this changed view lies in the fact that it compels us to regard certain
desires, affections, and motives as inherently worthy, because intrinsic
constituent factors of happiness. Thus it enables us to _identify_ our
happiness with the happiness of others, to find our good in their good,
not just to seek their happiness as, upon the whole, the most effective
way of securing our own. Our social affections are direct interests in
the well-being of others; their cultivation and expression is at one and
the same time a source of good to ourselves, and, intelligently guided,
to others. Taken in this light, it is sympathetic emotion and
imagination which make the standard of general happiness not merely the
"desirable end," but the desired end, the effectively working object of
endeavor.
=Intrinsic Motivation of Regard for Others.=--If it is asked _why_ the
individual should thus regard the well-being of others as an inherent
object of desire, there is, according to Mill, but one answer: We cannot
think of ourselves save as to some extent _social_ beings. Hence we
cannot separate the idea of ourselves and of our own good from our idea
of others and of their good. The natural sentiment which is the basis of
the utilitarian morality, which gives the idea of the social good weight
with us, is the
"desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures.... The social
state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man,
that except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of
voluntary abstraction, _he never conceives himself otherwise than
as a member of a body_.... Any condition, therefore, which is
essential to a state of society becomes more and more an
inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of
things he is born into and which is the destiny of a human being."
This strengthening of social ties leads the individual "to
identify his _feelings_ more and more with the good" of others.
"He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as
a being, who, _of course_, pays regard to others. The good of
others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be
attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our
existence." This social feeling, finally, however weak, does not
present itself "as a superstition of education, or a law
despotically imposed from without, but as an attribute which it
would not be well to be without.... Few but those whose mind is a
moral blank could _bear_ to lay out their course of life on the
line of paying no regard to others except so far as their own
private interest compels."[152]
The transformation is tremendous. It is no longer a question of acting
for the general interest because that brings most pleasure or brings it
more surely and easily. It is a question of finding one's good in the
good of others.
=III. The Benthamite External Ties of Private and General
Interests.=--Aside from sympathy and love of peaceful relations and good
repute, Bentham relied upon law, changes in political arrangements, and
the play of economic interests which make it worth while for the
individual to seek his own pleasure in ways that would also conduce to
the pleasure of others. Penal law can at least make it painful for the
individual to try to get his own good in ways which bring suffering to
others. Civil legislation can at least abolish those vested interests
and class privileges which inevitably favor one at the expense of
others, and which make it customary and natural to seek and get
happiness in ways which disregard the happiness of others. In the
industrial life each individual seeks his own advantage under such
conditions that he can achieve his end only by rendering service to
others, that is, through exchange of commodities or services. The proper
end of legislation is then to make political and economic conditions
such that the individual while seeking his own good will at least not
inflict suffering upon others, and positively, so far as possible, will
promote their good.[153]
=IV. Mill's Criticism.=--Mill's criticism does not turn upon the
importance of legislation and of social economic arrangements in
promoting the identity of individual and general good. On the contrary,
after identifying (in a passage already quoted, _ante_, p. 286) the
ideal of utilitarian morality with love of neighbor, he goes on:
"As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal utility
would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should
place the happiness of every individual as nearly as possible in
harmony with the interest of the whole; and, secondly, that
education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human
character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of
every individual an indissoluble association between his own
happiness and the good of the whole."
The criticism turns upon the fact that _unless_ the intrinsic social
idea, already discussed, be emphasized, any association of private and
general happiness which law and social arrangements can effect will be
external, more or less artificial and arbitrary, and hence dissoluble
either by intellectual analysis, or by the intense prepotency of
egoistic desire.
=Mill's Transformation.=--If, however, this idea of inherent social ties
and of oneself as a social being is presupposed, the various external
agencies have something internal to work upon; and their effect is
internal, not external. Their effect is not to establish a mere
_coincidence_ (as with Bentham) between pleasure to oneself and pleasure
to others, but to protect, strengthen, and foster the sense, otherwise
intermittent and feeble, of the social aspects and relations of one's
own being. It is for this reason that Mill lays more stress on
_education_ than on mere external institutional changes, and, indeed,
conceives of the ultimate moral value of the institutional arrangements
as itself educative. Their value to him is not that they are
contrivances or pieces of machinery for making the behavior of one
conduce more or less automatically to the happiness of others, but that
they train and exercise the individual in the recognition of the social
elements of his own character.
=Summary of Previous Discussion.=--We have carried on our discussion of
the relation between the common good as the standard for measuring
rightness, and pleasure as the end and spring of the individual's
activity, in terms of Mill's development of Bentham's utilitarianism.
But of course our results are general, and they may be detached not only
from this particular discussion, but from the truth or falsity of
utilitarianism as a technical theory. Put positively, our results are
these: (1) Moral quality is an attribute of character, of dispositions
and attitudes which express themselves in desires and efforts. (2) Those
attitudes and dispositions are morally good which aim at the production,
the maintenance, and development of ends in which the agent and others
affected alike find satisfaction. There is no difference (such as early
utilitarianism made) between good as standard and as aim, because _only
a voluntary preference for and interest in a social good is capable,
otherwise than by coincidence or accident, of producing acts which have
common good as their result_. Acts which are not motivated by it as aim
cannot be trusted to secure it as result; _acts which are motived by it
as a living and habitual interest are the guarantee, so far as
conditions allow, of its realization_. Those who care for the general
good for its own sake are those who are surest of promoting it.
=The Good Moral Character.=--The genuinely moral person is one, then, in
whom the habit of regarding all capacities and habits of self from the
social standpoint is formed and active. Such an one forms his plans,
regulates his desires, and hence performs his acts with reference to the
effect they have upon the social groups of which he is a part. He is one
whose dominant attitudes and interests are bound up with associated
activities. Accordingly he will find his happiness or satisfaction in
the promotion of these activities irrespective of the particular pains
and pleasures that accrue.
=Social Interests and Sympathy.=--A genuine social interest is then
something much broader and deeper than an instinctive sympathetic
reaction. Sympathy is a genuine natural instinct, varying in intensity
in different individuals. It is a precious instrumentality for the
development of social insight and socialized affection; but in and of
itself it is upon the same plane as any natural endowment. It may lead
to sentimentality or to selfishness; the individual may shrink from
scenes of misery just because of the pain they cause him, or may seek
jovial companions because of the sympathetic pleasures he gets. Or he
may be moved by sympathy to labor for the good of others, but, because
of lack of deliberation and thoughtfulness, be quite ignorant of what
their good really is, and do a great deal of harm. One may wish to do
unto others as he would they should do unto him, but may err egregiously
because his conception of what is desirable for himself is radically
false; or because he assumes arbitrarily that whatever he likes is good
for others, and may thus tyrannically impose his own standards upon
them. Again instinctive sympathy is partial; it may attach itself
vehemently to those of blood kin or to immediate associates in such a
way as to favor them at the expense of others, and lead to positive
injustice toward those beyond the charmed circle.[154]
=Transformation of Instinctive Sympathies.=--It still remains true that
the instinctive affectionate reactions in their various forms (parental,
filial, sexual, compassionate, sympathetic) are the sole portions of the
psychological structure or mechanism of a man which can be relied upon
to work the identification of other's ends with one's own interests.
What is required is a _blending_, a _fusing_ of the sympathetic
tendencies with all the other impulsive and habitual traits of the self.
When interest in power is permeated with an affectionate impulse, it is
protected from being a tendency to dominate and tyrannize; it becomes an
interest in _effectiveness of regard for common ends_. When an interest
in artistic or scientific objects is similarly fused, it loses the
indifferent and coldly impersonal character which marks the specialist
as such, and becomes an interest in the adequate aesthetic and
intellectual development of the conditions of a common life. Sympathy
does not merely _associate_ one of these tendencies _with_ another;
still less does it make one a means to the other's end. It so intimately
permeates them as to transform them both into a single new and moral
interest. This same fusion protects sympathy from sentimentality and
narrowness. Blended with interest in power, in science, in art, it is
liberalized in quality and broadened in range. In short, the fusion of
affectionate reactions with the other dispositions of the self
_illuminates, gives perspective and body to the former_, while it _gives
social quality and direction to the latter_. The result of this
reciprocal absorption is the disappearance of the natural tendencies in
their original form _and the generation of moral_, i.e., _socialized
interests_. It is sympathy transformed into a habitual standpoint which
satisfies the demand for a standpoint which will render the person
interested in foresight of all obscure consequences (_ante_, p. 262).
=1. Social Interest and the Happiness of the Agent.=--We now see what is
meant by a distinctively _moral_ happiness, and how this happiness is
supreme in quality as compared with other satisfactions, irrespective of
superior intensity and duration on the part of the latter. It is
impossible to draw any fixed line between the _content_ of the moral
good and of natural satisfaction. The end, the right and only right end,
of man, lies in the fullest and freest realization of powers in their
appropriate objects. The good consists of friendship, family and
political relations, economic utilization of mechanical resources,
science, art, in all their complex and variegated forms and elements.
There is no separate and rival moral good; no separate empty and rival
"good will."
=Nature of Moral Interest and Motivation.=--Yet _the interest_ in the
social or the common and progressive realization of these interests may
properly be called a distinctive moral interest. The degree of actual
objective realization or achievement of these ends, depends upon
circumstances and accidents over which the agent has little or no
control. The more happily situated individual who succeeds in realizing
these ends more largely we may call more fortunate; we cannot call him
morally better. The interest in all other interests, the voluntary
desire to discover and promote them within the range of one's own
capacities, one's own material resources, and the limits of one's own
surroundings, is, however, under one's control: _it is one's moral
self_. _The nature and exercise of this interest constitutes then the
distinctively moral quality in all good purposes._ They are morally good
not so far as objectively accomplished and possessed, but so far as
cherished in the dominant affections of the person.
=The Moral Interest as Final Happiness.=--Consequently the true or final
happiness of an individual, the happiness which is not at the mercy of
circumstance and change of circumstance, lies not in objective
achievement of results, but in the supremacy within character of an
alert, sincere, and persistent interest in those habits and institutions
which forward common ends among men. Mill insisted that quality of
happiness was morally important, not quantity. Well, that quality which
is most important is the peace and joy of mind that accompanies the
abiding and equable maintenance of socialized interests as central
springs of action. To one in whom these interests live (and they live to
some extent in every individual not completely pathological) their
exercise brings happiness because it fulfills his life. To those in whom
it is the supreme interest it brings supreme or final happiness. It is
not preferred because it is the greater happiness, but in being
preferred as expressing the only kind of self which the agent
fundamentally wishes himself to be, it constitutes a kind of happiness
with which others cannot be compared. It is unique, final,
invaluable.[155]
=Identity of the Individual and General Happiness.=--No algebraic
summing up of sympathetic pleasures, utilities of friendship, advantages
of popularity and esteem, profits of economic exchange among equals,
over against pains from legal penalties and disapproving public opinion,
and lack of sympathetic support by others, can ever make it even
approximately certain that an individual's own interest, in terms of
quantity of pleasures and pains, is to regard the interest of
others.[156] Such a demonstration, moreover, if possible, would not
support but would weaken the moral life. It would reduce the
manifestation of character to selecting greater rather than less amounts
of homogeneous ends. It would degrade reflection and consideration to
ingenuity in detecting where larger quantities of pleasures lie, and to
skill in performing sums of addition and subtraction. Even if such a
scheme could be demonstrated, every one except the most languid and
phlegmatic of pleasure-seekers would reject a life built upon it. Not
only the "good," but the more vigorous and hearty of the "bad," would
scorn a life in which character, selfhood, had no significance, and
where the experimental discovery and testing of destiny had no place.
The identity of individual and general happiness is a _moral_ matter; it
depends, that is, upon the reflective and intentional development of
that type of character which identifies itself with common ends, and
which is happy in these ends just because it has made them its own.
=2. Social Ends and the Happiness of Others.=--The same principle holds
of the happiness of others. Happiness means the expression of the active
tendencies of a self in their appropriate objects. Moral happiness means
the satisfaction which comes when the dominant active tendencies are
made interests in the maintenance and propagation of the things that
make life worth living. Others, also, can be happy and should be happy
only upon the same terms. Regard for the happiness of others means
_regard for those conditions and objects which permit others freely to
exercise their own powers from their own initiative, reflection, and
choice_. Regard for their final happiness (i.e., for a happiness whose
_quality_ is such that it cannot be _externally_ added to or subtracted
from) demands that these others shall find the controlling objects of
preference, resolution, and endeavor in the things that are worth while.
=3. Happiness and Common Ends.=--For all alike, in short, the chief
thing is the discovery and promotion of those activities and active
relationships in which the capacities of all concerned are effectively
evoked, exercised, and put to the test. It is difficult for a man to
attain a point of view from which steadily to apprehend how his own
activities affect and modify those of others. It is hard, that is, to
learn to accommodate one's ends to those of others; to adjust, to give
way here, and fit in there with respect to our aims. But difficult as
this is, it is easy compared with the difficulty of acting _in such a
way_ for ends which are helpful to others as will call out and make
effective their activities.
=Moral Democracy.=--If the vice of the criminal, and of the coarsely
selfish man is to disturb the aims and the good of others; if the vice
of the ordinary egoist, and of every man, upon his egoistic side, is to
neglect the interests of others; the vice of the social leader, of the
reformer, of the philanthropist and the specialist in every worthy cause
of science, or art, or politics, is to seek ends which promote the
social welfare in ways which fail to engage the active interest and
cooperation of others.[157] The conception of conferring the good upon
others, or at least of attaining it for them, which is our inheritance
from the aristocratic civilization of the past, is so deeply embodied in
religious, political, and charitable institutions and in moral
teachings, that it dies hard. Many a man, feeling himself justified by
the social character of his ultimate aim (it may be economic, or
educational, or political), is genuinely confused or exasperated by the
increasing antagonism and resentment which he evokes, because he has not
enlisted in his pursuit of the "common" end the freely cooperative
activities of others. This cooperation must be the root principle of the
morals of democracy. It must be confessed, however, that it has as yet
made little progress.
Our traditional conceptions of the morally great man, the moral hero and
leader, the exceptionally good social and political character, all work
against the recognition of this principle either in practice or theory.
They foster the notion that it is somebody's particular business to
reach by his more or less isolated efforts (with "following," or
obedience, or unreflective subordination on the part of others) a needed
social good. Some genius is to lead the way; others are to adopt and
imitate. Moreover, the method of awakening and enlisting the activities
of all concerned in pursuit of the end seems slow; it seems to postpone
accomplishment indefinitely. But in truth a common end which is not made
such by common, free voluntary cooperation in process of achievement is
common in name only. It has no support and guarantee in the activities
which it is supposed to benefit, because it is not the fruit of those
activities. Hence, it does not stay put. It has to be continually
buttressed by appeal to external, not voluntary, considerations; bribes
of pleasure, threats of harm, use of force. It has to be undone and done
over. There is no way to escape or evade this law of happiness, that it
resides in the exercise of the active capacities of a voluntary agent;
and hence no way to escape or evade the law of a common happiness, that
it must reside in the congruous exercise of the voluntary activities of
all concerned. The inherent irony and tragedy of much that passes for a
high kind of socialized activity is precisely that it seeks a common
good by methods which forbid its being either common or a good.
LITERATURE
See references upon utilitarianism at end of ch. xiv. For happiness, see
Aristotle, _Ethics_, Book I., and Book X., chs. vi.-ix.; Dickinson, _The
Meaning of Good_; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 268-286; Rickaby,
_Aquinas Ethicus_, Vol. I., pp. 6-39; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch. xv.;
Santayana, _The Life of Reason_; Rashdall, _The Theory of Good and
Evil_.
The following histories of utilitarianism bring out the social side of
the utilitarian theory: Albee, _History of Utilitarianism_; Stephen,
_The English Utilitarians_; Halevy, _La Formation du Radicalisme
Philosophique_, especially Vols. I. and II.
FOOTNOTES:
[139] The discussion of altruism and egoism in ch. xviii. on the Self,
considers some aspects of this question from another point of view.
[140] _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 361.
[141] _Ibid._, pp. 365-66. Green then goes on to argue that this service
has been in spite of its hedonistic factor, and that if the theory were
generally applied with all the hedonistic implications to personal
behavior in private life, it would put impediments in the way of moral
progress.
[142] It will be noted that we have here the same double role of
pleasure that met us at the outset (see _ante_, p. 267): one sort of
happiness is the moving spring of action, because object of desire;
another and incompatible sort is the standard, and hence proper or right
end.
[143] It is this hedonistic element of the object of desire and moving
spring which calls forth such denunciations as Carlyle's; on the other
hand, it is the assertion of the common happiness as the standard which
calls out the indignant denial of the utilitarians; which, for example,
leads Spencer to retort upon Carlyle's epithet of "pig-philosophy" with
a counter charge that Carlyle's epithet is a survival of
"devil-worship," since it assumes pain to be a blessing. (_Principles of
Ethics_, Vol. I., pp. 40-41).
[144] Abbott's _Kant's Theory of Ethics_, p. 116.
[145] _Utilitarianism_, third paragraph of ch. iv.
[146] By this phrase Bentham refers to the necessity of controlling this
spring to activity just as any other is regulated, by reference to its
consequences.
[147] Bentham himself was not a psychologist, and he does not state the
doctrine in this extreme form. But those of the Benthamites who were
psychologists, being hedonistic in their psychology, gave the doctrine
this form.
[148] _Early Essays_, p. 354. (Reprint by Gibbs, London, 1897.)
[149] _Ibid._, p. 357.
[150] _Ibid._, p. 404.
[151] _Autobiography_, London, 1884, p. 143.
[152] _Utilitarianism_, ch. iii., _passim_.
[153] Some phases of this view as respects legislation, etc., are
touched upon later in ch. xviii.
[154] Mill in his article on Bentham says of him: "Personal affection,
he well knew, is as liable to operate to the injury of third parties,
and requires as much to be kept in check, as any other feeling whatever:
and general philanthropy ... he estimated at its true value when
divorced from the feeling of duty, as the very weakest and most unsteady
of all feelings" (_Op. cit._, p. 356).
[155] "It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by
caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the
highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having
wide thought and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as
ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it,
that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose
before everything else, because our souls see it is good."--GEORGE ELIOT
in _Romola_.
[156] The recognition of this by many utilitarian hedonists has caused
them to have recourse to the supernaturally inflicted penalties and
conferred delights of a future life to make sure of balancing up the
account of virtue as self-sacrificing action with happiness, its proper
end.
[157] The recognition of this type of spiritual selfishness is modern.
It is the pivot upon which the later (especially) of Ibsen's tragedies
turn.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PLACE OF REASON IN THE MORAL LIFE; MORAL KNOWLEDGE
Sec. 1. PROBLEM OF REASON AND DESIRE
=Intelligence and Reason in a Moral Act.=--A voluntary act is one which
involves intention, purpose, and thus some degree of deliberateness. It
is this trait which marks off the voluntary act from a purely
unconscious one (like that of a machine) and from one which yields to
the superior urgency of present feeling, one which is pushed on from
behind, as an instinctive or impulsive act, instead of being called out
by some possibility ahead. This factor of forethought and of preference
after comparison for some one of the ends considered, is the factor of
intelligence involved in every voluntary act. To be intelligent in
action is, however, a far-reaching affair. To know what one is really
about is a large and difficult order to fill; so large and difficult
that it is the heart of morality.[158] The relevant bearings of any act
are subtler and larger than those which can be foreseen and than those
which will be _unless_ special care is taken. The tendencies which
strongly move one to a certain act are often exactly those which tend to
prevent one's seeing the effect of the act upon his own habits and upon
the well-being of others. The internal forces and the external
circumstance which evoke the idea of an end and of the means of
attaining it are frequently also those which deflect intelligence to a
narrow and partial view. The demand for a standard by which to regulate
judgment of ends is thus the demand not only for intelligence, but for a
certain kind of intelligence.
In short, a truly moral (or right) act is one which is intelligent in an
emphatic and peculiar sense; it is a _reasonable_ act. It is not merely
one which is thought of, and thought of as good, at the moment of
action, but one which will continue to be thought of as "good" in the
most alert and persistent reflection.[159] For by "reasonable" action we
mean such action as recognizes and observes all the necessary
conditions; action in which impulse, instinct, inclination, habit,
opinion, prejudice (as the case may be) are moderated, guided, and
determined by considerations which lie outside of and beyond them. Not
merely to form ends and select means, but to judge the _worth_ of these
means and ends by a standard, is then the distinctive province of reason
in morals. Its outcome is _moral knowledge_; that is judgments of right
and wrong, both in general, and in the particular and perplexing cases
as they arise. This is the topic of the present chapter.
=Typical Problems.=--The problem of moral knowledge is in its general
form: Is there a distinct and separate faculty of moral reason and
knowledge, or is there but one power of judgment which varies with its
object? The former view is the intuitional (from Latin, _intueor_: to
look at); it is associated with theories, which, like the Kantian,
emphasize attitudes, not results and intentions; while the view which
holds that there is but one form of thought which, in morals, concerns
itself with results, and with their association with the present aim, is
the empirical. There are two especial difficulties which lead to the
upholding of the intuitional point of view, difficulties which any
theory of moral knowledge has to meet. They are (I) The Relation of
Desire and Reason, and (II) the Knowledge of Private and General Good.
=1. Desire and Reason.=--Ordinary knowledge in practical matters follows
the line set by desire. Hunger makes us think of food and of how to get
it; sociable desire, of friends, and how to secure their companionship,
and so on. Now a surging mass of desires, vehement and bulky, may
concentrate itself upon the idea of any end; and as soon as it does so,
it tends to shut out wider considerations. As we have just seen, it is
the object of reason to give us a calm, objective, broad, and general
survey of the field. Desires work against this, and unless (so runs the
argument) there is a faculty which works wholly independent of desires,
as our ordinary practical knowledge does not, it is absurd to suppose
there can be a rational principle which will correct and curb desire.
=2. Private and General Good.=--Since the wide and permanent good is
social, it is urged that unless we have an independent faculty of moral
knowledge, our judgment will be subservient to the ends of private
desire, and hence will not place itself at the public point of view. Or,
if it does so, it will be simply as a matter of expediency to calculate
better the means for getting our own pleasure. In general, it is urged
that only a faculty of knowledge completely independent of personal
wishes, habits, purposes can secure judgments possessing inherent
dignity and authoritativeness; since these require an elevated,
impartial, universal, and necessary point of view. We shall in the
sequel attempt to show that this view of knowledge results from the
false conception of desire as having pleasure for its object, and from a
false conception of the relation of intent and motive. When these errors
are corrected, there is no ground to assume any special faculty of moral
intelligence, save as the one capacity of thought is specialized into a
particular mental habit by being constantly occupied in judging values.
We shall try to show that the broad and public point of view is secured
by fusion of impulses with sympathetic affections. We shall begin with
stating and criticizing the views of Kant, who upholds the doctrine of a
separate independent Moral Reason in its most extreme form.
Sec. 2. KANT'S THEORY OF PRACTICAL REASON
Kant is at one with the hedonist as regards the natural object of
desire; it is pleasure. All purposes and ends that spring from
inclination and natural tendency come under one head: self-love. Hence,
the ordinary use of intelligence is confined to the matter of passing
upon what constitutes the individual's private happiness and how he
shall secure it. There are then fundamental contrasts between ordinary
practical activity and genuinely moral activity, contrasts which reflect
themselves in the theory of the nature and function of moral knowledge.
(1) The moral end is _unqualified_, absolute, categorical. It is not
something which we can pick or leave at our option. Morality is the
region of final ends, ends not to be disputed or questioned; and reason
must set forth such final ends. Since, however, happiness is not a
morally necessary end, intelligence in its behalf can only give
hypothetical counsel and advice: _if_ you would be happy, or happy in
this, or that way, then take such and such measures. Reason which
promulgates ends must be of a different sort from the intelligence which
simply searches for means.
(2) Morality is not qualified, but _certain_ in its requirements. The
most inexperienced, the humblest, the one most restricted in his
circumstances and opportunities, must know what is morally required as
surely as the wisest and most educated. Hence moral reason must utter
its precepts clearly and unambiguously. But no one can be _sure_ what
happiness is, or whether a given act will bring joy or sorrow. "The
problem of determining certainly what action would promote the
happiness of a rational being is insoluble." (Abbott's _Kant_, p. 36.)
The demand for _certainty_ of precepts in moral matters also requires a
special faculty.
(3) Morality, which is inexorable and certain in its demands, is also
_universal_ in its requirements. Its laws are the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever, the same for one as for another. Now happiness
notoriously varies with the condition and circumstances of a person, as
well as with the conditions of different peoples and epochs.
Intelligence with reference to happiness can only give counsel, not even
rules, so variable is happiness. It can only advise that upon the
average, under certain conditions, a given course of action has usually
promoted happiness. When we add that the commands of morality are also
universal with respect to the different inclinations of different
individuals, we are made emphatically aware of the necessity of a
rational standpoint, which in its impartiality totally transcends the
ends and plans that grow out of the ordinary experience of an
individual.
=An A Priori Reason Kant's Solution.=--The net outcome is that only a
reason which is separate and independent of all experience is capable of
meeting the requirements of morality. What smacks in its origin and aim
of experience is tainted with self-love; is partial, temporary,
uncertain, and relative or dependent. The moral law is unqualified,
necessary, and universal. Hence we have to recognize in man as a moral
being a faculty of reason which expresses itself in the law of conduct
_a priori_ to all experience of desire, pleasure, and pain. Besides his
sensuous nature (with respect to which knowledge is bound up with
appetite) man has a purely rational nature, which manifests itself in
the consciousness of the absolute authority of universal law.[160]
=Formal Character of Such Reason.=--This extreme separation of reason
from experience brings with it, however, a serious problem. We shall
first state this problem; and then show that its artificial and
insoluble character serves as a refutation of Kant's theory of a
transcendental, or wholly non-natural and non-empirical, mode of
knowledge. Reason which is wholly independent of experience of desires
and their results is, as Kant expressly declares, purely _formal_.
(Abbott's _Kant_, p. 33; p. 114.) That is to say, it is _empty_; it does
not point out or indicate anything particular to be done. It cannot say
be industrious, or prudent, generous; give, or refrain from giving, so
much money to this particular man at this particular time under just
these circumstances. All it says is that morality is rational and
requires man to follow the law of reason. But the law of reason is just
that a man should follow the law of reason. And to the inevitable
inquiry "What then is the law of reason?" the answer still is: To follow
the law of reason. How do we break out of this empty circle into
specific knowledge of the specific right things to be done? Kant has an
answer, which we shall now consider.
=Kant's Method.=--He proceeds as follows: The law is indeed purely
formal or empty (since, once more, all specific ends are "empirical" and
changeable), but it is so because it is universal. Now nothing which is
universal can contradict itself. All we need to do is to take any
proposed principle of any act and ask ourselves whether it can be
universalized without self-inconsistency. If it cannot be, the act is
wrong. If it can be, the act is right. For example:
"May I, when in distress, make a promise with the intention not to
keep it?... The shortest way, and an unerring one to discover the
answer to the question whether a lying promise is consistent with
duty, is to ask myself, Should I be content that my maxim (to
extricate myself from trouble by a false promise) should hold good
as a universal law, for myself as well as for others? And should I
be able to say to myself, every one may make a deceitful promise
when he finds himself in a difficulty from which he cannot
otherwise extricate himself? Then I personally become aware that
while I can will the lie, I can by no means will that lying should
be a universal law. For with such a law there would be no such
thing as a promise. No one should have any faith in the proffered
intention, or, if they do so over hastily, would pay one back in
one's own coin at the first opportunity" (_Op. cit._, p. 19).
The principle if made universal simply contradicts itself, and thus
reveals that it is no principle at all, not rational. Summing this up in
a formula, we get as our standard of right action the principle: "Act as
if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of
nature" (_Op. cit._, p. 39).
The procedure thus indicated seems simple. As long as an individual
considers the purpose or motive of his action as if it were merely a
matter of that one deed; as if it were an isolated thing, there is no
rationality, no consciousness of moral law or principle. But let the
individual imagine himself gifted with such power that, if he acts, the
motive of his act will become a fixed, a regular law in the constitution
of things. Would he, as a rational being, be willing to bring about such
a universalization,--can he, with equanimity as a reasonable being,
contemplate such an outcome? If he can, the act is right; if not (as in
the case of making a lying promise), wrong.
No sensible person would question the instructiveness of this scheme in
the concrete. It indicates that the value of reason--of abstraction and
generalization--in conduct is to help us escape from the partiality that
flows from desire and emotion in their first and superficial
manifestations, and to attain a more unified and permanent end. As a
method (though not the only one) of realizing the _full meaning_ of a
proposed course of action, nothing could be better than asking ourselves
how we should like to be committed forever to its principle; how we
should like to have others committed to it and to treat us according to
it? Such a method is well calculated to make us face our proposed end in
its impartial consequences; to teach the danger of cherishing merely
those results which are most congenial to our passing whim and our
narrow conception of personal profit. In short, by generalizing a
purpose we make its _general_ character evident.
But this method does not proceed (as Kant would have it) from a mere
consideration of moral law _apart from a concrete end, but from an end
in so far as it persistently approves itself to reflection after an
adequate survey of it in all its bearings_. It is the possibility of
_generalizing the concrete end_ that Kant falls back upon.
Other illustrations which Kant offers enforce the same lesson. He
suggests the following:
(1) A man in despair from misfortune considers suicide. "Now he
inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal
law of nature." We see at once that a system of nature by which it
should be a law to destroy life by means of the very
feeling--self-love--whose nature it is to impel to the maintenance
of life, would contradict itself and therefore could not exist.
(2) A man who has a certain talent is tempted from sluggishness
and love of amusement not to cultivate it. But if he applies the
principle he sees that, while a system of nature might subsist if
his motive became a law (so that all people devoted their lives to
idleness and amusement), yet he cannot _will_ that such a system
should receive absolute realization. As a rational being he
necessarily also wills that faculties be developed since they
serve for all sorts of possible purposes.
(3) A prosperous man, who sees some one else to be wretched, is
tempted to pay no attention to it, alleging that it is no concern
of his. Now, if this attitude were made a universal law of nature,
the human race might subsist and even get on after a fashion; but
it is impossible to will that such a principle should have the
validity of a law of nature. Such a will would contradict itself,
for many cases would occur in which the one willing would need the
love and sympathy of others; he could not then without
contradicting himself wish that selfish disregard should become a
regular, a fixed uniformity.
=The Social End is the Rational End.=--These illustrations make it clear
that the "contradiction" Kant really depends upon to reveal the
wrongness of acts, is the introduction of friction and disorder among
the various concrete ends of the individual. He insists especially that
the social relations of an act bring out its general purport. A right
end is one which can be projected harmoniously into the widest and
broadest survey of life which the individual can make. A "system of
nature" or of conduct in which love of life should lead to its own
destruction certainly contradicts itself. A course of action which
should include all the tendencies that make for amusement and
sluggishness would be inconsistent with a scheme of life which would
take account of other tendencies--such as interest in science, in music,
in friendship, in business achievement, which are just as real
constituents of the individual, although perhaps not so strongly felt at
the moment. A totally callous and cruel mode of procedure certainly
"contradicts" a course of life in which every individual is so placed as
to be dependent upon the sympathy and upon the help of others. It is the
province of reason to call up a sufficiently wide view of the
consequences of an intention as to enable us to realize such
inconsistencies and contradictions if they exist; to put before us, not
through any logical manipulation of the principle of contradiction, but
through memory and imagination a particular act, proposal, or suggestion
as a portion of a connected whole of life; to make real to us that no
man, no act, and no satisfaction of any man, falls or stands to itself,
but that it affects and is affected by others. Our conclusion is: the
right as the _rational_ good means that which is harmonious with all the
capacities and desires of the self, that which expands them into a
cooperative whole.
=Kant's Introduction of Social Factors.=--The further development which
Kant gives the formula already quoted (p. 312) goes far to remove the
appearance of opposition between the utilitarian social standard and his
own abstract rationalism. Kant points out that according to his view the
moral or rational will is its own end. Hence every rational person is
always an end, never a means:--this, indeed, is what we mean by a
person. But every normal human being is a rational person. Consequently
another formula for his maxim is: "So act as to treat humanity, whether
in thine own person or in that of any other, as an end, never as a means
merely." The man who contemplates suicide "uses a person merely as a
means to maintaining a tolerable condition of life." He who would make a
lying promise to another makes that other one merely a means to his
profit, etc. Moreover, since all persons are equally ends in themselves
and are to be equally regarded in behavior, we may say the standard of
right is the notion of a "Kingdom of Ends"--the idea of "the union of
different rational beings in a system by common laws."[161]
These propositions are rather formal, but the moment we put definite
meaning into them, they suggest that the good for any man is that in
which the welfare of others counts as much as his own. The right is that
action which, so far as in it lies, combines into a whole of common
interests and purposes the otherwise conflicting aims and interests of
different persons. So interpreted, the Kantian formula differs in words,
rather than in idea, from Bentham's happiness of all concerned "each
counting for one and only one"; from Mill's statement that the "deeply
rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a
social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that
there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his
fellow creatures." In all of these formulae we find re-statements of our
conception that the good is the activities in which all men participate
so that the powers of each are called out, put to use, and reenforced.
=Consequent Transformation of Theory of Reason.=--Now if the common
good, in the form of a society of individuals, as a kingdom of ends, is
the object with reference to which the ends of desire have to be
rationalized, Kant's theory of an _a priori_ and empty Reason is
completely made over. In strict logic Kant contradicts himself when he
says that we are to generalize the end of desire, so as to see whether
it could become a universal law. For according to him no end of desire
(since it is private and a form of self-love) _can possibly be
generalized_. He is setting up as a method of enlightenment precisely
the very impossibility (impossible, that is, on his own theory that
private happiness is the end of desire) which made him first resort to
his _a priori_ and transcendental reason. No more complete contradiction
can be imagined.
On the other hand, if we neglect the concrete, empirical conditions and
consequences of the object of desire, there is no motive whatsoever that
may not be generalized. There is no _formal_ contradiction in acting
always on a motive of theft, unchastity, or insolence. All that Kant's
method can require, in strict logic, is that the individual always,
under similar circumstances, act from the same motive. Be willing to be
always dishonest, or impure, or proud in your intent; achieve
consistency in the badness of your motives, and you will be good!
Doubtless no one, not even the worst man, would be willing to be
universally consistent in his badness. But this is not in the least a
matter of a purely formal, logical inconsistency of the motive with
itself;[162] it is due rather to that _conflict among diverse desires,
and different objects for which one strives, which makes him aware that
at some time he should want to act kindly and fairly_.
=Organization of Desires from the Social Standpoint.=--What Kant is
really insisting upon at bottom is, then, the demand for such a revision
of desire as it casually and unreflectively presents itself as would
make the desire a consistent expression of the whole body of the
purposes of the self. What he demands is that a desire shall not be
accepted as an adequate motive till it has been organized into desire
for an end which will be compatible with the whole system of ends
involved in the capacities and tendencies of the agent. This is true
rationalization. And he further warns us that only when a particular
desire has in view a good which is social will it meet this requirement.
This brings us to our next problem. Just what is the process by which we
judge of the worth of particular proposals, plans, courses of actions,
desires? Granted that a generalized good, a socialized happiness, is the
point of view at which we must place ourselves to secure the reasonable
point of view, how does this point of view become an operative method?
Sec. 3. MORAL SENSE INTUITIONALISM
So far, our conclusions are (1) that the province of reason is to enable
us to generalize our concrete ends; to form such ends as are consistent
with one another, and reenforce one another, introducing continuity and
force, where otherwise there would be division and weakness; and (2)
that only social ends are ultimately reasonable, since they alone permit
us to organize our acts into consistent wholes. We have now, however, to
consider how this conception takes effect in detail; how it is employed
to determine the right or the reasonable in a given situation. We shall
approach this problem by considering a form of intuitionalism
historically prior to that of Kant. This emphasizes the direct character
of moral knowledge in particular cases, and assimilates moral knowledge
to the analogy of sense perception, which also deals directly with
specific objects; it insists, however, that a different kind of faculty
of knowledge operates in the knowledge of acts from that which operates
in the knowledge of things. Our underlying aim here is to bring out the
relation of immediate appreciation to deliberate reflection, with a view
to showing that the reasonable standpoint, that of the common good,
becomes effective through the socialized attitudes and emotions of a
person's own character.
=Moral Sense.=--This theory holds that rightness is an intrinsic,
absolute quality of special acts, and as such is immediately known or
recognized for what it is. Just as a white color is known as white, a
high tone as high, a hard body as existent, etc., so an act which is
right is known as right. In each case, the quality and the fact are so
intimately and inherently bound together that it is absurd to think of
one and not know the other. As a theory of moral judgment,
intuitionalism is thus opposed to utilitarianism, which holds that
rightness is not an inherent quality but one relative to and borrowed
from external and more or less remote consequences. While some forms of
intuitionalism hold that this moral quality belongs to general rules or
to classes of ends, the form we are now to consider holds that the moral
quality of an individual act cannot be borrowed even from a moral law,
but shines forth as an absolute and indestructible part of the motive of
the act itself. Because the theory in question sticks to the direct
perception of the immediately present quality of acts, it is usually
called, in analogy with the direct perception of eye or ear, the moral
sense theory.
=Objections to Theory.=--The objections to this theory in the extreme
form just stated may be brought under two heads: (1) There is no
evidence to prove that all acts are directly characterized by the
possession of absolute and self-evident rightness and wrongness; there
is much evidence to show that this quality when presented by acts can,
as a rule, be traced to earlier instruction, to the pressure of
correction and punishment, and to association with other experiences.
(2) While in this way many acts, perhaps almost all, of the average
mature person of a good moral environment, have acquired a direct moral
coloring, making unnecessary elaborate calculation or reference to
general principles, yet there is nothing infallible in such intuitively
presented properties. An act may present itself as thoroughly right and
yet may be, in reality, wrong. The function of conscious deliberation
and reasoning is precisely to detect the existence of and to correct
such intuitive cases.[163]
=I. Direct Perception as Effect of Habits.=--It must be admitted, as a
result of any unprejudiced examination, that a large part of the acts,
motives, and plans of the adult who has had favorable moral surroundings
seem to possess directly, and in their own intrinsic make-up, rightness
or wrongness or moral indifference. To think of lying or stealing is one
with thinking of it as wrong; to recall or suggest an act of kindness is
the same as thinking of it as right; to think of going after mail is to
think of an act free from either rightness or wrongness. With the
average person it is probably rare for much time to be spent in figuring
out whether an act is right or wrong, after the idea of that act has
once definitely presented itself. So far as the facts of moral
experience in such cases are concerned, the "moral sense" theory appears
to give a correct description.
(1) But the conclusion that, therefore, moral goodness or badness is and
always has been an inherent, absolute property of the act itself,
overlooks well-known psychological principles. In all perception, in all
recognition, there is a funding or capitalizing of the results of past
experience by which the results are rendered available in new
experiences. Even a young child recognizes a table, a chair, a glass of
milk, a dog, as soon as he sees it; there is no analysis, no conscious
interpretation. Distance, direction, size, under normal circumstances,
are perceived with the same assurance and ease. But there was a time
when all these things were learning; when conscious experimentation
involving interpretation took place. Such perceptions, moreover, take
place under the guidance of others; pains are taken indelibly to stamp
moral impressions by associating them with intense, vivid, and
mysterious or awful emotional accompaniments.[164]
Anthropological and historical accounts of different races and peoples
tell the same story. Acts once entirely innocent of moral distinctions
have acquired, under differing circumstances and sometimes for trivial
and absurd reasons, different moral values:--one and the same sort of
act being stamped here as absolute guilt, there as an act of superior
and heroic virtue. Now it would be fallacious to argue (as some do) that
because distinctions of moral quality have been acquired and are not
innate, they are therefore unreal when they are acquired. Yet the fact
of gradual development proves that no fixed line exists where it can be
said the case is closed; that just this is henceforth forever right or
wrong; that there shall be no further observation of consequences, no
further correction and revision of present "intuitions."
(2) Our immediate moral recognitions take place, moreover, only under
usual circumstances. There is after all no such thing as complete moral
maturity; all persons are still more or less children--in process of
learning moral distinctions. The more intense their moral interests, the
more childlike, the more open, flexible, and growing are their minds. It
is only the callous and indifferent, or at least the conventional, who
find all acts and projects so definitely right and wrong as to render
reflection unnecessary. "New occasions teach new duties," but they teach
them only to those who recognize that they are not already in possession
of adequate moral judgments. Any other view destroys the whole meaning
of reflective morality and marks a relapse to the plane of sheer custom.
Extreme intuitionalism and extreme moral conservatism; dislike to
calculation and reflection, for fear of innovations with attendant
trouble and discomfort, are usually found to go together.
=II. Direct Perception No Guarantee of Validity.=--This suggests our
second objection. The existence of immediate moral quality, the direct
and seemingly final possession of rightness, as matter of fact, is not
adequate proof of validity. At best, it furnishes a presumption of
correctness, in the absence of grounds for questioning it, in fairly
familiar situations. (a) There is nothing more direct, more seemingly
self-evident, than inveterate prejudice. When class or vested interest
is enlisted in the maintenance of the custom or institution which is
expressed in a prejudice, the most vicious moral judgments assume the
guise of self-conscious sanctity. (b) A judgment which is correct under
usual circumstances may become quite unfit, and therefore wrong, if
persisted in under new conditions. Life, individual and social, is in
constant process of change; and there is always danger of error in
clinging to judgments adjusted to older circumstances. "The good is the
enemy of the better." It is not merely false ideas of the values of life
that have to be re-formed, but ideas once true. When economic,
political, and scientific conditions are modifying themselves as
rapidly and extensively as they are in our day, it is reconstruction of
moral judgment that needs emphasis, rather than the existence of a lot
of ready-made "intuitions." When readjustment is required, deliberate
inquiry is the only alternative to inconsiderate, undirected, and hence
probably violent changes:--changes involving undue relaxation of moral
ties on one side and arbitrary reactions on the other.
=Deliberation and Intuition.=--It is indeed absurd to set immediate
recognition of quality and indirect calculation of more or less remote
consequences, intuition and thought, over against each other as if they
were rivals. For they are mutually supplementary. As we saw in a
previous chapter, the foresight of future results calls out an
_immediate reaction_ of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, of happiness
or dislike. (See p. 272.) It is just as false to say that we calculate
only future pains and pleasures (instead of changes in the world of
things and persons) as it is to say that anticipations of the changes to
be wrought in the world by our act are not accompanied by an immediate
emotional appreciation of their value. The notion that deliberation upon
the various alternatives open to us is simply a cold-blooded setting
down of various items to our advantage, and various other items to our
disadvantage (as Robinson Crusoe wrote down in bookkeeping fashion his
miseries and blessings), and then striking an algebraic balance, implies
something that never did and never could happen. Deliberation is a
process of active, suppressed, rehearsal; of imaginative dramatic
performance of various deeds carrying to their appropriate issues the
various tendencies which we feel stirring within us. When we see in
imagination this or that change brought about, there is a direct sense
of the amount and kind of worth which attaches to it, as real and as
direct, if not as strong, as if the act were really performed and its
consequence really brought home to us.
=Deliberation as Dramatic Rehearsal.=--We, indeed, estimate the import
or significance of any present desire or impulse by forecasting what it
would come or amount to if carried out; literally its consequences
define its _consequence_, its meaning and importance. But if these
consequences were conceived _merely as remote_, if their picturing did
not at once arouse a present sense of peace, of fulfillment, or of
dissatisfaction, of incompletion and irritation, the process of thinking
out consequences would remain purely intellectual. It would be as barren
of influence upon behavior as the mathematical speculations of a
disembodied angel. Any actual experience of reflection upon conduct will
show that every foreseen result at once stirs our present affections,
our likes and dislikes, our desires and aversions. There is developed a
running commentary which stamps values at once as good or evil. It is
this direct sense of value, not the consciousness of general rules or
ultimate goals, which finally determines the worth of the act to the
agent. Here is the inexpugnable element of truth in the intuitional
theory. Its error lies in conceiving this immediate response of
appreciation as if it excluded reflection instead of following directly
upon its heels. Deliberation is actually an imaginative rehearsal of
various courses of conduct. We give way, _in our mind_, to some impulse;
we try, _in our mind_, some plan. Following its career through various
steps, we find ourselves in imagination in the presence of the
consequences that would follow: and as we then like and approve, or
dislike and disapprove, these consequences, we find the original impulse
or plan good or bad. Deliberation is dramatic and active, not
mathematical and impersonal; and hence it has the intuitive, the direct
factor in it. The advantage of a mental trial, prior to the overt trial
(for the act after all is itself also a trial, a proving of the idea
that lies back of it), is that it is retrievable, whereas overt
consequences remain. They cannot be recalled. Moreover, many trials may
mentally be made in a short time. The imagining of various plans carried
out furnishes an opportunity for many impulses which at first are not in
evidence at all, to get under way. Many and varied direct sensings,
appreciations, take place. When many tendencies are brought into play,
there is clearly much greater probability that the capacity of self
which is really needed and appropriate will be brought into action, and
thus a truly reasonable happiness result. The tendency of deliberation
to "polarize" the various lines of activity into opposed alternatives,
into incompatible "either this or that," is a way of forcing into clear
recognition the importance of the issue.
=The Good Man's Judgments as Standard.=--This explains the idea of
Aristotle that only the good man is a good judge of what is really good.
Such an one will take satisfaction in the thought of noble ends and will
recoil at the idea of base results. Because of his formed capacities,
his organized habits and tendencies, he will respond to a suggested end
with an emotion which confers its appropriate kind and shade of value.
The brave man is sensitive to all acts and plans so far as they involve
energy and endurance in overcoming painful obstacles; the kindly man
responds at once to the elements that affect the well-being of others.
The moral sense or direct appreciations of the good man may thus be said
to furnish the standard of right and wrong. There are few persons who,
when in doubt regarding a difficult matter of conduct, do not think of
some other person in whose goodness they believe, and endeavor to direct
and clinch their own judgment by imagining how such an one would react
in a similar situation--what he would find congenial and what
disagreeable. Or else they imagine what that other person would think of
them if he knew of their doing such and such an act. And while this
method cannot supply the standard of their own judgment, cannot
determine the right or wrong for their own situations, it helps
emancipate judgment from selfish partialities, and it facilitates a
freer and more flexible play of imagination in construing and
appreciating the situation.
Sec. 4. THE PLACE OF GENERAL RULES
Between such a highly generalized and formal principle as that of Kant,
and the judgment of particular cases, we have intermediate
generalizations; rules which are broad as compared with individual
deeds, but narrow as compared with some one final principle. What are
their rational origin, place, and function? We have here again both the
empirical and the intuitional theories of knowledge, having to deal with
the same fundamental difficulty: What is the relation of the special
rule to the general principle on one side and to the special case on the
other? The more general, the more abstractly rational the rule, the
vaguer and less applicable it is. The more definite and fixed it is, the
greater the danger that it will be a Procrustean bed, mutilating the
rich fullness of the individual act, or destroying its grace and freedom
by making it conform servilely to a hard and fast rule. Our analysis
will accordingly be devoted to bringing to light the conditions under
which a rule may be rational and yet be of specific help.
=I. Intuitionalism and Casuistry.=--Utilitarianism at least holds that
rules are derived from actual cases of conduct; hence there must be
points of likeness between the cases to be judged and the rules for
judging them. But rules which do not originate from a consideration of
special cases, which simply descend out of the blue sky, have only the
most mechanical and external relation to the individual acts to be
judged. Suppose one is convinced that the rule of honesty was made
known just in and of itself by a special faculty, and had absolutely
nothing to do with the recollection of past cases or the forecast of
possible future circumstances. How would such a rule apply itself to any
particular case which needed to be judged? What bell would ring, what
signal would be given, to indicate that just _this_ case is the
appropriate case for the application of the rule of honest dealing? And
if by some miracle this question were answered so one knows that here is
a case for the rule of honesty, how would we know just what course in
detail the rule calls for? For the rule, to be applicable to all cases,
must omit the conditions which differentiate one case from another; it
must contain only the very few similar elements which are to be found in
all honest deeds. Reduced to this skeleton, not much would be left save
the bare injunction to be honest whatever happens, leaving it to chance,
the ordinary judgment of the individual, or to external authority to
find out just _what_ honesty specifically means in the given case.
This difficulty is so serious that all systems which have committed
themselves to belief in a number of hard and fast rules having their
origin in conscience, or in the word of God impressed upon the human
soul or externally revealed, always have had to resort to a more and
more complicated procedure to cover, if possible, all the cases. The
moral life is finally reduced by them to an elaborate formalism and
legalism.
=Illustration in Casuistry.=--Suppose, for example, we take the Ten
Commandments as a starting-point. They are only ten, and naturally
confine themselves to general ideas, and ideas stated mainly in negative
form. Moreover, the same act may be brought under more than one rule. In
order to resolve the practical perplexities and uncertainties which
inevitably arise under such circumstances, _Casuistry_ is built up (from
the Latin _casus_, case). The attempt is made to foresee all the
different cases of action which may conceivably occur, and provide in
advance the exact rule for each case. For example, with reference to the
rule "do not kill," a list will be made of all the different situations
in which killing might occur:--accident, war, fulfillment of command of
political superior (as by a hangman), self-defense (defense of one's own
life, of others, of property), deliberate or premeditated killing with
its different motives (jealousy, avarice, revenge, etc.), killing with
slight premeditation, from sudden impulse, from different sorts and
degrees of provocation. To each one of these possible cases is assigned
its exact moral quality, its exact degree of turpitude and innocency.
Nor can this process end with overt acts; all the inner springs of
action which affect regard for life must be similarly classified: envy,
animosity, sudden rage, sullenness, cherishing of sense of injury, love
of tyrannical power, hardness or hostility, callousness--all these must
be specified into their different kinds and the exact moral worth of
each determined. What is done for this one kind of case must be done for
every part and phase of the entire moral life until it is all
inventoried, catalogued, and distributed into pigeon-holes definitely
labelled.
=Dangers of Casuistry.=--Now dangers and evils attend this way of
conceiving the moral life, (a) _It tends to magnify the letter of
morality at the expense of its spirit._ It fixes attention not upon the
positive good in an act, not upon the underlying agent's disposition
which forms its spirit, nor upon the unique occasion and context which
form its atmosphere, but upon its literal conformity with Rule A, Class
I., Species 1, sub-head (1), etc. The effect of this is inevitably to
narrow the scope and lessen the depth of conduct. (i.) It tempts some to
hunt for that classification of their act which will make it the most
convenient or profitable for themselves. In popular speech,
"casuistical" has come to mean a way of judging acts which splits hairs
in the effort to find a way of acting that conduces to personal
interest and profit, and which yet may be justified by some moral
principle. (ii.) With others, this regard for the letter makes conduct
formal and pedantic. It gives rise to a rigid and hard type of character
illustrated among the Pharisees of olden and the Puritans of modern
time--the moral schemes of both classes being strongly impregnated with
the notion of fixed moral rules.
(b) _This ethical system also tends in practice to a legal view of
conduct._--Historically it always has sprung from carrying over legal
ideas into morality. In the legal view, liability to blame and to
punishment inflicted from without by some superior authority, is
necessarily prominent. Conduct is regulated through specific injunctions
and prohibitions: Do this, Do not do that. Exactly the sort of analysis
of which we have spoken above (p. 327) in the case of killing is
necessary, so that there may be definite and regular methods of
measuring guilt and assigning blame. Now the ideas of liability and
punishment and reward are, as we shall see in our further discussion
(chs. xvii. and xxi.), important factors in the conduct of life, but any
scheme of morals is defective which puts the question of avoiding
punishment in the foreground of attention, and which tends to create a
Pharisaical complacency in the mere fact of having conformed to command
or rule.
(c) _Probably the worst evil of this moral system is that it tends to
deprive moral life of freedom and spontaneity_ and to reduce it
(especially for the conscientious who take it seriously) to a more or
less anxious and servile conformity to externally imposed rules.
Obedience as loyalty to principle is a good, but this scheme practically
makes it the only good and conceives it not as loyalty to ideals, but as
conformity to commands. Moral rules exist just as independent
deliverances on their own account, and the right thing is merely to
follow them. This puts the center of moral gravity outside the concrete
processes of living. All systems which emphasize the letter more than
the spirit, legal consequences more than vital motives, put the
individual under the weight of external authority. They lead to the kind
of conduct described by St. Paul as under the law, not in the spirit,
with its constant attendant weight of anxiety, uncertain struggle, and
impending doom.
=All Fixed Rules Have Same Tendencies.=--Many who strenuously object to
all of these schemes of conduct, to everything which hardens it into
forms by emphasizing external commands, authority and punishments and
rewards, fail to see that such evils are logically connected with any
acceptance of the finality of fixed rules. They hold certain bodies of
people, religious officers, political or legal authorities, responsible
for what they object to in the scheme; while they still cling to the
idea that morality is an effort to apply to particular deeds and
projects a certain number of absolute unchanging moral rules. They fail
to see that, if this were its nature, those who attempt to provide the
machinery which would render it practically workable deserve praise
rather than blame. In fact, the notion of absolute rules or precepts
cannot be made workable except through certain superior authorities who
declare and enforce them. Said Locke: "It is no small power it gives one
man over another to be the dictator of principles and teacher of
unquestionable truths."
=II. Utilitarian View of General Rules.=--The utilitarians escape the
difficulties inherent in the application to particular cases of a rule
which has nothing to do with particular cases. Their principles for
judging right and wrong in particular cases are themselves
generalizations from particular observations of the effect of certain
acts upon happiness and misery. But if we take happiness in the
technical sense of Bentham (as meaning, that is, an aggregate of
isolated pleasures) it is impossible for general rules to exist--there
is nothing to generalize. If, however, we take happiness in its
common-sense form, as welfare, a state of successful achievement,
satisfactory realization of purpose, there can be no doubt of the
existence of maxims and formulae in which mankind has registered its
experience. The following quotations from Mill bring out the essential
points:
"We think utility or happiness much too complex and indefinite an
end to be sought except through the medium of various secondary
ends concerning which there may be, and often is, agreement among
persons who differ in their ultimate standard; and about which
there does in fact prevail a much greater unanimity among thinking
persons, than might be supposed from their diametrical divergence
on the great questions of moral metaphysics" (_Essay on Bentham_).
These secondary ends or principles are such matters as regard for
health, honesty, chastity, kindness, and the like. Concerning them he
says in his _Utilitarianism_ (ch. ii.):
"Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to
the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs
which have thus come down are rules of morality for the multitude
and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding
better.... To consider the rules of morality as improvable is one
thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizations entirely and
endeavor to test each individual action directly by the first
principle, is another.... Nobody argues that the act of navigation
is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to
calculate the nautical almanac. Being rational creatures, they go
to sea with it already calculated; and all rational creatures go
out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common
questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more
difficult questions of wise and foolish."
=Empirical Rules Run into Fixed Customs.=--It cannot be denied that Mill
here states considerations which are of great value in aiding present
judgments on right and wrong. The student of history will have little
doubt that the rules of conduct which the intuitionalist takes as
ultimate deliverances of a moral faculty are in truth generalizations of
the sort indicated by Mill. But the truth brought out by Mill does not
cover the ground which needs to be covered. Such rules at best cover
customary elements; they are based upon past habits of life, past
natural economic and political environments. And, as the student of
customs knows, greater store is often set upon trivial, foolish, and
even harmful things than upon serious ones--upon fashions of
hair-dressing, ablutions, worship of idols. Coming nearer our own
conditions, past customs certainly tolerate and sanction many practices,
such as war, cruel business competition, economic exploitation of the
weak, and absence of cooperative intelligent foresight, which the more
sensitive consciences of the day will not approve.
=Hence are Unsatisfactory.=--Yet such things have been so identified
with happiness that to forego them means misery, to alter them painful
disturbance. To take the rules of the past with any literalness as
criteria of judgment in the present, would be to return to the
unprogressive morality of the regime of custom--to surrender the advance
marked by reflective morality. Since Bentham and Mill were both
utilitarians, it is worth noting that Bentham insisted upon the
utilitarian standard just because he was so convinced of the
unsatisfactory character of the kind of rules upon which Mill is
dwelling. The "Nautical Almanac" has been _scientifically_ calculated;
it is adapted rationally to its end; but the rules which sum up custom
are a confused mixture of class interest, irrational sentiment,
authoritative pronunciamento, and genuine consideration of welfare.
=Empirical Rules Also Differ Widely.=--The fact is, moreover, that it is
only when the "intermediate generalizations" are taken vaguely and
abstractly that there is as much agreement as Mill claims. All educated
and virtuous persons in the same country practically agree upon the
rules of justice, benevolence, and regard for life, so long as they are
taken in such a vague way that they mean anything in general and nothing
in particular. Every one is in favor of justice in the abstract; but
existing political and economic discussions regarding tariff, sumptuary
laws, monetary standards, trades unions, trusts, the relation of capital
and labor, the regulation or ownership of public utilities, the
nationalization of land and industry, show that large bodies of
intelligent and equally well-disposed people are quite capable of
finding that the principle of justice requires exactly opposite things.
Custom still forms the background of all moral life, nor can we imagine
a state of affairs in which it should not. Customs are not external to
individuals' courses of action; they are embodied in the habits and
purposes of individuals; in the words of Grote (quoted above, p. 173),
they "reign under the appearance of habitual, _self-suggested_
tendencies." Laws, formulated and unformulated, social conventions,
rules of manners, the general expectations of public opinion, are all of
them sources of instruction regarding conduct. Without them the
individual would be practically helpless in determining the right
courses of action in the various situations in which he finds himself.
Through them he has provided himself in advance with a list of
questions, an organized series of points-of-view, by which to approach
and estimate each state of affairs requiring action. Most of the moral
judgments of every individual are framed in this way.
=For Customs Conflict.=--If social customs, or individual habits, never
conflicted with one another, this sort of guidance would suffice for the
determination of right and wrong. But reflection is necessitated because
opposite habits set up incompatible ends, forms of happiness between
which choice has to be made. Hence the need of _principles in judging_.
Principles of judgment cannot simply reinstate past rules of behavior,
for the simple reason that as long as these rules suffice there is no
reflection and no demand for principles. Good and evil, right and wrong,
are embodied in the injunctions and prohibitions of customs and
institutions and are not thought about.
=Moral Import of Principles is Intellectual, Not Imperative.=--This
brings us to the essential point in the consideration of the value of
general principles. _Rules are practical; they are habitual ways of
doing things. But principles are intellectual; they are useful methods
of judging things._ The fundamental error of the intuitionalist and of
the utilitarian (represented in the quotation from Mill) is that they
are on the lookout for rules which will of themselves tell agents just
what course of action to pursue; _whereas the object of moral principles
is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to
make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the
particular situation in which he finds himself_. No genuine moral
principle prescribes a specific course of action; rules[165] like
cooking recipes, may tell just what to do and how to do it. A moral
principle, such as that of chastity, of justice, of the golden rule,
gives the agent a basis for looking at and examining a particular
question that comes up. It holds before him certain possible aspects of
the act; it warns him against taking a short or partial view of the act.
It economizes his thinking by supplying him with the main heads by
reference to which to consider the bearings of his desires and purposes;
it guides him in his thinking by suggesting to him the important
considerations for which he should be on the lookout.
=Golden Rule as a Tool of Analysis.=--A moral principle, then, is not a
command to act or forbear acting in a given way: _it is a tool for
analyzing a special situation_, the right or wrong being determined by
the situation in its entirety, and not by the rule as such. We sometimes
hear it stated, for example, that the universal adoption of the Golden
Rule would at once settle all industrial disputes and difficulties. But
supposing that the principle were accepted in good faith by everybody;
it would not at once tell everybody just what to do in all the
complexities of his relations to others. When individuals are still
uncertain of what their real good may be, it does not finally decide
matters to tell them to regard the good of others as they would their
own. Nor does it mean that whatever in detail we want for ourselves we
should strive to give to others. Because I am fond of classical music it
does not follow that I should thrust as much of it as possible upon my
neighbors. But the "Golden Rule" does furnish us a _point of view from
which to consider acts_; it suggests the necessity of considering how
our acts affect the interests of others as well as our own; it tends to
prevent partiality of regard; it warns against setting an undue estimate
upon a particular consequence of pain or pleasure, simply because it
happens to affect us. In short, the Golden Rule does not issue special
orders or commands; but it does simplify judgment of the situations
requiring intelligent deliberation.
=Sympathy as Actuating Principle of a Reasonable Judgment.=--We have had
repeated occasion (as in the discussion of intent and motive, of
intuition and deliberate calculation) to see how artificial is the
separation of emotion and thought from one another. As the only
effective thought is one fused by emotion into a dominant interest, so
the only truly general, the reasonable as distinct from the merely
shrewd or clever thought, is the _generous_ thought. Sympathy widens our
interest in consequences and leads us to take into account such results
as affect the welfare of others; it aids us to count and weigh these
consequences as counting for as much as those which touch our own honor,
purse, or power. To put ourselves in the place of another, to see from
the standpoint of his purposes and values, to humble our estimate of our
own claims and pretensions to the level they would assume in the eyes of
a sympathetic and impartial observer, is the surest way to attain
universality and objectivity of moral knowledge. Sympathy, in short, is
the general principle of moral knowledge, not because its commands take
precedence of others (which they do not necessarily), but because it
furnishes the most reliable and efficacious _intellectual_ standpoint.
It supplies the tool, _par excellence_, for analyzing and resolving
complex cases. As was said in our last chapter, it is the _fusion_ of
the sympathetic impulses with others that is needed; what we now add is
that in this fusion, sympathy supplies the _pou sto_ for an effective,
broad, and objective survey of desires, projects, resolves, and deeds.
It translates the formal and empty reason of Kant out of its abstract
and theoretic character, just as it carries the cold calculations of
utilitarianism into recognition of the common good.
LITERATURE
For criticisms of Kant's view of reason, see Caird, _Philosophy of
Kant_, Vol. II., Book II., ch. ii.; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp.
194-203 and 355-363; Fite, _Introductory Study_, pp. 173-188; Muirhead,
_Elements of Ethics_, pp. 112-124.
For intuitionalism, see Calderwood, _Handbook of Moral Philosophy_;
Maurice, _Conscience_; Whewell, _The Elements of Morality_; Martineau,
_Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. II., pp. 96-115; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch.
iii.; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, Book I., chs. viii.-ix., and Book
III. entire, but especially ch. i.; _History of Ethics_, 170-204, and
224-236, and _Lectures on Ethics of Green, Spencer, and Martineau_,
361-374.
For the moral sense theory, see Sidgwick, _History of Ethics_, p. 189;
Shaftesbury, _Characteristics_; Hutcheson, _System of Moral
Philosophy_.
For casuistry, see references in Rand's _Bibliography_, Vol. III., Part
II., p. 880.
For the variability of moral rules, see Locke, _Essay on the Human
Understanding_, Book I.; Bain, _Moral Science_, Part I., ch. iii.;
Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I., Part II.; Williams, _Review of
Evolutional Ethics_, pp. 423-465; Bowne, _Principles of Ethics_, ch. v.;
Schurman, _The Ethical Import of Darwinism_; the writings of Westermarck
and Hobhouse elsewhere referred to, and Darwin, _Descent of Man_, Part
I., chs. iv.-v.
For the nature of moral judgment and the function of reason in conduct,
see Aristotle, Book III., chs. ii.-iii., and Book VI.; Ladd, _Philosophy
of Conduct_, ch. vii.; Sharp, _Essay on Analysis of the Moral Judgment_,
in Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (Garman Commemorative Volume);
Santayana, _Life of Reason_, Vol. I., chs. x.-xii.; Bryant, _Studies in
Character_, Part II., chs. iv.-v.
For the social character of conscience, see Cooley, _Human Nature and
the Social Order_, ch. x.
For sympathy and conscience, see Adam Smith, _Theory of Moral
Sentiments_, especially Part III., chs. i. and iv., and Part IV., chs.
i.-iii.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, pp. 228-238.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] "Any one can be angry: that is quite easy. Any one can give money
away or spend it. But to do these things to the right person, to the
right amount, at the right time, with the right aim and in the right
manner--this is not what any one can easily do."--ARISTOTLE, _Ethics_,
Book II., ch. ix.
[159] Compare the sentence quoted on p. 268 from Hazlitt.
[160] This means Duty. This phase will be discussed in the next chapter.
[161] _Kant's Theory of Ethics_, trans. by Abbott, pp. 47-51.
[162] In last analysis Kant is trying to derive moral enlightenment from
the most abstract principle of formal logic, the principle of Identity,
that A is A!
[163] A student in an ethics class once made this remark: "Conscience is
infallible, but we should not always follow it. Sometimes we should use
our reason."
[164] Compare Locke, _Essay on the Human Understanding_, Book I., ch.
iii.
[165] Of course, the word "rule" is often used to designate a
principle--as in the case of the phrase "golden-rule." We are speaking
not of the words, but of their underlying ideas.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PLACE OF DUTY IN THE MORAL LIFE: SUBJECTION TO AUTHORITY
=Conflict of Ends as Attractive and as Reasonable.=--The previous
discussion has brought out the contrast between a Good or Satisfaction
which is such _directly_, immediately, by appealing attractively to
desire; and one which is such indirectly, through considerations which
reflection brings up. As we have seen, the latter must, if entertained
at all, arouse some direct emotional response, must be felt to be in
some way satisfactory. But the _way_ may be quite unlike that of the end
which attracts and holds a man irrespective of the principle brought to
light by reflection. The one may be intense, vivid, absorbing, passing
at once into overt action, unless checked by a contrary reason. The good
whose claim to be good depends mainly on projection of remote
considerations, may be theoretically recognized and yet the direct
appeal to the particular agent at the particular time be feeble and
pallid. The "law of the mind" may assert itself less urgently than the
"law of the members" which wars against it.
=Two Senses of Term Duty.=--This contrast gives rise to the fact of
Duty. On one side is the rightful supremacy of the reasonable but remote
good; on the other side is the aversion of those springs to action which
are immediately most urgent. Between them exists the necessity of
securing for the reasonable good efficacy in operation; or the necessity
of redirecting the play of naturally dominant desires. Duty is also
used, to be sure, in a looser and more external sense. To identify the
dutiful with the right apart from conflict, to say that a man did his
duty, may mean that he did right, irrespective of the prior state of his
inclinations. It frequently happens that the wider and larger good which
is developed through reflective memory and foresight is welcomed, is
directly appreciated as good, since it is thoroughly attractive. Without
stress and strain, without struggle, it just displaces the object which
unreflective impulse had suggested. It is the fit and proper, the only
sensible and wise thing, under the circumstances. The man does his duty,
but is glad to do it, and would be troubled by the thought of another
line of action. So far as calling the act "duty" brings in any new
meaning, it means that the right act is one which is found to meet the
demands, the necessities, of the situation in which it takes place. The
Romans thus spoke of duties as _offices_, the performance of those
functions which are appropriate to the status which every person
occupies because of his social relations.
=Conscious Conflict.=--But there are other cases in which the _right_
end is distinctly apprehended by the person as standing in opposition to
his natural inclinations, as a principle or law which _ought_ to be
followed, but which _can_ be followed only by constraining the
inclinations, by snubbing and coercing them. This state of affairs is
well represented by the following quotation from Matthew Arnold, if we
take it as merely describing the facts, not as implying a theory as to
their explanation:
"All experience with conduct brings us at last to the fact of two
selves, or instincts, or forces--name them, however we may and
however we may suppose them to have arisen--contending for the
mastery over men: one, a movement of first impulse and more
involuntary, leading us to gratify any inclination that may
solicit us and called generally a movement of man's ordinary or
passing self, of sense, appetite, desire; the other a movement of
reflection and more voluntary, leading us to submit inclination
to some rule, and called generally a movement of man's higher or
enduring self, of reason, spirit, will."[166]
We shall (I.) present what we consider the true account of this
situation of conflict in which the sense of duty is found; (II.) turn to
explanations which are one-sided, taking up (1) the intuitive, (2) the
utilitarian theory; and finally (III.) return with the results of this
criticism to a restatement of our own theory.
Sec. 1. THE SUBJECTION OF DESIRE TO LAW
Ordinary language sets before us some main facts: duty suggests what is
due, a debt to be paid; ought is connected with owe; obligation implies
being bound to something--as we speak of "bounden duty." We speak
naturally of "meeting obligations"; of duties being "imposed," "laid
upon" one. The person who is habitually careless about his duties is
"unruly" or "lawless"; one who evades or refuses them is "unprincipled."
These ideas suggest there is something required, exacted, having the
sanction of law, or a regular and regulative principle; and imply
natural aversion to the requirements exacted, a preference for something
else. Hence duty as a conscious factor means constraint of inclination;
an unwillingness or reluctance which _should_ be overcome but which it
is difficult to surmount, requiring an effort which only adequate
recognition of the rightful supremacy of the dutiful end will enable one
to put forth. Thus we speak of interest conflicting with principle, and
desire with duty. While they are inevitably bound together, it will be
convenient to discuss separately (1) Inclination and impulse as averse
to duty, and (2) Duty as having authority, as expressing law.
=1. Inclination Averse to Duty.=--Directly and indirectly, all desires
root in certain fundamental organic wants and appetites. Conduct,
behavior, implies a living organism. If this organism were not equipped
with an intense instinctive tendency to keep itself going, to sustain
itself, it would soon cease to be amid the menaces, difficulties,
rebuffs, and failures of life. Life means appetites, like hunger,
thirst, sex; instincts like anger, fear, and hope, which are almost
imperious in their struggles for satisfaction. They do not arise from
reflection, but antedate it; their existence does not depend upon
consideration of consequences, but their existence it is which tends to
call out reflection. Their very presence in a healthy organism means a
certain reservoir of energy which overflows almost spontaneously. They
are impulsive. Such tendencies, then, constitute an essential and
fundamental part of the capacities of a person; their realization is
involved in one's happiness. In all this there is nothing abnormal nor
immoral. But a human being is something more than a mere demand for the
satisfaction of instincts of food, sex, and protection. If we admit (as
the theory of organic evolution requires) that all other desires and
purposes are _ultimately_ derived from these tendencies of the organism,
still it is true that the refined and highly developed forms exist side
by side with crude, organic forms, and that the simultaneous
satisfaction of the two types, just as they stand, is impossible.
=Organic and Reflectively Formed Tendencies Conflict.=--Even if it be
true, as it may well be, that the desires and purposes connected with
property were developed out of instincts having to do with food for self
and offspring, it is still true that the developed desires do not wholly
displace those out of which they developed. The presence of the purposes
elaborated by thought side by side with the more organic demands causes
strife and the need of resolution. The accumulation of property may
involve subordinating the immediate urgency of hunger; property as an
institution implies that one is not free to satisfy his appetite just as
he pleases, but may have to postpone or forego satisfaction, because the
food supply belongs to another; or that he can satisfy hunger only
through some labor which in itself is disagreeable to him. Similarly the
family springs originally out of the instinct of reproduction. But the
purposes and plans which go with family life are totally inconsistent
with the mere gratification of sexual desire in its casual and
spontaneous appearance. The refined, highly developed, and complex
purposes exact a checking, a regulation and subordination of
inclinations as they first spring up--a control to which the
inclinations are not of themselves prone and against which they may
rebelliously assert themselves.
=Duty May Reside on the More Impulsive Side.=--It would be a great
mistake, however, to limit the need of subordination simply to the
unruly agencies of appetite. Habits which have been consciously or
reflectively formed, even when in their original formation these habits
had the sanction and approval of reason, require control. The habits of
a professional man, of an investigator, or a lawyer, for example, have
been formed through careful and persistent reflection directed upon ends
adjudged right. Virtues of painstaking industry, of perseverance, have
been formed; untimely and unseemly desires have been checked. But as an
outcome these habits, and the desires and purposes that express them,
have perhaps become all-engrossing. Occupation is preoccupation. It
encroaches upon the attention needed for other concerns. The skill
gained tends to shut the individual up to narrow matters and to shut out
other "universes" of good which should be desired. Domestic and civic
responsibilities are perhaps felt to be insignificant details or
irritating burdens unworthy of attention. Thus a reflective habit,
legitimate in itself, right in its right place, may give rise to
desires and ends which involve a corrosive selfishness.
Moreover, that the insubordination does not reside in appetites or
impulses just as appetites and impulses, is seen in the fact that duty
may lie on the side of a purpose connected with them, and be asserted
against the force of a habit formed under the supervision of thought.
The student or artist may find his pursuit makes him averse to
satisfying the needful claims of hunger and healthy exercise. The
prudent business man may find himself undutifully cold to the prompting
of an impulse of pity; the student of books or special intellectual or
artistic ends may find duty on the side of some direct human impulse.
=Statement of Problem.=--Such considerations show that we cannot
attribute the conflict of duty and inclination simply to the existence
of appetites and unreflective impulses, as if these were in and of
themselves opposed to regulation by any principle. We must seek for an
explanation which will apply equally to appetites and to habits of
thought. What is there common to the situations of him who feels it his
duty to check the satisfaction of strong hunger until others have been
properly served, and of the scientific investigator who finds it his
duty to check the exercise of his habit of thinking in order that he may
satisfy the demands of his body?
=Statement of Explanation.=--Any habit, like any appetite or instinct,
represents something formed, set; whether this has occurred in the
history of the race or of the individual makes little difference to its
established urgency. Habit is second, if not first, nature. (1) Habit
represents _facilities_; what is set, organized, is relatively easy. It
_marks the line of least resistance_. A habit of reflection, so far as
it is a specialized habit, is as easy and natural to follow as an
organic appetite. (2) Moreover, the exercise of any easy, frictionless
habit is pleasurable. It is a commonplace that use and wont deprive
situations of originally disagreeable features. (3) Finally, a formed
habit is an active _tendency_. It only needs an appropriate stimulus to
set it going; frequently the mere absence of any strong obstacle serves
to release its pent-up energy. It is a propensity to act in a certain
way whenever opportunity presents. Failure to function is uncomfortable
and arouses feelings of irritation or lack.
Reluctance to the right end, an aversion requiring to be overcome, if at
all, by recognition of the superior value of the right end, is then to
be accounted for _on the ground of the inertia or momentum of any
organized, established tendency_. This momentum gives the common ground
to instinctive impulses and deliberately formed habits. The momentum
represents the _old_, an adaptation to familiar, customary conditions.
So far as similar conditions recur, the formed power functions
economically and effectively, supplying ease, promptness, certainty, and
agreeableness to the execution of an act.
But if new, changed conditions require a serious readjustment of the old
habit or appetite, the natural tendency will be to resist this demand.
Thus we have precisely the traits of reluctance and constraint which
mark the consciousness of duty. A self without habits, one loose and
fluid, in which change in one direction is just as easy as in another,
would not have the sense of duty. A self with no new possibilities,
rigidly set in conditions and perfectly accommodated to them, would not
have it. But definite, persistent, urgent tendencies to act in a given
way, occurring at the same time with other incompatible tendencies which
represent the self more adequately and yet are not organized into
habits, afford the conditions of the sense of restraint. If for any
reason the unorganized tendency is judged to be the truer expression of
self, we have also the sense of lawful constraint. _The constraint of
appetite and desire is a phenomenon of practical readjustment, within
the structure of character, due to conflict of tendencies so
irreconcilable in their existing forms as to demand radical
redirection._
When an appetite is in accord with those habits of an individual which
enable him to perform his social functions, or which naturally accrue
from his social relations, it is legitimate and good; when it conflicts,
it is illicit, it is lust; we call it by hard names and we demand that
it be curbed; we regard its force as a menace to the integrity of the
agent and a threat to social order. When the reflective habits of an
individual come into conflict with natural appetites and impulses, the
manifestation of which would enlarge or make more certain the powers of
the individual in his full relations to others, it is the reflective
habits which have to be held in and redirected at the cost of whatever
disagreeableness.
=(2) The Authority of Duty.=--A duty, in Kant's words, is a
_categorical_ imperative--it claims the absolute right of way as against
immediate inclination. That which, on one side, is the constraint of
natural desire, is, on the other, the authoritative claim of the right
end to regulate. Over against the course of action most immediately
urgent, most easy and comfortable, so congenial as at once to motivate
action unless checked, stands another course, representing a wider and
more far-reaching point of view, and hence furnishing the rational end
of the situation. However lacking in intensity, however austere this
end, it stands for the whole self, and is therefore felt to be rightly
supreme over any partial tendency. But since it looks to realization in
an uncertain future, rather than permission just to let go what is most
urgent at the moment, it requires effort, hard work, work of attention
more or less repulsive and uncongenial. Hence that sense of stress and
strain, of being pulled one way by inclination and another by the claims
of right, so characteristic of an experience of obligation.
=Social Character of Duties.=--But this statement describes the
experience only on its formal side. In the concrete, that end which
possesses claim to regulate desire is the one which grows out of the
social position or function of the agent, out of _a course of action to
which he is committed by a regular, socially established connection
between himself and others_. The man who has assumed the position of a
husband and a parent has by that very fact entered upon a _line_ of
action, something continuous, running far into the future; something so
fundamental that it modifies and pervades his other activities,
requiring them to be coordinated or rearranged from its point of view.
The same thing holds, of course, of the calling of a doctor, a lawyer, a
merchant, a banker, a judge, or other officer of the State. Each social
calling implies a continuous, regular mode of action, binding together
into a whole a multitude of acts occurring at different times, and
giving rise to definite expectations and demands on the part of others.
Every relationship in life, is, as it were, _a tacit or expressed
contract with others_, committing one, by the simple fact that he
occupies that relationship, to a corresponding mode of action. Every
one, willy-nilly, occupies a social position; if not a parent, he is a
child; if not an officer, then a citizen of the State; if not pursuing
an occupation, he is in preparation for an occupation, or else is living
upon the results of the labors of others.
=Connection with Selfhood.=--Every one, in short, is in _general
relations to others_,--relationships which enter so internally and so
intimately into the very make-up of his being that he is not morally
free to pick and choose, saying, this good is really my affair, that
other one not. The mode of action which is required by the fact that the
person is a member of a complex social network is a more final
expression of his own nature than is the temporarily intense instinctive
appetite, or the habit which has become "second nature." It is not for
the individual to say, the latter is attractive and therefore really
mine, while the former is repellant and therefore an alien intruder, to
be surrendered to only if it cannot be evaded. From this point of view,
the conflict of desire and duty, of interest and principle, expresses
itself as a conflict between tendencies which have got organized into
one's _fixed character_ and which therefore appeal to him just as he is;
and those tendencies which relate to the development of a larger self, a
self which should take fuller account of social relations. The Kantian
theory emphasizes the fact brought out above: _viz._, that duty
represents the authority of an act expressing the reasonable and
"universal" self over a casual and partial self; while the utilitarian
theory emphasizes the part played by social institutions and demands in
creating and enforcing both special duties and the sense of duty in
general.
Sec. 2. KANTIAN THEORY
="Accord with" Duty versus "from" Duty.=--Kant points out that acts
may be "in accordance with duty" and yet not be done "from duty."
"It is always, for example, a matter of duty that a dealer should not
overcharge an inexperienced purchaser, and wherever there is much
commerce the prudent tradesman does not overcharge.... Men are thus
honestly served; but this is not enough to prove that the tradesman so
acted from duty and from principles of honesty; his own advantage
required it" (_Kant's Theory of Ethics_, Abbott's translation, p. 13).
In such a case the act externally viewed is in _accordance_ with duty;
morally viewed, it proceeds from selfish calculation of personal profit,
not from duty. This is true in general of all acts which, though
outwardly right, spring from considerations of expediency, and are based
on the consideration that "honesty (or whatever) is the best policy."
Persons are naturally inclined to take care of their health, their
property, their children, or whatever belongs to them. Such acts, no
matter how much they accord with duty, are not done _from duty_, but
from inclination. If a man is suffering, unfortunate, desirous of death,
and yet cherishes his life with no love for it, but from the duty to do
so, his motive has truly moral value. So if a mother cares for her
child, _because_ she recognizes that it is her duty, the act is truly
moral.
=From Duty alone Moral.=--According to Kant, then, acts alone have moral
import that are consciously performed "from duty," that is, with
recognition of its authority as their animating spring. "_The idea of
good and evil (in their moral sense) must not be determined before the
moral law, but only after it and by means of it_" (_Ibid._, p. 154). All
our desires and inclinations seek naturally for an _end_ which is
good--for happiness, success, achievement. No one of them nor all of
them put together, then, can possibly supply the motive of acting _from_
duty. Hence duty and its authority must spring from another source, from
reason itself, which supplies the consciousness of a law which _ought_
to be the motive of every act, whether it is or not. The utilitarians
completely reverse the truth of morals when they say that the idea of
the good end comes first and the "right" is that which realizes the good
end.
=Dual Constitution of Man.=--We are all familiar with the notion that
man has a dual constitution; that he is a creature both of sense and
spirit; that he has a carnal and an ideal nature; a lower and a higher
self, a self of appetite and of reason. Now Kant's theory of duty is a
peculiar version of this common notion. Man's special ends and purposes
all spring from desires and inclinations. These are all for personal
happiness and hence without moral worth. They form man's sensuous,
appetitive nature, which if not "base" in itself easily becomes so,
because it struggles with principle for the office of supplying motives
for action. The principle of a law absolutely binding, requires the
complete expulsion of the claim of desires to _motivate_ action. (See
_Kant's Theory_, pp. 70-79; 132-136; 159-163.) If a man were an animal,
he would have only appetite to follow; if he were a god or angel, he
would have only reason. Being man, being a peculiar compound of sense
and reason, he has put upon him the problem of resisting the natural
prompting of inclination and of accepting the duty of acting from
reverence for duty.
=Criticism of Kant's Theory.=--There is an undoubted fact back of Kant's
conception which gives it whatever plausibility it has--the fact that
inclinations which are not necessarily evil tend to claim a controlling
position, a claim which has to be resisted. The peculiarity of Kant's
interpretation lies in its complete and final separation of the two
aspects, "higher" and "lower," the appetitive and rational, of man's
nature, and it is upon this separation, accordingly, that our discussion
will be directed.
=I. Duty and the Affections.=--In the first place, Kant's absolute
separation of sense or appetite from reason and duty, because of its
necessary disparagement of the affections leads to a formal and pedantic
view of morality. It is one thing to say that desire as it _first_ shows
itself _sometimes_ prompts to a morally inadequate end; it is quite
another thing to say that _any_ acceptance of an end of desire as a
motive is morally wrong--that the act to be right must be first brought
under a conscious acknowledgment of some law or principle. Only the
exigencies of a ready-made theory would lead any one to think that
habitual purposes that express the habitually dominant tendencies and
powers of the agent, may not suffice to keep morally sound the main
tenor of behavior; that it is impossible for regard for right ends to
become organized into character and to be fused into working unity with
natural impulses. Only a metaphysical theory regarding the separation
of sense and reason in man leads to the denial of this fact.
Between the merchant who is honest in his weights and fixed in his
prices merely because he calculates that such a course is to his own
advantage, and the merchant (if such a person could exist) who should
never sell a spool of thread or a paper of pins without having first
reminded himself that his ultimate motive for so doing was respect for
the law of duty, there is the ordinary merchant who is honest because he
has the desires characteristic of an honest man. Schiller has made fun
of the artificial stringency of Kant's theory in some verses which
represent a disciple coming to Kant with his perplexity:
"Willingly serve I my friends, but I do it, alas with affection.
Hence I am plagued with this doubt, virtue I have not attained!"
to which he received the reply:
"This is your only resource, you must stubbornly seek to abhor them;
Then you can do with disgust that which the law may enjoin."
These verses are a caricature of Kant's position; he does not require
that affections should be crushed, but that they should be stamped with
acknowledgment of law before being accepted as motives. But the verses
bring out the absurd element in the notion that the affections and
inclinations may not of themselves be morally adequate springs to
action,--as if a man could not eat his dinner simply because he was
hungry, or be amiable to a companion because he wanted to be, or relieve
distress because his compassionate nature urged him to it.
It is worth while noting that some moralists have gone to the opposite
extreme and have held that an act is not right unless it expresses the
overflowing spontaneity of the affections; that a man's act is only
imperfectly right when he performs it not from affection, but from
coercion by duty. Thus Emerson speaks of men who "do by knowledge what
the stones do by structure." And again, "We love characters in
proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. When we see a soul
whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank
God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel
and say, 'Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his
native devils.'" The facts seem to be that while, in a good man, natural
impulses and formed habits are adequate motive powers under ordinary
conditions, there are times when an end, somewhat weak in its motive
force because it does not express an habitually dominant power of the
self, needs to be reenforced by associations which have gathered at all
periods of his past around the experience of good. There is a certain
reservoir of emotional force which, while far from fluid, is capable of
transfer and application, especially in a conscientious person. Kant
criticizes the moral sense theory on the ground that "in order to
imagine the vicious man tormented with a sense of his transgressions, it
must first represent him as morally good in the main trend of his
character" (Abbott, p. 128). Well, a man who is capable of making appeal
to the sense of duty in general, is the one in whom love of good is
already dominant.
=II. Tendency to Fanaticism and Idealization of Authority.=--Kant's
theory of fixed and final separation between desire and reason leads us
into a fatal dilemma; either a right end is impossible, or any end is
right provided we fall back on a belief that it is our duty to perform
it. Kant holds that every concrete end, every definite purpose which we
entertain, comes from desire. Law utters no specific command except "do
your duty"; it stamps an end of desire as right only when it is pursued,
not because it is an end of desire, but "from duty." The actual end
which is before us is, in any case, supplied through inclination and
desire. Reason furnishes _principle_ as a _motive_. We have here, in
another form, the separation of end and motive which has already
occupied us (p. 248). End and motive are so disconnected, so irrelevant
to one another, that we have no alternative except either to condemn
every end, because, being prompted by desire, it falls so far short of
the majesty of duty; or else fanatically to persist in any course when
once we have formally brought it under the notion of duty.
The latter alternative would be the one chosen by a truly Kantian agent
because it is alone possible in practice. But the moral fanatic does
about as much evil in the world as the man of no moral principle.
Religious wars, persecutions, intolerance, harsh judgment of others,
obstinate persistence in a course of action once entered upon in spite
of the testimony of experience to the harm that results; blind devotion
to narrow and one-sided aims; deliberate opposition to art, culture,
social amenities, recreations, or whatever the "man of principle"
happens to find obnoxious: pharisaical conviction of superiority, of
being the peculiar, chosen instrument of the moral law;--these and the
countless ills that follow in their wake, are inevitable effects of
erecting the isolated conviction of duty into a sufficient motive of
action. So far as these evils do not actually flow from an acceptance of
the Kantian principle, it is because that has been promulgated and for
the most part adopted, where reverence for authority and law is strong.
In Germany the Kantian philosophy has, upon the whole, served as a help
in criticizing law and procedure on the basis of their rationality,
while it has also served as a convenient stamp of rational sanction upon
a politically authoritative regime, already fairly reasonable, as such
matters go, in the content of its legislation and administration.
=III. Meaning of Duty for Duty's Sake.=--It is a sound principle to do
our duty _as_ our duty, and not for the sake of something else. "Duty
for duty's sake" means, in truth, _an act for the act's own sake_; the
gift of cold water, the word of encouragement, the sweeping of the room,
the learning of the lesson, the selling of the goods, the painting of
the picture, because they are the things really called for at a given
time, and hence their own excuses for being. _No moral act is a means to
anything beyond itself,--not even to morality._ But, upon Kant's theory,
duty for duty's sake means a special act not for its own sake, but for
the sake of abstract principle. Just as the hedonists regard a special
act as a mere means to happiness, so Kant makes the concrete act a mere
means to virtue. As there is a "hedonistic paradox," namely that the way
to get happiness is to forget it, to devote ourselves to things and
persons about us; so there is a "moralistic" paradox, that the way to
get goodness is to cease to think of it--as something separate--and to
devote ourselves to the realization of the full value of the practical
situations in which we find ourselves. Men can really think of their
"duty" only when they are thinking of specific things to be done; to
think of Duty at large or in the abstract is one of the best ways of
avoiding doing it, or of doing it in a partial and perverted way.
=Summary of Criticism of Kant.=--To sum up, the theory which regards
duty as having its source in a rational self which is independent of and
above the self of inclination and affection (1) deprives the habitual
desires and affections, which make the difference between one concrete
character and another, of moral significance; (2) commits us to an
unenlightened performance of what is called duty irrespective of its
real goodness; and (3) makes moral principle a remote abstraction,
instead of the vivifying soul of a concrete deed. Its strongest point,
its insistence upon the _autonomous_ character of duty, or that duty is
organically connected with the self in some of its phases or functions,
will appear more clearly as we contrast it with the utilitarian theory.
Sec. 3. THE UTILITARIAN THEORY OF DUTY
=Problem of Duty on Hedonistic Basis.=--The utilitarians' explanation of
the constraint of desire by the authority of right is framed to meet the
peculiar difficulty in which their hedonistic theory places them. If
pleasure is the good, and if all desire is naturally for the good, why
should desire have to be constrained? How can such a thing as "duty"
exist at all? For to say that a man is obliged or bound to seek that
which he just can't help seeking is absurd. There is, according to the
utilitarian, a difference, however, between the pleasure which is the
object of desire and that which is the standard of judgment. The former
is the person's own pleasure; it is private. The happiness which
measures the rightness of the act is that of all persons who are
affected by it. In view of this divergence, there must, if right action
is to occur, be agencies which operate upon the individual so as to make
him find his personal pleasure in that which conduces to the general
welfare. These influences are the expectations and demands of _others so
far as they attach consequences in the way of punishment, of suffering,
and of reward and pleasure, to the deeds of an individual_.