In presenting this little volume to the public I am fully conscious of
my presumption in introducing my personal views in a region where many
hundreds of better qualified writers have devoted their best efforts.
Since, however, no apology can justify a profitless task, if such it be,
or add to its utility, if indeed it possesses any, I will not attempt to
make one.
If I have contributed in ever so slight a degree towards an
understanding of the mental state or attitude we call fanaticism, for
the purpose of guarding against the catastrophes it begets, I shall have
achieved my purpose. It is unfortunately inevitable that a discussion
which involves current opinions and beliefs must necessarily encounter
strong prejudices and opposition, but it is less on this account that
this little work is likely to fail than for the reason to which Hume
attributed the failure which attended the publication of his "Treatise
of Human Nature," which he described as his guilt "of a very usual
indiscretion, in going to the press too early." A circumstance which
prevented that "unfortunate literary attempt from reaching such
distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots."[1]
Needless to say, I have relied for my interpretation of human notions
and ideas, and the conduct which results from them, very largely upon
the works of past and contemporary writers; and my indebtedness to those
with whom I differ no less than those with whom I agree is but very
inadequately acknowledged in my references to the works of some of them.
The earlier portions of the essay are devoted chiefly to an examination
of moral ideas, the latter portions more exclusively to the facts of
nature and of mind from which they derive their meaning. Throughout I
have attempted to keep the argument as free as possible from the thin
air of philosophical and scholastic dialectic, and as far as possible in
terms of common usage and thought. With this end in view, and for the
sake of brevity, the authors to whose works I have referred most
frequently have been selected either because they are better known or
because their opinions are more widely held than in the case of others.
But in any case no claim to exhaustive or even adequate treatment can be
made for so slight a review of so vast a subject.
The first problem which I have attempted to deal with is one which
confronts all moralists. It consists in the difficulty of deriving
ethical notions from notions which are not ethical, or of deducing the
moral law from the facts of experience and of nature. The attempt to
escape from this difficulty often takes the form of adopting a theory
by which the whole world is divided into two unrelated worlds, a world
of values and a physical world of mechanical sequences. In order to
bring these two independent and self-consistent systems within the same
reality and to weld them together, God is postulated. God is necessary,
it is argued, to prove the objectivity of morality. That is to say, that
since moral values are eternally valid, independently of man's capacity
to be conscious of them, they can only have existence in the one eternal
mind.[2]
The purpose of this essay is to offer a different solution. As this
question of the status of moral values is of great importance to the
moral argument, a preliminary examination of the ground may be helpful.
The predication of value to an object which elicits moral approbation is
not, as most Theistic writers stubbornly maintain, an implicit
acknowledgment of the objectivity of the goodness predicated, it is
merely the act of appreciating the subject or valuer's attitude in
relation to the object (the relationship may be purely hypothetical),
but it may, and usually does, invite a similar attitude on the part of
any number of subjects.[3] The relation of subject to object--this also
applies to all relations--may belong to objective reality, but not the
moral worth we ascribe to the object as a result of that relationship.
This distinction is important and involves, necessarily, a
discrimination (not always made) between the treatment of knowledge and
of value. Hume, by denying the objective character of the relations and
connexions of nature equally with moral judgment, in his interpretation
of individual experience, treated moral judgment and knowledge of
natural science in an identical manner. In the following discussion
truth, to which I have denied relativity, is accorded a position
altogether distinct from value. Appreciation of truth and interest in
knowing is treated as a value, but not truth itself to which
subjectivity is denied. The method I have adopted of treating this
fundamental point may perhaps be made clearer by a simple illustration.
Let us take any particular moral judgment, for example, "A [a conscious
individual] is good." The assertion implies that A is the habitual doer
of desirable actions, or is benevolently disposed towards the valuer,
Society at large, or God, according to the valuer's idea of goodness. In
any case A's conduct or his attitude must have evoked approbation by
reason of its effect (emotional or material) upon the valuer or those
with whom he is in sympathy. The valuer might attempt to refute this
definition by maintaining that A's habitual conduct does him the
greatest injury, but that his predication of good in respect of A is
the assertion of an objective fact. In spite of such an objection, I
would reply that the moral judgment may indeed be intended to imply
certain definite objective qualities or properties _because_ the valuer
considers these desirable, and chooses arbitrarily to define "good" as
containing those definite properties, or because in the community to
which he addresses himself they are customarily so defined. The
veracity, however, of the moral judgment, considered as a statement of
fact, can only be tested after an agreement has been reached as to the
content of the symbol "good." It has then been given a meaning which
alone it does not possess. The validity of moral judgment, when it is
not merely the expression of individual attitude, will therefore always
depend upon the criterion of conduct previously adopted. In this way it
is held that a moral judgment differs from a statement of fact, which is
valid irrespective of the existence of any mind capable of apprehending
that fact.
In the last two chapters, where an examination of psychological
processes has been necessary, I have experienced no slight difficulty in
finding appropriate terms by which to distinguish certain conceptions
which are in some respects new. An inapt terminology and the misuse of
terms is so grave a fault, and so habitually results in errors,
obscurity, and confusion, that it may not be superfluous to call
attention to the terms that are more liable to misinterpretation and in
many ways least satisfactory. For this purpose it will be necessary to
give the briefest possible account of the use to which they are put,
while their more precise definition will be left to the chapters in
which they occur.
The psychic life and the mental activity of human beings is conditioned
by three factors. The first, heredity, denotes the accumulation of
experiences and consequent structural modifications acquired by the race
during the process of its adjustment to its environment; the
manifestation of the result of this experience in behaviour is called
instinct. The second is the result of the habits and acquirements of the
individual from the moment of conception to the end of his existence:
this, together with the first, produces what we call character. The
third, those external influences operating upon the individual, we refer
to as environment.
If we would reflect upon the mental life of humanity we must consider
the individual mind in relation to the world of mankind. In considering
the individual mind I have adopted the terms _objective mind_ and
_subjective mind_ to denote two aspects of mind. The words "objective"
and "subjective" in conjunction with mind are used in a special sense
which has to be defined. The world of men has been considered as the
psychic environment of the individual mind, and I have introduced a term
to denote the power of aggregations of human thoughts and impulses. It
has been viewed as an aspect of the universal process underlying the
conative disposition and will-to-power of all living beings, and on
account of the mode of its operation it has been termed "cosmic
suggestion." The term is not intended to imply that the psychic forces
of the human mind can be "given off" and have separate existence, like
the "odylic fluid" of the early Mesmerists. The power is that of
collective minds; suggestion an effect of its activity, not a derived
essence. It must be understood that these three terms are provisional,
and will be discarded if, in the course of time, better ones suggest
themselves.
Finally, I would crave the indulgence of my readers to say a few words
about the philosophy of egoism. There is a view of egoism--the principle
of self-interest--as distinguished from altruism, which is seen in
opposition to asceticism and mysticism, a view which prompted Lecky when
he wrote: "Taking human nature with all its defects, the influence of an
enlightened self-interest first of all upon the actions and afterwards
upon the character of mankind, is shown to be sufficient to construct
the whole edifice of civilization; and if that principle were withdrawn,
all would crumble in the dust.... When, therefore, the ascetic,
proclaiming the utter depravity of mankind, seeks to extirpate his most
natural passions, to crush the expansion of his faculties, to destroy
the versatility of his tastes, and to arrest the flow and impulse of his
nature, he is striking at the very force and energy of civilization."
How infinitely preferable is the spirit of enlightened egoism to the
blind altruism of the fanatic! The egoism that enhances rather than dims
the love of others. It is only through the realization of community of
interests and aims that like thought will result in like conduct. It is
a recognition of this principle of systematic integration of interests
and their concomitant obligations, starting from egoism, in the sense of
a realization of the relation of self to environment, and then through
successive stages of widening appreciation of the full contents of
environment to the identification of the self with the community, which
alone leads to State or National morality, and will lead, ultimately it
may be hoped, to the morality of a community of all nations--that is, a
world morality. It is for this reason that we say that the end and aim
of a true ethical system is to find the interests of mankind in the
interests of the individual.
And now, as we stand on the threshold of a new era--a new world in
search of its soul--what better precept can we have than the simple
words of the great thinker who, three hundred years ago, also stood on
the threshold of a new world of thought?
"Il suffit de bien juger pour bien faire, et de juger le mieux qu'on
puisse, pour faire aussi tout son mieux, c'est-à-dire, pour acquérir
toutes les vertus, et ensemble tous les autres biens, qu'on puisse
acquérir; et lorsqu'on est certain que cela est, on ne saurait manquer
d'être content."--Descartes, "Discours de la Méthode."