Here is the difficulty, a difficulty of the profoundest and most

instructive sort. If we could see our way clearly through it, little

in ethics would remain obscure. The common mode of meeting it is to

leave it thus paradoxical. Self-sacrifice banishes rationality and is

a glorious madness. But such a conclusion is a repellent one. How can

it be? Reason is man's distinctive characteristic. While brutes act

blindly, while the punctual physical universe minutely obeys laws of

which it knows nothing, usually it is open to man to judge the path he

will pursue. Shall we then say that, though reason is a convenience in

all the lower stretches of life, when we reach self-sacrifice, our

single awesome height, it ceases? I cannot think so. On the contrary,

I hold that in self-sacrifice we have a case not of glorious madness,

but of somewhat extreme rationality. How, then, is rational contrasted

with irrational guidance? As we here approach the central and most

difficult part of our discussion, clearness will oblige me to enter

into some detail.

When a child looks at a watch, he sees a single object. It is

something there, a something altogether detached from his

consciousness, from the table, from other objects around. It is a

brute fact, one single thing, complete in itself. Such is the child's

perception. But a man of understanding looks at it differently. Its

detached singleness is not to him the most important truth in regard

to it. Its meaning must rather be found in the relations in which it

stands, relations which, seeming at first to lie outside it, really

enter into it and make it what it is. The rational man would

accordingly see it all alive with the qualities of gold, brass, steel,

the metals of which it is composed. He would find it incomprehensible

apart from the mind of its maker, and would not regard that mind and

watch as two things, but as matters essentially related. Indeed, these

relations would run wider still, and reason would not rest satisfied

until the watch was united to time itself, to the very framework of

the universe. Apart from this it would be meaningless. In short, if a

man comprehends the watch in a rational way he must comprehend it in

what may he called a conjunct way. The child might picture it as

abstract and single, but it could really be known only in connection

with all that exists. Of course we pause far short of such full

knowledge. Our reason cannot stretch to the infinity of things. But

just so far as relations can be traced between this object and all

other objects, so much the more rational does the knowledge of the

watch become. Rationality is the comprehending of anything in its

relations. The perceptive, isolated view is irrational.

But if this is true of so simple a matter as a watch, it is doubly

true of a complex human being. The child imagines he can comprehend a

person too in isolation, but rational proverb-makers long ago told us,

"One person, no person." Each person must be conceived as tied in with

all his fellows. We have seen how in the case of the watch we were

almost obliged to abandon the thought of a single object and to speak

of it as a kind of centre of constitutive relations. A plexus of ties

runs in every direction, and where these cross there is the watch. So

it is among human beings. If we try for a moment to conceive a person

as single and detached, we shall find he would have no powers to

exercise. No emotions would be his, whether of love or hate, for they

imply objects to arouse them, no occupations of civilized life, for

these involve mutual dependency. From speech he would be cut off, if

there were nobody to speak to; nor would any such instrument as

language be ready for his use, if ancestors had not cooperated in its

construction. His very thoughts would become a meaningless series of

impressions if they indicated no reality beside themselves. So empty

would be that fiction, the single and isolated individual. The real

creature, rational and conjunct man, is he who stands in living

relationship with his fellows, they being a veritable part of him and

he of them. Man is essentially a social being, not a being who happens

to be living in society. Society enters into his inmost fibre, and

apart from society he is not. Yet this does not mean that society, any

more than the individual, has an independent existence, prior,

complete, and authoritative. What would society be, parted from the

individuals who compose it? No more than an individual who does not

embody social relationships. The two are mutual conceptions, different

aspects of the same thing. We may view a person abstractly, fixing

attention on his single centre of consciousness; or we may view him

conjunctly, attending to his multifarious ties.

Now what is distinctive of self-sacrifice is that it insists in a

somewhat extreme way on this second and rational mode of regard. It is

a frank confession of interlocking lives. It says, "I have nothing to

do with the abstract, isolated, and finite self. That is a matter of

no consequence. What I care about is the conjunct, social, and

infinite self--that self which is inseparable from others. Where that

calls, I serve." The self-sacrificing person knows no interest of his

own separate from those of his father and mother, his wife and

children. He cannot ask what is good for himself and set it in

contrast with what is good for them. For his own broader existence is

presented in these dear members of his family. And such a man, so far

from being mad, is wise as few of us are. Glorious indeed is the self-

sacrificer, because he is so sane, because in him all pettiness and

detachment are swept away. He appears mad only to those who stand at

the opposite point of view, but in his eyes it is they who are

ridiculous. In fact, each must be counted crazy or wise according to

the view we take of what constitutes the real person.

I remember a story current in our newspapers during the Civil War.

Just before a battle, an officer of our army, knowing of what

consequence it was that his regiment should hold its ground, hastened

to the rear to see that none of his men were straggling. He met a

cowardly fellow trying to regain the camp. Turning upon him in a

passion of disgust, he said, "What! Do you count your miserable little

life worth more than that of this great army?" "Worth more to me,

sir," the man replied. How sensible! How entirely just from his own

point of view, that of the isolated self! Taking only this into

account, he was but a moral child, incapable of comprehending anything

so difficult as a conjunct self. He imagined that could he but save

this eating, breathing, feeling self, no matter if the country were

lost, he would be a gainer. What folly! What would existence be worth

outside the total inter-relationship of human beings called his land?

But this fact he could not perceive. To risk his separate self in such

a cause seemed absurd. Turn for a moment and see how absurd the

separate self appears from the point of view of the conjunct. When our

Lord hung upon the cross, the jeering soldiers shouted, "He saved

others, himself he cannot save." No, he could not; and his inability

seemed to them ridiculous, while it was in reality his glory. His true

self he was saving--himself and all mankind--the only self he valued.

IX

Now it is this strange complexity of our being, compelling us to view

ourselves in both a separate and a conjunct way, which creates all the

difficulty in the problem of self-sacrifice. But I dare say that when

I have thus shown the reality and worth of the conjunct self, it will

be felt that self-sacrifice is altogether illusory; for while it seems

to produce loss, it is in fact the avoidance of what entails

littleness. So says Emerson:--

"Let love repine and reason chafe,

There came a voice without reply:

'T is man's perdition to be safe

When for the truth he ought to die."

Have we not, then, by explaining the rationality of self-sacrifice,

explained away the whole matter and practically identified it with

self-culture? There is plausibility in this view--and it has often

been maintained--but not complete truth. For evidently the emotions

excited by culture and sacrifice are directly antagonistic. Toward a

man pursuing the aim of culture we experience a feeling of approval,

not unmixed with suspicion, but we give him none of that reverent

adoration which is the proper response to sacrifice. And if the

feelings of the beholder are contrasted, so also are the psychological

processes of the performer. The man of culture starts with a sense of

defect which he seeks to supplement; the sacrificer, with a sense of

fullness which he seeks to empty. He who turns to self-culture says,

"I have progressed thus far. I have gained thus much of what I would

acquire. But still I am poor. I need more. Let me gather as abundantly

as possible on every side." But the thought of him who turns to self-

sacrifice is, "I have been gaining, but I only gained to give. Here is

my opportunity. Let me pour out as largely as I may." He contemplates

final impoverishment. Accordingly I was obliged to say in my

definition that the self-sacrificer seeks to heighten another's

possessions, pleasures, or powers at the cost of his own. Undoubtedly

at the end of the process he often finds himself richer than at the

beginning. Perhaps this is the normal result; but it is not

contemplated. Psychologically the sacrificer is facing in a different

direction.

X

Yet, though the motive agencies of the two are thus contrasted, I

think we must acknowledge that sacrifice no less than culture is a

powerful form of self-assertion. To miss this is to miss its essential

character, and at the same time to miss the safeguards which should

protect it against waste. For to say, "I will sacrifice myself" is to

leave the important part of the business unexpressed. The weighty

matter is in the covert preposition _for_.--"I will sacrifice myself

_for_," An approved object is aimed at. We are not primarily

interested in negating ourselves. Only our estimate of the importance

of the object justifies our intended loss. This object should

accordingly be scrutinized. Self-sacrifice is noble if its end is

noble, but become reprehensible when its object is petty or

undeserving. Omit or overlook that word _for_, and self-sacrifice

loses its exalted character. It sinks into asceticism, one often most

degrading of moral aberrations. In asceticism we prize self-sacrifice

for its own sake. We hunt out what we value most; we judge what would

most completely fulfill our needs; and then we abolish it. Abolish it

for what? For nothing but the mere sake of abolishing. This is to turn

morality upside down; and in place of the Christian ideal of abounding

life, to set up the pessimistic aim of impoverishment. There is

nothing of this kind in self-sacrifice. Here we assert ourselves, our

conjunct selves. We estimate what will be best for the community of

man and seek to further this at whatever cost to our isolated

individuality. By this dedication to a deserving object sacrifice is

purified, ennobled, and made strong. We speak of the glorious deed of

him who plunges into the water to save a child. But it is a foolish

and immoral thing to risk one's life for a stone, a coin, or nothing

at all. "Is the object deserving?" we must ask, "or shall I reserve

myself for greater need?"

Too easily does our sympathetic and sentimental age, recklessly

eulogistic of altruism, hurry into self-sacrifice. Altruism in itself

is worthless. That an act is unselfish can never justify its

performance. He who would be a great giver must first be a great

person. Our men, and still more our women, need as urgently the gospel

of self-development as that of self-sacrifice; though the two are

naturally supplemental. Our only means of estimating the propriety and

dignity of sacrifice is to inquire how closely connected with

ourselves is its object. Until we can justify this connection, we have

no right to incur it, for genuine sacrifice is always an act of self-

assertion. In saving his regiment and contributing his share toward

saving his country, the soldier asserts his own interests. He is a

good soldier in proportion as he feels these interests to be his;

while the deserter is condemned, not for refusing to give his life to

an alien country and regiment, but because he was small enough to

imagine that these great constituents of himself were alien. I tell

the man on the street the way home because I cannot part his

bewilderment from my own. The problem always is, What may I suitably

regard as mine? And in solving it, we should study as carefully that

for which we propose to sacrifice ourselves as anything which we might

seek to obtain. Triviality or lack of permanent consequence is as

objectionable in the one case as in the other. The only safe rule is

that self-sacrifice is self-assertion, is a judgment as regards what

we would welcome to be a portion of our conjunct self.

Perhaps an extreme case will show this most clearly. Jesus prayed,

"Not my will, but thine, be done." He did not then lose his will. He

asserted and obtained it. For his will was that the divine will should

be fulfilled, and fulfilled it was. He set aside one form of his will,

his private and isolated will, knowing it to be delusive. But his true

or conjunct will--and he knew it to be his true one--he abundantly

obtained. It is no wonder, then, that in explaining these things to

his disciples he says, "My meat it is to do the will of my Father."

That is always the language of genuine self-sacrifice. The act is not

complete until the sense of loss has disappeared.

XI

Yet while I hold that self-sacrifice is thus the very extreme of

rationality, grounding as it does all worth in the relational or

conjunct selfhood, I cannot disguise from myself that it contains an

element of tragedy too. This my readers will already have felt and

will have begun to rebel against my insistence that self-sacrifice is

the fulfillment of our being. For though it is true that when

opposition arises between the conjunct and separate selves our largest

safety is with the former, the very fact that such opposition is

possible involves tragedy. One part of the nature becomes arrayed

against another. We must die to live. Our lower goods are found

incompatible with our higher. Pleasure, comfort, property, friends,

possibly life itself, have become hostile to our more inclusive aims

and must be cast aside. It is true that when the tragic antithesis is

presented and we can reach our higher goods only by loss of the lower,

hesitation is ruin. It is true too that on account of that element of

self-assertion to which I have drawn, attention, the genuine

sacrificer is ordinarily unaware of any such tragedy. But none the

less tragedy is there. To suppose it absent would strip sacrifice of

what we regard as most characteristic.

Nor can we pause here. Those who would call self-sacrifice a glorious

madness have still further justification. A leap into the dark we must

at least admit it to be, For trace it rationally as far as we may,

there always remains uncertainty at the close. There is, for example,

uncertainty about ultimate results. The mother toiling for her child,

and neglecting for its sake most of what would render her own life

rich, can never know that this child will grow up to power. The day

may come when she will wish it had died in childhood. The glory of her

action is bound up with this darkness. Were the soldier, marching to

the field, sure that his side would be victorious, he would be only

half a hero. The consequences of self-sacrifice can never be certain,

foreseen, calculable. There must be risk. Omit it, and the sacrifice

disappears. Indeed nothing in life which calls forth high admiration

is free from this touch of faith and courage, this movement into the

unknown. It is at the very heart of self-sacrifice.

But besides the unknown character of the result there is usually

uncertainty as regards the cost. The sacrificer does not give

according to measure. I do not say I will attend to this sick person

up to such and such a point, but when that point is reached I shall

have done enough. This would hardly be self-sacrifice. I rather say,

"Here I am. Take me, use me to the full, spend of me whatever you

need. How much that will be, I do not know." So there is an element of

darkness in ourselves.

And possibly I ought to mention a third variety of these

incalculabilities of sacrifice. We do not plan the case. A while ago,

meeting a literary man whose product is of much consequence to the

community and himself, I asked him how his book was coming on.

"Badly," he answered. "Just now an aged relative has fallen ill. There

is no other place where she can be properly disposed, and so she has

been brought to my house. I must care for her, my home will be much

broken up, and my work must be set aside." I said, "Is that your duty?

Have you not a more important obligation to your book?" But he

answered, "One cannot choose a duty." I did not fully agree. I think

we should carefully weigh duties, even if we do not choose them.

Morality would otherwise become the sport of accident. But I perceive

that in the last analysis no duty is made by ourselves. It is given us

by something more authoritative than we, something which we cannot

alter, fully estimate, or without damage evade. Necessity is laid upon

us, sometimes an invading necessity. We are walking our well-ordered

path, pursuing some dear aims, when harsh before us stands a waiting

duty, bidding us lay aside that in which we are engaged and take it. I

have said I believe a degree of scrutiny is needful here. We should

ask, what for? We should correlate the new duty with those already

pledged. And probably an interrupting duty is less often the one it is

well to follow than one which has had something of our time and care.

Few fresh calls can have the weighty claim of loyalty to obligation

already incurred. But, after all, that on which we finally decide has

not sprung from our own wishes. It subjects those wishes to itself.

Standing over against us, it summons us to do its bidding, and allows

us no more to be our own self-directed masters.

XII

Summing up, then, the jarring characteristics of self-sacrifice,--its

frequency, rationality, assertiveness, nearness to self--culture; yes,

and its darker traits of risk, immeasurability, and authoritativeness,

--does it not begin to appear that I have been calling it by a wrong

name? Self-sacrifice is a negative term. It lays stress on the thought

that I set myself aside, become in some way less than I was before. And

no doubt through all this intricate discussion certain belittlements

have been acknowledged, though these have also been shown to lie along

the path of largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both

negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the

subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This

is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from

our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause,

--these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it

which its practicers will recognize. That damage to the abstract self

which chiefly impresses the outsider is something of which the

sacrificer is hardly aware. How exquisitely astonished are the men in

the parable when called to receive reward for their generous gifts!

"Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee, or thirsty and gave

thee drink? When saw we thee sick or in prison and came unto thee?"

They thought they had only been following their own desires.

Perhaps the most admirable case of self-sacrifice is that in which no

single person appears who is profited by our loss. The scholar, the

artist, the scientific man dedicate themselves to the interests of

undifferentiated humanity. They serve their undecipherable race, not

knowing who will obtain gains through their toils. In their sublime

benefactions they study the wants of no individual person, not even of

themselves. Yet, turn to a man of this type and try to call his

attention to the privations he endures, and what will be his answer?

"I have no coat? I have no dinner? I have little money? People do not

honor me as they honor others? Yes, I believe I lack these trifles.

But think what I possess! This great subject; or rather, it possesses

me. And it shall have of me whatever it requires."

In such service of the absolute is found the highest expression of

self-sacrifice, of social service, of self-realization. The doctrine

that though union with a reason and righteousness not exclusively our

own each of us may hourly be renewed is the very heart of ethics.

XIII

I have attempted to cut out a clear path through an ethical jungle

overgrown with the exuberance of human life. I have not succeeded, and

it is probably impossible to succeed. In the subject itself there is

paradox. Conflicting elements enter into the very constitution of a

person. To trace them even imperfectly one must be patient of

refinements, accessible to qualifications, and ever ready to admit the

opposite of what has been laboriously established. We all desire

through study to win a swift simplicity. But nature abhors simplicity:

she complicates; she forces those who would know to take pains, to

proceed cautiously, and to feel their way along from point to point.

This I have tried to do; and I believe that the inquiry, though

intricate, primarily scientific, and only partially successful, need

not altogether lack practical consequence. Our age is bewildered

between heroism and greed. To each it is drawn more powerfully than

any age preceding. Neither of the two does it quite comprehend. If we

can render the nobler somewhat more intelligible, we may increase the

confidence of those who now, half-ashamed, follow its glorious but

blindly compulsive call.

REFERENCES ON SELF-SACRIFICE

Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. xi., xii.

Bradley's Appearance and Reality, p. 414-429.

Paulsen's Ethics, bk. ii. ch. 6.

Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, ch. iii., Section 4 (g).

Sidgwick's Methods, concluding chapter.

Kidd's Social Evolution, ch. 5.

S. Bryant in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1893.

Bradley in Journal of Ethics, Oct. 1894.

Mackenzie, in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1895.

VII

NATURE AND SPIRIT

I

At this culmination of our long discussion, a discussion much confused

by its necessary mass of details, it may be well to pause a moment, to

fix attention on the great lines along which we have been moving, and

to mark the points on which they appear to converge. We have regarded

goodness as divided into two very unequal parts. The first two

chapters treated of goodness in general, a species which being shared

alike by persons and things is in no sense distinctive of persons. The

last four chapters have been given to the more complex task of

exploring the goodness of persons.

In things we found that goodness consists in having their manifold

parts drawn into integral wholeness. And this is true also of persons.

But the modes of organization in the two cases were so unlike as to

require long elucidation. Our conclusion would seem to be that while

goodness is everywhere expressive of organization, personal conduct is

good only when consciously organized, guided, and aimed at the

development of a social self. We have seen how self-consciousness lies

at the foundation of personality, sharply discriminating persons from

things. We have seen too that wherever it is present, the person

curiously directs himself, passing through all the varieties of

purposive activity which were catalogued in the chapter on self-

direction. But such activity implies a being of variable, not of fixed

powers, a being accordingly capable of enlargement, and with

possibilities in him which every moment renders real. This progressive

realization of himself, this development, he--so far as he is good--

consciously conducts. And finally we found in the person the strange

fact that he conceives of his good self as essentially in conjunction

with his fellow man, and recognizes that parted off and in separate

abstractness he is no person at all. Accordingly personal

organization, direction, enlargement, conjunction. Under our analysis

two antithetic worlds emerge, a world of nature and of spirit, the

former guided by blind forces, the latter self-managed. Unlike

spiritual beings, natural objects are under alien control; have not

the power of development, and when brought into close conjunction with

others are liable to disruption.

II

Accepting this vital distinction, we see that the work of spiritual

man will consist in progressively subjugating whatever natural powers

he finds within him and without, rendering them all expressive of

self-conscious purpose. for we men are not altogether spiritual; in us

two elements meet. Our spirituality is superposed on a natural basis.

Like things, we have our natural aptitudes, blind tendencies,

established functions of body and mind. These are all serviceable and

organic; but to become spiritual all need to be redeemed, or drawn

over into the field of consciousness, where our special stamp may be

set upon them. When we speak of a good act, we mean an act which shows

the results of such redemption, one whose every part has been studied

in relation to every other part, and has thus been made to bear our

own image and superscription.

And this is essentially the Christian ideal, that spirit shall be lord

of nature. I ought to reject my natural life, accounting it not my

life at all. Until shaped by myself, it is merely my opportunity for

life, material furnished, out of which my true and conscious life may

be constructed. Widely is this contrasted with the pagan conceptions,

where man appears with powers as fixed as the things around him.

Indeed, in many forms of paganism there is no distinction between

persons and things. They are blended. And such blending usually

operates to the disparagement of the person; for things being more

numerous, and their laws more urgent, the powers of man become lost in

those of nature. Or if distinction is made, and men in some dim

fashion become aware that they are different from things, still it is

the tendency of paganism to subordinate person to nature. The child is

sacrificed to the sun. The sun is not thought of as existing for the

child. From the Christian point of view everything seems turned upside

down. Man is absorbed in natural forces, natural forces are reverenced

as divine, and self-consciousness--if noticed at all--is regarded as

an impertinent accident.

In the Christian ideal all this is reversed. Man is called to be

master of himself, and therefore of all else. The many beautiful

adjustments of the natural world are thought to possess dignity only

so far as they accept the conscious purposes put by us in their

keeping. And in man himself goodness is held to exist only in

proportion as his conduct expresses fullness of self-consciousness,

fullness of direction, and fullness of conscious conjunction with

other persons. I do not see how we can escape this conclusion. The

careful argumentation through which the previous chapters have brought

us obliges us to count conduct valuable in proportion as it bears the

impress of self-conscious mind.

III

Yet it must be owned that during the last few centuries doubts have

arisen about the justice of this Christian ideal. The simple

conception of a world of spirit and a world of nature arrayed against

each other, the one of them exactly what the other is not, the world

of spirit the superior, the world of nature to be frowned on, used

possibly, but always in subordination to spiritual purposes,--this

view, dominant as it was in the Middle Ages, and still largely

influential, has been steadily falling into disrepute. There is even a

tendency in present estimates to reverse the ancient valuation and

allow superiority to nature. Such a transformation is strikingly

evident in those sensitive recorders of human ideals, the Fine Arts.

Let us see what at different times they have judged best worthy of

record.

Early painting dealt with man alone, or rather with persons; for

personality in its transcendent forms--saints, angels, God himself--

was usually preferred above little man. Except the spiritual, nothing

was regarded as of consequence. The principle of early painting might

be summed in the proud saying, "On earth there is nothing great but

man; in man there is nothing great but mind." It is true when man is

thus detached from nature he hardly appears to advantage or in his

appropriate setting. But the early painters would tolerate nothing

natural near their splendid persons. They covered their backgrounds

with gilding, so that a glory surrounded the entire figure, throwing

out the personality sharp and strong. Nothing broke its effect. But

after all, one comes to see that we inhabit a world; nature is

continually about us, and man really shows his eminence most fully

when standing dominant over nature. Early painting, accordingly, began

to set in a little landscape around the human figures, contrasting the

person with that which was not himself. But an independent interest

could not fail to spring up in these accessories. By degrees the

landscape is elaborated and the figure subordinated. The figure is

there by prescription, the landscape because people enjoy it. Nature

begins to assert her claims; and man, the eminent and worthy

representative of old ideals, retires from his ancient prominence.

When the Renaissance revolted against the teachings of the mediaeval

church, the disposition to return to nature was insolently strong.

Natural impulses were glorified, the physical world attracted

attention, and even began to be studied. Hitherto it had been thought

deserving of study only because in a few respects it was able to

minister to man. But in the Renaissance men studied it for its own

sake. Gradually the distinction between man and nature grew faint, so

that a kind of pantheism arose in which a general power, at once

natural and spiritual, appeared as the ruler of all. We individual men

emerge for a moment from this great central power, ultimately

relapsing into it. Nature had acquired coordinate, if not superior,

rights. Yet the full expression of this independent interest in nature

is more recent than is usually observed. Landscape painting goes back

but little beyond the year sixteen hundred. It is only two or three

centuries ago that painters discovered the physical world to be worthy

of representation for its own sake.

As the worth of nature thus became vindicated in painting, parallel

changes were wrought in the other arts. Arts less distinctly rational

began to assert themselves, and even to take the lead. The art most

characteristic of modern times, the one which most widely and

poignantly appeals to us, is music. But in music we are not distinctly

conscious of a meaning. Most of us in listening to music forget

ourselves under its lulling charms, abandon ourselves to its spell,

and by it are swept away, perhaps to the infinite, perhaps to an

obliteration of all clear thought. Is it not largely because we are so

hard pressed under the anxious conditions of modern life that music

becomes such an enormous solace and strength? I do not say that no

other factors have contributed to the vogue of music, but certainly it

is widely prized as an effective means of escape from ourselves. Music

too, though early known in calm and elementary forms, has within the

last two centuries been developed into almost a new art.

Of all the arts poetry is the most strikingly rational and articulate.

Its material is plain thought, plain words. We employ in it the

apparatus of conscious life. Poetry was therefore concerned in early

times entirely with things of the spirit. It dealt with persons, and

with them alone. It celebrated epic actions, recorded sagacious

judgments, or uttered in lyric song emotions primarily felt by an

individual, yet interpreting the common lot of man. But there has

occurred a great change in poetry too, a change notable during the

last century but initiated long before. Poetry has been growing

naturalistic, and is to-day disposed to reject all severance of body

and spirit. The great nature movement which we associate with the

names of Cowper, Burns, and Wordsworth, has withdrawn man's attention

from conscious responsibility, and has taught him to adore blind and

vast forces which he cannot fully comprehend. We all know the

refreshment and the deepening of life which this mystic new poetry has

brought. But it is hard to say whether poetry is nowadays a spiritual

or a natural art. Many of us would incline to the latter view, and

would hold that even in dealing with persons it treats them as

embodiments of natural forces. Our instincts and unguided passions,

the features which most identify us with the physical world, are

coming more and more to be the subjects of modern poetry.

IV

Nature, meanwhile, that part of the universe which is not consciously

guided, has become within a century our favorite field of scientific

study. The very word science is popularly appropriated to naturalistic

investigation. Of course this is a perversion. Originally it was

believed that the proper study of mankind was man. And probably we

should all still acknowledge that the study of personal structure is

as truly science as study of the structure of physical objects. Yet so

powerfully is the tide setting toward reverence for the unconscious

and the sub-conscious that science, our word for knowledge, has lost

its universality and has taken on an almost exclusively physical

character.

Perhaps there was only one farther step possible. Philosophy itself,

the study of mind, might be regarded as a study of the unconscious.

And this step has been taken. Books now bear the paradoxical title

"Philosophy of the Unconscious," and investigation of the sub-

conscious processes is perhaps the most distinctive trait of

philosophy to-day. More and more it is believed that we cannot

adequately explore a person without probing beneath consciousness. The

blind processes can no longer be ruled out. Nature and spirit cannot

be parted as our fathers supposed they might. Probably Kant is the

last great scholar who will ever try to hold that distinction firm,

and he is hardly successful. In spite of his vigorous antitheses,

hints of covert connection between the opposed forces are not absent.

Indeed, if the two are so widely parted as his usual language asserts,

it is hard to see how his ethics can have mundane worth. Curiously

enough too, at the very time when Kant was reviving this ancient

distinction, and offering it as the solid basis of personal and social

life, the opposite belief received its most clamorous announcement,

resounding through the civilized world in the teachings of Rousseau.

Rousseau warns us that the conscious constructions of man are full of

artifice and deceit, and lead to corruption and pain. Conscious

guidance should, consequently, be banished, and man should return to

the peace, the ease, and the certainty of nature.

V

Now I do not think it is worth while to blame or praise a movement so

vast as this. If it is folly to draw an indictment against a nation,

it is greater folly to indict all modern civilization. We must not say

that philosophy and the fine arts took a wrong turn at the

Renaissance,--at least it is useless to call on them now to turn back.

The world seldom turns back. It absorbs, it re-creates, it brings new

significance into the older thought. All progress, Goethe tells us, is

spiral,--coming out at the place where it was before, but higher up.

No, we cannot wisely blame or praise, but we may patiently study and

understand. That is what I am attempting to do here. The movement

described is no negligible accident of our time. It is world-wide, and

shows progress steadily in a single direction.

In order, however, to prove that such a change in moral estimates has

occurred, it was hardly necessary to survey the course of history. The

evidence lies close around us, and is found in the standards of the

society in which we move. Who are the people most prized? Are they the

most self-conscious? That should be the case if our long argument is

sound. Our preceding chapters would urge us to fill life with

consciousness. In proportion as consciousness droops, human goodness

becomes meagre; as our acts are filled with it, they grow excellent.

These are our theoretic conclusions, but the experience of daily life

does not bear them out. If, for example, I find the person who is

talking to me watches each word he utters, pauses again and again for

correction, choosing the determined word and rejecting the one which

instinctively comes to his lips, I do not trust what he says, or even

listen to it; while he is shaping his exact sentences I attend to

something else. In general, if a man's small actions impress us as

minutely planned, we turn from him. It is not the self-reflecting

persons, cautious of all they do, say, or think, who are popular. It

is rather those instinctively spontaneous creatures characterized by

abandon--men and women who let themselves go, and with all the wealth

of the world in them, allow it to come out of itself--that we take to

our hearts. We prize them for their want of deliberation. In short, we

give our unbiased endorsement not to the spiritual or consciously

guided person, but to him, on the contrary, who shows the closest

adjustment to nature.

VI

Yet even so, we have gone too far afield for evidence. First we

surveyed the ages, then we surveyed one another. But there is one

proof-spot nearer still. Let us survey ourselves. I am much mistaken

if there are not among my readers persons who have all their lives

suffered from self-consciousness. They have longed to be rid of it, to

be free to think of the other person, of the matter in hand. Instead

of this, their thoughts are forever reverting to their own share in

any affair. Too contemptible to be avowed, and more distressing than

almost any other species of suffering, excessive self-consciousness

shames us with our selfishness, yet will not allow us to turn from it.

When I go into company where everybody is spontaneous and free, easily

uttering what the occasion calls for, I can utter only what I call for

and not at all what the occasion asks. Between the two demands there

is always an awkward jar. When tortured by such experiences it does

not soothe to have others carelessly remark, "Oh, just be natural!"

That is precisely what we should like to be, but how? That little

point is continually left unexplained. Yet obviously self-

consciousness involves something like a deadlock. For how can one

consciously exert himself to be unconscious and try not to try? We

cannot arrange our lives so as to have no arrangement in them, and

when shaking hands with a friend, for example, be on our guard against

noticing. Once locked up in this vicious circle, we seem destined to

be prisoners forever. That is what constitutes the anguish of the

situation. The most tyrannical of jailers--one's self--is over us, and

from his bondage we are powerless to escape. The trouble is by no

means peculiar to our time, though probably commoner forty years ago

than at any other period of the world's history. But it had already

attracted the attention of Shakespeare, who bases on it one of his

greatest plays. When Hamlet would act, self-consciousness stands in

his way. The hindering process is described in the famous soliloquy

with astonishing precision and vividness, if only we substitute our

modern term "self-consciousness" for that which was its ancient

equivalent:--

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action."

And such is our experience. We, too, have purposed all manner of

important and serviceable acts; but just as we were setting them in

execution, consideration fell upon us. We asked whether it was the

proper moment, whether he to whom it was to be done was really needy,

or were we the fit doer, or should it be done in this way or that. We

hesitated, and the moment was gone. Self-consciousness had again

demonstrated its incompetence for superintending a task. Many of us,

far from regarding self-consciousness as a ground of goodness, are

disposed to look upon it as a curse.

VII

Before, however, attempting to discover whether our theoretic

conclusions may he drawn into some sort of living accord with these

results of experience, let us probe a little more minutely into these

latter, and try to learn what reasons there may be for this very

general distrust of self-consciousness as a guide. Hitherto I have

exhibited that distrust as a fact. We always find it so; our neighbors

find it so, the ages have found it so. But why? I have not pointed out

precisely the reasons for the continual fact. Let me devote a page or

two to rational diagnosis.

To begin with, I suppose it will be conceded that we really cannot

guide ourselves through and through. There are certain large tracts of

life totally unamenable to consciousness.

Of our two most important acts, and those by which the remaining ones

are principally affected, birth and death, the one is necessarily

removed from conscious guidance, and the other is universally

condemned if so guided. We do not--as we have previously seen--happen

to be present at our birth, and so are quite cut off from controlling

that. Yet the conditions of birth very considerably shape everything

else in life. We cannot, then, be purely spiritual; it is impossible.

We must be natural beings at our beginning; and at the other end the

state of things is largely similar, for we are not allowed to fix the

time of our departure. The Stoics were. "If the house smokes," they

said, "leave it." When life is no longer worth while, depart. But

Christianity will not allow this. Death must be a natural affair, not

a spiritual. I am to wait till a wandering bacillus alights in my

lung. He will provide a suitable exit for me. But neither I nor my

neighbors must decide my departure. Let laws of nature reign.

And if these two tremendous events are altogether removed from

conscious guidance, many others are but slightly amenable to it. The

great organic processes both of mind and body are only indirectly, or

to a partial extent, under the control of consciousness. A few

persons, I believe, can voluntarily suspend the beating of their

hearts. They are hardly to be envied. The majority of us let our

hearts alone, and they work better than if we tried to work them.

Though it is true that we can control our breathing, and that we

occasionally do so, this also in general we wisely leave to natural

processes. A similar state of affairs we find when we turn to the mind

itself. The association of ideas, that curious process by which one

thought sticks to another and through being thus linked draws after it

material for use in all our intellectual constructions, goes on for

the most part unguided. It would be plainly useless, therefore, to

treat our great distinction as something hard and fast. Nature and

spirit may be contrasted; they cannot be sundered. Spirit removed from

nature would become impotent, while nature would then proceed on a

meaningless career.

Then too there are all sorts of degrees in consciousness. No man was

ever so conscious of himself and his acts that he could not be more

so. When introspection is causing us our sharpest distress, it may

still be rendered more minute. That is one cause of its peculiar

anguish. We are always uncertain whether our troubles have not arisen

from too little self-consciousness, and we whip ourselves into greater

nicety and elaborateness of personal observation. Varying through a

multitude of degrees, the fullness of consciousness is never reached.

A more thorough exercise of it is always possible. At the last, nature

must be admitted as a partner in the control of our lives, and her

share in that partnership the present age believes to be a large one.

VIII

For could we always consciously steer our conduct, we should be unwise

to do so. Consciousness hinders action. Acts are excellent in

proportion as they are sure, swift, and easy. When we undertake

anything, we seek to do exactly that thing, reach precisely that end,

and not merely to hit something in the neighborhood. Occasions, too,

run fast, and should be seized on the minute. Action is excellent only

when it meets the urgent and evasive demands of life. Faltering and

hesitation are fatal. Nor must action unduly weary. Good conduct

effects its results with the least necessary expenditure of effort.

When there are so many demands pressing upon us, we should not allow

ourselves to become exhausted by a single act, but should keep

ourselves fresh for further needs. Efficient action, then, is sure,

swift, and easy.

Now the peculiarity of self-consciousness is that it hinders all this

and makes action inaccurate, slow, and fatiguing. Inaccuracy is almost

certain. When we study how something is to be done, we are apt to lay

stress on certain features of the situation, and not to bring others

into due prominence. It is difficult separately to correlate the many

elements which go to make up a desired result. Sometimes we become

altogether puzzled and for the moment the action ceases. When I have

had occasion to drive a screw in some unusual and inconvenient place,

after setting the blade of the screw-driver into the slot I have asked

myself, "In which direction does this screw turn?" But the longer I

ask, the more uncertain I am. My only solution lies in trusting my

hand, which knows a great deal more about the matter than I. When we

once begin to meditate how a word is spelled, how helpless we are! It

is better to drop the question, and pick up the dictionary. In all

such cases consideration tends to confuse.

It tends to delay, too, as everybody knows. To survey all the

relations in which a given act may stand, to balance their relative

gains and losses, and with full sight to decide on the course which

offers the greatest profit, would require the years of Methuselah. But

at what point shall we cut the process short? To obtain full

knowledge, we should pass in review all that relates to the act we

propose; should inquire what its remoter consequences will be, and how

it will affect not merely myself, my cousin, my great-grandchild, but

the man in the next street, city, or state. There is no stopping. To

carry conscious verification over a moderate range is slow business.

If on the impulse of occasion we dash off an action unreflectingly,

life will be swift and simple. If we try to anticipate all

consequences of our task it will be slow and endless.

Nor need I dwell on the fatigue such conscious work involves. In

writing a letter, we usually sit down before our paper, our minds

occupied with what we would say. We allow our fingers to stroll of

themselves across the page, and we hardly notice whether they move or

not. If anybody should ask, "How did you write the letter _s?_" we

should be obliged to look on the paper to see. But suppose, instead

of writing in this way, I come to the task to-morrow determined to

superintend all the work consciously. How shall I hold my pen in the

best possible manner? How shape this letter so that each of its curves

gets its exact bulge? How give the correct slant to what is above or

below the line? I will not ask how long a time a letter prepared in

this fashion would require, or whether when written it would be fit to

read, for I wish to fix attention on the exhaustion of the writer. He

certainly could endure such fatigue for no more than a single epistle.

The schoolboy, when forced to it, seldom holds out for more than half

a page, though he employs every contortion of shoulder, tongue, and

leg to ease and diversify the struggle.

A dozen years ago some nonsense verses were running through the

papers,--verses pointing out with humorous precision the very

infelicities of conscious control to which I am now directing

attention. They put the case thus:--

"The centipede was happy, quite,

Until the toad for fun

Said, 'Pray which leg comes after which?'

This worked her mind to such a pitch

She lay distracted in a ditch,

Considering how to run."

And no wonder! Problems so complex as this should be left to the

disposal of nature, and not be drawn over into the region of spiritual

guidance. But the complexities of the centipede are simple matters

when compared with the elaborate machinery of man. The human mind

offers more alternatives in a minute than does the centipede in a

lifetime. If spiritual guidance is inadequate to the latter, and is

found merely to hinder action, why is not the blind control of nature

necessary for the former also? Our age believes it is and, ever

disparaging the conscious world, attaches steadily greater consequence

to the unconscious. "It is the unintelligent me," writes Dr. O. W.

Holmes, "stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a thousand times

before he can do it and then never knows how he does it, that at last

does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the pretentious

claims of intellect into the humble accuracy of instinct; and we end

at last by acquiring the dexterity, the perfection, the certainty

which those masters of arts, the bee and the spider, inherit from

nature."

REFERENCES ON NATURE AND SPIRIT

Green's Prolegomena, Section 297.

Dewey's Study of Ethics, Section xli.

Seth's Study of Ethical Principles, pt. i. ch. 3, Section 6.

Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. i. ch. i. Section iii.

Earle's English Prose, p. 490-500.

Palmer in The Forum, Jan. 1893.

VII

THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS

I

Such is the mighty argument conducted through several centuries in

behalf of nature against spirit as a director of conduct. I have

stated it at length both because of its own importance and because it

is in seeming conflict with the results of my early chapters. But

those results stand fast. They were reached with care. To reject them

would be to obliterate all distinction between persons and things.

Self-consciousness is the indisputable prerogative of persons. Only so

far as we possess it and apply it in action do we rise above the

impersonal world around. And even if we admit the contention in behalf

of nature as substantially sound, we are not obliged to accept it as

complete. It may be that neither nature nor spirit can be dispensed

with in the supply of human needs. Each may have its characteristic

office; for though in the last chapter I have been setting forth the

superiorities of natural guidance, in spiritual guidance there are

advantages too, advantages of an even more fundamental kind. Let us

see what they are.

They may be summarily stated in a single sentence: consciousness alone

gives fresh initiative. Disturbing as the influence of consciousness

confessedly is, on its employment depends every possibility of

progress. Natural action is regular, constant, conformed to a pattern.

In the natural world event follows event in a fixed order, Under the

same conditions the same result appears an indefinite number of times.

The most objectionable form of this rigidity is found in mechanism. I

sometimes hear ladies talking about "real lace" and am on such

occasions inclined to speak of my real boots. They mean, I find, not

lace that is the reverse of ghostly, but simply that which bears the

impress of personality. It is lace which is made by hand and shows the

marks of hand work. Little irregularities are in it, contrasting it

with the machine sort, where every piece is identical with every other

piece. It might be more accurately called personal lace. The machine

kind is no less real--unfortunately--but mechanism is hopelessly dull,

says the same thing day after day, and never can say anything else.

Now though this coarse form of monotonous process nowhere appears in

what we call the world of nature, a restriction substantially similar

does; for natural objects vary slowly and within the narrowest limits.

Outside such orderly variations, they are subjected to external and

distorting agencies effecting changes in them regardless of their

gains. Branches of trees have their wayward and subtle curvatures, and

are anything but mechanical in outline. But none the less are they

helpless, unprogressive, and incapable of learning. The forces which

play upon them, being various, leave a truly varied record. But each

of these forces was an invariable one, and their several influences

cannot be sorted, judged, and selected by the tree with reference to

its future growth. Criticism and choice have no place here, and

accordingly anything like improvement from year to year is impossible.

The case of us human beings would be the same if we were altogether

managed by the sure, swift, and easy forces of nature. Progress would

cease. We should move on our humdrum round as fixedly constituted, as

submissive to external influence, and with as little exertion of

intelligence as the dumb objects we behold. Every power within us

would be actual, displayed in its full extent, and involving no

variety of future possibility. We should live altogether in the

present, and no changes would be imagined or sought. From this dull

routine we are saved by the admixture of consciousness. For a gain so

great we may well be ready to encounter those difficulties of

conscious guidance which my last chapter detailed. Let the process of

advance be inaccurate, slow, and severe, so only there be advance. For

progress no cost is too great. I am sometimes inclined to congratulate

those who are acute sufferers through self-consciousness, because to

them the door of the future is open. The instinctive, uncritical

person, who takes life about as it comes, and with ready acceptance

responds promptly to every suggestion that calls, may be as popular as

the sunshine, but he is as incapable of further advance. Except in

attractiveness, such a one is usually in later life about what he was

in youth; for progress is a product of forecasting intelligence. When

any new creation is to be introduced, only consciousness can prepare

its path.

Evidently, then, there are strong advantages in guidance through the

spirit. But natural guidance has advantages no less genuine. Human

life is a complex and demanding affair, requiring for its ever-

enlarging good whatever strength can be summoned from every side.

Probably we must abandon that magnificent conception of our ancestors,

that spirit is all in all and nature unimportant. But must we, in

deference to the temper of our time, eliminate conscious guidance

altogether? May not the disparagement of recent ages have arisen in

reaction against attempts to push conscious guidance into regions

where it is unsuitable? Conceivably the two agencies may be

supplementary. Possibly we may call on our fellow of the natural world

for aid in spiritual work. The complete ideal, at any rate, of good

conduct unites the swiftness, certainty, and ease of natural action

with the selective progressiveness of spiritual. Till such a

combination is found, either conduct will be insignificant or great

distress of self-consciousness will be incurred. Both of these evils

will be avoided if nature can be persuaded to do the work which we

clearly intend. That is what goodness calls on us to effect. To

showing the steps through which it may be reached the remainder of

this chapter will be given.

II

Let us, then, take a case of action where we are trying to create a

new power, to develop ourselves in some direction in which we have not

hitherto gone. For such an undertaking consciousness is needed, but

let us see how far we are able to hand over its work to

unconsciousness. Suppose, when entirely ignorant of music, I decide to

learn to play the piano. Evidently it will require the minutest

watchfulness. Approaching the strange instrument with some uneasiness,

I try to secure exactly that position on the stool which will allow my

arms their proper range along the keyboard. There is difficulty in

getting my sheet of music to stand as it should. When it is adjusted,

I examine it anxiously. What is that little mark? Probably the note C.

Among these curious keys there must also be a C. I look up and down.

There it is! But can I bring my finger down upon it at just the right

angle? That is accomplished, and gradually note after note is

captured, until I have conquered the entire score. If now during my

laborious performance a friend enters the room, he might well say, "I

do not like spiritual music. Give me the natural kind which is not

consciously directed." But let him return three years later. He will

find me sitting at the piano quite at my ease, tossing off notes by

the unregarded handful. He approaches and enters into conversation

with me. I do not cease my playing; but as I talk, I still keep my

mind free enough to observe the swaying boughs outside the window and

to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers which my friend has brought. The

musical phrases which drop from my fingers appear to regulate

themselves and to call for little conscious regard.

Yet if my friend should try to show me how mistaken I had been in the

past, attempting to manage consciously what should have been left to

nature, if he should eulogize my natural action now and contrast it

with my former awkwardness, he would plainly be in error. My present

naturalness is the result of long spiritual endeavor, and cannot be

had on cheaper terms; and the unconsciousness which is now noticeable

in me is not the same thing as that which was with me when I began to

play. It is true the incidental hardships connected with my first

attack on the piano have ceased. I find myself in possession of a new

and seemingly unconscious power. An automatic train of movements has

been constructed which I now direct as a whole, its parts no longer

requiring special volitional prompting. But I still direct it, only

that a larger unit has been constituted for consciousness to act upon.

The naturalness which thus becomes possible is accordingly of an

altogether new sort; and since the result is a completer expression of

conscious intention, it may as truly be called spiritual as natural.

III

It has now become plain that our early reckoning of actions as either

natural or spiritual was too simple and incomplete. Conduct has three

stages, not two. Let us get them clearly in mind. At the beginning of

life we are at the beck and call of every impulse, not having yet

attained reflective command of ourselves. This first stage we may

rightly call that of nature or of unconsciousness, and manifestly most

of us continue in it to some extent and as regards certain tracts of

action throughout life. Then reflection is aroused; we become aware of

what we are doing. The many details of each act and the relations

which surround it come separately into conscious attention for

assessment, approval, or rejection. This is the stage of spirit, or

consciousness. But it is not the final stage. As we have seen in our

example, a stage is possible when action runs swiftly to its intended

end, but with little need of conscious supervision. This mechanized,

purposeful action presents conduct in its third stage, that of second

nature or negative consciousness. As this third is least understood,

is often confused with the first, and yet is in reality the complete

expression of the moral ideal and of that reconciliation of nature and

spirit of which we are in search, I will devote a few pages to its

explanation.

The phrase negative consciousness describes its character most

exactly, though the meaning is not at once apparent. Positive

consciousness marks the second stage. There we are obliged to think of

each point involved, in order to bring it into action. In piano-

playing, for example, I had to study my seat at the piano, the music

on the rack, the letters of the keyboard, the position of my fingers,

and the coordination of all these with one another. To each such

matter a separate and positive attention is given. But even at the

last, when I am playing at my ease, we cannot say that consciousness

is altogether absent. I am conscious of the harmony, and if I do not

direct, I still verify results. As an entire phrase of music rolls off

my rapid fingers, I judge it to be good. But if one of the notes

sticks, or I perceive that the phrase might be improved by a slightly

changed stress, I can check my spontaneous movements and correct the

error. There is therefore a watchful, if not a prompting,

consciousness at work. It is true that, the first note started, all

the others follow of themselves in natural sequence. Though I withdraw

attention from my fingers, they run their round as a part of the

associated train. But if they go awry, consciousness is ready with its

inhibition. I accordingly call this the stage of negative

consciousness. In it consciousness is not employed as a positive

guiding force, but the moment inhibition or check is required for

reaching the intended result, consciousness is ready and asserts

itself in the way of forbiddal. This third stage, therefore, differs

from the first through having its results embody a conscious purpose;

from the second, through having consciousness superintend the process

in a negative and hindering, rather than in a positive and prompting

way. It is the stage of habit. I call it second nature because it is

worked, not by original instincts, but by a new kind of associative

mechanism which must first be laboriously constructed.

Years ago when I began to teach at Harvard College, we used to regard

our students as roaring animals, likely to destroy whatever came in

their way. We instructors were warned to keep the doors of our lecture

rooms barred. As we came out, we must never fail to lock them. So

always in going to a lecture, as I passed through the stone entry and

approached the door my hand sought my pocket, the key came out, was

inserted in the keyhole, turned, was withdrawn, fell back into my

pocket, and I entered the room. This series of acts repeated day after

day had become so mechanized that if on entering the room I had been

asked whether on that particular day I had really unlocked the door, I

could not have told. The train took care of itself and I was not

concerned in it sufficiently for remembrance. Yet it remained my act.

On one or two occasions, after shoving in the key in my usual

unconscious fashion, I heard voices in the room and knew that it would

be inappropriate to enter. Instantly I stopped and checked the

remainder of the train. Habitual though the series of actions was, and

ordinarily executed without conscious guidance, it as a whole was

aimed at a definite end. If this were unattainable, the train stopped.

All are aware how large a part is played by such mechanization of

conduct. Without it, life could not go on. When a man walks to the

door, he does not decide where to set his foot, what shall be the

length of his step, how he shall maintain his balance on the foot that

is down while the other is raised. These matters were decided when he

was a child. In those infant years which seem to us intellectually so

stationary, a human being is probably making as large acquisitions as

at any period of his later life. He is testing alternatives and

organizing experience into ordered trains. But in the rest of us a

consolidation substantially similar should be going on in some section

of our experience as long as we live. For this is the way we develop:

not the total man at once, but this year one tract of conduct is

surveyed, judged, mechanized; and next year another goes through the

same maturing process. Not until such mechanization has been

accomplished is the conduct truly ours. When, for example, I am

winning the power of speech, I gradually cease to study exactly the

word I utter, the tone in which it is enunciated, how my tongue, lips,

and teeth shall be adjusted in reference to one another. While

occupied with these things, I am no speaker. I become such only when,

the moment I think of a word, the actions needed for its utterance set

themselves in motion. With them I have only a negative concern.

Indeed, as we grow maturer of speech, collocations of words stick

naturally together and offer themselves to our service. When we

require a certain range of words from which to draw our means of

communication, there they stand ready. We have no need to rummage the

dimness of the past for them. Mechanically they are prepared for our

service.

Of course this does not imply that at one period we foolishly believed

consciousness to be an important guide, but subsequently becoming

wiser, discarded its aid. On the contrary, the mechanization of second

nature is simply a mode of extending the influence of consciousness

more widely. The conclusions of our early lectures were sound. The

more fully expressive conduct can be of a self-conscious personality,

so much the more will it deserve to be called good. But in order that

it may in any wide extent receive this impress of personal life, we

must summon to our aid agencies other than spiritual. The more we

mechanize conduct the better. That is what maturing ourselves means.

When we say that a man has acquired character, we mean that he has

consciously surveyed certain large tracts of life, and has decided

what in those regions it is best to do. There, at least, he will no

longer need to deliberate about action. As soon as a case from this

region presents itself, some electric button in his moral organism is

touched, and the whole mechanism runs off in the surest, swiftest,

easiest possible way. Thus his consciousness is set free to busy

itself with other affairs. For in this third stage we do not so much

abandon consciousness as direct it upon larger units; and this not

because smaller units do not deserve attention, but because they have

been already attended to. Once having decided what is our best mode of

action in regard to them, we wisely turn them over to mechanical

control.

IV

Such is the nature of moral habit. Before goodness can reach

excellence, it must be rendered habitual. Consideration, the mark of

the second stage, disappears in the third. We cannot count a person

honest so long as he has to decide on each occasion whether to take

advantage of his neighbor. Long ago he should have disciplined himself

into machine-like action as regards these matters, so that the

dishonest opportunity would be instinctively and instantly dismissed,

the honest deed appearing spontaneously. That man has not an amiable

character who is obliged to restrain his irritation, and through all

excitement and inner rage curbs himself courageously. Not until

conduct is spontaneous, rooted in a second nature, does it indicate

the character of him from whom it proceeds.

That unconsciousness is necessary for the highest goodness is a

cardinal principle in the teaching of Jesus. Other teachers of his

nation undertook clearly to survey the entirety of human life, to

classify its situations and coolly to decide the amount of good and

evil contained in each. Righteousness according to the Pharisees was

found in conscious conformity to these decisions. Theirs was the

method of casuistry, the method of minute, critical, and instructed

judgment. The fields of morality and the law were practically

identified, goodness becoming externalized and regarded as everywhere

substantially the same for one man as for another. Pharisaism, in

short, stuck in the second stage. Jesus emphasized the unconscious and

subjective factor. He denounced the considerate conduct of the

Pharisees as not righteousness at all. It was mere will-worship. Jesus

preached a religion of the heart, and taught that righteousness must

become an individual passion, similar to the passions of hunger and

thirst, if it would attain to any worth. So long as evil is easy and

natural for us, and good difficult, we are evil. We must be born

again. We must attain a new nature. Our right hand must not know what

our left hand does. We must become as little children, if we would

enter into the kingdom of heaven.

The chief difficulty in comprehending this doctrine of the three

stages lies in the easy confusion of the first and the third. Jesus

guards against this, not bidding us to be or to remain children, but

to become such. The unconsciousness and simplicity of childhood is the

goal, not the starting-point. The unconsciousness aimed at is not of

the same kind as that with which we set out. In early life we catch

the habits of our home or even derive our conduct from hereditary

bias. We begin, therefore, as purely natural creatures, not asking

whether the ways we use are the best. Those ways are already fixed in

the usages of speech, the etiquettes of society, the laws of our

country. These things make up the uncriticised warp and woof of our

lives, often admirably beautiful lives. When speaking in my last

chapter of the way in which our age has come to eulogize guidance by

natural conditions, I might have cited as a striking illustration the

prevalent worship of childhood. Only within the last century has the

child cut much of a figure in literature. He is an important enough

figure to-day, both in and out of books. In him nature is displayed

within the spiritual field, nature with the possibilities of spirit,

but those possibilities not yet realized. We accordingly reverence the

child and delight to watch him. How charming he is, graceful in

movement, swift of speech, picturesque in action! Enviable little

being! The more so because he is able to retain his perfection for so

brief a time.

But we all know the unhappy period from seven to fourteen when he who

formerly was all grace and spontaneity discovers that he has too many

arms and legs. How disagreeable the boy then becomes! Before, we liked

to see him playing about the room. Now we ask why he is allowed to

remain. For he is a ceaseless disturber; constantly noisy and

constantly aware of making a noise, his excuses are as bad as his

indiscretions. He cannot speak without making some awkward blunder. He

is forever asking questions without knowing what to do with the

answers. A confused and confusing creature! We say he has grown

backward. Where before he was all that is estimable, he has become all

that we do not wish him to be.

All that _we_ do not wish him to be, but certainly much more what God

wishes him to be. For if we could get rid of our sense of annoyance,

we should see that he is here reaching a higher stage, coming into his

heritage and obtaining a life of his own. Formerly he lived merely the

life of those about him. He laid a self-conscious grasp on nothing of

his own. When now at length he does lay that grasp, we must permit him

to be awkward, and to us disagreeable. We should aid him through the

inaccurate, slow, and fatiguing period of his existence until, having

tested many tracts of life and learned in them how to mechanize

desirable conduct, he comes back on their farther side to a childhood

more beautiful than the original. Many a man and woman possesses this

disciplined childhood through life. Goodness seems the very atmosphere

they breathe, and everything they do to be exactly fitting. Their acts

are performed with full self-expression, yet without strut or

intrusion of consciousness. Whatever comes from them is happily

blended and organized into the entirety of life. Such should be our

aim. We should seek to be born again, and not to remain where we were

originally born.

V

In what has now been said there is a good deal of comfort for those

who suffer the pains of self-consciousness, previously described. They

need not seek a lower degree of self-consciousness, but only to

distribute more wisely what they now possess. In fullness of

consciousness they may well rejoice, recognizing its possession as a

power. But they should take a larger unit for its exercise. In meeting

a friend, for example, we are prone to think of ourselves, how we are

speaking or poising our body. But suppose we transfer our

consciousness to the subject of our talk, and allow ourselves a hearty

interest in that. Leaving the details of speech and posture to

mechanized past habits, we may turn all the force of our conscious

attention on the fresh issues of the discussion. With these we may

identify ourselves, and so experience the enlargement which new

materials bring. When we were studying the intricacies of self-

sacrifice, we found that the generous man is not so much the self-

denier or even the self-forgetter, but rather he who is mindful of his

larger self. He turns consciousness from his abstract and isolated

self and fixes it upon his related and conjunct self. But that is a

process which may go on everywhere. Our rule should be to withdraw

attention from isolated minutiae, for which a glance is sufficient.

Giving merely that glance, we may then leave them to themselves.

Encouraging them to become mechanized, we should use these mechanized

trains in the higher ranges of living. The cure for self-consciousness

is not suppression, but the turning of it upon something more

significant.

VI

Every habit, however, requires perpetual adjustment, or it may rule us

instead of allowing us instead to rule through it. We do well to let

alone our mechanized trains while they do not lead us into evil. So

long as they run in the right direction, instincts are better than

intentions. But repeatedly we need to study results,--and see if we

are arriving at the goal where we would be. If not, then habit

requires readjustment. From such negative control a habit should never

be allowed to escape. This great world of ours does not stand still.

Every moment its conditions are altering. Whatever action fits it now

will be pretty sure to be a slight misfit next year. No one can be

thoroughly good who is not a flexible person, capable of drawing back

his trains, reexamining them, and bringing them into better adjustment

to his purposes.

It is meaningless, then, to ask whether we should be intuitive and

spontaneous, or considerate and deliberate. There is no such

alternative. We need both dispositions. We should seek to attain a

condition of swift spontaneity, of abounding freedom, of the absence

of all restraint, and should not rest satisfied with the conditions in

which we were born. But we must not suffer that even the new nature

should be allowed to become altogether natural. It should be but the

natural engine for spiritual ends, itself repeatedly scrutinized with

a view to their better fulfillment.

VII

The doctrine of the three stages of conduct, elaborated in this

chapter, explains some curious anomalies in the bestowal of praise,

and at the same time receives from that doctrine farther elucidation.

When is conduct praiseworthy? When may we fairly claim honor from our

fellows and ourselves? There is a ready answer. Nothing is

praiseworthy which is not the result of effort. I do not praise a lady

for her beauty, I admire her. The athlete's splendid body I envy,

wishing that mine were like it. But I do not praise him. Or does the

reader hesitate; and while acknowledging that admiration and envy may

be our leading feelings here, think that a certain measure of praise

is also due? It may be. Perhaps the lady has been kind enough by care

to heighten her beauty. Perhaps those powerful muscles are partly the

result of daily discipline. These persons, then, are not undeserving

of praise, at least to the extent that they have used effort. Seeing a

collection of china, I admire the china, but praise the collector. It

is hard to obtain such pieces. Large expense is required, long

training too, and constant watchfulness. Accordingly I am interested

in more than the collection. I give praise to the owner. A learned man

we admire, honor, envy, but also praise. His wisdom is the result of

effort.

Plainly, then, praise and blame are attributable exclusively to

spiritual beings. Nature is unfit for honor. We may admire her, may

wish that our ways were like hers, and envy her great law-abiding

calm. But it would be foolish to praise her, or even to blame when her

volcanoes overwhelm our friends. We praise spirit only, conscious

deeds. Where self-directed action forces its path to a worthy goal, we

rightly praise the director.

Now, if all this is true, there seems often-times a strange

unsuitableness in praise. We may well decline to receive it. To praise

some of our good qualities, pretty fundamental ones too, often strikes

us as insulting. You are asked a sudden question and put in a

difficult strait for an answer. "Yes," I say, "but you actually did

tell the truth. I wish to congratulate you. You were successful and

deserve much praise." But who would feel comfortable under such

eulogy? And why not? If telling the truth is a spiritual excellence

and the result of effort, why should it not be praised? But there lies

the trouble. I assumed that to be a truth-teller required strain on

your part. In reality it would have required greater strain for

falsehood. It might then seem that I should praise those who are not

easily excellent, since I am forbidden to praise those who are. And

something like this seems actually approved. If a boy on the street,

who has been trained hardly to distinguish truth from lies, some day

stumbles into a bit of truth, I may justly praise him. "Splendid

fellow! No word of falsehood there!" But when I see the father of his

country bearing his little hatchet, praise is unfit; for George

Washington cannot tell a lie.

Absurd as this conclusion appears, I believe it states our soundest

moral judgment; for praise never escapes an element of disparagement.

It implies that the unexpected has happened. If I praise a man for

learning, it is because I had supposed him ignorant; if for helping

the unfortunate, I hint that I did not anticipate that he would regard

any but himself. Wherever praise appears, we cannot evade the

suggestion that excellence is a matter of surprise. And as nobody

likes to be thought ill-adapted to excellence, praise may rightly be

resented.

It is true, there is a group of cases where praise seems differently

employed. We can praise those whom we recognize as high and lifted up.

"Sing praises unto the Lord, sing praises," the Psalmist says. And our

hearts respond. We feel it altogether appropriate. We do not disparage

God by daily praise. No, but the element of disparagement is still

present, for we are really disparaging ourselves. That is the true

significance of praise offered to the confessedly great. For them, the

praise is inappropriate. But it is, nevertheless, appropriate that it

should be offered by us little people who stand below and look up.

Praising the wise man, I really declare my ignorance to be so great

that I have difficulty in conceiving myself in his place. For me, it

would require long years of forbidding work before I could attain to

his wisdom. And even in the extreme form of this praise of superiors,

substantially the same meaning holds. We praise God in order to abase

ourselves. Him we cannot really praise. That we understand at the

start. He is beyond commendation. Excellence covers him like a

garment, and is not attained, like ours, by struggle through

obstacles. Yet this difference between him and us we can only express

by trying to imagine ourselves like him, and saying how difficult such

excellence would then be. We have here, therefore, a sort of reversed

praise, where the disparagement which praise always carries falls

exclusively on the praiser. And such cases are by no means uncommon,

cases in which there is at least a pretense on the praiser's part of

setting himself below the one praised. But praise usually proceeds

down from above, and then, implicitly, we disparage him whom we

profess to exalt.

Nor do I see how this is to be avoided; for praise belongs to goodness

gained by effort, while excellence is not reached till effort ceases

in second nature. To assert through praise that goodness is still a

struggle is to set the good man back from our third stage to our

second. In fact by the time he really reaches excellence praise has

lost its fitness, goodness now being easier than badness, and no

longer something difficult, unexpected, and demanding reward. For this

reason those persons are usually most greedy of praise who have a

rather low opinion of themselves. Being afraid that they are not

remarkable, they are peculiarly delighted when people assure them that

they are. Accordingly the greatest protection against vanity is pride.

The proud man, assured of his powers, hears the little praisers and is

amused. How much more he knows about it than they! Inner worth stops

the greedy ear. When we have something to be vain about, we are seldom

vain.

VIII

But if all this is true, why should praise be sweet? In candor most of

us will own that there is little else so desired. When almost every

other form of dependence is laid by, to our secret hearts the good

words of neighbors are dear. And well they may be! Our pleasure

testifies how closely we are knitted together. We cannot be satisfied

with a separated consciousness, but demand that the consciousness of

all shall respond to our own. A glorious infirmity then! And the

peculiar sweetness which praise brings is grounded in the

consciousness of our weakness. In certain regions of my life, it is

true, goodness has become fairly natural; and there of course praise

strikes me as ill-adjusted and distasteful. I do not like to have my

manners praised, my honesty, or my diligence. But there are other

tracts where I know I am still in the stage of conscious effort. In

this extensive region, aware of my feebleness and hearing an inward

call to greater heights, it will always be cheering to hear those

about me say, "Well done!" Of course in saying this they will

inevitably hint that I have not yet reached an end, and their praises

will displease unless I too am ready to acknowledge my incompleteness.

But when this is acknowledged, praise is welcome and invigorating. I

suspect we deal in it too little. If imagination were more active, and

we were more willing to enter sympathetically the inner life of our

struggling and imperfect comrades, we should bestow it more liberally.

Occasion is always at hand. None of us ever quite passes beyond the

deliberate, conscious, and praise-deserving line. In some parts of our

being we are farther advanced, and may there be experiencing the peace

and assurance of a considerable second nature. But there too perpetual

verification is necessary. And so many tracts remain unsubdued or

capable of higher cultivation that throughout our lives, perhaps on

into eternity, effort will still find room for work, and suitable

praises may attend it.

REFERENCES ON THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS

James's Psychology, ch. iv.

Bain's Emotions and the Will, ch. ix.

Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, ch. iii.

Stephen's Science of Ethics, ch. vii. Section iii.

Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, pt. ii. bk. i. ch. iii.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Nature of Goodness, by George Herbert Palmer