The tendency of the Evolution Theory, as it penetrates human thought, is
to rub out lines--the old lines of formal classification. We no longer
now put in a class apart those animals which have horns or cloven
hooves, because we find that continuous descent and close kinship weave
relations which are not bounded by horns or hooves. And, for a not
dissimilar reason, modern thought, based on the theory of evolution, is
tending to rub out the hard and fast lines between moral Right and
Wrong--the old formal classifications of _actions_ as some in their
nature good, and some in their nature bad.
The Eastern, or at least Indian, thought and religion rubbed out these
lines long ago. Its philosophy indeed was founded on a theory of
Evolution--the continuous evolution or emanation of the Many from the
One. It could not therefore regard any _class_ of beings or creatures as
essentially bad, or any _class_ of actions as essentially wrong, since
all sprang from a common Root. The only essential evil was ignorance
(_avidya_)--that is, the fact of the being or creature not knowing or
perceiving its emanation from, or kinship with, the One--and of course
any action done under this condition of _avidya_, however outwardly
correct, was essentially wrong; while on the other hand _all_ actions
done by beings fully realising and conscious of their union with the One
were necessarily right.
Of this attitude towards Right and Wrong there are abundant instances in
the Upanishads. The choice of the path does not lie _between_ Good and
Bad, as in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, but it lies above and in a region
transcending them both. "By the serenity of his thoughts a man blots out
_all_ actions, whether good or bad."[42] "He does not distress himself
with the thought, Why did I not do what is good? Why did I do what is
bad?"[43] All religions indeed, by the very fact of their being
religions, have indicated a sphere above morality, to which their
followers shall and must aspire. What else is St. Paul's reiterated
charge to escape from the dominion of sin and law, into the glorious
liberty of the children of God? And in all ages the great mystics--those
who stand near the fountain-sources of evolution and emanation--have
seen and said the same. Says Spinoza:--"With regard to good and evil,
these terms indicate nothing positive in things considered in
themselves, nor are they anything else than modes of thought, or
notions which we form from _the comparison of one thing with another_.
For one and the same thing may at the same time be both good and evil,
or indifferent."[44]
Here indeed, in these pregnant words, we come upon the very root of the
matter. A thing, an action, may be called good or bad in respect to a
certain purpose or object; but in itself, No. Wine may be good for the
encouragement of sociability, but may be bad for the liver. The
Sabbath-day may be pronounced a beneficial institution from some points
of view, but not from others. A scrupulous respect for private property
may certainly be a help to settled social life; but the practice of
thieving--as recommended by Plato--may be very useful to check the lust
of private riches. To speak of wine as in its nature good or bad is
manifestly absurd; and the same of a pious respect for private property
or the Sabbath-day. These things are good under certain conditions or
for certain purposes, and bad under other conditions or for other
purposes. But of course it belongs and goes with the brute externalising
tendency of the mind, to stereotype the actual material thing--which
should be only the vehicle of the spirit--and give _it_ a character and
a cult as good or bad. The Sabbath ceases to be made for man, and man is
made for the Sabbath. Law, Custom, Pharisaism, and Self-righteousness
spring up and usurp the sphere of morality, and all the histories of
savage and civilised nations, with their endless fetishes and taboos
and superstitions and ceremonies, and caste-marks and phylacteries, and
petty regulations and proprieties,--including bitter scorn and
persecution of those who do not fulfil them,--are but illustrations of
this process.
All the prophets and saviours of the world have been for the Spirit as
against the letter--and the teachings of all religions have in their
turn become literalised and fossilised! Perhaps there has been no
greater anti-literal than Jesus of Nazareth, and yet perhaps no religion
has become more a thing of forms and dogmas than that which passes under
his name. Even his counsels of Gentleness and Love--which one would
indeed have thought might escape this process--have been corrupted into
mere prescriptions of morality, such as those of Non-resistance, and of
philanthropic Altruism.
It seems strange indeed that so great a man as Tolstoy should have lent
himself to this process--to the pinning down of the excellent spirit of
Christ (who by the way was man enough to drive the money-changers out of
the Temple) to a mere formula, as one might pin a dragon-fly to a
labelled card--_Thou shalt not use Violence: thou shalt not Resist!_ And
all the while to cleave to a formula only means to admit the evil in
some other shape which the formula does not meet--to forswear the stick
only means to resort to rebuke and sarcasm in self-defence, which may
inflict more pain and a deeper scar, and in some cases more injury,
than the stick; or if self-defence in any shape is quite forsworn then
that only means to resign and abandon one's place in the world
completely.
And the same of the somewhat spooney Altruism, which was at one time
much recommended as the maxim of conduct. For all the while it is
notorious that the specially altruistic people are as a rule painfully
dull and uninteresting, and afford far less life and charm to those
around them than many who are frankly egotistic; and so by following a
formula of Altruism it seems they wreck the very work they set before
themselves to do--namely, that of making the world brighter!
Against these weaknesses of Christianity Nietzsche was a healthy
reaction. It was he insisted on the terms "good" and "bad" being
restored to their proper use, as terms of relation--"good" for what?
"bad" for what? But his reaction against maudlin altruism and
non-resistance led him towards a pitfall in the opposite direction,
towards the erection of the worship of Force almost into a formula, Thou
_shalt_ use Violence, thou _shalt_ Resist. His contempt for the feeble
and the spooney and the knock-kneed and the humbug is very delightful
and entertaining, and, as I say, healthy in the sense of reaction; but
one does not get a very clear idea what the strength which Nietzsche
glorifies is for, or whither it is going to lead. His blonde beasts and
his laughing lions may represent the Will to Power; but Nietzsche seems
to have felt, himself, that this latter alone would not suffice, and so
he passed on to his discovery or invention of the Beyond-man,--_i.e._ of
a childlike being who, without argument, _affirms_ and creates, and
before whom institutions and conventions dissolve, as it were of their
own accord.[45] This was a stroke of genius; but even so it leaves
doubtful what the relation of such Beyond-men to each other may be, and
whether, if they have no common source of life, their actions will not
utterly cancel and destroy each other.
The truth is that Nietzsche never really penetrated to the realisation
of that farther state of consciousness in which the deep underlying
unity of man with Nature and his fellows is perceived and felt. He saw
apparently that there is a life and an inspiration of life beyond all
technical good and evil. But for some reason--partly because of the
natural difficulty of the subject, partly perhaps because the Eastern
outlook was uncongenial to his mind--he never found the solution which
he needed; and his outline of the Superman remains cloudy and uncertain,
vague and variously interpreted by followers and critics.
The question arises, What do _we_ need? We are to-day, in this matter,
in a somewhat parlous state. The old codes of Morality are moribund; the
Ten Commandments command only a very qualified assent; the Christian
religion as a real inspiration of practical life and conduct is dead;
the social conventions and Mrs. Grundy remain, feebly galling and
officious. What are we to do? Are we to bolster up the old codes, in
which we have largely ceased to believe, merely in order to have a
code?--or are we to let them go?
Of course, if we have decided what the final purpose or life of Man is,
then we may say that what is good for that purpose is finally "good,"
and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil." The Eastern
philosophy, as I have said, deciding that the final purpose of Man is
identification with Brahm, declares _all_ actions to be evil (even the
most saintly) which are done by the self as separate from Brahm; and all
actions as good which are done in the condition of _vidya_ or conscious
union. But here, though a final good and evil are allowed and
acknowledged, as existing respectively in the conditions of vidya or
avidya, those conditions altogether escape any external rule or
classification.
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, taking up this subject not long ago in a
criticism[46] of Mr. Orage's little book on Nietzsche, said that all
this talk about "beyond good and evil" was nonsense; that we must have
some code; and that in effect, any code, even a bad one, was better than
none. And one sees what he means. It is perfectly true, in a sense, that
the harness, the shafts, and the blinkers keep a large part of the
world on the beaten road and out of the ditch, and that folk are always
to be found who, rather than use their higher faculties, will rely on
these external guides; but to encourage this kind of salvation by
blinkers seems the very reverse of what ought to be done; and one might
even ask whether salvation by such means is salvation at all--whether
the ditch were not better!
Besides, what _can_ we do? It is not so much that we are deliberately
abandoning the codes as that they are abandoning us. With the gradual
infiltration of new ideas, of Eastern thought, of Darwinian philosophy,
of customs and creeds of races other than our own, with Bernard Shaw
lecturing on the futility of the Ten Commandments, and so forth, it is
not difficult to see that in a short while it will be impossible to
rehabilitate any of the ancient codes or to give them a sanction and a
sense of awe in the public mind. If with Gilbert Chesterton we should
succeed in bolstering up such a thing for a time--well, it will only be
for a time.
And the question is, whether the time has not really come for us to
stand up--like sensible men and women--and _do without rules_; whether
we cannot trust ourselves at last to throw aside the blinkers. The
question is whether we cannot realise that solid and central life which
underlies and yet surpasses all rules. For truly, if we cannot do this,
our state is pitiable--having ceased to believe in the letter of
Morality, and yet unable to find its spirit!
It is here, then, that the New Morality comes in, as more or less
clearly understood and expressed by the progressive sections to-day.
Modern Socialism, in effect, taking up a position in its way somewhat
similar to that of Eastern philosophy, says: Morality in its essence is
not a code, but simply the realisation of the Common Life;[47] and that
is a thing which is not foreign and alien to humanity, but very germane
and natural to it--a thing so natural that without doubt it would be
more in evidence than it is, did not the institutions and teachings of
Western civilisation tend all along to deny and disguise it. To liberate
this instinct of the Common Life, freeing it from hard and cramping
rules, and to let it take its own form or forms--grafted on and varied
of course by the personal and selective element of Affection and
Sympathy--is the hope that lies before the world to-day for the solution
of all sorts of moral and social problems.
And the more this position is thought over, the more, I believe, will it
commend itself. The sense of organic unity, of the common welfare, the
instinct of Humanity, or of general helpfulness, are things which run in
all directions through the very fibre of our individual and social
life--just as they do through that of the gregarious animals. In a
thousand ways: through heredity and the fact that common ancestral blood
flows in our veins--though we be only strangers that pass in the street;
through psychology, and the similarity of structure and concatenation in
our minds; through social linkage, and the necessity of each and all to
the others' economic welfare; through personal affection and the ties of
the heart; and through the mystic and religious sense which, diving deep
below personalities, perceives the vast flood of universal being--in
these and many other ways does this Common Life compel us to recognise
itself as a fact--perhaps the most fundamental fact of existence.
To teach this simple foundational fact and what flows from it to every
child--not only as a theory, but as a practical habit and inspiration of
conduct--is not really difficult, but easy. Children, having this sense
woven into their very being, grow up in the spirit and practical
habitude of it, and from the beginning possess the inspiration of what
we call Morality--far more effectually indeed than copy-book maxims can
provide. Respect for truth, consideration towards parents and elders,
respect for the reasonable properties, dignities, conveniences of
others, as well as for one's own needs and dignities, become perfectly
natural and habitual. And that this is no mere hypothesis the example of
Japan has lately shown where every young thing is brought up so far
drenched in the sentiment of community that to give one's life for one's
country is looked upon as a privilege.[48] The general lines, I say, of
morality would be secure, and much more secure than they now are, if we
could only bring the children up in an educational and practical
atmosphere of that solidarity which as a matter of fact is demanded
to-day by socialism and the economic movement generally.
And on this ground-work, as I have hinted, Personal Affection and
Sympathy would build a superstructure of their own; they would outline a
society as much more beautiful, powerful and closely knit than the
present one founded on the Cash-nexus, as, say, the Athenian society of
the time of Pericles was superior to that of the Lapithæ who first
bitted and bridled the horse.
While the general Life, equal, pervasive, and in a sense
undifferentiated, is a great fact which has to be acknowledged; so this
personal Love and Affection, choosing, selecting, and giving outline and
form to that life, is equally a fact, equally undeniable, equally
sacred--and one which has to be taken in conjunction with the other.
I say equally sacred: because there has been a tendency (no doubt due to
certain causes) to look upon personal affection, in its various phases
from slight inclinations of sympathy to the stronger compulsions of
passion, as something rather dubious in character, at best an amiable
weakness not to be encouraged. Tolstoy, in one of his writings, figures
the case of a little household in days of famine not really having bread
enough for their own wants. Then a stranger child comes to the door and
pleads for food. Tolstoy suggests that the mother ought to take the
scanty crust from her own child to feed the stranger withal, or at least
to share the food equally between the two children. But such a
conclusion seems to me doubtful.
Whatever "ought" may mean in such a connexion, we know pretty well that
such never _will_ be the rule of human life, we may almost say never can
be; perhaps we should be equally justified in saying, never "ought" to
be. For obviously there must be preferences, selections. Our affections,
our affinities, our sympathies, our passions, are not given us for
nothing. It is not for nothing that every individual person, every tree,
every animal has a _shape_, a shape of its own. If it were not so the
world would be infinitely, inconceivably, dull. Yet to ask that a mother
should in all cases treat strange children exactly the same as her own,
that a man from the oceanic multitude should single out no special or
privileged friends, but should love all alike, is to ask that these folk
in their mental and moral nature should become as jellyfish--of no
distinct shape or satisfaction to themselves or any one else. Profound
and indispensable as is the Law of Equality--the law, namely, that there
is a region within all beings where they touch to a common and equal
life--the other law, that of Individual predilection, is equally
indispensable. Try to reduce all to the one motive of the general
interest, and you might have a perfect morality, but a morality woodeny,
hard and dull, without form and feature. Try to dispense with this, and
to found society on individual affection and love, and on individual
initiative, without morals, and you would have a flighty, unstable
thing, without consistency or backbone.
My contention, then, is that our hope for the future society lies in its
embodiment of these two great principles jointly: (1) the recognition of
the Common Life as providing the foundation-element of general morality,
and (2) the recognition of Individual Affection and Expression--and to a
much greater degree than hitherto--as building up the higher groupings
and finer forms of the structure. And in proportion as (1) provides a
solider basis of morals than we have hitherto had, so will it be
possible to give to (2) a width of scope and freedom of action hitherto
untried or untrusted. Conjointly with the strengthening of these
principles of Solidarity and Affection in society must of course come
the strengthening of Individuality--the right and the desire of every
being to preserve and develop its own proper _shape_, and so to add to
the richness and interest of life--and this involves the right of
Resistance, and (once more) the relegation of the formula of
non-resistance into the background.
These considerations, however, are leading us too far afield, and away
from the special subject of our paper. I mention them chiefly in order
to show that while we are considering Morality as a foundation-element
of Society, it must never be lost sight of that it is not the only
element, and that it would be comparatively senseless and useless unless
grafted on and complemented and completed by the others.
The method of the New Morality, then, will be to minimise formulæ, and
(except as illustrations) to use them sparely; and to bring children
up--and so indirectly all citizens--in such conditions of abounding life
and health that their sympathies, overflowing naturally to those around,
will cause them to realise in the strongest way their organic part in
the great whole of society--and this not as an intellectual theory, so
much as an abiding consciousness and foundation-fact of their own
existence. Make this the basis of all teaching. Make them realise--by
all sorts of habit and example--that to injure or deceive others is to
injure themselves--that to help others somehow satisfies and fortifies
their own inner life. Let them learn, as they grow up, to regard all
human beings, of whatever race or class, as ends in themselves--never to
be looked upon as mere things or chattels to be made use of. Let them
also learn to look upon the animals in the same light--as beings, they
too, who are climbing the great ladder of creation--beings with whom
also we humans have a common spirit and interest. And let them learn to
respect _themselves_ as worthy and indispensable members of this great
Body. Thus will be established a true Morality--a morality far more
searching, more considerate of others, more adaptive and more genuine
than that of the present day--a morality, we may say, of common-sense.
For it may indeed be said that Morality--taking a downright and almost
physiological view of it--is simply _abundance of life_. That is, that
when a man has so abounding and vital an inner nature that his
sympathies and activities overflow the margin of his own petty days and
personal advantage, he is by that fact entering the domain of morality.
Before that time and while limited to the personal organism, the
creative life in each being is either non-moral like that of the
animals, or simply selfish like that of the immature man; but when it
overflows this limit it necessarily becomes social, and moves to the
support and consideration of the neighbour. Having formerly found its
complete activity in the sustentation of the personal self it now
spreads its helpful energies into the lives of the other selves around.
Altruism, in fact, in its healthy forms, is the overflow of abounding
vitality. It is a morality without a code, and happily free from
limiting formulæ.[49]
And if it be again said that a morality of this kind, which rests on a
principle and a mental attitude only, is a danger, let us pause for a
moment to consider how much more dangerous is one which rests on
formulæ. If morality without a code is a serious matter, how much more
serious is one which is nailed up _within_ a code! For looking back on
history it would sometimes seem that the black-and-white, the
this-thing-right-and-that-thing-wrong morality has been the most wicked
thing in the world. It has been an excuse for all the most devilish
deeds and persecutions imaginable. A formula of the Sabbath-day, a
formula about Witchcraft, a formula of Marriage (regardless of the real
human relation), a formula concerning Theft (regardless of the dire need
of the thief)--and burnings, hangings, torturings without mercy! The
terrible thing about this Right-and-Wrong morality is not only that it
leads to these dreadful reprisals; but that it brands upon the victim as
well as upon the oppressor the fatuous notions that a certain _thing_ is
right or wrong, and that what one has to do is to save _oneself_--two
notions both of which are directly contrary to true Morality. A boy
tells a verbal lie--perhaps through fear, perhaps through inadvertence.
He has broken a formula and is immediately caned. Moral: he will keep to
verbal truth afterwards--however mean or insidious it may be--and be
pharisaically self-satisfied; but he will never realise that the
importance of truth and lies rests not in the words, but in the
confidence and mutual trust which they either create or destroy. The
peculiarly English worship of Duty is open to the same objection.
"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," and splendid as is the
conception and practice of Duty, as a self-oblivious inspiration and
enthusiasm, it becomes a truly revolting thing when it takes the
all-too-common form "I have done _my_ Duty, I'm all right!" "I am going
to do _my_ Duty, whatever becomes of you." Can anything be imagined more
disintegrating to society, more certain to split it up into a dustheap
of self-regarding units, than a formula of this kind? "It is my painful
Duty to condemn you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead," says
the Judge to the wretched girl who, in a frenzy of despair, has drowned
her baby. What he really means is that while he perfectly recognises the
monstrosity of the Law which he has sworn to administer, and the
soul-killing effect on the girl which his sentence may have, yet in
order to save _himself_ from the risk or the wrong of breaking that Law,
he is willing and ready to pronounce that sentence. "It is my duty to
burn you," says the Inquisitor to the heretic; and the implication is
really, "I am afraid that if I do not burn you I shall get burnt myself,
in the next world."
The sooner an end can be made of this sort of morality, the
better--which under the cloak of public advantage or benefit is only
thinking about self-promotion and self-interest, either in this world
or the next, and which truly is calculated not to further human
solidarity but to destroy it. It runs and trickles through all of modern
society, poisoning the well-springs of affection, this morality which,
having paid its domestic servants their regular wages, is quite
satisfied with itself, and expects them to do _their_ duty in return,
but is silent about their real needs and welfare; which treats its
wage-workers as simple machines for the grinding out of profits, and
lifts its eyebrows in serene surprise when they retaliate against such
treatment; which can only regard a criminal as a person who has broken a
formula, and in return must be punished according to a formula; and a
pig as an animal for which you provide reasonable provender and a stye,
and which in return you are entitled to _eat_. Pharisaical, self-centred
and self-interested, materialistic to the last degree, and really
senseless in its outlook, this current morality is indeed, and very
seriously, a public peril.
Thou shalt not steal: an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat.
Keep _within_ the code, within the letter; always speak the nominal
truth (whoever may suffer thereby); keep up the accepted formulæ of
marriage and the sex-relation (though hearts may be bleeding and
perishing); pay every respect to property, and so forth; and you may
have the gratification of being looked upon as a bulwark of society. But
none the less it is probable that you are undermining and corrupting
that society to the core. Your outlook is merely on the surface, while
you are condoning deep-seated ill.
Of course the New Morality--to look _within_, to feel and refer to the
needs of others almost as instinctively as to one's own, to refuse to
regard any _thing_ as in itself good or bad, and to look upon all
beings, oneself included, as ends in themselves and not as a means of
personal self-advancement and glorification--while it is the more
natural, is also the more difficult in a sense, as providing no set
pattern or rule. But surely the time has arrived for its adoption. It is
the morality which must underlie the freer, more varied forms of the
society of the future; and it is the only escape from the corruption of
the old order.
To take particular examples. Truth, in word or act, is--we all
feel--very important, very fundamental. It is the basis of the common
understanding of which I have spoken. It is the basis of the expression
of oneself, and of the recognition of others. Any one who is deeply
imbued with the consciousness of the common life will necessarily have a
deep respect for the Truth; he will also have a deep respect for the
Life, the Property, the good Name, the Affections, and so forth, of
others, as well as for his own similar attributes. He will not be able
to say, as a formula: I will _never_ deceive another (tell a lie); I
will _never_ take the life of others, man or animal (kill); and so on,
because he knows there are situations in which that very Life arising
within him, or even his own absolute necessity, will demand such
actions, will compel him to the performance of them; but all the same he
will in his ordinary existence carry out the principle which underlies
these formulæ, and much more thoroughly, probably, than the formulæ
themselves would demand.
Similarly about such matters as sexual morality. There are outcries
against Lady-Godiva-shows and living statuary--apparently because folk
are afraid of such things rousing the passions. No doubt the things may
act that way. But why, we may ask, should people be afraid of rousing
passions which, after all, are the great driving forces of human life?
Clearly it is because they think the other forces which should guide
these passions or give them a helpful and useful direction are too weak.
And in this last respect they are right. The guiding and inhibiting
forces in our present society are feeble--because they consist only in a
few conventional formulæ, which are rapidly being undermined. We are
generating steam in a boiler which is already cankered with rust. The
cure is not to cut off the passions, or to be weakly afraid of them, but
to find a new, sound, healthy engine of general morality and
common-sense within which they will work. And this is what in the future
we must try to do.
This morality, this organic, vital, almost physiological morality of the
common life--which means a quick response of each unit to the needs of
the other units, and much the same in the body politic as health means
in the physical body--must underlie and be the basis of the societies of
the future. It will mean the liberation of a thousand and one instincts,
desires and capacities which since our childhood's days have lain buried
within us, concealed and ignored because we have thought them wrong or
unworthy, when really all they have wanted has been recognition and the
opportunity to become healthy _by_ recognition--by the process in fact
of balancing against each other, and against opposing and complementary
elements, and so finding their places in the Whole. On this new Morality
of acceptance and recognition and wide-reaching redemption, it will be
possible, as I have already said, to graft not only a stronger
expression of individuality all round, but also a higher and more varied
and more gracious life of _personal affection_--which now alas! lies
like a thing wounded and half dead. Its establishment will, I take it,
mean the oncoming of a society which will liberate personal affection
and love--will liberate forces hitherto artificially crippled because
their liberation would tear our current morality of formulæ to mere rags
and tatters. It means, I take it, the oncoming of a society whose main
motive will no longer be the struggle for Bread (since that is ruled out
by the enormous growth of our wealth-producing powers), but the desire
for the satisfaction of the Heart--thus preparing no doubt new and
unforeseen difficulties and sufferings, yet filling life with such
beautiful things that the motives of greed and the mean pursuit of
money, which now weigh upon the world, will be like an evil nightmare of
the Past from which the dawn delivers us.