the relation of nations to each other and to subject peoples goes without
saying. But the cynic may maintain with some plausibility that the
moralist's chapter on International Ethics must be as void of content as
the traditional chapter on "Snakes in Ireland." In this the cynic is
wrong, as usual; but it is instructive to listen to him, if only that we
may intelligently refute him.
It is not always easy for an individual to determine just what he owes to
his family, to his neighbors, or to his country. Is it surprising that it
should be difficult for men to determine just what one country, or what
one race, owes to another? This is the subject of international ethics.
He who treads upon this ground should walk gingerly, and not feel too
sure of himself. But there is no reason why the moralist should not put
upon paper such reflections as occur to him. He cannot say anything more
devoid of reason than much that is said by others.
The great Grotius, in writing on international law, in the seventeenth
century, drew his illustrations chiefly from Greeks and Romans long dead.
He had much more recent material ready to hand. But he well knew that he,
who would induce another to give him calm and dispassionate attention,
must not begin by treading on the toes of his listener. I shall strive to
profit by his example. It is best to say only what each man can apply to
his neighbor. We are all sensitive in this field.
160. OUR METHOD OF APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT--We have seen (Sec 80) that
rational elements are to be found even in the irrational will, if one
will look below the surface.
Is it rational for the mother to place before all else the interests of
the hairless, toothless and, apparently, mindless little creature that
she clasps to her breast? The very existence of society depends upon her
having the feeling that prompts her to do it. Is it rational to favor
one's neighbor, to be proud of one's native town, which may be a poor
sort of a town? Is it rational to be patriotic, even when one's state is
not much of a state?
We have seen that the Rational Social Will incorporates itself in
societies very gradually, and that it draws into its service lesser
groups of many descriptions. He who detaches himself from these lesser
groups is not a man. He is the mere outline of a man--the "featherless
biped" of the philosopher. It is not of such that a state can be made.
It is the duty of the state to prevent a man from shrinking into being
the mere member of some lesser group, but it is not its duty to
obliterate what is human in him. And the Rational Social Will must see to
it that he does not, on the other hand, forget, in a blind and irrational
patriotism, that he is a human being with a capacity for human
sympathies--sympathies extending far beyond the limits of any state.
Except when they are under the influence of strong passion, I think we
may say that men in civilized states, at least, have already shown
themselves amenable to the influence of the Rational Social Will in this
direction. It must be confessed that that influence has, as yet, been
limited.
The approach to the subject of international ethics must lie in the
recognition that men are set in families, in neighborhoods, in towns or
cities, in states; and are yet human beings with a capacity for
respecting and loving those who belong to none of these particular
organizations. My advice to the man who wishes to abuse his fellow-man is
to do it quickly, and before he is acquainted with him. If he gets to
know him well, he will probably find something lovable in him, and he
will lose the pleasure of being malicious.
161. SOME PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL ETHICS.--The man who reads history
finds, sometimes, things to inspire him; and sometimes, things that are
depressing. He sees that the family must expand into the clan, that the
clan must come into contact with others, that the state must rise, and
that some interrelation of states is an inevitable necessity. He sees
that man's increase in insight, in diligence, in enterprise, must make
him reach out and trade with his fellow-man.
He sees also conquest, with the subjugation of peoples; he sees trade
extended by force, and under the smoke of cannon; he sees a peaceful
economic penetration, which ends in protectorates and annexations, in
defiance of the will of those who do not want to be either protected or
annexed.
What is rational is real, and what is real is rational, said Hegel.
[Footnote: _The Philosophy of Right_, Preface, and see Sec Sec 351 and
347.] He further maintained that civilized nations may treat as
barbarians peoples who are behind them in the "essential elements of the
state"; and also that, in a given epoch, a given nation is dominant, and
"other existing nations are void of right."
Hegel has long been dead, and is turned to dust. He always was as dry as
dust, even when he was alive, but he was a great man. But the famous
Englishman, Sir Thomas More, wrote more engagingly; and does he not tell
us, in his "Utopia," that any nation's holding unused a piece of ground
needed for the nourishment of other people is a just cause of war?
Such doctrines should be most comforting to us Americans. They appear to
teach us that we are, at present, the chosen people; that the rights of
other peoples are as the rights of the Hivites, the Hittites, and all the
rest; that we are justified in taking what we please, for who is there to
withstand us?
Yet ethical Americans shake their heads over such philosophies, and some
of them even speak slightingly of philosophers. This, in spite of the
fact that great men seldom talk pure nonsense, except when carried away
by excitement, as all men may be, at times. If what they say sounds to us
wholly unmeaning, it is probable that we have not fully understood the
voice that speaks within them. What can be said in their defense? and
what can be said in, at least, partial defence of the actual historical
procedure of the nations? They have not been wholly composed of
criminals, and they must possess at least the rudiments of a moral sense.
(1) We have seen that the state maintains its right as against those who
belong to it by controlling, not by destroying, the lesser groups which
exist within the state. Such a control appears to be demanded by the
Rational Social Will, but it often frustrates the will of the individual.
(2) We have seen that the spread of the community is inevitable, and
that, in the interests of rationality, it is desirable.
(3) We have seen that, even in the family, all the members are not
equally free agents. The small boy is not consulted touching the amount
of his punishment, nor can he dictate where it shall be laid on. And the
state does not give to all the individuals in it equal political rights,
nor guarantee to them an equal share of influence. This is desirable, on
the whole, in the interests of the whole, but grave abuses may easily
come into being.
(4) We have seen that the greater whole guarantees to individuals rights,
and assigns to them duties. In so far as it is rational, it cannot do
this arbitrarily. To have recourse to metaphysical abstractions is
futile. Shall we say, without hedging, that a man has a right to the
fruits of his labor, or that first occupation gives a right to the soil?
Then, shall the man who is too weak to work be refused a right to the
ownership of a coat? Or must the discoverer of a continent prove a real
occupancy, by performing the ridiculous task of the abnormal center of
the mythical mathematical infinite circle, by being everywhere at the
same time?
(5) We have seen that the human community, taking the words in a broad
sense, will spread, and already has spread, beyond the limits of several
nationalities. It is in the interest of human society that it should do
so. It is rational, in the sense of the word everywhere used in this
book. But the nations continue to exist, and they often cultivate
selfishly national interests. So do families cultivate selfishly family
interests. So does the egoist selfishly dig about and fertilize the
number One.
(6) It requires little acuteness to see that some communities of men are
miserable exponents of the social will. They are deplorably governed.
Read Slatin's fascinating book, "Fire and Sword in the Soudan,"--it is
better than any novel,--and ask yourself what becomes of the social will
or of rationality of any sort under the rule of a Mahdi. Is it not the
duty of the nations to combine and to relieve suffering humanity?
(7) There are theorists who maintain that, in the nature of things, the
soil belongs to nobody. We find, in the actual state of things, it
usually belongs to somebody, unless it is so poor that it is not worth
owning at all. But it may belong to somebody who can make little more use
of it than an infant can of a gold watch. A handful of Indians, wandering
over a great tract of country in which they chase game in the intervals
of time during which they chase and scalp one another, may have an
immemorial, although unrecorded, title to the land.
Shall they be permitted to keep back settlers from more or less civilized
and densely populated countries? Settlers eager to cultivate the land and
to make it support many, where before it supported few, and supported
those few miserably?
And shall the natural resources of great regions of the earth be
permitted to lie fallow merely because the actual inhabitants are too
ignorant and too indolent to want to produce anything and to trade? He
who finds his happiness in idleness, bananas, and black wives who can be
beaten with impunity, has little interest in international traffic, with
such blessings as it is supposed to bring.
The world is filling up. The losses due to war and pestilence, said no
less an authority than Darwin, are soon made up. There is something
terrifying in what the very modern science of geography has to tell us
about the rapidity with which the remaining part of the earth's surface,
available for the nourishment of man, is being exhausted. What problems
will face the Rational Social Will in the none too distant future?
162. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD.--We have seen that something can be
said for the philosopher. The Rational Social Will does not appear to
give carte blanche to the man who wishes to remain ignorant, idle, cut
off from the family of the nations, the possessor of great tracts of land
which he will not develop, the cruel oppressor of such as he finds within
his power. It tends to deal with him, wherever it finds him, as an
enlightened nation treats the idle, the vicious and the irresponsible
within its own borders.
Undoubtedly civilization has made some advance in the course of the
centuries. When the world is at peace, the stranger is not normally an
outlaw. I have sojourned in the cities of many of the nations of Europe
and have made excursions into Africa and Asia. Nowhere have I been
compelled to ask for the protection of an American consul. It has been
recognized that I had rights, although an American. And the ability to
sign my name has procured me a supply of money.
Notwithstanding all this, it is depressing to read of the dealings of the
nations with each other, and with backward peoples--who have been well
defined as peoples who possess gold-mines, but no efficient navy. Is it
not generally taken for granted that it is the duty of more powerful and
more enlightened nations to take the backward nations in hand, to exploit
their resources, and, incidentally, to exploit _them_?
Not that international law has not counted for something. To be sure
Hegel reduced it to the level of "a good intention," [Footnote: _The
Philosophy of Right_, Sec Sec 330-333.] but it has counted for something.
Descartes and Spinoza could, with impunity, be heretics in little
Holland. Switzerland has for centuries been the refuge of the oppressed.
But we cannot forget that our highest authority, Captain Mahan, declared,
in 1889, that certain rights of neutrals were "forever secured,"
[Footnote: _The Influence of Sea Power upon History_, Boston, 1908,
chapter ii, p. 84.] and he has since stood revealed as a false prophet, a
mere man making a guess. International law is a capital thing--when it is
not put under a strain, and when no nation is too powerful.
The depressing thing is that rapacity and oppression become glorified,
when the cloak of patriotism is thrown over their shoulders. I drew my
illustrations in the last section from wild Indians and from African
savages. But there are nations in all stages of their development. How
"backward" must a nation be to give us the right to rule over it by
force? No people were more ingenious than the ancient Romans in finding
plausible reasons for the wars which it pleased them to wage. This has
never been a lost art. Men's enemies are, like the absent, always in the
wrong; and those are apt to become enemies, in whose defeat some
substantial advantage is to be looked for.
163. THE SOLUTION.--The very title seems a presumption. Who may dogmatize
in matters so involved? I make no pretentions to giving a clear vision of
"yonder shining light," but I venture to hint at the general direction in
which one is to seek the little wicket gate.
The only ethical solution of our problem appears to lie in the frank
recognition of the fact that the groups of men, called nations, may be as
brutal egoists as are individual persons, and in the earnest attempt to
avoid the baleful influence of such egoism.
Man _is_ his brother's keeper. But that does not give him the right
to keep his brother in chains, nor to use him for selfish ends. This is
as true of nations as it is of individuals, of families, of religious
orders, or of unions, whether of employers or of employees.
It is certainly true of nations. It is only as having a place in, and as
being an instrument of, the great organism of humanity aimed at by the
Rational Social Will, that the individual, the family, the tribe, the
nation, have any ethical justification for being at all. Sometimes it is
very profitable for the individual, or for some group of human beings, to
disallow this obligation to be moral. We treat the individual as a
robber; why not admit that there are robber nations?
I feel like reiterating that it is a great thing to be young; to live in
that Golden Age in which one still believes what one sees in print, and
still is moved by the honeyed words of statesmen. When one is old, and
has enjoyed some breadth of culture, one has read the newspapers of many
lands, and has met a certain number of statesmen, usually with a start of
surprise.
It is borne in upon one--a matter touched upon in the last chapter--that
it appears to be generally accepted that the state and its
representatives may adopt a peculiar variety of ethics. Certainly
statesmen feel justified in doing for their country what they, as
gentlemen, would never dream of doing for themselves. They talk of
justice, when they would scoff at such justice within the borders of
their own states; they talk of humanity, and they have in mind the
economic advantage of their own peoples; they speak of protection and
Christianization, when they mean economic exploitation or strategic
superiority. As for truth, the less said about that subject the better.
I know of only one way in which the determination of a nation to aid in
the general realization of the Rational Social Will can be tested. Does
it, in dealing with other nations, civilized or backward, propose what is
palpably to its own advantage, or is it evidently disinterested? It is
thus that we judge a man, when we wish to fix his ethical status; it is
thus that the Rational Social Will judges a nation. The language in which
the proposals are made is a matter of no moment. It may fairly be called
professional slang, and can quickly be acquired, even by men of mediocre
intelligence, in any diplomatic circle.
164. THE NECESSITY FOR CAUTION.--Shall a man, then, eschew patriotism,
and become a citizen of the world, as though he were a Stoic philosopher?
By no means. As well eschew the family or the neighborhood. But let him
not, in his patriotism, forget that he is a man. Here, as everywhere, he
is called upon to exercise judgment. This is a burden which he can never
throw off. He must pay the penalty of being a rational human being. As an
instrument of the Rational Social Will the state must be kept up. It is
his duty to see that it is done. His cat has an easier task; she may
sleep her life away in peace.
We hear much of the brotherhood of man and of artificial barriers. The
barriers are not all artificial, and they cannot be swept away with a
gesture.
Races and peoples are formed upon the model of their own immemorial past.
They have their institutions, their traditions, their loyalties, their
standards of living. What is tolerable to one man is wholly intolerable
to another. To compel men to live together in intimacy, when centuries of
training have made them antipathetic, is sheer cruelty.
Men may be brothers, but there are big brothers and little brothers. I do
not refer to physical bulk. I refer to the development of intelligence,
to the degree and kind of culture, which has been attained. There are
little brothers still at the stage of development at which it is natural
for human beings to drool. Shall we have them sit up to the table and
serve them with the complete dinner, enlivening it with intellectual
conversation?
Between incontinently doing this, and relegating the little brothers to a
nursery where they will be treated with cruelty and starved in our
interests, some persons seem to think there is no middle course. In their
enthusiasm for humanity, they forget that the brotherhood of man may be
made as ridiculous as the eight-hour day. Between eight hours of the
creative work of a Milton and eight hours of the dawdling done by a lazy
housemaid, there is no relation save that both may be measured by a
clock.
These enthusiasts forget much. Men are not alike; they do not want to be
alike; they do not want to live together in close intimacy, when they
have little in common; they reverence different things; as a rule, they
would rather be somewhat unhappy after their own fashion, than be happy
under compulsion, after the fashion of someone else.
We have, thus, on the one hand, the enthusiasts who would at once sound
the trump and announce the millenium, feeding the lion and the sucking
calf out of the same dish and on the same meat. We have, on the other,
those who are eager to take on their shoulders the white man's burden--to
enclose in a coop, as if they were chickens, the greater part of the
human race, allaying the discontent of the imprisoned by pointing out to
them that, although their freedom of movement is limited, they are
growing fat, and that they should show their gratitude by laying eggs.
Surely, there must be some middle course. Patience and caution are
virtues. Surely, it is possible to accept the existing organism of
society, to love one's country, and yet to strive to respect the freedom
of others. It is not easy for a true patriot to do this, but it seems to
be what the Rational Social Will demands of him.
The moralist who reads history carefully is not wholly discouraged. He
may look forward to some time, in the more or less distant future, when
there may be a union of the nations in the interests of all men; when the
gross egoism of the hypertrophied patriot may be curbed; when the
mellifluous language of the statesman may mean more than did the pious
letter which Nero wrote to the Roman Senate, after he had murdered his
mother.
CHAPTER XXXVI
ETHICS AND OTHER DISCIPLINES
165. SCIENCES THAT CONCERN THE MORALIST.--There are certain sciences that
the Moralist must lay under contribution very directly, and yet he seems
to be able to make little return to those who cultivate them, at least in
their professional capacity.
He must ask aid from the biologist, the psychologist, the anthropologist.
They help him to a comprehension of what man is; and, hence, of what it
is desirable that man should strive to do. But these men seldom come to
the moralist for advice. They appear to be able to work without his help.
There are, however, other sciences in which the moralist feels that he
has more of a right to meddle, however independent they may regard
themselves.
Take, for example, politics or economics, or the very modern and
rudimentary science of eugenics. The man who cultivates political science
may know much more than do most moralists about states and their forms of
organization; about legislative, executive and judicial functions; about
the probable effects of the centralization or decentralization of
authority; about what may be expected, in a given case, from a
restriction or extension of the franchise; about the creation and
maintenance of a military establishment and the building up of an
efficient civil service. The economist may be a monster of learning and a
master in ingenuity on all problems touching the creation and
distribution of wealth.
But the political scientist and the economist, however able, share our
common humanity. A man's outlook is more or less apt to be bounded by the
limits of the science of his predilection. The several sciences, broader
or more specialized, rest, in the minds of most men, upon foundations
which are taken for granted. It is too much to expect that every sermon
should begin as far back as the Garden of Eden. "Practical" politics and
economics do not, as a rule, go so far back.
The transition from practical politics and economics to ethical problems
may be made at any time. No man was shrewder than Machiavelli, and the
moral sense of mankind has rebelled against him and made him a byword. A
state, desirous of maintaining itself, may palpably violate in its
institutions, inherited from the past, a social will grown more rational,
more conscious of its rights and more articulate. Then the appeal is made
to right and justice in other than the traditional forms. It may, in a
given instance, be wrong to create wealth; existing forms of its
distribution may be iniquitous. The ultimate arbiter in all such matters
must be the Ethical Man.
Human society is indefinitely complex. Many specialists must occupy
themselves with its problems. A technical question in this field may
always be carried over to moral ground. He who undertakes to make this
transition without having made a fairly thorough study of ethics appears
to be working in the dark. His assumptions have been questioned, or have
been abandoned. Who shall furnish him with a new basis for his special
science?
Ethics is a basal science. It justifies, or it refuses to justify, those
specialists who concern themselves with men in societies. It is a very
old science and has interested men vastly. I have spoken above of
eugenics as a new science. Only in its modern form is it new. Plato
cultivated it intemperately when he wrote his "Republic"--but he saw that
his "Republic" would not do, and he wrote his "Laws." He stood condemned
by Ethics.
Usually men who occupy themselves seriously, and in a broad way, with man
in society, have adopted, consciously or unconsciously, some ethical
doctrine. But this is often done without due consideration, and without a
sufficient knowledge of what has been said by the great thinkers of the
past. It is for this reason that I have treated at such length in this
volume of the schools of the moralists.
166. ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY.--It should be observed that in developing the
Ethics of the Rational Social Will, or the Ethics of Reason--the doctrine
advocated in this volume--I have not depended upon a particular
philosophy.
I see no reason why a Realist or an Idealist, a Monist or a Dualist, one
who holds to an immediate perception of an external world or one who
regards our acquaintance with it as a matter of inference, should refuse
to go with me so far. Nor do I see any reason why a believer in God, one
who bows at the shrine of Mind-Stuff, or one who refuses to commit
himself at all upon such matters, should enter a demurrer. The
Parallelist and the Interactionist, however widely they differ touching
the relation of mind and body, may here fall upon one another's necks and
shed tears of brotherly affection.
That it is proper for the philosopher to interest himself in ethics, I
have maintained. [Footnote: See chapter vi, Sec 18.] He is supposed to be a
critical and reflective man, and to take broad views of human affairs.
Such views are needed when one comes to the study of ethics.
I am forced to admit that some philosophers, when they have written on
ethical subjects, have said certain things to which the critical moralist
cannot readily assent. He who maintains that certain human intuitions--
which it may even appear impossible to reconcile with each other--are
inexplicably and infallibly authoritative, seems to leave us without so
much as the hope of ever attaining to ultimate rationality. [Footnote:
See chapter xxiii.]
And there are philosophers who would persuade us that, unless we accept
all the religious or theological doctrines which have appeared to them
acceptable, we rob man of every incentive for being moral at all. If God
is not going to repay him with interest for the pains which he gives
himself, does he not play the part of a dupe in being good? We have seen
that this was palpably the position of Paley. [Footnote: Chapter xxiv, Sec
96.] If God will not reconcile, ultimately, benevolence and self-
interest, proclaimed Reid, man "is reduced to this miserable dilemma,
whether it is best to be a fool or a knave." [Footnote: _Essays on the
Active Powers of Man_, Essay III, Part III, chapter viii. It would be
absurd to believe that either Paley or Reid lived down to the level of
his doctrine. Both were very decent men, and capable of
disinterestedness.] Some of the utterances of Kant and of Green seem to
point in the same direction, but both have made it abundantly plain that
they, personally, and whatever their intellectual perplexities, were
moved by something much higher than egoism. [Footnote: See chapters xxiv,
Sec 97; xxvi, 3; and xxix.]
I mean to say very little about philosophy in this volume. I wish to keep
to ethics, a science old enough and strong enough to stand upon its own
feet. But it would be wrong not to underline one or two points in this
connection, if only to obviate misunderstanding:
(1) There is nothing wrong in a man's wishing to earn the heaven in which
he believes. It is not wrong for him to wish to be happy on earth and in
the body. But if the desire for his own happiness, either here or
hereafter, is the _only_ motive that can move him, he is not a good
man. Prudence may be a virtue, generally speaking; but it is no
substitute for benevolence. The man who is _only_ prudent is no fit
member of any society of rational beings anywhere.
(2) Men are often better than their words would indicate. Paley talks as
if he were a cad; Reid flounders; Kant, noble as are many of his
utterances, sometimes gives forth an uncertain sound. Yet no one of these
men was personally selfish.
And yet all of these men assumed that morality is endangered unless there
is a God to repay men for being good. Why did they insist so strenuously
upon this, and incorporate it into their philosophy? We must, I think, go
beneath the surface to find the real reason; and when we have discovered
it, we cannot regard them in an unfavorable light.
They felt, I believe, that good men _ought_ to be made happy; that
this is rational, if anything is. So far, they are quite in accord with
the doctrine of the Rational Social Will. And they saw no other way of
guaranteeing a complete rationality than in holding to a theistic
philosophy.
(3) This means that their real motives were not selfish and personal.
This is admirably brought out when we turn to Green. It is too much to
expect that many of my readers have read his "Prolegomena to Ethics,"
which is repetitious, tedious, and rather vague, though it is inspired by
a fine spirit and has the great merit of having influenced, directly or
indirectly, a number of able writers to produce excellent works on
ethics. [Footnote: I need only to refer to the text-books by Muirhead,
Mackenzie, Dewey and Fite.]
Green dwells, with infinite repetition, upon the presence in man "of a
principle not natural," which is identical in all men, and which, in
some way that he does not explain, holds the world of our experiences
together, being itself not in time or in space. The disciple of Paley or
Reid or Kant will search his pages in vain for any indication that this
"principle" performs or can perform any of the functions of the God
believed in by the above-mentioned philosophers. Nevertheless, it is the
source of an ardent inspiration to Green, who relieves the baldness of
the appellation "principle," by calling it, sometimes, "self-
consciousness," sometimes, "reason." It does not appear to promise Green
anything, so his devotion to it may be regarded as disinterested.
However, he owes to it inspiration.
Philosophers find their inspiration in very different directions. The
philosopher, as such, sometimes rather objects to the word, "God."
[Footnote: See chapter xxvi, Sec 123, note.] But he may feel much as men
generally feel toward God, when he contemplates his "Conscious
Principle," or his "Idea," or the "Substance" which he conceives as the
identity of thought and extension, or, for that matter, "Mind-Stuff" or
the "Unknowable." That other men may not see that he has anything in
particular to be inspired about, or that he can hope for anything in
particular for himself or for other men, does not rob him of his
inspiration, and that may affect his life deeply.
It is, hence, not a matter of no importance to ethics what manner of
philosophy it pleases a man to elect. One's outlook upon the great world
may repress or may stimulate ethical strivings, may narrow or may broaden
the ethical horizon. It is something to feel, even rather blindly, that
one has a Cause. For myself, I think it is better to have a Cause that
seems worth while, even when rather impartially looked at. But, of this,
more in the next section.
(4) Whatever one thinks of such matters, it is well to come back to the
fact that, nevertheless, ethics stands upon its own feet. Even if Paley,
and Reid, and Kant, and Green, and many others, are in the wrong, the
doctrine of the Rational Social Will stands sure. It is wrong to be
selfish; it is wrong to be untruthful; it is wrong to be unjust. It is
wrong for individuals, and it is wrong for nations. The man, or the group
of men, that does wrong, is irrational. It stands condemned.
167. ETHICS AND RELIGION.--I regret having to speak, in this book, about
religion at all, just as I regret having to refer to the philosophers.
But it would be folly to omit all reference to religious duties. They
have played quite too important a part in the life of the family, of the
tribe, of the state; and that not merely here and there, but everywhere,
in societies of all degrees of development, in recent centuries and in
times of a hoary antiquity. Those interested in the classics have read
the remarkable little book, "The Ancient City," by Fustel de Coulanges.
As schoolboys we were brought up on the pious Aeneas. All Christians have
some knowledge of the theocratic state of the Hebrews, and we know
something of the history of Christian Europe. The anthropologist gives us
masses of information touching the religious duties of all sorts and
conditions of men.
There are those who rid themselves easily of the problem of religious
duties. They simply deny that there are any. And there are those--the
classes overlap--who easily shuffle off duties to the family and to the
state. They regard it as their function to ignore and to destroy.
(1) I cannot think the matter is so simple. There always have been
religious duties generally recognized, as a matter of fact. The boldest
and most gifted of thinkers, who have not hesitated to call into being
Utopian schemes for an ideal state, such men as Plato and More, have
thought that the ideal state must have a religion. And the modern
scientist has gravely raised the question whether the state can maintain
itself, if all religious beliefs, with their inspirations and their
restraints, die out. [Footnote: McDougall, _Social Psychology_,
chapter xiii.]
The moralist, who accepts religious duties, has a difficult task. It is
not enough for him to say that men have religious duties "in general,"
just as it is not enough for him to say that they have political duties
"in general." On the other hand it would be the height of presumption for
him to endeavor to tell every man what he should do in detail. He does
not feel it his duty to tell every man whom he should marry, or for whom
he should vote at each election. Still, it does seem as though the
moralist ought to do more than tell a man vaguely that he has religious
duties.
(2) Why not follow the analogy suggested by duties to the family, the
neighborhood, the state?
States have their religions, sometimes unequivocally and unmistakably,
and sometimes not so palpably. The religion of a people has, as a rule,
its roots far back in the history of that people. Its religion has
influenced in many subtle ways its institutions, its emotions, its
habits, its whole outlook upon life.
Even where, as with us, state and church have been, in theory, wholly
sundered, there has been no question, up to the present, of the
disappearance of a religion. The United States has been regarded as a
Christian nation, inspired by ideals and addicted to customs only
explicable by a Christian past.
The fact that it is so is somewhat obscured to us. For this there are two
causes. The first is, that the American, who is a freeman, possesses and
exercises a fatal ingenuity in the creation of a multitude of sects out
of practically nothing. Still, most of these sects have more in common
than some of their adherents suppose. They spring, as a rule, from a
Christian root. The second is, that our land has been the goal of the
greatest migration ever recorded in human history. Most of those who have
come to us have, so far, come from nations in some sense Christian, but
they have brought with them very diverse traditions, and some appear to
object to traditions altogether.
Nevertheless, I think we may be called a Christian nation, and if we
follow the analogy above suggested--that of the relations of men to the
state and to lesser organisms within the state--it would appear that it
is the duty of an American to recognize himself as a Christian rather
than as a Mahometan or a Pagan. If he does recognize this, he will feel
himself under certain obligations which are independent of his personal
tastes and proclivities.
(3) For one thing, he will recognize that a religion is not a thing to be
stripped off and drawn on as one changes a suit of clothes.
A woman may regret that her infant has red hair. She will not, on that
account, as a rule, exchange him surreptitiously for another. Men do not
commonly repudiate their fathers because they are not rich or are growing
old. A good citizen may regret that his country has seen fit to enter
into a given war, but he will not, therefore, give aid or comfort to the
enemy.
He who is capable of lightly repudiating his religion resembles the man
who is capable of discarding his wife, when he sees the first grey hair.
Those who do such things are apt to be men who fill their whole field of
vision with their rights, and can find no place there for their duties.
Nor should it be overlooked that the man, who is capable of lightly
discarding his wife, is the man as capable of supplying her place with a
worse. Even so, he who easily throws off his religion is usually the man
who easily replaces it with some superstition, scientific or merely
whimsical, at which other men wonder.
Men lament sometimes over the fact that the task of the foreign
missionary is a hard one. Were it really an easy one, there would be no
stability in human societies, for there would be no stability in human
nature. The man of light credulity is the man who easily takes on new
faiths; not the man to whom tradition and loyalty mean something.
(4) It seems to follow, as a corollary, that the religion in which a man
has been brought up has the first claim upon him. I accept this without
hesitation.
But this does not mean that the claim is in all cases final and valid.
There may be cases in which it seems to be the duty of a man to leave his
wife, to disinherit a child, to transfer his allegiance from one state to
another. Such cases are recognized as justifiable by men who are
thoughtful and disinterested. But the same men also recognize that, were
such disruptions of the bonds which unite men in communities the rule and
not the exception, it would mean the destruction of the community.
Similarly, it may become the duty of a man to transfer his allegiance
from one church to another.
Are not religions, rationally compared, of different values? Have there
not been religions indisputably on a moral level lower than that of the
community which they represent? Undoubtedly.
And there have been governments so bad that the only refuge has seemed to
lie in revolution. It should be remembered, however, that revolutions can
be resorted to too lightly; and that evolution, where possible, is
preferable to revolution, whether in things secular or in things
religious. It is always easier to tear down than it is to build up. Nor
does anyone, save the anarchist, tear down through wanton love of
destruction. Even he is apt to feel called upon to give some sort of a
vague excuse for his violence.
It will be observed that I have all along spoken, not merely of religion,
but of the Church. I have done this because religion is a social
phenomenon. It has its institutions, and cannot live without them.
It cannot be denied that individual philosophers have evolved religious
philosophies; it cannot be denied that solitary individuals, as such,
have felt religious emotions. How much of this is due to the fact that
there have been religions and churches, I do not believe that they
themselves have realized.
But, if religion is to be a vital force of any sort in a state, holding
up ideals and stimulating the emotion that helps to realize them, it must
be incorporated in an institution or in institutions. You cannot remove
the rose and keep the perfume. Even the memory of it tends to vanish. A
religious man without a church is like a citizen without a state. A
citizen without a state is a man who makes the effort to keep step, and
to walk in single file, all alone.
(5) Having said so much for Religion and for the Church, it is right that
I should refer to some things that may be said on the other side.
It may be claimed that men of science have a tendency to turn away from
religion and to grow indifferent to or to deny religious duties. In this
there is some truth, although notable exceptions to the rule may be
cited.
But I have known many men of learning in two hemispheres, in some cases
rather intimately. With the utmost respect for their learning and for
their mental ability, I am still bound to say that I have found them
quite human. Some of them--among the greatest of them--have been so
absorbed in their special fields of investigation, that they have not
merely given scant attention to religion and to religious duties, but
have done scant justice even to their own family life or to the state.
And all have not been equally broad men, capable of seeing clearly the
part which religion has played in the life of humanity.
To this I must add that the impartial objectivity with which the scholar
is supposed by the layman to view things is something of a chimera. In
saying this I criticize no one more severely than I criticize myself.
This may be taken as my apology for the utterance. Have we not seen, not
many years since, that, in the feeling aroused by an international
conflict, some scores of great scholars on the one side found it possible
to write and to sign a series of statements diametrically opposed to a
series drawn up and signed by some scores of equally famous scholars on
the other? Was either group walled in hopelessly by sheer ignorance? It
is easy to take lightly matters about which one does not particularly
care.
There is another objection brought against religion and the church which
seems to be more significant. Is there not a danger that an interest in
these may hamper freedom of thought and encourage an undue conservatism?
It should be borne in mind that religion and the church are not the only
forces that make for conservatism. Family affection is conservative; the
law is conservatism itself, and men feel that it should not be lightly
tampered with. How impartial and how ready to introduce innovations
should men be in any field? Changes of certain kinds, though they may
have no little bearing upon our comfort, do not threaten the existence of
either state or church. Could someone devise a scheme by which the
periodical visits of the plumber could be avoided, we should all welcome
it, and have no fear of the consequences.
Other innovations may bring in their train consequences more momentous.
What men deeply care about, they cling to, and the question which
confronts us is a very broad one. Does humanity, on the whole, gain or
lose by a given degree of conservatism? An increase of knowledge is by no
means the only thing that makes for civilization. Men may be highly
enlightened, and yet rotten to the very core. How much of the ballast of
conservatism and of loyalty to tradition is it well to throw overboard in
the interest of accelerated motion? Those who, in our judgment, throw
overboard much too much we have taken to deporting.
(6) Here it will very likely be objected: In all this you are advocating
sheer Pragmatism! Are we to accept God and look for a life to come,
extending the spread of the community after the fashion suggested in
Chapter XIX, and broadening the outlook for a future and more perfect
rationality, for no better reason than that it is our whim? Shall we
_believe_ and join ourselves with other _believers_, for no
better reason than that something happens to tempt our will?
I beg the reader, if he will be just to my thought, to follow me here
with close attention.
168. ETHICS AND BELIEF.--Under this heading I must call attention to
several points.
(1) I deny that I advocate Pragmatism at all. The views which I advocate
are so many thousand years older than Pragmatism, that it seems unjust to
them, at this late date, to compel them to take on a new name, and to be
carried about in swaddling clothes in the arms of the philosophers, after
they have been functioning as adults in human communities from time
immemorial.
(a) That abounding genius and most lovable man, William James, realizing,
as many lesser men did not realize, that the truth contained in such
views was in danger of being lost sight of by many, wrote, with
characteristic vivacity and unerring dramatic instinct, the little volume
called "Pragmatism." It is with no lack of appreciation of the services
he has rendered, that I venture to call attention to the fact that he
has, in certain respects, failed to do justice to those views.
(b) Pragmatism has received attention partly on account of the
exaggerations of which it has been guilty. These have repelled some men
of sober mind. It appears to be maintained that we can play fast and
loose with the world, and make it what we will. I have criticized this
elsewhere,9 and shall not do so now. I shall only say here that I do not
believe that so able a man of science as William James meant all that he
said to be taken quite literally. He was gifted with a sense of humor.
This, some lack.
(c) Men of genius are apt to be strongly individualistic and impatient of
restraints. We have seen that there is such a thing as a public
conscience and a private conscience. The latter is only too often a
whimsical thing. Pragmatism appears to teach that any individual, as
such, has a moral right to adopt any hypothesis live enough to appeal to
his individual will. One has only to call to mind the extraordinary
assortment of guests collected by Signer Papini in his novel pragmatic
"hotel." [Footnote: _Ibid_.] Can such, by any human ingenuity, be
moulded into anything resembling an orderly community?
(d) In a later work, Professor James, realizing that religion and
theology are not identical, and strongly desirous of promoting religion,
deals severely with theology and the theologians. [Footnote: _Varieties
of Religious Experience_, Lecture xviii.]
One truth has been seen, but has not another been treated with some
injustice? Is it not inevitable that reflective men, who cherish beliefs,
should endeavor to give a more or less clear and reasoned account of
them? What degree of success is to be looked for, and what emphasis
should be laid upon such attempts, are questions which will probably
divide men for a long time to come.
(2) Hence, I do not advocate Pragmatism at all, but I agree with it in so
far, at least, as to recognize that belief is a phenomenon which concerns
the will. That it is so is a commonplace of psychology; and it was
recognized dimly long before the psychologist, as such, came into being.
That it is so is rather readily overlooked where the evidence for certain
beliefs is undeniable and overpowering. I seem forced to believe that I
am now writing. I do not seem forced in a similar manner to accept a
particular metaphysical doctrine or a given system of theological dogma.
Intelligent men appear to be able to discuss such matters with each other
and to agree to disagree. If they are tolerant, they can do this good-
temperedly. It is worth while to keep several points clearly in mind:
(a) Beliefs are not a matter of indifference. Some evidently lead to
palpable and speedy disaster. If I elect to believe that I can fly, and
leave my window-sill as lightly as does the sparrow I now see there, it
is time for my friends to provide me with an attendant.
Other beliefs are not of this character. And that they will lead to
ultimate disaster of any sort to myself or to others seems highly
disputable.
(b) What may be called scientific evidence may be adduced for different
beliefs with varying degrees of cogency. Hegel tries to distinguish
between the authority of the state and that of the church by attributing
to the former something like infallibility. He maintains that religion
"believes," but that the state "knows." [Footnote: The Philosophy of
Right, Sec 270.]
We have had abundant reason to see that the state does not _know_,
but _believes_, and that it is very often mistaken in its beliefs.
Nevertheless, it does its best to keep order, to be as rational as it
can, and to look a little way ahead. I think it ought to be admitted that
it concerns itself with matters more _terre-a-terre_ than does the
church; and that it ought not to be taken as a general truth that the
state should take its orders from the church. It has to do with matters
which, like our daily bread, must be assured, if certain other matters
are to be considered at all. In so far Hegel was right. There are those
who forget this, and talk as if metaphysical systems and religious
beliefs should be forced upon men in spite of themselves, either by sheer
force of windpower or with the aid of the police.
To this it may be added that beliefs range from an unshakable and
unthinking conviction to that degree of acquiescence which can scarcely
be distinguished from mere loyalty. It remains to be proved that the
latter may not come under the head of belief, and is something to be
condemned. [Footnote: More than thirty years ago, while I was the guest
of Henry Sidgwick at Cambridge, England, I asked him how it was that he,
the President of the British Society for Psychical Research, had never,
in his presidential addresses, expressed a belief in the phenomena
investigated. He answered that if the word "belief" were taken broadly
enough to express a willingness to look into things, he might be said to
believe. No more candid soul ever breathed.]
(c) Beliefs, being phenomena which concern the will, are at the mercy of
many influences. Is there any scientific evidence open to the parallelist
in psychology which is not also open to the interactionist? Is the
conviction that one's country is in the right a mere matter of scientific
evidence? Are the enlightened adherents of a given sect wholly ignorant
of the tenets and of the arguments of another?
I maintain that tradition and loyalty have their claims. They are not the
only claims that can be made, but they are worthy of serious
consideration. Man is man, whether he is dealing with things secular or
with things religious.
To see that such claims are recognized everywhere we have only to open
our eyes. It is absurd to believe that all the adherents of a political
party are influenced only by the logical arguments published in the
newspapers. A newspaper that lived on logic alone would starve to death.
It is ridiculous to believe that all the members of a church are induced
to become such only by the arguments of the theologians, many of which
arguments the mass of the members are not in a position to comprehend at
all.
And learned men are men, too. The philosopher who really kept himself
free from all prepossessions would, if he did much serious reading,
probably epitomize in his own person a large part of the history of
philosophy, falling out of one system and into another, like an acrobat.
But he is usually caught young and influenced by some teacher, or he is
carried away by some book or by the spirit of the times. As he is not an
abnormal creature, he acts like other men, becoming an adherent of a
school, or, if he is ambitious, starting one.
(d) We have seen that the individual has duties toward the state. We have
also seen that the state has duties toward the individual. The state
should not make it practically impossible for him to be a loyal citizen.
A somewhat similar duty appears to be incumbent upon the church.
A church that forces upon all of its members, as a condition of
membership, intricate and abstract systems of metaphysics; a church that
does not teach good-will toward men, but makes walls of separation out of
slight differences of opinion; a church that lags behind the moral sense
of the community in which it finds itself; a church that starves the
religious life; these, and such as these, must expect to lose adherents.
It is not that men reject them; it is that they reject men.
Those who read history have no reason to think that men, except here and
there and under exceptional circumstances, will cease to regard religious
duties as duties. I have not ventured to offer any detailed solution of
the problem of loyalty to the church. But neither have I ventured to
offer any detailed solution of the problem of loyalty to the state. In
the one case, as in the other, I suggest as guides tradition, intuition
and reflective reasoning. I can only counsel good sense and some degree
of patience. It may be said: You do not solve the difficulty for the
individual. I admit it. Such difficulties every thinking man must meet
and solve for himself.
169. THE LAST WORD.--Those persons, whether students, or teachers, who
dislike this final chapter, may omit it, without detriment to the rest of
the book. The doctrine of the Rational Social Will is not founded upon
this chapter. The latter is a mere appendix.
I regret that, in a work in which I have wished to avoid disputation, I
have felt compelled to touch upon religious duties at all. But they have
played, and still play, so significant a role in the history of mankind,
that the omission could scarcely have been made. You are free to take
them or leave them; but you are not free to take or leave the Rational
Social Will as the Moral Arbiter of the Destinies of Man.
NOTES
1. CHAPTERS I TO III.--The notes in a book of any sort are rarely read,
except by a few specialists, and by them not seldom with a view to
refuting the author. I shall make the following as brief as I may. But I
do wish to give some of my readers--all will not be equally learned--an
opportunity to get acquainted with a few books better than this one. This
first note is not addressed to the learned, and some will find it
superfluous.
I intend to mention here a handful of books which any cultivated man may
read with profit, and re-read with profit, if he has already read them.
They can be collected gradually at a relatively slight expense, and it is
a pleasure to have them in one's library. The list may easily be
bettered, and may be indefinitely lengthened. I mention only books for
those who are accustomed to do their reading in English.
It is hardly necessary to say that I do not advise all this reading in
connection with the first three chapters of this book. But, as those
chapters are concerned with the accepted content of morals as recognized
by individuals and communities, I have a good excuse for bringing the
list in here. Many other good books, not in the list, are referred to
later in the volume, in other chapters.
It is very convenient to have within one's reach some such book as
Sidgwick's _History of Ethics_. The only fault to find with Sidgwick
is that he has made his book too short, and has not given enough
references. But he is admirably fair and sympathetic, as well as clear
and interesting.
He, who would dip more deeply into the Greek moralists, can read the
accounts of the ancient egoists, Aristippus and Epicurus, in the _Lives
of the Philosophers_ by that entertaining old gossip, Diogenes
Laertius. The translation in Bohn's edition will serve the purpose.
As for the greatest of the Greeks--a keen pleasure, intellectual and
aesthetic, awaits the man who turns to Plato's _Republic_ and his
_Laws_. Jowett's great translation is in every public library. And
we must read Aristotle's _Nichomachean Ethics_ and his _Politics_.
Here little attention is given to artistic form; but the preternatural
acuteness of the man is overpowering. If we would understand some
of the reasons which induced Plato and Aristotle to write of the state
as they did, we can turn to chapter xiv of Grote's _Aristotle_.
With certain later classical moralists most of us are more or less
familiar. Seneca, in his work _On Benefits_, gives a good picture of
the moral emotions and judgments of an enlightened man of his time. He
was a great favorite with Christian writers later. Cicero's work, _De
Officiis--On Duties_--it is best known under the Latin title, is very
clear and very clever. It is, in its last half, full of "cases of
conscience." I venture to suggest to the teacher of undergraduates who
find ethics a dry subject, that he give them a handful of Cicero's
"cases" to quarrel over. Doing just this has brought about something
resembling civil war in certain classes of my undergraduates. It has done
them good, and it has vastly entertained me. But each teacher must follow
his own methods. We can none of us dictate.
How many of us have drawn inspiration from the noble reflections
contained in the _Thoughts_ of Marcus Aurelius and in the
_Discourses_ of Epictetus, those great Stoics! The unadorned
translations of George Long will serve to introduce us to these.
To get a good idea of how the moral world revealed itself to a Father of
the Church in the fifth century, we have only to turn to that most
fascinating of autobiographies, the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine.
His _City of God_ is too long, though interesting. Augustine's
thought influenced the world for centuries. Then we may take a long jump
and come down to St. Thomas, the great Scholastic of the thirteenth
century. To get acquainted with him, we may turn to the English versions
by Rickaby, _Aquinas Ethicus_. Those of us who are smugly satisfied
at belonging to the twentieth century must remind ourselves that there
were great men in the thirteenth, and that many among our contemporaries
are still listening to them. We Protestant teachers of philosophy are
sometimes in danger of forgetting this. A strictly fresh century and a
strictly fresh egg cannot claim to be precisely on a par.
I do not think that I shall add the modern moralists to this list. There
are a great many of them, and many of them are very good. But they are
discussed at length in Part VII, which deals with the schools of the
moralists. Citations and references are there given. I think, however,
that I ought to add here that I should regard an ethical collection
incomplete that did not include at least one of the comprehensive works
on morals lately offered us by certain sociologists. Westermarck's
wonderful book--a mine of information--on _The Origin and Development
of the Moral Ideas_, or the admirable book by Hobhouse, _Morals in
Evolution_, will serve to fill the gap.
Information regarding editions of all the books I have mentioned can be
had in most public libraries, or from any good publisher and book-seller.
As for the reading to accompany these Chapters, I-III, I suggest looking
over the chapters by Westermarck and Hobhouse, indicated in foot-notes.
He who would realize how men have differed in their moral outlook on life
might read the lives of Aristippus, Epicurus and Zeno, in Diogenes
Laertius; or follow the account, in Sidgwick's _History of Ethics_,
of Aristotle's teaching, as compared with the ethics of the Church.
2. Chapters IV to VII.--These chapters on ethics as science and on
ethical method do not appear to me to call for extensive notes. Several
foot-notes are given which might be followed up. I think it would be a
very good thing for the student to read chapters i and vi in Sidgwick's
admirable work, The _Methods of Ethics_.
3. Chapters VIII to X.--To undertake to give any adequate list of
references on the chapters which treat of man's nature and of his
material and social environment would take us quite too far afield. I
merely suggest looking up the articles on "Anthropology" and "Sociology"
in the _Encyclopedia Britannica._ References are given there. And
one should not overlook Darwin's great book on _The Descent of Man_.
It will never be rendered superfluous, although the men of our day
criticize it in detail. A recent work of value is "Heredity and
Environment in the Development of Men," by Professor Edwin Grant Conklin,
1918.
4. Chapters XI to XVI.--Here my notes must be somewhat more detailed, for
we are on quite debatable ground. At any rate, there is much dispute,
between men of unquestionable ability, on the one side and on the other.
I may be pardoned for thinking that the general argument of these
chapters is reasonable and sound.
In commenting upon Chapter XI, I suggest that the reader look up what
Hobhouse has to say on impulse, desire and will, in his volume, _Morals
in Evolution_; also that he consult the same topics in James'
_Psychology_. McDougall's _Social Psychology_ might be read
with much profit.
Some admirable writers have a repugnance to using the word "volition" in
speaking of the brutes. I cannot help thinking that this is a dispute
touching the proper use of a word, rather than that any important
distinction in _kind_ is marked. Some human volitions stand out very
clearly as such. There are free ideas present, there is the tension of
desires, there is deliberation, and there is clearly conscious choice, or
the final release of tension. But how many of the decisions--I see no
objection to the word,--which we make during the course of a day, are of
this character! It would be difficult to set a lower limit to volition.
Muirhead, who writes, in his _Elements of Ethics_, clearly and well
of desires, emphasizing the presence of "tensions," follows the Neo-
Hegelian tradition in speaking of will. He describes it as the act by
which the attention is concentrated upon one object of desire, and he
calls the act of choice the _identifying of oneself_ with one object
or line of action.
Naturally, it is not easy to think of the bee or the ant or the spider,
perhaps not even of the cat or dog, as "identifying itself" with some
object of desire. I suggest that the reader, after a perusal of Muirhead,
reflect upon what Hobhouse has to say of the lower animals; or that he
look up Miss Washburn's book on _The Animal Mind_, (second edition,
1918), where a really serious study of the brute is undertaken.
On Chapter XII, I find no comment necessary. As to Chapter XIII, I
recommend to the reader a reading or re-reading of the fascinating pages
in which James treats of instinct in his _Psychology_. And let him
look up the same subject in McDougall's _Social Psychology_. At the
same time, I enter a note of warning against reading even such good
writers uncritically. There is no little dispute in this field. Dr. H. R.
Marshall's volume _Mind and Conduct_ gives an unusually thoughtful
account of instinct (N. Y., 1919).
Comment on Chapter XIV is not imperatively necessary. But I must speak
with detail of Chapter XV, for the best of men quarrel when they come
upon this ground:
Sec 49. The psychologist takes into his mouth no word more ambiguous than
"feeling." It may be used to indicate any mental content whatever--John
Stuart Mill could speak of consciousness as composed of a string of
feelings. Herbert Spencer divided conscious processes into "feelings" and
"relations between feelings." James obliterates the distinction, and
finds it possible to speak of "a feeling of _and_, a feeling of
_if_, a feeling of _but_," etc. (_Psychology_ I, p. 154,
ff.).
Some writers do not distinguish between emotions and feelings. Thus,
Darwin, in his _Descent of Man_, calls pleasure and pain "emotions."
Marshall (_op. cit._, chapter ii) makes emotions, and even
intuitions, "instinct-feelings." Dewey, in his _Ethics_ (p. 251),
appears to treat emotions as synonymous with feelings. Gardiner, in his
interesting and careful study, _Affective Psychology in Ancient Writers
after Aristotle_ (_Psychological Review_. May, 1919), treats of
"what are popularly called the feelings, including emotions."
On the other hand, in ethical writings the word, "feelings," very often
means no more than pleasure and pain. Thus, _Seth_ (_A Study of
Ethical Principles_, p. 63), makes feelings synonymous with pleasure
and pain. Muirhead (_Elements of Ethics_, p. 46), says, "by feeling
is meant simply pleasure and pain"; and to have "interest" in, he defines
as to have pleasure in (p. 46).
This narrowing of the meaning of the word on the part of ethical writers
is, perhaps, natural. The hedonistic moralists made pleasure and pain the
only ultimate reasonable stimulants to action. Many moralists opposed
them (see, later, Chapters XXIV and XXV). So pleasure and pain became
"the feelings," _par excellence_. Both Dewey and Alexander sometimes
speak as if, by the word "feeling," we meant no more than pleasure and
pain. So does Kant.
The modern psychologist sometimes distinguishes pleasure and pain from
"agreeableness" and "disagreeableness." Marshall, a high authority on
pleasure and pain, refuses to draw the distinction (_op. cit._, Part
III. chapter vi). But he also refuses to call pleasure and pain
sensations, regarding them as "qualifications of our sensations," like
intensity, duration, and the like.
Are pleasures, as pleasures, alike? and are pains, as pains, alike?
Jeremy Bentham refused to distinguish between kinds of pleasures. On the
other hand, John Stuart Mill did so (see Chapter XXV in this volume); and
S. Alexander, in his work entitled _Moral Order and Progress_,
maintains that pleasures differ in kind, and cannot be compared merely in
their intensity (see page 202).
The whole matter is complicated enough, and there is occupation for the
most disputatious. But I do not think that these disputes very directly
affect the argument of my chapter.
Sec 50. That there is a relation between feeling and action, but that the
two are by no means nicely adjusted to each other, has been recognized in
many quarters.
Darwin, discussing the mental and moral qualities of man, points out that
the satisfaction of some fundamental instincts gives little pleasure,
although uneasiness is suffered if they are not satisfied. Seth (_op.
cit._, p. 64) says that feelings "guide" action; and he claims that
the energy of a moving idea lies in the feeling which it arouses (p. 70).
On the quantity of emotion, and its relation to action, see Stephen, The
Science of Ethics, ii, iii, 25.
Sec 51. It appears to be repugnant to Green to admit that feeling--
pleasure--can be the direct object of action; and he denies roundly that
a sum of pleasures can be made an object of desire and will at all
(_Prolegomena to Ethics_, Sec 221; see Sec 113 of this book). Moreover,
he maintains, and in this Dewey follows him, that the making of pleasure
an object is evidence of the existence of unhealthy desires. I cannot but
think this, taken generally, an exaggeration. Of course, what is called
"a man of pleasure" is a pretty poor sort of a thing.
Sec 52. In this section I do not touch at all upon the immemorial dispute
concerning what has been called "the 'freedom' of the will."
Indeed, I leave it out of this book altogether. The moralist must, I
think, assume that man has natural impulses and is a rational creature.
Those who are interested in the problem above mentioned, may turn to my
_Introduction to Philosophy_, chapter xi, Sec 46, where the matter is
discussed, and references (in the corresponding note) are given.
Chapter XVI.--The matter of this chapter appears, clear enough, but it
may be well to give a few references touching the two conceptions of the
functions of Reason.
Men of quite varying views have inclined to the doctrine which appeals to
me. I think it is to be gotten out of Hegel. Green, who is much
influenced by him, takes, as the rational end of conduct, a "satisfaction
on the whole," which implies a harmonization and unification of the
desires (see, in this book, Chapter XXVI, Sec 122). Spencer, in his
_Study of Sociology_, defines the rational as the consistent.
Stephen, in his _Science of Ethics_, chapter ii, Sec 3, says: "Reason,
in short, whatever its nature, is the faculty which enables us to act
with a view to the distant and the future." He claims that rationality
tends to bring about a certain unity or harmony. Hobhouse, _Morals in
Evolution_, (pp. 572-581), says that reason harmonizes the impulses.
The champions of the opposite view are the intuitionists proper--such men
as Kant, Reid, Price, even Sidgwick. To judge of their doctrine--they
were great men, be it remembered, and worthy of all respect--I suggest
that the reader wait until he has read the chapter on _Intuitionism_
in this volume, Chapter XXIII.
5. CHAPTERS XVII TO XIX.--What is said in Chapter XVII seems too
obviously true to need comment. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the
chapter is not full of platitudes. But even platitudes are overlooked by
some; and there is some merit in arranging them systematically. Besides,
they may serve as a spring-board.
As to Chapter XVIII, I suggest reading chapter vii, of Westermarck's book
on _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_. It is entitled
_Customs and Laws as Expressions of Moral Ideas_.
For Chapter XIX, one may read Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, Part
I, chapter vi, where he shows how the mere "group morality" gradually
gives place to a wider morality in which the concept of humanity plays a
part. In the same work, Part II, chapters i and ii, the author treats of
religious or sub-religious ideas as affecting conduct. Compare
Westermarck, _op. cit._, chapter xl. See, also, _The Ancient
City_, by Fustel de Coulanges.
6. CHAPTERS XX TO XXII.--What is said in Chapter XX may be well
reinforced by turning to Hobhouse (_op. cit._), Part I, chapter iii,
where he traces the gradual evolution of rational morality in the field
of justice. See, also, Westermarck, (_op. cit._) chapters ix and x,
i. e., "The Will as the Subject of Moral Judgment and the Influence of
External Events," and "Agents under Intellectual Disability." In the last
chapter referred to, animals, drunkards, idiots, the insane, etc., come
on the stage. The chapter is full of curious information.
In Chapter XXI (Sec 86), I have spoken of the hesitating utterances of
moralists touching any duties we may owe to the brutes. I suggest that
before anyone dogmatize in detail on this subject he read with some care
such a comprehensive work as Miss Washburn's _The Animal Mind_. The
book is admirable. Chapters x and xliv of Westermarck's work are
instructive and entertaining on this subject. Hegel disposes of the
animals rather summarily. See his _Philosophy of Right_, Sec 47.
Sidgwick, _The Methods of Ethics_, Book III, chapter iv, 2, is well
worth consulting. See in my own volume, Chapter XXX, Sec 141.
For Chapter XXII, I give no references. I appeal only to the common sense
of my reader.
7. Chapters XXIII to XXIX.--For the chapters on the Schools of the
Moralists, XXIII to XXIX, I shall give briefer notes than I should have
given, were the chapters not already so well provided with foot-notes.
So far as the first four of these chapters are concerned, I shall assume
that enough has been said, drawing attention only to two points which
concern Chapter XXIII.
It is very interesting to note that one of our best critics of
intuitionism, Hemy Sidgwick, was himself an intuitionist. His _Methods
of Ethics_ deserves very close attention. Again Intuitions are often
spoken of as if they had been shot out of a pistol, and had neither
father nor mother. To understand them better it is only necessary to read
chapter viii of Dr. H. R. Marshall's little book, _Mind and
Conduct_, which shows how difficult it is to mark intuitions off
sharply, and to treat them as if they had nothing in common with reason.
Those interested in the ethics of evolution, treated in Chapter XXVII,
should not miss reading the fourth chapter of Darwin's _Descent of
Man_. Huxley's essay, _Evolution and Ethics_, might be read. The
"Prolegomena" to the essay is, however, much more valuable than the essay
itself. Spencer's general theory of conduct is best gathered from his
_Data of Ethics_, which was reprinted as Part I of his _Principles
of Ethics_. The volume by C. M. Williams, entitled, _A Review of
Evolutionary Ethics_, gives a convenient account of a dozen or more
writers who have treated of ethics from the evolutionary standpoint. It
is well not to overlook what Sidgwick has to say of evolution and ethics;
see _The Methods of Ethics_, Book I, chapter ii, Sec 2.
As for Chapter XXVIII, on "Pessimism," it is enough, I think, to refer
the reader to Book IV, in Schopenhauer's work on _The World as Will and
Idea_. The Book is entitled _The Assertion and Denial of the Will to
Live, where Self-consciousness has been Attained_. See also his
supplementary chapters, xlvi, on "The Vanity and Suffering of Life," and
xlviii, "On the Doctrine of the Denial of the Will to Live." For the
doctrine of von Hartmann, see chapters xiii to xv, in the part of his
work entitled, _The Metaphysic of the Unconscious_.
For the chapter on Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, I shall give but a few
references, though the literature on these writers is enormous. The
English reader will find T. K. Abbott's translation of Kant's ethical
writings a very convenient volume (third edition, London, 1883). The
translation of Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_, by S. W. Dyde (1896),
I have found good, where I have compared it with the original. The word
"Right" in the title is unavoidably ambiguous, for the German word means
both "right" and "law." Hegel is dealing, in a sense, with both. I have
indicated, in a foot-note, that Nietzsche ought to be read in the
original. He is a marvellous artist.
Perhaps I should add that Nietzsche will be read with most pleasure by
those who do not attempt to find in his works a system of ethics. I
recommend to the reader, especially, his three volumes: _The Genealogy
of Morals_; _Beyond Good and Evil_; and _Thus Spake Zarathustra_;
(New York, 1911).
8. CHAPTERS XXX TO XXXVI.--I shall not comment on Chapter XXX. It is
sufficiently interpreted by what has been said earlier in this book. Nor
do I think that Chapter XXXI needs to be discussed here. I need only say
that many moralists have commented upon the negative aspect of the moral
law. It will be remembered that the "demon" of Socrates--a dreadful
translation--was a negative sign. I do not think that those who have
dwelt upon the negative aspect of morality have reflected sufficiently
upon the moral organization of society. We are put to school unavoidably
as soon as we are born.
I shall not dwell upon Chapters XXXII and XXXIII. Here I appeal merely to
the good sense of the reader.
But Chapter XXXIV demands more attention. He who is ignorant of history,
and has come into no close contact with the organization and functioning
of any state other than his own, is as unfit to pass judgment upon states
generally, as is the man who has never been away from his native village
to pass judgment upon towns generally--towns inhabited by various peoples
and situated in different quarters of the globe. His lot may, it is true,
happen to be cast in a good village; but how he is to tell that it is
good, I cannot conceive. He has no standard of comparison.
Fortunately, his ignorance is not as harmful as it might be. The Rational
Social Will, which is penetrated through and through with traditions
wiser than the whims of the individual, carries him along upon its broad
bosom, and makes decisions for him.
The sociologist and the political philosopher should be consulted, as
well as the historian, by one who would make a satisfactory list of books
touching the subject of this chapter. But the moralist may be allowed to
suggest a few titles, some of them very old ones. Plato's _Republic_
is fascinating, and Aristotle's _Politics_ is the shrewdest of
books. But compare the state as conceived by these men with our notions
of a modern democracy! More's _Utopia_ is a delight. To get back to
earth and see what _history_ means to a state, and to its
constitution and laws, read Sir Henry Maine's _Ancient Law_. States
are not made in a day, although, under abnormal conditions, governments
may be upset, and new ones set up, within twenty-four hours. After such
unhistorical proceedings, one can scarcely expect "fast colors." One or
two washings will suffice to show what was there before.
He who has a weakness for the operatic can peruse Rousseau's _Social
Contract_ and the _Declaration of the Rights of Man_ published in
the great French Revolution. As an antidote, I suggest Bentham's essay on
_Anarchical Fallacies_.
But reading will do little good--even historical reading--unless one
also thinks. It is wonderful how much knowledge a man may escape, if he
is born under the proper star. I once knew an undergraduate in an
American university, who attended compulsory chapel for more than three
years, and who still thought that the Old Testament was a history of the
Ancient Romans.
There is quite too much to say about Chapters XXXV and XXXVI. The only
thing to do is to say nothing. I shall touch upon just one point in each
chapter. I venture to beg the teacher, when he treats of International
Ethics, to read in class, with his students, those pages in which Sir
Thomas More describes the principles upon which the Utopians conducted
their wars. Remember that Sir Thomas was not merely a statesman, but, by
common consent, a learned, a great, and a good man. Mark the reaction of
the undergraduate mind.
The one matter upon which I shall comment in Chapter XXXVI, is the
question of belief as an object of approval or of censure. Westermarck
states (_The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, Volume I,
chapter viii, p. 216), that neither the Catholic nor the Protestant
Church regarded _belief, as such_, as an object of censure. Yet each
was willing to punish heresy. The point is most interesting, and I hazard
an explanation. The churches were organizations with a definite object.
They made use of reward and punishment. This was reasonable enough,
abstractly considered. However, doctrine was the affair of the
theologian. Now the theologian, like the philosopher, is a man who
assumes that he is concerned with _proofs_, and with proofs only. If
a thing is _proved_, how can a man _help_ believing it? Only if
he _will_ not, which is sheer obstinacy or perversity. Let him,
then, be punished on account of his defective character (see Westermarck,
I, chapter xi, p. 283).
I think the apparent quibbling here can be gotten rid of by recognizing
the truth emphasized in Sec Sec 167-168, namely, that logical proofs play
but a subordinate part in the adoption or rejection of beliefs touching a
vast number of matters both secular and religious. If we can influence
men's emotions, we can influence their beliefs. Both State and Church
have this power. It is a power that can be abused. But it is, on the
whole, a good thing that men's beliefs can thus be influenced. There
would be no stability in human society could they not. Every ignorant
man--and many men are ignorant--would be at the mercy of every clever
talker; and he would change his beliefs every day. As men act on beliefs,
this means that he would zig-zag through life to the detriment of all
orderly development. I beg the reader, learned or unlearned, to put aside
prepossessions, and to look at things as they are in this field.