IS CONSCIENCE ALWAYS A PATHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON?
“When the rookery is pretty well filled, and the nest-building
is in full swing, the birds have a busy and anxious time. To get
enough of suitable small stones is a matter of difficulty, and
may involve long journeys for each single stone. The temptation
is too strong for some of them, and they become habitual thieves.
The majority remain stupidly honest. Amusing complications result.
The bearing of the thief clearly shows that he knows he is doing
wrong. He has a conscience, at least a human conscience, i. e.,
the fear of being found out. Very different is the furtive look
of the thief, long after he is out of danger of pursuit, from the
expression of the honest penguin coming home with a hard-earned
stone.
“An honest one was bringing stones from a long distance. Each stone
was removed by a thief as soon as the owner’s back was turned. The
honest one looked greatly troubled as he found that his heap didn’t
grow, but he seemed incapable of suspecting the cause.
“A thief, sitting on his own nest, was stealing from an
adjacent nest, whose honest owner was also at home, but looking
unsuspectingly in another direction. Casually he turned his head
and caught the thief in the act. The thief dropped the stone and
pretended to be busy picking up an infinitesimal crumb from the
neutral ground.”
“The Heart of the Antarctic,” SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON, Vol. II, p.
253 (Section on the Adelie Penguin, by James Murray, Biologist of
the Expedition).
The word “conscience” was perhaps originally synonymous with
consciousness, but it gradually came to mean _self_-consciousness
of a very special type, namely, the silent commendation or censure
which a man may bestow upon his actions or his projects. This word
“conscience” replaced the Middle English term _inwit_,—a term made
famous in the title of a book (circa 1340) called the “Ayenbite of
Inwit” (that is, the “Again-bite or Remorse of Conscience”). The
concept of conscience has played an important part in modern ethical
theory, and it is supposed by many persons to be the foundation of
all morality. What place it deserves to hold in a constructive,
mechanistic ethics can be determined, however, only by careful
analysis. So many extravagant claims have been advanced in its behalf
as to make one suspect that none of them are true. Things which
people have “always heard lauded and never discussed” are only with
difficulty saved from oblivion when intellectual revolutions have
altered the emphasis which man puts on the values of life. It was
thus with the word “soul,” and with the word “immortality,” and it is
likely to be the same with the word “conscience.” At least it will
be an advantage to look at the philosophical pedigree of this once
mighty shibboleth.
It may be surprising to learn that as far as ethical theory is
concerned, the doctrine of an infallible conscience is the product of
no less recent a time than the XVIII century. The Conscience-theory
is the philosophical property of such men as Butler, Clarke, Kant,
Shaftesbury, and Reid, rather than of their predecessors. Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679), who founded critical English ethics, flatly
refused to give to the then immature concept of conscience any
recognition; indeed, he declared it to be nothing less than a
“disease” of the state, and one “of those things that weaken or
tend to the dissolution of a commonwealth.” In Chapter XXIX of the
“Leviathan,” he states the current notions of conscience: (1) “That
every private man is judge of good and evil actions,” and (2) “That
whatsoever a man does against his conscience is sin.” Both of these
notions Hobbes condemns. “For,” he observes with characteristic
sagacity, “a man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and
as the judgment so also the conscience may be erroneous.”
This emphasis which Hobbes placed upon the untrustworthiness of
private ethical judgments was fatal to his purpose. His successors
began straightway to reanimate that which he had sought to bury once
and for all, and, whether on account of their temperamental antipathy
to the intellectualism of Hobbes, or because they were honestly
seeking for some valid ethical principle, they asserted, first
timidly, and later with a surprising boldness the very thing which
Hobbes had sought especially to efface from the docket of ethical
discussion.
We find this reaction beginning in Shaftesbury (1671-1713). Albeit
this author gives a minor place in his ethical theory to the notion
of a “moral sense,” or rational, reflex affection which approves only
socially beneficial actions, yet the positive emphasis which he puts
upon it is nevertheless significant. The affirmation proved to be
contagious, for those who followed Shaftesbury immediately elevated
conscience to a central position in their systems. We refer here to
Butler, Clarke, Kant, and Reid, who are known as intuitionists.
According to Butler (1692-1752), conscience is a “principle of
reflection” and not a mere _feeling_. And this principle of
reflection is for him a natural or inherent property of man’s
mind. It is the principle by which a man “approves or disapproves
his heart, temper, and actions”; it is a faculty which “tends to
restrain men from doing mischief to each other, and leads them to do
good.” Be it noted here that Butler says nothing about the so-called
infallibility of conscience, nor does he argue that it must be the
same for all persons. Moreover, he gives a somewhat analytical
definition of it, and is willing to grant that its function is
utilitarian.
The old belief in the certainty of conscience now begins to reappear.
It was Clarke (1675—1729) who attempted to defend it by the use of
a mathematical analogy. We are all familiar with the axiom (or
truism) that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to
each other. If now we keep the general form, but alter the substance
of this axiom, so that it reads: “Whatever I judge reasonable or
unreasonable for another to do for me, that by the same judgment I
declare reasonable or unreasonable that I in the like case should do
for him,” we have Clarke’s Law of Equity. To an arm-chair philosopher
such a statement sounds fairly cogent, but its empirical value is not
thereby guaranteed. As every student of psychology knows, individual
differences, individual preferences, and the capacity of individuals
by this method of give-and-take are completely ignored in the
formulation of this law. Besides, Clarke’s conception of conscience
may be said to contain a hint of ethical solipsism, or the theory
that oneself is the only accurate authority on social justice. We
need not pause longer over the insuperable difficulties of such a
point of view.
It is, however, in the writings of Kant and Reid that the
conscience-theory attains its modern, sentimental form. In his
“Metaphysic of Morality” Kant (1724-1804) makes the following
straddling assertion: “Nothing in the whole world, or even outside of
the world [sic!] can possibly be regarded as good without limitation
except a _good will_.” But this is not the full extent to which this
philosopher presses his claims. For he continues, “A man’s will is
good, not because the consequences which flow from it are good, nor
because it is capable of attaining the ends which it seeks, but it is
_good in itself_, or because it wills the good. Its intrinsic value
is in no way increased by success or lessened by failure.” From all
of which Kant concludes that “As the will must not be moved to act
from any desire for the results expected to follow from obedience to
a certain law, the only principle of the will which remains is that
of the conformity of actions to universal law. In all cases I must
act in such a way that I can at the same time will that my maxim
should become a universal law.” This last statement is the famous
categorical imperative.
At first glance this appears to have profundity, but it turns out
even upon the slightest analysis to be quite the opposite. For
example, the first passage quoted (“Nothing ... can be regarded as
good without limitation except a good will”) contains assertions
that nobody can know enough to make. It is ritualistic philosophy.
Moreover, the expression “good will” actually does (Kant to the
contrary, notwithstanding) put a logical limitation upon the concept
_good_, just as “good” cat, or “good” razor does. Besides, the term
“will” or volition always refers to a phenomenon which is strictly
dependent upon circumstances, for a man wills _only when_ there
is something to be possessed. These are not all the errors which
Kant here commits. His attempt to explain why the good will is good
(itself a statement exhibiting the fallacy of ambiguity) reveals
that Kant was a very poorly equipped psychologist. I ask you, how
many persons is it possible to find,—indeed, is it possible to find
one single man except among the psychopathic cases,—who would ever
be stimulated to live,—much less to subscribe to Kant’s theory,—if
his successes or failures had no effect whatever upon his future
volitions? We do not imply by this rhetorical question that every man
is, or can be, or should be immoderately egoistical, but only that
Kant had no insight whatever into the psychological problems involved
in ethics.
Consequently, the categorical imperative as a deduction from Kant’s
first principles is to be regarded as completely erroneous. How,
indeed, can a man act in such a way as to make the maxim of his
action a universal law? Suppose we offer a simple example. When I
am hungry, and food is before me, I eat it. Does this imply that my
will to eat becomes a universal law, namely, that all the hungry
should eat? But when I learn of the many hungry who are unable to
eat, my will to eat illustrates not a universal law, but an extremely
particular law, that is to say, the law that _if_ I am hungry, and
_if_ food is supplied, and, furthermore, _if_ I am willing to risk
that food, then, but only then, do I eat it. There seems to be no way
to establish the validity of Kant’s imperative, regardless of the
direction one’s thought takes. To cite a different example entirely,
let us imagine a hungry man who, having cornered all the food of
his tribe, eats it on the assumption that every other man would do
the same thing if he were similarly fortunate. Here the categorical
imperative appears in such a light as to shock its author profoundly.
And yet in strict logic, this interpretation is a valid one for an
intuitionist ethics. Do we wonder that Levy-Brühl speaks of “the
ambiguous and bastard concept of the moral law,” when they who
attempt to state such a law have neither comprehension nor patience
enough to discover the simplest principles of human conduct?
It is, however, in the “Essays on the Active Powers of Man,” by
Thomas Reid (1710-1796) that the commonplace notion of conscience
receives its principal philosophical support. Concerning this
“moral sense,” as Reid calls it in reminiscence of Shaftesbury, the
following formidable assertions are made. In the first place, “It is
without doubt far superior to every other power of the mind.” In the
second place, “The testimony of this moral sense,” like that of the
rest of the senses, “is the testimony of nature, and we have the same
reason to rely upon it.” In addition, just as the sense of vision
is fundamental for space perception, so “The truths immediately
testified by our moral faculty are the first principles of all moral
reasoning.” Reid would also have us note that this reasoning is not
inductive, but deductive, for he says, “The first principles of
morals are the _immediate_ dictates of the moral faculty.”
The outstanding fault of such a theory is that it assumes that every
name we choose to manufacture has a reality corresponding to it.
This is the fallacy of hypostatization, to which all idealistic
philosophers are addicted. Granted that it is true, as Butler says,
that we approve and disapprove of some of our actions, yet this does
not imply that there is a transcendent faculty within us which we
are at liberty to substantialize as Conscience or a Moral Sense.
Such language is merely noun-worship. It is granted that the words
“moral” and “sense” have each separately a meaning, but it does not
follow that the compound term “moral-sense” must therefore have one.
Moreover, all of these intuitionists are wilful and unperspicuous
rationalists, demanding a fundamental principle in ethics _before_
they have employed any induction or experimentation that might help
them to frame such a principle correctly. They are willing to do no
hard work, and to perform no crucial tests in order to see whether
their guesses are facts or fictions. To complete our criticism, we
must not omit to state that Reid’s elevation of conscience to a place
among the senses merely reveals the extent to which he was willing
to go in his defence of the testimony of the senses in general
against the idealists of his age. His use of the “moral sense” was
a debater’s trick. The high esteem in which conscience was held by
his antagonists tempted him to turn one of their own weapons against
them.
We can now better understand the statement previously made that the
personification of conscience was the peculiar artifice, the “useful
dodge,” of a certain school of ethical thinkers in the XVIII century.
Consequently it is erroneous to suppose that the commonplace view
of this phenomenon has always held undisputed sway over theoretical
ethics. It had no place whatever in the minds of Greek ethical
writers. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and their contemporaries
founded the science of ethics without even dreaming that there was
a conscience. Epictetus, Epicurus, and Marcus Aurelius showed no
poverty of constructive thought for the lack of it. Even Helvetius,
a contemporary of the intuitionists, rejected it as spurious when he
wrote: “He who will warrant his virtue in every situation is either
an impostor or a fool; characters equally to be mistrusted.”
Most people who have heard the name of John Locke will recall his
arguments against the assumptions of the moral intuitionists in
those passages where he combats the theory of innate moral ideas.
According to Locke, all such ideas would have to be (1) independent
of geographical location and climate, (2) independent of the age of
the person and of his training, and (3) recognized by all persons as
fundamental. But none of these conditions are found to be satisfied
by anyone who makes the shortest pilgrimage through the world in the
search for these statistics. And consequently the intellectually
honest Locke rejects the philosophical theory of conscience,
independently of his recognition of the facts of self-approval and
self-disapproval.
It remained, however, for John Stuart Mill to foreshadow the
beginning of the end of this fantastic theory of the moral faculty in
Chapter III of his “Utilitarianism.” He writes:—
“The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty
may be, is one and the same—a feeling in our own mind; a pain,
more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in
properly cultivated moral natures rises, in more serious cases,
into shrinking from it as an impossibility. This feeling ... is
the essence of Conscience; though in that complex phenomenon as it
actually exists, the simple fact is in general all encrusted over
with collateral associations, derived from sympathy, from love,
and still more from fear; from all the forms of religious feeling;
from the recollections of childhood and of all our past life; from
self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally even
self-abasement.”
This analysis of Mill’s reveals that what the intuitionists loosely
termed _conscience_ is a far more complex phenomenon than they had
suspected, and with this revelation the whole logical structure
of intuitionism breaks down. For if conscience is not the simple,
innate, infallible principle or faculty which the intuitionists
postulated it to be, the deductions they made from this hypothesis
become more and more untenable the longer they are scrutinized.
Mill’s analysis of the psychological factors in conscience, together
with Locke’s discovery of the cultural and geographical limitations
of any moral sense make it necessary to define this ethical
phenomenon in purely empirical terms.
Such a definition as we seek, however, could only be obtained by
securing an elaborate census of cases in which the words “conscience”
or “moral sense” were used. The census-taker would have to roam
over the whole earth, ask questions all day long, and even become
an eavesdropper at night, in order to gain the information he
desired. Even this method would hardly be exhaustive, since perhaps
far more “pangs of conscience” are felt than are ever expressed
in language; and so our census-taker, were he as thorough as we
might desire him to be, would have to be equipped with a sort of
ultra-stethoscope,—one that could elevate a blush into an audible
phenomenon,—in order to return with a full and complete report. The
lack of such exhaustive statistics must, of course, be permanent;
not only for want of census-takers, and for want of accuracy and
sincerity on the part of those giving their introspection, but also
because the concept of conscience may be slowly evolving, so that the
end of the census might not harmonize with its beginning.
Granting, indeed, that such an evolution exists, it does not
now appear to be either uniform or universal. For while, as we
have recently shown, the concept of conscience first attained a
philosophic importance in the XVIII century, and was thereafter
variously modified and developed, yet the popular notion of a moral
sense,—of “this deity within my bosom,” as some have even expressed
it,—has actually degenerated into something unworthy of a place
among the positive ethical values. Our quotation from James Murray’s
account of the behavior of the Adelie penguin is extremely pertinent
here. “_The fear of being found out_” is, we venture to say, the very
nucleus and core of the consciences of the majority of men. And while
without doubt some forms of fear are well-grounded, as, for example,
the farmer’s fear lest the oncoming storm wash out his seedlings, yet
when fear tends to limit prudence, or take the place of prevision,
the organism in which that fear arises is sub-normal and unsound.
Conscience, then, in so far as it is identical with this degrading
emotion of fear, and in so far as it begins and ends in a withdrawing
reaction, is nothing but a blight.
Yet something more remains to be said about the popular conception
of the word “conscience.” This word, as commonly used, denotes an
emotional state which, far from being in harmony with the ideals of
the group, often denotes the very opposite condition. It is hardly
necessary to remark that the fear of being found out does not imply
loyalty to the group any more than it implies the recognition of
that which makes for power, wisdom, and peace in the individual.
Indeed, conscience as popularly experienced, involving as it
does anxiety, trepidation, self-abasement, and a host of other
introversive tendencies, is an ethical liability, both to the group
and to the individual. The man who has transgressed the will of the
group is surely not a bit better off because of his fear of being
caught, nor can he regard his fear, even though he has already been
tortured by it, as giving him any right to a mitigation of the
penalty. As for himself, the conscience-stricken individual may have
so long squandered his energy in his effort to conceal his offence
as to bring him very close to ethical bankruptcy. The picture we
draw is not extreme,—it can be duplicated in every neighborhood,
if not in every family on the globe. For conscience, as it is
usually experienced, is a painful, withdrawing reaction, implying
negation rather than affirmation, incoordination rather than skilful
prevision, and morbidity instead of frank, overt, constructive
action. Accurate indeed is the phrase, “The pangs of conscience,” as
a description of the organic turmoil incident to this condition of
mal-adjustment. Can it not, then, be truthfully said, that in the
cases just described conscience is a pathological phenomenon?
Thus to discover that the popular form of conscience implies a vice
rather than a virtue is not, however, enough. We wish also to know
how and why this form of conscience has attained so great a vogue.
And here again we touch upon matters of the greatest importance for
a mechanistic ethics.
Conscience as a form of fear is so strong and so wide-spread for
two reasons. The first is already familiar to us, and is briefly
repeated. It is that the flexor system is originally stronger than
the extensor system. And so in the great majority of men whose
natures are less evolved, fear is almost a daily experience,—not
only the fear of nature and of the unknown, but also the fear of
the group by whose tolerance they exist. Moreover, sentiment and
not knowledge is the great group asset, by which we imply no such
educated sentiments as are derived from analytical inquiry, or from
an open search after the facts, but rather that kind of sentiment
which passively bars and actively hinders the enlargement of the
understanding. The group really never explains. When offended, it
simply becomes suspicious, and its gossips freely translate this
suspicion into rumor and inuendo. It is small wonder, then, that the
conscience-stricken individual, as a product of his group, has as
his first, and sometimes his only reaction, the tendency to shrink
and become unresilient when he realizes that his acts, or worse
still, his thoughts, have transgressed the taboos of his tribe. It
is a case of like master, like man; the group does not usually know
what its purposes are, much less does it ask to have those purposes
examined and revealed; and so the conscience-stricken individual,—the
sentimental child of the group,—reacts to his realization of
estrangement from the group in a manner that makes his last state
worse than his first.
This cannot be taken to imply that it is a sign of intellectual
maturity to transgress all the taboos of the group. Yet the argument
still holds that the influences produced by the exclusive use of this
negative form of conscience are baleful. Very early in the life of
the average child the expressions: “Don’t,” “If you dare to do that
again, I’ll whip you,” “What would people say?” and a score of other
negations are employed by his parents and teachers on the principle
that ethical guidance is achieved by such means. As a result, says
Edwin Holt, “The parent has set a barrier between the child and a
portion of reality; and forever after the child will be in some
measure impeded in its dealings” with those things which have become
taboo, always first feeling the prohibition, rather than the urgency
to act discriminatively upon a knowledge which a close contact with
the reality should produce. Such a parent has not “trusted the
truth,” and the final result is that the child has actually become “a
second-rate mind, not in harmony with itself,” since not in creative
touch with the environment.
Even more pointedly John Dewey writes in his criticism of the
doctrine of self-denial. “Morals is a matter of direction, not of
suppression. The urgency of desires cannot be got rid of; nature
cannot be expelled. If the need of happiness, of satisfaction of
capacity, is checked in one direction, it will manifest itself in
another. If the direction which is checked is an unconscious and
wholesome one, the one which is taken will be likely to be morbid and
perverse. The one who is conscious of continually denying himself
cannot rid himself of the idea that it ought to be ‘made up’ to him;
that a compensating happiness is due him for what he has sacrificed,
somewhat increased, if anything, on account of the unnatural virtue
he has displayed. To be self-sacrificing is to ‘lay up’ merit, and
this achievement must surely be rewarded with happiness—if not now,
then later. Those who habitually live on the basis of conscious
self-denial are likely to be exorbitant in the demands which they
make on some one near them, some member of their family or some
friend; likely to blame others if their own ‘virtue’ does not secure
for itself an exacting attention which reduces others to the plane of
servility. Often the doctrine of self-sacrifice leads to an inverted
hedonism; we are to be good—that is, forego pleasure—now, that we may
have a greater measure of enjoyment in some future paradise of bliss.
Or, the individual who has taken vows of renunciation is entitled by
that very fact to represent spiritual authority on earth and to lord
it over others.”
They who wish even a more striking picture of the extent to which
the negative type of conscience degrades the intellect, have
only to consult Alfred Adler’s “The Neurotic Constitution.” If
Dr. Adler correctly depicts the salient traits of the neurotic,
many intuitionists themselves are by implication introverts, and
consequently forfeit their claims to ethical leadership. The neurotic
is described as “a person possessing anxiety,” “the self-sacrificing
virtue,” “a marked sensitiveness,” “an irritable debility,” “an
estrangement from reality,” as well as “a person with a strong
tendency to symbolization,” and a penchant for “guiding fictions”
invented for the purpose of compensating him for his feeling of
inferiority at having lost solid contacts with reality. This, then,
is the success which the conscience-theory has met with at the hands
of scientific experts,—keen and sympathetic observers of the ways of
men.
Such an account of the degeneration of conscience into a
self-annihilating sentiment is, however, only one chapter in the
history of this concept. And while the list of uses to which the
word “conscience” has been put does not furnish as solid a basis
upon which to build a constructive ethical technique as did the uses
of “good,” “right,” and “virtue,” we can nevertheless still find a
positive ethical value for this term. How, then, will this value be
discovered?
It will be found by a study of those persons who have attained the
power to view the world in a purely objective and empirical manner;
of those persons who treat their own and other peoples’ actions
as experiments in the great laboratory of time, rather than as
timid ventures to be apologized for on the slightest provocation;
of those persons who have evolved to that point where their
knowledge determines their sentiments, and not their sentiments
their knowledge; and of those who, having by this means chosen
their dependable goods, learn the right methods to attain them, and
thereafter employ plain judgments of fact in estimating the success
which they acquire and the quality of the virtue which they achieve.
In such persons the positive, constructive, liberalizing type of
conscience exists,—a conscience which, through being built up of
objectively tested judgments, becomes the outstanding ethical asset
of the personality.
This type of conscience is not a myth, for it may be acquired in the
same way as any other skill is acquired. The objective knowledge
which it presupposes can be gained where every natural curiosity
of a child or an adult is developed into a frank acquaintance with
the object of curiosity; where fear is turned into intrepidity by a
bold analysis of its cause and by a frontal attack upon the exciting
stimulus; where one learns that ethical problems are always solved by
forming serviceable habits and never by the cultivation of permanent
anxieties; and where, finally, all the entangling alliances forced
upon one by unprofitable acquaintances are boldly, but politely,
annihilated. Even though many strongly entrenched traditions and
institutions of the world would decay were the type of conscience we
here describe to become wide-spread, yet this cannot deter the wise
man from making it his life work to add as many new names to the
list of those possessing ethical insight as it is within his power to
do. Indeed, whenever this list becomes so large as to be generally
regarded by autocrats as dangerous, we shall have come to that place
in the course of civilization where the first real ethical advance is
to be made.
CHAPTER IX
THE MITIGATION OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FREEDOM AND OBLIGATION
“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.”
R. B. PERRY, “The Moral Economy,” p. 34.
“One could scarcely construct a more erroneous view than that every
human being is endowed at birth with the same ‘lump sum’ of freedom,
which remains an inalienable possession throughout life. Our freedom
is not complete, it is in the making.... The process by which freedom
is won is the process of enlightenment. It is the truth that sets men
free, the clear perception of moral relations and moral laws, the
understanding of human nature and its true needs.”
W. G. EVERETT, “Moral Values,” pp. 358-9.
One of the most revolutionary changes which the scientific study of
psychology has wrought consists in the demolition of all the barriers
which formerly divided the body from the mind. The intellect, once
securely enthroned as the highest faculty in the mental hierarchy;
the reason, erstwhile religiously devoted to the contemplation
of pure truth; and the will, which formerly completed this trio
of sublime, unitary faculties, have, in the unbiased and careful
scrutiny of laboratory science, been shown to be not only highly
complicated processes, but products of experience as well; and not
only products of experience, but functions of brain and gland.
Furthermore, they have been revealed to be not solely functions of a
biological mechanism controlled by external stimuli, but also in a
larger sense they are now regarded as means by which the body of a
man adjusts itself to and gains control of its physical and social
environments. No longer do we ask the old question: “Why has the mind
a body?” but rather, “Why does the body have a mind?” And the answer
is: The body has a mind to enable the body to experiment with its
environment so that when it gets what it seems to want, it can know
that it has really wanted what it has gotten.
Some results of this highly reconstructive iconoclasm upon ethical
thought have already been depicted in the preceding chapters. Here
we are soon to see what effect such a doctrine has upon the last two
ethical concepts we shall analyze, namely, duty and freedom.
As may have already been divined, a mechanistic ethics on its
constructive side does not maintain a pension list for the outworn
conceptions of an earlier day. Consequently, in this place we
shall not ask what used to be thought of the “Freedom of the Will,”
nor shall we quote Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty” as a prologue to our
theme. For while only a hundred years ago no ethical teacher could
have safely omitted giving great emphasis to the theological setting
of these two concepts, today such a treatment would not arouse the
slightest “problematic thrill.” What used to be called “the Will” is
now an obsolete expression;—indeed, ever since Spinoza wrote, it has
been regarded as a myth. In its stead, we speak of the individual or
particular volitions of men, and we discuss their value in reducing
the gap between our liquid matter and its good. Likewise, what was
once called the lump-sum of our Duty has now become separated and
analyzed into claims, interests, other-regarding sentiments, and the
like, each one of which has a history and a real meaning for our
flesh-and-blood personality.
All such changes, while perhaps highly disconcerting to those persons
who feel that they cannot get along without their “guiding fictions,”
are really signs of a salutary advance along ethical lines. Once it
is realized that what is popularly termed “will-power” is after all
only _skill-power_, and that “moral obligation” should be translated
into _pragmatic urgency_, it will be plain that only clearly-prevised
action-tendencies can properly be called either right or virtuous. It
may be true that many a successful action has been performed in the
name of a fetichistic belief, but who will doubt that an even more
profitable action could have been motivated with less waste of the
body’s energies, had there been correct insight and a frank facing
of the facts. As long as people are afraid of life, so long are they
bound to allege some false cause of their actions. Conversely, as
soon as they realize that they _are_ what they _do_, and whenever
they learn that their ethical books cannot be balanced by drawing on
a phantom bank account, they begin to pile up ethical assets, and to
reduce their ethical liabilities.
From our earlier remark that the science of ethics is primarily
concerned with what _is_ rather than what _ought to be_, it may
be difficult to imagine what place the concept of human freedom
can have in a mechanistic treatment of the problems of conduct.
It might seem easier to foreshadow what will be the fate of the
concept of obligation, especially when we realize that oughting is
always hypothetical, rather than categorical. For every obligation
is specific and particular,—it depends upon conditions, places,
times, and persons, just as does every signification of good and
bad, and right and wrong. There is no general Ought, as our recent
discussion of Kant’s categorical imperative clearly implied. When,
then, we ask from whom or from what obligation arises, what answer
does a mechanistic ethics provide? Some may expect us to make the
traditional answer, namely, that it comes from the group, and that
the _feeling_ of obligation is a variation of the elemental type of
conscience. This sort of an answer is not to be given here. Although
the group largely determines how we shall feel with regard to what
_ought_ to be done, yet the final education of an ethically adult
person leaves him with a different mind on this point. Indeed, it
is our purpose here not only to show that the concept of ethical
freedom is a valid concept for a mechanistic ethics, but also and
more particularly that a true conception of ethical obligation
depends upon the discovery of what ethical freedom implies. That this
involves no paradox will be understood as soon as we comprehend what
it means to say that a man is _free_. Herewith we shall state five
conditions under which freedom of action is guaranteed.
The first meaning of free action is _action that is physically
possible_. I am not now, I never was, and I never shall be free (that
is, able) to walk backward and forward at the same time, or to be
in Boston and New York simultaneously. Neither can I, while kissing
Jennie at her fireside, be also kissing Kate at her doorway a mile
from Jennie’s house. On the other hand, the man who is sound of limb,
sensorially acute, and otherwise endowed with natural capacities, can
be said to be free to employ these capacities whenever and wherever
the conditions provide the opportunity.
Right here we ask whether this first meaning of freedom does not
have an important bearing on the question of ethical obligation. Is
it, indeed, not plain that just as we cannot do what is physically
impossible, so there is no valid obligation under these conditions?
This, however, is something which the intuitionists and the idealists
have persistently ignored, regarding it often as somehow the very
acme of virtue to declare as an ideal of conduct something which
is totally impossible of realization, and thereby fostering the
neurotic temperament instead of ethical enlightenment. Yet it is
plain that if, while being unable to do the impossible, I still am
pathologically anxious about it, I shall succeed only in accumulating
impatience and turmoil, and be forced to get what sour consolation
I can from Schopenhauer, or else to “gnaw the file” in some other
fashion. Moreover, according to a mechanistic ethics, I am an evil
person as long as I waste energy in this fashion, or in demanding
consolation for my erroneous sentiment. Not only am I bound to fail,
and thereby to create discord rather than relieve it, but I am also
losing time and energy which might have gone into more profitable
pursuits. On the other hand, while we do not yet say that we are
under obligation to perform every physically possible action, yet
every valid urgency still lies in that direction.
The second meaning of the word “freedom” is _absence of external
restraints_ imposed by physical obstacles or generated by human
beings. No man is free to act when external hindrances are too great
for him to overcome. Thus while it is possible for a sound man
to walk either forward or backward, he cannot keep on walking in
a straight line if his path is intercepted by the sheer wall of a
hundred-foot cliff, or if some one stronger than himself obstructs
his going. Excellent examples of such thwarting occur in the Greek
mythology of Hades. Tantalus was forever hindered by the gusts of
wind from plucking the fruit from the tree; Sisyphus could not force
the stone over the brow of the hill; and the daughters of Danaus
lost all the water they carried in their sieves. They were not,
therefore, _free_ to perform these actions. They may, it is true,
have everlastingly _wished_ them, but they could not _will_ them.
Nevertheless, while many similar hindrances to human action exist,
such as the friction-hindrance to perpetual motion, and the wall
which kept Pyramus from Thisbe, yet, on the whole, most of the
so-called external restraints are far less serious barriers to
freedom than we realize. This is not only attested by the magnificent
conquests of nature recently made by applied science, but it might
also be deduced from the properties of man’s protoplasm as modified
in his muscular architecture. For protoplasm is liquid, and liquids
flow; and man’s stream of thought as a derivative of his liquid
protoplasm acquires its labile character as a sort of natural
right. Just as a liquid under pressure transmits that pressure in
all directions, so a man who is made of good protoplasm tends, when
confronted by such obstacles as we have just described, to think,
and plan, and experiment, that is, TO FLOW, out of the difficulty.
His neuro-muscular equipment also singularly facilitates the turning
of his wish into a will. Our muscles do not only contract and relax
to produce lever movements in one plane, but they also combine
their movements into pronation, supination, and rotation, and these
synergic actions enable us to explore the obstacle and almost
literally to flow around it. This is also the mechanism by which
we puzzle out any problem. The all-or-none principle makes mental
analysis always possible and often accurate. Applied to Pyramus,
this means that the wall that separates him from Thisbe stimulates
him with her aid so variously that he not only rebels and laments,
but also starts to explore its surface and its possibilities, with
the final result that he vaults it and descends “until he can
come at Thisbe’s lips more directly.” There has always been an
abundance of old saws to encourage the bold and the faint-hearted
to regard obstacles as merely stepping-stones to future success,
but the physiological basis of such maxims we are only beginning to
comprehend. In fine, then, when we speak of a permanent obstacle to
our actions, we mean it only in so far as we do not also imply some
serious deficiency in the quality of our protoplasm.
The relation between this second type of freedom and obligation
is very obviously hinted at by the popular maxims on the theme
of perseverance. Moreover, it is historically demonstrable that
pragmatic urgency usually increases in direct ratio to the ease with
which external restraints can be surmounted. On the other hand,
it is gradually becoming recognized that “there are hundreds of
thousands of human beings who can by no possibility ever do what is
expected of them by society. Society must give over expecting such
things.”[22] Those who have no power to plan, scheme, or supervise,
are consequently not educated enough to appreciate the obligations
which such abilities involve.
We may now consider a third meaning of the concept “freedom.” _It
is exhibited in those actions which we have been so well trained
to perform that they occur without any conscious effort whatever._
Accordingly, the man with training and skill is more free than the
man who lacks these abilities. If the oboist of a symphony orchestra
is too sick to play, only another oboist is free to sit as a
substitute at his desk. A plumber will not do. It will be perceived
at once that many sorts of skill, even though they be the exclusive
possession of one person, may yet be turned to the equal advantage
of a great number of people, making them all co-sharers in his
freedom. By using the skill of the substitute oboist, for example,
both the managers and the patrons of the concert are free to carry
out their wishes. The enormous social advantages of most forms of
skilful technique require only a passing comment. Indeed, what we
call business and trade are ultimately the bargains we make for each
other’s skill. And here again the pragmatic urgency implicated by
this form of freedom is apparent, not only in the sharing of socially
profitable skill, but also in the acquisition of it.
A fourth empirical characterization of freedom may now be considered.
For free actions, in addition to those which are physically
possible, externally unhindered, and within the range of our skill,
are especially _those which some mechanism of the body actually
carries out in the manner in which it was originally set to do
it_. In popular speech this form of freedom is exemplified by such
expressions as, “I was successful,” “I was determined to do it,
and I did it,” or, “The clerk tried to palm off a substitute, but
I persevered in getting the original.” Such freedom emphatically
implies a _continuity in behavior_ which is absent in cases where
the desire is thwarted or suppressed. The physiological processes
which guarantee this form of freedom are interesting to contemplate.
As the wish passes over into will, not only are more and more muscle
fibers involved in the action-scheme stimulated to their maximum
contraction, but also wider and wider synergies of muscular groups
are brought into play, until all the available kinetic energy of the
body is released along the channel of one final common motor pathway.
Moreover, each and every muscle involved in such an action-scheme
stimulates, upon its contraction, a receptor nerve embedded within
it, and these circular reflex stimulations automatically reinforce
the contractions already begun. This is nature’s own contribution to
the unification of our personality in the performance of this type
of free activity. The whole neuro-muscular architecture involved in
such behavior becomes an automatic mechanism for reinforcing the
centrifugal bodily posture, and for providing against the wilting
of any motor discharge in any single muscle due to its prolonged
contraction. Such actions, then, which involve the steady and
uninhibited output of energy that we have described we call _free_.
They are equally manifested by the cat who springs upon and catches
the mouse she has been warily watching, and by the violoncello
virtuoso who scurries safely through the cadenza and arrives at the
_tutti_ without having either produced a “wolf tone” or dropped his
bow. It is such action which is connoted by the popular phrase “free
will.”
The final touch to our delineation of freedom may be added by saying
that _only when a man’s actions result in enlarging his environment,
and in providing him with increasing opportunities for turning his
wishes into wills, is he in the highest sense ethically free_. The
preceding characterizations of the free man were derived from simply
watching him _in the midst_ of any of a thousand activities. This
last part of the picture is obtained by reckoning the permanent
ethical assets which his efforts have provided. These assets are,
moreover, defined in terms of a continuing freedom. For while we are
all in a sense free to do anything within our ability, and for which
there is the time, the place, and the opportunity, yet only under
certain conditions can we follow such an action with another of our
own choosing. The liar, the thief, and the slanderer know very well
to what an extent their putative freedoms produce antagonists of
their own making with whom they must ever thereafter wage a dismal
conflict. On the other hand, the man of frankness and a truthful
tongue, the man who makes fair bargains with the universe, and the
man who can solve his problems without the loss of his own temper or
the respect of other persons, is ipso facto equipped with the ability
to synergize his muscles repeatedly into freely willed activities.
Moreover, while this fifth type of freedom is dependent upon the
presence of the other four, its effect upon them is reflexively
beneficial, in making more actions physically possible, reducing the
external hindrances to them, increasing the skill by which they are
performed, and insuring the continuity with which they are carried
out. Indeed, we may now identify virtue with the attainment of
this last type of freedom, and vice with its loss or decline. Such
activity is also right, and its stimulus is a dependable good.
In thus defining the conditions under which human freedom exists, we
have, I surmise, also discovered the secret of ethical obligation,
of pragmatic urgency. That is to say, whenever an action is possible,
when it is not opposed by restraints beyond a man’s power to
overcome, when he has the skill with which to perform it, and when he
can will it as well as wish it, and when also the performance of this
action increases the range of his effectiveness, then, but not till
then, can it be said that he _ought_ to perform it. The expressions,
“I ought,” or “I should,” henceforth mean: “I imagine that there
would be greater freedom if this course of action which I contemplate
were to be carried out.” Under this new conception of pragmatic
urgency, oughting is neither a _vis a tergo_, nor a _vis a fronte_,
nor yet Somebody’s fiat superadded to the data of ethics, but it is
simply the logical resultant of the conditions of such human activity
as produces dependable goods. We recognize no valid obligations
imposed upon men from above; obligations are rather implicit in any
activity which employs a man’s skill to satisfy his needs at the same
time that it educates his desires.
It is thus plain that there is no fundamental difference between
ethics and any other science. Just as the business of physical
science is to describe the conditions under which any phenomenon
occurs, so the business of ethical science is to ascertain, by a
study of the mechanisms of human behavior, the conditions which
underlie all of our ethical values. Wisely indeed did Protagoras
remark that “Man is the measure of all things,” but it was not until
many centuries after this statement had been made that a positively
constructive interpretation, could be put upon it.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] George Clarke Cox, “The Public Conscience,” p. 25.
CHAPTER X
THE ACQUISITION OF AN ETHICAL TECHNIQUE
“One of the reasons why pantheistic revery has been so popular is
that it seems to offer a painless substitute for genuine spiritual
effort.... When pushed to a certain point the nature cult always
tends towards sham spirituality.
‘Oh world as God has made it
All is beauty,
And knowing this is love, and
Love is duty,
What further can be sought for or desired?’
It seems to follow from these lines of Browning, perhaps the most
flaccid spiritually in the English language, that to go out and
mix oneself up with the landscape is the same as doing one’s duty.
As a method of salvation this is even easier and more æsthetic
than that of the Ancient Mariner, who, it will be remembered, is
relieved of the burden of his transgression by admiring the color
of water-snakes!”
IRVING BABBITT, “Rousseau and Romanticism.”
“Objection: Will not this end in ethical scepticism? Answer:
Nothing is further from scepticism than the conception of a reality
subject to laws, and of a rational action based on the knowledge of
those laws.”
L. LEVY-BRÜHL, “Ethics and Moral Science,”
Table of Contents, p. xi.
“In the preceding pages we have no doubt often hurt—but we have
hurt to heal. The good surgeon probes deeply in order that he may
not have the operation to perform again. Even a minute amount of
diseased tissues left behind can prevent the return of vigorous
and creative health. Thus what may seem to the anxious patient
unnecessary cruelty may be the greatest kindness. A sentimental
compromise is never welcomed by the mature judgment of the brave
man. And in this day when so many have willingly given their lives
for the sake of a human ideal, is it just and right to flinch
in the spiritual warfare which confronts our generation? We are
seeking nothing less than a renaissance in which men’s energies
will be wisely and loyally directed to what is greatly human
and humanly great. In such a service we must will to be hard on
ourselves and on others.”
ROY WOOD SELLARS, “The Next Step in Religion,” p. 211.
Little did Descartes dream that his attempt to find truth by the
method of candid doubting was a sign that human evolution had “turned
a corner,” or that the method he employed was to be the precursor
of an ethical renaissance. Yet the introduction of this one form of
psychological test as a philosophic instrument was an entering wedge
of such power that where great darkness had been, much light was
shed; and where the stolid inertia of many centuries had existed,
movement and life and enlightenment began to appear. But nature is
slow, and always takes plenty of time to play its elaborate game;
indeed, often nature seems to us to proceed by circuitous paths
where we would make an open right of way. However, even though it
was several centuries after Descartes before the first psychological
laboratory was founded, the development of thought toward the
recognition and use of the psychological method was nevertheless
steadily proceeding. Today there is no word we are more wont to
conjure with than the word _psychology_. And even if the foolish
always use it with derision, yet those who are wise know well to what
an extent it is symbolical of a new era of human development, on the
threshold of which era we now confidently stand.
What is this psychological method which has so silently become
established, and what has it to do with the acquisition of an
ethical technique? It is the method of analysis, experiment, and
constructive scepticism, which treats all phenomena objectively, that
is, by leaving out the personal equation, and by asking not how do
we preconceive that things _should_ appear, but only how _do_ they
appear with our personal bias in abeyance.
Such a method, which, by the way, is the essence of psychological
science, is very difficult to achieve. Indeed, for many it is
constitutionally impossible. The history of physical science records
how great were the struggles of men to become objectively-minded even
toward their external environment, struggles which have only recently
become successful. Witness the fact that for many centuries the
alchemists sought for the philosopher’s stone, a mineral which they
falsely preconceived to have the power of transmuting lead into gold;
witness the fact that the science of anatomy was for generations
denied its birth on account of pious prejudice and taboo; and witness
even today that many physical objects are said to be _bewitched_
when they fail to operate as expected, and that luck at cards is
still stoutly affirmed by otherwise estimable people. Indeed, there
are thousands of farmers in the United States who appeal to the
methods of divination in planting their crops and shingling their
houses. Consequently, it is plain that if the power to become
objectively-minded toward the physical world is so rarely attained,
it is even more difficult to become detached and un-self-conscious
toward the mental and social behavior of our fellow-men.
Nevertheless, this method of detachment, of looking at old things
with new eyes, is just what hundreds of teachers of psychology are
training thousands of students every year to employ; and its salutary
effects are being felt in every corner of the civilized world.
To some persons all this may come as a surprise, since the criticism
has already been publicly uttered that the study of psychology
tends to make one incurably introspective. On these grounds alone
the self-styled hard-headed business man often hastily classifies
psychology among the foibles of women and poets. This, however, is
simply another error due to hostile preconceptions. For even though
some psychologists have fallen into the practice of cultivating
Psyche for her own sake, yet their method originated from distinctly
other motives. Psychology, it is true, when cultivated by persons
constitutionally possessed of an introversive bias, may not always
eradicate that bias, any more than will the putting of an army rifle
into the hands of a timid man make him forthright into a model
top-sergeant.
In another strain, it is sometimes alleged that psychology is simply
a new head set upon the body of ancient Roman stoicism. But it
must be remembered that the detachment which the Stoics cultivated
lacked all the elements of a scientific inquisitiveness. It was
marked chiefly by a sweet indifference and unconcern, traits which
were derived from the belief that Reason which ruled the world was
interested only in the headlines of universal news. The psychologist,
far from being indifferent to the most transient phenomena of
human experience, regards them most steadfastly. Nevertheless, he
endeavors to maintain an equality of interest in all human affairs,
knowing full well that as soon as he takes sides, he loses his
sense of the proportions of the whole. Unlike the Stoic, he admits
the reality and inevitableness of pain and anguish; yet while he
studies these phenomena, he keeps a sharp lookout lest his personal
equation obtrude itself in the shape of sympathetic sorrows,—these
he steadfastly refuses to add to his report of the objective facts.
Nevertheless, it is conceivable that had not the elements of
stoic indifference been a basic capacity of human protoplasm, the
psychological attitude might not have been evolved.
Curiously enough, psychology has been both defended and attacked
on the basis of its supposed kinship with certain doctrines of
Jesus, as, for example, the Golden Rule. No psychologist is greatly
interested in any debate carried out on these lines. When Edwin
Holt’s “The Freudian Wish” first appeared a few years ago, some
caustic reviewer accused its author of “having gotten religion in
the form of Freud.” It is doubtful whether anyone, be he Christian
or non-Christian, would regard such a remark either as a help or
a hindrance to the acceptance of psychology as a contribution to
the technique of ethics. As far as the Golden Rule is concerned,
its relations to scientific method may be briefly indicated by
saying that while this maxim can be interpreted to imply a kind
of other-regard which seems to possess the elements of scientific
detachment, yet other things must also be considered before final
judgment is passed. For this hypothetical imperative,—“_Whatsoever ye
would_ that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them,”—is only
possible of application among equals of intellect or of sentiment,
and it can be used then only by a forehanded and judicious person,
one with discriminative sympathies, and able to mature his wishes
into wills. Psychology ventures to make no universal rules of
conduct, especially since it must first take an inventory of human
nature in order to find out what rules there are to which man will
give his uncoerced and unconscious loyalty.
Let it not be assumed, however, that the psychologist urges an
ethical moratorium while he is pursuing his search into the secret
places of human nature. The method of scientific detachment has
itself provided such an insight into the problems of conduct as to
make any such assumption absurd. He who catches a glimpse of what
it means to understand his fellow-men, rather than to regard them
primarily as creatures to be classified as either good or bad,
virtuous or vicious, begins to grow into an ethically adult person.
He at once loses that ancient, clandestine, stultifying tendency to
obtrude his own bias into his social environment, and he no longer
finds his chief comfort in adoring those who are most like unto
himself, or in mentally lynching in advance those who rub his ego
the wrong way. Scientific neutrality hath also its victories. The
application of the psychological method to prison reform, where
the criminal is regarded as an effect as well as a cause of social
mal-adjustments, has already been acknowledged as humanly great. Is
it not possible that we see in such phenomena the passing of an age
in which maxims were necessary, and the birth of an era where the
educative methods of wise and kind men will take their places?
The further drift of this would be hard, indeed, to conceal. Ethics
as a branch of psychology is inevitably bound up with the abolition
of praise and blame, and of reward and punishment, as the chief
themes in the judgments we pass upon our fellow-men. The tendency to
make such bi-polar judgments usually implies a prejudice inherited
from a pre-scientific age. With this change, of course, many of the
traditional moral categories will be replaced by the true categories
of the understanding,—categories derived from psychological insight
into the ethical potentialities of the natural man. Even now,
however, such a replacement is in progress, the results of which are
neither small nor unimportant.
We refer here to the wide-spread use of trait analyses, both in
business and in education, by which a man is estimated on the basis
of his tendencies, capacities, and powers. His body is measured for
its strength and resiliency, and where defects are discovered, a
regimen leading to the re-education of his physique is prescribed.
His mental developments are tested, and the common attributes of
the human mind, such as sensory acuity, retention, discrimination,
and the like, are estimated and recorded. The special talents he
possesses are revealed by performance tests, and his hitherto
undeveloped potentialities are induced to betray themselves. The
emotions from which he either profits or suffers are discovered by
methods adroitly devised for the purpose. Likewise, the individual’s
sociability,—whether it be merely gang-attachment, or a zest for
cooperative endeavors,—is made a matter of sympathetic study; while
still other bases upon which a man may be estimated are employed in
the attempt to help him find out just what manner of man he is.
While it is admitted that physical and mental tests are often
stupidly devised and bigotedly inflicted on the testee, yet it seems
likely that we have given here a method which can be employed to the
greatest advantage even in every-day ethics. For the psychological
method, in that it teaches one first to become analytical and
discriminative, replaces the old, unfounded prejudice that men are
unequivocally either good or bad, virtuous or vicious, saints or
sinners, by a desire to know just what can be done with and for them.
And while the methods of psychology will probably always rank men on
a scale from low to high, and will always employ opposite poles in
its judgments, yet in the multitude of such antonyms there is safety.
Scientific judgments are, by being unemotional, devoid both of that
extreme congratulation and sharp censure which attach to purely
moral estimates, while the wide range of observation upon which they
are made provides for the greatest number of human contacts and
of educative measures possible. To extol a man is often not much
different in effect than to blame him, and both praise and blame can
equally hinder his power to acquire an ethical technique. Men differ
too variously to be fitted to any one Procrustean bed; the human mind
has infinitely more than two dimensions. Moreover, the moralist’s
use of bi-polar judgments tends inevitably to separate men, rather
than to unite them, or to teach them to cooperate with one another.
And when we consider that from now on, at least, the predicaments of
this planet will be common liabilities of the whole human race, the
pragmatic urgency to employ the methods of psychology in attaining
social harmony are undisguisedly patent.
The benefits derived from employing the psychological method in
ethics are, however, by no means exclusively social. The use of this
method reacts directly upon the user in several significant ways.
In the first place, the man who employs even as few as twenty-five
of the newer categories in making a trait analysis of his fellows,
soon becomes aware of the fact that his former analysis of himself
is in need of revision. Exaggerated self-preference is thus broken
down, and replaced, not by its opposite,—self-abasement,—but by an
estimate which arises from comparisons and contrasts resulting from
the use of an objective standard. Again, the user of this method
learns that human behavior is not the product of some mysterious
mental element called “character,” but that character itself is the
product of traits, and, furthermore, that every trait has had a
developmental history, which is at every point a record of the effect
of environmental stimulus upon original nature. His own character
thereafter becomes subject to scientific scrutiny, and he realizes,
for example, that his previous emotional repugnances were not always
signs of incorruptibility, but very frequently, indeed, signs of the
extent to which his own desires had been prevented from reaching
their maturity. And, only to mention one more of the many benefits
of such new scientific insight, the use of this method reveals that
times out of number purely moral judgments are employed to quench,
rather than to quicken thought, and are uttered not so much to
indicate that discriminative sympathies are being acquired, as to
show that they have long since ceased to germinate. Henceforth the
employment of the psychological method goes hand in hand with the
urgency to prevent as many young minds as possible from suffering on
account of a retarded development.
Such a change of emphasis from traditional morals to scientific
methods implies unequivocally that the problems of ethics are
henceforth to be solved by experts. Already the recognition of the
need of such a change is evident in the reliance that is being placed
upon psychiatrists and other medical men to assist in the cure of
those who are maladjusted to their environment. Health-clinics
likewise are being both promoted and attended by those who realize
that the virtues go as deep as the viscera, and that often such
things as ignorance of the shape of one’s stomach have been the
source of many a lapse from normality. This reliance upon trained
experts is, moreover, a sign of still further changes in our
occidental philosophy of life. It means that we are acquiring the
conviction that constructive criticism is better than ritual, and
analysis more efficacious than prayer. For we have begun to see
that progress must come by honest, painstaking efforts in the here
and now, rather than by presuming upon the perfection of a universe
which we have only begun to understand. It is indeed the well-born
sentiment of many thousands of people today that science wisely
employed for the benefit and use of men is the only true word of God.
Herewith, also, the question of what sort of ideals an applied
mechanistic psychology of conduct provides may have an answer. On
this point we need not be dumb, nor can we make a “sentimental
compromise.” When the mechanist asserts that we _are_ what we
_do_, he does not thereby denounce ideals; on the contrary, he
thus only affirms his purpose to take the whole question of ideals
seriously, more seriously, in fact, than it was ever taken before.
Herein also he declares for the Ethics of Hercules rather than the
“Ethics of Cinderella.” For while he must admit that there is,
accordingly, no class of people who can be truthfully said to be
“the pure in heart,”—owing to the fatigue of attention incident to
all other-worldly contemplation,—yet he also asserts that the man
who knows his capacities and powers as the result of an objective
analysis, is by that means equipped to advance to more inclusive
levels of conduct than he who merely cultivates an inner life of
private mystery. The mechanist would therefore let new standards
grow out of the development of natural human capacities, out of the
struggle to educate men so that their desires and abilities mature
simultaneously, and out of the freedom which can thus be achieved by
those able to achieve it.
“Great love comes from great knowledge,” said Leonardo da Vinci, and
the advance of science today in all its branches corroborates this
assertion. Although at the present hour it does not seem clear just
what the universe is doing, yet they who recognize even in seemingly
disastrous tumults the struggles of man to enlarge his power to
think, will see that even if nature’s way appears to be circuitous
and even at times crude, it is nevertheless nature’s inevitable way.
Much lamentation is heard today over the changes which evolution has
brought to this planet, and the outcry is even raised that science
has taken away our souls. Is it necessary to reply that a faith
in stagnation is clearly out of joint with the creative functions
of time, or that the loss of an ancient belief may be the sign of
a truly ethical advance? Indeed, we can well be assured that the
type of soul which is composed of self-stifled desires, of restless
sentiments due to an ignoble retreat from reality, of the fear of
ultimate annihilation, not only _will_ die, but it also _ought_ to
die. There is another and a better kind of soul,—the one created out
of sagacity, skill, and kindness, which generates power, wisdom, and
peace,—and this type of soul, as long as the sun remains hot, and the
earth’s crust keeps flowering into men, will have its immortality
guaranteed. This is the mechanist’s religion,—a consequence of,
rather than an apology for, his ethics. For religion, though it be
a word made base by those who claim to have an endless copyright
on truth, and a retroactive monopoly on the deeper human emotions,
means to a mechanist something more closely allied to its original
signification. It means a reliance on that much of nature, and a
support from that much of humanity, as contributes to the development
of a man’s talents, to the freedom of his actions, and to his peace
of mind. The new labors of Hercules will consist in making this true
for the whole human race.
INDEX
Abstract terms, 24
Action-pattern, 20
Adler, A., 171
Adrian, E. D., 27
Andreas Hofer, 132
All-or-none principle, 27-30, 109
Aristotle, 8, 15
Babbitt, Irving, 189
Bayliss, W. M. 27, n; 32-n.
Buddhism, 139
Butler, Joseph, 157-8
Charcot, J. M., 33
Circular reflex, 89, 185
Clarke, Samuel, 158-9
Composition, fallacy of, 98
Conditioned reflex, 26, 54, 89
Couterat, L., 90
Cox, C. G., 8
Crile, G. W., 20
Davis, W. M., 8
Democritus, 12
Descartes, 36, 190
Dewey, I., 8, 16, 17, 21, 170-171
Diogenes, 121
Dynamogenesis, law of, 33
Emerson, 13, 72
Empedocles, 13, 59
Everett, W. G., 175
Golden Rule, 194
Harvey, William, 15
Helvetius, 164
Hobbes, 8, 157
Holt, E. B., 8, 16, 20, 31, 127, 170
Homer, 19
Hypostatization, fallacy of, 163
Initial predication, fallacy of, 6
James, W., 13, 51, 75
Jesus, 29, 72, 136
Language, functions of, 17-18
Law, “moral,” 68, 162
Legal rights, 84-94
Leonardo da Vinci, 8, 201
Levy-Brühl, L., 8, 162, 189
Locke, J., 164-5
Lucas, Keith, 27
Mahommedanism, 139
Meaning, 21-24
Meyer, Max, 104
Mill, J. S., 8, 165
Milton, 59
Morality not the same as ethics, 73
“Moral” rights, 94-100
“Motor set,” 20
Murray, James, 156
Outgoing reaction, 56
Paulsen, F., 137
Perry, R. B., 6, n; 175
Plato, 121, 130
Prince, Morton, 140
Protagoras, 187
Reciprocal innervation, law of, 32-35, 59
Regulus, 132
Reid, T., 162-3
Richet, C., 33
“Secret of Life,” 5
Sellars, R. W., 8, 58, 190
Shaftesbury, 158
Socrates, 7-8, 72, 132
“Specific response,” 20
Spencer, H., 8
Spinoza, 8, 99
Starling, E. H., 28, n; 32, n.
Stoics, 193
“Stream of thought,” 14
Thigmotaxis, 131
Titchener, E. B., 20
Vitalist, 5-7
Vague, meaning of, 26
Withdrawing reaction, 66
Zoroaster, 13, 58-9
_A PARTIAL LIST OF BORZOI TEXTS_
EARLY CIVILIZATION: AN INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY
_By Alexander A. Goldenweiser, Lecturer on Anthropology and
Sociology at the New School for Social Research, New York_
Large 8vo, Cloth, XXIV 424 pages
While offering an elementary text for the beginner in anthropology,
this volume is mainly designed as a source book of information and
suggestion for students of sociology who may wish to amplify their
familiarity with modern social phenomena by an inquiry into the
nature of early civilization and the workings of the primitive mind.
SECRET HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION OF EGYPT
_By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt_
Large 8vo, Cloth, 450 pages
This book makes clear the varying motives—imperialistic, economic,
and personal—which brought about the English occupation of Egypt.
Based on personal records and contemporary documents, its statements
and conclusions have a profound interest and importance for students
of history in general and of English history in particular.
THE GERMAN CONSTITUTION
_By René Brunet, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University
of Caen (translated from the French by Joseph Gollomb, with an
Introduction by Charles A. Beard)_
8vo, Cloth, XIV 339 pages
This is a critical discussion of the new German Constitution, the
actual text of which is included, in English, as an appendix.
It gives a lucid and unbiased account of the German Revolution,
describes the conflict of forces which ended in the establishment of
the Republic, and concludes with a systematic analysis of the new
plan of government.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
_By James Mickel Williams, Professor of Economics and Sociology in
Hobart College_
Large 8vo, Cloth, XVI 494 pages
A comparative study of the psychological aspects of the social
sciences. It treats of the relation of social psychology to political
science, jurisprudence, economics, history and sociology, analyzing
the psychological assumptions underlying the behavior of men living
in social relations.
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
_By James Mickel Williams, Professor of Economics and Sociology in
Hobart College_
Large 8vo Cloth, XII 459 pages
This book represents the first attempt that has been made to explain
society concretely in psychological terms. It describes the essential
processes that extend thruout the social organization, analyzing the
conflict of the different types of behavior in all human relations.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
_By Franz Carl Müller-Lyer (translated from the German by E. C. and
H. W. Lake, with Introductions by L. T. Hobhouse and E. J. Urwick)_
8vo, Cloth, 362 pages
This volume is mainly designed as a text for beginners in social
studies. It surveys broadly the various phases of man’s origin and
progress, co-ordinating the general facts of social evolution from
the earliest times and indicating the probable trend of future
developments.
HUMAN NATURE IN POLITICS
_By Graham Wallas, Professor of Political Science in London
University_
8vo, Cloth, 320 pages
This is a slightly revised edition, with a new Preface, of Professor
Wallas’ famous work first published in England, in 1908, and for some
time out of print. It offers a clear and forceful analysis of the
psychological processes which underlie political thought and action,
laying special emphasis upon the application of social psychology to
politics.
HOW ENGLAND IS GOVERNED
_By Rt. Hon. C. F. G. Masterman_
8vo, Cloth, XVI 293 pages
An introductory study of the working of the British Constitution,
written from the standpoint of one who has had actual experience
of the working of the political machinery of England. Students of
politics and government will find in this volume a most interesting
and valuable source of information.
FACING OLD AGE
_By Abraham Epstein, Formerly Director of the Pennsylvania
Commission to Investigate Old Age Pensions_
8vo, Cloth, XVI 352 pages
This book offers a scientific examination of the social and economic
problems presented by the aged. Frankly a plea for social action, it
presents in a most thoro and lucid manner the latest available data
bearing upon this interesting and important question.
12mo, Cloth, 280 pages
OUR WAR WITH GERMANY
_By John Spencer Bassett, Professor of American History in Smith
College_
Large 8vo, Cloth, 398 pages
This is a compact but complete account of the part played by the
United States in the World War. It is in no sense a mere record of
military events, but an analytical account of the political, economic
and military events that marked the period of the war.
CONSUMERS’ COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES
_By Charles Gide, Professor of Economics at the University of Paris
(translation from the French, edited by Cedric Long)_
8vo, Cloth, 300 pages
This translation of Professor Gide’s famous work is intended to meet
the needs of American students of Distributive Co-operation. The
first three chapters are devoted to an elucidation of the meaning and
history of the co-operative movement, while the bulk of the volume
deals with the practical problems of organization, administration and
development of consumers’ societies themselves.
THE ETHICS OF HERCULES
_By Robert Chenault Givler_
12mo, Cloth 210 pages
A strictly behavioristic treatment of ethical values. Not only is
human conduct the result of external and internal stimuli upon the
human body, but even our notions of right and wrong are derived from
the reactions of our nerves and muscles to the various stimuli which
excite them.
THE ETHICS OF JOURNALISM
_By Nelson Antrim Crawford_
8vo, Cloth 270 pages
A clear-cut, objective exposition and analysis of contemporary
journalistic practice with reference to advertising, news, and
editorial, carefully documented. Here is a pioneer book on a subject
which is attracting keen attention especially among practicing and
prospective journalists.
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL THEORY
_By Adam G. A. Balz, with the collaboration of William S. A. Pott_
12mo, Cloth 253 pages
The writers of this book take the position that a science of Human
Nature is requisite for the progress of all the social sciences, that
Social Psychology is failing to accomplish its fundamental purpose of
clarifying the uncertainties and ambiguities concerning the nature of
social facts and causes.
THE TREND OF ECONOMICS
_By Various Writers (edited by Rexford G. Tugwell)_
8vo, Cloth 550 pages
A series of monographs contributed by thirteen outstanding American
economists of the younger generation designed to set forth the
present tendencies of economic thought and inquiry in the light of
their historical development.
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 30 Changed: if the word have a meaning
to: if the word has a meaning
pg 52 Changed: Class B is always life-enchancing
to: Class B is always life-enhancing
pg 149 Changed: adopted them in a semi-parodoxical
to: adopted them in a semi-paradoxical