Value implies a valuer; however universal or established a value may be,
the term is meaningless unless it bears relation to people who value. No
definition of value is possible, or at any rate satisfactory, that does
not imply the judgment, choice, or assertion of a valuer in the act of
valuing. The universality of a value does not make it objective or
independent of valuers, but merely widens the applicability of that
value with regard to any imaginable valuer. If this can be admitted, it
follows that value cannot be made independent of the factors that
determine or have determined the mental attitude of the valuer. For this
reason I will attempt to give an account of some of the factors which
bear directly upon man, the valuer, and less directly upon values in
general and moral values in particular. The discussion will be under
four headings: (1) Instinct and Heredity; (2) Emotion; (3) Judgment of
Ends; (4) Environment and Cosmic Suggestion.
(1) INSTINCT AND HEREDITY
We have already alluded to the part played by instinct in determining
the initial character of the ego. Instincts are here distinguished from
the emotions to which they give rise. Without unduly stretching the
meaning of the word "suggestion," in the sense of a prompting to action
not specifically in hypnotism, instinct may perhaps be looked upon as
the innate suggestion of heredity. The two primary factors held to be
fundamental in shaping and influencing the character of the individual
are environment and heredity. The question of the predominance of the
one influence or the other is the subject of keen controversy, and
coincides with the contingent problem of the relative importance of
inherent and acquired characters.
It is now becoming increasingly evident that the problem of heredity is
nearer a solution if viewed rather from the psychical than from the
purely biological or material aspect. So we seek the solution of the
secret in psychology. The vital factor in organism is psychic from
protozoan to man, whether we identify it with "psychoplasm," soul, ego,
or "subjective mind."
Those who put forward memory as the basis of heredity show that
evolution implies the retention by organisms of their experiences in
accommodating themselves to their gradually changing environment.
Constant and reiterated striving in certain directions in this process
of accommodation, until actions become automatic--free of
effort--produces habit. In the words of Professor Ward: "This law of
habit we may reasonably regard as exemplified in the life of every
individual in the long line of genealogical ascent that connects us
with our humblest ancestors, in so far as every permanent advance in the
scale of life implies a basis of habit embodied in a structure which has
been perfected by practice."[64] Laborious observations have been
recorded of minute unicellular creatures to show that they "succeed as
we do, only by way of trial and error." Thus we are led to the
conclusion that the acquisition of habits by the individual during his
efforts to adapt himself to his environment, and transmitted down a long
line of genealogical descent, is the method of heredity; and further,
that man, in common with other animals, inherits all these racial and
individual acquirements from his parents. Instinct, we have said, may be
termed the "Suggestion of Heredity," which again is "race memory," or
the evolutionary product of habits acquired during the process of man's
adaptability to his environment. This, then, is the primary and
fundamental determinant of the character and quality of personality. It
is the quality which is inherent in a man from the moment he begins his
individual existence, that is, from the moment the sexual cells of both
parents coalesce in the process of conception and form a new stem-cell.
Haeckel divides the instincts into two chief classes: the primary, which
can be traced to the commencement of organic life--the common lower
impulses inherent in the psychoplasm. The chief are impulses to
self-preservation (by defence and maintenance) and the preservation of
the species (by generation and the care of the young). These two, hunger
and reproduction, are universally recognized as fundamental. The
secondary were due to intelligent adaption; translated into habit, they
gradually become automatic and "innate" in subsequent generations. The
earlier these habits are acquired and ingrained in the life history of
the race, the more invariable and immutable will be their transmission;
the habits of a few generations are easily modified or effaced by
conflicting tendencies or conditions. The life history of every new
individual, in its initial stages, is a (more or less complete[65])
recapitulation of the life history of the race. The _earlier_ ancestral
acquisitions have been transformed into habit and have become
secondarily automatic, the less are they liable to variation, and the
more inexorable and unfailing will be their transmission. Thus Darwin
showed the greater immutability of generic characters over later
acquired specific characters. This applies to psychic as well as to
physical characters. In the same way the earlier, during the course of
his life, a man assimilates a strong suggestion, the greater will be its
effect and the longer its influence will last.
Let us now consider instinct in relation to moral conceptions. Dr.
McDougall gives prominence in his "Social Psychology" to the following
instincts, which, together with the emotional excitements which
accompany them, play the foremost part in the evolution of moral ideas:
(1) The reproductive, parental and erotic instincts, responsible for the
earliest form of social feeling; (2) the instinct of pugnacity, with
which are connected the emotions of resentment and revenge, which give
rise, when complicated with other instincts, to indignation at
anti-social conduct; (3) the gregarious instinct, which inclines animals
to gather together in aggregations of their own species--this impulse
has an important bearing upon the sympathetic emotions and is at the
root of tribal loyalty; (4) the instincts of acquisition and
construction, which have been developed with the idea of property, and
the moral judgments connected therewith; (5) the instincts of
self-abasement (or subjection) and of self-assertion (or self-display),
with which are connected the emotions of "depression" and "elation"--the
former instinct gives rise to feelings of respect towards superiors,
divine or human, and the latter is the basis of self-respect.[66]
Other writers lay greater emphasis on a distinct instinct of Imitation.
It is undoubted that imitation, both when it is spontaneous and when it
is deliberate--the distinction between the two forms should be carefully
observed--plays a great part in the formation of moral judgments.
Theological and ethical writers are fond of saying that the sense of
moral obligation arises from the consciousness of approval, and
consequent imitation, of an ideal or a standard which is submitted to
our judgment; this implies deliberate imitation. The imitative tendency
(purely spontaneous) is strongly marked in every child in its first
efforts at vocalization, which are pure "Echolalia," i.e. incessant
repetition of the sounds it hears; in fact, imitation marks every step
of a child's growing consciousness. Practically all phenomena, however,
attributed to the imitative instinct is in reality a manifestation of
response to extrinsic suggestion. James speaks of "the imitative
tendency which shows itself in large masses of men, and produces panics,
and orgies and frenzies of violence, and which only the rarest
individuals can actively withstand.... Certain mesmerized subjects must
automatically imitate whatever motion their operator makes before their
eyes."[67]
To ascribe this tendency to a special instinct would be to disclose a
faulty appreciation of mob psychology and the Laws of Suggestion. These
panics, orgies and frenzies of violence, and similar vindictive or
enthusiastic mob tendencies, are simply the natural response to mass or
cosmic suggestion, as we shall see later.
The final and precipitate cause of these outbreaks is frequently the
personal magnetism, or more correctly the suggestion, of one man. The
qualities necessary for the exercise of this power--the secret of
successful demagogy--are not, as might be supposed, the possession of a
dominant will and a constructive, purposive or tenacious intellect. It
may be, indeed, that a great man of action, a Napoleon or Cæsar, arises,
and by these sterling qualities dominates the masses and their attendant
sycophants and demagogues; but more usually the essentials are a gift
for facile and frenzied oratory and the power of evoking emotional
presentations, qualities possessed, _par excellence_, by madmen and
fanatics, the Kerenskys, Lenins and visionaries of all times. Their
powers are the more irresistible, it is true, if combined with a shrewd
knowledge of correct methods of propaganda and lavish adulation, for the
obvious reason that, as we have seen, the strongest suggestion is the
one that is most acceptable to the subject and most in accord with his
predilections. Nothing would be truer than to say that only the rarest
individuals can actively withstand the onslaught of cosmic suggestion.
It is significant that the greatest human type, the true genius, who
appears most often in the great philosopher, less often in the great
artist, and who possesses a superabundance of dominant will-power and
constructiveness, is far less powerful than the great conqueror or
politician; for he commands intellect rather than emotion, and the world
is governed by emotion.
It is not sufficiently realized that many so-called geniuses,
imaginative, histrionic and poetical, can never deserve the highest
place, for they are the sounding-boards of the world; their superlative
quality is receptivity; they are instruments, not players; they voice
the great masses, and they share with publicists and politicians a
desire to be incriminated in the movement of their surroundings.
Wieninger, in his "Sex and Character," emphasizes the dependence of
publicists and tribunes of the people upon the masses they would lead.
The politician, like the prostitute, has to court the populace; she is a
woman of the streets--he is a man of the streets. For this reason he
denies to the great politician and the man of action the quality of true
greatness. "The man of action shares with the epileptic the desire to be
in criminal relation to everything around him, to make them appanages of
his petty self. The great man feels himself defined and separate from
the world, a nomad amongst nomads, and as a true microcosm he feels the
world already within him."
The really great men, the Kants, the Descartes, Leibnizs or Spencers,
and the greatest artists are wholly creative, purposive, dynamic; they
owe no allegiance to the masses, for they are greater than the masses;
they realize all without reflecting all; they seek nourishment where
they will, and they spew out what they will; this perfect freedom is
necessary for the attainment of truth. Truthfulness is a necessary
attribute of genius, but not of statecraft or government, or of
poetical effusions of the imagination.
While we are dealing with the subject of instincts it may not seem out
of place to refer to the widely held belief that maternal impressions
during pregnancy have a direct influence on the temperament of the
child, and are often responsible for inducing definite tendencies of
aversion and attraction and even physical resemblances. Although such
acquired tendencies, admitting their existence, cannot strictly be
classed with the instincts or tendencies inherited from former
generations, since they are acquired after the inception of, and by, the
new individual; yet they have a resemblance in that they are both
pre-natal acquirements, and are manifested in the same way. Writers on
heredity and biology are apt to dismiss the subject as unworthy of
serious consideration, and to account for any instances of the sort
attributed to this cause as based on pure coincidence. It is, however,
significant that the great majority of mothers who have given the matter
any thought are, as a rule, firmly convinced of the reality of pre-natal
influences. When the principles of suggestion are applied to the case,
it will be seen that the conditions of pre-natal existence are
favourable for the reception by an unborn child of strong telepathic
suggestions from its mother. The embryo mind is entirely receptive; any
violent psychic disturbance in the mother must react upon the child.
Most people know of some instance which points to the "impression"
theory, and which it would be impossible to account for in any other
way.
There appear to be no reasonable grounds for denying that maternal
impressions may sometimes be held accountable for temperamental
tendencies, not easily attributable to heredity, although it would, of
course, be absurd to attempt to account for all abnormalities in the
same way. The naturally greater receptivity and suggestibility of women,
shown by their quick response to emotional suggestion, their
credulousness, and the fact that women are the best mediums,[68] becomes
very much more marked during pregnancy. At such times some women,
normally distinguished by their vigour and initiative, become
conspicuously impressionable; they become, in fact, ready "conductors"
of suggestion. It follows that the influences that bear strongest upon
them also bear upon the child.
Greater importance should not be attached to the psychic environment of
a child than to its inherent hereditary qualities, which irrevocably
determine its native tendencies and the limits of its ultimate
possibilities. Environment may modify or enhance a child's inherent
characteristics in an infinite variety of ways, but cannot nullify them
or transcend by one iota the limit of its potential development.
In a previous chapter we discussed the view of those who regard moral
judgment as an emotion or intuition of the "good" and the "right," and
who find justification for our rules of conduct by referring them to the
Divine Will, which is supposed to inspire them by means of the "moral
organ" or conscience. We believe that a correct appreciation of
psychology makes it abundantly clear that although there are many
impulsive, instinctive and emotional factors totally unconnected with
any rational or intellectual process which do, indeed, affect our moral
judgments and give rise to ethical conventions, these factors can give
no _validity_ to moral codes; and that, stripped of the sentiments and
emotions with which they are obscured, moral systems must be judged by
principles of utility, while they are enforceable according to the
universality with which they are desired. It is, moreover, equally
absurd to look upon moral values as ultimate and irreducible categories
of good and evil, irrevocably codified by an omniscient Deity for the
conduct of humanity for all time, and supposedly accessible to the
intelligence of all who consult their conscience. This latter position,
which is maintained by Theistic "Rationalists," leads to precisely the
same "conclusion" as the arguments of the "Intuitionalists," the only
difference between them being that the conscience of the "Rationalists"
is a thinking and intellectual organ, while the conscience of the
Intuitionalists is an emotional and instinctive organ. But this amicable
convergence is not accidental but a _sine qua non_, since in either case
the object aimed at is identically the same, that object being the
establishment of conscience, dependent on morality, on a pinnacle of
ethical omniscience and infallibility, where its authority shall be
unquestionable and absolute. They may well be left to their quarrel,
which in reality amounts to little more than verbal quibbling.
Instinct, as we have seen, must inevitably play a very large part in the
evolution of public morality and the moral impulse of every individual.
Careful statistics have shown that criminal tendencies make their
appearance with unfailing persistency in selected degenerate families.
The genealogical record of one family may show a murderer in every
generation; pauperism, prostitution and drunkenness are characteristics
of another, and so on. Heredity will primarily determine a man's
inherent characteristics--his instincts, temperament, disposition and,
_eo facto_, his "conscience." Other factors, above all his immediate
psychic environment, may, indeed, modify these tendencies for better or
worse, but under the most favourable conditions Cosmic Suggestion, in
its aspect of "public conscience," can never altogether supplant strong
inherent tendencies. Those who believe in the conscience myth sometimes
object that the voice of conscience always calls in the right direction,
but that a man may, throughout a long life of crime, stifle and inhibit
that "still small voice," yet in the end (perhaps when faced with the
extreme penalty of the law) the wretched sinner will exhibit the
symptoms of the most genuine and heartfelt remorse and express the
greatest horror of his evil deeds. This type of explanation shows a
total failure to interpret psychological processes. It may, indeed, be a
common occurrence for a condemned criminal, brought suddenly face to
face with the prospect of plenary punishment, to experience real sorrow
and shame at his conduct. The emotion will probably be perfectly
genuine. The prisoner, with little hope of enjoying the fruits of his
felony and removed from the direct counter-influence of a criminal
environment, will be in the best possible frame of mind to respond to
the right cosmic suggestion--universal horror and detestation
of his deed. Such a suggestion, reacting upon the instinct of
self-preservation, will readily kindle emotions of remorse, self-horror
and sorrow. Penitence need have nothing to do with any true ethical
appreciation of the action of which it is supposed to be the object.
Many cases have been recorded of miserable old women accused of
witchcraft, who, learning for the first time at their trial of the
crimes they were supposed to have committed, have become convinced of
their guilt, and suffering the keenest pangs of remorse have died with
penitence and resignation.
Fear is the chief element of remorse: fear of our fellow-men, vague
fears for the future, or in the most literal sense the fear of Divine
retribution or God. Racine dramatizes this emotion in the famous
confession of Athalie: filled with dread at the words of warning uttered
by the ghost of her mother Jezebel, she recalls her vision:
Tremble, m'a-t-elle dit,
fille digne de moi;
Le cruel Dieu des Juifs
l'emporte aussi sur toi.
Je te plains de tomber
dans ses mains redoutables,
Ma fille.
(2) THE FACTOR OF EMOTION
Unfortunately for the attainment of truth, nothing has a greater
influence on the formation of human opinion and character, and is
therefore more inextricably bound up with all questions of politics,
religion, morality and art, than the complex mental state we call
emotion. Nothing affects the well-being, health and happiness of mankind
more directly.
Emotion may perhaps be defined as a continuity of complex presentations
manifested in organic sensation. In a sense, emotion is feeling, which
is the wider term; it is an effect, which therefore cannot exist
without its cause, though the same cause under different circumstances
may produce many varied emotions, both in quality and degree.
The visible manifestation of emotional disturbance need bear no relation
to its intensity. People of the greatest nervous sensibility, in whom
emotional excitements are most deeply and acutely felt, often keep their
emotions best under control. They are not, of course, able to inhibit
the involuntary or visceral processes which are affected by emotion:
heart, pulse, salivary glands and respiratory system may indeed tell the
tale; but the will may prevent the contagion spreading further: the
intellect may remain calm, thought and action slow and deliberate,
demeanour outwardly cool and collected.[69] The lower the level of
will-power and intellectual development, the more closely dependent will
all cerebral processes be upon emotional states and reactions; at the
same time, the emotions become cruder, less complex and subtle and even
less deeply felt. Children and savages are almost entirely emotional, in
the sense that they think emotionally and have no power of intellectual
detachment.
Professor Ward describes the effect of emotion on thought very clearly
as follows: "Emotional excitement--and at the outset the natural man
does not think much in cold blood--quickens the flow of ideas....
Familiar associations hurry attention away from the proper topic, and
thought becomes not only discursive but wandering; in place of concepts
of fixed and crystalline completeness, such as logic describes, we may
find a congeries of ideas but imperfectly compacted into one generic
idea, subject to continual transformation, and implicating much that is
irrelevant and confusing."[70]
There are few people indeed whose views on religion, politics, art, and
the rights and relations of the sexes are not chiefly emotional values.
We may think that our convictions are based on logical reasonings, but
the force of childish impressions and associations, and the unresisted
bias of passions and interests, are the processes by which they have
been cultivated, and rational thought has been devoted to the task of
finding reasons for the convictions that are ready made.
Emotion, as we have said, is a continuity of complex presentations whose
elements are manifold; it is a state of feeling subject to constant
modification and expansion while experience develops. First among the
causal factors which influence emotion are the instincts, others may be
intellectual concepts, many more come from the substrata of
consciousness, and of these many are strictly physiological in
character; for instance, there may be disturbances of the genital,
vasomotor or digestive systems, cerebellar disturbances or latent
molecular or biochemical nervous conditions, during which the mind
responds to stimuli ignored under other or healthier circumstances; but
over all it is the inherent disposition of the immaterial psychic or
subjective mind which gives the whole its tone and tendency. We must,
indeed, admit with James that "a disembodied human emotion is a sheer
nonentity."
With the psycho-physical problem as to whether sensory excitation is
antecedent to emotional expression, or emotion gives rise to bodily
expression, we are not here directly concerned. Since emotion is a
continuous condition of experience, it may reasonably be supposed that
organic disturbance is both a contributory cause and the reactionary
result of emotion.[71] Most people admit that "each emotion is a
resultant of a sum of elements," and that some of those elements are
functional and organic, without admitting the contention of Professor
James and those who insist with him that emotion is but a sum of
organic sensations.[72]
Emotional disturbances lead directly to the overthrow of the mental
balance, which divides the normal man from the madman and the
neurasthenic. Modern psychiatrists lay stress on the emotional character
of the latter affection. The underlying features of "functional
neurosis" reveal themselves in symptoms denoting the clash of emotional
elements within, together with a corresponding lack of adaptability to
outer environment, and are characterized by instability and exaggeration
of emotion rather than impaired intellect.[73]
The cultivation of the æsthetic, pleasurable and benevolent emotions on
the one hand, and the elimination of violent emotional excitements or
discordant and morbid emotions on the other, are conditions as essential
for the physical health as for the happiness of the individual.
Emotional sensibility is a condition necessary for the full appreciation
and enjoyment of art, and of all that is pleasurable and beautiful, but
when emotion is allowed to colour reason, the mind is closed to truth,
knowledge and logic.
Art gratifies the emotions as truth should gratify the intellect. It is
not always fully realized how large a part emotional elements, which may
embrace every form of sensory and erotic excitation, as well as the
whole tone of the subjective mind, play in the most intellectual
criticism of an artistic achievement. Of these elements some may be
irrelevant as well as irrational, and by no means realized by the critic
at the time of writing his appreciation. Elliot Smith and Pear
illustrate this point in a way few people would want to dispute. "Let us
suppose that a musical critic, after hearing a new symphony by an
unconventional composer, immediately writes a lengthy appreciation of
the performance. It is clear that nobody would expect him to be able to
give off-hand an account of his reasons for every sentence of the
criticism. But it is obvious that a single phrase in this account may be
but the apex of a whole pyramid of memories emanating from the critic's
technical training, his attitude towards the new departure, experiences
highly coloured with emotion which a few notes of music may have evoked,
and his mental condition at the time he heard the performance. Nobody
denies that these may have shaped or even determined his criticism. But
who believes either that they were all conscious at the time of writing
the article, or that he could resuscitate them without much time and
trouble and perhaps the help of a cross-examiner?"
In addition to the causal, largely emotional, elements might be added a
prime determinant in artistic appreciation, namely, cosmic suggestion.
In the case of a leading critic, overwhelmingly self-confident and
secure of his position, the mere knowledge of the consensus of informed
and uninformed opinion being favourable or otherwise might conceivably
arouse an equally illogical desire to be esoteric and different at all
costs. An antagonistic autosuggestion of this sort unconsciously
underlying a critic's attitude would more than negative any body of
opinion in one direction.[74] But if such artificial and diverse
influences can affect the most highly trained and most honest critic,
how much more will they affect the credulous and untrained? Far greater
will be the power of authoritative opinion in influencing those whose
emotional sensibility is blunt and untrained, who gape in unresponsive
perplexity at some artist's canvas, waiting to have the emotions they do
not feel suggested to them, and who, when given the lead, infuse by the
power of association into the meaningless daub or the subtlest motif
alike the same spirit of satisfaction they derive from the garish
crudities which alone, unaided, find a responsive echo in their breasts.
It is well known that the less tutored the intellect the more real, as a
rule, are the creatures of the imagination. Children and savages have a
wonderful faculty for believing in the reality of their illusions. Does
not this account for the fact that the less clearly a thing is
understood the greater is the power of the imagination in supplying a
meaning. A certain dimness and mystery or quality of incomprehensibility
invariably adds to the respect and awe paid to works of art and their
creators, officially labelled as "great." Sometimes mere age or distance
produces the requisite dimness. Racine considered this atmosphere of
distance a necessary device of stagecraft for the proper presentation of
a hero. "On peut dire que le respect que l'on a pour les héros augmente
à mesure qu'ils s'éloignent de nous."[75] In the same way the intensity
of horror bestowed upon the arch-villain of the piece is increased in
proportion to the distance away from which he is regarded; in other
words, the less you know about him. But this does not hold good for the
heroes of the histrionic stage more truly than for the heroes and
arch-villains of the wider stage of the world. The principle can be
applied equally to the heroes of art, religion, politics or war. It is
not, of course, the dimness or distance _per se_ which magnifies the
object of appreciation; unaided that would merely have the opposite
effect. The factor of dimness, by placing the object further from the
grasp of _reason_, enables the playwright, politician, or critic, as the
case may be, to play with greater ease and certainty upon the emotions
of his audience, and by force of suggestion to endue his puppet more
completely with the symbolic quality he wishes to present. In spite of
Medici prints, oleographic processes and the extension of culture which
renders any one liable to receive choice samples of the Italian Masters
free with a packet of cigarettes, what William Hazlitt said with
reference to Michael Angelo is still literally true. "We know," he
writes, "nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of fame and
greatness. Our admiration of him supports itself, and our idea of his
superiority seems self-evident, because it is attached to his name
only."
Convention is a very real and wellnigh irresistible power. Not a few of
our most cherished valuations--artistic, religious, political and
social--are conventional fetishes which have been slowly evolved in the
course of a great number of years as the result of determining factors,
for the most part accidental and forgotten, and probably called into
existence for totally different and unconnected reasons. Yet the
appropriate emotional reaction, evoked by the association of an object
with such a conventional valuation or sentiment, may be just as keenly
and genuinely felt as though it resulted from the awakening of some
instinctive or innate law of our nature. Impressionability is not a
quality to be despised, but on the contrary to be carefully guarded from
contamination. It is by means of emotion that all pleasure and pain, all
aversion and attraction, and all sense of the æsthetic is recorded by
the senses. Emotional sensibility may be compared to an instrument that
may be so finely made that it is capable of registering the most
delicate and exact vibrations so that any harsh sound will injure it,
while, on the other hand, it may be made of a texture so coarse that it
will respond instantly and indiscriminately to any loud and crude noise.
This instrument has an inherent quality of excellence with a
potentiality of exactness that may be developed in a great variety of
directions.
The many factors which play a part in æsthetic appreciation have been
abundantly explored by psychological writers.[76] They have traced the
great variety of ways in which art can be the means of evoking
sympathetic emotions by connecting its subject with the inexhaustible
interest in personality. They have cited the part played in inducing
pleasurable sensations in music by the association of range, depth of
tone and pitch with the expression of human passions; and in pictorial
art, the appeal to muscular sensibility by suggested associations with
movement and form, or the effect of straight lines and rounded forms in
inducing sensations of vigour and repose. More obvious are the appeals
to the sexual instincts. There are also associations that give beauty to
colours, pleasurableness to those tints that suggest youth, health,
vigour and feminine charm.
It is easy to understand the agreeableness of symbols of strength and
solidity; the restfulness of economy in presentation, the pleasing
effect of contrast and symmetry, variety and unity, of balance and the
laws of proportion and musical ratios, or of harmony and regularity. The
laws of relativity or comparison and of familiarity and strangeness are
factors which play a part in all appreciation. Finally, there is a more
exclusively intellectual pleasure in the process of analytical valuation
of artistic production.
We cannot acquire truth by means of the emotions, which can but be the
means of informing us of our personal relation towards our environment.
They may reveal us to ourselves, or may register the reflection of our
environment within us; but the consequences of emotion cannot be
regarded as ephemeral, for all emotional excitation must have a
permanent residual effect upon the tone of the subjective mind.
(3) JUDGMENT OF ENDS
Without attempting to catalogue or enumerate the various intellectual
and mental processes, consigning them to interminable classes and
subdivisions of volitional, cognitive, affective and cogitative states
or acts, labelled like so many distinct specimens in a collector's
museum, it may yet be possible to detach certain features involved in
the process of moral judgment which are distinguishable from the
essentially instinctive, emotional and suggested elements we have been
considering. The danger involved in reducing psychological processes to
their constituent elements and treating of each element as though it
were static and dissociated, is that it is apt to obscure a true
appreciation of the actual manifestations of personality which result
from complex and interactionary elements in continuous motion, forming
one integral whole in constant process of influencing and being
influenced by its environment. The whole is always more and something
different from the sum of its parts. The factors here specially referred
to which may determine in greater or lesser degree the nature and
direction of moral valuation are deliberative, critical and analytic.
These are essentially the intellectual and _objective_[77] processes
exercised to the best advantage when freed to the greatest possible
extent from instinctive and emotional complications. Judgments formed
under such conditions involve the realization of the ends and effects of
conduct, and an assignment of "desirableness" to those ends. It is clear
that an intellectual judgment of this nature, assigning value to the
ends of conduct, must take into account those inherent characteristics
and instincts which underlie all motives and interests. Thus, we
recognize the fact of the instinct of self-preservation, and are right
in assigning the qualification "good" to life as denoting its
desirableness; similarly the instinct of acquisition is general and
fundamental in the human species,[78] we accordingly assign the
qualification "good" to property and wealth, and to its destruction,
"evil"; the abstract value of the end of this instinct is intensified
and held in greater respect the more it is realized to have been the
means by which the surplus energy of mankind has been utilized to
accumulate the capital essential to the development of civilization. The
desirableness of both life and wealth is also considerably increased or
modified by collateral associations, by the pleasures they enable us to
experience.
There is in all judgment of the morality of an action a perception of
the end or consequence of that action. The clearness or dimness of the
perception will depend upon the habits of thought and the organization
of motives--or lack of it--which result from the native tendencies and
development of the subjective mind. The norm of valuation which we apply
to moral conduct is conditioned by many conscious and unconscious
factors which determine our idea of "desirableness," and the standard
will approximate to the conventional and common standard of the
community in so far as we are influenced by our environment--or in
proportion to our amenability to cosmic suggestion. It is on account of
the obvious desire for pleasure and for avoidance of pain that
Utilitarians are justified in making use of that general fact as a
standard of utility. This in no way implies that the motives of all
conduct are efforts to obtain pleasurable sensation or to avoid pain.
The mistake of this discredited doctrine of psychological hedonism lay
in confusing the motive or impulse to action with the valuation of
conduct. It is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that conduct is least
often determined by valuation. Realization or anticipation of the end of
action is not the necessary stimulus of action, neither does it conform
to volition or striving; but realization of consequences frequently
inhibits the fulfilment of volition. Both conduct and volition are
determined by the relation of subject to object, and by the constitution
of the ego, conditioned, as it is, by the innumerable factors of
heredity and environment.
(4) COSMIC SUGGESTION
Public opinion is often spoken of as something mysterious and powerful,
to be recognized and submitted to, but not to be explained. Napoleon is
credited with having said: "Public opinion is a power invisible,
mysterious, and irresistible." Some writers, failing to appreciate the
true significance and nature of this dynamic factor in the formation of
public sentiment, are content to fall back on the convenient subterfuge
of Divine agency as full and sufficient explanation. Thus they speak of
a "common consciousness" which is the arbiter of the morals and faiths
of men, a consciousness which is subject to evolutionary progress, and
yet owes its existence to Divine revelation.
However inadequately, the attempt has nevertheless been made in these
pages to present a wider and, at the same time, a more precise
definition of those psychic and vital forces, included in the term
environment, which play so great a part in the formation and growth of
human beliefs, opinions and sentiments, in binding together nations,
communities and groups, and no less a part in setting them against one
another. For lack of a better, the designation "cosmic suggestion" has
been used as a generic term to describe the force resulting from the
accumulative suggestions or impulsions of aggregations of individual
agents, between whom and the subjects or recipients a state of _rapport_
is more or less established. It is an aspect, or perhaps more accurately
a product, of the vital energy of the cosmos. In a community or a mass
of men moved by common emotions and ideas, each individual plays the
double rôle of operator and affected object or recipient.
The communication of a proposition by suggestion is distinguished from,
though often accompanied by, other means by which ideas are communicated
through the senses, involving rational processes which produce
conviction. Emotional suggestions are either rejected or accepted
unquestioningly in the absence of any logical reason. The supreme
importance and general applicability in normal waking life of this wider
aspect of hypnotic suggestion is seldom adequately appreciated by
students of social development. That the faiths and convictions of men
do not depend upon their appeal to "man's reasoning faculties" is,
however, usually admitted. Lecky frequently dwells on this fact, as in
the following passage: "In most men the love of truth is so languid, and
their reluctance to encounter mental prejudices is so great, that they
yield their judgments without an effort to the current, withdraw their
minds from all opinions or arguments opposed to their own, and thus
speedily convince themselves of the truth of what they wish to believe."
Dr. McDougall recognizes, as do most modern psychologists, the great
social importance of this "current" of which Lecky speaks; he terms it
mass-suggestion. "Children," he says, "largely in virtue of their
suggestibility, rapidly absorb the knowledge, beliefs, and especially
the sentiments of their social environment. But most adults also remain
suggestible, especially towards mass-suggestion, and towards the
propositions which they know to be supported by the whole weight of
society, or by long tradition."[79] This also he calls prestige
suggestion. Individual suggestibility, he considers, is conditioned by
native disposition and character, and dependent upon the relative
strengths of the two instincts of self-assertion and subjection. He does
not, however, appear to assign to this factor of suggestion any
conspicuous part in the excitation of such emotions as, for instance,
anger, moral indignation, shame and remorse. But the simultaneous
excitation of the same emotion in crowds is attributed to the action of
the gregarious instinct which is accountable for the sympathetic
induction of emotion. The explanation given of the fact that the
instinctive behaviour of one animal directly excites similar behaviour
on the part of his fellows, consists in the assumption that among
gregarious animals each of the principal instincts has a special
perceptual inlet that is adapted to receive the sense-impressions made
by the expressions of the same instinct in other animals of the same
species: thus, for example, the fear instinct, _inter alia_, has a
special perceptual inlet that renders it excitable by the sound of the
cry of fear; the instinct of pugnacity is similarly excited through a
perceptual inlet by the sound of the roar of anger, and so on. Whatever
the value of this assumption it is clear that the emotional excitement
of an aggregation of individuals reacts with cumulative intensity upon
each member of it. It is sufficient, however, to say that there exists
in the human species a fundamental impulse of gregarious attraction,
analogous in the physical world to the law of gravitation, which tends
to produce aggregations of men and to intensify their suggestibility in
relation to sheer weight of numbers and proximity. If we accept the view
that the subjective mind is liable to be directly influenced by other
subjective minds with which it is _en rapport_, the hypothesis of
special perceptual inlets, designed for each instinct to receive only
the corresponding sense-impressions derived from the efferent action of
the same instinct in other individuals, becomes of secondary importance.
Any cause which simultaneously provokes emotional excitement in a large
body of people tends to bring them into _rapport_, thence onwards a
community of feeling has been established, like elements coalesce,
foreign elements are dissipated or repulsed, the mass will think, feel
and act as a collective whole, the impulse or emotion of one will
re-echo in all, as when a certain note is struck all the chords in the
instrument which are attuned to it are set vibrating. A skilful orator
who can once succeed in evoking strong emotional response in his
audience is in the most favourable position for transmitting any
proposition by suggestion; any assertion is then likely to be received
unquestioningly and with the strength of conviction, any suggestion to
be resolved into action.
An orator of the ecstatic and fanatical type will endeavour, by working
himself into a frenzy of excitement, to throw himself into the
_subjective_ state, for thus he is in closest _rapport_ with his
environment. This is the secret of the power of demagogues and of other
worthless and otherwise insignificant individuals. It is said to have
been the method of one of the most extraordinary characters of modern
times--Rasputin, or Grigori Yefimovitsch, a gross, illiterate, debauched
and fanatical Siberian monk, who, up to the time of his murder in
December 1916, had the reputation of being the most powerful man in
Russia. According to the few reliable accounts of him that are
obtainable, the influence of this man's personality and the
religio-erotic frenzies which characterized his ministrations were such
that women of the highest culture and refinement would prostitute
themselves, body and soul, in obedience to his suggestion, ministers and
high state officials habitually sought his favours, and among the masses
he was a constant object of idolatry.
Does any one suppose that if Mark Antony could have circulated his
famous speech on the death of Cæsar in pamphlet form, or could have
published his appeal in a leading daily, he would have chosen that
method? Or if he had done so that he would have attained as striking a
result as by the fire of his oratory? This brings us to a consideration
of the difference between written propaganda and that which is spoken or
acted and accompanied by emotional suggestion.
The mere written or printed proposition is assimilated by
autosuggestion; its aim is to awaken what is already in the reader's
mind, whether of fear or courage, love or hate, admiration or contempt,
to make articulate what before was vague and undefined, to associate
these qualities in the reader to certain objects or symbols, in this way
gradually building up sentiments and ideals. But cosmic suggestion or
psychic environment is a vital influence, capable of overcoming
resistance and of kindling human passions and emotions. It is often
asserted that the Press accurately voices public opinion; this, however,
as all pressmen know, is not true. The Press to a certain extent
approximates certain sections of public opinion, or more accurately
adapts itself to it, but all it can truthfully be said to represent is
the newspaper proprietors, and in a lesser degree the host of hired
scribblers whom they employ. At the same time it would be foolish to
minimize the enormous and ever-increasing power it wields--a power that
increases _pari passu_ with the growing power of the masses and
corresponding decrease in responsibility and intelligence of their
chosen rulers. The Press, no longer confining itself to its legitimate
rôle of conveying news, tends more and more to present the appearance of
organized concerns for the dissemination of lies and counter-lies, and
the propagation of hate, envy and humbug, each organ shouting its
particular claptrap and catchwords with the frenzied persistence of
bucket-shop touts. Mr. Hilaire Belloc draws a subtle distinction between
what he calls the "Capitalist Press," or those organs run for mere
profit, and a "Free Press," or organs produced for the sole motive of
influencing public opinion, i.e. for propaganda.[80] The former is
vicious and untruthful, the latter is virtuous and bears witness to the
truth. Having once consigned all the existing press organs to their
respective categories as "Capitalist" or "Free" by this simple test of
motive, the vice of the one and the virtue of the other are at once
apparent: anything meriting the label "Capitalist" is naturally bad and
depraved, while sufficient guarantee of the integrity and virtue of the
"Free" Press may be found in the fact that Mr. Belloc himself writes for
the "Free" Press, and testifies to the fact that it does not pay. While
so arbitrary a distinction must necessarily appear captious and
fanciful, and absurd when applied as a test of veracity, we may yet
perhaps roughly distinguish between those organs which are designed
primarily to sell at a maximum profit and those which are sold primarily
to propagate a "cause," even at a loss. At the risk of appearing
cynical, we might say that the chief difference between the two lies in
the fact that the former is designed to pander to the foibles of its
readers, and the latter is the expression of the fanaticism of its
writers. As a matter of fact, such a hard and fast distinction can
seldom be made between the two, since both motives are usually operative
in the same enterprise, though in varying proportions. But surely it is
absurd to claim for either an inherent predisposition to speak the
truth. The failure of the "Free Press"--the carping rags that imagine
themselves independent--would appear to lie in the very fact of their
eagerness to convert. The natural resentment of the man who discerns an
attempt to convert him was well expressed in a witty speech in the House
of Commons during a debate on the relations between Press and
Government. What had always attracted him most about Lord Northcliffe,
said the Hon. Member for Stockport, was that he had never pretended to
be a philanthropist. He was not one of those pestilent people who
pretended to run newspapers in order that they might leave the world a
little better than they found it.[81]
Tradition and the building up of sentiments and ideals, together with
the symbols by which they are known and familiarized, are very largely,
if not exclusively, the work of the written word. But Literature and the
Press are themselves governed by their past history, and by traditions
and conventions that have been gradually built up from a few fundamental
ideas, however diversified they may eventually have become; and these
ideas, in their turn, owe their origin to the passions and sentiments of
the race as a whole. Even the work of genius has its roots in the ideas
of the past. "Are we sure," asks a French author, "that the ideas which
flow from great men of genius are exclusively their own work? No doubt
they always spring from the wealth of individual souls, but the myriads
of grains of dust which form the alluvion where those ideas have
generated are surely formed by the soul of the nation?"[82]
We have seen that it is a fundamental principle that the strongest
suggestion must prevail; mass tells against single individuals,
overwhelming quantity against quality, when the strength of either is
measured against the resistance to be overcome. Cosmic suggestion is
conditioned by various circumstances which affect its influence. It is a
commonplace to say that like attracts like; this fact is but another
attribute of gregarious attraction and tends towards establishing the
homogeneity of aggregations, and slightly modifies the attraction of
mere numbers. It results in a diversity of centres of attraction; but
these centres of attraction are apt to converge and coalesce if for any
reason they are simultaneously affected by related or identical
sentiments. Frequency and persistency, as is well known, also modify the
force of mere numbers. The loudest and most frequently repeated
affirmations carry the most weight. In this way small bands of fanatics,
by dint of reiteration, have had their catchwords and shibboleths
accepted unquestioningly.
So far from weakening the respect and awe with which mere symbols are
regarded, their very obscurity and lack of meaning will ensure their
position and inviolability. The vogue for mysticism in poetry, art, and
religion reflects this love of symbolism. Men, from the very indolence
of their minds, love to set up symbols and to worship them, without
verifying the truths they are supposed to represent, for symbols are
easily acquired and easily perceived, and dispense with the arduous
necessity of probing reality and the mental discipline without which
truth cannot be reached.
The power of words and symbols is entirely independent of their real
meaning. As we have already shown, the most meaningless and the most
obscure phrases are, as a rule, for that very reason the most potent.
Such terms as liberty, equality, democracy, socialism, etc., whose
meanings are so vague that whole libraries do not exhaust their possible
interpretations, are solemnly uttered as though they were magic spells,
at the very sound of which all problems disappear. Symbolism and
mysticism form the fanatic's charter of licence. They revel in the dim
obscurity which intensifies the false brightness of their symbols. They
welcome the emotional domination of their minds that they may abandon
themselves to passions and feelings, and by developing their
_subjective_[83] powers, infect the masses with their madness. A true
metaphysics, it is well to remember, is the very antithesis of
mysticism, for it aims at the elimination of symbols; its method is to
co-ordinate and synthesize, and by means of the systematization of
materia to penetrate through and beyond, towards a realization of
direction and of value; it tests the highest powers of the intellect.
Bergson defines metaphysics as the science which claims to dispense with
symbols. A symbol, at best, can only stand for an aspect of the truth, a
mere sign-post pointing somewhere in its direction. Symbols have no part
in intuition, yet linguistic symbols are necessary for conveying
thoughts and ideals to others. The generality of men, however, can only
think in symbols, and can only be influenced by them; lies and illusions
are propagated and perpetrated in the form of images, yet images perform
necessary service in establishing goals of endeavour for securing
co-ordination and moral direction. Symbololatry is a common trait of
humanity, and few men analyse the symbols they worship; for this reason
it is necessary that the ideals and symbols of "the good" should be
forged by the few and the wise, not by the force of the greatest number,
that is, they must come from above, not from below. Thus we see that in
past history religion has performed a necessary function, and that in
spite of the gross unreality of its symbols it constituted the only
instrument of consolidation at the disposal of primitive man. Without
this force, born of man's fear of the unknown, his ignorance and false
appreciation of causality, together with a vague realization of his
dependence on his fellows, the imposition of rough and arbitrary values,
which first constituted moral conduct, would have been impossible. For
this reason any advancement and progress in the direction of
civilization would have been impossible without religion. The
conservative spirit of religion is seen to have been the means of
securing the consolidation and stability of society which was necessary
for the well-being and strength of every community; without this it
could not have survived. As long as men are dazzled by symbols and
governed by emotions, and there is at present no sign of change in this
respect, a strong hierarchy capable of evoking respect for its values
alone can save a state from disintegration, anarchy and social decay;
but only if that hierarchy is composed of the highest, noblest and most
enlightened in the race can those values be the best possible, and can
they continue to improve _pari passu_ with advancing civilization. The
alternative, the increasing despotism of the many, articulating through
the voice of demagogues, resulting in the gradual extermination of the
few and the highest, and in the imposition of values growing ever more
false, points the way to decadence and barbarism. Evolution implies
decline no less than advancement, and the "survival of the fittest" in
the former case means the survival of the lowest and the most degraded.
A child's moral conduct, like primitive man's, is at first absolutely
dependent upon his environment, but with the development of
self-consciousness and with the growth of an ideal of self, his values
and his conduct become progressively freer from his present environment,
and in a greater degree determined by the direction of past habits and
the force of early impressions.[84] "There is hardly anything," said
Mill, "so absurd or so mischievous that it may not by the use of
external sanctions and the force of early impressions be made to act on
the human mind with all the authority of conscience."
The attainment of character through the development of an ideal of self
and the systematization of habits and motives is a slow and gradual
process, and only rarely is complete independence of judgment attained,
which alone renders the highest form of moral conduct possible, when all
conduct is determined by will with regard to the realization of ends.