but, in
spite of their fantastic character, bear some semblance of ordered
reality, so the impulses of even the most unintelligent and inconsequent
of human beings are not wholly chaotic, but differ only in the degree of
their organization from those of the most rational and far-seeing.
Where there is even a glimmer of intelligence, ends are recognized and
means to their attainment are chosen. Ends are compared, and the
preference is given to some over others. But, with all this, there may be
much incoherence and planlessness. Men can live somehow without looking
far into the future, or keeping well in mind the lessons to be learned
from the past. They can manage to exist in the face of no little short-
sighted impulsiveness and inconsistency. But it is palpable that they
cannot, under such circumstances, live as they might live were they more
truly rational.
The individual deficient in foresight and control may, it is true, be
carried along and defended from disaster by the presence of these
qualities in the greater organism of which he is a part. The infant is a
parasite upon society; it is provided for independently of its own
efforts. The child would soon come to grief were its ends not chosen by
others and its conduct kept under control. And a vast number of persons
not children are in much the same position. There is foresight and
rational purpose somewhere; they profit by it; but of foresight and
rational purpose they themselves possess but a modicum.
Where breadth of view is lacking, where the future is unforeseen or
ignored and the past is forgotten, where desires arise and impel to
action in relative independence of one another, the man seeks today what
tomorrow he rejects. We can scarcely say that the man chooses. He is the
scene of independent choices, varied and inconsistent. He is the victim
of caprice, and appears to us largely the creature of accident, a prey to
the impulse which happens to be in his mind at the moment. From such a
man we cannot look for an adherence to distant aims, and the marshalling
of the proper means to their attainment. He cannot count upon himself,
and he cannot be counted upon. That he can play no significant role in
such stable organizations as the state and church is obvious. His desires
may be many and varied, but they converge upon no one end. We set him
down as irrational.
54. ONE VIEW OF REASON.--Concerning the part played by reason or
intelligence in the active life of man there has been no little dispute.
It has been maintained, on the one hand, that reason or intelligence
serves its whole purpose in holding before the mind all its impulses and
desires, revealing their interrelations, and making possible an
enlightened and deliberate choice from among them. Where the horizon is
thus extended and mental clarity reigns, the attention can roam unimpeded
over the whole field, consider the objects of desire in their true
relations and compare them with one another. Congruous desires can
reinforce each other; conflicting desires can be brought face to face,
and the one or the other can deliberately be dismissed; fundamental and
dominant desires may assert their supremacy, and give their stamp to far-
reaching decisions which exercise a control over minor decisions and
favor or repress a multitude of desires and volitions.
The attainment of perfect rationality in this sense is an ideal never
completely realized. No man can hold before his mind all his impulses and
desires, see them in their true relations to each other, and come to a
decision which will do complete justice to all. But the ideal may be
approached.
The reason, in this case, resembles the presiding officer of a
deliberative assembly, who insists that all the members shall be heard
from, all proposals seriously considered, and that the ultimate decision
shall justly represent the true will of the deliberative body as a whole.
The specious but fallacious argument is, in the debate, revealed in its
true nature; the obstinate insistence of the individual is not allowed to
prevail; the loud voice is recognized to be a loud voice and nothing
more; fugitive gusts of passion exhaust themselves; the permanent and
fundamental will of the assembly is revealed in the final vote. It is
claimed that, in such a mind, the result is a harmonization and
unification of the multiplicity of the desires and purposes which, in a
mind less rational, jostle one another without control, and refuse to
fall into an ordered system. That the decisions of a rational mind reveal
both a unity and a harmony not evinced by a mind short-sighted and
impulsive cannot be denied. But it is well to understand clearly what is
meant by such unity and harmony.
55. DOMINANT AND SUBORDINATE DESIRES.--Wherever a group of desires fall
into a system and work together toward a common end, we have unity. Such
a system may be short-lived, comparatively poor in content, and of no
great significance for a man's life as a whole. It may come into
competition with another similar system, and be displaced by it. An
interest that has dominated our minds for a time, and controlled our
desires and volitions, may readily give place to different choices. I may
successively bend all my energies upon the winning of a game, the doing
of a successful stroke of business, the defeat of a social rival, the
success of a philanthropic undertaking. There is no normal human being
who does not exhibit such limited volitional units. The most idle and
purposeless of vagrants, the most scatter-brained school-boy, the most
volatile coquette, may, for a time, be dominated by some desire which
calls into its service other desires and thus realizes some chosen end.
Such volitional units do not, however, go far toward unifying the efforts
of a life. It is only when some dominant and deep-seated desire, oft
recurring, not easily displaced by others, sweeps into its train the
other desires of a man, establishing a sovereignty and exacting
subservience, that such an effect is accomplished. Then the lesser units
fall into a significant relation to each other as constituent elements in
the greater unit. The life, as such, may be said to have a purpose; it
strives toward a single goal.
Whatever bears upon the attainment of such a dominant purpose may,
however trivial in itself, acquire a vital importance and be eagerly
desired. To a man of mature mind there can be little interest in hitting
a small ball with a stick, abstractly considered. Nor is the dropping of
a bit of paper into a box with a slit in it an action in itself
calculated to stir profound emotion. But if the hitting of the ball in
the right way marks the critical point in winning an eagerly contested
game of golf, the interest in it may be absorbing. And if the bit of
paper is an offer of marriage committed to the post, the hand may tremble
and the heart leap in the breast. A dominant desire may create or
reinforce other desires to a degree to which it is not easy to set
limits.
56. THE HARMONIZATION OF DESIRES.--And it may actively repress other
desires or cause them to dwindle and disappear. A man possessed by a
devouring ambition may resolutely scorn delights to which he would
otherwise be keenly susceptible, or he may simply ignore them without
effort. The attention, fixed upon some chosen end, and busied with the
means to its attainment, may leave them unheeded. Finding no place in the
volitional pattern that occupies the mind, they are cast aside and soon
forgotten.
In so far, hence, as the desires of a man tend to fall thus into groups
converging upon a single end, we find not merely unity but harmony. The
volitional pattern is of a given kind, and the colors which enter into it
are selected.
When, however, we speak of the desires of a rational mind as harmonized,
we do not mean that incompatible desires are reconciled. One cannot laugh
and drink at the same time, nor can the desire for luxurious ease be made
to fall upon the neck of the desire for attainment through strenuous
effort. The final harmony attained resembles in some respects the peace
enforced by the violent character depicted by Mark Twain, who would have
peace at any price, and was willing to sacrifice to it the life and limb
of the opposing party. The cessation of strife does not imply the
satisfaction of all parties to a contest; nor does the fact that a life
is controlled by a ruling motive, which reinforces or calls into being
certain desires and robs others of their insistence, imply that by any
device all the desires which man has, still less all that he, as a human
being, might have, can find their satisfaction. Harmony is obtained at
the price of the suppression of many desires; but, where a mind is
strongly dominated by a comprehensive volitional unit, the price may be
paid without much regret.
57. VARIETIES OF DOMINANT ENDS.--Obviously, the comprehensive and
harmonious volitional complexes which may come to characterize different
minds may be of very different complexion. Peace of mind, the bubble
reputation, the amassing of a fortune, a happy domestic life,
humanitarian effort, the perfecting of one's character--each may become
the controlling end which furthers or inhibits individual desires and
emotions. Or the ends may be such as to appear to most men far more
insignificant. To the collection of first editions or the heaping
together of bric-a-brac a man may sacrifice his financial security and
the welfare of his family. Naturally, the moralist cannot put all such
ends upon the same level; but, from the point of view of the
psychologist, the processes which take place in the minds thus unified
and harmonized are essentially the same.
58. AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.--To the position that it is reason or
intelligence that brings about this unity and harmony an objection may be
brought. It may be claimed that breadth of information and clarity of
vision are quite compatible with highly inconsistent action revealing the
temporary dominance of a succession of incongruous desires.
_Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor_, confessed the Latin
poet. Have we not seen men of the highest intelligence, gifted with
foresight, quite capable of grasping the relation of means to ends,
nevertheless subject to the baleful influence of momentary desires which
drive them hither and thither like a rudderless bark at the mercy of the
wind and tide? How does it happen that their intelligence does not help
them?
To this we may answer that it is not the same thing to possess
intelligence and to use it. One may be supplied with information and
quite capable of taking long views and embracing inclusive ends--and the
attention may be so preoccupied with the desire of the moment, that the
voices of others are stifled. In so far as this is the case, the man can
not, at the time, be said to be reasonable or intelligent. He has
information, and acts as if he were ignorant; his choices do not issue as
a resultant of his desires as a whole; there is no resultant; the single
desires make their influence felt separately.
To be sure, an insistent and oft-recurring desire may introduce a good
deal of unity and harmony into life, even where long views are not taken
and there is little intelligence. The stupid egoist may become rather a
consistent egoist, and increasingly so as he grows older. His desires and
volitions may converge upon an end of which he is very imperfectly
conscious; incompatible desires may come to be repressed. But this does
not refute the position that, when reason or intelligence is supreme, the
attention is directed upon a wide range of desires, they are weighed in
the light of each other, and the ultimate decision is no longer blind,
but fairly expresses the permanent push of the man's nature. Even where a
desire or group of desires, unilluminated by intelligence, seems so
insistent as to take on something of this character, complete unity and
harmony of action may be lacking, due to the short-sightedness of the
methods employed to attain to the chosen goal. Blind desires may easily
defeat their own ends; wealth does not necessarily accumulate in
proportion to a man's miserliness; the ardent but unenlightened
philanthropist may do his fellow-man more harm than good. Long views are
of no little service in weeding out inconsistent actions and introducing
order and unity into life.
59. THIS VIEW OF REASON MISCONCEIVED.--In the above view of the function
of reason or intelligence it has not been represented as issuing commands
to perform certain actions rather than others, nor as furnishing motives
not in some way related to the impulses and desires of man. It has been
treated, literally, as the presiding officer of a public assembly, who
insists that every voice shall be heard; that all proposals shall be
weighed and compared with one another; that the consequences of all shall
be clearly foreseen. Its function is enlightenment; the driving force
which impels to action of any sort has been found in the impulses and the
desires.
It is possible to set this view forth in terms which make it highly
unpalatable.
Thus Hume, who has a weakness for shocking the susceptibilities of the
conservative and the sober-minded, startles us with the remark that
"Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions." [Footnote:
A Treatise of Human Nature, iv, Sec 3.] This doctrine, taken as the average
reader is almost inevitably impelled to take it, seems worthy of instant
reprobation. It appears to degrade the rational in man and to exalt the
blind and irrational.
But it is not fair to the doctrine to set it forth in such terms. There
is no small difference between random and fugitive desires and those more
fundamental desires that express truly the nature of a man. Desires
organized and harmonized gain great strength, and are enabled to overcome
and expel from the mind erratic impulses, the obedience to which may
easily be followed by regret. Action taken without a clear foresight of
consequences, with an imperfect conception of the relation of means to
ends, is blind and irrational action. Reason, as bringing enlightenment,
as making possible deliberation, as turning the incoherent clamors of a
mob of inconsistent desires into the authoritative voice of an orderly
deliberative assembly, is not a faculty to be lightly regarded.
Nor should it be forgotten that, neither to the plain man, nor to the
moralist, do desires all stand upon the same level. He who bends his
intellectual energies to the satisfaction of his greed, his avarice, his
longing for revenge, may fairly be said to be prostituting his mind to
the service of passion. But is it a proper use of language to describe as
the slave of his passions the man whose thought is set upon the
enlightenment of mankind, the alleviation of suffering, the service of a
state, the attainment of a noble character? Were Socrates, St. Francis,
Abraham Lincoln, Wilberforce, Thomas Hill Green, the slaves of their
passions? Yet these men were moved by certain dominant desires, and their
unswerving pursuit of their goal was made possible only by the reason
that harmonized their lives and substituted deliberate purpose for random
impulse.
The doctrine, then, that the reason is to be likened rather to the
presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, concerned only to give
every voice a fair hearing, than to a legislator issuing commands
independently, may be so stated as not to shock the sober-minded.
And the doctrine recommends itself in showing that reason and inclination
or desire are not enemies. The possession of reason must lead to the
suppression of some desires--those incompatible with a comprehensive
purpose deliberately embraced; but the desires and the reason or
intelligence work together to a common end. On this view, it is not the
rational man who is divided against himself; it is the short-sighted, the
impulsive, the inconsistent, the irrational man. He is the prey of
warring desires whose strife leads to no permanent peace under the
guidance of reason.
60. ANOTHER VIEW OF REASON.--To certain minds this view of reason as the
arbiter and reconciler of man's impulses and desires does not appeal.
Thus, Kant, whose doctrine will be more fully considered later,
[Footnote: Chapter xxix.] holds that man's reason promulgates a law which
takes no account of the impulses and desires of man. Thus, also, Henry
Sidgwick, who differs from Kant in making the attainment of happiness the
goal of human endeavor, and who, consequently, is not tempted to
disregard the desires of man, yet refers to the reason independently
certain maxims, which he regards as self-evident, touching our own good
and the good of our neighbor. [Footnote: _The Methods of Ethics_,
chapter iii.]
There are certain considerations which appear to favor the view that the
reason is a faculty which may be regarded as an independent law-giver. A
man may be possessed of great intelligence; he may be well-informed,
acute in his reasonings, and consistent in his strivings to attain some
comprehensive end, which, on the whole, appears congruous to his nature,
such as it is. Yet we may regard him as highly unreasonable. Judged by
some higher standard which we look upon as approved by reason, he is
found to fall short. Is reason, then, synonymous with intelligence? Or is
it something more--the source of an ultimate standard of action,
intuitively known, and by which all man's actions must be judged? Upon
this question light will be thrown in the pages following.
PART V
THE SOCIAL WILL
CHAPTER XVII
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOCIAL WILL
61. WHAT IS THE SOCIAL WILL?--The social will is not a mysterious entity,
separate and distinct from all individual wills. It is their resultant.
The resultant of two or more physical forces is a force; it has a
character and may be described. The resultant of individual wills in
interaction is a will with a given character which it is of no small
importance for the moralist to comprehend. This will presents aspects
closely analogous to those presented by the will of the individual.
Thus, to begin with, a community of men may be said to will a vast number
of things which have never been made by the members of the community the
object of conscious reflection. It may unthinkingly move along the groove
made for it by tradition. It may be intellectually upon so low a plane
that even the possibility of acting in other ways does not occur to it.
Nevertheless, ways of action thus unthinkingly pursued cannot properly be
said to be beyond the voluntary control of the community. A new situation
may draw attention to the fact that they are unsatisfactory, lead to
critical examination, to inhibition, to deliberate change. Between the
passive acceptance of actions prescribed by tradition and deliberate
conscious choice in the presence of recognized alternatives there is no
clear line of demarcation.
Under the pressure of circumstances or with the gradual increase of
information and intelligence the traditional may undergo slight
modifications which scarcely rank as conscious departures from what has
been passively accepted. The algebraic sum of such departures may, with
the lapse of time, come to be by no means insignificant, yet no
individual may have exercised in any considerable degree conscious
reflection or shown in any large measure freedom of choice.
On the other hand, the social will may, at times, reveal itself in
deliberate decisions, preceded by much conscious deliberation, and
initiating wide departures from established usage. The presence of new
enemies or a diminution of the food-supply may awake a primitive
community from its lethargy, leading it to modify its habits and adjust
itself to new conditions. A barbarous horde may set out upon a career of
conquest, and may introduce revolutionary changes into its manner of
life. A civilized nation may come to the conclusion that, in the course
of human events, it has become necessary for it to dissolve the bands
which have held it to another nation; it may frame for itself an
independent constitution, embodying new ideals and prescribing a new form
of corporate life.
But, as in the case of the individual, so in that of the community, the
tendency to fall again into a rut is always apparent. Laws, once enacted,
lend a passive resistance to change, even when they no longer serve well
the ends they were intended to serve. The independence of thought and
action revealed in the adoption of new constitutions are not conspicuous
in their maintenance. Man collective, as well as man individual, falls
into habits, and he commits to his unthinking self what was wrought out
by himself as thinking and consciously choosing. Passive acceptance of
the traditional again wins the day and becomes a ruling factor in action.
[Footnote: "It is indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has
never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be
improved since the moment when external completeness was first given to
them by their embodiment in some permanent record." MAINE, _Ancient
Law_, chapter ii.]
This tendency to mechanization should not surprise us, for we meet with
the phenomenon everywhere. The man who says, "Good-by" today does not
mean "God be with thee," and the "Gruss Dich Gott" of the Bavarian
peasant is very properly translated by the American child as "Hallo." The
traditional tends to lose or to alter its meaning, but it continues to
serve a purpose. A community without traditions, without settled ways of
acting, followed, for the most part, without much reflection, would be in
the position of a man without habits either good or bad. Human life as we
know it could not go on upon such a basis. The rule has, at times, its
inconveniences; but it leads somewhere, at least; whereas he who plunges
into the unexplored forest may find every step a problem, and may come
even to doubt whether any step is a step in advance.
62. SOCIAL WILL AND SOCIAL HABITS.--Within the province of the social
will fall what may not inaptly be called the habits of a community--ways
of acting acquired largely without premeditation and followed to a great
extent through mere inertia. The province of the social will is a broad
one. Deliberate choices; those half-conscious choices analogous to the
unheeded expressions of preference which fill the days of the individual;
impulses and tendencies which scarcely emerge into the light--all are
expressions of the social will.
In the next chapter I shall distinguish between customs proper and social
habits in a broader sense. But, in discussing the general problem of the
relation of habit to will, it is not necessary to mark the distinction.
Some habits rest upon us lightly; some are inveterate. Of some we are
well aware; others have to be pointed out to us before we recognize that
we have them. Some we approve, some we disapprove, to some we are
indulgent or indifferent. All these peculiarities are found in the
relation of the social will to social habits. It may recognize them,
approve of them, encourage them. It may pay them little attention. It may
disapprove them and strive to repress them. Will has brought them into
being; it is will that maintains them; it is will that must modify or
suppress them.
As a matter of fact, all communities do tend to change their habits, some
more slowly, some more rapidly. And for its habits we hold a community
responsible. Common sense refers them to its will, and exercises approval
or disapproval. This it would not do were the practices upon which
judgment is passed recognized as beyond the control of will altogether.
63. SOCIAL WILL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.--Under the general heading of
the habits of a society it is not out of place to discuss its social and
political organization.
The fact that there never was an original social contract, made with each
other by men solitary and unrelated, with the deliberate intent of
putting an end to the war of all against all, does not signify that the
social state in which men find themselves is a something with which the
human will has had, and has, nothing to do.
Social and political organization are the result of a secular process,
but behind that process, as moving and directing forces, stand the will
and the intelligence of man. The social and political organization of a
community is not the creation of any single generation of men. Each
generation is born into a given social setting, as the individual is born
into the setting furnished by the community. This social setting, the
heritage of the community from the past, may be compared to a great
estate brought together by the efforts of a man's ancestors, and
transmitted to him to hold intact, to add to, to squander, as he may be
inclined. It is a product attained by man's nature in its struggle with
environment, and that product may be modified by the same forces that
made it what it is.
Into this heritage the generation of men who compose a community at any
given time may enter with little thought of its significance, with no
information, or with false information, touching the manner of its coming
into being, and with small inclination to do anything save to leave
unchanged the institutions of which it finds itself possessed.
Nevertheless, the forms under which societies are organized are subject
to the social will, and, if disapproved, are modified or abolished. Some
change is taking place even where there is apparent immobility, as
becomes evident when the history of institutions is followed through long
periods of time. The utmost that can be said is that, where intelligence
is little developed and energy at a low ebb, the social will may bear the
stamp of passive acceptance of the inherited, rather than exhibit a
tendency to innovation. _Will_ it remains, but we may hesitate to
describe it as a _free will_.
It is at times forced upon our attention with unmistakable emphasis that
the forms of social and political organization are under voluntary
control. Momentous changes may be made deliberately, and with full
consciousness of their significance. Among the more progressive nations
in our day the duty of introducing innovations appears to be generally
recognized: constitutions are amended; the status of social classes is
made the object of legislation; even the domain of the family is invaded,
as in legislation touching marriage and divorce. Men appear to feel
themselves free to will deliberately the end that shall be served by the
mechanism of the state, and to adapt that mechanism to the attainment of
the end chosen.
64. THE SOCIAL WILL AND IDEAL ENDS.--The social will, like the wall of
the individual, may manifest itself in decisions which it is obviously
impossible to carry out to a completely successful issue. A community has
a power of control over its members, but that control has its limits.
Even a man's actions cannot be completely controlled by the community of
which he is a part. There are always individuals who violate rules, and
to whom, as it would seem, no motive can be presented which is adequate
to keep them in the rut prescribed by society.
Still less can the social will exercise full control over men's thoughts
and feelings. Influenced to some degree they may be. A man may be kept in
ignorance, or furnished with information calculated to determine his
thought in a given direction. His emotions may be played upon; he may be
exhorted, rewarded, punished. But thoughts and feelings are not open to
direct inspection; they may be concealed or simulated. Much more readily
than actions can they withdraw themselves from control.
Nevertheless, the social will may, and does, ignore all such limitations
to its powers. Laws are not passed to regulate the changes of the
weather, which palpably fall outside the province of the law; but they
are passed to regulate the actions of men, which normally fall within it;
that is, which can, to a very significant degree, be influenced by the
attitude of the social will. For the same reason laws may even take
cognizance of men's thoughts. Of the accidental limitations of its power
of control within the general sphere in which it has a meaning to speak
of control, the social will is not compelled to take cognizance. It may
set itself to encourage or repress certain types of character and
conduct, and take measures to attain the end it has selected. That the
measures taken should sometimes prove inadequate does not alter the fact
of the choice of an end, nor does it obscure the revelation of the trend
of the social will.
Thus, a community may be said to will that its members shall not be
guilty of violence; it may will to live at peace with other communities;
it may will to conquer and subjugate. Whether, in each case, the will
shall be completely realized or not, may not be determined by the mere
fact of its willing. Nevertheless, the permanent volitional attitude may
be unmistakably present, and may reveal itself in strivings toward the
chosen goal. To describe this attitude as no more than wishing is
manifestly to do it an injustice.
65. THE PERMANENT SOCIAL WILL.--The social will may be regarded as
something permanent. Its existence is not confined to those moments in
which collective decisions are being made. The will to be one which
constitutes a group of human beings a nation is not at all times actively
exercised, but the settled disposition to action looking toward that end
may be always present and ready to be called into action. An autocracy
remains such when its irresponsible head is making no decisions; and a
democracy is not such only while elections are being held or the
legislature is sitting. The organization of a society, the whole body of
the usages which it accepts and approves, are revelations of the social
will. That will does, it is true, give expression to itself in a series
of actual decisions more or less conscious and deliberate, but it is far
more than any such series of decisions. It is a disposition, rooted in
the past and reaching into the future. It is a guarantee of decisions to
come, of whose nature we may make some forecast.
The permanent social will constitutes the _character_ of a
community. Our study of the will of the individual prepares us for the
recognition of the fact that communities may be but dimly aware of their
own character, and may be quite unable to give an unbiased account of the
ideals which animate them.
CHAPTER XVIII
EXPRESSIONS OF THE SOCIAL WILL
66. CUSTOM.--We have seen above that even the forms of political and
social organization may justly be regarded as an expression of the social
will. Such forms are the result of past choices, and their acceptance in
the present is evidence of present choice.
Between the organization of a society and its customs proper we may
distinguish by comparing the former to structure and the latter to
function in the case of any organism. But we must bear in mind that,
here, structure has been built up by, and is in process of modification
by, the same forces that exhibit themselves in function. It would not be
wholly out of place to describe a people as having the custom of being
ruled by hereditary chiefs, of choosing their monarchs, or of governing
themselves through elected representatives. Forms of organization are
handed down to successive generations by the same social tradition that
transmits customs of every description.
Customs are public habits which are, on the whole, approved by a
community. They are ways of acting which are regarded as normal and
proper. Where the authority of custom is evoked, pressure is brought to
bear upon the individual to adjust himself to the will of the community.
A community, like an individual, may have habits which it does not
approve. Such may be tolerated, although disapproved; or active efforts
may be made to set them aside. Some habits may be regarded with
comparative indifference, although professedly held in condemnation. The
individual, in following such habits, may claim that they are not
unequivocally condemned by the community, and he is not conscious of the
weight of displeasure which visits the violation of the will of the
community when unequivocally expressed.
In simple and primitive societies custom prescribes to the individual his
course of life in the minutest detail. It possesses the authority of the
dictator. In societies upon a higher level it may leave to him some
discretion in deciding upon the details of his daily life, while still
exercising a paramount control over the general trend of his actions.
Thus the will of the community, expressed in custom, determines what the
members of the community _ought_ to do, and it takes measures to
enforce obedience to its decisions. Is it surprising that the names which
have been given to the science which treats of man's rights and duties,
_morals, ethics_ (_mores, ethica, Sitten_), should reflect this
truth? It would be an inadequate statement to maintain that the science
of morals is no more than a systematic exposition of the customary in
human societies. It is not an inadequate statement to assert that, in
many societies, custom has, in fact, furnished the ultimate and complete
standard of obligation, and that in all societies it is of enormous
significance in moulding men's notions of right and wrong.
67. THE GROUND FOR THE AUTHORITY OF CUSTOM.--Habits are as essential to a
society as they are to an individual human being. Without them, society
could not live. In any social state--and no man can live except in a
social state--there must be cooperation. How can there be cooperation if
there are no social habits upon which men may count in their dealings
with one another?
Try to conceive all the tacit mutual conventions, the unconscious
adaptations to custom, which guide our daily lives, suspended for twenty-
four hours. When should one rise in the morning? How should one dress?
What and how should one eat? Of business there could be no question, nor
could there be cooperation in pleasures. Public order there could not be,
for there would be no public worthy of the name. Protection of life and
limb would be the creature of accident. Between civility and insult there
would be no recognizable distinction. In short, men could not behave
either well or ill, for there would be no rule to follow or to violate,
nothing to expect, and, hence, no ground for disappointment.
In such a chaotic condition no society of men has ever lived. No actual
state of anarchy has ever been complete, nor could it be, and endure. A
"reign of terror" is a reign of law in comparison with such a dissolution
of all the bonds which knit man to man. When we pass from one community
to another, we find one set of public habits exchanged for another. Some
sets impress us as better, some as worse. But there is no set which is
not better than none. It makes it possible for men to live, if not to
live well.
Customs are, then, a necessity. It is equally necessary that they should,
in general, have binding force for the individual. But there are customs
good and bad. The individual may fall into habits which he, upon
reflection, concludes to be injurious to him, and which others see
clearly to be injurious. A community sufficiently enlightened to
criticize itself at all, may come to disapprove some of its customs and
may endeavor to abolish them.
This means that a new act of the social will may set itself in opposition
to the social will already crystallized into custom. In a given instance,
and where there are differences of opinion, it may be a nice question
whether the new or the old should be regarded as the authoritative
expression of the social will.
68. THE ORIGIN AND THE PERSISTENCE OF CUSTOMS.--From the fact that
customs are, in general, to be regarded as expressions of the social
will, it might be assumed that their purposive character and social
utility should be a sufficient explanation of their coming into being.
But the matter is not so simple. A man may fall into habits which are no
indication of what he regards as useful to him. Such habits have not been
formed independently of his will, and yet they may appear to be
purposeless, or even detrimental. Who wishes to have the inveterate habit
of cracking the joints of his fingers or of biting his finger-nails? What
purpose do such habits serve?
Although the social utility of customs, taken generally, is easily
apparent, yet there are many customs which seem inexplicable upon such a
principle. Why, for example, should the king of a primitive community be
prohibited from sleeping lying down? or why should it be forbidden that
he gaze upon the sea? [Footnote: _Encyclopedia Britannica_, Eleventh
edition, article "Taboo."] The origin of such customs is hidden in
obscurity. That their adoption was not without its reason, we may assume.
That the reason was a reasonable one cannot be maintained. It seems
probable, however, that it at some time seemed reasonable to some one.
The persistence of habit, social as well as individual, would account for
the perpetuation of the custom long after the occasion which gave rise to
it had been forgotten.
69. LAW.--Between custom and law, taken generally, it is by no means easy
to draw a sharp distinction, although, in some instances, the
distinction, may be clearly marked. In primitive communities, laws
reduced to writing, and administered by persons deliberately chosen for
that end, may be wholly lacking; and yet who would say that such
communities do not live under the reign of law in a broad sense of the
term? A course of life is prescribed to the individual; failure to come
up to the standard meets with punishment.
Nevertheless, as social life rises in the scale and as communities become
developed, custom and law become differentiated. The latter stands out
upon the background of the former as something more sharply defined.
Penalties and the method of their infliction are more exactly fixed. Not
all violations of what is customary are taken up into the legal code as
punishable offences, although they meet with that indefinite measure of
punishment entailed by social disapproval.
Those public habits which it seems to a community it is of especial
importance to preserve and enforce come to be embodied in laws. The
selection is a matter of more or less deliberate choice, and is an
expression of will. The choice is not, normally, an arbitrary one. The
laws of a people are, unless accident has intervened, the outcome and
expression of its corporate life. For their ultimate authority they rest
upon the acquiescence of the social will. Laws contrary to deep-seated
and widely accepted custom are not apt to be regarded as of binding
force. They are felt to be tyrannous, and are obeyed, if at all,
unwillingly, and because of pressure from without.
In a later chapter [Footnote: Chapter XX.] I shall dwell upon the fact
that the accidental may play a very significant role in law. In given
instances the laws of a community may be, not the outcome of its will in
any sense, but something imposed upon it. Such laws cannot but be felt to
be oppressive and a restriction of freedom.
Laws, like customs, may cease to have a significance, and they may be
modified or allowed to fall into desuetude. There is, however, much
conservatism, as all who are familiar with legal usage know. And laws may
fail of their purpose. They may aim to diminish crime, and their
undiscriminating severity may foster crime. So may the individual select
an end, fall into error in his choice of means, and, as a result of
experience, resolve to substitute for such means others which are better
adapted to carry out his purpose.
70. PUBLIC OPINION.--Public opinion is manifestly a force broader and
more vague than established custom, and still broader than law. Public
opinion may approve or condemn what no law touches, and it makes its
influence felt beyond the sphere of what is customary.
Where customs and laws come to be imperfect expressions of the social
will, they may stand condemned by public opinion. In such a case their
authority is undermined and violations of them are condoned. Where public
opinion is strongly against a law; the law becomes ineffective. The
conservatism of law is such that a law may be allowed to stand unchanged,
and yet may fail to be carried into effect. Juries may refuse to convict,
or the unpalatable infliction of punishment may be avoided by granting to
the judge a wide discretion in pronouncing sentence.
The gradual development of a strong public sentiment may lead to the
passage of new laws, not based upon previously established customs, but
deliberately framed with a view to the public weal. Old customs may be
modified and new customs may be introduced. That the recommendations of
public opinion extend beyond the sphere of the customary is manifest. It
is not the custom of most men to leave any large part of their estate to
public charity. Except in the case of the very rich, the failure to do so
is not, as a rule, expressly condemned. Yet such bequests are approved,
the testators are praised, and the attitude of public opinion has no
small influence upon the conduct of individuals. Again, extreme self-
sacrifice is not customary; it is exceptional; and yet shining examples
of unselfishness excite a warm sympathy. The expression of this sympathy
is not without its influence.
Public opinion is more palpably an expression of the actual social will
than are custom and law. We have seen that the last two may represent, in
given instances, rather the inherited will of the past than the living
will of the present. But when we call public opinion an expression of the
social will we cannot mean that it necessarily reflects the sentiment of
all the members of a given community.
In primitive communities custom may be a public habit which embraces all,
or nearly all, individuals. Public opinion may scarcely have a separate
existence. In communities more developed, some individuals may disapprove
and refuse to follow many customs which are characteristic of the society
to which they belong. Laws are not approved by all, and, in progressive
states, there is usually some agitation which has as its object the
repeal of old laws or the passage of new ones. In communities where there
is independence of thought, public opinion is usually divided.
Furthermore, the communities to which civilized men belong are not
homogeneous aggregations of units. There is the public opinion which
obtains within single groups within the state. The adherents of a
religious sect may have notions peculiar to themselves of the conduct
proper to the individual, and such notions may extend far beyond what is
actually prescribed by the tenets of the sect. The several trades and
professions, the social classes, neighborhoods, even lesser voluntary
associations of men, such as clubs, may be pervaded by a public sentiment
which varies with each group. When we speak of public opinion generally
we have in mind something broader, a resultant. But the public sentiment
of the lesser groups cannot be ignored. The individual feels himself
especially influenced by the opinions of those most nearly associated
with him.
Under the head of public opinion it is convenient to speak of the
opinions of moral teachers who have influenced the race. Such a thinker
may enunciate truths far in advance of the opinions of his fellows. His
teachings are not, hence, fairly representative of the social will as it
reveals itself in his time. But the sentiments of the more enlightened
never are completely in accord with those of the mass of their fellows.
They are not mere aberrations from the social will; they are its
forerunners. The moralist and the religious teacher initiate new choices,
which may become the choices of large bodies of men. From them proceed
influences which have their issue in new expressions of the social will,
characterizing whole societies, and giving birth to new customs, new
laws, and a new form of public opinion. One can scarcely imagine what
China would be without her Confucius; or the Arabic world, with Mahomet
abstracted.
CHAPTER XIX
THE SHARERS IN THE SOCIAL WILL
71. THE COMMUNITY.--It is difficult to state with absolute exactness what
constitutes a community.
We may define it as a group of human beings associated in a common life,
depending upon and cooperating with each other. This definition will
apply, to be sure, to lesser groups within a tribe or state; and even to
a collection of tribes or states in so far as such enter into alliances
and cooperate to their mutual advantage. As, however, the bond of union
is, in the former case, subordinate to the higher authority of a larger
group (for the family is subject to the tribe or state); and as, in the
latter case, the bond of union is a relatively loose one, and evidently
subordinate to that which binds the citizens of individual states, the
community proper may be regarded as that group which is characterized by
a relatively great degree of inner coherence and by relative external
independence.
The type of such communities is, among the more primitive peoples, the
tribe, and among the more developed, the state. The authority of such
groups over their own members is, theoretically, paramount, although it
may be suspended or abolished by the exertion of force from without.
Such a community may be said to be inspired by a social will expressed in
its customs, its laws and the public opinion prevalent in it. Its members
may be said to be sharers in the social will of the community. Their
participation in it is marked by their being endowed with rights and
charged with duties.
It has not been characteristic of communities generally that all who find
their place in them should be like sharers in the social will. The
distinction has been made between the citizen, who enjoys the fullest
rights and may, perhaps, directly take part in the government of the
state, and those who, while _in_ the state, are not _of_ it, as
they do not enjoy citizenship. Where slavery, in any of its forms, has
prevailed, the distinction between those who are significant factors in
determining the social will, and those who have not this prerogative, has
been very marked. Social classes have often enjoyed, even before the law,
privileges of great moment. Women have, as a rule, not been treated as
citizens, and have been refused a share in the government of the
community. Children are cared for and are protected, but political rights
are denied them. Their status before the law is a peculiar one. The
mentally defective, both in primitive communities and in developed ones,
stand in a relation to the community peculiar to themselves. They are not
excluded from it; they are accorded rights; but they are assigned in the
community a place of their own. Wherever we look, we find inequality. The
sharers in the social will do not share equally, nor do they share in the
same way. This is true of communities of every description, but the
differences are more marked in some than in others.
72. THE COMMUNITY AND THE DEAD.--It is not merely of the living human
beings which compose a community that the social will takes cognizance.
Other wills are made participants in the body of rights and duties
peculiar to the community.
In many communities the dead are still counted among its members. They
are conceived as affecting its welfare, and as demanding services from
the living. Duties towards the dead are a well-recognized division of the
sum of a man's obligations in communities the most diverse in their
character. In some, they occupy a very prominent place; in no community
are they wholly overlooked. A striking illustration of the recognition by
the social will of the rights of the dead is to be found in the whole
modern law of testamentary succession. The will expressed by a man while
he is alive is given effect as though he were still in the flesh and
insisted upon the fulfillment of his desire. It appears to work as a
permanent factor in the community life, making its influence felt for
generations. Witness its influence in charitable foundations, in the law
of entail, and the like.
73. THE COMMUNITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL.--Nor is it merely in recognizing
the wills of the dead that the social will extends its sphere beyond the
community of living human beings. To primitive man, and to man far from
primitive, his social environment has not seemed to be limited to the
living and the dead who have, or who have had, an undeniable and
unequivocal place in the community.
The part played in the life of man by supernatural beings of various
orders has been a most significant one. Demons and gods, spirits of a
lower or of a higher order, have occupied his mind and have influenced
his actions. Such beings have been conceived to be, sometimes, malevolent
and needing to be placated, sometimes, benevolent and fit objects of
gratitude. Their wills man has regarded as forces to be taken into
account, a something to which the individual and the community must
adjust themselves.
Man's relation, or supposed relation, to such beings has been a source of
classes of duties upon which great stress has been laid. The influence of
this admission of supernatural beings into the circle of those directly
concerned in the community life has found its expression in the
organization of the state, in custom, in law, in public opinion. We know
little of a community when we overlook this factor.
Between magic and religion it is not easy to draw a sharp line,
especially when we view religion in the lower stages of its development.
In both we have to do with what may be called the supernatural. Magic has
been defined as the employment of mechanical means to attain the desired
end. In religion, when it so far develops that its specific character
seems clearly revealed, we have left the sphere of the mechanical.
The distinction between the mechanical and the spiritual is familiar to
us in our dealings with our fellow-men. In such dealings we may employ
physical force. On the other hand, we may appeal to their intelligence
and their emotions, and thus influence their action. In so far as we do
not make such an appeal, we deal with our fellows, not as though they
belonged to our social environment, but to our physical.
At the lowest stages of his development, man does not distinguish clearly
between persons and things. This means that he cannot distinguish clearly
between his material environment and his social. But the distinction
becomes gradually clearer, and it is, in the end, a marked one. Religion
becomes differentiated from magic. To confound religion, in its higher
developments, with magic is an inexcusable confusion.
74. RELIGION AND THE COMMUNITY.--The denotation of the term religion is a
broad one, and there will probably always be dispute as to the justice of
its extension to this or to that particular form of faith. But it seems
clear that it is typical of religion to extend what may not unjustly be
called the social environment of man.
Will is recognized other than the wills of the human beings constituting
the community. To the part played by such wills a very great prominence
may be given.
States may be theocratic, as among the ancient Hebrews; or church and
state may share the dominion, or struggle between themselves for the
supremacy, as in Europe in the Middle Ages; or the state may be
theoretically supreme in authority and yet maintain and lend authority to
a church. Even where church and state are, in theory, quite divorced--a
modern conception--the church with its ordinances and prescriptions, its
sacred days, its ceremonial, its educational institutions, remains a very
significant factor in the social environment of man. Religious duties
have at all times and in all sorts of societies been regarded as
constituting an important aspect of conduct. They color strongly the
_mores_ of the community. Whole codes of morals may be referred to
the teachings of certain religious leaders. They claim their authority on
religious grounds.
The great significance of the role played by religion in the sphere of
morals is impressed upon one who glances over the works of those writers
who have approached the subject of ethics from the side of anthropology
or sociology. A review of the facts has even tempted one of the most
learned to seek the origin of morals almost wholly in religion.
[Footnote: WUNDT, _Ethics_, Vol. I. "The Facts of the Moral Life";
see chapters ii and iii. English Translation, London, 1897.]
That religion should play an important part in giving birth to or
modifying moral codes is not surprising. Man adjusts himself to his
social environment as he conceives it. If the community of wills which he
recognizes includes the wills of supernatural beings, it is natural that
the social will which finds its expression in the organization of the
state, in custom, in law and in public opinion, should be modified by
such inclusion.
Nor is it surprising that the supernatural element should, at times,
dwarf and render insignificant the other elements which enter into the
social will. It may seem to man the all-important factor in his life.
Within the human community some individuals count for much more than do
others. There are those who scarcely seem to have any voice in
contributing to the character and direction of the social will. Others
are influential; and, in extreme cases, the wills of the few, or even
that of a single individual, may be the source of law for the many. If
men come to the conclusion that the weal and woe of the community are
dependent upon the will of the gods, or of God, they will unavoidably
give frank recognition to that will above others, and such recognition
will dictate conduct. The gods of Epicurus, leading a lazy existence in
the interstellar spaces, indifferent to man and in no wise affecting his
life, could scarcely become the objects of a cult. But the God of the
Mahometan, of the Jew, or of the Christian, is a ruler to be feared,
loved, obeyed. His will is law, and is determinative of conduct.
75. THE SPREAD OF THE COMMUNITY.--So far I have been speaking of the
community properly so called, of the single group of human beings living
its corporate life. But such groups do not normally remain in isolation.
As the isolation of the group diminishes, as contacts between it and
others become more numerous and more important, the necessity of
conventions controlling the relations of groups becomes more pressing.
This implies the development of a broader social will, inclusive of the
social wills of the several communities. This social will may be very
feeble, and the bond between men belonging to different communities may
be a weak one; or it may be vigorous, and furnish an intimate bond. The
savage, to whom those beyond the pale of his tribe or small confederation
are mere strangers, and probably enemies, stands at the lower limit of
the scale; the trader, to whom the stranger is co-partner in a mutually
profitable transaction, stands higher; the Stoic philosopher,
cosmopolitan in thought and feeling, rating the claims of kindred and
country as less significant than the bonds which unite all men in virtue
of their common humanity, marks the other extreme. The spread of the
social will grows marked as man rises in the scale of civilization.
Barriers are broken down and limits are transcended.
This broader social will, like the narrower, reveals itself in the
organization of society. We find confederations of tribes or states;
alliances temporary or relatively permanent. And the broader social will
modifies customs, gives birth to systems of law, and encourages the
development of an inclusive humanitarian sentiment.
It does not necessarily obliterate old distinctions. The family,
neighborhood, kindred, have their claims even under the most firmly
organized of states; but those claims are limited and controlled. Even
so, the broader social will may come to regard states as answerable for
their decisions. International law remains to the present day what has
aptly been called a pious wish. But public opinion prepares the way for
law; and all states, whatever be their real aims, now attempt to justify
their actions by an appeal to the more or less nebulous tribunal of
international public opinion. In this they recognize its claim to act as
arbiter. Within the jurisdiction of a state, the motto, "my family, right
or wrong," would not be a maxim approved in a court of justice.
International law is made a mock of by the frank enunciation of the
maxim, "my country, right or wrong." Hence, such frankness is, in
international relations, not encouraged.
The more or less skillfully made appeal to the moral sense of mankind--to
the broader social will as public opinion--implies a certain recognition
of its authority, or, at least, of its influence. Whether this is a
definite step toward the granting of a real authority to the broader
social will, an authority which will curb impartially the selfishness of
individual states, it remains for the future to decide.
PART VI
THE REAL SOCIAL WILL
CHAPTER XX
THE IMPERFECT SOCIAL WILL
76. THE APPARENT AND THE REAL SOCIAL WILL.--It is important to
distinguish between the apparent and the real social will. We may begin
by pointing out that the question "apparent to whom?" is a pertinent one.
The social will is brought to bear upon the individual through a variety
of agencies. The family, the neighborhood, the church, the trade or
profession, the political party, the social class--all these have their
habits and maxims. They tend to mold to their type those whom they count
among their members. The pressure which they bring to bear is felt as a
sense of moral obligation. Naturally, individuals with different
affiliations will be sensible of the pressure in different ways, and may
differ widely in their conceptions of the obligations actually laid upon
the individual by the will of the greater organism of which he is a part.
But even he who rises above minor distinctions and takes a broad view of
society is forced to recognize that the distinction between the apparent
and the real social will may be a most significant one.
We have found the expression of the social will in custom, law and public
opinion. This is just; but the statement must be accepted with
reservations.
There are instances in which neither the organization of the state, nor
the laws according to which it is governed, can be considered as in any
sense an expression of the social will. An autocracy, established by
force, and ruling without the free consent of the governed, is an
external and overruling power. It may be obeyed, but it is not consented
to. Nor is any body of law or system of government imposed upon a subject
people by an alien and dominant race a fair exponent of the social will
of the people thus governed. Custom and public opinion are at variance
with law. However just and enlightened the government, as judged from the
standpoint of some other race or nation, its control must be felt as
oppressive by those upon whom it is imposed. Traditions felt to be the
most sacred may be violated; moral laws, as understood by those thus
under dictation, may be transgressed by obedience to the law of the land.
Where custom, law and public opinion are more nearly the spontaneous
outcome of the life of a community, they may with more justice be taken
as expressions of the social will of that community as it is at the time.
Yet, even here, we must make reservations.
The organization of a state represents rather the crystallized will of
the past than the free choice of the present. To be sure, it is accepted
in the present; but this is little more than the acquiescence of inertia.
And public opinion may be at variance both with custom and with law long
before it succeeds in modifying either. What is the actual social will of
a community during the interval?
The past may be felt as exercising a certain tyranny over the present.
That the present cannot be cut wholly loose from it is manifest, but how
far should its dependence be accepted? In the past there have been
historical causes for the rise of dictatorships, of oligarchies, of
dominant social classes. The men of a later time inherit such social
institutions, may accept them as desirable, or may feel them as
instruments of tyranny. Shall we say that they represent the actual
social will of the community until such time as they are done away with
by a successful revolution? Or shall we say that they are in harmony with
the apparent social will only, and really stand condemned?
77. THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY.--Our own democratic institutions rest upon
the theory that the social will is to be determined by the majority vote.
To be sure, we seem to find it necessary to limit the application of this
doctrine, and to seek stability of government by fixing, in certain cases
rather arbitrarily, the size of the majority that shall count. [Footnote:
See the Constitution of the United States, Article V.] But the doctrine,
taken generally, does seem in harmony with the test of rationality
developed above. [Footnote: Chapter xvi.] It aims at the satisfaction of
many desires--at what may be termed satisfaction _on the whole_.
Nevertheless, it is possible to question whether the vote of the majority
represents, in a given instance, the actual will of the community.
No one knows better than the practical politician how the votes of the
majority are obtained. No one knows better than he that, in the most
democratic of communities, it is the wills of the few that count. The
organization of a party, clever leadership, the command of the press, the
catching phrases of the popular orator, the street procession, the brass
band, the possession of the ability to cajole and to threaten--these play
no mean role in the outcome, which may be the adoption of a state policy
of which a large proportion of the majority voting may be quite unable to
comprehend the significance. Shall we say, in such a case, that the will
of the majority was for the ultimate end? Or shall we say that the vote
was in pursuance of a multitude of minor ends, many of which had but an
accidental connection with the ultimate end?
78. IGNORANCE AND ERROR AND THE SOCIAL WILL.--The apparent will of the
community appears to be, in large measure, an accidental thing. That is
to say, men will what they would not will were they not hampered by
ignorance and error, and were they not incapable of taking long views of
their own interests.
The decisions of the social will may be the outcome of ignorance and
superstition.
Where it is thought necessary to punish the accidental homicide in order
to appease the ghost of the dead man, which might otherwise become a
cause of harm, the course of justice, if one may call it such, deviates
from what the enlightened man must regard as normal. The belief that sin
is an infection, communicable by heredity or even by contact, must lead
to similar aberrations of primitive justice. Animals, and even material
things, have, and not by peoples the most primitive, been treated as
rational, responsible and amenable to law. This seems to do the brutes
more than justice. On the other hand, the philosophical tenet of the
Cartesians, which denied a mind to the brutes, resulted in no little
cruelty. The treatment of drunkards, and of the mentally defective, has,
at times, been based upon the notion that they are possessed by god or
demon, and, hence, have a right to peculiar consideration, or may be
treated with extreme rigor.
It is worth while to follow up the above reference to the Cartesians by a
reference to St. Augustine. Trains of reasoning based upon theological or
philosophical tenets have more than once given rise to aberrations of the
moral judgment.
The intellectual subtlety of Augustine betrays him into magnifying to
enormous proportions the guilt of the boyish prank of stealing green
pears from the garden of a neighbor, inspired by the agreeable thought of
the irritation which would be caused by the theft. The pears were not
edible, and were thrown to the pigs, which circumstance seduces this
father of the Church into the reflection that the sin must have been
committed for no other end than for the sake of sinning. A greater crime
than this he cannot conceive.
Many years after the event, in writing his Confessions, he expresses in
unmeasured terms his horror of the deed, filling seven chapters
[Footnote: _Confessions_, chapters iv-x.] with his reflections and
lamentations: "Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, upon which thou
hadst mercy when in the depths of this bottomless pit." "O corruption! O
monster of life and depth of death! Is it possible that I liked to do
what I might not, simply and for no other reason than because I might
not?"
Saint as he was, Augustine would have made a sorry schoolmaster. It is
evident that the enlightened mind cannot regard schoolboys as unique
monsters of iniquity for making a raid on an orchard.
The community whose decisions are made under the influence of erroneous
preconceptions undoubtedly wills, but its will is determined by the
accident of ignorance. It is to be likened to the man who, in unfamiliar
surroundings, takes the wrong road in his desire to get home. He chooses,
but he does not choose what he would if he knew what he was about.
79. HEEDLESSNESS AND THE SOCIAL WILL.--Numberless illustrations might be
given of the fact that, not merely ignorance and error, but also a short-
sighted heedlessness plays no small part in introducing elements of the
accidental and irrational into the social will. The man who spends freely
with no thought for the morrow is not more irrational than the state that
permits a squandering of its resources, and wakes up too late only to
discover that it has lost what cannot easily be replaced.
The life of the community is a long one, and calls for long views of the
interests of the community. These are too often lacking. Heedlessness and
indifference are a fertile source of abuses. In which case, the will of
the community resembles that of the impulsive and erratic man, who has
too little foresight and self-control to consult consistently his own
interests. We may say that he desires his own good on the whole, but we
cannot say that he desires it at all times. Future goods disappear from
his view. His choices clash. His actual will at any given moment appears
to be the creature of accident. So it may be with the community.
80. RATIONAL ELEMENTS IN THE IRRATIONAL WILL.--The actual social will, as
revealed in custom, law and public opinion, often appears, thus, highly
irrational, and we may be justified in distinguishing between it and the
real will which we conceive of as struggling to get itself expressed.
Nevertheless, in justice to custom, law and public opinion, we must look
below the surface of things. Even where the decisions of the community
seem most irrational, and where there appears to be little consciousness
of the ends pursued by the real will, the discriminating observer may see
that pure irrationality does not prevail. The individual may show by his
actions that he has comprehensive ends, and may yet not be distinctly
aware of them. So may a community of men.
"The true meaning of ethical obligations," says Hobhouse, [Footnote:
_Morals in Evolution_, New York, 1906, p. 30.] "--their bearing on
human purposes, their function in social life--only emerges by slow
degrees. The onlooker, investigating a primitive custom, can see that
moral elements have helped to build it up, so that it embodies something
of moral truth. Yet these elements of moral truth were perhaps never
present to the minds of those who built it. Instead thereof we are likely
to find some obscure reference to magic or to the world of spirits. The
custom which we can see, perhaps, to be excellently devised in the
interests of social order or for the promotion of mutual aid is by those
who practice it based on some taboo, or preserved from violation from
fear of the resentment of somebody's ghost." It is not wholly irrational
that, in the laws of various peoples, an allowance should be made for the
sudden resentment which flames up when wrong has been suffered, and that
an offence grown cold should be treated more leniently than one which is
fresh and the smart caused by which has not had time to suffer
diminution. Society has to do with men as they are. It is its task to
bend the will of the individual into conformity with the social will.
That resentment for wrongs suffered is an important element in the
establishment of order in the community can scarcely be denied, nor is it
wholly unreasonable, men being what they are, for the community to make
some concessions to the natural feeling of the individual. Moreover, the
offender caught in the act is indubitably the real offender; and settled
animosities are more injurious to the social order than are fugitive
gusts of passion.
And if it is true that the arbitrary laws of hospitality, as recognized
by some primitive and half-civilized communities, are reinforced by the
superstitious fear of the stranger's curse, it is none the less true that
they serve certain social needs. The fact that hospitality tends to
decline when it becomes superfluous is sufficient to indicate its social
significance.
Again, collective responsibility--the making of a man responsible for the
delinquencies of those connected with him, even when he could in no way
have prevented the evils in question--appears to modern civilized man, in
most instances, [Footnote: Only under normal conditions. We have recently
had abundant opportunity to see that in time of war civilized nations
have no scruples in making the innocent suffer with the guilty, or even
for the guilty.] an irrational thing. Yet men are actually knit into
groups with common interests and accustomed to cooperation. To treat them
as wholly independent units, responsible only to some higher organization
such as the state, is to overlook actual relationships which have no
small influence in determining the course of their lives. Within each
lesser group the members can and do encourage or repress given types of
action beneficial or the reverse. Is it irrational for the larger group
to set such influences to work by holding the lesser group responsible in
its collective capacity? In China the principle has worked with some
measure of success as an instrument of order for many centuries. In an
enlightened society some better method of attaining order may obtain, but
it would be a mistake to assume that there is nothing behind the
principle of collective responsibility save the unintelligent attempt to
satisfy resentment by striking indirectly at the offender through those
connected with him, or the mental confusion that identifies the culprit,
through mere association of ideas, with other members of the group to
which he belongs.
81. THE SOCIAL WILL AND THE SELFISHNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL.--There is,
then, often some reason to be discovered even in what appears at first
sight to be wholly irrational. But no small part of the irrationality of
the actual social will must be set down, in the last instance, to that
peculiar form of irrationality in the individual or in groups of
individuals which we call selfishness.
That some degree of inequality should be necessary in communities of men,
in view of the differentiation of function implied in cooperative effort,
may be admitted. How far the inherited organization or the existing
environment of a given community may make it necessary, in the interests
of all, to grant a large measure of power or prerogative to a single
individual, or to the few, is fair matter for investigation. But the most
cursory glance at the pages of history, the most superficial survey of
the present condition of mankind, must make it evident that a far-seeing
and enlightened social will has not been the determining factor in
bringing into existence many of the institutions which are accepted by
the actual social will of a given epoch.
Neither Alexander the Great nor Napoleon can be regarded as true
exponents of the social will. The rule of the oligarchy is based upon
selfish considerations. The institution of slavery overrides the will of
the bondsman in the interests of his possessor. The perennial struggle
between the "haves" and the "have nots"--the rich and the poor--is,
unfortunately, carried on by those engaged in it with a view to their own
interests and not with a view to the good of society as a whole.
That those to whom especial opportunities are, by the accident of their
position, open, or by whom special rights are inherited, should accept
the situation as right and proper is not to be wondered at. All rights
and duties have their roots in the past, and conceptions of what is
feasible and desirable are always influenced by tradition. While from the
standpoint of the real social will anomalous and accidental it is
nevertheless psychologically explicable and natural that the mediaeval
knight should be bound by the rules of chivalry only in his dealings with
those of his own rank; that the murder of a priest should be regarded as
a crime of a special class; that benefit of clergy should be extended to
a limited number of those guilty of the same offence; that the lists of
the deadly sins should, in an age dominated by the monastic idea, smack
so strongly of the cloister.
Natural it is, and, perhaps, inevitable, that such expressions of the
social will should make their appearance. They have their place in the
historic evolution of society. But they betray the fact that man is
imperfectly rational. They cannot be regarded as expressions of the
permanent rational will which belongs to man as man.
CHAPTER XXI
THE RATIONAL SOCIAL WILL
82. REASONABLE ENDS.--We have seen in the chapter on "Rationality and
Will," that we cannot consider a man rational unless his choices are
harmonized and converge upon some comprehensive end. It has been hinted,
furthermore, that not all comprehensive ends can be described as
reasonable or rational.
A child may be consistently disobedient to its parents, and, given
parents of a certain kind, it may find its life highly satisfactory. A
man may consistently be a bad neighbor, and may harbor the conviction
that, on the whole, he gains by it. A miser may be consistent; he may
come to joy in denying himself luxuries and even comforts, repaid in the
consciousness of an increasing store. The philosophical egoist may reason
with admirable consistency, and may habitually act in accordance with his
convictions, leading, for him, a very endurable life.
All these may be intelligent, even acutely intelligent, and may reason
clearly and well. Nevertheless, men generally refuse to consider their
behavior reasonable. There are ends which we regard as rational, and
others which we condemn as irrational.
It is not enough, hence, that a man's volitions should be intelligently
harmonized and unified. His will must be adjusted to ends which
themselves can be judged rational.
And in deciding whether the ends he chooses are rational or not, we
proceed just as we do in judging the rationality of his individual
choices. If the latter are made in the light of information, if their
significance is realized, if they converge upon some comprehensive end
and do not merely clash and defeat one another, we have seen that they
are made under the guidance of reason or intelligence. The individual
volitions are congruous with the permanent set of the man's will. They
are judged by their background, by their harmony with the "pattern" which
is revealed in the man's volitional life.
Even so, each such volitional pattern, the harmonized and unified will of
the individual as directed upon some comprehensive end, is judged to be
rational or not according as it does or does not accord with the ends
pursued by the social will. Individuals, whose wills are thoroughly
unified and harmonized by the dominant influence of given chosen ends,
may be thoroughly out of harmony with the chosen ends of the larger
organism of which they are a part. They may be out of harmony with each
other. Considered alone, each may display an internal order and unity.
Taken together they may be seen to be in open strife.
We have found the social will to be something relatively permanent and
moving with more or less consistency toward certain comprehensive ends.
That the ends chosen by given individuals may be very much out of harmony
with these is palpable. The deliberate idler, the whole-hearted epicure,
the habitually untruthful man, the miser, the cold egoist--these and such
as these are condemned in enlightened communities. Their lives do not
help to further, but serve to frustrate, the ends approved by the social
will. In so far they may be regarded as consistently irrational.
83. AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.--Consistently irrational! it may be exclaimed;
how can that be? is not a far-sighted consistency the very mark of
rational choice?
The difficulty is only an apparent one. Many forms of consistency may
indicate a certain degree of rationality, and yet too slight a degree to
win approval. There is such a thing as a narrow consistency. He who
devotes his life to the purpose of revenge, may live consistently, but he
loses much. A bitter and angry life is not a desirable thing, even from
the standpoint of the individual.
But why should we limit ourselves to the standpoint of the individual, in
judging of the rationality of ends? There are those to whom it appears
self-evident that this should be done; those to whom it does not seem
reasonable for a man to do anything by which he, on the whole, loses;
those who deny the reasonableness of self-sacrifice in any form. This
doctrine will be examined later. [Footnote: See Sec 102 and 128.]
Here it is enough to point out that men do not actually limit the notion
of rationality in this way. In every, even moderately, rational life some
desires must be suppressed. All desires cannot be satisfied. Why should
it not be regarded as rational and reasonable that, to attain the
comprehensive ends of the social will, certain ends consistently chosen
by certain kinds of individuals should deliberately be denied?
As a matter of fact, men generally do so regard it. They employ the terms
rational and irrational, reasonable and unreasonable, to indicate the
harmony or lack of harmony between the individual and the social will. We
call the man unreasonable who insists upon having his own way regardless
of his fellows; and this, even in instances in which his fellows cannot
punish him for his selfish attitude.
It is not a matter of accident that this should be so. The analogy
between the relation of separate volitions to the dominant ends which
control action on the part of the individual, and the relation of the
ultimate choices of individuals to the ends pursued by the social will,
is a close one. In the well-ordered mind the clash of conflicting desires
is reduced to a minimum. In a well-ordered community the conflict of
individual wills is also reduced to a minimum. In each case, we are
concerned with the work of reason, and judgments as to rationality and
irrationality are equally in place.
84. REASONABLE SOCIAL ENDS.--The will of the individual, when affirmed to
be rational or irrational, is, therefore, referred to the background of
the social will. But the social will is more or less different in
different communities, and in the one community at different stages of
its development. Is there any measure of the degree of rationality of the
social will itself? is there any standard to which its different
expressions may be referred?
We may criticise a community as we criticise an individual man even when
he is taken as abstracted from his social setting. The man's choices may
be blind, conflicting, wayward, and ill-adapted to serve his interests
taken as a whole. In the last chapter we saw that a community may
resemble such a man. It may be ignorant, superstitious, short-sighted,
and in conflict with itself. The social will as actually revealed may be
an imperfect and inconsistent thing. Here enlightenment and inner
harmonization are called for, to set the social will free.
But even where the will of a community is something more definite and
consistent than this, it may be condemned by the moral judgment of the
enlightened. An appeal may be made from the will of the community in the
narrower sense to that of the larger community. The limits of nation,
race and religion may be transcended, and we may appeal to humanity as
such, refusing to recognize the will of any lesser unit as really
ultimate. He who occupies the one standpoint is apt to speak of defending
his legitimate rights, or of extending to subject races the blessings of
civilization. He who takes his stand upon the other may talk of lust of
dominion, or desire for economic advantage. The one may use the term
righteous indignation; the other, the word anger. The moral judgment
passed upon an act depends upon the concept under which men manage to
bring it. What is approved by the tribal ethics may be abhorrent to the
ethics of humanity.
But the larger social will, so far as it has gotten itself expressed at
all, seems to remain something vague and indefinite. It is appealed to as
rational; but how indicate clearly the end which it sets before itself
and the obligations which it lays upon mankind?
The difficulty of describing in detail the ultimate ends of the real
social will has led some writers to speak in terms of exaggerated
vagueness. The mere idea in a man "of something, he knows not what, which
he may and should become" can give little guidance to action; nor can one
aim with much confidence at a goal of which "we can only speak or think
in negatives." [Footnote: _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Sec Sec 192, 172,
180. But GREEN is not always so indefinite. He is on the right track. He
reverences the social will and the historical development of the social
order.]
But it is not necessary to speak in this way. We may form some conception
of the real, rational social will, without being compelled to know all
that man is capable of becoming and without being able to forecast the
details of his environment in the distant future.
We may attain to our conception by determining clearly the nature of the
aims man sets before himself in proportion to his growing rationality. We
can see in what direction man moves as he develops and becomes
enlightened. From this standpoint, the aims of the rational social will
appear to be as follows:
(1) The harmonious satisfaction of the impulses and desires of man.
(2) Such an unfolding of his powers as will increase their range and
variety, broaden man's horizon, and give him an increased control over
erratic impulses.
(3) The bringing about of a social state in which the will of each
individual within a community counts for something, and not merely the
will of a chosen few.
(4) The broadening of the conception of what constitutes a community, so
that ever increasing numbers are regarded as having claims that must be
recognized.
(5) The taking into consideration of the whole of life; the whole life of
individuals and of communities, so that the insistent present shall not
be given undue weight, as against the future.
85. THE ETHICS OF REASON.--The doctrine of the Rational Social Will might
very properly be called the Ethics of Reason. It is not to be confounded
with the so-called "tribal" or "group" ethics. To be sure, it has to do
with man as a social being; but this is characteristic of ethical systems
generally. Man is a social being; he is one essentially, and not
accidentally. That he should be a member of a tribe, or of any lesser
group than the whole body of sentient and reasonable beings, may not
unjustly be regarded as an historical accident, as a function of his
position in the scale of development.
In judging the doctrine of the rational social will, bear in mind the
following:
(1) It rests upon the basis of the impulsive and volitional nature of
man.
(2) It recognizes reason in the individual, and declares that only so far
as he is rational is he the proper subject of ethics at all. Erratic and
uncontrolled impulse knows no moral law.
(3) It sees reason in the customs, laws and public opinion of the tribe
or the state, while recognizing a higher tribunal before the bar of which
all these are summoned.
(4) It appeals to the reason of the race--the reason appropriate to the
race as enlightened and freed from the shackles of local prejudice and
restricted sympathy.
(5) It recognizes that man can give expression to his nature, can satisfy
his desires and exercise his reason, only as aided by his physical and
social environment. It emphasizes the necessity of a certain reverence
for the actual historical development of human societies, with their
institutions. Such institutions are the embodiment of reason--not pure
reason, but reason struggling to get itself expressed as it can. He who
would legislate for man independently of such institutions has left the
solid earth and man far behind. He is suspended in the void.
86. THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION.--Civilizations differ; some are more
material, laying stress upon man's conquest of his material environment.
Others exhibit a greater appreciation of idealistic elements, the pursuit
of knowledge for its own sake, the cultivation of the fine arts, the
development of humanitarian sentiment. For civilization in general it is
not necessary to advance an argument. But there are elements in many
civilizations which the thoughtful man may feel called upon to defend.
Civilization, taken generally, scarcely needs a labored justification
because it is only in a civilization of some kind or other that we can
look for a guarantee of the broad social will, for the reign of reason.
Undeveloped man is at the mercy of nature; he is the sport of history.
Where developed man can raise his voice, man possessed of power and
capable of taking broad views of things, the rule of reason may be set
up. A deliberate attempt may be made to recognize many wills, harmonize
discords. Order may be brought out of chaos, and the limits of the realm
within the borders of which order reigns may be indefinitely extended.
Such is the general ethical justification for the rise of a civilization.
It is an expression of, and an instrument for the realization of, the
broader social will. That a given civilization may be imperfect in both
respects has been made clear in the last chapter. In the light of the
general justification for civilization many questions may be raised
touching this or that element in civilizations as we observe them.
Thus, it may be pointed out that as man progresses in civilization he
calls into being a multitude of new wants, many of which may have to
remain unsatisfied. [Footnote: Compare chapter xxx, Sec 142.] It may be
asserted that literature, art and science are, in fact, cherished as
though they were ends in themselves, and not means called into existence
to serve the interests of man. Absorbing as it may be to him, how can the
philologist prove that his science is useful to humanity either present
or prospective? How shall the astronomer, who may frankly admit that he
cannot conceive that nine tenths of the work with which he occupies
himself can ever be of any actual use to anyone, justify himself in
devoting his life to it? Shall a curiosity, which seems to lead nowhere,
be satisfied? And if so, on what ground?
Moreover, every civilization recognizes that some wills are to be given a
more unequivocal recognition than others. Inequality is the rule. A man
does not put his own children upon a level with those of his neighbor.
Even in the most democratic of states men do not stand upon the same
level. In dealing with our own fellows we do not employ the same weights
and measures as in dealing with foreigners. Who loses his appetite for
his breakfast when he reads that there have been inundations in China or
that an African tribe has come under the "protection" of a race of
another color? The white man has added to his burden--the burden of
economic advantage present or prospective--and we find it as it should
be. Finally, when we bring within our horizon the "interests" of humbler
sentient creatures, we see that they are unhesitatingly subordinated to
our own. Some attention is paid to them in civilized communities. They
are recognized, not merely by custom and public opinion, but, to some
degree, even by law. Men are punished for treating certain animals in
certain ways. But why? Have the animals rights? There is no topic within
the sphere of morals upon which moralists speak with more wavering and
uncertain accents. [Footnote: See chapter XXX, Sec 141.]
I know of no way in which such problems as the above can be approached
other than by the appeal to reason, as reason has been understood in the
pages preceding. The reign of reason implies the recognition of all
wills, _so far as such a recognition is within the bounds of
possibility_. The escape from chaos lies in the evolution of the
enlightened social will. Man must be raised in the scale, in order that
he may have control; control over himself, over other men, over the
brutes. And he cannot rise except through the historical evolution of a
social order. This implies the development of the capacities latent in
man.
To decide that any of his capacities shall be allowed to remain dormant
may threaten future development. To cut off certain arts and sciences as
not palpably serving the interests of man is a dangerous thing. To ignore
the actual history of man's efforts to become a rational being, and to
place, hence, all wills upon the one level, is to frustrate the desired
end. It is not thus that the reign of reason can be established.
CHAPTER XXII
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIAL WILL
87. MAN'S MULTIPLE ALLEGIANCE.--We have seen that each man has his place
in a social order. This order is the expression and the embodiment of the
social will, which accepts him, protects him, gives him a share in the
goods the community has so far attained, recognizes his individual will
in that it accords to him rights, and prescribes his course of conduct,
that is, defines his duties or obligations.
The social will is authoritative; it issues commands and enforces
obedience. With its commands the individual may be in sympathy or he may
not. But upon obedience the social will insists, and it compasses its
ends by the bestowal of rewards or the infliction of punishment. The
moral law to which man thus finds himself subject is something not wholly
foreign to the nature of the individual. It has come into being as an
expression of the nature of man. That nature the individual shares with
his fellows.
Obedience to the social will would be a relatively simple matter were
that will always unequivocally and unmistakably expressed, and did all
the members of a community feel the pressure of the social will in the
same manner and to the same degree. But the whole matter is indefinitely
complicated by what may be called man's multiple allegiance.
Organized societies do not consist of undifferentiated units. They are
not mere aggregates, both are highly complex in their internal
constitution. A conscientious man may feel that he owes duties to
himself, to his immediate family, to his kindred, to his neighborhood, to
his social class, to his political party, to his church, to his country,
to its allies, to humanity. The social will does not bring its pressure
to bear upon the man who holds one place in the social order just as it
does upon him who holds another.
Nor are the injunctions laid upon a man always in harmony. The demands of
family may seem to conflict with those of neighborhood or of profession;
duties to the church may seem to conflict with duties to the state;
patriotism may appear to be more or less in conflict with an interest in
humanity taken broadly. That the individual should often approach in
doubt and hesitation the decision as to what it is, on the whole, his
duty to do, is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that individuals the
most conscientious should find it impossible to be at one on the subject
of rights and duties. Two men may agree perfectly that it is right to "do
good," and be quite unable to agree just what good it is right to do now,
or with whom one should make a beginning.
88. THE APPEAL TO REASON.--Were there no appeal save to the social will
as it happens to make its pressure felt upon this person or that, in this
situation or that, there could be no issue to dispute. Dispute would be
useless and sheer dogmatism would prevail. But there is such an appeal
and men do make it, where they are in any degree enlightened. It is the
appeal to Reason.
He who says: "I have especial rights, just because I am Smith, and so has
my father, because he is my father," has no ground of argument with
Jones, who says: "I have especial rights because I am Jones, and so has
my father, because he is my father." Upon such a basis, or lack of basis,
all discussion becomes fatuous. But if Smith and Jones agree that duties
to self should only within limits be recognized, and that duties to
family have their place upon the larger background of the will of the
state, they may, at least, begin to talk.
The multiple allegiance of the individual does not mean that a man is
subject to a multitude of independent masters whose several claims have
no relation to one another. An appeal may be made from lower to higher.
We have seen that, in the organization of a given society, the social
will may be imperfectly expressed. It may come about that the place in
the social order assigned to a man cramps and pains him, or forces him to
exertions which seem intolerable. He may passively accept it, or he may
set himself in opposition to the social will as it is, appealing to a
better social will. The fact that an individual finds himself out of
harmony with given aspects of the social will characteristic of his age
and country is no proof that he desires to set himself up in opposition
to the social will in general.
In a given instance, he may be, from the standpoint of existing law, a
criminal. Yet he may reverence the law above his fellows. His aberrations
need not be arbitrary wanderings, prompted by selfish impulses. He may
leave the beaten track because he does not approve of it, which is a very
different thing from disliking it. Some will judge him to be a pestilent
fellow; some will rate him as a reformer, a prophet, perhaps a martyr.
Neither judgment is of the least value so long as it reflects merely the
tastes or prejudices of the individual. Each must justify itself before
the bar of reason, if it would have a respectful hearing. A reason must
be given for conservatism and a reason must be given for reform.
89. THE ETHICS OF REASON AND THE VARYING MORAL CODES.--Several
advantages may be claimed for the ethical doctrine I have been
advocating:
(1) It gives a relative justification to the varying moral codes of
communities of men in the past and in the present. A code may, even when
imperfect from some higher point of view, fit well a community at a given
stage of its development. It may be a man's duty to obey its injunctions,
even where they are not seen to be the wisest possible. One reason for
bowing to custom is that it _is_ custom; one reason for obeying laws
is that they _are_ laws. They embody the permanence and stability of
the social will, and have a _prima facie_ claim to our reverence.
(2) In recognizing the social will as something deeper and broader than
the will of the individual, as having its roots in the remote past and as
reaching into the distant future, it admits the futility of devising
utopian schemes which would bless humanity in defiance of the actual
expressions of the social will revealed in the development of human
societies. The whim of the individual cannot well be substituted for the
settled purpose of the community--a purpose ripened by generations of
experience, and adjusted to what is possible under existing conditions.
(3) On the other hand, it distinguishes between lower and higher ethical
codes, or codes lower or higher in certain of their aspects. It sets a
standard of comparison; it recognizes progress towards a goal.
(4) And, in all this, it does not appear to decide _arbitrarily_
either what is the goal of man's moral efforts or what means must be
adopted to attain to it. It rests upon a study of man; man as he has
been, man as he is, in all the manifold relations in which he stands to
his environment, physical and social.
There are other ethical theories in the field, of course. Some of them
are advocated by men of original genius and of no little learning. Some
deserve more attention than others, but all should have a hearing, at
least. A close scrutiny will often reveal that advocates of different
theories are by no means so far apart as a hasty reading of their works
would suggest. Writers the most diverse may assist one to a comprehension
of one's own theory. Its implications may be developed, objections to it
may be suggested, its strong points may stand revealed. By no means the
least important part of a work on ethics is its treatment of the schools
of the moralists. If it be written with any degree of fairness, it may
contain what will serve the reader with an antidote to erroneous opinions
on the part of the writer. To a study of the most important schools of
the moralists I shall now turn.
PART VII
THE SCHOOLS OF THE MORALISTS