THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL APPEAL
There is a phrase, "liberty of conscience," which well expresses the
modern conception of moral obligation. It recognizes that duty in the
last analysis is imposed upon the individual neither by society nor
even by God, but by himself; that there is no authority in moral
matters more ultimate than a man's own rational conviction of what is
best.
We meet here with the application to morality of the motive which
underlies the whole modern reaction against medievalism, the motive
which John Locke so aptly summarized when he said, "We should not judge
of things by men's opinions, but of opinions by things." [1] This is
individualism of the positive temper, the protest against convention
and authority; in behalf, not of license, but of knowledge.
Mediaevalism is condemned, not for its universalism, but for its
arbitrariness and untruth; for its mistaking of the weight of
collective opinion, or of institutional prestige, for the weight of
evidence.
This is the characteristic temper of the modern {35} individualism,
whether it be dominated by a bias for sense or a bias for reason.
Locke, like his forerunner, Bacon, is an individualist because it is
the individual in his detachment from society that alone can be
open-eyed and open-minded; who is qualified to carry on that "proper
business of the understanding," "to think of everything just as it is
in itself." [2] Descartes, although in habit of mind and speculative
instinct he has so little in common with the Englishman, nevertheless
finds in the individual's self-discipline and concentration the only
hope of preserving the savor of the salt of knowledge. Thus he says:
I thought that the sciences contained in books, (such of them at least
as are made up of probable reasonings, without demonstrations),
composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals
massed together, are farther removed from truth than the simple
inferences which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced
judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.[3]
Spinoza, who both abandoned the world and was abandoned by it, sought
an individual philosophy of life that should be more universal than the
opinion of the world on account of its greater truth. "Further
reflection convinced me, that if I could really get to the root of the
matter I should be leaving certain evils for a certain good." [4]
This was the impulse in which modern tolerance of individual opinion
and appeal to {36} individual conscience originated. It was a protest
not against order, but against the disheartening drag, the heavy and
dull constraint, of an order externally imposed. Freedom was valued
not for the sake of lawlessness, but for the sake of a clearer
recognition of the proper laws of things, of the principles that lie in
nature and civilization and control them inherently.
Individualism in this sense is not sceptical. Even a charge that
existing codes of morality and systems of thought are largely matters
of social habit, or rules devised by church and state to maintain an
arbitrary and profitable power, does not justify the inference that
there is no truth. For there is no dilemma between public tyranny and
private caprice. On the contrary, it means that tyranny is itself a
form of caprice, and that caprice in any form must give way before
reason and experiment. Certain contemporary popular philosophers, such
as Wells and Shaw, appear to believe that to repudiate the rigid
conventions of the day means to abolish absolute distinctions utterly
and fall back upon a general laxity and vagueness. But this is to
throw out the baby with the bath. The evil in convention is the
substitution of merely _habitual_ distinctions for real distinctions,
and the only justification for an assault on convention is the bringing
of such real distinctions to light.
{37}
The individualist virtually claims that an individual's belief, if it
be critical, is entitled to precedence over public belief, simply
because the individual mind is a better instrument of knowledge than
the public mind. It is the individual mind that is more directly
confronted with the evidence, more single and responsive.
Individualism is not, then, an appeal to private opinion in any
disparaging sense. For, in so far as private opinion is independent
and truthful in motive, concerning itself with its objects rather than
with the social model of the day, it is self-corrective and tends
inevitably toward the common truth. It is the opinion that is not
really individual, but imitative, respectful of persons, generally
submissive to ulterior motives of a social kind, that is private in the
bad sense. Its privacy lies in its artificiality, in its partisanship,
and in its remove from the open daylight of experience.
If, therefore, one must in moral matters finally rely on the
individual's judgment, this in no way implies the breakdown of
universal principles. It is neither necessary nor natural that
individual judgment should bespeak whim, hasty impulse, or narrow
self-interest. The guardian in Plato's _Republic_ was as much an
individual as the merchant or the soldier.[5] In a sense he was more
an individual than these, since he was not swayed by the crowd, but
thought with freedom {38} and independence. Nevertheless his thought
embraced the interests of the entire community, and comprehended the
organization and forms of adjustment through which they all might live
and thrive. In moral as in other matters the true appeal of
individualism is to an intelligence which, though emancipated from
convention, is on that very account committed to the general
necessities that lie in the field it seeks to know.
In view of these considerations, then, we may pronounce legitimate and
hopeful the moral individualism of the time. It implies the
recognition that there is a genuine ground for moral action, which may
be brought home to any individual mind that will deal honestly and
directly with the facts of life. Morality is not a useful fiction
which must be protected against inquisitiveness and cherished in
ignorance and servility; it is a body of compelling truth that will
convince wherever there is a capacity to observe and reason. It
requires no higher sanction than the individual, because the individual
is society's organ of truth; because only in the individual mind is
society open to rational conviction.
Latitudinarianism and tolerance in this sense bespeak a confidence in
morality's ability to justify itself. At the same time they represent
a protest against replacing the intrinsic truth of morality by the
arbitrary standards of authority {39} and convention. Now, while there
is little need in the present day of protecting individual judgment
against encroachments of authority, there can be no doubt of the great
need of protecting it against the more insidious encroachments of
convention. This is peculiarly an age of publicity. The forces of
suggestion and imitation operate on a scale unparalleled in the history
of society. Standards and types readily acquire an almost irresistible
prestige, simply through becoming established as models. And the
sanction of opinion may be gained for almost any formula, from a
fashion in hats to an article in theology. Convention can no longer be
accounted conservative. It sanctions promiscuously usages as venerable
as civilization itself, and as transient as the fad of the hour.
Democratic institutions and universal educational privileges have bred
a social mass intelligent and responsive enough to be modish, but
lacking in discrimination and criticism.
The tyranny of opinion, the fear of being different, has long since
been recognized as a serious hinderance to the development which
political freedom and economic opportunity ought properly to stimulate.
But the moral blindness to which it gives rise has never, I think, been
sufficiently emphasized. We require of business men only that measure
of honesty that we {40} conventionally expect in that type of
occupation. A politician is proverbially tricky and self-seeking. The
artistic temperament would scarcely be recognized if it did not
manifest itself in weakness and excess. It is as unreasonable to
expect either tunefulness or humor in a musical comedy as to expect a
statement of fact in an advertisement. In short, where any human
activity is conventionalized, standards are arbitrarily fixed; and
critical discernment grows dull if it does not altogether atrophy. It
simply does not occur to the great majority of men that any activity
should be judged otherwise than by comparing it with the stereotyped
average of the day. This is, to be sure, only that blindness of the
common mind which Socrates and Plato observed in their day, but it is
now aggravated through the greater massiveness and conductivity of
modern society.
These considerations will serve both to introduce and to justify my
present undertaking. I assume that duty is not an arbitrary mandate
which the individual must obey blindly or from motives of fear; but the
conviction of moral truth, the enlightened recognition of the good.[6]
Hence I wish to demonstrate morality to an individual reflective mind,
open to the facts of life and to conviction of truth. I shall expound
morality out of no book but experience, "that universal and publick
Manuscript, that lies {41} expans'd unto the Eyes of all." To refer
morality to custom, to conscience in the sense of individual
prepossession or institutional authority, even if these be interpreted
as the oracles of God, is to justify the suspicion that it is
groundless and arbitrary, at best a matter of loyalty or good form. I
shall present morality as a set of principles as inherent in conduct,
as unmistakably valid there, as is gravitation in the heavens. I shall
hope to make it appear that the saving grace of morality is directly
operative in life; needing no proof from any adventitious source,
because it proves _itself_ under observation.
I shall address myself to an individual protagonist whom I shall
designate in the second person; and whom I shall suppose to exhibit
that yielding reluctance which is the mark of a mind that for very love
of truth will not too readily assent.
As I am to prove morality to you, I accept the burden of proof; but you
are not on that account totally without responsibility in the matter.
As you must not stop your ears, or close your bodily eyes, so you must
not shut the eye of the mind, or harden your heart. Were you to adopt
such an attitude I should be compelled to set argument aside, and
resort to such practical measures as might shock or entice you into
reasonableness. Or, I might abandon you as incorrigible. It is {42}
clear that I can as little show reasons to a man who will not think
them with me, as I can show the road to one who will not look where I
point it out. A very large amount of moral exhortation consists in the
attempt to overcome apathy and inattention. Such exhortation cannot in
the nature of the case be logical, because the subject's logical organ
is not as yet functioning. I doubt if there is any discussion of moral
matters in common life in which this form of appeal is not present in a
measure sufficient to obscure the merits of the question at issue. I
desire for present purposes to eliminate as far as possible all
conflict and prejudices, and thus to dispense with zeal and eloquence.
I shall assume, therefore, that you propose to be reasonable concerning
this moral affair. By this I mean simply that you shall directly
observe the facts of life, report candidly on these facts, and fully
accept the implications of any judgment to which you may commit
yourself. I may phrase your pledge of reasonableness thus: "Show what
is right, and that it is right, and I will accept it. I mean my action
to be good, and ask only to have the good demonstrated to me, that I
may intelligently adopt it."
{43}
II
It is commonly believed that whereas the logic of _prudence_ is
unimpeachable, there is a hiatus between this level of morality and
those above. To drink one's self to death is a species of folly that
the poorest intelligence can understand; but the folly in meanness,
injustice, or impiety is a harder matter. Believing as I do that the
folly is equally demonstrable in all of these cases, I propose not to
accept your ready assent in the simpler case until its grounds have
been made as clear and definite as possible. I feel convinced that
prudence is not so simple a matter as appears; in fact that it involves
the whole ethical dialectic.
I find you, let us say, eating an apple with evident relish; and I ask
you why. If you are candid, and free from pedantry, you will doubtless
reply that it is because you like to. In this particular connection I
can conceive no profounder utterance. But we may obtain a phraseology
that will suit our theoretical purposes more conveniently and serve
better to fix the matter in our minds. Your eating of the apple is a
process that tends within certain limits to continue and restore
itself, to supply the actions and objects necessary to its own
maintenance. I have proposed that we call such a process an
_interest_. In that it is a part of that very complex physical and
{44} moral thing called "you," it is _your_ interest, and it also has,
of course, its special subject-matter, in this case the eating of an
apple. It involves specific movements of body, and makes a specific
requisition on the environment. Now, still confining ourselves
strictly to this interest, we shall doubtless agree to call any phase
of it in which it is fulfilled, in which its exercise is fostered and
unimpeded, _good_. And we shall doubtless agree to attach the same
term, although perhaps in a less direct sense, to that part of the
environment which it requires, in this case the apple, and to the
subsidiary actions which mediate it, such as the grasping of the apple,
or the biting and mastication of it. I mean only that these modes or
factors of the interest are _in some sense good_; qualifications and
limitations may be adjudicated later.
In this case, which so far as I can see is the simplest possible case
of the sort of value that enters into life, the value is supplied by a
specific type of process which we may call an interest, and it is
supplied thereby absolutely, fundamentally. It makes both this apple
and your eating of it good that you should _like to eat it_. If you
could explain every action as you explain this action, when it is thus
isolated, there would be no moral problem.
We may now safely open the door to the objections that have been
pressing for admission. {45} The first to appear is an old friend
among philosophers; but one whose reputation so far exceeds its merits
that it must be submitted to vigilant examination. It is objected (I
am sure that you have long wanted to say this) that your repast is
_good for you, good from your point of view_, but not on that account
_really good_. These are the terms with which it is customary to
confound any serious judgment of truth; and they acquire a peculiar
force here because we seem to have invited their application. We have
agreed that your action is good in that it suits your interest, and
thus seem to have defined its goodness as relative to you. Now, if we
are to avoid a confusion of mind that would terminate our investigation
here and now, we must bring to light a latent ambiguity.
We have, it is true, discovered goodness to be a phase of a process
called "interest," which is qualified further, through the use of a
personal pronoun. The nature of goodness, in other words, is such as
to involve certain specific _relations_, here involving a person or
subject. Goodness is not peculiar in this respect; for there are very
few things in this world that do not involve specific relations. This
is the case, for example, with planets, levers, and brothers. There is
no planet without its sun, no lever without its fulcrum, no brother who
is not somebody's brother.
{46}
But the relationship in the case of goodness is supposed to be a more
serious matter; sufficiently serious to discredit the meaning of
goodness, or make all judgments concerning goodness merely expressions
of bias. The supposition is due to the confusion of a relativity in
the _subject-matter_ of the judgment, with a relativity of the judgment
itself to the individual that gives utterance to it. Thus the
judgment, "You like apples," deals with your interest and the objects
relating to it; but the judgment itself is not therefore biassed. It
is no more an expression of your opinion than it is of mine; it is a
formulation of what occurs in the field of experience open to all
observers. A judgment _concerning_ only you, is utterly different from
a judgment _representing_ only you. The latter, if there were such a
thing, would be ungrounded, and would justify the sceptic's suspicions.
The confusion is possible here simply because the subject-matter of the
judgment in question is itself a judgment. It could scarcely arise in
the parallel cases. The lever cannot be defined except in relation to
its fulcrum. This may be loosely generalized and made to read:
judgments concerning a lever are relative to a fulcrum. It might even
be said that a lever is a lever only from the point of view of its own
fulcrum. But the most unscrupulous quibbler would scarcely offer this
as evidence against {47} the objective validity of our knowledge of
levers. Your brother is necessarily related to you; but the
proposition defining the relationship is not on that account relative,
that is, peculiarly yours or any one else's. Fraternity is a complex
involving a personal connection, but is none the less entirely
objective. And precisely the same thing is true of goodness. To
observe it adequately one must bring into view that complex object
called an interest, which may be yours or his or mine; but it will be
brought none the less into our common view, and observed as any other
object may be observed. Because goodness is inherent in a process
involving instincts, desires, or persons, it is not one whit less valid
or objective than it would be if it involved the sun or the first law
of motion.
Let us now turn to a much more fruitful objection. Suppose it be
objected that your action, though good when thus artificially isolated,
will in the concrete case have to be considered more broadly before any
final judgment can be pronounced on it. To this objection I fully
assent. It implies that although we have fully defined a hypothetical
case of goodness, we have so far simplified the conditions as to make
our conclusions inadequate to moral experience. Accepting this
qualification, it is now in order to complicate the situation; but
retaining our analysis {48} of the elementary process, and employing
terms in the meaning derived therefrom.
Let us suppose that the apple which you enjoy eating, is my apple, and
that I delight in keeping it for my own uses. Such being the case, we
fall to wrangling over it, and your appetite is like to go unappeased.
I now have evidence to show you that your act of violent appropriation
does not conduce to your interest. This is simply an experimental and
empirical fact. I am in a position to show you that the character of
your action is other than you supposed, that you were under a
misapprehension as to its goodness. It leads not to the enjoyable
activity which interests you, but to a series of bodily exertions and a
state of unfulfilled longing in which you have no interest at all.
Indeed your action is a hinderance to your interest; in other words, is
bad.
But I proceed to point out to you the further fact that, if you will
buy the apple and thus conciliate me, you may get rid of my
interference and proceed with your activity. Your purchase is now
justified in precisely the same manner as your original seizure of the
object. If you are asked why you do it, you may still reply, "Because
I like apples."
Now, it would accord with the customary use of terms to call such
action on your part _prudence_; and prudence is commonly regarded as a
virtue {49} or moral principle. But in prudence the meaning of
morality is as yet only partially realized; it is morality upon a
relatively low level. Hence it is desirable to avoid reading too much
into it.
On the one hand, prudence does involve the checking of one interest in
consequence of the presence of another. You have noted my interest,
acknowledged it as having its own claims, and made room for it.
Therein your action differs signally from your dealings with your
mechanical environment. And it is this contact and adjustment of
interests, this practical recognition of the fact that the success of
one interest requires that other interests be respected, and dealt with
in a special manner appropriate to them as interests, that marks the
procedure as moral. On the other hand, while you have acknowledged my
interest, you have not _adopted_ it. You have concerned yourself with
my love of property only in so far as it affected your fondness for
apples. In order to appeal to you I have had to appeal to this, as yet
your only interest. The moral value of your action lies wholly in its
conduciveness to this interest, because it is controlled wholly by it.
You are as yet only a complex acting consistently in such wise as to
continue an eating of apples. This formula is entirely sufficient as a
summary of your conduct, even after you have learned to respect my
property. And therein lies {50} its _merely_ prudential character. In
prudence thus strictly and abstractly regarded, there is no preference,
no subordination of motives. Action is controlled by an exclusive and
insistent desire, which limits itself only with a view to effectiveness.
III
It would appear, then, that if I am to justify those types of action
which are regarded as more completely moral, _I must persuade you to
adopt interests that at any given instant do not move you_. I must
persuade you to forego your present inclination for the sake of
another; to judge between interests, and prefer that which on grounds
that you cannot reasonably deny is the more valid. In other words, I
must define a logical transition from prudence to _preference_, or
_moral purpose_.
Let us suppose that, in spite of your liking, apples do not "agree
with" you. It is, for example, pertinent to remark that if you eat the
apple to-day you cannot go to the play to-morrow. Our parley proceeds
as follows:
"Just now I am eating apples. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof."
"But you acknowledge your fondness for the theatre."
"Yes, but that doesn't interest me now."
"Nevertheless you recognize the interest in {51} play-going as a real
one, dormant to-day, temporarily eclipsed by another interest, but
certain to revive to-morrow?"
"I do."
"And you admit that, apart from the chance of your death in the
meantime, a chance so small as to be negligible, an interest to-morrow
is as real as an interest to-day?"
"Yes."
"Now, recognizing these two interests, and keeping them firmly in view,
observe the consequences of your action if you persist in eating the
apple, and pronounce judgment upon it."
"It would seem to be both good and bad; good in its conduciveness to
the satisfaction of my present appetite, bad in its preventing my
enjoyment of the play."
In your last reply you have fairly stated the problem. You are not
permitted to escape the dilemma by simply neglecting the facts, for
this would be contrary to the original agreement binding you to be and
remain open-minded. And you are now as concerned as I to solve the
problem by defining a reorganization of the situation that would permit
of an action unequivocally good, that is altogether conducive to the
fulfilment of interest.
To understand what would constitute a solution of this moral problem it
is important to observe, {52} in the first place, that an action
_wholly conducive to both interests_ would take precedence of an action
which fulfilled the one but sacrificed the other. Were it possible for
you to eat the apple now and go to the play to-morrow, your rational
course would be to allow your present impulse free play. You would
thus be alive to the total situation; your action would in reality be
regulated by both interests, or rather by a larger interest embracing
and providing for both. An action thus controlled would have a more
adequate justification than an action conceived with reference to the
one interest exclusively, and merely happening to be favorable to the
other interest also. Or suppose that, by substituting a different
species of apple for the one first selected, you could avoid
disagreeable consequences, and without loss of immediate gratification.
In this case you would have corrected your original action and adopted
a course that proved itself better, because conducive to the fulfilment
of to-morrow's interest as well as to-day's.
We have thus arrived at a very important conception, that of a higher
interest possessing a certain priority in its claims. The higher
interest as I have defined it is simply the greater interest, and
greater in the sense that it exceeds a narrower interest through
embracing it and adding to it. Your interest in the fulfilment of {53}
to-day's interest _and_ to-morrow's, is demonstrably greater than your
interest in the fulfilment of either exclusively, because it provides
for each and more. In this perfectly definite sense your preference
may be justified.
Let us now apply this principle of preference to the more complex case
in which there is no available action which will fulfil both interests.
Suppose that you cannot both eat apples to-day and go to the play
to-morrow. How is one to define a good action in the premises? In the
first place the good act originally conceived in terms of the free play
of the present impulse is proved to be illusory. There is no good act
until your interests are reorganized. In other words, the higher
interest, which is entitled to preference, requires some modification
of the participating interests. But the higher interest owes its title
to its liberality or comprehensiveness. Hence it must represent _the
maximum fulfilment of both interests which the conditions allow_. Such
a controlling interest may require you altogether to forego the present
indulgence, or it may merely require that it be severely limited. In
any case, the controlling interest will _represent_ both interests,
modified, postponed, or suppressed, as is necessary for their maximum
joint fulfilment. The higher interest which thus replaces the original
interest, and which is entitled to do so only {54} because it
incorporates them, I propose to call _moral purpose_.
There are two highly important principles which we have been brought to
recognize through this analysis of preference, and it will be worth our
while briefly to resume them.
In the first place, no interest is entitled to your exclusive regard
merely because it happens at any given time to be moving you. I shall
call this the principle of the objective validity of interests. I mean
simply that an interest is none the less an interest because it does
not coincide with an individual's momentary inclination. In reminding
you of an interest overlooked, I have not sought to justify it by
subsuming it under your present interest. I have not tried to prove
that it is to your interest as an epicure that you should go to the
play. I have simply pointed out the other interest, and allowed it to
stand on its merits. In ethical theories of a certain type, and in
much impromptu moralizing, it is assumed that there is no legitimate
appeal except in behalf of interests that are at the instant already
alive. This is as absurd as to suppose that in order to bring you to
the truth in any purely theoretical matter, I must confine myself to
evidence that you already recognize. In both cases your individual
experience at any given time may be narrow and limited owing to causes
that are in the highest {55} degree arbitrary. It may be advisable
that I should solicit your attention by connecting what I have to offer
with what is already familiar to you; but this is a psychological
expedient. My appeal is logically supported by objects, by principles,
by data which are in no wise dependent for their claims on their
connection with your present stock in trade.
Chesterton refers to one who "had that rational and deliberate
preference which will always to the end trouble the peace of the world,
the rational and deliberate preference for a short life and a merry
one." [7] I cannot regard such hedonistic opportunism as other than
wantonness or wilful carelessness. It may be deliberate in the sense
of being consciously persisted in, but I cannot find any rationality in
it. It arises naturally enough through the greater vividness of the
interests that are already adopted and proved; but all prejudices arise
from such accidents, and they are none the less on that account
absolutely antagonistic to the rational attitude--that willingness that
things should be for me even as they are.
In the second place, it has appeared that there is no demonstrable
priority of one simple interest over another differing only
qualitatively from it. I propose to call this the principle of _the
quantitative basis of preference_. I know that the term quantity has
an ugly sound in this context. {56} But I believe that this is due
simply to a false abstraction. Two good books are not better than one
because two is better than one, but because in two of a given unit of
goodness there is more of goodness than in one. Two is more than one,
but not more good, unless that which is counted is itself good. Nor is
two longer or heavier than one, unless the units numbered happen to be
those of length or weight. To prefer two interests to one does not
imply that one is a lover of quantity, but a lover of good; of that
which if it be and remain good, the more the better.
At any rate it seems to me a matter of simple candor to admit that
"more" is a term implying quantity, whether it be "more room," "more
weight," "more goodness," or "more beauty." It seems to me to be
equally evident that "more" implies commensurable magnitude; and that
commensurability implies the existence of a common unit in the terms
compared. Two inches are more than one inch in that they include one
inch and also another like unit. Now in moral matters the unit of
value is the fulfilment of the simple interest; and in consequence I
see no way of demonstrating that one such simple interest is more good
than another, as I see no way of demonstrating that one inch is longer
than another. But I do see that if I can carry a simple interest over
into a compound one, and there both {57} retain it and add to it, I
shall have more--more by what I add. Such comparison is never a simple
matter, perhaps in any concrete case never wholly conclusive. But I
can conceive no more important and more clarifying declaration of
principle. It means that any rational decision as to the precedence of
social ideals, or as to historical progress from good to better, must
be based on width of representation and weight of incentive.
IV
If what I have said thus far has proved convincing to you, this may be
owing to the fact that you have not been called upon to adopt any
interest beyond what are conventionally regarded as your own. In moral
matters it is customary to attach a certain finality to personal
pronouns. But there are no terms in common use which have so rough and
loose a meaning, which cover so equivocal and confused an experience;
albeit the necessity and frequency of their use has made them standard
currency and polished them into a sort of deceptive smoothness to the
touch. There is no term so altogether handy as the term "I," nor is
there any so embarrassed when called on to show its credentials in the
shape of clear and verifiable experience. If, then, you stand upon
_your_ interests I shall not be convinced, for I shall {58} not know
what you mean. There is no sense in which you are a finished and
demonstrable fact. My dealings with you, and this is peculiarly true
of my rational dealings with you, cannot be tested by _you_ in any
absolute or fixed sense, simply because they may _make_ you, as they
may make me.
Let us return to our test case. You are the epicure, and I am the
proprietor; you seize my apple, and I protest. But now I no longer
appeal to you merely as one who enjoys eating apples, and warn you that
you are selecting the wrong means of attaining that end. I simply
inform you that the apple is my property, and that I desire to retain
it. I appeal to you to respect my wishes, at least to the extent of
non-interference. If you reply that this is no interest that you
acknowledge, then I am in a position to inform you. For on no ground
can you attach finality to the set of interests which at any given time
you choose to acknowledge. If I may remind you of a forgotten
interest, I may inform you of a new interest. In the one case, you
acknowledge that there is such an interest in that you anticipate its
revival, and realize that its mere absence is no proof of its
non-existence. You recognize it as having its roots in your organism,
and its opportunity for exercise in certain definable and predictable
circumstances. This is what you mean when you acknowledge that _you
will desire_ to go to the play {59} to-morrow. But the evidence of the
existence of still another interest, in this case mine, is no less
convincing. Like your own latent interest, it does not at the instant
move you. But it has the specific character of an interest, and its
place in the existent world through its relation to my organism.
Recognizing it as an interest, you cannot in the given case fail to
observe that it qualifies your action as good or bad, through being
affected by it. If your action fulfils your interest and thwarts mine,
it is again mixed, both good and bad. In order to define the good act
in the premises it is necessary, as in the previous case, to define a
purpose which shall embrace both interests and regulate action with a
view to their joint fulfilment.
It is customary to argue this principle of impartiality, according to
which the merely personal consideration is declared to be irrelevant to
the determination of moral value, by a critique of _egoism_. The
_reductio ad absurdum_ of egoism has recently been formulated by G. E.
Moore in as thorough and conclusive a manner as could be desired.[8]
That writer analyzes egoism into a series of propositions all of which
are equivocal, false, or, so far as true, non-egoistic in their
meaning. I shall reduce Moore's propositions to two, and modify them
to suit my own conception of goodness.
{60}
As an egoist you may, in the first place, affirm that _there are no
interests but yours_. This proposition, however, is manifestly false.
Accept any definition of an interest or desire that you will, and I can
find indefinitely many cases answering your definition and falling
outside the class of those which you claim as your own. None of these,
if it conforms fully to your definition, is any the less an interest or
desire than the one that happens to be moving you at the instant.
There would be as good ground for saying that your brother was the only
brother, or your book the only book. Even if you abate the rigor of
the proposition, you cannot escape its essential falsity. If you
affirm that there are no interests but the interests of _each_, or that
_each_ man's interests are the only interests, you flatly contradict
yourself. If you affirm that your interests are of superior
importance, that they are exceptional, peculiar, entitled to
pre-eminence--this is virtually equivalent to your original
proposition. The respect in which your interests seem different from
all others either enters into your definition of interest, in which
case it becomes general; or it is some adventitious circumstance that
does not belong to your interests as such, some accident of proximity
which may have psychological or instrumental importance, but cannot
rightly affect your judgment of good. For goodness lies in {61} the
objective bearing of your action on such things as interests; precisely
as the diagonal is a line connecting the vertices of opposite angles in
a square, independently of all circumstances that do not affect the
generic character of the square.
In the second place, you may affirm that _for you there are no
interests but your own_. But this is an equivocal proposition. It may
mean that _in your opinion_ there are none, in which case you admit the
probable falsity of your judgment through contrasting it with the
consensus of opinion; through attributing it to your narrowness and
false perspective. Your offering it as your opinion gives the
proposition at best a tentative form; the question of its truth remains
to be adjudicated. I need only present other interests answering your
description of an interest to prove you mistaken. And if you were to
generalize your proposition and say that each man thinks his own
interests the only interests, you would be doubly wrong, in that the
generalization would be unwarranted, and the opinion imputed to each
man false.
Or, your claim that for you there are no interests but your own, might
be taken to mean that in some sense you must confine your endeavors to
the fulfilment of your own interests. Otherwise, you may argue, the
practical situation would {62} reach a dead-lock, a state of hopeless
confusion in which each individual neglected his own proper affairs for
the sake of those he had neither the means nor the competence to serve.
Now this is indisputably true, but it is not egoism. The judgment that
each individual must labor where he may do so most effectively, that he
must assume not only a general responsibility for all interests
affected by his action, but also a special responsibility for those
with whose direct execution he is charged, is an impartial judgment.
It expresses a broad and intelligent view of the total situation. In
the fable of the fox and the grapes, the action of the fox is due to
the folly of a too fluent attention. Similarly, he who lets go his
present hold of the web of interests simply because his eye happens to
alight on another vantage-point, is as much the blind slave of novelty
as the self-centred man is of familiarity. In both cases the fault is
one of narrowness of range, of arbitrary exclusion.
Egoists, then, are guilty of a kind of stupid provinciality. They are
like those closet-philosophers whom Locke describes.
The truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen in the
intellectual world, where light shines and as they conclude, day
blesses them; but the rest of that vast expansum they give up to night
and darkness, and so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty traffic
with known correspondents, in some little {63} creek; within that they
confine themselves, and are dexterous managers enough of the wares and
products of that corner with which they content themselves, but will
not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge, to survey the riches
that nature hath stored other parts with, no less genuine, no less
solid, no less useful than what has fallen to their lot, in the admired
plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to them contains
whatsoever is good in the universe.[9]
The impartial or judicial estimate of value is properly recognized as
essential to the meaning of _justice_. I do not here refer to justice
in the more narrow and familiar sense. Retributive justice, or justice
in any of its special legal aspects, is a political rather than an
ethical matter.[10] But political justice must be based on ethical
justice. And to the definition of this fundamental principle some
contribution has now been made. There is a parody of justice, a
justice of condescension, that the principles already defined do
discredit. For it has sometimes been thought that justice required
only a deliberate estimate of interests by those best qualified to
judge, as though the settlement of moral issues were a matter of
connoisseurship. The viciousness of this conception lies in the fact
that qualitatively regarded there is no superiority or inferiority
among interests. The relish of caviare is no better, no worse, than
the relish of bread. Preference among interests must be based on their
difference {64} of representation, or their difference of
compatibility. A wide and safe interest is better than a narrow and
mischievous interest, better for its liberality. It follows that no
interest can be condemned except upon grounds that recognize its
claims, and aim so far as possible to provide for it among the rest.
No interest can rationally be rejected as having no value, but only as
involving too great a cost.
But though these considerations are sufficient to expose moral
snobbery, they do not fully define justice. For justice imputes a
certain inviolability to the claims of that unit of life which we term
loosely a human, personal, moral, free, or rational being. There is
some sense in which you are a finality; making it improper for me
simply to dispose of you, even if it be my sincere intention to promote
thereby the well-being of humanity. You are not merely one interest
among the rest, to be counted, adjusted, or suppressed by some court of
moral appraisement. I think I may safely assume that there is to-day
an established conscience supporting Kant's dictum, "So act as to treat
humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every
case as an end withal, never as means only." [11]
Let me state briefly what appears to me to be the proper basis of this
judgment. I have said that I am not entitled simply to suppress your
{65} action as may be approved by my own judgment. Now, did I propose
to do so, what justification should I offer? I should present, no
doubt, the facts in the case. I should show you the incompatibility of
your presently adopted course with the general good. But let us
suppose that you defend your action on the same grounds. In that case
your endorsement of your action has precisely the same formal
justification as my condemnation of it. Our equality lies in the fact
that we are both claiming candidly to represent the truth. In the last
analysis our equality is based on the identity of the objective content
to which we appeal. As witnesses of a specific truth within the range
of both, the meanest mortal alive and the omniscient intelligence are
equal; and simply because the identical truth is as valid in the mouth
of one as in the mouth of the other. Where it is a matter of
disagreement between you and me, our equality lies in the fact that
neither can do more than appeal to the object. Neither has any
authority; there _is_ no authority in matters of truth, but only
evidence. The only rational solution of disagreement is agreement;
that is, the coalescence of opinions in the common object to which they
refer and toward which they converge. The method of approximating
agreement is discussion; which is the attempt of each of two knowers to
avail himself of all the organs {66} and instruments of knowledge
possessed by the other. Discussion involves mutual respect, in which
each party acknowledges the finality of the other as a vehicle of
truth. This, I believe, is that moral equality, that dignity and
ultimate responsibility attaching to all rational beings alike, without
which justice cannot be fulfilled.
Justice, then, embraces these two ideas. In the first place, in
estimating the goodness or evil of action, merely personal or party
connections must not be admitted in evidence. In the second place, the
deliberate judgment of any rationally minded individual is entitled to
respect as a source of truth. Conflict must in the last analysis be
overcome by the congruence of impartial minds. Hence the justification
of reciprocal respect among persons who think honestly; and of a public
forum to which all shall have access, and where business shall be
transacted under the vigilant eye of him who is most concerned. A
candid mind is the last court of jurisdiction. So long as the
procedure of society is questioned or resented by one honest
conscience, it is lacking in complete verification, and its findings
are open to doubt.
{67}
V
Enough has already been said to show that the goodness of action must
be determined with reference to nothing less than the totality of all
affected interests. For this highest principle I have reserved the
honored term, _good-will_. Neither you nor I can reasonably decline to
consider the bearing of our actions on any interest whatsoever. Right
conduct, since it is inconsistent with the least ruthlessness, must
inevitably in the end assume the form of humanity and piety.
I know that it is not customary to suppose that devotion to the service
of mankind is rational; it is taken to be gratuitous, if not quixotic.
But once let it be granted that goodness accrues to action in
proportion to its fruitfulness, it follows that that action is most
blessed that is dedicated without reservation to the general life.
There is only one course which can recommend itself to that fair and
open mind to which I conceive myself to be addressing this appeal:
namely, so to act in fulfilment of the interest in hand, as either to
promote or make room for all other interests.
And this is true not only of such interests as may be assumed to exist,
as constitute one's present neighborhood, near and remote; it is also
true of interests that are as yet only potentialities, defined by the
capacity of living things {68} to grow. If it be unreasonable to
neglect the bearing of one's action on interests which one happens not
to be familiar with, it is unreasonable to neglect its bearing on
interests not yet asserted, wherever there is a presumption that such
may come to be. In other words, one's moral account cannot be made up
without a provision for entries that have yet to be made. Such a
provision will take the form of a purpose to grow, an ardent spirit of
liberality, an eagerness for novelty. Good-will builds better than it
knows; it is open toward the future; committed to a task which requires
foresight and also faith. But such devotion, with all its
extravagance, with its very reverence for what is not known but must
nevertheless be accounted best, is only, after all, the part of
fearless good sense. If anything be good, and if it be reasonable to
pursue it, then is the maximum of that thing the _best_, and the
pursuit of it _wholly_ reasonable.
It may even be said that thrift is only a lesser form of piety, and
piety the whole of thrift. For, first and last, goodness lies in the
saving and increase of life. The justification of any act lies in its
being provident; in its yield of immediate fulfilment and its generous
allowance for the other interest, the remote interest, and the interest
that is as yet only surmised. The good will is the will to participate
productively, permissively, {69} and formally in the total undertaking
of life. Only when this intention controls one's decisions can one act
without fear of one's own critical reflection.
VI
Let me add a word concerning the part played by the imagination in
enforcing the logic of morality. An enlightened conscience, or a
rational conviction of duty, will consist essentially in the viewing of
life with a certain remove from its local incidents. In conduct, as in
all matters where validity or truth is concerned, the critical
consciousness must disengage itself and view the course of things in
its due proportions, allowing one's dearest interests to lie where they
lie among the rest. I have read so admirable a representation of the
moral function of the logical imagination in a recent paper by H. G.
Lord, that I beg leave to quote it here in full:
As between one's self and another "the image of an impartial outsider
who acts as our judge" is none other than this rational insight into
the relation existing between two who are cognitively to each other
just this and not anything else. It is the vision of the actual
reciprocity of the two. From this comes the Golden Rule in its various
forms: "Love thy neighbor as thyself," "Do unto others as ye would be
done by," "Put yourself in his place." But, furthermore, even this
simpler justice necessitates the power not only to "see yourself as
others see {70} you," but even more adequately, and as we say more
justly, to put yourself where you belong in a system of many, in which
you not only count for one and no more than one, but in which you count
for just that sort of one, fulfilling just that sort of function which
your place in the rationally conceived system involves or necessitates.
And this gives us a form of justice much more profound and complex than
that of the Golden Rule, and requiring constructive imagination and
rational insight of the very highest order. And with this insight goes
necessarily an inevitableness, an inexorableness, and, as we say
metaphorically, an imperativeness, which no amount of twisting and
intellectual thimble-rigging can avoid. The logic of the system cannot
be avoided any more than a step in a mathematical demonstration. . . .
So long as it stands, its parts, elements, or members are _placed_, and
there is set over each of them the imperative of the system in which
they are members.[12]
It has sometimes been thought that a fair view of life will inhibit
action through discrediting party zeal. John Davidson describes what
he calls "the apathy of intelligence."
To be strong to the end, it is necessary to shut many windows, to be
deaf on either side of the head at will, to fetter the mind. . . . The
perfect intelligence cannot fight, cannot compete. Intelligence, fully
awake, is doomed to understand, and can no more take part in the
disputes of men than in the disputes of other male creatures.[13]
Now it is true that intelligence inhibits wantonness; for intelligence,
fully awake, knows how unreasonable it is that one who loves life
should {71} destroy it. But because intelligence affirms the motive of
each combatant, it must move action to the saving of both. Where
intelligence is directed to the inner impulse of life, it is not
apathetic, but sympathetic. Its span is widened, while its incentive
is not divided but multiplied.
Nor does it follow that when duty is interpreted as enlightenment, life
must lose its romantic flavor and cease to require the old
high-spirited virtues. It is this very linking of life to life, this
abandonment of one's self to the prodigious of the whole, that provides
the true object of reverence, and permits the sense of mystery to
remain even after the light has come. Although the way of morality is
evident and well-proved in direction, being plain to whomever will look
at life with a fair and commanding eye, achievement is difficult, the
great victories hard won, and the certain prospect bounded by a near
horizon. Even though life be rationalized, it will none the less call
for intrepid faith; for what Maeterlinck calls "the heroic,
cloud-tipped, indefatigable energy of our conscience." [14]
{72}