It is impossible for a physician to prescribe a rational regimen for a
patient unless he has formed some clear conception of the nature of his
constitution and of the morbid influences to which it is inclined; and
in judging the wisdom of various proposals for the management of
character we are at once met by the initial controversy about the
goodness or the depravity of human nature. It is a subject on which
extreme exaggerations have prevailed. The school of Rousseau, which
dominated on the Continent in the last half of the eighteenth century,
represented mankind as a being who comes into existence essentially
good, and it attributed all the moral evils of the world, not to any
innate tendencies to vice, but to superstition, vicious institutions,
misleading education, a badly organised society. It is an obvious
criticism that if human nature had been as good as such writers
imagined, these corrupt and corrupting influences could never have grown
up, or at least could never have obtained a controlling influence, and
this philosophy became greatly discredited when the French Revolution,
which it did so much to produce, ended in the unspeakable horrors of the
Reign of Terror and in the gigantic carnage of the Napoleonic wars. On
the other hand, there are large schools of theologians who represent man
as utterly and fundamentally depraved, 'born in corruption, inclined to
evil, incapable by himself of doing good;' totally wrecked and ruined
as a moral being by the catastrophe in Eden. There are also moral
philosophers--usually very unconnected with theology--who deny or
explain away all unselfish elements in human nature, represent man as
simply governed by self-interest, and maintain that the whole art of
education and government consists of a judicious arrangement of selfish
motives, making the interests of the individual coincident with those of
his neighbours. It is not too much to say that Society never could have
subsisted if this view of human nature had been a just one. The world
would have been like a cage-full of wild beasts, and mankind would have
soon perished in constant internecine war.
It is indeed one of the plainest facts of human nature that such a view
of mankind is an untrue one. Jealousy, envy, animosities and selfishness
no doubt play a great part in life and disguise themselves under many
specious forms, and the cynical moralist was not wholly wrong when he
declared that 'Virtue would not go so far if Vanity did not keep her
company,' and that not only our crimes but even many of what are deemed
our best acts may be traced to selfish motives. But he must have had a
strangely unfortunate experience of the world who does not recognise the
enormous exaggeration of the pictures of human nature that are conveyed
in some of the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and Schopenhauer. They tell us
that friendship is a mere exchange of interests in which each man only
seeks to gain something from the other; that most women are only pure
because they are untempted and regret that the temptation does not come;
that if we acknowledge some faults it is in order to persuade ourselves
that we have no greater ones, or in order, by our confession, to regain
the good opinion of our neighbours; that if we praise another it is
merely that we may ourselves in turn be praised; that the tears we shed
over a deathbed, if they are not hypocritical tears intended only to
impress our neighbours, are only due to our conviction that we have
ourselves lost a source of pleasure or of gain; that envy so
predominates in the world that it is only men of inferior intellect or
women of inferior beauty who are sincerely liked by those about them;
that all virtue is an egotistic calculation, conscious or unconscious.
Such views are at least as far removed from truth as the roseate
pictures of Rousseau and St. Pierre. No one can look with an unjaundiced
eye upon the world without perceiving the enormous amount of
disinterested, self-sacrificing benevolence that pervades it; the
countless lives that are spent not only harmlessly and inoffensively but
also in the constant discharge of duties; in constant and often painful
labour for the good of others. The better section of the Utilitarian
school has fully recognised the truth that human nature is so
constituted that a great proportion of its enjoyment depends on
sympathy; or, in other words, on the power we possess of entering into
and sharing the happiness of others. The spectacle of suffering
naturally elicits compassion. Kindness naturally produces gratitude. The
sympathies of men naturally move on the side of the good rather than of
the bad. This is true not only of the things that immediately concern
us, but also in the perfectly disinterested judgments we form of the
events of history or of the characters in fiction and poetry. Great
exhibitions of heroism and self-sacrifice touch a genuine chord of
enthusiasm. The affections of the domestic circle are the rule and not
the exception; patriotism can elicit great outbursts of purely unselfish
generosity and induce multitudes to risk or sacrifice their lives for
causes which are quite other than their own selfish interests. Human
nature indeed has its moral as well as its physical needs, and naturally
and instinctively seeks some object of interest and enthusiasm outside
itself.
If we look again into the vice and sin that undoubtedly disfigure the
world we shall find much reason to believe that what is exceptional in
human nature is not the evil tendency but the restraining conscience,
and that it is chiefly the weakness of the distinctively human quality
that is the origin of the evil. It is impossible indeed, with the
knowledge we now possess, to deny to animals some measure both of reason
and of the moral sense. In addition to the higher instincts of parental
affection and devotion which are so clearly developed we find among some
animals undoubted signs of remorse, gratitude, affection,
self-sacrifice. Even the point of honour which attaches shame to some
things and pride to others may be clearly distinguished. No one who has
watched the more intelligent dog can question this, and many will
maintain that in some animals, though both good and bad qualities are
less widely developed than in man, the proportion of the good to the
evil is more favourable in the animal than in the man. At the same time
in the animal world desire is usually followed without any other
restraint than fear, while in man it is largely though no doubt very
imperfectly limited by moral self-control. Most crimes spring not from
anything wrong in the original and primal desire but from the
imperfection of this higher, distinct or superadded element in our
nature. The crimes of dishonesty and envy, when duly analysed, have at
their basis simply a desire for the desirable--a natural and inevitable
feeling. What is absent is the restraint which makes men refrain from
taking or trying to take desirable things that belong to another.
Sensual faults spring from a perfectly natural impulse, but the
restraint which confines the action of that impulse to defined
circumstances is wanting. Much, too, of the insensibility and hardness
of the world is due to a simple want of imagination which prevents us
from adequately realising the sufferings of others. The predatory,
envious and ferocious feelings that disturb mankind operate unrestrained
through the animal world, though man's superior intelligence gives his
desires a special character and a greatly increased scope, and
introduces them into spheres inconceivable to the animal. Immoderate and
uncontrolled desires are the root of most human crimes, but at the same
time the self-restraint that limits desire, or self-seeking, by the
rights of others, seems to be mainly, though not wholly, the prerogative
of man.
Considerations of this kind are sufficient to remedy the extreme
exaggeration of human corruption that may often be heard, but they are
not inconsistent with the truth that human nature is so far depraved
that it can never be safely left to develop unimpeded without strong
legal and social restraint. It is not necessary to seek examples of its
depravity within the precincts of a prison or in the many instances
that may be found outside the criminal population of morbid moral taints
which are often as clearly marked as physical disease. On a large scale
and in the actions of great bodies of men the melancholy truth is
abundantly displayed. On the whole Christianity has been far more
successful in influencing individuals than societies. The mere spectacle
of a battle-field with the appalling mass of hideous suffering
deliberately and ingeniously inflicted by man upon man should be
sufficient to scatter all idyllic pictures of human nature. It was once
the custom of a large school of writers to attribute unjust wars solely
to the rulers of the world, who for their own selfish ambitions
remorselessly sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of their
subjects. Their guilt has been very great, but they would never have
pursued the course of ambitious conquest if the applause of nations had
not followed and encouraged them, and there are no signs that democracy,
which has enthroned the masses, has any real tendency to diminish war.
In modern times the danger of war lies less in the intrigues of
statesmen than in deeply seated international jealousies and
antipathies; in sudden, volcanic outbursts of popular passion. After
eighteen hundred years' profession of the creed of peace, Christendom is
an armed camp. Never, or hardly ever, in times of peace had the mere
preparations of war absorbed so large a proportion of its population and
resources, and very seldom has so large an amount of its ability been
mainly employed in inventing and in perfecting instruments of
destruction. Those who will look on the world without illusion will be
compelled to admit that the chief guarantees for its peace are to be
found much less in moral than in purely selfish motives. The financial
embarrassments of the great nations; their profound distrust of one
another; the vast cost of modern war; the gigantic commercial disasters
it inevitably entails; the extreme uncertainty of its issue; the utter
ruin that may follow defeat--these are the real influences that restrain
the tiger passions and the avaricious cravings of mankind. It is also
one of the advantages that accompany the many evils of universal
service, that great citizen armies who in time of war are drawn from
their homes, their families, and their peaceful occupations have not the
same thirst for battle that grows up among purely professional soldiers,
voluntarily enlisted and making a military life their whole career. Yet,
in spite of all this, what trust could be placed in the forbearance of
Christian nations if the path of aggression was at once easy, lucrative
and safe? The judgments of nations in dealing with the aggressions of
their neighbours are, it is true, very different from those which they
form of aggressions by their own statesmen or for their own benefit. But
no great nation is blameless, and there is probably no nation that could
not speedily catch the infection of the warlike spirit if a conqueror
and a few splendid victories obscured, as they nearly always do, the
moral issues of the contest.
War, it is true, is not always or wholly evil. Sometimes it is
justifiable and necessary. Sometimes it is professedly and in part
really due to some strong wave of philanthropic feeling produced by
great acts of wrong, though of all forms of philanthropy it is that
which most naturally defeats itself. Even when unjustifiable, it calls
into action splendid qualities of courage, self-sacrifice, and
endurance which cast a dazzling and deceptive glamour over its horrors
and its criminality. It appeals too, beyond all other things, to that
craving for excitement, adventure, and danger which is an essential and
imperious element in human nature, and which, while it is in itself
neither a virtue nor a vice, blends powerfully with some of the best as
well as with some of the worst actions of mankind. It is indeed a
strange thing to observe how many men in every age have been ready to
risk or sacrifice their lives for causes which they have never clearly
understood and which they would find it difficult in plain words to
describe.
But the amount of pure and almost spontaneous malevolence in the world
is probably far greater than we at first imagine. In public life the
workings of this side of human nature are at once disclosed and
magnified, like the figures thrown by a magic lantern on a screen, to a
scale which it is impossible to overlook. No one, for example, can study
the anonymous press without perceiving how large a part of it is
employed systematically, persistently and deliberately in fostering
class, or race, or international hatreds, and often in circulating
falsehoods to attain this end. Many newspapers notoriously depend for
their existence on such appeals, and more than any other instruments
they inflame and perpetuate those permanent animosities which most
endanger the peace of mankind. The fact that such newspapers are
becoming in many countries the main and almost exclusive reading of the
poor forms the most serious deduction from the value of popular
education. How many books have attained popularity, how many seats in
Parliament have been won, how many posts of influence and profit have
been attained, how many party victories have been achieved, by appealing
to such passions! Often they disguise themselves under the lofty names
of patriotism and nationality, and men whose whole lives have been spent
in sowing class hatreds and dividing kindred nations may be found
masquerading under the name of patriots, and have played no small part
on the stage of politics. The deep-seated sedition, the fierce class and
national hatreds that run through European life would have a very
different intensity from what they now unfortunately have if they had
not been artificially stimulated and fostered through purely selfish
motives by demagogues, political adventurers and public writers.
Some of the very worst acts of which man can be guilty are acts which
are commonly untouched by law and only faintly censured by opinion.
Political crimes which a false and sickly sentiment so readily condones
are conspicuous among them. Men who have been gambling for wealth and
power with the lives and fortunes of multitudes; men who for their own
personal ambition are prepared to sacrifice the most vital interests of
their country; men who in time of great national danger and excitement
deliberately launch falsehood after falsehood in the public press in the
well-founded conviction that they will do their evil work before they
can be contradicted, may be met shameless, and almost uncensured, in
Parliaments and drawing-rooms. The amount of false statement in the
world which cannot be attributed to mere carelessness, inaccuracy, or
exaggeration, but which is plainly both deliberate and malevolent, can
hardly be overrated. Sometimes it is due to a mere desire to create a
lucrative sensation, or to gratify a personal dislike, or even to an
unprovoked malevolence which takes pleasure in inflicting pain.
Very often it is intended for purposes of stockjobbing. The financial
world is percolated with it. It is the common method of raising or
depreciating securities, attracting investors, preying upon the ignorant
and credulous, and enabling dishonest men to rise rapidly to fortune.
When the prospect of speedy wealth is in sight, there are always numbers
who are perfectly prepared to pursue courses involving the utter ruin of
multitudes, endangering the most serious international interests,
perhaps bringing down upon the world all the calamities of war. It is no
doubt true that such men are only a minority, though it is less certain
that they would be a minority if the opportunity of obtaining sudden
riches by immoral means was open to all, and it is no small minority who
are accustomed to condone these crimes when they have succeeded. It is
much to be questioned whether the greatest criminals are to be found
within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on a small scale nearly always
finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a gigantic scale continually
escapes. The pickpocket and the burglar seldom fail to meet with their
merited punishment, but in the management of companies, in the great
fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic fortunes are
acquired by the ruin of multitudes and by methods which, though they
evade legal penalties, are essentially fraudulent. In the majority of
cases these crimes are perpetrated by educated men who are in possession
of all the necessaries, of most of the comforts, and of many of the
luxuries of life, and some of the worst of them are powerfully favoured
by the conditions of modern civilisation. There is no greater scandal or
moral evil in our time than the readiness with which public opinion
excuses them, and the influence and social position it accords to mere
wealth, even when it has been acquired by notorious dishonesty or when
it is expended with absolute selfishness or in ways that are positively
demoralising. In many respects the moral progress of mankind seems to me
incontestable, but it is extremely doubtful whether in this respect
social morality, especially in England and America, has not seriously
retrograded.
In truth, while it is a gross libel upon human nature to deny the vast
amount of genuine kindness, self-sacrifice and even heroism that exists
in the world, it is equally idle to deny the deplorable weakness of
self-restraint, the great force and the widespread influence of purely
evil passions in the affairs of men. The distrust of human character
which the experience of life tends to produce is one great cause of the
Conservatism which so commonly strengthens with age. It is more and more
felt that all the restraints of law, custom, and religion are essential
to hold together in peaceful co-operation the elements of society, and
men learn to look with increasing tolerance on both institutions and
opinions which cannot stand the test of pure reason and may be largely
mixed with delusions if only they deepen the better habits and give an
additional strength to moral restraints. They learn also to appreciate
the danger of pitching their ideals too high, and endeavouring to
enforce lines of conduct greatly above the average level of human
goodness. Such attempts, when they take the form of coercive action,
seldom fail to produce a recoil which is very detrimental to morals. In
this, as in all other spheres, the importance of compromise in practical
life is one of the great lessons which experience teaches.