| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
Author: Dewey, John
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics" ***
Libraries.)
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Italics have been transcribed using _underscores_ and small capitals as
ALL CAPITALS. Inconsistencies in hyphenation and punctuation have not
been corrected. A list of other corrections can be found at the end of
the document. The Table of Contents is left as in the original and does
not list all of the subsections.
_For we are not children of the bond-woman, but of the
free._
_E pur se muove._
OUTLINES
OF A
CRITICAL THEORY OF ETHICS
BY
JOHN DEWEY
Professor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN REGISTER PUBLISHING COMPANY The Inland Press 1891.
Copyright, 1891. REGISTER PUBLISHING CO., Ann Arbor, Mich.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION 1-12
PART I.--FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL NOTIONS.
CHAPTER I.--_The Good_ 13-138
Hedonism 14
Utilitarianism 52
Evolutionary Utilitarianism 67
Kantianism 78
Problem and Solution 95
Realization of Individuality 97
Ethical Postulate 127
CHAPTER II.--_The Idea of Obligation_ 139-158
Bain's Theory 140
Spencer's Theory 142
Kant's Theory 147
Its Real Nature 152
CHAPTER III.--_The Idea of Freedom_ 158-166
Negative Freedom 158
Potential Freedom 159
Positive Freedom 164
PART II.--THE ETHICAL WORLD.
Social Relations 167
Moral Institutions 169
PART III.--THE MORAL LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
Division of Subject 181
CHAPTER I.--_The Formation and Growth of Ideals_ 182-211
Conscience 182
Conscientiousness 199
Development of Ideals 206
CHAPTER II.--_The Moral Struggle or the Realizing of Ideals_ 211-227
Goodness as Struggle 211
Badness 214
Goodness and Badness 221
CHAPTER III.--_Realized Morality or the Virtues_ 227-233
Cardinal Virtues 231
CONCLUSION 233-238
PREFACE.
Although the following pages have taken shape in connection with
class-room work, they are intended as an independent contribution
to ethical science. It is commonly demanded of such a work that its
readers shall have some prefatory hint of its sources and deviations.
In accordance with this custom, I may state that for the backbone
of the theory here presented--the conception of the will as the
expression of ideas, and of social ideas; the notion of an objective
ethical world realized in institutions which afford moral ideals,
theatre and impetus to the individual; the notion of the moral life
as growth in freedom, as the individual finds and conforms to the law
of his social placing--for this backbone I am especially indebted to
Green's 'Prolegomena to Ethics', to Mr. Bradley's 'Ethical Studies', to
Professor Caird's 'Social Philosophy of Comte' and 'Critical Philosophy
of Kant' (to this latter book in particular my indebtedness is
fundamental), and to Alexander's 'Moral Order and Progress'. Although
I have not been able to adopt the stand-point or the method of Mr.
Spencer, or of Mr. Leslie Stephen my obligation to the 'Data of Ethics'
and to the 'Science of Ethics' (especially to the latter) is large.
As to the specific forms which give a flesh and blood of its own to
this backbone, I may call attention to the idea of desire as the
ideal activity in contrast with actual possession; to the analysis of
individuality into function including capacity and environment; to the
treatment of the social bearings of science and art (a point concerning
which I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Franklin Ford); to the statement
of an ethical postulate; to the accounts of obligation, of moral rules,
and of moral badness.
While the book is an analysis, in outline, of the main elements of the
theory of ethics rather than a discussion of all possible detailed
questions, it will not be found the less fitted, I hope, to give a
student an idea of the main methods and problems of contemporary
ethics. Other teachers, indeed, may agree that a general outline is
better than a blanket-mortgage spread over and forestalling all the
activity of the student's mind.
I have not been unmindful of the advisability of avoiding in
presentation both undue polemic, and undue dogmatism without sufficient
reference to the statements of others. I hope the method hit upon,
of comparing opposite one-sided views with the aim of discovering a
theory apparently more adequate, will help keep the balance. I have
quoted freely from the chief modern authorities, hoping that the
tastes here given will tempt the reader to the banquet waiting in
the authors themselves. The occasional references introduced are not
bibliographical, nor intended as exhaustive statements of authorities
consulted; they are meant as aids to an intelligent reading on the part
of the general student. For this reason they are confined mainly to
modern English writings.
INTRODUCTION.
I.
Definition of Ethics.
The term ethics is derived from a Greek word meaning manners, customs,
habits, just as the term morals is derived from a Latin word with a
similar meaning. This suggests the character of the science as an
account of human action. Anthropology, ethnology, psychology, are also,
in their way, accounts of human action. But these latter branches of
knowledge simply _describe_, while the business of ethics is to _judge_.
This does not mean that it belongs to ethics to prescribe what man
ought to do; but that its business is to detect the element of
obligation in conduct, to examine conduct to see what gives it its
_worth_. Anthropology, etc., do not take into account the _whole_ of
action, but simply some of its aspects--either external or internal.
Ethics deals with conduct in its entirety, with reference, that is,
to what makes it conduct, its _end_, its real meaning. Ethics is the
science of conduct, understanding by conduct man's activity in its
whole reach.
Three of the branches of philosophy may be called
_normative_, implying that they deal with some _norm,
standard_ or _end_, estimating the value of their
respective subject-matters as tested by this end. These
are Logic, dealing with the end Truth, and the value of
intellectual processes with respect to it; Æsthetics,
dealing with Beauty and the value of emotional conditions
as referred to it; and Ethics, as defined above. But this
norm in no case comes from outside the subject-matter; it
is the subject-matter considered in its totality.
II.
Meaning of Moral.
In its widest sense, the term moral or ethical means nothing more
than relating to conduct; having to do with practice, when we look at
conduct or practice from the point of view not of its occurrence, but
of its value. Action is something which takes place, and as such it
may be described like any objective fact. But action has also relation
to an end, and so considered it is _moral_. The first step in ethics
is to fix firmly in mind the idea that the term moral does not mean
any special or peculiar kind of conduct, but simply means practice and
action, conduct viewed not partially, but in connection with the end
which it realizes.
It should be noted that the term moral has a wider and a
narrower sense. In the wider sense it means action in the
moral sphere, as opposed to _non_-moral, and thus includes
both good and bad conduct. In the narrower sense it means
moral, as opposed to _im_moral. See Bradley, Ethical
Studies, p. 53, note, for a further meaning.
III.
Meaning of Conduct.
Ethics then has to do with conduct or action viewed completely, or in
relation to its end. But what is conduct? It must be distinguished from
action in general; for any process of change, the working of a pump,
the growth of a plant, the barking of a dog, may be called action.
Conduct implies more than something taking place; it implies purpose,
motive, intention; that the agent knows what he is about, that he has
something which he is aiming at. All action accomplishes something or
brings about results, but conduct has the result _in view_. It occurs
for the sake of producing this result. Conduct does not simply, like
action in general, have a cause, but also a reason, and the reason is
present to the mind of the agent. There can be conduct only when there
is a being who can propose to himself, as an end to be reached by
himself, something which he regards as worth while. Such a being is a
moral agent, and his action, when conscious, is conduct.
IV.
Division of Ethics.
The main ethical problem is just this: What is the conduct that really
deserves the name of conduct, the conduct of which all other kinds
of action can be only a perverted or deflected form? Or, since it is
the end which gives action its moral value, what is the true end,
_summum bonum_ of man? Knowing this, we have a standard by which we
judge particular acts. Those which embody this end are _right_, others
wrong. The question of the rightness of conduct is simply a special
form of the question concerning the nature of the end or good. But
the end bears another relation to specific acts. They are not only
marked off by it as right or wrong, but they have to fulfill it. The
end or good decides what should be or _ought_ to be. Any act necessary
to fulfill the end is a _duty_. Our second inquiry will be as to the
nature of obligation or duty. Then we have to discuss the nature of a
being who is capable of action, of manifesting and realizing the end;
capable of right (or wrong) of obligatory and good action. This will
lead us to discuss the question of _Freedom, or Moral Capacity and its
Realization_. The discussion of these three abstract questions will
constitute Part I of our theory; Part II will take up the various forms
and institutions in which the good is objectively realized, the family,
state, etc.; while Part III will be devoted to an account of the moral
experience of the individual.
V.
The Motive in Conduct.
Before taking up the first problem presented, the nature of the good
or the end of conduct, it is necessary to analyze somewhat further
the various sides and factors of conduct in order to see where the
distinctly ethical element is to be found. The elements particularly
deserving consideration are (1) the Motive; (2) the Feelings or
Sentiments; (3) Consequences of the Act; (4) Character of Agent. We
shall begin with
1. _The Motive._ The motive of the act is the end aimed at by the agent
in performing the act. Thus the motive of Julius Cæsar in crossing the
Rubicon was the whole series of results which he intended to reach by
that act of his. The motive of a person in coming to college is to gain
knowledge, to prepare himself for a certain profession. The motive is
thus identical with the ideal element of the action, the purpose in
view.
2. _The Feelings or Disposition._ Some writers speak of the feelings
under which the agent acts as his motive. Thus we may suppose Julius
Cæsar 'moved' by the feelings of ambition, of revenge, etc., in
crossing the Rubicon. The student may be 'moved' by curiosity, by
vainglory, by emulation, by conscience, in coming to college. It is
better, however, to regard the motive as the reason for which the act
is performed, and to use the term moving or impelling cause for the
feelings in their relation to action. Thus we may imagine a parent
asking a child why he struck a playmate, meaning what was the motive
of the action. If the child should reply that he struck his playmate
because he was angry, this answer would give the moving cause or
impelling force of the action, but not its motive. The motive would
be the idea of punishing this playmate, of getting even with him, of
taking something away from him. The motive is the end which he desired
to reach by striking and on account of which he struck. This is implied
by the fact that the parent would ask, "What _made_ you _angry_?"
VI.
Moral Bearing of These Distinctions.
It is the feelings which supply the impelling force to action. They
may be termed, collectively, the _natural disposition_. The natural
disposition in itself has no _moral_ value. This has been well
illustrated by Bentham.
Principles of Morals and Legislation, pp. 49-55. Bentham
here uses the term 'motive' to designate what we have
called the moving cause.
We may select of the many examples which he gives that of curiosity.
We may imagine a boy spinning a top, reading a useful book and letting
a wild ox loose in a road. Now curiosity may be the 'motive' of each
of these acts, yet the first act would generally be called morally
indifferent, the second good, the third abominable.
What we mean by the 'natural' feelings, then, is the feelings
considered in abstraction from activity: Benevolence, as a _mere_
feeling, has no higher moral value than malevolence. But if it is
directed upon action it gets a value at once; let the end, the act,
be right, and benevolence becomes a name for a _moral_ disposition--a
tendency to _act_ in the due way. Nothing is more important than to
distinguish between mere sentiments, and feeling as an element in
conduct.
VII.
Relation of Consequences and Conduct.
Do the consequences of an act have anything to do with its morality? We
may say no, pointing to the fact that a man who does his best we call
good, although the consequences of his act may be far from good. We say
his purpose in acting was right, and using as he did all the knowledge
that he had, he is not to be blamed for its bad consequences. On the
other hand, it is evident that we do take into account consequences in
estimating the moral value of an act. Suppose, to use one of Bentham's
examples, a person were about to shoot an animal but foresaw that
in doing so there was a strong probability that he would also wound
some bystander. If he shot and the spectator were wounded, should we
not hold the agent morally responsible? Are there not multitudes of
intended acts of which we say that we cannot tell whether they are good
or bad until we know how they are likely to turn out?
The solution of the difficulty is in recognizing the ambiguity of the
term 'consequences'. It may mean the whole outcome of the act. When I
speak, I set in motion the air, and its vibrations have, in turn, long
chains of effects. Whatever I do must have an endless succession of
'consequences' of which I can know but very little; just so far as, in
any act, I am ignorant of the conditions under which it is performed,
so far I am ignorant of its consequences. _Such_ consequences are
wholly irrelevant morally. They have no more to do with the morality of
the act than has the fact that the earth is revolving while the act is
taking place.
But we may mean by consequences the _foreseen_ consequences of an
act. Just in the degree that any consequence is considered likely to
result from an act, just in that degree it gets moral value, for it
becomes _part of the act_ itself. The reason that in many cases we
cannot judge of the morality of an intended act until we can judge its
probable results, is that until we know of these results the action is
a mere abstraction, having no content at all. _The conceived results
constitute the content of the act to be performed._ They are not
merely relevant to its morality, but _are_ its moral quality. The
question is whether any consequence is foreseen, conceived, or not. The
foreseen, the _ideal_ consequences are the end of the act, and as such
form the _motive_.
See on Sections 6 and 7, Alexander, Moral Order and
Progress, pp. 36-46; on Section 7, Green, Prolegomena to
Ethics, pp. 317-323.
VIII.
Character and Conduct.
We have seen that the moral sentiments, or the moral disposition
(distinguished from the feelings as passing emotions), on one side,
and the consequences as ideal or conceived (distinguished from the
consequences that, _de facto_, result), on the other, both have moral
value. If we take the moral feelings, not one by one, but as a whole,
as an _attitude_ of the agent toward conduct, as expressing the kind of
motives which upon the whole moves him to action, we have _character_.
And just so, if we take the consequences willed, not one by one, but
as a whole, as the kind of end which the agent endeavors to realize,
we have _conduct_. Character and conduct are, morally, the same thing,
looked at first inwardly and then outwardly. Character, except as
manifest in conduct, is a barren ideality. Our moral judgments are
always severe upon a man who has nothing to show but 'good intentions'
never executed. This is what character comes to, apart from conduct.
Our only way of telling the nature of character is the conduct that
issues from it. But, on the other hand, conduct is mere outward
formalism, excepting as it manifests character. To say that a man's
conduct is good, unless it is the manifestation of a good character, is
to pass a judgment which is self-contradictory.
See Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 48-50 and p. 39.
From this point of view we are enabled to identify the two senses of
motive already discussed--the ideal of action and the moving feelings.
Apart from each other they are abstractions. Cæsar's motive in
crossing the Rubicon may have been 'ambition,' but this was not some
bare feeling. It was a feeling of ambition produced in view of the
contemplation of a certain end which he wished to reach. So a boy's
motive in striking a playmate may be anger, but this means (if the
act is anything more than one of blind physical reaction) an anger
having its conscious cause and aim, and not some abstract feeling of
anger in general. The feeling which has its nature made what it is by
the conceived end, and the end which has ceased to be a bare abstract
conception and become an interest, are all one with each other.
Morality is then a matter pertaining to character--to the feelings
and inclinations as transformed by ends of action; and to conduct--to
conceived ends transformed into act under the influence of emotions.
But what _kind_ of character, of conduct, is right or realizes its true
end? This brings us to our first problem.
PART I.
FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL NOTIONS.
CHAPTER I.--THE GOOD.
IX.
Subdivision of Theories.
We may recognize three main types of theories regarding the good,
of which the first two represent (we shall attempt to show) each
respectively one side of the truth, while the third combines the
one-sided truths of the other two. Of the first two theories one is
abstract, because it tends to find the good in the mere consequences
of conduct aside from character. This is the hedonistic theory, which
finds the good to be pleasure. This is either individualistic or
universalistic according as it takes individual or general pleasure
to be the good. The second type of theories attempts to find the good
in the motive of conduct apart from consequences even as willed; it
reduces the good to conformity to abstract moral law. The best type of
this theory is the Kantian. We shall criticize these theories with a
view to developing the factors necessary to a true moral theory.
X.
Hedonism.
According to the strict hedonistic position, the pleasure resulting
to the agent from his act is the end of conduct and is therefore the
criterion of its morality. The position as usually taken involves,
first, that pleasure is psychologically the sole motive to action; and,
secondly, that the results of an act in the way of the pain or pleasure
it produces are the only tests we have of the rightness of the act.
It is said above that these two points are involved in
the hedonistic position as _usually_ taken. They are not
_necessarily_ involved.
Sidgwick (Methods of Ethics, Bk. I, ch. IV and Bk. IV,
ch. I) holds that pleasure is not the object of desire
or motive of action, but that happiness is the moral
end and criterion. On the other hand Hodgson (Theory of
Practice, Vol. II, ch. II) holds that pleasure may be the
motive (in the sense of impelling force) but it is never
the criterion of conduct. Kant adopts the psychology of
hedonism regarding pleasure as the object of desire, but
holds that on that very account no object of desire can be
the standard of moral conduct.
A good statement of strict individualistic hedonism is the
following from Barratt, Physical Ethics, page 71: "If man
aims at pleasure merely by the physical law of action, that
pleasure must evidently be ultimately his own, and whether
it be or not preceded by phenomena which he calls the pain
and pleasure of others, is a question not of principle but
of detail, just as the force of a pound weight is unaltered
whether it be composed of lead or of feathers, or whether
it act directly or through pulleys."
XI.
The Hedonistic Position Supported.
Hedonism holds that pleasure is both the natural end and the proper
criterion of action:
The following quotation from Bentham (Principles of Morals
and Legislation, Works, Vol. I, p. 1) gives a statement
of both these elements. "Nature has placed man under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It
is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, [i. e.
they are criteria] as well as to determine what we shall do
[motives]. On the one hand, the standard of right or wrong
[criterion]; on the other the chain of causes and effects
[motives], are fastened to their throne."
1. _Pleasure as Criterion._ That the tendency of an action to produce
pleasure is the standard for judging its moral value is generally held
by the hedonists to be so axiomatic as to be beyond argument.
See Bain, Moral Science, p. 27. "The ultimate data must be
accepted as self-evident: they have no higher authority
than that mankind generally are disposed to accept them....
Now there can be no proof offered for the position that
happiness is the proper end of all human pursuits, the
criterion of all right conduct. It is an ultimate or final
assumption to be tested by reference to the individual
judgment of mankind." So Bentham, Enquiry I, II, "The
principle is not susceptible of direct proofs for that
which is used to prove everything else can not itself be
proved; a chain of proofs must have their commencement
somewhere." Mill, Utilitarianism. (Dissertations and
Discussions, pp. 348-349). "The only proof capable of being
given that an object is visible is that people actually
see it. In like manner the sole evidence it is possible
to produce that anything is desirable is that people do
actually desire it." See Stephen, Science of Ethics, p.
42; Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 30-32 and p. 46; Lotze,
Practical Philosophy, pp. 18-19: Sidgwick, Methods of
Ethics, pp. 368-369.
Hedonism, then, represents the good or the desirable and pleasure to be
two names for the same fact. What indeed can be worth while unless it
be either enjoyable in itself or at least a means to enjoyment? Would
theft be considered bad if it resulted in pleasure or truth itself good
if its universal effect were pain?
2. _Pleasure as object of desire._ It is also urged that psychological
analysis shows that pleasure is not only the desirable, but also always
the _desired_. Desire for an object is only a short way of saying
desire for the pleasure which that object may bring. To want food is to
want the pleasure it brings; to want scientific ability is to desire
to find satisfaction, or attain happiness. Thus it is laid down as a
general principle that the invariable object of desire, and motive
of action is some pleasure to be attained; the action itself and the
direct end of action being simply means to pleasure.
For a strong statement of this doctrine see Mill, Op. cit.,
pp. 354-5. "Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant,
aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena
entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same
phenomenon,--in strictness of language, two different
modes of naming the same psychological fact; to think of
an object as desirable and to think of it as pleasant are
one and the same thing." See also, Bain, Emotions and Will,
p. 436, Senses and Intellect, pp. 338-344; Sully, Outlines
of Psychology, p. 575, "The inclination or tendency of the
active mind towards what is pleasurable and away from what
is painful is the essential fact in willing." Also pp.
576-577.
XII. Criticism.
Pleasure Not the End of Impulse.
Taking up the points in reverse order, we shall endeavor to show
first, that the motive of action, in the sense of end aimed at, is not
pleasure. This point in itself, is, of course, rather psychological
than ethical. Taking up then the psychology of pleasure in its
connection with will, we shall discuss its relation to impulse, to
desire and to motive.
It is generally agreed that the raw material of volition is found
in some form or other of the impulsive or instinctive actions. Such
tendencies (_e. g._, the impulse for food, for drink, for unimpeded
motion) clearly precede the reaching of an end, and hence the
experience of any pleasure in the end. Our first actions, at least,
are not for pleasure; on the contrary, there is an activity for
some independent end, and this end being reached there is pleasure
in an act which has succeeded. This suggests as a possible principle
that pleasure is not so much the end of action, as an element in the
activity which reaches an end. What Aristotle says of another matter
is certainly true of instinctive action. "It is not true of every
characteristic function that its action is attended with pleasure,
_except indeed the pleasure of attaining its end_."
See Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, pp.
299-300; Sidgwick, Op. cit., pp. 38-45.
XIII. Criticism--_Continued_.
Pleasure Not the End of Desire.
It may, however, be said that, while our instinctive actions have
another end than pleasure, this is not true of conscious desires--that,
indeed, just the difference between instinct and desire is that the
former goes blindly to its end, while the latter superimposes the
thought of the pleasure to be reached upon the mere instinct. So we
have to analyze the nature of desire.
A child, led by impulse, has put a piece of sugar into his mouth,
just as, under the same circumstances, he would put a piece of stone
into his mouth. But his action results in a state of pleasure wholly
unforseen by him. Now the next time the child sees the sugar he will
not merely have the impulse to put it in his mouth. There will also be
the remembrance of the pleasure enjoyed from sugar previously. There is
consciousness of sugar as satisfying impulse and hence desire for it.
1. This is a description of an instance of desire. Does it bear us out
in the doctrine that pleasure is the object of desire? It is possible
that, in an irrational animal, the experience of eating food reinforces
the original instinct for it with associated images of pleasure. But
even this is very different from a desire for pleasure. It is simply
the primordial instinct intensified and rendered more acute by new
sensational factors joined to it. In the strict sense, there is still
no desire, but only _stronger_ impulse. Wherever there is desire there
is not only a feeling of pleasure associated with other feelings (_e.
g._, those of hunger, thirst), but there is the _consciousness of an
object in which satisfaction is found_. The error of the hedonistic
psychology is in omitting one's consciousness of an _object_ which
satisfies. The hedonists are quite right in holding that the end of
desire is not any object external to consciousness, but a condition of
consciousness itself. The error begins in eliminating all objective
(that is, active) elements from consciousness, and declaring it to be
a mere state of feeling or sensation. The practical consciousness, or
will, cannot be reduced to mere feeling, any more than the theoretical
consciousness, or knowledge, can be so reduced.
Even Mill, in its statement of the hedonistic psychology, does not
succeed in making the object of desire mere pleasure as a state of
feeling. It is the "pleasant _thing_" and not pleasure alone which
he finds equivalent to the desire. It is true enough that sugar as
an external fact does not awaken desire, but it is equally true
that a child does not want a passive pleasure. What he wants is his
own activity in which he makes the sugar his own. And it should
be remembered that the case of sugar is at once a trivial and an
exceptional one. Not even children want simply sweet-meats; and the
larger the character which finds expression in wants, the more does
the direct object of want, the bread, the meat, become a mere element
in a larger system of activity. What a man wants is to live, and he
wants sweet-meats, amusements, etc., just as he wants substantials--on
account of their value in life.
Professor James compares the idea that pleasure is the end
of desire to saying that "because no steamer can go to
sea without incidentally consuming coal, ... therefore no
steamer can go to sea for any other motive than that of
coal-consumption." Psychology, Vol. II, p. 558. See the
entire passage, pp. 549-559.
2. But granting that an 'object' and a 'pleasure' are both necessary
to desire, it may be argued that the 'object' is ultimately a means
to 'pleasure.' This expressly raises a question already incidentally
touched upon: What is the controlling element in desire? Why is the
object thought of as pleasant? Simply because it is thought of as
satisfying want. The hedonists, says Green (Prolegomena to Ethics, p.
168), make the "mistake of supposing that a desire can be excited by
the anticipation of its own satisfaction." This is to say, of course,
that it exists before it exists, and thus brings itself into being.
Green, Op. cit., p. 167, states the matter thus: "Ordinary
motives are interests in the attainment of objects, without
which it seems to the man that he cannot satisfy himself,
and in the attainment of which, _because he has desired
them_, he will find a certain pleasure, but only because he
has previously desired them, not because pleasures are the
objects desired." Bradley says on this same point (Ethical
Studies, p. 230): "The difference is between my finding
my pleasure in an end, and my finding means for the end
of my pleasure, and the difference is enormous." Consult
the entire passage, pp. 226-235. See also Caird, Critical
Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, p. 229.
It is the object, then, which controls, and the pleasure is on account
of the attaining of the desired object. But even this statement makes
more division in desire than actually exists; for
3. The real object of desire is activity itself. The will takes its
rise, as we have seen, in impulse; in the reaching for something to
satisfy some felt lack. Now, in reality, desire adds nothing to
impulse excepting _consciousness_ of the impulse. Volitional action
does not differ from impulsive or instinctive, _except in bringing to
consciousness the nature of the want and of the activity necessary to
satisfy it_. But this makes just the difference between 'natural' or
animal activity, and 'moral' or human activity. To be conscious of the
impulse is to elevate it from a blind impelling force to an intended or
proposed end; and thus, by bringing it _before_ consciousness, both to
extend its range and to idealize it, spiritualize it. To be conscious
of an impulse for food means to give up the unreasoned and momentary
seizing of it; to consider the relation of things to this want, what
will satisfy it best, most easily, etc. The _object_ of desire is not
something outside the action; it is an element in the enlarged action.
And as we become more and more conscious of impulse for food, we
analyze our action into more and more 'objects' of desire, but these
objects never become anything apart from the action itself. They are
simply its analyzed and defined content. Man wants activity still, but
he knows better what activity means and includes.
Thus, when we learn what the activity means, it changes its character.
To the animal the activity wanted is simply that of eating the food,
of realizing the momentary impulse. To man the activity becomes
enlarged to include the satisfaction of a whole life, and not of one
life singly, but of the family, etc., connected with the single life.
The material well-being of the family becomes one of the objects of
desire into which the original impulse has grown. But we misinterpret,
when we conceive of this well-being as an external object lying outside
the action. It means simply one aspect of the fuller action. By like
growing consciousness of the meaning of the impulse, production and
exchange of commodities are organized. The impulse for food is extended
to include a whole range of commercial activities.
It is evident that this growing consciousness of the nature of an
impulse, whereby we resolve it into manifold and comprehensive
activities, also takes the impulse out of its isolation and brings it
into connection with other impulses. We come to have not a series of
disconnected impulses, but one all-inclusive activity in which various
subordinate activities (or conscious impulses) are included. Thus, in
the previous example, the impulse for food is united with the family
impulse, and with the impulse for communication and intercourse with
society generally. It is this growing unity with the whole range
of man's action that is the 'spiritualizing' of the impulse--the
natural and brutal impulse being just that which insists upon itself
irrespective of all other wants. The spiritualizing of the impulse
is organizing it so that it becomes one factor in action. Thus we
literally come to 'eat to live', meaning by life not mere physical
existence, but the whole possible sphere of active human relations.
4. Relation of activity to pleasure. We have seen that the 'object' of
desire in itself is a mere abstraction; that the real object is full
activity itself. We are always after larger scope of movement, fuller
income in order to get larger outgo. The 'thing' is always for the
sake of doing; is a part of the doing. The idea that anything less or
other than life (movement, action, and doing), can satisfy man is as
ridiculous when compared with the actual course of things in history,
as it is false psychologically. Freedom is what we want, and freedom
means full unimpeded play of interests, that is, of conscious impulses
(see Sec. 34 and 51). If the object is a mere abstraction apart from
activity, much more is pleasure. Mere pleasure as an object is simply
the extreme of passivity, of mere having, as against action or doing.
It is _possible_ to make pleasure to some degree the object of desire;
this is just what the voluptuary does. But it is a commonplace that
the voluptuary always defeats himself. He never gets satisfaction who
identities satisfaction with having pleasures. The reason is evident
enough. Activity is what we want, and since pleasure comes from getting
what we want, pleasure comes only with activity. To give up the
activity, and attempt to get the pleasure is a contradiction in effect.
Hence also the 'hedonistic paradox'--that in order to get pleasure we
must aim at something else.
There is an interesting recognition of this in Mill
himself, (see his Autobiography, p. 142). And in his
Utilitarianism, in discussing the feasibility of getting
happiness, he shows (pp. 318-319) that the sources of
happiness are an intelligent interest in surrounding
things--objects of nature, achievements of art, incidents
of history--and especially an unselfish devotion to others.
Which is to say that man does not find satisfaction
in pleasure as such at all, but only in objective
affairs--that is, in complete interpretation, in activity
with a wide and full content. Further consideration of the
end of desire and its relation to pleasure may be found in
Green, Op. cit., pp. 123-132; pp. 163-167. Bradley, Mind,
Vol. XIII, p. 1, and Dewey, Psychology, pp. 360-365.
XIV. Criticism--_Continued_.
Character and Pleasure.
It now being admitted that the end of desire is activity itself in
which the 'object' and 'pleasure' are simply factors, what is the
moving spring to action? What is it that arouses the mind to the larger
activity? Most of the hedonists have confounded the two senses of
motive already spoken of, and have held that _because_ pleasure is the
end of desire, therefore it is the moving spring of conduct (or more
often that because it is the moving spring of conduct it _therefore_ is
the end of desire).
Mr. Stephen (Science of Ethics, pp. 46-58), although classing himself
as a hedonist, has brought out this confusion very clearly. Ordinary
hedonism confounds, as he shows, the judgment of what is pleasant--the
supposed end--with the pleasant judgment--the moving spring. (See also
Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 232-236). It may be admitted that it is feeling
which moves to action, but it is the _present_ feeling which moves.
If the feeling aimed at moves, it is only as through anticipation it
becomes the present feeling. Now is this present feeling which moves
(1) mere pleasure and (2) mere feeling at all? This introduces us to
the question of the relation of pleasure (and of feeling in general) to
character.
1. If the existing state of consciousness--that which moves--were pure
pleasure, why should there be any movement, any act at all? The feeling
which moves must be in so far complex: over against the pleasure felt
in the anticipation of an end as satisfying, there must be pain felt in
the contrasting unsatisfactory present condition. There must be tension
between the anticipated or ideal action, and the actual or present
(relative) non-action. And it is this tension, in which pain is just
as normal an element as pleasure, which moves. Desire is just this
tension of an action which satisfies, and yet is only ideal, against an
actual possession which, in contrast with the ideal action, is felt as
incomplete action, or lack, and hence as unsatisfactory.
2. The question now comes as to the nature of this tension. We may
call it 'feeling,' if we will, and say that feeling is the sole motive
power to action. But there is no such thing as feeling at large, and
the important thing, morally, is what _kind_ of feeling moves. To take
a mere abstraction like 'feeling' for the source of action is, at
root, the fallacy of hedonism. To raise the question, What is it that
makes the feeling what it is, is to recognize that the feeling, taken
concretely, is _character_ in a certain attitude.
Stephen, who has insisted with great force that feeling
is the sole 'motive' to action, has yet shown with equal
cogency the moral uselessness of such a doctrine, when
feeling is left undefined (Op. cit., p. 44). "The love of
happiness must express the sole possible motive of Judas
Iscariot and his master; it must explain the conduct of
Stylites on his column, of Tiberius at Capreæ, of A Kempis
in his cell, and of Nelson in the cockpit of the Victory.
It must be equally good for saints, martyrs, heroes,
cowards, debauchees, ascetics, mystics, cynics, misers,
prodigals, men, women, and babes in arms." Surely, this is
only to say, in effect, that 'love of happiness' is a pure
bit of scholasticism, an undefined entity.
In a hedonistic argument (by Stanton Coit, Mind, Vol. XI, p. 349),
the fallacy is seen in the following discussion. The story is told of
Abraham Lincoln that he once passed an animal in distress by the side
of the road, and that, after going by, he finally went back and got
him out of the ditch. On being praised for his act, he replied that he
did it on his own account, since he kept getting more uncomfortable as
he thought of the animal in distress. From this, it cannot be inferred
that love of pleasure is at the basis of moral acts. The mere lumping
off of feeling as the spring of conduct overlooks the only important
thing morally--the fact that Lincoln felt pain at the thought of the
animal unrelieved, and pleasure at the idea of its relief, just because
he was a man of compassionate _character_. It was not the feeling, but
the character revealed in, and creative of, the feeling that was the
real source of the act.
To connect this with our previous account of desire (p. 26): the
important thing morally is that the nature of the tension between fact
and idea--the actual state and the ideal activity--is an expression
of character. What kind of activity does it take to satisfy a man?
Does riding in a comfortable carriage, and following the course of his
own reflections exhaust his need of action? or does his full activity
require that note be taken of a suffering animal? It is the kind
of character one is (that is, the kind of activity which satisfies
and expresses one) which decides what pleasure shall be taken in an
anticipated end, what feeling of lack or hindrance (what pain) there
shall be in the given state, and hence what the resulting tension, or
desire, shall be. It is, therefore, character which moves to conduct.
Mere wishing, the mere floating fancy of this or that thing as
desirable, is not desire. To _want_ is an active projection of
character; really and deeply to want is no surface and passing
feeling; it is the stirring of character to its depths. There may be
repressed activity; that is not, of itself, desire. There may be an
image of larger activity; that is not, of itself, desire. But given
the _consciousness_ of a repressed activity in view of the perception
of a possible larger action, and a man strives within himself to break
his bonds and reach the new satisfaction. This striving within one's
self, before the activity becomes overt, is the emotional antecedent
of action. But this inward striving or tension, which constitutes
desire, is so far from being _mere_ emotion that it is character
itself--character as it turns an inward or ideal advance into an
outward, or real progress, into action.
We may fall back on Aristotle's statement (page 38, of
Peters' translation of his ethics): "The pleasure or pain
that accompanies an act must be regarded as a _test_ of
_character_. He who abstains from the pleasures of the body
and rejoices in his abstinence is temperate, while he who
is vexed at having to abstain is still profligate. As Plato
tells us, man needs to be so trained from youth up as to
take pleasure and pain _in the right objects_."
XV.
Summary.
The truth in hedonism is its conviction that the good, the end of man,
is not to be found in any outward object, but only in what comes home
to man in his own conscious experience. The error is in reducing this
experience to mere having, to bare feelings or affections, eliminating
the element of doing. It is this doing which satisfies man, and it is
this which involves as its content (as knowledge of impulse, instead
of blind impulse) objective and permanent ends. When Mill speaks of
the end of desire as a "satisfied life," (p. 317 of Utilitarianism) he
carries our assent; but to reduce this satisfied life to feelings of
pleasure, and absence of pains, is to destroy the life and hence the
satisfaction. As Mill recognizes, a life bounded by the agent's own
feelings would be, as of course, a life "centred in his own miserable
individuality." (Mill, p. 319). Such words have meaning only because
they suggest the contrast with activity in which are comprehended,
as 'ends' or 'objects' (that is, as part of its defined content)
things--art, science and industry--and persons (see Secs. 34 and 35).
Here too we must 'back to Aristotle.' According to him the
end of conduct is _eudaimonia_, success, welfare, satisfied
life. But _eudaimonia_ is found not in pleasure, but in
the fulfillment of human powers and functions, in which
fulfillment, since it is fulfillment, pleasure is had.
(Ethics, Bk. I, ch. 4-8).
We now take up the question whether pleasure is a standard of right
action, having finished the discussion concerning it as an end of
desire.
XVI.
Pleasure as the Standard of Conduct.
The line of criticism on this point may be stated as follows: Pleasure
fails as a standard for the very reason that it fails as a motive.
Pleasure, _as conceived by the hedonist_, is passive, merely agreeable
sensations, without any objective and qualitative (active) character.
This being so, there is no permanent, fixed basis to which we may refer
_acts_ and by which we may judge them. A standard implies a single
comprehensive end which unifies all acts and through connection with
which each gets its moral value fixed. Only action can be a standard
for acts. To reduce all acts to means to getting a mere state of
feeling is the inevitable consequence of hedonism. So reducing them is
to deprive them of any standard of value.
An end to serve as standard must be (1) a comprehensive end for all
the acts of an individual, and (2) an end comprehending the activities
of various individuals--a common good.
1. The moral end must be that for the sake of which all conduct
occurs--the _organizing principle_ of conduct--a totality, a system.
If pleasure is the end it is because each detail of conduct gets its
placing, its moral value through relation to pleasure, through the
contribution it makes to pleasure.
2. The moral end must also include the ends of the various agents who
make up society. It must be capable of constituting a social system
out of the acts of various agents, as well as an individual system out
of the various acts of one agent; or, more simply, the moral end must
be not only the good for all the particular acts of an individual, but
must be a _common good_--a good which in satisfying one, satisfies
others.
All ethical theories would claim that the end proposed by them served
these two purposes. We shall endeavor to show that the hedonistic
theory, the doctrine that the pleasure is the good, is not capable of
serving either of them.
XVII.
Pleasure Not a Standard.
1. _It does not unify character._ In the first place, the hedonistic
theory makes an unreal and impossible separation between conduct and
character. The psychology of hedonism comes into conflict with its
ethics. According to the former the motive of all action is to secure
pleasure or avoid pain. So far as the motive is concerned, on this
theory there can be no immoral action at all. That the agent should
not be moved by pleasure, and by what, at the time of acting, is the
greatest pleasure possible, would be a psychological impossibility.
Every motive would be good, or rather there would be no distinction of
good or bad pertaining to the motive. The character of the agent, as
measured by his motives, could never, under such circumstances, have
any moral quality.
To the consequences of action, or the conduct proper, however, the
terms good and bad might be applied. Although the agent is moved by
pleasurable feelings, the result of his action may be painful and thus
bad. In a word, on the hedonistic theory, it is only the external
consequences of conduct, or conduct divorced from character, to which
moral adjectives have any application. Such a separation not only
contradicts our experience (see VIII), but inverts the true order of
moral judgment. Consequences do not enter into the moral estimate at
all, except so far as, being foreseen, they are the act in idea. That
is, it is only as the consequences are taken up into the motive, and
thus related to character, that they are subject to moral judgment.
Indeed, except so far as action expresses character, it is not conduct,
but mere physical sequence, as irrelevant to morality as the change in
blood distribution, which also is the 'result' of an action. Hedonism
has to rule out at the start the only thing that gives totality to
action--the character of the agent, or conduct as the outcome of
motives. Furthermore, the ordinary judgment of men, instead of saying
that the sole moral motive is to get pleasure, would say that to
reduce everything to means for getting pleasure is the very essence of
immorality.
On the point above, compare Bentham, Op. cit., I, p. 48.
"A motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure or
pain operating in a certain manner. Now pleasure is in
itself a good: nay, even, setting aside immunity from pain,
the only good; pain is in itself an evil, and, indeed,
without exception, the only evil; or else the words good
and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every
sort of pain and of every sort of pleasure. It follows,
therefore, immediately and incontestably, that there is
no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a
bad one. If motives are good or bad, it is only on account
of their effects; good on account of their tendency to
produce pleasure or avert pain; bad on account of their
tendency to produce pain or avert pleasure. Now the case
is, that from one and the same motive, and from every kind
of motive, may proceed actions that are good, others that
are bad and others that are indifferent." Further, on p.
60, Bentham asks: "Is there nothing, then, about a man
that can properly be termed good or bad, when on such or
such an occasion he suffers himself to be governed by such
or such a motive? Yes, certainly, his _disposition_. Now
disposition is a kind of fictitious entity, feigned for the
convenience of discourse, in order to express what there
is supposed to be _permanent_ in a man's frame of mind. It
is with disposition as with everything else; it will be
good or bad according to its effects." The first quotation,
it will be noticed, simply states that the motive is in
itself always good, while conduct (_i. e._, consequences)
may be good, bad or indifferent. The second quotation
seems, however, to pass moral judgment upon character
under the name of disposition. But disposition is judged
according to the tendency of a person's actions. A good
or bad disposition, here, can mean nothing intrinsic to
the person, but only that the person has been observed to
act in ways that usually produce pain or pleasure, as the
case may be. The term is a 'fiction', and is a backhanded
way of expressing a somewhat habitual _result_ of a
given person's conduct his motive remaining good (or for
pleasure) all the time. The agent would never pronounce any
such judgment upon his own disposition, unless as a sort of
surprise that, his motive being 'good,' his actions turn
out so 'bad' all the time. At most, the judgment regarding
disposition is a sort of label put upon a man by others, a
label of "Look out for him, he is dangerous," or, "Behold,
a helpful man."
The moral standard of hedonism does not, then, bear any relation to the
character of the agent, does not enable us to judge it, either as a
whole or in any specific manifestation.
XVIII.
It Does Not Give a Criterion for Concrete Acts.
Pleasure, as the end, fails also to throw light on the moral value of
any specific acts. Its failure in this respect is, indeed, only the
other side of that just spoken of. There is no organizing principle,
no 'universal' on the basis of which various acts fall into a system
or order. The moral life is left a series of shreds and patches, where
each act is torn off, as to its moral value, from every other. Each
act is right or wrong, according as _it_ gives pleasure or pain, and
independently of any whole of life. There is, indeed, no whole of
moral life at all, but only a series of isolated, disconnected acts.
Possession, passivity, _mere_ feeling, by its very nature cannot
unite--each feeling is itself and that is the end of it. It is action
which reduces multiplicity to unity. We cannot say, in the hedonistic
theory, that pleasure is the end, but _pleasures_.
Each act stands by itself--the only question is: What pleasure will
_it_ give? The settling of this question is the "hedonistic calculus."
We must discover the intensity, duration, certainty, degree of nearness
of the pleasure likely to arise from the given act, and also its
purity, or likelihood of being accompanied by secondary pains and
pleasures. Then we are to strike the balance between the respective
sums on the pleasure and pain sides, and, according as this balance is
one of pleasure or pain, the act is good or evil.
Bentham, Op. cit., p. 16, was the first to go into detail
as to this method. He has also given certain memoriter
verses stating "the points on which the whole fabric of
morals and legislation may be seen to rest.
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure,
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure,
Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end.
If it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid whichever be thy view,
If pains must come, let them extend to few."
This, however, in its reference to others, states the
utilitarian as well as the hedonistic view.
Now, it must be remembered that, if pleasure is the end, there is no
intrinsic connection between the motive of the act, and its result.
It is not claimed that there is anything belonging intrinsically to
the motive of the act which makes it result in pleasure or pain. To
make such a claim would be to declare the moral quality of the act the
criterion of the pleasure, instead of pleasure the criterion of the
act. The pleasures are external to the act; they are irrelevant and
accidental to its quality. There is no 'universal,' no intrinsic bond
of connection between the act and its consequences. The consequence is
a mere particular state of feeling, which, in this instance, the act
has happened to bring about.
More concretely, this act of truth-telling has in this instance,
brought about pleasure. Shall we call it right? Right in _this_
instance, of course; but is it right generally? Is truth-telling, as
such, right, or is it merely that this instance of it happens to
be right? Evidently, on the hedonistic basis, we cannot get beyond
the latter judgment. _Prior_ to any act, there will be plenty of
difficulties in telling whether it, as _particular_, is right or wrong.
The consequences depend not merely on the result intended, but upon a
multitude of circumstances outside of the foresight and control of the
agent. And there can be only a precarious calculation of possibilities
and probabilities--a method which would always favor laxity of conduct
in all but the most conscientious of men, and which would throw the
conscientious into uncertainty and perplexity in the degree of their
conscientiousness.
"If once the pleas of instinct are to be abolished and
replaced by a hedonistic arithmetic, the whole realm of
animated nature has to be reckoned with in weaving the
tissue of moral relations, and the problem becomes infinite
and insoluble".--Martineau, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 334.
But waive this; let the particular case be settled. There is still no
law, no principle, indeed no presumption as to future conduct. The act
is not right _because_ it is _truth-telling_, but because, in this
instance, circumstances were such as to throw a balance of pleasure
in its favor. This establishes no certainty, no probability as to its
next outcome. The result _then_ will depend wholly upon circumstances
existing _then_--circumstances which have no intrinsic relation to the
act and which must change from time to time.
The hedonist would escape this abolition of all principle, or even
rule, by falling back upon a number of cases--'past experience' it is
called. We have found in a number of cases that a certain procedure has
resulted in pleasure, and this result is sufficient to guide us in a
vast number of cases which come up.
Says Mill (Op. cit., pp. 332-4): "During the whole past
duration of the species, mankind have been learning by
experience the tendencies of actions, on which experience
all the prudence as well as all the morality of life are
dependent.... Mankind must by this time have acquired
positive belief as to the effects of some actions on their
happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are
the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the
philosopher, until he has succeeded in finding better....
Nobody argues that the art 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 ready 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."
That we do learn from experience the moral nature of actions is
undoubted. The only question is: _if_ hedonism were true, _could_ we
so learn? Suppose that I were convinced that the results of murder in
the past had been generally, or even without exception (though this
could not be proved), painful; as long as the act and the result in the
way of feeling (pain or pleasure) are conceived as having no intrinsic
connection, this would not prove that in the present instance murder
will give a surplus of pain. I am not thinking of committing murder in
general, but of murder under certain specific present circumstances.
These circumstances may, and, to some extent, _must_ vary from all
previous instances of murder. How then can I reason from them to
it? Or, rather, let me use the previous cases as much as I may, the
moral quality of the act I am now to perform must still be judged not
from them, but from the circumstances of the present case. To judge
otherwise, is, on hedonistic principles, to be careless, perhaps
criminally careless as to one's conduct. The more convinced a man is
of the truth of hedonism and the more conscientious he is, the more he
is bound _not_ to be guided by previous circumstances, but to form his
judgment anew concerning the new case. This result flows out of the
very nature of the hedonistic ideal. Pleasure is not an activity, but
simply a particular feeling, enduring only while it is felt. Moreover,
there is in it no principle which connects it intrinsically with any
_kind_ of action. To suppose then that, because ninety-nine cases of
murder have resulted in pain, the hundredth will, is on a par with
reasoning that because ninety-nine days have been frosty, the hundredth
will be. Each case, taken as particular, must be decided wholly by
itself. There is no continuous moral life, and no system of conduct.
There is only a succession of unlike acts.
Mill, in his examination of Whewell, (Diss. and Diss.,
Vol. III, pp. 158-59), tries to establish a general
principle, if not a universal law, by arguing that, even
in exceptional cases, the agent is bound to respect the
rule, because to act otherwise would weaken the rule, and
thus lead to its being disregarded in other cases, in which
its observance results in pleasure. There are, he says,
persons so wicked that their removal from the earth would
undoubtedly increase the sum total of happiness. But if
persons were to violate the general rule in these cases,
it would tend to destroy the rule. "If it were thought
allowable for any one to put to death at pleasure any human
being whom he believes that the world would be well rid
of,--nobody's life would be safe." That is to say, if every
one were really to act upon and carry out the hedonistic
principle, no rule of life would exist. This does very well
as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of hedonism, or as an argument
against adopting hedonism, but it is difficult to see how
Mill thought that it established a 'rule' on a hedonistic
basis. Mill's argument comes to saying that if hedonism
were uniformly acted upon, it would defeat itself--that
is, pleasure would not result. Therefore, in order to get
pleasure, we must not act upon the principle of hedonism
at all, but follow a general rule. Otherwise put: hedonism
gives no general rule, but we must have a general rule to
make hedonism works and therefore there is a general rule!
This begging of the question comes out even more plainly as
Mill goes on: "If one person may break through the rule
on his own judgment, the same liberty cannot be refused to
others; and, since no one could rely on the rule's being
observed, the rule would cease to exist." All of this is
obviously true, but it amounts to saying: "We _must_ have
a rule, and this we would not have if we carried out the
hedonistic principle in each case; therefore, we must not
carry it out." A principle, that carried out destroys all
rules which pretend to rest upon it, lays itself open to
suspicion. Mill assumes the entire question in assuming
that there is a rule. Grant this, and the necessity of
not 'making exceptions,' that is, of not applying the
hedonistic standard to each case, on its own merits,
follows. But the argument which Mill needs to meet is that
hedonism _requires_ us to apply the standard to each case
in itself, and that, therefore, there _is_ no rule. Mill
simply says--_assume_ the rule, and it follows, etc.
See Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 96-101; Green, Bk. IV, Ch. 3;
Martineau, Vol. II, pp. 329-334.
XIX.
The Sum and the Quality of Pleasure as the Standard.
We have been dealing with hedonism in its strict form--that which makes
_a_ pleasure, considered as to its intensity, certainty, etc., the
end of an act. Hedonism in this form fails to unify life, and fails,
therefore, to supply any standard. But the end of conduct is often
stated to be the greatest possible sum of pleasures thus introducing a
certain element of generality. Mill goes further and brings in the idea
of quality of pleasure.
Regarding the sum of pleasures the following from Sidgwick
(Op. cit., p. 382; see also p. 114) gives the hedonistic
statement. "The assumption is involved that all pleasures
are capable of being compared qualitatively with one
another and with all pains; that every feeling has a
certain intensive quality, positive or negative (or perhaps
zero) in respect to its desirableness and that the quantity
may be known, so that each may be weighed in ethical scales
against any other. This assumption is involved in the very
motion of maximum happiness," as the attempt to make "as
great as possible a sum of elements not quantitatively
commensurable would be a mathematical absurdity."
I. Sum of pleasures as the moral end. This, first, taken as criterion,
comes into conflict with the hedonistic psychology of pleasure as the
motive of acts; and, secondly, it requires some objective standard by
means of which pleasure is to be summed, and is, in so far, a surrender
of the whole hedonistic position.
1. If the object of desire is pleasure or a state of feeling which
exists only as it is felt, it is impossible that we should desire a
greatest sum of pleasures. We can desire a pleasure and that only. It
is not even possible that we should ever desire a continuous series of
pleasures. We can desire one pleasure and when that is gone, another,
but we can not unify our desires enough to aim at even a sum of
pleasures.
This is well put by Green (Op. cit, p. 236). "For the
feeling of a pleased person, or in relation to his sense
of enjoyment, pleasure cannot form a sum. However numerous
the sources of a state of pleasant feeling, it is one
and is over before another can be enjoyed. It and its
successors can be added together in thought, but not in
enjoyment or in imagination of an enjoyment. If the desire
is only for pleasure, _i. e._, for an enjoyment or feeling
of pleasure, we are simply victims of words when we talk of
desire for a sum of pleasures, much more when we take the
greatest imaginable sum to be the most desirable." See the
whole passage, pp. 235-246.
2. But the phrase "sum of pleasures" undoubtedly has a meaning--though
the fact that it has a meaning shows the untruth of the hedonistic
psychology. Surrendering this psychology, what shall we say of the
maximum possibility of pleasure as the criterion of the morality
of acts? It must be conceded that this conception does afford some
basis--although a rather slippery one--for the unification of conduct.
Each act is considered now not in its isolation merely, but in its
connection with other acts, according as its relation to them may
increase or decrease the possible sum of future happiness. But this
very fact that some universal, or element of relation, albeit a
quantitative one, has been introduced, arouses this inquiry: Whence
do we derive it? How do we get the thought of a sum of pleasure,
and of a maximum sum? _Only by taking into account the objective
conditions upon which pleasures depend, and by judging the pleasures
from the standpoint of these objective conditions._ When we imagine
we are thinking of a sum of pleasures, we are really thinking of
that totality of conditions which will come nearest affording us
self-satisfaction--we are thinking of a comprehensive and continuous
activity whose various parts are adjusted to one another. Because it is
complete activity, it is necessarily conceived as giving the greatest
possible pleasure, but apart from reference to complete activity and
apart from the objects in which this is realized, the phrase 'greatest
sum of happiness' is a mere phrase. Pleasures must be measured by a
standard, by a yard stick, before they can be summed in thought, and
the yard stick we use is the activity in which the pleasure comes. We
do not measure conduct by pleasure, but we compare and sum up pleasures
on the basis of the objects which occasion them. To add feelings, mere
transitory consequences, without first reducing those feelings to a
common denominator by their relation to one objective standard, is an
impossibility. Pleasure is a sort of sign or symbol of the object which
satisfies, and we may carry on our judgment, if we will, in terms of
the sign, without reference to the standard, but to argue as if the
sign were the thing, as if the sum of pleasure were the activity, is
suicidal.
Thus Green says (Op. cit., p. 244): "In truth a man's
reference to his own true happiness is a reference to the
objects which chiefly interest him, and has its controlling
power on that account. More strictly, it is a reference
to an ideal state of well-being, a state in which he
shall be satisfied; _but the objects of the man's chief
interests supply the filling of that ideal state_." See the
argument as put by Alexander (Moral Order and Progress,
pp. 199-200). Alexander has also brought out (Ibid., pp.
207-210) that even if we are going to use a quantitative
standard, the idea of a sum is not a very happy one. It
is not so much a sum of pleasures we want, as a certain
proportionate distribution and combination of pleasures.
"To regard the greatest sum of pleasures as the test of
conduct, supposing that we could express it in units of
pleasure, would be like declaring that when you had an
atomic weight of 98 you had sulphuric acid. The numerical
test would be useless unless we knew what elements were
to be combined, and in what proportion. Similarly till we
know what kinds of activities (and therefore what kinds
of pleasures) go with one another to form the end, the
greatest sum of pleasures will give us only the equivalent
of the end, but will not tell us what the composition of
the end is, still less how to get at it; or, to put the
matter more simply, when we know what the characters of
persons are, and how they are combined in morality, we then
estimate the corresponding sum of pleasures." (p. 209.)
II. A certain quality of pleasure the end. Some moralists, notably John
Stuart Mill, introduce considerations regarding the quality of pleasure
into the conception of the end. "It is quite compatible," says Mill,
"with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds
of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others." (p.
310.) Is it compatible? Is kind of pleasure the same thing as pleasure?
does not strict hedonism demand that all kinds of pleasure equally
present as to intensity in consciousness shall be of the same value?
To say otherwise is to give up pleasure as such as the standard and to
hold that we have means for discriminating the respective values of
pleasures which simply, _as feelings_, are the same. It is to hold,
that is to say, that there is some standard of value external to the
pleasures as such, by means of which their moral quality may be judged.
In this case, this independent standard is the real moral criterion
which we are employing. Hedonism is surrendered.
Kant's position on this point seems impregnable. "It is
surprising," he says, "that men otherwise astute can
think it possible to distinguish between higher and lower
desires, according as the ideas which are connected with
the feeling of pleasure have their origin in the senses
or in the understanding; for when we inquire what are the
determining grounds of desire, and place them in some
expected pleasantness, it is of no consequence whence
the _idea_ of this pleasing object is derived, but only
how much it _pleases_.... The only thing that concerns
one, in order to decide choice, is how great, how long
continued, how easily obtained and how often repeated,
this agreeableness is. For as to the man who wants money
to spend, it is all the same whether the gold was dug out
of the mountain or washed out of the sand, provided it is
every-where accepted at the same value; so the man who
cares only for the enjoyment of life does not ask whether
the ideas are of the understanding or the senses, but only
_how much_ and _how great pleasure_ they will give for the
longest time."
See also Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 105-110.
When we ask how the differences in quality are established and how
we translate this qualitative difference into moral difference, the
surrender of pleasure as the standard becomes even more evident.
We must know not only the fact of different qualities, but how to
decide which is 'higher' than any other. We must bring the qualities
before a tribunal of judgment which applies to them some standard of
measurement. In themselves qualities may be different, but they are not
higher and lower. What is the tribunal and what is the law of judgment?
According to Mill the tribunal is the preference of those who are
acquainted with both kinds of pleasure.
"Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all, or almost
all who have experience of both, give a decided preference,
irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer
it, that is the more desirable pleasure." It is an
unquestionable fact that such differences exist. "Few human
creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower
animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's
pleasures. No intelligent person would consent to be a
fool; no instructed person would be an ignoramus; no person
of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base,
even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the
dunce or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than
they are with theirs.... It is better to be a human being
dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates
dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the
pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only
know their own side of the question. The other party to the
comparison knows both sides."--Mill, Op. cit., pp. 311-313.
And in an omitted portion Mill says the reason that one
of the higher faculty would prefer a suffering which goes
along with that higher capacity, to more pleasure on a
lower plane, is something of which "the most appropriate
appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings
possess in one form or another."
A question immediately arises regarding this standard of preferability.
Is it the mere historical fact that some man, who has experienced both,
prefers A to B that makes A more desirable? Surely I might say that if
that person prefers A, A is more desirable to him, but that I for my
part prefer B, and that I do not intend to give up my preference. And
why should I, even though thousands of other men happened to prefer A?
B is the greater pleasure, none the less, to me, and as a hedonist I
must cling to the only standard that I have. The hedonists, in a word,
have appealed to feeling, and to feeling they must go for judgment. And
feeling exists only as it is felt and only to him who feels it.
On the other hand, perhaps it is not the bare act that some men prefer
one pleasure to another that makes it more desirable, but something
in the character of the men who prefer. And this is what Mill implies.
It is a "sense of dignity" belonging to man which makes his judgment
of pleasure better than that of animals; it is the human being against
the pig, Socrates against the fool, the good man against the rascal.
This is the complete surrender of hedonism, and the all but explicit
assertion that human character, goodness, wisdom, are the criteria of
pleasure, instead of pleasure the criterion of character and goodness.
Mill's "sense of dignity," which is to be considered in all estimates
of pleasures, is just the sense of a moral (or active) capacity and
destiny belonging to man. To refer pleasures to _this_ is to make it
the standard, and with this standard the anti-hedonist may well be
content, while asking, however, for its further analysis.
To sum up our long discussion of pleasure as a criterion of conduct
in respect of its unity, we may say: Pleasure, _as it actually exists
in man_, may be taken as _a_ criterion, although not the really
primary one, of action. But this is not hedonism; for pleasure as it
_exists_ is something more than pleasurable feeling; it is qualified
through and through by the kind of action which it accompanies, by
the kind of objects which the activity comprehends. And thus it is
always a secondary criterion. The moment we begin to analyze we
must ask what _kind of activity_, what kind of object it is which
the pleasure accompanies and of which it is a symbol. We may, if we
will, calculate a man's wealth in terms of dollars and cents; but this
is only because we can translate the money, the symbol, into goods,
the reality. To desire pleasure instead of an activity of self, is
to substitute symbol for fact, and a symbol cut off from fact ceases
to be a symbol. Pleasure, as the hedonist treats it, mere agreeable
feeling without active and thus objective relationships, is wholly an
abstraction. Since an abstraction, to make it the end of desire results
in self-contradiction; while to make it the standard of conduct is to
deprive life of all unity, all system, in a word--of all standard.
XX.
The Failure of Pleasure as a Standard to Unify Conduct Socially.
Thus far our examination of the hedonistic criterion has been devoted
to showing that it will not make a system out of individual conduct.
We have now to recognize the fact that pleasure is not a common good,
and therefore fails to give a social unity to conduct--that is, it does
not offer an end for which men may coöperate, or a good which reached
by one must be shared by another. No argument is needed to show,
theoretically, that any proposed moral criterion must, in order to be
valid, harmonize the interests and activities of different men, or to
show, practically, that the whole tendency of the modern democratic
and philanthropic movement has been to discover and realize a good
in which men shall share on the basis of an equal principle. It is
contended that hedonism fails to satisfy these needs. According to it,
the end for each man is his own pleasure. Pleasure is nothing objective
in which men may equally participate. It is purely individual in the
most exclusive sense of that term. It is a state of feeling and can
be enjoyed only while felt, and only by the one who feels it. To set
it up for the ideal of conduct is to turn life into an exclusive and
excluding struggle for possession of the means of personal enjoyment;
it is to erect into a principle the idea of the war of all against
all. No end more thoroughly disintegrating than individual agreeable
sensation could well be imagined.
Says Kant, (page 116 of Abbott's Trans., entitled Kant's
Theory of Ethics) on the basis of the desire of happiness
"there results a harmony like that which a certain
satirical poem depicts as existing between a married couple
bent on going to ruin: O, marvellous harmony, what he
wishes, she wishes also; or like what is said of the pledge
of Francis I to the emperor Charles V, what my brother
Charles wishes that I wish also (_viz._, Milan)."
Almost all modern moralists who take pleasure as the end conceive it
to be not individual pleasure, but the happiness of all men or even
of all sentient creatures. Thus we are brought to the consideration of
Utilitarianism.
Says Mill (Op. cit., p. 323), "The happiness which forms
the Utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is
not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned;
as between his own happiness and that of others,
Utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial
as a disinterested and benevolent spectator." And (page
315) the Utilitarian standard is "not the agent's own
greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness
altogether." See also Sidgwick (Op. cit., p. 379), "By
Utilitarianism is here meant the ethical theory, first
distinctly formulated by Bentham, that the conduct which,
under any given circumstances is externally or objectively
right is that which will produce the greatest amount of
happiness _on the whole_; that is, taking into account
all whose happiness is affected by the conduct. It would
tend to clearness if we might call this principle, and the
method based upon it, by some such name as Universalistic
hedonism." As popularly put, the utilitarian standard is
the "greatest happiness of the greatest number." While
in its calculation "each is to count for one and only
one." (_Bentham_). And finally Bain (Emotions and Mill,
p. 303), "Utility is opposed to the selfish theory, for,
as propounded, it always implies the good of society
generally, and the subordination of individual interests to
the general good."
XXI.
Criticism of Utilitarianism.
The utilitarian theory certainly does away entirely with one of the
two main objections to hedonism--its failure to provide a general,
as distinct from a private end. The question which we have to meet,
however, is whether this extension of the end from the individual to
society is consistent with the fundamental principles of hedonism.
_How_ do we get from individual pleasure to the happiness of all?
An intuitional utilitarian, like Sidgwick, has ready an
answer which is not open to the empirical utilitarians,
like Bentham, Mill and Bain. Methods of Ethics, Bk. III,
ch. 13-14, p. 355. "We may obtain the _self-evident
principle_ that the good of any one individual is of no
more importance, as a part of universal good, than the
good of any other. The abstract principle of the duty
of benevolence, _so far as it is cognizable by direct
intuition_" is, "that one is morally bound to regard the
good of any other individual as much as one's own"--and
page 364, "_the principles, so far as they are immediately
known by abstract intuition_, can only be stated as
precepts to seek (1) one's own good on the whole, and (2)
the good of any other no less than one's own, in so far as
it is no less an element of universal good." Sidgwick, that
is, differs in two important points from most utilitarians.
He holds that pleasure is not the sole, or even the usual
object of desire. And he holds that we have an immediate
faculty of rational intuition which informs us that the
good of others is as desirable an end of our conduct as is
our own happiness. Our former arguments against pleasure as
the _end_, bear, of course, equally against this theory,
but not the following arguments. Criticisms of this
position of Sidgwick's will be found in Green (Op. cit.,
pp. 406-415); Bradley (Op. cit., pp. 114-117).
The popular answer to the question how we get from individual to
general happiness, misses the entire point of the question. This
answer simply says that happiness is '_intrinsically_ desirable'. Let
it be so; but 'happiness' in this general way is a mere abstraction.
Happiness is always a particular condition of one particular person.
Whose happiness is desirable and _to whom_? Because my happiness is
intrinsically desirable to me, does it follow that your happiness is
intrinsically desirable to me? Indeed, in the hedonistic psychology,
is it not nonsense to say that a state of your feeling is desirable
to me? Mill's amplified version of the popular answer brings out the
ambiguity all the more plainly. He says (Utilitarianism, p. 349), "No
reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that
each person, so far as he believes it to be obtainable, desires his own
happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof
which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that
happiness is a good; that each person's happiness is a good to that
person; and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate
of all persons." But does it follow that because the happiness of A is
an end to A, the happiness of B an end to B, and the happiness of C an
end to C, that, therefore, the happiness of B and C is an end to A?
There is obviously no connection between the premises and the supposed
conclusion. And there appears to be, as Mill puts it, only an account
of the ambiguity of his last clause, "the general happiness a good to
the aggregate of all persons." The good of A and B and C may be a good
to the aggregate (A + B + C), but what universalistic hedonism requires
is that the aggregate good of A + B + C, be a good to A and to B and
to C taken separately--a very different proposition. Mill is guilty
of the fallacy known logically as the fallacy of division--arguing
from a collective whole to the distributed units. Because all men
want to be happy, it hardly follows that every man wants all to be
happy. There is, accordingly, no _direct_ road from individualistic
hedonism--private pleasure--to universalistic--general pleasure.
Moreover, if we adopt the usual psychology of hedonism and say that
pleasure is the motive of acting, it is absolutely absurd to say that
general pleasure can be a motive. How can I be moved by the happiness
which exists in some one else? I may feel a pleasure resembling his,
and be moved by it, but that is quite a different matter.
XXII.
Indirect Means of Identifying Private and General Pleasure.
Is there any _indirect_ method of going from the pleasure of one to
the pleasure of all? Upon the whole, the utilitarians do not claim
that there is any natural and immediate connection between the desire
for private and for general happiness, but suppose that there are
certain means which are instrumental in bringing about an identity. Of
these means the sympathetic emotions and the influence of law and of
education are the chief. Each of these, moreover, coöperates with the
other.
1. _Sympathetic and Social Emotions._
We are so constituted by nature that we take pleasure in the happiness
of others and feel pain in their misery. A proper regard for our own
welfare must lead us, therefore, to take an interest in the pleasure
of others. Our own feelings, moreover, are largely influenced by the
feelings of others toward us. If we act in a certain way we shall
incur the disapprobation of others, and this, independently of any
overt punishment it may lead them to inflict upon us, arouses feelings
of shame, of inferiority, of being under the displeasure of others,
feelings all of which are decidedly painful. The more enlightened our
judgment, the more we see how our pleasures are bound up in those of
others.
"The Dictates of Utility" (Bentham, Op. cit., p. 56)
"are neither more nor less than the dictates of the
most extensive and enlightened (that is, well advised)
benevolence," and (p. 18), "The pleasures of benevolence
are the pleasures resulting from the view of any pleasures
supposed to be possessed by the beings who may be the
objects of benevolence.... These may also be called the
pleasures of good will, the pleasures of sympathy, or the
pleasures of the benevolent or social affections"; and (p.
144), "What motives (independent of such as legislation and
religion may choose to furnish) can one man have to consult
the happiness of another?... In answer to this, it cannot
but be admitted that the only interests which a man at all
times and upon all occasions is sure to find _adequate_
motives for consulting, are his own. Notwithstanding this,
there are no occasions in which a man has not some motives
for consulting the happiness of other men. In the first
place he has, on all occasions, the purely social motive
of sympathy and benevolence; in the next place he has,
on most occasions, the semi-social motives of love of
amity and love of reputation." And so in the Deontology,
which, however, was not published by Bentham himself, page
203, "The more enlightened one is, the more one forms the
habit of general benevolence, because it is seen that the
interests of men combine with each other in more points
than they conflict in."
2. _Education and Law._
Education, working directly and internally upon the feelings, and
government, appealing to them from without through commands and
penalties, are constantly effecting an increasing identity of
self-interest and regard for others. These means supplement the action
of sympathy and the more instinctive emotions. They stimulate and even
induce a proper interest in the pleasures of others. In governmental
law, with its punishments, we have an express instrument for making the
pleasures of one harmonize with (or at least not conflict with) the
pleasures of others.
Thus Bentham, after stating that an enlightened mind
perceives the identity of self-interest and that of
others (or of _egoism_ and _altruism_, as these interests
are now commonly called), goes on (Deontology, p. 201):
"The majority do not have sufficient enlightenment, nor
enough moral feeling so that their character goes beyond
the aid of laws, and so the legislator should supplement
the frailty of this natural interest, in adding to it an
artificial interest more appreciable and more continuous.
Thus the government augments and extends the connexion
which exists between prudence and benevolence." Mill says
(Op. cit., p. 323): "To do as you would be done by, and
to love your neighbor as yourself, constitute the ideal
perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making
the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin,
first, that laws and social arrangements should place the
happiness or the interest 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."
XXIII.
Private Pleasures and General Welfare.
In criticism of these indirect methods of establishing the identity of
'egoism' and 'altruism,' it may be said:
1. That the supposed relation between the private and the general
happiness is extrinsic, and hence always accidental and open to
exception.
It is not contended that there is any order which _morally_ demands
that there be an identity of interests. It is simply argued that there
are certain physical and psychological forces which operate, _as matter
of fact_, to bring about such a result. Now we may admit, if we like,
that such forces exist and that they are capable of accomplishing all
that Bentham and Mill claim for them. But all that is established is,
at most, a certain state of facts which is interesting as a state of
facts, but which has no especial moral bearing. It is not pretended
that there is in the very order of things any necessary and intrinsic
connection between the happiness of one and of another. Such identity
as exists, therefore, must be a mere external result of the action
of certain forces. It is accidental. This being the case, how can it
constitute the universal ideal of action? Why is it not open for an
agent, under exceptional circumstances, to act for his own pleasure,
to the exclusion of that of others? We may admit that, upon the whole
(or that always, though this is wholly impossible to prove) in past
experience, personal pleasure has been best attained by a certain
regard for the pleasures of others; but the connection being wholly
empirical (that is, of past instances and not of an intrinsic law), we
may ask how it can be claimed that the same connection is _certain_ to
hold in this new case? Nor is it probable that any one would claim that
the connection between individual pleasure and general pleasure had
been so universal and invariable in past experience.
_Intrinsic moral considerations_ (that is, those based on the very
nature of human action) being put aside, a pretty strong case could be
made out for the statement that individual happiness is best attained
by ignoring the happiness of others. Probably the most that can be
established on the other side is that a due prudence dictates that
_some_ attention be paid to the pleasures of others, in calculating
one's own pleasures.
And this suggests:
2. That the end is still private pleasure, general pleasure being
simply a means. Granting all that the hedonists urge, what their
arguments prove is not that the general pleasure is the end of action,
but that, private pleasure being the end, regard for the pleasures of
others is one of the most efficient means of reaching it. If private
pleasure is a selfish end, the end is not less selfish because the road
to it happens to bring pleasure to others also.
See Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 61-74.
3. The use of education and law to bring about this identity,
presupposes that we already have the _ideal_ of the identity as
something desirable to realize--it takes for granted the very thing to
be proved. Why should it occur to men to use the private influence of
opinion and education, and the public influences of law and penalty
to identify private welfare with public, unless they were already
convinced that general welfare was the end of conduct, the one
desirable thing? What the hedonist has to do is to show how, from the
end of private happiness, we may get to the end of general happiness.
What Bentham and Mill do show is, that if we take general happiness as
the end, we may and do use education and law to bring about an identity
of personal and general pleasures. This may go undoubted, but the
question how we get the general happiness as the end, the good, remains
unanswered.
Nor is this all. The conception of general happiness, taken by itself,
has all the abstractness, vagueness and uncertainty of that of personal
happiness, multiplied indefinitely by the greater number of persons
introduced. To calculate the effects of actions upon the general
happiness--when happiness is interpreted as a state of feeling--is an
impossibility. And thus it is that when one is speaking of pleasures
one is really thinking of welfare, or well-being, or satisfied and
progressive human lives. Happiness is considered as it would be, if
determined by certain active and well defined interests, and thus the
hedonistic theory, while contradicting itself, gets apparently all
the support of an opposed theory. Universalistic hedonism thus, more
or less expressly, takes for granted a social order, or community of
persons, of which the agent is simply one member like any other. This
is the ideal which it proposes to realize. In this way--although at the
cost of logical suicide--the ideal gets a content and a definiteness
upon which it is possible to base judgments.
That this social organization of persons is the ideal which
Mill is actually thinking of, rather than any succession of
states of agreeable sensation, is evident by his treatment
of the whole subject. Mill is quite clear that education
and opinion may produce _any_ sort of feeling, as well as
truly benevolent motives to actions. For example, in his
critique of Whewell, he says, (Op. cit., p. 154): "All
experience shows that the moral feelings are preëminently
artificial, and the products of culture; that even when
reasonable, they are no more spontaneous than the growth
of corn and wine (which are quite as natural), and that
the most senseless and pernicious feeling can as easily be
raised to the utmost intensity by inculcation, as hemlock
and thistles could be reared to luxuriant growth by sowing
them instead of wheat." It is certainly implied here that
legislation, education and public opinion must have as a
presupposed standard the identity of general and private
interests or else they may produce anything whatever.
That is to say, Mill instead of arriving at his result of
general happiness simply takes it for granted.
This fact and the further fact that he virtually defines
happiness through certain objective interests and ends
(thus reversing the true hedonistic position) is obvious
from the following, (Mill, Op. cit., pp. 343-347): After
again stating that the moral feelings are capable of
cultivation in almost any direction, and stating that
moral associations that are of artificial construction
dissolve through the force of intellectual analysis (_cf._
his Autobiography, p. 136), and that the association
of pleasure with the feeling of duty would similarly
dissolve unless it had a _natural_ basis of sentiment, he
goes on. "But there is this basis of powerful _natural_
sentiment. This firm foundation is that of the social
feelings of mankind; 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 of 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 which he is born into, and which is the
destiny of a human being." Mill then goes on to describe
some of the ways in which the social unity manifests itself
and influences the individual's conduct. Then the latter
"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. _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._ This conviction is the ultimate
sanction of the greatest happiness morality."
It is to be noticed that there is involved in this account three ideas,
any one of which involves such a reconstruction of the pleasure theory
as to be a surrender of hedonism.
1. There is, in one instance, a _natural_ (or intrinsic) connection
between the end of conduct and the feelings, and not simply an
external or artificial bond. This is in the case of the social
feelings. In other words, in one case the ideal, that is, happiness,
is intrinsically, or necessarily connected with a certain kind of
conduct, that flowing from the social impulses. This, of course,
reverses hedonism for it makes happiness dependent upon a certain kind
of conduct, instead of determining the nature of conduct according as
it happens to result in pleasure or pain.
2. Man conceives of himself, of his end or of his destiny as a member
of a social body, and this conception determines the nature of his
wants and aims. That is to say, it is not mere happiness that a man
wants, but a certain _kind_ of happiness, that which would satisfy a
man who conceived of himself as social, or having ends and interests in
common with others.
3. Finally, it is not mere general "happiness" which is the end, at
all. It is social unity; "harmony of feelings and aims," a beneficial
condition for one's self in which the benefits of all are included.
Instead of the essentially vague idea of states of pleasurable
sensation we have the conception of a community of interests and ends,
in securing which alone is true happiness to be found. This conception
of the moral ideal we regard as essentially true, but it is not
hedonism. It gives up wholly the notion that pleasure is the _desired_,
and, since it sets up a standard by which it determines pleasure, it
gives up equally the notion that pleasure as such is the _desirable_.
In addition to the works already referred to, the following
will give fuller ideas of hedonism and utilitarianism: For
historical treatment see Sidgwick, History of Ethics; Jodl,
Geschichte der Ethik, Vol. II., pp. 482-468; Bain, Moral
Science, Historical Mention; Guyau, La Morale Anglaise
Contemporaine; Wallace, Epicureanism; Pater, Marius, the
Epicurean; Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy; Grote,
Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy (especially
fair and valuable criticism); Lecky, History of European
Morals, Vol. I, ch. I; Birks, Utilitarianism (hostile);
Blackie, Four Phases of Morals: Essay on Utilitarianism
(hostile); Gizycki, Students' Manual of Ethical Philosophy,
(Coit's trans., favorable); Calderwood, Hand-Book of Moral
Philosophy (opposed); Laurie, Ethica (_e. g._, p. 10). "The
object of will is not pleasure, not yet happiness, but
reason-given law--the law of harmony; but this necessarily
ascertained through feeling, and, therefore, through
happiness."
Wilson and Fowler, Principles of Morals, Vol. I, pp.
98-112; Vol. II, pp. 262-273. Paulsen, System der Ethik,
pp. 195-210.
XXIV.
The Utilitarian Theory Combined With the Doctrine of Evolution.
There has lately been an attempt to combine utilitarian morality with
the theory of evolution. This position, chiefly as occupied by Herbert
Spencer and Leslie Stephen, we shall now examine.
Alexander, also, Moral Order and Progress, makes large use
of the theory of evolution, but does not attempt to unite
it with any form of hedonism.
For the combination, at least three decided advantages are claimed over
ordinary utilitarianism.
1. It transforms 'empirical rules' into 'rational laws.' The
evolutionary hedonists regard pleasure as the good, but hold that the
theory of evolution enables them to judge _of the relation of acts to
pleasure_ much better than the ordinary theory. As Mr. Spencer puts
it, the ordinary theory is not scientific, because it does not fully
recognize the principle of causation as existing between certain
acts as causes, and pleasures (or pains) as effects. It undoubtedly
recognizes that some acts _do_ result in pain or pleasure, but does
not show _how_ or _why_ they so result. By the aid of the theory of
evolution we can demonstrate that certain acts _must_ be beneficial
because furthering evolution, and others painful because retarding it.
Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 5758. "Morality properly
so-called--the science of right conduct--has for its object
to determine _how_ and _why_ certain rules of conduct are
detrimental, and certain other rules beneficial. Those good
and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary
consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive
it to be the business of moral science to _deduce, from
the laws of life and the conditions of existence_, what
kinds of action _necessarily_ tend to produce happiness,
and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this,
its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and
are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation
of happiness or misery.... The objection which I have to
the current utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more
developed form of utility--does not see that it has reached
but the initial stage of moral science.... It is supposed
that in future, as now, utility is to be determined only by
observation of results; and that there is no possibility
of knowing by deduction from fundamental principles what
conduct _must_ be detrimental and what conduct _must_ be
beneficial." _Cf._ also ch. IX, and Stephen, Science of
Ethics, ch. IX.
It is contended, then, that by the use of the evolutionary theory, we
may substitute certain conditions, which in the very nature of things
tend to produce happiness, for a calculation, based upon observation
of more or less varying cases in the past, of the probable results of
the specific action. Thus we get a fixed objective standard and do
away with all the objections based upon the uncertainty, vagueness and
liability to exceptions, of the ordinary utilitarian morality.
Spencer, Op. cit., p. 162: "When alleging that empirical
utilitarianism is but introductory to rational
utilitarianism I pointed out that the last does not take
welfare for its _immediate_ object of pursuit, but takes
for its immediate object of pursuit conformity to certain
principles which, in the nature of things, causally
determine welfare."
2. It reconciles 'intuitionalism' with 'empiricism.' The theory of
evolution not only gives us an objective standard on which happiness
necessarily depends, and from which we may derive our laws of conduct,
instead of deriving them from observation of particular cases, but
it enables us to recognize that there are certain moral ideas now
innate or intuitive. The whole human race, the whole animal race, has
for an indefinite time been undergoing experiences of what leads to
pleasure and of what leads to pain, until finally the results of these
experiences have become organized into our very physical and mental
make-up. The first point was that we could substitute for consideration
of results consideration of the causes which determine these results;
the present point is that so far as we have to use results, we can use
those of the race, instead of the short span of the individual's life.
Spencer, Op. cit., pp. 123-124. "The experiences of utility
organized and consolidated through all past generations
of the human race have been producing corresponding
nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission
and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties
of moral intuition--certain emotions corresponding to
right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in
the individual experiences of utility.... The evolution
hypothesis thus enables us to reconcile opposed moral
theories.... The doctrine of innate powers of moral
perception become congruous with the utilitarian doctrine,
when it is seen that preferences and aversions are rendered
organic by inheritance of the effects of pleasurable and
painful experiences in progenitors."
3. It reconciles 'egoism' with 'altruism.' As we have seen, the
relation of personal pleasure to general happiness presents very
serious difficulties to hedonism. It is claimed, however, that the
very process of evolution necessitates a certain identity. The being
which survives must be the being which has properly adapted himself to
his environment, which is largely social, and there is assurance that
the conduct will be adapted to the environment just in the degree in
which pleasure is taken in acts which concern the welfare of others.
If an agent has no pleasure in such acts he will either not perform
them, or perform them only occasionally, and thus will not meet the
conditions of surviving. If surrounding conditions demand constantly
certain actions, those actions in time must come to be pleasurable. The
conditions of survival demand altruistic action, and hence such action
must become pleasurable to the agent (and in that sense egotistic).
"From the laws of life (Spencer Op. cit., p. 205) it must
be concluded that unceasing social discipline will so mould
human action, that eventually sympathetic pleasures will
be pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each and
all.... Though pleasure may be gained by giving pleasure,
yet the thought of the sympathetic pleasure to be gained
will not occupy consciousness, but only the thought of the
pleasure given."
XXV.
Criticism of Evolutionary Utilitarianism.
Regarding the whole foregoing scheme, it may be said so far as it is
true, or suggestive of truth, it is not hedonistic. It does not judge
actions from their effects in the way of pleasure or pain, but it
judges pleasures from the basis of an independent standard 'in the
nature of things.' It is expressly declared that happiness is not to
be so much the end, as the _test_ of conduct, and it is not happiness
in general, of every sort and kind, but a certain kind of happiness,
happiness conditioned by certain modes of activity, that is the test.
Spencer's hedonism in its final result hardly comes to more than saying
that in the case of a perfect individual in a perfect society, every
action whatever would be accompanied by pleasure, and that, therefore,
_in such a society_, pleasure would be an infallible sign and test of
the morality of action--a position which is not denied by any ethical
writer whatever, unless a few extreme ascetics. Such a position simply
determines the value of pleasure by an independent criterion, and then
goes on to say _of pleasure so determined_, that it is the test of
the morality of action. This may be true, but, true or not, it is not
hedonistic.
Furthermore, this standard by which the nature of pleasure is
determined is itself an ethical (that is, active) standard. We have
already seen that Spencer conceives that the modes of producing
happiness are to be deduced from the "laws of life and the conditions
of existence". This might be, of course, a deduction from _physical_
laws and conditions. But when we find that the laws and conditions
which Spencer employs are mainly those of _social_ life, it is
difficult to see why he is not employing a strictly ethical standard.
To deduce not right actions directly from happiness, but the kinds of
actions which will produce happiness from a consideration of a certain
ideal of social relationships seems like a reversal of hedonism; but
this is what Mr. Spencer does.
XXVI.
The Real Criterion of Evolutionary Ethics.
Mr. Spencer expressly recognizes that there exists (1) an ideal code of
conduct, formulating the conduct of the completely adapted man in the
completely evolved society. Such a code is called absolute ethics as
distinguished from relative ethics--a code the injunctions of which
are alone to be considered "as absolutely right, in contrast with those
that are relatively right or least wrong, and which, as a system of
ideal conduct, is to serve as a standard for our guidance in solving,
as well as we can, the problems of real conduct" (p. 275 of the Data of
Ethics). "The ideal code deals, it will be observed, with the behavior
of the completely adapted man in a completely evolved society." This
ideal as elsewhere stated, is "an ideal social being so constituted
that his spontaneous activities are congruous with the conditions
imposed by the social environment formed by other such beings.... The
ultimate man is one in whom there is a correspondence between all
the promptings of his nature and all the requirements of his life as
carried on in society" (p. 275). Furthermore, "to make the ideal man
serve as a standard, he has to be defined _in terms of the conditions
which his nature fulfill_--in terms of the objective requisites which
must be met before conduct can be right" (p. 179). "Hence it is
manifest that we must consider the ideal man as existing in the ideal
social state" (p. 280).
Here we have in the most express terms the recognition of a final and
permanent standard with reference to which the nature of happiness is
determined, and the standard is one of social relationships. To be
sure it is claimed that the standard is one which results in greatest
happiness, but every ethical theory has always claimed that the ideal
moral condition would be accompanied by the maximum possible happiness.
2. The ideal state is defined with reference to the end of evolution.
That is, Spencer defines pleasure from an independent standard instead
of using pleasure as the standard. This standard is to be got at by
considering that idea of "fully evolved conduct" given by the theory of
evolution. This fully evolved conduct implies: (i.) Greatest possible
quantity of life, both in length and breadth; (ii.) Similar maintenance
of life in progeny; and (iii.) Life in which there is no interference
of actions by one with those of another, and, indeed, life in which
the "members of a society" give material help in the achievement of
ends, thus rendering the "lives of all more complete". (See Chap. II
of Data of Ethics). Furthermore, the "complete life here identified
with the ideally moral life" may be otherwise defined as a life of
perfect equilibrium (p. 74), or balance of functions (p. 90), and this
considered not simply with reference to the individual, but also with
reference to the relation of the individual to society. "Complete life
in a complete society is but another name for complete equilibrium
between the co-ordinated activities of each social unit and those of
the aggregate of units" (p. 74, and the whole of chap. V. See also
pp. 169-170 for the position that the end is a society in which each
individual has full functions freely exercised in due harmony, and is,
p. 100, "the spontaneous exercise of duly proportioned faculties").
3. Not only is pleasure thus determined by an objective standard of
"complete living in a complete society" but it is expressly recognized
that _as things are now, pleasure is not a perfect guide to, or even
test of action_. And this difficulty is thought to be removed by
reference to the ideal state in which right action and happiness will
fully coincide.
The failure of pleasure as a perfect test and guide of right conduct,
comes out in at least three cases:--
1. There is the conflict of one set of pleasures with another, or of
present happiness with future, one lot having to be surrendered for the
sake of another. This is wrong, since pleasure as such is good, and,
although a fact at present, exists only on account of the incomplete
development of society. When there is "complete adjustment of humanity
to the social state there will be recognition of the truth that actions
are completely right only when, besides being conducive to future
happiness, special and general, they are immediately pleasurable, and
that painfulness, not only ultimate but proximate, is the concomitant
of actions which are wrong" (p. 29. See for various cases in which
"pleasures are not connected with actions which must be performed" and
for the statement that this difficulty will be removed in an ideal
state of society, p. 77; pp. 85-87; pp. 98-99).
2. There is also, at present, a conflict of individual happiness with
social welfare. In the first place, as long as there exist antagonistic
societies, the individual is called upon to sacrifice his own happiness
to that of others, but "such moralities are, by their definition, shown
to belong to incomplete conduct; not to conduct that is fully evolved"
(See pp. 133-137). Furthermore, there will be conflict of claims, and
consequent compromises between one's own pleasure and that of others
(p. 148), until there is a society in which there is "complete living
through voluntary co-operation", this implying negatively that one
shall not interfere with another and shall fulfill contracts, and
positively that men shall spontaneously help to aid one another lives
beyond any specified agreement (pp. 146-149).
3. There is, at present, a conflict of obligation with pleasure.
Needed activities, in other words, have often to be performed under a
pressure, which either lessens the pleasure of the action, or brings
pain, the act being performed, however, to avoid a greater pain (so
that this point really comes under the first head). But "the remoulding
of human nature into fitness for the requirements of social life, must
eventually make all needful activities pleasurable, while it makes
displeasurable all activities at variance with these requirements" (p.
183). "The things now done with dislike, through sense of obligation,
will be done then with immediate liking" (p. 84, and p. 186; and pp.
255-256). All the quotations on these various points are simply so many
recognitions that pleasure and pain as such are not tests of morality,
but that they become so when morality is independently realized.
Pleasure is _not_ now a test of conduct, but becomes such a test as
fast as activity becomes full and complete! What is this but to admit
(what was claimed in Sec. XIII) that activity itself is what man wants;
not _mere_ activity, but the activity which belongs to man as man,
and which therefore has for its realized content all man's practical
relationships.
Of Spencer's conception of the ideal as something not now
realized, but to be some time or other realized once for
all, we have said nothing. But see below, Sec. 64, and also
Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 264-277, and also James, Unitarian
Review, Vol. XXII., pp. 212-213.
We have attempted, above, to deal with evolutionary
ethics only in the one point of its supposed connection
with pleasure as a standard. Accounts and criticisms
of a broader scope will be found in Darwin, Descent
of Man; Martineau, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 335-393;
Schurman, Ethical Import of Darwinism; Sorley, Ethics of
Naturalism, chapters V, and VI; Stephen, Science of Ethics,
particularly pp. 31-34; 78-89; 359-379; Royce, Religious
Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 74-85; Everett, Poetry, Comedy
and Duty, Essay on the New Ethics; Seth in Mind, Jan. 1889,
on Evolution of Morality; Dewey, Andover Review, Vol. VII,
p. 570; Hyslop, Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 348.
XXVII.
Formal Ethics.
We come now to the ethical theories which attempt to find the good
not only in the will itself, but in the will irrespective of any end
to be reached by the will. The typical instance of such theories is
the Kantian, and we shall, therefore, make that the basis of our
examination. Kant's theory, however, is primarily a theory not of the
good, but of the nature of duty, and that makes a statement of his
doctrine somewhat more difficult.
"The concept of good and evil must not be determined
before the moral law (of which it seems as if it must be
the foundation), but only after it and by means of it"
(Abbott's Trans., p. 154).
Separating, as far as we can, his theory of the good from that of duty,
we get the following results:
1. Goodness belongs to the will, and to that alone. "Nothing can
possibly be conceived, in the world or out of it, which can be called
good without qualification except a good will." The will is not good
because of what it brings about, or what it is fitted to bring about;
that is, it is not good on account of its adaptation to any end outside
of itself. It is good in itself. "It is like a jewel which shines by
its own light, having its whole value in itself."
2. The good, then, is not to be found in any _object_ of will or of
desire, nor in the will _so far as it is directed towards an end
outside itself_. For the will to be moved by inclination or by desire
is for it to be moved for the sake of some external end, which,
moreover, is always pleasure (Kant, _i. e._, agrees with the hedonists
regarding the object of desire, but on that very ground denies that
pleasure is the good or the desirable). If, then, no object of desire
can be the motive of a good will, what is its motive? Evidently only
some principle derived from the will itself. The good will is the will
which acts from regard to its own law.
3. What is the nature of this law? All objects of desire (_i. e._, all
material) have been excluded from it. It must, therefore, be purely
formal. The only content of the law of the good will is the _idea of
law itself_. The good will acts from reverences for law as _law_. It
not only acts _in conformity with law_, but has the conception of law
as its directing spring.
4. There must, however, be some application of this motive of law in
general to particular motives or acts. This is secured as follows: The
idea of law carries with it the idea of universality or self-identity.
To act from the idea of law is then so to act that the motive of action
can be generalized--made a motive for all conduct. The good will is
the _legislative_ will; the will whose motive can be made a law for
conduct universally. The question in a specific case is then: Can your
motive here be made universal, _i. e._, a law? If the action is bad,
determined by an object of desire, it will be contingent and variable,
since pleasures are different to different persons and to the same
person from moment to moment. The will is good, then, when its motive
(or maxim) is to be found solely in the _legislative form_ of the
action, or in its fitness to be generalized into a universal principle
of conduct, and the law of the good will is: "Act so that the maxim
of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of
universal legislation" (Abbott's Trans., p. 119; also p. 55).
5. The application may be illustrated by the following cases:
(_a_) Some one, wearied by what he conceives to be the entire misery
of life proposes to commit suicide, but he asks himself whether this
maxim based on the principle of self-love could become a universal law
of nature; and "we see at once that a system of nature in which the
very feeling, whose office is to compel men to the preservation of
life, should lead men by a universal law to death, cannot be conceived
without contradiction". That is to say, the principle of the motive
which would lead a man to suicide cannot be generalized without
becoming contradictory--it cannot be made a law universal.
(_b_) An individual wishes to borrow money which he knows that he
cannot repay. Can the maxim of this act be universalized? Evidently
not: "a system of nature in which it should be a universal law to
promise without performing, for the sake of private good, would
contradict itself, for then no one would believe the promise--the
promise itself would become impossible as well as the end it had in
view."
(_c_) A man finds that he has certain powers, but is disinclined to
develop them. Can he make the maxim of such conduct a universal law? He
cannot _will_ that it should become universal. "As a rational being, he
must will that his faculties be developed."
(_d_) A prosperous individual is disinclined to relieve the misery
of others. Can his maxim be generalized? "It is impossible to _will_
that such a principle should have the universal validity of a law of
nature. For a will which resolved this would contradict itself, in as
much as many cases might occur in which one would have need of the love
and sympathy of others, and in which, by such a law of nature, sprung
from his own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he
desires."
In conclusion, then, the good is the good will itself, and the will is
good in virtue of the bare form of its action, independently of all
special material willed.
See Abbott's trans., pp. 9-46; 105-120. Caird's Critical
Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, pp. 171-181; 209-212.
XXVIII.
Relation of this Theory to Hedonism.
The Kantian theory, as already noticed, agrees in its psychology with
hedonism. It holds that pleasures are the objects of desire. But it
reverses the conclusion which hedonism draws from this fact _as to the
desirable_. Since pleasures are the object of desire, and pleasures can
give no law, no universality to action, the end of action must be found
wholly _outside_ the pleasures, and wholly outside the desires. It can
be found only in the bare law of the will itself.
1. Hedonism finds the end of conduct, or the desirable, wholly
determined by the various particular desires which a man happens to
have; Kantianism holds that to discover the end of conduct, we must
wholly exclude the desires.
2. Hedonism holds that the rightness of conduct is determined wholly by
its consequences; Kantianism holds that the consequences have nothing
to do with the rightness of an act, but that it is decided wholly by
the motive of the act.
From this contrast, we may anticipate both our criticism of the Kantian
theory and our conception of the true end of action. The fundamental
error of hedonism and Kantianism is the same--the supposition that
desires are for pleasure only. Let it be recognized that desires
are for objects conceived as satisfying or developing the self, and
that pleasure is incidental to this fulfillment of the capacities
of self, and we have the means of escaping the one-sidedness of
Kantianism as well as of hedonism. We can see that the end is neither
the procuring of particular pleasures through the various desires,
nor action from the mere idea of abstract law in general, but that it
is the _satisfaction of desires according to law_. The desire in its
particular character does not give the law; this, as we saw in our
criticism of hedonism, is to take away all law from conduct and to
leave us at the mercy of our chance desires as they come and go. On
the other hand the law is not something wholly apart from the desires.
This, as we shall see, is equally to deprive us of a law capable of
governing conduct. The law is the law of the desires themselves--the
harmony and adjustment of desires necessary to make them instruments in
fulfilling the special destiny or business of the agent.
From the same point of view we can see that the criterion is found
neither in the consequences of our acts _as pleasures_, nor _apart from
consequences_. It is found indeed in the consequences of acts, _but in
their complete consequences_:--those upon the agent and society, as
helping or hindering them in fulfillment of their respective functions.
XXIX.
Criticism of Kantian Criterion of Conduct.
1. _With reference to the unification of the conduct of the
individual._ Of pleasure as the object of desire, we need now say
nothing further, but may proceed at once to the criticism of the theory
that the will, acting according to the mere idea of law in general, is
the end of man and hence that it is the criterion of the rightness or
wrongness of his acts. We shall attempt to show that such an end is
wholly empty, and that it fails (as much as hedonism) to unify conduct
or to place any specific act as to its morality.
The difficulty of the end proposed by Kant is that it is an
abstraction; that it is remote. The hedonist leaves out one element
from conduct, and takes into account the merely particular or
individualistic side; the Kantian abstracts the opposite element--the
merely universal. The formal universal, or universal stripped of all
particular content, has, considered as an end of action, at least three
defects.
I. It is an end which would make impossible that very conduct of which
it is taken to be the end--that is, moral conduct. In denying that
pleasure is the end of action, we took pains to show that it (or rather
the feeling due to the tension between pleasure of a state considered
better and the pain of the experienced worse state) is a necessary
element in the force impelling to action. The mere conception of an
end is purely intellectual; there is nothing in it to move to action.
It must be _felt_ as valuable, as worth having, and as more valuable
than the present condition before it can induce to action. It must
_interest_, in a word, and thus excite desire. But if feeling is, as
Kant declares, to be excluded from the motive to action, because it
is pathological or related to pleasure as the object of desire, how
can there be any force moving to action? The mind seems to be set over
against a purely theoretical idea of an end, with nothing to connect
the mind with the end. Unless the end interests, unless it arouses
emotion, why should the agent ever aim at it? And if the law does
excite feeling or desire, must not this, on Kant's theory, be desire
for pleasure and thus vitiate the morality of the act? We seem to
be in a dilemma, one side of which makes moral action impossible by
taking away all inducing force, while the other makes it impossible by
introducing an immoral factor into the motive.
Kant attempts to escape from this difficulty by claiming that there
is one feeling which is rational, and not sensuous in quality, being
excited not by the conception of pleasure or pain, but by that of the
moral law itself. This is the feeling of reverence, and through this
feeling we can be moved to moral action. Waiving the question whether
the mere idea of law in general would be capable of arousing any moral
sentiment--or, putting the matter from the other side, whether Kant
gives us a true account of the feeling of reverence--it is clear that
this admission is fatal to Kant's theory. If desire or feeling as such
is sensuous (or _pathological_, as Kant terms it), what right have we
to make this one exception? And if we can make this one exception, why
not others? If it is possible in the case of reverence, why not in
the case, say, of patriotism, or of friendship, or of philanthropy,
or of love--or even of curiosity, or of indignation, or of desire
for approbation? Kant's separation of reverence, as the one moral
sentiment from all others as pathological, is wholly arbitrary. The
only distinction we can draw is of the feelings as they well up
naturally in reaction upon stimuli, sentiments not conceived and thus
neither moral nor immoral, and sentiments as transformed by ends of
action, in which case all without exception may be moral or immoral,
according to the character of the end. The Kantian separation is not
only arbitrary psychologically, but is false historically. So far is
it from true that the only moral sentiment is reverence for law, that
men must have been moved toward action for centuries by motives of
love and hate and social regard, before they became capable of such
an abstract feeling as reverence. And it may be questioned whether
this feeling, as Kant treats it, is even the highest or ultimate form
of moral sentiment--whether it is not transitional to love, in which
there is complete union of the individual interest on one hand, and the
objective end on the other.
For these criticisms at greater length, see Caird, Critical
Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, Bk. II, ch. IV.
II. The Kantian end would not bring about any system in conduct--on
the contrary, it would tend to differences and collisions. What is
required to give unity to the sphere of conduct is, as we have seen,
a principle which shall comprehend all the motives to action, giving
each its due place in contributing to the whole--a universal which
shall organize the various particular acts into a harmonious system.
Now Kant's conception of the good does not lead to such result. We
may even say that it makes it impossible. According to Kant each act
must be considered independently of every other, and must be capable
of generalization on its own account. Each motive of action must be
capable of being _itself_ a universal law of nature. Each particular
rule of action is thus made absolute, and we are left not with one
universal which comprehends all particulars in their relations to one
another, but literally with a lot of universals. These not only fail
to have a unity, but each, as absolute, must contradict some other. If
the principles always to tell the truth and always to preserve life
are universal _in themselves_, and not universal simply _through their
relation to some total and controlling principle of life_, it must be
impossible to reconcile them when they come into conflict.
See Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 187-190, and p. 215.
_Cf._ "Treated as universal and without exception, even
two such commands as _e. g._, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and
'Thou shalt not kill,' must ultimately come into conflict
with each other; for, if all other interests are to be
postponed to the maintenance of the rights of property,
it is impossible that all other interests should also be
postponed to the preservation of human life--and to make
either property or life an absolute end is to raise a
particular into a universal, to treat a part as if it were
a whole. But the true moral vindication of each particular
interest cannot be found in elevating it into something
universal and absolute, but only in determining its place
in relation to the others in a complete system of morality."
III. The principle is so empty of all content that it does not enable
us to judge of any specific act.
A caution should be noticed here, which is equally
applicable to the criticism of hedonism: When it is said
that the end does not enable us to judge of specific
acts, the objection is not that the _theory_ (Kantianism
or hedonism, as the case may be) does not give us rules
for moral conduct. It is not the business of any theory,
however correct as a theory, to lay down rules for conduct.
The theory has simply to discover what the _end_ is, and it
is the end in view which determines specific acts. It is
no more the business of ethics to tell what in particular
a man ought to do, than it is of trigonometry to survey
land. But trigonometry must state the principles by which
land _is_ surveyed, and so ethics must state the end by
which conduct _is_ governed. The objection to hedonism and
Kantianism is that the end they give does not _itself_
stand in any practical relation to conduct. We do not
object to Kantianism because the _theory_ does not help us
as to specific acts, but because the _end_, formal law,
does not help us, while the real moral end must determine
the whole of conduct.
Suppose a man thrown into the complex surroundings of life with an
intelligence fully developed, but with no previous knowledge of right
or wrong, or of the prevailing moral code. He is to know, however,
that goodness is to be found in the good will, and that the good will
is the will moved by the mere idea of the universality of law. Can
we imagine such an one deriving from his knowledge any idea of what
concrete ends he ought to pursue and what to avoid? He is surrounded
by special circumstances calling for special acts, and all he knows is
that _whatever_ he does is to be done from respect for its universal
or legislative quality. What community is there between this principle
and _what_ he is to do? There is no bridge from the mere thought of
universal law to any concrete end coming under the law. There is no
common principle out of which grows the conception of law on one hand,
and of the various special ends of action, on the other.
Suppose, however, that ends are independently suggested or proposed,
will the Kantian conception serve to _test_ their moral fitness? Will
the conception that the end must be capable of being generalized
tell us whether this or that end is one to be followed? The fact
is, that there is no end whatever that _in or by itself_, cannot be
considered as self-identical, or as universal. If we presuppose a
certain rule, or if we presuppose a certain moral order, it may be
true that a given motive cannot be universalized without coming into
conflict with this presupposed rule or order. But aside from some
moral system into connection with which a proposed end may be brought,
for purposes of comparison, lying is just as capable as truth-telling
of generalization. There is no more contradiction in the motive of
universal stealing than there is in that of universal honesty--unless
there is as standard some order or system of things into which the
proposed action is to fit as a member. And this makes not the bare
universality of the act, but the system, the real criterion for
determining the morality of the act.
Thus Mill remarks, regarding Kant's four illustrations
(_Ante_, p. 80), that Kant really has to employ utilitarian
considerations to decide whether the act is moral or not.
For the foregoing criticisms, see Bradley, Ethical Studies,
Essay IV; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 185-186, and
212-214, and, indeed, the whole of ch. II of Bk. II.
XXX.
Criticism of Kantian Criterion of Conduct.
2. _With reference to the furnishing of a common good or end._ If
the Kantian end is so formal and empty as not to enable us to bring
into relation with one another the various acts of one individual, we
may agree, without argument, that it does not provide us with an end
which shall unify the acts of different men into a connected order
of conduct. The moral end, the acting from regard for law as law,
is presented to each individual by himself, entirely apart from his
relations to others. That he has such relations may, indeed, furnish
additional material to which the law must be applied, but is something
to which the character of the law is wholly indifferent. The end is not
in itself a social end, and it is a mere accident if in any case social
considerations have to be taken into account. It is of the very quality
of the end that it appeals to the individual as an isolated individual.
It is interesting to note the way in which Kant, without
expressly giving up the purely formal character of the
moral end, gives it more and more content, and that content
social. The moral law is not imposed by any external
authority, but by the rational will itself. To be conscious
of a universal self-imposed law is to be conscious of
one's self as having a universal aspect. The source of
the law and its end are both in the will--in the rational
self. Thus man is an end to himself, for the rational self
is man. Such a being is a person--"Rational beings are
_persons_, because their nature marks them out as ends
in themselves, _i. e._, as beings who should never be
used merely as means.... Such beings are not ends simply
_for us_, whose existence as brought about by our action
has value, but _objective ends_, _i. e._, beings whose
existence is an end in itself, an end for which no other
end can be substituted so as to reduce it to a mere means."
Thus, we get a second formula. "Always treat humanity,
both in your own person and in the person of others, as an
end and never merely as a means." (Abbott's Trans., pp.
46-47; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, 219). Here the criterion
of action is no longer the bare self-consistency of its
motive, but its consistency with the rational nature of
the agent, that which constitutes him a person. And, too,
"the will of every rational being is likewise a universally
law-giving will." (Abbott, p. 49). The conception of
humanity embodied in others as well as in one's self is
introduced, and thus our criterion is socialized. Even now,
however, we have a lot of persons, each of whom has to
be considered as an end in himself, rather than a social
unity as to which every individual has an equal and common
reference. Kant advances to this latter idea in his notion
of a "Kingdom of ends." "We get the idea of a complete and
systematically connected totality of all ends--a whole
system of rational beings as ends in themselves as well
as of the special ends which each of them may set up for
himself--_i.e._, a kingdom of ends.... Morality is the
reference of all deeds to the legislation which alone can
make such a kingdom possible." (See Abbott's Trans., pp.
51-52). This transformation of a mere formal universal into
a society or kingdom of persons--while not sufficiently
analyzed as Kant states it (see Caird, Vol. II, pp.
225-226)--gives us truly a social criterion, and we shall
hereafter meet something resembling it as the true ideal.
As finally stated, it does not differ in essential content
from Mill's individual who "conceives of himself only as
a member of a body," or from Spencer's free man in a free
society.
XXXI.
Value of Kantian Theory.
We must not leave the Kantian theory with the impression that it is
simply the caprice of a philosopher's brain. In two respects, at least,
it presents us, as we shall see, with elements that must be adopted;
and even where false it is highly instructive.
Kant's fundamental error is in his conception that all desires or
inclinations are for private pleasure, and are, therefore, to be
excluded from the conception of the moral end. Kant's conclusion,
accordingly, that the good will is purely formal follows inevitably
if ever it is granted that there is any intrinsic opposition between
inclination as such, and reason or moral law as such. If there is such
an opposition, _all_ desire must be excluded from relation to the
end. We cannot make a compromise by distinguishing between higher and
lower desires. On the contrary, if the end is to have content, it must
include all desires, leaving out none as in itself base or unworthy.
Kant's great negative service was showing that the ascetic principle
logically results in pure formalism--meaning by ascetic principle that
which disconnects inclinations from moral action.
Kant's positive service was, first, his clear insight into the fact
that the good is to be found only in activity; that the will itself,
and nothing beyond itself, is the end; and that to adopt any other
doctrine, is to adopt an immoral principle, since it is to subordinate
the will (character, self and personality), to some outside end.
His second great service was in showing the necessity of putting in
abeyance the immediate satisfaction of each desire as it happens to
arise, and of subordinating it to some law not to be found in the
particular desire. He showed that not the particular desire, but only
the desire as controlled by the idea of law could be the motive of
moral action. And if he fell into the error of holding that this meant
that the desire must be excluded from the moral motive, this error does
not make it less true that every particular desire must be controlled
by a universal law. The truth of asceticism is that the desire must be
checked until subordinated to the activity of the whole man. See Caird,
Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 200; pp. 203-207; 226-227.
XXXII.
The Problem and Its Solution.
If we gather together the results of our observations of hedonism and
of Kantianism we get something like the following problem and solution
in outline. The end of action, or the good, is the realized will, the
developed or satisfied self. This satisfied self is found neither in
the getting of a lot of pleasures through the satisfaction of desires
just as they happen to arise, nor in obedience to law simply because
it is law. It is found in _satisfaction of desires according to law_.
This law, however, is not something external to the desires, but is
their own law. Each desire is only one striving of character for larger
action, and the only way in which it can really find satisfaction
(that is, pass from inward striving into outward action) is _as_ a
manifestation of character. A desire, taken as a desire for its own
apparent or direct end _only_, is an abstraction. It is a desire for
an entire and continuous activity, and its satisfaction requires that
it fitted into this entire and continuous activity; that it be made
conformable to the conditions which will bring the whole man into
action. It is this fitting-in which is the law of the desire--the
'universal' controlling its particular nature. This 'fitting-in' is no
mechanical shearing off, nor stretching out, but a reconstruction of
the natural desire till it becomes an expression of the whole man. The
problem then is to find that special form of character, of self, which
includes and transforms all special desires. This form of character is
at once the Good and the Law of man.
We cannot be content with the notion that the end is the satisfaction
of the self, a satisfaction at once including and subordinating the
ends of the particular desire. This tells us nothing positive--however
valuable it may be negatively in warning us against one-sided
notions--until we know _what_ that whole self is, and _in what_
concretely its satisfaction consists. As the first step towards such a
more concrete formula, we may say:
XXXIII.
The Moral End or the Good is the Realization by a Person and as a
Person of Individuality.
In saying that this realization is _by a person_ and _as a person_ we
are saying nothing new. We are simply repeating what we have already
learned about moral conduct (Sec. III). Conduct is not that which
simply reaches certain consequences--a bullet shot from a rifle does
that; there is conduct only when the consequences are foreseen; made
the reason of action. A person is a being capable of conduct--a being
capable of proposing to himself ends and of attempting to realize them.
But what is the meaning of the rest of the formula? What do we mean by
individuality? We may distinguish two factors--or better two aspects,
two sides--in individuality. On one side, it means special disposition,
temperament, gifts, bent, or inclination; on the other side, it means
special station, situation, limitations, surroundings, opportunities,
etc. Or, let us say, it means _specific capacity_ and _specific
environment_. Each of these elements, apart from the other, is a bare
abstraction and without reality. Nor is it strictly correct to say that
individuality is constituted by these two factors _together_. It is
rather, as intimated above, that each is individuality looked at from a
certain point of view, from within or from without.
If we are apt to identify individuality with the inner side alone, with
capacity apart from its surroundings, a little reflection will show
the error. Even the most devoted adherent of "self-culture" would not
hold that a gift could be developed, or a disposition manifested, in
isolation from all exterior circumstances. Let the disposition, the
gift be what it may (amiable or irascible, a talent for music or for
abstract science, or for engineering), its existence, to say nothing of
its culture, apart from some surroundings is bare nonsense. If a person
shuts himself up in a closet or goes out into the desert the better
to cultivate his capacities, there is still the desert or the closet
there; and it is as conditioned by them, and with reference to them
that he must cultivate himself. For more is true than that, as a matter
of fact, no man can wholly withdraw himself from surroundings; the
important point is that the manner and the purpose of exercising his
capacity is always _relative_ to and _dependent_ upon the surroundings.
Apart from the environment the capacity is mere emptiness; the exercise
of capacity is always establishing a relation to something exterior to
itself. All we can say of capacity apart from environment is that _if_
certain circumstances were supplied, there would be something there. We
call a capacity _capability_, possibility, as if for the very purpose
of emphasizing the necessity of external supplementing.
We get the same fact, on the other side, by calling to mind that
circumstances, environment are not indifferent or irrelevant to
individuality. The difference between one individual and another lies
as much in the station in which each is placed as in the capacity
of each. That is to say, environment enters into individuality as a
constituent factor, helping make it what it is.
On the other hand, it is capacity which makes the environment really an
environment _to_ the individual.
The environment is not simply the facts which happen objectively to lie
about an agent; it is such part of the facts as may be _related_ to
the capacity and the disposition and gifts of the agent. Two members
of the same family may have what, to the outward eye, are exactly
the same surroundings, and yet each may draw from these surroundings
wholly unlike stimulus, material and motives. Each has a different
environment, made different by his own mode of selection; by the
different way in which his interests and desires play upon the plastic
material about him. It is not, then, the environment as physical of
which we are speaking, but as it appeals to consciousness, as it is
affected by the make-up of the agent. This is the _practical_ or
_moral_ environment. The environment is not, then, what is then and
there present in space. To the Christian martyr the sufferings of his
master, and the rewards of faithfulness to come to himself were more
real parts of his environment than the stake and fire. A Darwin or a
Wallace may find his environment in South America or the Philippine
Islands--or, indeed, in every fact of a certain sort wherever found
upon the earth or in whatever geological era. A man of philanthropic
instincts may find _his_ environment among Indians or Congo negroes.
Whatever, however near or remote in time and space, an individual's
capacities and needs relate him to, is his environment. The moment we
realize that only what one conceives as proper material for calling out
and expressing some internal capacity is a part of his surroundings,
we see not only that capacity depends upon environment, but that
environment depends upon capacity. In other words, we see that each in
itself is an abstraction, and that the real thing is the individual who
is constituted by capacity and environment in their relation to one
another.
_Function_ is a term which we may use to express union of the two sides
of individuality. The idea of function is that of an active relation
established between power of doing, on one side, and something to
be done on the other. To exercise a function as a student is not to
cultivate tastes and possibilities internally; it is also to meet
external demands, the demands of fact, of teachers, of others needing
knowledge. The citizen exercises his function not simply in cultivating
sentiments of patriotism within; one has to meet the needs of the
city, the country in which one lives. The realization of an artistic
function is not poring over emotions of beauty pumped up within one's
self; it is the exercise of some calling. On the other hand, it hardly
needs saying that the function of a student, a citizen, an artist, is
not exercised in bare conformity to certain external requirements.
Without the inner disposition and inclination, we call conduct dead,
perfunctory, hypocritical. An activity is not functional, unless it is
organic, expressing the life of the agent.
A function thus includes two sides--the external and the internal--and
reduces them to elements in one activity. We get an analogy in
any animal function. The digestive function includes the material
appropriated, just as much as it does the organ appropriating. It is
the service, the work which the organ does _in_ appropriating material.
So, morally, function is capacity _in action_; environment transformed
into an element in personal service.
Thus we get another formula for the moral end:
The performance by a person of his specific function, this function
consisting in an activity which realizes wants and powers with
reference to their peculiar surroundings.
XXXIV.
Moral Functions as Interests.
If morality consists in the exercise of one's _specific_ functions, it
follows that no _detailed_ account of the content of the moral end can
possibly be given. This content is thoroughly individual or infinite.
It is concrete to the core, including every detail of conduct, and this
not in a rigid formula, but in the movement of life. All we can do is,
by abstraction, to select some of the main features of the end, such as
the more common and the more permanent. While each individual has his
own particular functions, which can no more be exhausted by definition
or description than the qualities of any other individual object, it is
also true that we can recognize certain typical functions to be found
permanently and in all. These make, as it were, the skeleton of the
moral end which each clothes with his own flesh and blood.
Functions are _interests_--objective interests were not the term
tautological. Interests have three traits worth special mention.
1. They are _active_. An interest is not an emotion produced from
without. It is the reaction of the emotion to the object. Interest is
identified, in ordinary speech, with attention; we _take_ an interest,
or, if we say simply 'interested,' that involves some excitation,
some action just beginning. We talk of a man's interests, meaning his
occupations or range of activities.
2. They are _objective_. The emotion aroused goes out to some object,
and is fixed upon that; we are always interested _in something_. The
active element of interest is precisely that which takes it out of the
inner mood itself and gives it a terminus, an end in an object.
3. An interest is _satisfaction_. It is its own reward. It is not a
striving for something unrealized, or a mere condition of tension.
It is the satisfaction in some object which the mind already has.
This object may be possessed in some greater or less degree, in
full realization or in faint grasp, but interest attaches to it as
possessed. This differentiates it from desire, even where otherwise
the states are the same. Desire refers to the lack, to what is not
present to the mind. One state of mind may be called both interest in,
and desire for, knowledge, but desire emphasizes the unknown, while
interest is on account of the finding of self, of intelligence, in
the object. Interest is the union in feeling, through action, of self
and an object. An interest in life is had when a man can practically
identify himself with some object lying beyond his immediate or already
acquired self and thus be led to further expression of himself.
To have an interest, then, is to be alert, to have an object, and to
find satisfaction in an activity which brings this object home to self.
Not every interest carries with it _complete_ satisfaction.
But no interest can be wholly thwarted. The purer the
interest, the more the interest is in the object for its
own sake, and not for that of some ulterior consequence,
the more the interest fulfills itself. "It is better to
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all", and
love is simply the highest power of interest--interest
freed from all extrinsic stuff.
Of the interests, two abstract forms may be recognized, interest in
persons and interest in things. And these may be subdivided: Interest
in persons: interest in _self_ and _others_. Interest in things--into
their contemplation (_knowledge_) and into their production (_art_).
And art again may be either productive of things to be contemplated
(fine art), or useful--manufactures, industry, etc. The moral end,
then, or the Good will consist in the exercise of these interests,
varied as they may be in each individual by the special turn which his
capacities and opportunities take.
XXXV.
The Exercise of Interests as the Moral End.
Let us now, as a means of rendering our conception of the moral end
more concrete, consider briefly each of the forms of interest.
1. Interest in self. We must free ourselves from any notion that an
interest in self is non-moral, if not actually immoral. The latter
position is seldom consciously assumed, but it is not uncommon to
have interest in self, under the name of prudence, marked off from
the moral sphere. Interest in self, if the interest is pure, is just
as much an interest in the moral end as interest in anything or
anybody else. Interest in self may take the form of selfishness, or of
sentimentalism; but this is only an _impure_ interest, an interest not
in self, but in some consequences to which the self may be directed.
Interest in self may take many forms, according to the side of self
which is the object of attention, and according to the range of the
self taken into account. A _rudimentary_ form is prudence, but even
this, instead of being non-moral, is, in proper place and degree,
moral, as moral as benevolence; and, if not in its proper place,
immoral. From such an interest there are all stages up to the interest
in self as it most deeply and broadly is, the sense of honor, moral
dignity, self-respect, conscientiousness, that attempt to be and
to make the most of one's self, which is at the very root of moral
endeavor.
The ground that is usually given for making the distinction
between Prudence, Self-Regard, Self-Love as non-moral,
and Benevolence, Altruism etc., as moral, is that in the
former case a mere regard for one's own advantage dictates
proper conduct, while in the latter case there must be a
positive virtuous intent. We may, for example, be pointed
to some cool calculating man who takes care of his health
and his property, who indeed is generally 'prudent',
because he sees that it is for his advantage, and be told
that while such an end is not immoral it is certainly not
moral. But in return it must be asked what is meant here by
advantage? If by it is meant private pleasure, or advantage
over somebody else, then this conduct does not spring
from interest in self at all, but from interest in some
exterior consequence, and as springing from such an impure
interest is not simply non-moral, but positively immoral.
On the other hand, if 'advantage' means regard for one's
whole function, one's place in the moral order, then such
interest in self is moral. Care for bodily health in the
interest of efficiency in conduct is supremely moral beside
reckless disregard of it in the interest of some supposed
higher or more spiritual function.
If it is meant that conduct is immoral because it springs
from some interest on the part of the agent, the reply
is that all conduct must so arise, and that any other
supposition leads us immediately into asceticism and into
formalism.
2. Interest in others. The generic form of interest in others is
sympathy, this being specified by the various forms of social
organization of which the individual is a member. A person is, we have
seen, one who can conceive of ends and can act to realize these ends.
Only a person, therefore, can conceive of others as ends, and so have
true sympathy.
It is not meant, of course, that animals do not
perform acts which, _de facto_, are altruistic or even
self-sacrificing. What is meant is that the animal does
not act from the _idea_ of others of his kind as ends in
themselves. If the animal does so act, it cannot be denied
the name of person.
True interest in others is pure, or disinterested, in the sense of
having no reference to some further and external consequence to one's
self. Interest in others need not be moral (or pure) any more than
interest in self is necessarily immoral (or impure). It is a mistake
to distinguish interest in self as _egoistic_ and interest in others
as _altruistic_. Genuine interests, whatever their object, are both
egoistic and altruistic. They are egoistic simply because they _are
interests_--imply satisfaction in a realized end. If man is truly
a social being, constituted by his relationships to others, then
social action must inevitably realize himself, and be, in that sense,
egoistic. And on the other hand, if the individual's interest in
himself is in himself _as_ a member of society, then such interest is
thoroughly altruistic. In fact, the very idea of altruism is likely to
carry a false impression when it is so much insisted upon, as it is
nowadays in popular literature, as the essence of morality. The term as
used seems to imply that the mere giving up of one's self to others,
as others, is somehow moral. Just as there may be an immoral interest
in self, so there may be an immoral 'altruism.' It is immoral in any
case to sacrifice the actual relationships in the case, those which
demand action, to some feeling outside themselves--as immoral when the
feeling to which the sacrifice is offered up is labelled 'benevolence',
as when it is termed 'greediness'. It is no excuse when a man gives
unwisely to a beggar that he feels benevolent. _Moral_ benevolence is
the feeling directed toward a certain end which is known to be the
fit or right end, the end which expresses the situation. The question
is as to the _aim_ in giving. Apart from this aim, the act is simply
relieving the agent's own feelings and has no moral quality. Rather
it is immoral; for feelings do have a moral _capacity_, that is, a
relation to ends of action, and hence to satisfy them on their account,
to deprive them of their practical reference, is bad. Aside from what
this illustrates, there is a tendency in the present emphasis of
altruism to erect the principle of charity, in a sense which implies
continued social inequality, and social slavery, or undue dependence
of one upon another, into a fundamental moral principle. It is well
to "do good" to others, but it is much better to do this by securing
for them the freedom which makes it possible for them to get along in
the future without such 'altruism' from others. There is what has been
well termed an "egotism of renunciation"; a desire to do for others
which, at bottom, is simply an attempt to regulate their conduct. Much
of altruism is an egoism of a larger radius, and its tendency is to
"manufacture a gigantic self", as in the case where a father sacrifices
everything for his children or a wife for her husband.
See Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 402. See also Hinton, The
Law Breaker, p. 287: "The real meaning of the difficulty
about a word for "regard for others" is that we do not want
it. It would mislead us if we had it. It is not a regard
for _others_ that we need, but simply a _true_ regard, a
regard to the facts, to nature; it is only a truth to facts
in our regard, and its nature is obscured by a reference to
"others", as if that were the essential point.... It is not
as being for others, but as being _true_, that the regard
for others is demanded."
Some ethical writers have gone to the other extreme and held that all
benevolence is a disguised or an enlightened selfishness, since having
a necessary reference to self. The reference to self must be admitted;
unless the action springs from an interest of the agent himself the act
may be outwardly useful, but cannot be moral. But the argument alluded
to inverts the true relation involved. If a man's interests are such
that he can find satisfaction only in the satisfaction of others, what
an absurdity to say that his acting from these interests is selfish!
The very fact of such identity of self with others in his interest is
the proof of his unselfishness.
See Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 241, for an
admirable discussion of this difficulty. When it is said
that your pain is painful to me, he says, the inference
is often "insinuated that I dislike your pain because
it is painful to me in some special relation. I do not
dislike it _as_ your pain, but in virtue of some particular
consequence, such, for example, as its making you less
able to render me a service. In that case _I do not really
object to your pain as your pain at all_, but only to some
removable and accidental consequences." (And see his whole
treatment of sympathy, pp. 230-245). The whole question is
shown to come to this: Is my interest in, my sympathy with,
your joy and sorrow as such, or in your joy and sorrow as
contributing to mine? If the latter, of course the interest
is selfish, not being an interest in others at all. But
if the former, then the fact that such sympathy involves
one's own satisfaction is the best proof that man is not
selfishly constructed. When Stephen goes on to say that
such sympathy does not involve the existence of a real
unity larger than the individual, he seems to me to misread
his own facts, probably because he conceives of this unity
as some abstract or external thing.
Discussion regarding self-love and benevolence, or, in
modern phrase, egoism and altruism, has been rife in
English ethics since the time of Hobbes, and especially of
Shaftesbury and Butler. See, in particular, the Sermons
of the latter, which gave the central point of discussion
for almost a century. With reference to the special
weakness of this point of view, with its co-ordination
of two independent principles, see Green, Philosophical
Works, Vol. III, pp. 99-104. The essential lack (the lack
which we have tried to make good in the definition of
individuality as the union of capacity and surroundings
in function), was the failure to analyze the idea of the
individual. Individuality being defined as an exclusive
principle, the inevitable result was either (i.) the
"disguised selfishness" theory; or (ii.) the assumption of
two fundamentally different principles in man. The ordinary
distinction between prudence and virtue is an echo of the
latter theory. Then, finally, (iii.) a third principle,
generally called conscience by Butler, was brought in as
umpire in the conflict of prudence and virtue.
Suggestive modern treatment of the matter, from a variety
of points of view, will be found in Spencer, Data of
Ethics, chs. XI-XIII; Stephen, Op. cit., ch. VI; Sidgwick,
Op. cit., Bk. V, ch. VII; Royce, Op. cit., ch. IV; Sorley,
Ethics of Naturalism, pp. 134-150; Alexander, Op. cit., pp.
172-180; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 400-405; Paulsen,
System der Ethik, pp. 295-311.
3. Interest in Science and Art. Man is interested in the world about
him; the knowledge of the nature and relations of this world become one
of his most absorbing pursuits. Man identifies himself with the meaning
of this world to the point that he can be satisfied only as he spells
out and reads its meaning. (See, for example, Browning's "Grammarian's
Funeral".) The scientific interest is no less a controlling motive
of man than the personal interest. This knowledge is not a means for
having agreeable sensations; it is not dilettanteism or "love of
culture"; it is interest in the large and goodly frame of things. And
so it is with art; man has interests which can be satisfied only in the
reconstruction of nature in the way of the useful and the beautiful.
I have made no distinction between 'fine' and 'useful' art.
The discussion of this question does not belong here, but
the rigid separation of them in æsthetic theory seems to me
to have no justification. Both are products of intelligence
in the service of interests, and the only difference is in
the range of intelligence and interests concerned. 'Use'
is a _limited_ service and hence implies an external end;
beauty is complete use or service, and hence not mere use
at all, but self-expression. Historically, all art which
has not been merely sentimental and 'literary' has sprung
from interest in good workmanship in the realizing of an
idea.
It seems as if here interests violated their general law, and, in the
case of use at least, were an interest in some ulterior end. But it
may be questioned whether a carpenter whose aim was consciously beyond
the work he was doing, would be a good workman--and this whether the
further end is his own private advantage, or social benefit at large.
The thought of the further benefit to self and of the utility to accrue
to some one else, will, if it becomes a _part_ of what he is doing,
undoubtedly intensify his interest--it must do so, for it enlarges
its content. But to _identify_ one's own or another's well-being with
work, and to make the work a mere _means_ to this welfare, are two
quite different things. The good artisan "has his heart in his work".
His self-respect makes it necessary for him to respect this technical
or artistic capacity, and to do the best by it that he can without
scrimping or lowering. To a good business man business is not the mere
means to money-making; and it is sentimentalism (and hence immoral) to
demand that it be a mere means to the good of society. The business, if
it is a moral one (and _any_ business, _so far_ as it is thus carried
on, is moral), is carried on for the sake of the activity itself, as a
realizing of capacity in a specific situation.
XXXVI.
The Moral Quality of Science.
We seem, however, to meet here, in relation to science and art, a
difficulty which threatens our whole theory. Can it be claimed, it may
be asked, that devotion to science or art constitutes goodness in the
same sense that devotion to the interests of one's family or state
constitutes it? No one doubts that a good father or a good citizen is a
good man, in so far forth. Are we ready to say that a good chemist or
good carpenter, or good musician is, in so far, a good man? In a word,
is there not a reference to the good of persons present in one case and
absent in another, and does not its absence preclude the scientific and
artistic activities from any share, _as such_, in the moral end?
It must be remembered that the moral end does not refer to some
consequence which happens, _de facto_, to be reached. It refers to an
end _willed_; _i.e._, to an idea held to and realized as an idea. And
this fact shows us the way to meet the query, in part at least. If,
when we say good carpenter, or good merchant, we are speaking from the
standpoint of results, independently of the idea conceived as end in
the mind of the agent; if we mean simply, 'we like what that man does',
then the term good has no moral value. A man may paint 'good' pictures
and not be, in so far, a good man, but in this sense a man may _do_ a
great deal of 'good', and yet not be a good man. It was agreed at the
outset that moral goodness pertains to the kind of idea or end which a
man clings to, and not to what he happens to effect visibly to others.
If a scientific man pursues truth as a mere means to reputation, to
wealth, etc., we do not (or should not) hesitate to call him immoral.
This does not mean that if he _thinks_ of the reputation,
or of wealth, he is immoral, for he may foresee wealth and
the reputation as necessarily bound up in what he is doing;
it may become a part of the end. It means that if knowledge
of truth is a _mere means_ to an end beyond it, the man is
immoral.
What reason is there why we should not call him moral if he does his
work for its own sake, from interest in this cause which takes him
outside his "own miserable individuality", in Mill's phrase? After all,
the phrase a 'good father' means but a character manifesting itself in
certain relations, as is right according to these relations; the phrase
has moral significance not in itself, but with reference to the end
aimed at by character. And so it is with the phrase 'a good carpenter.'
That also means devotion of character to certain outer relations for
their own sake. These relations may not be so important, but that is
not lack of moral meaning.
XXXVII.
Adjustment to Environment.
So far we have been discussing the moral ideal in terms of its inner
side--capacity, interest. We shall now discuss it on its outer or
objective side--as 'adjustment to environment' in the phrase made
familiar by the evolutionists. Certain cautions, however, must be noted
in the use of the phrase. We must keep clearly in mind the relativity
of environment to inner capacity; that it exists only as one element of
function. Even a plant must do something more than adjust itself _to_
a fixed environment; it must assert itself _against_ its surroundings,
subordinating them and transforming them into material and nutriment;
and, on the surface of things, it is evident that _transformation_ of
existing circumstances is moral duty rather than mere reproduction of
them. The environment must be plastic to the ends of the agent.
But admitting that environment is made what it is by the powers
and aims of the agent, what sense shall we attribute to the term
adjustment? Not bare conformity to circumstances, nor bare external
reproduction of them, even when circumstances are taken in their proper
moral meaning. The child in the family who simply adjusts himself _to_
his relationships in the family, may be living a moral life only in
outward seeming. The citizen of the state may transgress no laws of
the state, he may punctiliously fulfill every contract, and yet be a
selfish man. True adjustment must consist in _willing_ the maintenance
and development of moral surroundings as _one's own end_. The child
must take the spirit of the family into himself and live out this
spirit according to his special membership in the family. So a soldier
in the army, a friend in a mutual association, etc. Adjustment to
intellectual environment is not mere conformity of ideas to facts. It
is the living assimilation of these facts into one's own intellectual
life, and maintaining and asserting them as _truth_.
There are environments existing prior to the activities of any
individual agent; the family, for example, is prior to the moral
activity of a child born into it, but the point is to see that
'adjustment', to have a moral sense, means _making the environment a
reality for one's self_. A true description of the case would say that
the child takes for his own end, ends already existing for the wills
of others. And, in making them his own, he creates and supports for
himself an environment that already exists for others. In such cases
there is no special transformation of the existing environment; there
is simply the process of making it the environment for one's self. So
in learning, the child simply appropriates to himself the intellectual
environment already in existence for others. But in the activity of
the man of science there is more than such personal reproduction and
creation; there is increase, or even reconstruction of the prior
environment. While the ordinary citizen hardly does more than make his
own the environment of ends and interests already sustained in the
wills of others, the moral reformer may remake the whole. But whether
one case or the other, adjustment is not outer conformity; it is living
realization of certain relations in and through the will of the agent.
XXXVIII.
The Moral End is the Realization of a Community of Wills.
Since the performance of function is, on the other side, the creation,
perpetuation, and further development of an environment, of relations
to the wills of others, its performance _is a common good_. It
satisfies others who participate in the environment. The member of the
family, of the state, etc., in exercising his function, contributes to
the whole of which he is a member by realizing its spirit in himself.
But the question discussed in section XXXVI recurs under another
aspect. Granting that the satisfying of personal interests realizes a
common good, what shall we say of the impersonal interests--interests
in science and art. Is the good carpenter or chemist not only in so
far a good man, but also a good social member? In other words, does
every form of moral activity realize a common good, or is the moral end
partly social, partly non-social?
One objection sometimes brought to the doctrine that the
moral end is entirely social, may be now briefly dismissed.
This is the objection that a man has moral duties toward
_himself_. Certainly, but what of _himself_? If he is
essentially a social member, his duties toward himself have
a social basis and bearing. The only relevant question is
whether one is wholly a social member--whether scientific
and artistic activities may not be non-social.
The ground here taken is that the moral end is wholly social. This
does not mean that science and art are means to some social welfare
beyond themselves. We have already stated that even the production of
utilities must, as moral, be its own end. The position then is that
intellectual and artistic interests _are themselves_ social, when
considered in the completeness of their relations--that interest in
the development of intelligence is, in and of itself, interest in the
well-being of society.
Unless this be true there is no moral end at all, but only moral
ends. There is no comprehensive unity in life, but a number of ends
which, being irreducible to a common principle, must be combined on the
best principle of compromise available. We have no 'The Good', but an
aggregate of fragmentary ends.
It helps nothing to say that this necessary unity is
found in the _self_ to be realized, unless we are pointed
to something in the self that unites the social and
non-social functions. Our objection is that the separation
of intellectual interests from social makes a chasm in the
self.
For the same reason it follows that in the case of a collision of
social with intellectual ends--say the conflict of a man's interests as
a member of a family with his interests in new scientific discovery--no
reconciliation is possible. If the interests are forms of social
interest, there is a common end in both, on the basis of which the
conflict can be resolved. While such considerations do not prove that
there is but one end, and that social, they may well make us hesitate
about carelessly taking a position of which they are the logical
consequence.
Of course, every one recognizes that a certain amount of scientific and
artistic interest is social in character. A certain amount of interest
in truth, or in intelligence, a certain amount of susceptibility to
beauty, a certain amount of devotion to utility, are universally
recognized to be necessary to make judicious, agreeable and efficient
social members. The whole system of modern education has meaning only
on this supposition.
More than this: A certain amount of intelligence, and a certain amount
of susceptibility to embodied ideals, _must_ exist to give moral
conduct. A moral end is, as we have seen, always a _conception_, an
idea. The very act of bringing conduct out of the impulsive into the
moral sphere, depends upon the development of intelligence so as to
transform a feeling into the perception of a situation. And, as we
watch moral development from childhood to maturity, is it not evident
that progress consists in power to conceive of larger and better
defined ends? to analyze the situation which demands active response,
the function which needs exercise, into specific relations, instead of
taking it partially or even upon some one else's say so? Conduct, so
far as not based upon an intelligent recognition and realization of the
relationships involved, is either sentimental, or _merely_ habitual--in
the former case immoral, and in the latter failing of the complete
morality possible.
If the necessary part played in conduct by artistic cultivation is not
so plain, it is largely because 'Art' has been made such an unreal
Fetich--a sort of superfine and extraneous polish to be acquired only
by specially cultivated people. In reality, living is itself the
supreme art; it requires fineness of touch; skill and thoroughness
of workmanship; susceptible response and delicate adjustment to a
situation apart from reflective analysis; instinctive perception of
the proper harmonies of act and act, of man and man. Active art is the
embodiment of ideals; the clothing of ideas otherwise abstract in their
peculiar and fit garb of concrete outward detail; passive art is the
quick and accurate response to such embodiments as are already made.
What were human conduct without the one and the other?
Granting the necessity of knowledge and of its artistic application
in conduct, the question arises as to where the line is to be drawn.
Evidently, if anywhere, at specialisms, remote philosophic or
mathematical endeavors; life-times spent in inventive attempts without
appreciable outcome. But to draw the line is not easy. The remote of
one generation is the social tool of the next; the abstract mathematics
and physics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the great
social forces of the nineteenth--the locomotive, the telegraph,
the telephone, etc. And how, in any case, can we tell a scientific
investigator that up to a certain experiment or calculation his work
may be social, beyond that, not? All that we can say is that beyond a
certain point its social character is not obvious to sense and that
the work must be carried on by faith.
Thus it is that we dispose of objections like Bradley's (Ethical
Studies, p. 202): "Nothing is easier than to suppose a life of art or
speculation which, as far as we can see, though true to itself, has, so
far as others are concerned, been sheer waste or even loss, and which
knew that it was so." That we can not _see_ any social _result_ in such
cases has nothing to do with the question whether or not the interests
themselves are social. We may imagine a life of philanthropic activity,
say of devotion to emancipation of slaves in a country wholly given
over to slavery, or of a teacher in an unenlightened country, which,
as far as we can see, (though, in this case, as in the one referred
to by Mr. Bradley, everything depends upon how far we _can_ see) has
been sheer waste, so far as influence on others is concerned. The point
is whether in such cases the life lived is not one of devotion to the
interests of humanity as such.
We have been trying to show that everyone admits that
science and art, up to a certain point, are social, and
that to draw a line where they cease to be so, is in
reality to draw a line where we cease to _see_ their social
character. That we should cease to _see_ it, is necessary
in the case of almost every advance. Just because the new
scientific movement is new, we can realize its social
effects only afterwards. But it may be questioned whether
the motive which actuates the man of science is not, when
fully realized, a _faith_ in the social bearing of what he
is doing. If we were to go into a metaphysical analysis,
the question would have to be raised whether a barely
intellectual fact or theory be not a pure abstraction--an
unreality if kept apart entirely from the activities of men
in relation to one another.
XXXIX.
Science and Art as Necessary Factors of Social Welfare.
Let us consider the problem on its other side. What kind of an interest
is our interest in persons, our distinctively social interest? Suppose
we attempt to separate our interests in truth, beauty, and use from
our interest in persons: _What remains in the persons to be interested
in?_ Is not a necessary part of out interest in persons, an interest in
them as beings fulfilling their respective intellectual and artistic
capacities; and if we cut this out of our social interest, have we
not maimed and stunted our interest in persons? We wish the fullest
life possible to ourselves and to others. And the fullest life means
largely a complete and free development of capacities in knowledge
and production--production of beauty and use. Our interest in others
is not satisfied as long as their intelligence is cramped, their
appreciation of truth feeble, their emotions hard and uncomprehensive,
their powers of production compressed. To will their true good is to
will the freeing of all such gifts to the highest degree. Shall we
say that their true good requires that they shall go to the point of
understanding algebra, but not quaternions, of understanding ordinary
mechanics, but not to working out an electro-magnetic theory of light?
to ability to appreciate ordinary chords and tunes, but not to the
attempt to make further developments in music?
And this throws light upon the case referred to by Mr. Bradley.
_Social_ welfare demands that the individual be permitted to devote
himself to the fulfilling of _any_ scientific or artistic capacity that
he finds within himself--provided, of course, it does not conflict
with some more important capacity--irrespective of results. To say to
a man: You may devote yourself to this gift, provided you demonstrate
beforehand its social bearing, would be to talk nonsense. The new
discovery is not yet made. It is absolutely required by the interests
of a progressive society that it allow freedom to the individual to
develop such functions as he finds in himself, irrespective of any
_proved_ social effect. Here, as elsewhere, morality works by faith,
not by sight.
Indeed the ordinary conception of social interests, of benevolence,
needs a large over-hauling. It is practically equivalent to doing
something directly for others--to one form or another of charity.
But this is only negative morality. A true social interest is that
which wills for others freedom from dependence on our _direct_ help,
which wills to them the self-directed power of exercising, in and by
themselves, their own functions. Any will short of this is not social
but selfish, willing the dependence of others that we may continue
benignly altruistic. The idea of "giving pleasure" to others, "making
others happy", if it means anything else than securing conditions so
that they may act freely in their own satisfaction, means slavery.
As society advances, social interest must consist more and more in
free devotion to intelligence for its own sake, to science, art and
industry, and in rejoicing in the exercise of such freedom by others.
Meantime, it is truth which makes free.
See Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 249-257, where this
doctrine is stated with great force.
Where, finally, does the social character of science and art come
in? Just here: they are elements in the perfection of individuality,
and they are elements whose very nature is to be moving, not rigid;
distributed from one to another and not monopolistic possessions. If
there are forms of science and art which, at present, are static, being
merely owned collections of facts, as one may have a collection of
butterflies in a frame, or of etchings in a closed portfolio, this is
not because they are science and art, but imperfect science and art.
To complete their scientific and artistic character is to set these
facts in motion; to hurl them against the world of physical forces
till new instruments of man's activity are formed, and to set them in
circulation so that others may also participate in their truth and
rejoice in their beauty. So far as scientific or artistic attainments
are treasured as individual possessions, so far it _is_ true that
they are not social--but so far it is _also_ true that they are
immoral: indeed that they are not fully scientific or artistic, being
subordinated to having certain sensations.
The intellectual movement of the last four or five centuries has
resulted in an infinite specialization in methods, and in an immense
accumulation of fact. It is quite true, since the diversity of fact
and of method has not yet been brought to an organic unity, that their
social bearing is not yet realized. But when the unity is attained (as
attained it must be if there is unity in the object of knowledge), it
will pass into a corresponding unity of practice. And then the question
as to the social character of even the most specialized knowledge will
seem absurd. It will be to ask whether men can coöperate better when
they do not know than when they do know what they want. Meantime the
intellectual confusion, and the resulting divorce of knowledge from
practice, exists. But this constitutes a part of the environment of
which action must take heed. It makes it one of the pressing duties
that every man of intelligence should do his part in bringing out the
public and common aspects of knowledge. _The_ duty of the present is
the socializing of intelligence--the realizing of its bearing upon
social practice.
XL.
The Ethical Postulate.
We have attempted to show that the various interests are social in
their very nature. We have not attempted to show that this can be
seen or proved in any given case. On the contrary, in most, if not
all cases, the agent acts from a faith that, in realizing his own
capacity, he will satisfy the needs of society. If he were asked to
_prove_ that his devotion to his function were right because certain to
promote social good, he might well reply: "That is none of my affair.
I have only to work myself out as strength and opportunity are given
me, and let the results take care of themselves. I did not make the
world, and if it turns out that devotion to the capacity which was
given me, and loyalty to the surroundings in which I find myself do
not result in good, I do not hold myself responsible. But, after all,
I cannot believe that it will so turn out. What is really good for me
_must_ turn out good for all, or else there is no good in the world
at all." The basis, in a word, of moral conduct, with respect to the
exercise of function, is a faith that moral self-satisfaction (that
is, satisfaction in accordance with the performance of function as
already defined) means social satisfaction--or the faith that self and
others make a true community. Now such faith or conviction is at the
basis of all moral conduct--not simply of the scientific or artistic.
Interest in self must mean belief in one's business, conviction of its
legitimacy and worth, even prior to any sensible demonstration. Under
any circumstances, such demonstration can extend only to past action;
the social efficiency of any new end must be a matter of faith. Where
such faith is wanting, action becomes halting and character weak.
Forcible action fails, and its place is taken by a feeble idealism, of
vague longing for that which is not, or by a pessimistic and fruitless
discontent with things as they are--leading, in either case, to
neglect of actual and pressing duty. The basis of moral strength is
_limitation_, the resolve to be one's self only, and to be loyal to the
actual powers and surroundings of that self. The saying of Carlyle's
about doing the "duty that lies nearest", and of Goethe's that "America
is here or nowhere", both imply that faith in the existing moral
capacity and environment is the basis of conduct. All fruitful and
sound human endeavor roots in the conviction that there is something
absolutely worth while, something 'divine' in the demands imposed by
one's actual situation and powers. In the great moral heroes of the
world the conviction of the worth of their destiny, and of what they
were meant to do, has amounted to a kind of fatalism. They have done
not simply what they _could_ do, but what they _must_ do.
On the other hand, effective social interest is based upon what is
vaguely called 'faith in humanity', or, more specifically, belief
in the value of each man's individuality, belief in some particular
function which he might exercise, given appropriate conditions and
stimuli. Moral interest in others must be an interest in their
possibilities, rather than in their accomplishments; or, better, in
their accomplishments so far as these testify to a fulfilling of
function--to a working out of capacity. Sympathy and work for men which
do not grow out of faith in them are a perfunctory and unfertile sort
of thing.
This faith is generally analyzed no further; it is left as faith in
one's 'calling' or in 'humanity'. But what is meant is just this:
in the performing of such special service as each is capable of,
there is to be found not only the satisfaction of self, but also
the satisfaction of the entire moral order, the furthering of the
community in which one lives. All moral conduct is based upon such a
faith; and _moral theory must recognize this as the postulate upon
which it rests_. In calling it a postulate, we do not mean that it is a
postulate which our theory makes or must make in order to be a theory;
but that, through analysis, theory _finds that moral practice makes
this postulate_, and that with its reality the reality end value of
conduct are bound up.
In calling it a postulate we do not mean to call it unprovable, much
less unverifiable, for moral experience is itself, so far as it goes,
its verification. But we mean that the further consideration of this
postulate, its demonstration or (if the case so be) its refutation,
do not belong to the realm of ethics as such. Each branch of human
experience rests upon some presupposition which, _for that branch_, is
ultimate. The further inquiry into such presuppositions belong not to
mathematics, or physics, or ethics, but to metaphysics.
Unless, then, we are to extend our ethical theory to inquire into the
possibility and value of moral experience, unless, that is, we are to
make an excursion into the metaphysics of ethics, we have here reached
our foundation. The ethical postulate, the presupposition involved in
conduct, is this:
IN THE REALIZATION OF INDIVIDUALITY THERE IS FOUND ALSO THE NEEDED
REALIZATION OF SOME COMMUNITY OF PERSONS OF WHICH THE INDIVIDUAL IS A
MEMBER; AND, CONVERSELY, THE AGENT WHO DULY SATISFIES THE COMMUNITY IN
WHICH HE SHARES, BY THAT SAME CONDUCT SATISFIES HIMSELF.
Otherwise put, the postulate is that there is a community of persons; a
good which realized by the will of one is made not private but public.
It is this unity of individuals as respects the end of action, this
existence of a practical common good, that makes what we call the moral
order of the world.
Shakespeare has stated the postulate--
To thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou can'st not then be false to any man.
Its significance may be further developed by comparing it with the
scientific postulate.
All science rests upon the conviction of the thorough-going and
permanent unity of the world of objects known--a unity which is
sometimes termed the 'uniformity of nature' or the 'reign of law';
without this conviction that objects are not mere isolated and
transitory appearances, but are connected together in a system by laws
or relations, science would be an impossibility. Moral experience
_makes for the world of practice_ an assumption analogous in kind to
that which intellectual experience makes for the world of knowledge.
And just as it is not the affair of science, as such, or even of logic
(the theory of science) to justify this presupposition of science, or
to do more than show its presence in intellectual experience, so it is
not the business of conduct, or even of ethics (the theory of conduct)
to justify what we have termed the 'ethical postulate'. In each case
the further inquiry belongs to metaphysics.
XLI.
Does the End Proposed Serve as a Criterion of Conduct?
We have now concluded that an end which may be termed indifferently
'The Realization of Individuality', 'The Performance of Specific
Functions', 'The Satisfaction of Interests', 'The Realization of a
Community of Individuals' is the moral end. Will this end serve the
two aims (see Sec. XVI) required of a criterion, or standard: (1) Will
it unify individual conduct? (2) Will it afford a common good? We have
just been endeavoring to show that it does both of these things; that
as the realization of one's specific capacity, it unifies individual
conduct, and that, as the performance of function, it serves to satisfy
the entire community. To take up just these points, accordingly, would
involve a repetition of what has been said, and we shall therefore take
up instead some aspects of the individual and social unity of conduct,
not already considered.
1. The System of Individual Conduct. We must be careful not to
interpret the idea of specific function too rigidly or abstractly. It
does not mean that each one has some supreme mission in life to which
everything else must be sacrificed--that a man is to be an artist,
or a soldier, or a student, or a day-laborer and nothing else. On
the contrary, the idea of function is that which comprehends all the
various sides of life, and it cannot be narrowed below the meaning we
have already given: the due adjustment of capacity and surroundings.
Wherever there is any capacity or any circumstance, no matter how
trivial, there is something included in the exercise of function,
and, therefore to be satisfied--according to its place, of course,
in the whole of life. Amusements and all the minor details of life
are included within the scope of morality. They are elements in the
exercise of function, and their insignificance and triviality does not
exclude them from the grasp of duty and of the good. It is a mistake to
suppose that because it is optional or indifferent--as it constantly
is--what acts among the minor details of life are to be done or left
undone, or unimportant whether they are done or left undone at all,
therefore such acts have no moral value. Morality consists in treating
them just as they are--if they are slight or trivial they are to be
performed as slight and trivial. Morality does not simply permit the
performance of such acts, but demands it. To try to make, in the
interests of duty, a serious matter out of every detail of life would
be immoral--as much so, in kind, as to make light of momentous matters.
See Alexander, Op. cit. pp. 53-54.
Bradley, Op. cit., pp, 194-197.
Consider, also, how this conception of the end stands in definite
relation to concrete acts; how it explains the possibility of decision
as to whether this or that proposed act is right. We do not have to
trace the connection of the act with some end beyond, as pleasure, or
abstract law. We have only to analyze the _act itself_. We have certain
definite and wholly concrete facts; the given capacity of the person at
the given moment, and his given surroundings. The judgment as to the
nature of these facts is, in and of itself, a judgment as to the act
to be done. The question is not: What is the probability that this act
will result in the balance of maximum pleasure; it is not what general
rule can we hunt up under which to bring this case. It is simply:
_What is this case?_ The moral act is not that which satisfies some
far-away principle, hedonistic or transcendental. It is that which
meets the present, actual situation. Difficulties indeed, arise, but
they are simply the difficulty of resolving a complex case; they are
intellectual, not moral. The case made out, the moral end stands forth.
No extraneous manipulation, to bring the case under some foreign end,
is required.
And this suggests the elasticity of the criterion. In fact moral
conduct is entirely individualized. It is where, when, how and of whom.
There has been much useless discussion as to the absolute or relative
character of morals--useless because the terms absolute and relative
are not defined. If absolute is taken to mean immobile and rigid, it is
anything but desirable that morals should be absolute. If the physical
world is a scene of movement, in which there is no rest, it is a poor
compliment to pay the moral world to conceive of it as static and
lifeless. A rigid criterion in a world of developing social relations
would speedily prove no criterion at all. It would be an abstract
rule, taking no account of the individualized character of each act;
its individuality of capacity and of surroundings, of time, place and
relationships involved. A truly absolute criterion is one which adjusts
itself to each case according to the specific nature of the case; one
which moves with the moving world. On the other hand, if relative means
uncertain in application, changing in time and place without reason for
change in the facts themselves, then certainly the criterion is not
relative. If it means taking note of all concrete relations involved,
it _is_ relative. The absoluteness, in fine, of the standard of action
consists not in some rigid statement, but in never-failing application.
Universality here, as elsewhere, resides not in a thing, but in a way,
a method of action. The absolute standard is the one applicable to all
deeds, and the conception of the exercise of function is thus absolute,
covering all conduct from the mainly impulsive action of the savage to
the most complex reaches of modern life.
Aristotle's well known theory of the 'mean' seems to have
its bearing here. "It is possible," he says (Peters' trans.
of Ethics, p. 46), "to feel fear, confidence, desire,
anger, pity, and generally to be affected pleasantly
and painfully, either too much or too little--in either
case wrongfully; but to be affected thus at the right
_times_, and on the right _occasions_, and toward the
right _persons_, and with the right _object_ and in the
right _fashions_, is the mean course and the best course,
and these are characteristics of virtue." The right time,
occasion, person, purpose and fashion--what is it but the
complete individualization of conduct in order to meet
the whole demands of the whole situation, instead of some
abstraction? And what else do we mean by fit, due, proper,
right action, but that which just hits the mark, without
falling short or deflecting, and, to mix the metaphor,
without slopping over?
2. The system of social conduct, or common good. Moral conduct springs
from the faith that all right action is social and its purpose is
to justify this faith by working out the social values involved. The
term 'moral community' can mean only a unity of action, made what it
is by the co-operating activities of diverse individuals. There is
unity in the work of a factory, not in spite of, but _because of_ the
division of labor. Each workman forms the unity not by doing the same
that everybody else does, or by trying to do the whole, but by doing
his specific part. The unity is the one activity which their varied
activities make. And so it is with the moral activity of society and
the activities of individuals. The more individualized the functions,
the more perfect the unity. (See section LII.)
The exercise of function by an agent serves, then, both to define and
to unite him. It makes him a _distinct_ social member at the same time
that it makes him a _member_. Possession of peculiar capacities, and
special surroundings mark one person off from another and make him
an individual; and the due adjustment of capacities to surroundings
(in the exercise of function) effects, therefore, the realization of
individuality--the realization of what we specifically are as distinct
from others. At the same time, this distinction is not isolation;
the exercise of function is the performing of a special _service_
without which the social whole is defective. Individuality means
not separation, but defined position in a whole; special aptitude in
constituting the whole.
We are now in a position to take up the consideration of the two other
fundamental ethical conceptions--obligation and freedom. These ideas
answer respectively to the two sides of the exercise of function. On
the one hand, the performing of a function realizes the social whole.
Man is thus 'bound' by the relations necessary to constitute this
whole. He is subject to the conditions which the existence and growth
of the social unity impose. He is, in a word, under _obligation_; the
performance of his function is duty owed to the community of which he
is a member.
But on the other hand, activity in the way of function realizes the
individual; it is what makes him an individual, or distinct person.
In the performance of his own function the agent satisfies his own
interests and gains power. In it is found his _freedom_.
Obligation thus corresponds to the _social_ satisfaction, freedom to
the _self_-satisfaction, involved in the exercise of function; and
they can no more be separated from each other than the correlative
satisfaction can be. One has to realize himself as a member of a
community. In this fact are found both freedom and duty.
CHAPTER II.--THE IDEA OF OBLIGATION.
XLII.
Theories Regarding Moral Authority.
The idea of obligation or duty has two sides. There is the idea of law,
of something which controls conduct, and there is the _consciousness_
of the necessity of conforming to this law. There is, of course,
no separation between the two sides, but the consideration of the
latter side--the recognition of obligation--may be best dealt with
in discussing conscience. Here we shall deal simply with the fact
that there is such a thing in conduct as law controlling action, and
constituting obligation. Theories regarding obligation may, for our
purposes, be subdivided into those which make its exercise restraint
or coercion (and which therefore hold that in perfect moral conduct,
duty as such disappears); and those which hold that obligation is a
normal element in conduct as such, and that it is not, essentially, but
only under certain circumstances, coercive. Of the former type, some
theories (mainly the hedonistic) regard the restraint as originally
imposed from without upon the desires of the individual, while others
(as the Kantian) regard it as imposed by man's reason upon his desires
and inclinations.
XLIII.
Bain's Theory of Obligation.
It is obvious that the question of obligation presents considerable
difficulty to the hedonistic school. If the end of conduct is pleasure,
as the satisfaction of desire, why should not each desire be satisfied,
if possible, as it arises, and thus pleasure secured? What meaning
is there in the term 'duty' or 'obligation' if the moral end or good
coincides wholly with the natural end of the inclinations themselves?
It is evident, at all events, that the term can have significance
only if there is some cause preventing the desires as they arise from
natural satisfaction. The problem of obligation in hedonism thus
becomes the problem of discovering that outside force which restrains,
or, at least, constrains, the desire from immediate gratification.
According to Bain, this outside force is social disapprobation
manifested through the form of punishment.
"I consider that the proper meaning, or import of the terms
[duty, obligation] refers to that class of action which is
enforced by the sanction of punishment.... The powers that
impose the obligatory sanction are Law and Society, or the
community acting through the Government by public judicial
acts, and apart from the Government by the unofficial
expressions of disapprobation and the exclusion from social
good offices". Emotions and Will, p. 286. See also pp.
321-323 and p. 527.
Through this 'actual and ideal avoidance of certain acts and dread
of punishment' the individual learns to forego the gratification of
some of his natural impulses, and learns also to cultivate and even to
originate desires not at first spontaneous. "The child is open from the
first to the blame and praise of others, and thus is led to do or avoid
certain acts".
On the model, however, of the action of this external authority
there grows up, in time an internal authority--"an ideal resemblance
of public authority" (p. 287), or "a _fac simile_ of the system of
government around us" (p. 313).
"The sentiment, at first formed and cultivated by the
relations of actual command and obedience, may come at last
to stand upon an independent foundation.... When the young
mind, accustomed at the outset to implicitly obeying any
set of rules is sufficiently advanced to appreciate the
motive--the utilities or the sentiment that led to their
imposition--the character of the conscience is entirely
changed.... Regard is now had to the intent and meaning of
the law, and not to the mere fact of its being prescribed
by some power" (E. and W., p. 318).
But when the sense of obligation becomes entirely detached
from the social sanction, "even then the notion, sentiment
or form of duty is derived from what society imposes,
although the particular matter is quite different. Social
obligation develops in the mind originally the feeling
and habit of obligation, and this remains although the
particular articles are changed" (page 319, note). _Cf._
also Bain, Moral Science, pp. 20-21 and 41-43.
XLIV.
Spencer's Theory of Obligation.
Spencer's theory is, in substance, an enlarged and better analyzed
restatement of Bain's theory. Bain nowhere clearly states in what the
essence of obligation consists, when it becomes independent, when the
internal _fac simile_ is formed. _Why_ should I not gratify my desires
as I please in case social pressure is absent or lets up? Spencer
supplies the missing element. According to him, "the essential trait in
the moral consciousness is the control of some feeling or feelings by
some other feeling or feelings" (Data of Ethics, p. 113). The kind of
feeling which controls is that which is more complex and which relates
to more remote ends; or, we are 'obliged' to give up more immediate,
special and direct pleasures for the sake of securing more general,
remote and indirect ones. Obligation, in its essence, is the surrender
or subordination of present to future satisfaction. This control,
restraint, or suppression may be 'independent' or, self-imposed,
but is not so at first, either in the man or in the child. Prior to
self-restraint are the restraints imposed by the "visible ruler, the
invisible ruler and society at large"--the policeman, the priest and
public opinion. The man is induced to postpone immediate gratification
through his fear of others, especially of the chief, of the dead and
of social displeasure--"legal penalty, supernatural punishment and
social reprobation". Thus there grows up the sense of obligation.
This refers at first only to the above-mentioned extrinsic effects of
action. But finally the mind learns to consider the intrinsic effect
of the action itself--the evil inflicted by the evil deed, and then
the sense of duty, or coercion, evolved through the aforesaid external
agencies, becomes transferred to this new mode of controlling action.
Desires are now controlled through considerations of what their _own_
effects would be, were the desires acted upon.
It follows "that the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory,
and will diminish as fast as moralization increases" (page 127).
Even when compulsion is self-imposed, there is still compulsion,
coercion, and this must be done away with. It _is_ done away with as
far as an act which is at first done only for the sake of its own
remoter consequences comes to be done for its own sake. And this will
ultimately occur, if the act is continued, since "persistence in
performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure".
See Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine, besides the
works of Bain and Spencer. In addition to objections
which will forthwith be made, we may here note a
false abstraction of Spencer's. He makes the act and
its consequences _two_ things, while the act and its
consequences (provided they are known as such) are the
same thing, no matter whether consequences are near or
remote. The only distinction is that consequences once
not known as such at all are seen in time to be really
consequences, and thus to be part of the content of the
act. The transfer from the "external consequences" imposed
by the ruler, priest and public-opinion to the intrinsic
consequences of the act itself, is thus a transfer from an
immoral to a moral basis. This is very different from a
change of the form of obligation itself.
XLV.
Criticism of these Theories.
Putting aside the consideration of the relation of desire to duty, (the
question whether duty is essentially coercive) until after we have
taken up the Kantian idea of obligation, we may note the following
objections to the theories just stated. Their great defect is that
they do not give us any method of differentiating moral coercion (or
obligation) from the action of mere superior physical force. Taking it
(first) upon the side of the individual: Is there any reason _why_ the
individual submits to the external authority of government except that
he _has_ to do so? He may argue that, since others possess superior
force, he will avoid certain pains by conforming to their demands,
but such yielding, whether temporary or permanent, to superior force
is very far from being a recognition that one _ought_ to act as the
superior force dictates. The theories must logically commit us to the
doctrine that 'might makes right' in its baldest form. Every one knows
that, when the individual surrenders the natural gratifications of his
desires to the command of others, if his sole reason is the superior
force of the commanding party, he does not forego in the surrender his
right to such gratification the moment he has the chance to get it.
Actual slavery would be the model school of duties, if these theories
were true.
The facts adduced by Bain and Spencer--the growth of the recognition
of duties in the child through the authority of the parents, and in
the savage through the use of authority by the chief--are real enough,
but what they prove is that obligation may be brought home to one by
force, not that force creates obligation. The child and the man yield
to force in such a way that their sense of duty is developed only in
case they recognize, implicitly, the force or the authority as already
_right_. Let it be recognized that _rightful_ force (as distinct from
mere brute strength) resides in certain social authorities, and these
social authorities may do much, beyond the shadow of doubt, to give
effect to the special deeds and relations which are to be considered
obligatory. These theories, in fine, take the fact of obligation for
granted, and, at most, only show the historical process by which its
fuller recognition is brought about. Force in the service of right is
one thing; force as constituting and creating right is another.
And this is to say (secondly), considering the matter from the side
of society, that the theories of Bain and Spencer do not explain
why or how social authority should exercise coercive force over the
individual. If it is implied that they do so in the moral interests
of the individual or of the community, this takes it for granted
that there already is in existence a moral ideal obligatory upon the
individual. If it is implied that they exercise coercive force in
the interests of their own private pleasure, this might establish a
despotism, or lead to a political revolt, but it is difficult to see
how it could create the fact of duty. When we consider any concrete
case, we see that society, in its compelling of the individual, is
possessed of moral ideals; and that it conceives itself not merely
as having the _power_ to make the individual conform to them, nor as
having the _right_ merely; but as under the bounden _duty_ of bringing
home to the individual _his_ duties. The social authorities do not,
perforce, create morality, but they embody and make effective the
existing morality. It is only just because the actions which they
impose are thought of as _good_, good for others as for themselves,
that this imposition is taken out of the realm of tyranny into that of
duty (see Sec. XXXVIII).
XLVI.
The Kantian Theory of Obligation.
As we have seen, Kant takes the conception of duty as the primary
ethical notion, superior to that of the good, and places it in the
most abrupt opposition to desire. The relation of duty to desire is
not control of some feelings by others, but rather suppression of all
desire (not in itself, but as a _motive_ of action) in favor of the
consciousness of law universal. We have, on one side, according to
Kant, the desire and inclination, which are sensuous and pathological.
These constitute man's 'lower nature'. On the other side there is
Reason, which is essentially universal, above all caprice and all
prostitution to private pleasure. This Reason, or 'higher nature',
imposes a law upon the sentient being of man, a law which takes the
form of a command (the 'Categorical Imperative'). This relation of a
higher rational nature issuing commands to a lower sensuous nature
(both within man himself), is the very essence of duty. If man were
wholly a sentient being, he would have only to follow his natural
impulses, like the animals. If he were only a rational being, he
would necessarily obey his reason, and there would still be no talk
of obligation. But because of the dualism, because of the absolute
opposition between Reason and Desire, man is a being subject to
obligation. Reason says to the desires "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt
not". Yet this obligation is not externally imposed; the man as
rational imposes it upon himself as sensuous. Thus Kant says that, in
the realm of morality, man is both sovereign and subject.
The reflex influence of Rousseau's social theories upon
Kant's moral doctrines in this respect is worthy of more
attention than it usually receives. Kant's moral theory is
hardly more than a translation of Rousseau's politics into
ethical terms, through its union with Kant's previously
established dualism of reason and sense.
XLVII.
Criticism of the Kantian Theory.
1. No one can deny that a genuine opposition exists between the
'natural' desires and moral activity. The being that satisfies each
desire or appetite as it arises, without reference of it to, or
control of it by, some principle, has not had the horizon of conduct
lift before him. But Kant makes the satisfaction of desire _as such_
(not of this or that desire) antagonistic to action from duty. Kant
was forced into this position by his fundamental division of sense
from reason, but it carries with it its own condemnation and thus
that of the premises from which it is derived. It comes to saying
that the actual desires and appetites are not what they ought to be.
This, in itself, is true enough. But when Kant goes on to say, as he
virtually does, that what ought to be _cannot_ be, that the desires as
such cannot be brought into harmony with principle, he has made the
moral life not only a riddle, but a riddle with no answer. If mankind
were once convinced that the moral ideal were something which ought
to be but which could not be, we may easily imagine how much longer
moral endeavor would continue. The first or immediate stimulus to
moral effort is the conviction that the desires and appetites are not
what they should be; the underlying and continuing stimulus is the
conviction that the expression of desires in harmony with law is the
sole abiding good of man. To reconcile the two is the very meaning
of the moral struggle (see Sec. LXIV). Strictly, according to Kant,
morality would either leave the appetites untouched or would abolish
them--in either case destroying morality.
See Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 226-28.
2. Kant again seems to be on the right track in declaring that
obligation is not anything externally imposed, but is the law of man's
being, self-imposed. This principle of 'autonomy' is the only escape
from a theory of obligation which would make obligation external, and
regard for it slavish fear, or servile hope of reward. To regard even
a Divine Being as the author of obligation is to make it a form of
external constraint, appealing only to hope or fear, unless this Divine
Being is shown to be organically connected with self.
But this abstract universal reason which somehow dwells, without
mediation or reason, in each individual, seems to be somewhat
scholastic, a trifle mythological. There is undoubtedly in man's
experience a function which corresponds to what Kant is aiming, thus
mythologically, to describe. But it is one thing to recognize an
opposition of a desire, in its isolation, to desire as organic to the
function of the whole man; it is another to split man into a blank
dualism of an abstract reason, on one side, having no antecedents or
bearings, and of a mess of appetites, having only animal relationship,
on the other. The truth that Kant is aiming to preserve seems to be
fairly stated as two-fold: first, that duty is self-imposed, and
thus the dutiful will autonomous or free; and, second, the presence
of struggle in man between a 'lower' and a 'higher'. The first point
seems to be sufficiently met by the idea already advanced that self,
or individuality, is essentially social, being constituted not by
isolated capacity, but by capacity acting in response to the needs
of an environment--an environment which, when taken in its fullness,
is a community of persons. Any law imposed by such a self would be
'universal', but this universality would not be an isolated possession
of the individual; it would be another name for the concrete social
relationships which make the individual what he is, as a social member
or organ. Furthermore, such a universal law would not be formal, but
would have a content--these same relationships.
The second point seems to be met by recognizing that in the realization
of the law of social function, conflict must occur between the desire
as an immediate and direct expression of the individual--the desire in
its isolation--and desire as an expression of the whole man; desire,
that is, as wholly conformable to the needs of the surroundings. Such
a conflict is real enough, as everyone's experience will testify, but
it is a conflict which may be solved--which must be solved so far as
morality is attained. And since it is a conflict within desire itself,
its solution or morality, does not require any impossible obliteration
of desire, nor any acting from an 'ought' which has no relation to
what 'is'. This, indeed, is _the_ failure of the Kantian Ethics: in
separating what should be from what is, it deprives the latter, the
existing social world as well as the desires of the individual, of all
moral value; while, by the same separation, it condemns that which
should be to a barren abstraction. An 'ought' which does not root in
and flower from the 'is', which is not the fuller realization of the
actual state of social relationships, is a mere pious wish that things
should be better. And morality, that is, right action, is not so feeble
as this would come to.
XLVIII.
The Source and Nature of Obligation.
The basis of a correct theory of obligation lies, as already stated,
in holding fast to its concrete relations to the moral end, or good.
This end consists in an activity in which capacity is exercised in
accordance with surroundings, with the social needs which affect the
individual. It is implied in this very idea, that the end is not
something which the individual may set up at his own arbitrary will.
The social needs give control, law, authority. The individual may not
manifest his capacity, satisfy his desires, apart from their specific
relation to the environment in which they exist. The general fact of
obligation which is constituted through this control of capacity by the
wider function is, of course, differentiated into specific 'laws' or
duties by the various forms which the one function takes, as capacity
and circumstances vary.
In other words, obligation or duty is simply the aspect which the good
or the moral end assumes, as the individual conceives of it. From
the very fact that the end is the good, and yet is not realized by
the individual, it presents itself to him as that which _should be
realized_--as the ideal of action. It requires no further argument
to show that obligation is at once self-imposed, and social in its
content. It is self-imposed because it flows from the good, from the
idea of the full activity of the individual's own will. It is no law
imposed from without; but is his own law, the law of his own function,
of his individuality. Its social content flows from the fact that this
individuality is not mere capacity, but is this capacity _acting_, and
acting so as to comprehend social relationships.
Suppose that man's good and his conviction of duty were divorced
from one another--that man's duty were other than to fulfill his
own specific function. Such a thing would make duty purely formal;
the moral law would have no intrinsic relation to daily conduct, to
the expression of man's powers and wants. There have, indeed, been
moralists who think they do the Lord service, who think they add to
the dignity and sacredness of Duty by making it other than the idea
of the activity of man, regulated indeed, but regulated only by its
own principle of activity. But such moralists in their desire to
consecrate the idea of duty remove from it all content, and leave it
an empty abstraction. On the other hand, their eagerness to give
absoluteness and imperativeness to duty by making it a law other
than that of the normal expression of man, casts discredit upon the
one moral reality--the full, free play of human life. In denying
that duty is simply the _intrinsic_ law, the _self_-manifestation
of this life, they make this life immoral, or at least non-moral.
They degrade it to a bundle of appetites and powers having no moral
value until the outside moral law is applied to them. In reality, the
dignity and imperativeness of duty are simply the manifest dignity and
unconditioned worth of human life as exhibited in its free activity.
The whole idea of the separateness of duty from the concrete flow of
human action is a virulent example of the fallacy mentioned in an early
section--the fallacy that moral action means something more than action
itself (see Sec. II).
The attempt to act upon a theory of the divorce of satisfaction and
duty, to carry it out in practice, means the maiming of desire through
distrust of its moral significance, and thus, by withdrawing the
impetus of action, the reduction of life to mere passivity. So far as
this does not happen, it means the erection of the struggle itself, the
erection of the opposition of law to desire, into the very principle of
the moral life. The essential principle of the moral life, that good
consists in the freeing of impulse, of appetite, of desire, of power,
by enabling them to flow in the channel of a unified and full end is
lost sight of, and the free service of the spirit is reduced to the
slavish fear of a bond-man under a hard taskmaster.
The essential point in the analysis of moral law, or obligation, having
been found, we may briefly discuss some subsidiary points.
1. The relation of duty to a given desire. As any desire arises,
it will be, except so far as character has already been moralized,
a demand for its own satisfaction; the desire, in a word, will be
isolated. In so far, duty will be in a negative attitude towards the
desire; it will insist first upon its limitation, and then upon its
transformation. So far as it is merely limitative, it demands the
denying of the desire, and so far assumes a coercive form. But this
limitation is not for its own sake, but for that of the transformation
of desire into a freer and more adequate form--into a form, that is,
where it will carry with it, when it passes into action, _more of
activity_, than the original desire would have done.
Does duty itself disappear when its constraint disappears? On the
contrary, so far as an act is done unwillingly, under constraint,
so far the act is impure, and _undutiful_. The very fact that there
is need of constraint shows that the self is divided; that there is
a two-fold interest and purpose--one in the law of the activity
according to function, the other in the special end of the particular
desire. Let the act be done _wholly as duty_, and it is done wholly for
its own sake; love, passion take the place of constraint. This suggests:
2. Duty for duty's sake.
It is clear that such an expression states a real moral fact; unless a
duty is done _as_ duty it is not done morally. An act may be outwardly
just what morality demands, and yet if done for the sake of some
private advantage it is not counted moral. As Kant expresses it, an
act must be done not only in accordance with duty, but _from duty_.
This truth, however, is misinterpreted when it is taken to mean that
the act is to be done for the sake of duty, and duty is conceived as
a third thing outside the act itself. Such a theory contradicts the
true sense of the phrase 'duty for duty's sake', for it makes the act
done not for its own sake, but as a mere means to an abstract law
beyond itself. 'Do the right because it is the right' means do the
right _thing_ because it _is_ the right thing; that is, do the act
disinterestedly from interest in the act itself. A duty is always some
act or line of action, not a third thing outside the act to which it
is to conform. In short, duty means _the act which is to be done_, and
'duty for duty's sake' means do the required act as it really is; do
not degrade it into a means for some ulterior end. This is as true
in practice as in theory. A man who does his duty not for the sake of
the acts themselves, but for the sake of some abstract 'ideal' which
he christens duty in general, will have a morality at once hard and
barren, and weak and sentimental.
3. The agency of moral authority in prescribing moral law and
stimulating to moral conduct.
The facts, relied upon by Bain and Spencer, as to the part played
by social influences in imposing duties, are undeniable. The facts,
however, are unaccountable upon the theory of these writers, as that
theory would, as we have seen, explain only the influence of society
in producing acts done from fear or for hope of reward. But if the
individual and others are equally members of one society, if the
performance by each man of his own function constitutes a good common
to all, it is inevitable that social authorities should be an influence
in constituting and teaching duties. The community, in imposing its
own needs and demands upon the individual, is simply arousing him to
a knowledge of his relationships in life, to a knowledge of the moral
environment in which he lives, and of the acts which he must perform if
he is to realize his individuality. The community in awakening moral
consciousness in the morally immature may appeal to motives of hope
and fear. But even this fact does not mean that to the child, duty
is necessarily constituted by fear of punishment or hope of reward.
It means simply that his capacity and his surroundings are both so
undeveloped that the exercise of his function takes mainly the form of
pleasing others. He may still do his duty _as_ his duty, but his duty
now consists in pleasing others.
On Obligation see Green, Op. cit., pp. 352-356; Alexander,
Op. cit., pp. 142-147. For different views, Martineau,
Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 92-119; Calderwood, Op. cit., pp.
131-138, and see also, Grote, Treatise on Moral Ideals, ch.
VII.
CHAPTER III.--THE IDEA OF FREEDOM.
XLIX.
The Forms of Freedom.
We may now deal, more briefly, with the problem of moral capacity. It
is, in principle, the ability to conceive of an end and to be governed
in action by this conceived end. We may consider this capacity in three
aspects, as negative, as potential and as positive.
1. _Negative Aspect of Freedom._ The power to be governed in action by
the thought of some end to be reached is freedom _from_ the appetites
and desires. An animal which does not have the power of proposing ends
to itself is impelled to action by its wants and appetites just as they
come into consciousness. It is _irritated_ into acting. Each impulse
demands its own satisfaction, and the animal is helpless to rise above
the particular want. But a _person_, one who can direct his action
by conscious ends, is emancipated from subjection to the particular
appetites. He can consider their relation to the end which he has set
before himself, and can reject, modify or use them as best agrees with
the purposed end. This capacity to control and subjugate impulses by
reflection upon their relationship to a rational end is the power of
self-government, and the more distinct and the more comprehensive in
scope the end is, the more real the self-government.
2. _Potential Freedom._ The power to conceive of ends involves the
possibility of thinking of many and various ends, and even of ends
which are contrary to one another. If an agent could conceive of but
one end in some case, it would always seem to him afterwards that he
had been necessitated to act in the direction of that end; but the
power to put various ends before self constitutes "freedom of choice",
or potential freedom. After action, the agent calls to mind that there
was another end open to him, and that if he did not choose the other
end, it was because of something in his character which made him prefer
the one he actually chose.
L.
Moral Responsibility.
Here we have the basis of moral _responsibility_ or _accountability_.
There is no responsibility for any result which is not intended or
foreseen. Such a consequence is only physical, not moral. (Sec. VII).
But when any result has been foreseen, and adopted as foreseen, such
result is the outcome not of any external circumstances, nor of mere
desires and impulses, but of the agent's conception of his own end.
Now, because the result thus flows from the agent's own conception of
an end, he feels himself responsible for it.
It must be remembered that the end adopted is that which is conceived
_as satisfying self_--that, indeed, when we say end of action, we mean
only some proposed form of self-satisfaction. The adopted end always
indicates, therefore, that sort of condition which the agent considers
to be good, or self-satisfactory. It is because a result flows from the
agent's _ideal of himself_, the thought of himself which he considers
desirable or worth realizing, that the agent feels himself responsible.
The result is simply an expression of himself; a manifestation of what
he would have himself be. Responsibility is thus one aspect of the
identity of character and conduct. (Sec. VII). We are responsible for
our conduct because that conduct is ourselves objectified in actions.
The idea of responsibility is intensified whenever there have been two
contrary lines of conduct conceived, of which one has been chosen. If
the end adopted turns out not to be satisfactory, but, rather, unworthy
and degrading, the agent feels that he _might_ have chosen the other
end, and that if he did not, it was because his character was such,
his ideal of himself was such, that this other end did not appeal
to him. The actual result is felt to be the outcome of an unworthy
character manifested in the adoption of a low form of satisfaction;
and the evident contrast of this low form with a higher form, present
to consciousness but rejected, makes the sense of responsibility more
acute. As such, it is the judgment of disapprobation passed upon
conduct; the feeling of remorse and of the desert of punishment.
Freedom as the power of conceiving ends and of realizing the ideal end
in action, is thus the basis both of responsibility and of approbation
(or disapprobation).
_The Freedom of Indifference._ It is this potential
freedom, arising from the power of proposing various
ends of action, which, misinterpreted, gives rise to the
theory of a liberty of indifferent choice--the theory
that the agent can choose this or that without any
ground or motive. The real experience is the knowledge,
after the choice of one end, that since another end was
also present to consciousness that other end might have
been chosen, _if only the character had been such as to
find its satisfaction in that other end_. The theory of
indifference misconstrues this fact to mean that the agent
might just as well have chosen that other end, without any
if or qualification whatever. The theory of indifference,
moreover, defeats its own end. The point which it is
anxious to save is responsibility. It sees that if only
one course of action were ever open to an agent, without
the possibility of any _conception_ of another course, an
agent, so acting, could not be held responsible for not
having adopted that other course. And so it argues that
there must always be the possibility of indifferent or
alternate choice; the possibility of adopting this or that
line of action without any motive. But if such were the
case responsibility would be destroyed. If the end chosen
is not an expression of character, if it does not manifest
the agent's ideal of himself, if its choice is a matter
of indifference, it does not signify morally, but is mere
accident or caprice. It is because choice is _not_ a matter
of indifference, but an outcome of character that the
agent feels responsibility, and approves or disapproves.
He virtually says: "I am responsible for this outcome,
not because I could have chosen another end just as well
_without any reason_, but because I thought of another end
and rejected it; because my character was such that that
end did not seem good, and was such that this end did seem
good. My character is myself, and in this unworthy end I
stand self-condemned."
LI.
Moral Reformation.
Freedom considered as potential, depending upon the power of the agent
to frame diverse ends, is the basis not only of responsibility, but
also of the possibility of reformation, or of change in character and
conduct. All moral action is the expression of self, but the self
is not something fixed or rigid. It includes as a necessary part of
itself the possibility of framing conceptions of what it would be,
and there is, therefore, at any time the possibility of acting upon
some ideal hitherto unrealized. If conduct were the expression of
character, in a sense which identified character wholly with past
attainments, then reformation would be impossible. What a man once was
he must always continue to be. But past attainments do not exhaust all
the possibilities of character. Since conduct necessarily implies a
continuous adjustment of developing capacity to new conditions, there
is the ability to frame a changed ideal of self-satisfaction--that
is, ability to lead a new life. That the new ideal is adopted from
experience of the unworthy nature of former deeds is what we should
expect. The chosen end having proved itself unsatisfactory, the
alternative end, previously rejected, recurs to consciousness with
added claims. To sum up: The doctrine that choice depends upon
character is correct, but the doctrine is misused when taken to mean
that a man's outward conduct will always be in the same direction that
it has been. Character involves all the ideas of different and of
better things which have been present to the agent, although he has
never attempted to carry them out. And there is always the possibility
that, if the proper influences are brought to bear, some one of
these latent ideals may be made vital, and wholly change the bent of
character and of conduct.
LII.
Positive Freedom.
The _capacity_ of freedom lies in the power to form an ideal or
conception of an end. _Actual_ freedom lies in the realization of
that end which actually satisfies. An end may be freely adopted, and
yet its actual working out may result not in freedom, but in slavery.
It may result in rendering the agent more subject to his passions,
less able to direct his own conduct, and more cramped and feeble in
powers. Only that end which executed really effects greater energy and
comprehensiveness of character makes for actual freedom. In a word,
only the good man, the man who is truly realizing his individuality, is
free, in the positive sense of that word.
Every action which is not in the line of performance of functions
must necessarily result in self-enslavement. The end of desire is
activity; and it is only in fullness and unity of activity that freedom
is found. When desires are not unified--when, that is, the idea of
the exercise of function does not control conduct--one desire must
conflict with another. Action is directed now this way, now that,
and there is friction, loss of power. On account of this same lack of
control of desires by the comprehensive law of social activity, one
member of society is brought into conflict with another, with waste
of energy, and with impeded and divided activity and satisfaction of
desire. Exercise of function, on the other hand, unifies the desires,
giving each its relative, although subordinate, place. It fits each
into the others, and, through the harmonious adjustment of one to
another, effects that complete and unhindered action which is freedom.
The performance of specific function falls also into free relations
with the activities of other persons, coöperating with them, giving and
receiving what is needed, and thus constituting full liberty. Other
aspects of freedom, as the negative and the potential, are simply means
instrumental to the realization of individuality, and when not employed
toward this, their true end, they become methods of enslaving the agent.
On the subject of moral freedom, as, upon the whole, in
agreement with the view presented here: See
Green: Prolegomena to Ethics, pp. 90-117; 142-158. Bradley:
Ethical Studies, ch. I; Caird: Phil. of Kant, Vol. II, Bk.
II, ch. 3; Alexander: Moral Order and Progress, pp. 336-341.
And, for a view agreeing in part, Stephen: Science of
Ethics, pp. 278-293.
For presentations of the freedom of indifference, see,
Lotze: Practical Philosophy, ch. 3. Martineau: Op.
cit., Vol. II, pp. 34-40. Calderwood: Handbook of Moral
Philosophy.
PART II.
THE ETHICAL WORLD.
LIII.
The Reality of Moral Relations.
The habit of conceiving moral action as a certain _kind_ of action,
instead of all action so far as it really is action, leads us to
conceive of morality as a highly desirable something which somehow
ought to be brought into our lives, but which upon the whole is not.
It gives rise to the habit of conceiving morality as a vague ideal
which it is praiseworthy for the individual to strive for, but which
depends wholly for its existence upon the individual's wish in the
matter. Morality, that is, is considered as a relation existing between
something which merely _ought to be_, on one hand, and the individual's
choice, or his conscience on the other. This point of view has found
typical expression in Bishop Butler's saying: "If conscience had might
as it has right, it would rule the world."
But right is not such a helpless creature. It exists not in word but
in power. The moral world is, here and now; it is a reality apart from
the wishes, or failures to wish, of any given individual. It bears
the same relation to the individual's activity that the 'physical
world' does to his knowledge. Not till the individual has to spin the
physical world out of his consciousness in order to know it, will
it be necessary for him to create morality by his choice, before it
can exist. As knowledge is mastery in one's self of the real world,
the reproduction of it in self-consciousness, so moral action is the
appropriation and vital self-expression of the values contained in the
existing practical world.
The existence of this moral world is not anything vaguely mysterious.
Imagine a well organized factory, in which there is some comprehensive
industry carried on--say the production of cotton cloth. This is the
end; it is a common end--that for which each individual labors. Not all
individuals, however, are doing the same thing. The more perfect the
activity, the better organized the work, the more differentiated their
respective labors. This is the side of individual activity or freedom.
To make the analogy with moral activity complete we have to suppose
that each individual is doing the work because of itself, and not
merely as drudgery for the sake of some further end, as pay. Now these
various individuals are bound together by their various acts; some
more nearly because doing closely allied things, all somewhat, because
contributing to a common activity. This is the side of laws and duties.
This group of the differentiated and yet related activities is the
analogue of the moral world. There are certain wants which have
constantly to be fulfilled; certain ends which demand coöperating
activities, and which establish fixed relations between men. There is a
world of ends, a realm of definite activities in existence, as concrete
as the ends and activities in our imagined factory. The child finds,
then, ends and actions in existence when he is born. More than this: he
is not born as a mere spectator of the world; he is born _into_ it. He
finds himself encompassed by such relations, and he finds his own being
and activity intermeshed with them. If he takes away from himself, as
an agent, what he has, as sharing in these ends and actions, nothing
remains.
LIV.
Moral Institutions.
This world of purposes and activities is differentiated into various
institutions. The child is born as a member of a _family_; as he grows
up he finds that others have possessions which he must respect, that
is, he runs upon the institution of _property_. As he grows still
older, he finds persons outside of the family of whose actions he must
take account as respects his own: _society_, in the limited sense
as meaning relations of special intimacy or acquaintanceship. Then
he finds the political institutions; the city, state and nation. He
finds an educational institution, the school, the college; religious
institutions, the church, etc., etc. Everywhere he finds men having
common wants and thus proposing common ends and using coöperative modes
of action. To these organized modes of action, with their reference to
common interests and purposes, he must adjust his activities; he must
take his part therein, if he acts at all, though it be only negatively
or hostilely, as in evil conduct. These institutions _are_ morality
real and objective; the individual becomes moral as he shares in this
moral world, and takes his due place in it.
Institutions, then, are organized modes of action, on the basis of the
wants and interests which unite men. They differ as the family from the
town, the church from the state, according to the scope and character
of the wants from which they spring. They are not bare _facts_ like
objects of knowledge; they are _practical_, existing for the sake of,
and by means of the will--as execution of ideas which have interest.
Because they are expressions of common purposes and ideas, they are
not merely private will and intelligence, but, in the literal sense,
_public_ will and reason.
The moral endeavor of man thus takes the form not of isolated fancies
about right and wrong, not of attempts to frame a morality for himself,
not of efforts to bring into being some praiseworthy ideal never
realized; but the form of sustaining and furthering the moral world
of which he is a member. Since the world is one of action, and not of
contemplation like the world of knowledge, it can be sustained and
furthered only as he makes its ends his own, and identifies himself and
his satisfaction with the activities in which other wills find their
fulfillment.
This is simply a more concrete rendering of what has
already been said about the moral environment (see Sec. 33).
LV.
The Aspects of a Moral Institution.
An institution is, as we have seen the expression of unity of desires
and ideas; it is general intelligence in action, or common will. As
such common will, it is, as respects the merely private or exclusive
wants and aims of its members, absolutely _sovereign_. It must aim
to control them. It must set before them the common end or ideal and
insist upon this as the only real end of individual conduct. The ends
so imposed by the public reason are _laws_. But these laws are for the
sake of realizing the _common_ end, of securing that organized unity of
action in which alone the individual can find freedom and fullness of
action, or his own satisfaction. Thus the activity of the common will
gives freedom, or _rights_, to the various members of the institution.
Every institution, then, has its sovereignty, or authority, and
its laws and rights. It is only a false abstraction which makes us
conceive of sovereignty, or authority, and of law and of rights as
inhering only in some supreme organization, as the national state.
The family, the school, the neighborhood group, has its authority
as respects its members, imposes its ideals of action, or laws, and
confers its respective satisfactions in way of enlarged freedom, or
rights. It is true that no one of these institutions is isolated; that
each stands in relation with other like and unlike institutions. Each
minor institution is a member of some more comprehensive whole, to
which it bears the same relation that the individual bears to it. That
is to say, _its_ sovereignty gives way to the authority of the more
comprehensive organization; its laws must be in harmony with the laws
which flow from the larger activity; its rights must become aspects
of a fuller satisfaction. Only humanity or the organized activity of
all the wants, powers and interests common to men, can have absolute
sovereignty, law and rights.
But the narrower group has its relations, none the less, although, in
ultimate analysis, they flow from and manifest the wider good, which,
as wider, must be controlling. Without such minor local authorities,
rights and laws, humanity would be a meaningless abstraction, and its
activity wholly empty. There is an authority in the family, and the
moral growth of the child consists in identifying the law of his own
conduct with the ends aimed at by the institution, and in growing into
maturity and freedom of manhood through the rights which are bestowed
upon him as such a member. Within its own range this institution
is ultimate. But its range is not ultimate; the family, valuable
and sacred as it is, does not exist for itself. It is not a larger
selfishness. It exists as one mode of realizing that comprehensive
common good to which all institutions must contribute, if they are not
to decay. It is the same with property, the school, the local church,
and with the national state.
We can now translate into more concrete terms what was said, in Part
I, regarding the good, obligation and freedom. That performance of
function which is 'the good', is now seen to consist in vital union
with, and reproduction of, the practical institutions of which one is a
member. The maintenance of such institutions by the free participation
therein of individual wills, is, of itself, the common good. Freedom
also gets concreteness; it is the assured rights, or powers of action
which one gets as such a member:--powers which are not mere claims, nor
simply claims recognized as valid by others, but claims re-inforced by
the will of the whole community. Freedom becomes real in the ethical
world; it becomes force and efficiency of action, because it does not
mean some private possession of the individual, but means the whole
coöperating and organized action of an institution in securing to an
individual some power of self expression.
LVI.
Moral Law and the Ethical World.
Without the idea of the ethical world, as the unified activity of
diverse functions exercised by different individuals, the idea of the
good, and of freedom, would be undefined. But probably no one has ever
attempted to conceive of the good and of freedom in total abstraction
from the normal activity of man. Such has not been the lot of duty,
or of the element of law. Often by implication, sometimes in so many
words, it is stated that while a physical law may be accounted for,
since it is simply an abstract from observed facts, a moral law stands
wholly above and apart from actual facts; it expresses solely what
'ought to be' and not what is; that, indeed, whether anything in
accordance with it ever has existed or not, is a matter of no essential
moral importance theoretically, however it may be practically. Now it
is evident that a law of something which has not existed, does not and
perhaps never will exist, is essentially inexplicable and mysterious.
It is as against such a notion of moral law that the idea of a real
ethical world has perhaps its greatest service.
A moral law, _e. g._, the law of justice, is no more _merely_ a law of
what ought to be than is the law of gravitation. As the latter states a
certain relation of moving masses to one another, so the law of justice
states a certain relation of active wills to one another. For a given
individual, at a given time and circumstances, the law of justice may
appear as the law of something which ought to be, but is not:--is not
_for him in this respect_, that is to say. But the very fact that it
ought to be for him implies that it already is for others. It _is_ a
law of the society of which he is a member. And it is because he _is_ a
member of a society having this law, that is a law of what _should_ be
for him.
Would then justice cease to be a law for him if it were not observed
at all in the society of which he is a member? Such a question is as
contradictory as asking what would happen to a planet if the solar
system went out of existence. It is the law of justice (with other such
laws) that _makes_ society; that is, it is those active relations
which find expression in these laws that unify individuals so that they
have a common end, and thus mutual duties. To imagine the abolition of
these laws is to imagine the abolition of society; and to ask for the
law of individual conduct apart from all relationship, actual or ideal,
to society, is to ask in what morality consists when moral conditions
are destroyed. A society in which the social bond we call justice does
not obtain to some degree in the relations of man to man, is _not_
society; and, on the other hand, wherever some law of justice actually
obtains, there the law _is_ for every individual who is a member of the
society.
This does not mean that the 'is', the actual status of the moral
world, is identical with the 'ought', or the ideal relations of man to
man. But it does mean that there is no obligation, either in general
or as any specific duty, which does not _grow_ out of the 'is', the
actual relations now obtaining.[1] The ethical world at any given
time is undoubtedly imperfect, and, _therefore_, it demands a certain
act to meet the situation. The very imperfection, the very badness
in the present condition of things, is a part of the environment
with reference to which we must act; it is, thus, an element in the
_law_ of future action that it shall not exactly repeat the existing
condition. In other words, the 'is' gives the law of the 'ought', but
it is a part of this law that the 'ought' shall not be as the 'is'. It
is because the relation of justice does hold in members of a stratum of
society, having a certain position, power or wealth, but does not hold
between this section and another class, that the law of what should
be is equal justice for all. In holding that actual social relations
afford the law of what should be, we must not forget that these actual
relations have a negative as well as a positive side, and that the new
law must be framed in view of the negatives, the deficiencies, the
wrongs, the contradictions, as well as of the positive attainments. A
moral law, to sum up, is the principle of action, which, acted upon,
will meet the needs of the existing situation as respects the wants,
powers, and circumstances of the individuals concerned. It is no
far-away abstraction, but expresses the _movement_ of the ethical world.
[1] See Secs. 59, 60 and 63 for discussion of other aspects
of this question.
One example will help define the discussion. Take the case of a street
railway conductor, whose union has ordered a strike. What determines
the law of his conduct under the circumstances? Evidently the existing
ethical institutions of which he is a member, so far as he is conscious
of their needs. To determine what he should do, he does not hunt up
some law of an 'ought' apart from what is; if he should hunt for and
should find such a law he would not know what to do with it. Just
because it is apart from his concrete circumstances it is no guide, no
law for his conduct at all. He has to act not in view of some abstract
principle, but in view of a concrete situation. He considers his
present wage, its relation to its needs and abilities; his capacity
and taste for this and for that work; the reasons for the strike; the
conditions of labor at present with reference to winning the strike,
and as to the chance of getting other work. He considers his family,
their needs and developing powers; the demand that they should live
decently; that his children should be fairly educated and get a fair
start in the world; he considers his relationships to his fellow
members in the union, etc. These considerations, and such as these,
give the law to his decision in so far as he acts morally and not
instinctively. Where in this law-giving is there any separation from
facts? On the contrary, the more right the act (the nearer it comes
to its proper law), the more it will simply express and reflect the
actual concrete facts. The law, in other words, of action, is the law
of actual social forces in their onward movement, in so far as these
demand some response in the way of conduct from the individual.
We may restate from this point of view, what we have already learned:
A moral law is thoroughly individualized. It cannot be duplicated; it
cannot be for one act just what it is for another. The ethical world
is too rich in capacity and circumstance to permit of monotony; it is
too swift in its movement to allow of bare repetition. It will not hold
still; it moves on, and moral law is the law of action required from
individuals by this movement.
The consideration of specific institutions, as the family,
industrial society, civil society, the nation, etc.,
with their respective rights and laws, belongs rather to
political philosophy than to the general theory of ethics.
PART III.
THE MORAL LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
LVII.
Division of Subject.
We have now analyzed the fundamental moral notions--the good, duty and
freedom; we have considered their objective realization, and seen that
they are outwardly expressed in social relations, the more typical
and abiding of which we call institutions; that abstract duties are
realized in the laws created and imposed by such institutions, and
that abstract freedom is realized in the rights possessed by members
in them. We have now to consider the concrete moral life of an
individual born into this existing ethical world and finding himself
confronted with institutions in which he must execute his part, and
in which he obtains his satisfaction and free activity. We have to
consider how these institutions appeal to the individual, awakening in
him a distinct _moral_ consciousness, or the consciousness of active
relations to persons, in antithesis to the theoretical consciousness
of relations which exist in contemplation; how the individual behaves
towards these institutions, realizing them by assuming his proper
position in them, or attempting to thwart them by living in isolation
from them; and how a moral character is thus called into being. More
shortly, we have to deal (I) with the practical consciousness, or
the formation and growth of ideals of conduct; (II) with the moral
struggle, or the process of realizing ideals, and (III) with moral
character, or the virtues.
CHAPTER I.--THE FORMATION AND GROWTH OF IDEALS.
LVIII.
Analysis of Conscience.
The practical consciousness, or the recognition of ends and relations
of action, is what is usually termed _conscience_. The analysis
of conscience shows that it involves three elements, which may be
distinguished in theory, although they have no separate existence in
the actual fact of conscience itself. These three elements are (1) the
knowledge of certain specific forms of conduct, (2) the recognition of
the authority or obligatoriness of the forms, and (3) the emotional
factors which cluster about this recognition. That is to say, we often
speak (1) of conscience telling or informing us of duties; we speak of
an enlightened or unenlightened conscience; of savage, or mediæval, or
modern conscience. Here we are evidently thinking of the kind and range
of particular acts considered right or wrong. But we also speak (2) of
the authority and majesty of conscience; of the commands of conscience,
etc. Here we are thinking of the consciousness of _obligation in
general_. The savage and the civilized man may vary greatly in their
estimate of what particular acts are right or wrong, and yet agree in
the recognition that such acts as are right are absolutely obligatory.
Finally we speak of an approving or disapproving, or remorseful
conscience, of a tender or a hardened conscience, of the pangs, the
pricks of conscience, etc. Here (3) we are evidently dealing with the
responsiveness of the disposition to moral distinctions, either in
particular acts, or in the recognition of moral law in general.
LIX.
Conscience as the Recognition of Special Acts as Right or Wrong.
Conscience in this sense is no peculiar, separate faculty of mind. It
is simply intelligence dealing with a certain subject-matter. That is,
conscience is distinguished not by the kind of mental activity at work,
but by the kind of material the mind works upon. Intelligence deals
with the nature and relations of things, and we call it understanding;
intelligence deals with the relations of persons and deeds, and it is
termed conscience.
We may, with advantage, recognize these stages in the development of
intelligence as dealing with moral relationships:
1. _The Customary or Conventional Conscience._ The existing moral
world, with the types and varieties of institutions peculiar to it, is
constantly impressing itself upon the immature mind; it makes certain
demands of moral agents and enforces them with all the means in its
power--punishment, reward, blame, public-opinion, and the bestowal of
social leadership. These demands and expectations naturally give rise
to certain convictions in the individual as to what he should or should
not do. Such convictions are not the outcome of independent reflection,
but of the moulding influence of social institutions. Moreover the
morality of a time becomes consolidated into proverbs, maxims and
law-codes. It takes shape in certain habitual ways of looking at and
judging matters. All these are instilled into the growing mind through
language, literature, association and legal custom, until they leave in
the mind a corresponding habit and attitude toward things to be done.
This process may be compared to the process by which knowledge of
the world of things is first attained. Certain of the more permanent
features of this world, especially those whose observance is important
in relation to continued physical existence and well-being, impress
themselves upon the mind. Consciousness, with no reflective activity of
its own, comes to mirror some of the main outlines of the world. The
more important distinctions are fixed in language, and they find their
way into the individual mind, giving it unconsciously a certain bent
and coloring.
2. _The Loyal Conscience._ But just as the mind, which seems at
first to have the facts and features of the world poured into itself
as a passive vessel, comes in time through its own experience to
appreciate something of their meaning, and, to some extent, to verify
them for itself; so the mind in its moral relations. Without forming
any critical theory of the institutions and codes which are forming
character, without even considering whether they are what they should
be, the individual yet comes at least to a practical recognition that
it is in these institutions that he gets his satisfactions, and through
these codes that he is protected. He identifies himself, his own life,
with the social forms and ideals in which he lives, and repels any
attack upon them as he would an attack upon himself. The demands which
the existing institutions make upon him are not felt as the coercions
of a despot, but as expressions of his own will, and requiring loyalty
as such. The conventional conscience, if it does not grow into this,
tends to become slavish, while an intelligence which practically
realizes, although without continual reflection, the _significance_ of
conventional morality is _free_ in its convictions and service.
3. _The Independent or Reflective Conscience._ The intelligence may
not simply appropriate, as its own, conventions embodied in current
institutions and codes, but may _reflect_ upon them. It may ask: What
is this institution of family, property for? Does the institution
in its present form work as it should work, or is some modification
required? Does this rule which is now current embody the true needs of
the situation, or is it an antiquated expression of by-gone relations?
What is the true spirit of existing institutions, and what sort of
conduct does this spirit demand?
Here, in a word, we have the same relation to the ethical world, that
we have in physical science to the external world. Intelligence is not
content, on its theoretical side, with having facts impressed upon
it by direct contact or through language; it is not content with
coming to feel for itself the value of the truths so impressed. It
assumes an independent attitude, putting itself over against nature and
cross-questioning her. It proposes its own ideas, its own theories and
hypotheses, and manipulates facts to see if this rational meaning can
be verified. It criticises what passes as truth, and pushes on to more
adequate statement.
The correlative attempt, on the part of intelligence on its practical
side, may have a larger or a smaller scope. In its wider course
it aims to criticise and to re-form prevailing social ideals and
institutions--even those apparently most fixed. This is the work of
the great moral teachers of the world. But in order that conscience be
critical, it is not necessary that its range be so wide. The average
member of a civilized community is nowadays called upon to reflect
upon his immediate relationships in life, to see if they are what
they should be; to regulate his own conduct by rules which he follows
not simply because they are customary, but the result of his own
examination of the situation. There is no difference in kind between
the grander and the minuter work. And it is only the constant exercise
of reflective examination on the smaller scale which makes possible,
and which gives efficiency to, the deeper criticism and transformation.
LX.
Reflective Conscience and the Ethical World.
This conception of conscience as critical and reflective is one of the
chief fruits of the Socratic ethics, fructified by the new meaning
given life through the Christian spirit. It involves the 'right of
free conscience'--the right of the individual to know the good, to
know the end of action, for himself, rather than to have some good,
however imposing and however beneficent, enjoined from without. It
is this principle of subjective freedom, says Hegel, which marks the
turning-point in the distinction of modern from ancient times (Sec.
124, _Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts_, Vol. VIII of Hegel's
Works).[2]
[2] I hardly need say how largely I am indebted in the
treatment of this topic, and indeed, in the whole matter of
the 'ethical world', to Hegel.
But this notion of conscience is misinterpreted when the content as
well as the form of conscience is thought to be individual. There is
no right of private judgment, in the sense that there is not a public
source and standard of judgment. What is meant by this right is that
the standard, the source, is not the opinion of some other person,
or group of persons. It is a common, objective standard. It is that
embodied in social relationships themselves.
The conception of conscience as a private possession, to be exercised
by each one in independence of historical forms and contemporary
ideals, is thoroughly misleading. The saying "I had to follow my
own notion of what is right" has been made the excuse for all sorts
of capricious, obstinate and sentimental performance. It is of such
notions that Hegel further says: "The striving for a morality of one's
own is futile, and by its very nature impossible of attainment; in
respect of morality the saying of the wisest men of antiquity is the
only true one: To be moral is to live in accordance with the moral
tradition of one's country" (Hegel, Works, Vol. I, p. 389). And in
discussing the same question, Bradley has said that the wish to have
a morality of one's own better than that of the world is to be on the
threshold of morality (p. 180).
Yet, on the other hand, conscience should not simply repeat the
burden of existing usages and opinions. No one can claim that the
existing morality embodies the highest possible conception of personal
relations. A morality which does not recognize both the possibility
and the necessity of advance is immorality. Where then is the way out
from a capricious self-conceit, on one hand, and a dead conformity
on the other? Reflective conscience must be _based_ on the moral
consciousness expressed in existing institutions, manners and beliefs.
Otherwise it is empty and arbitrary. But the existing moral status is
never wholly self-consistent. It realizes ideals in one relation which
it does not in another; it gives rights to 'aristocrats' which it
denies to low-born; to men, which it refuses to women; it exempts the
rich from obligations which it imposes upon the poor. Its institutions
embody a common good which turns out to be good only to a privileged
few, and thus existing in self-contradiction. They suggest ends which
they execute only feebly or intermittently. Reflective intelligence
cross-questions the existing morality; and extracts from it the
ideal which it pretends to embody, and thus is able to criticise the
existing morality in the light of its _own_ ideal. It points out the
inconsistencies, the incoherencies, the compromises, the failures,
between the actual practice and the theory at the basis of this
practice. And thus the new ideal proposed by the individual is not
a product of his private opinions, but is the outcome of the ideal
embodied in existing customs, ideas and institutions.
LXI.
The Sense of Obligation.
There has been much discussion regarding the nature of the act of mind
by which obligation is recognized. A not uncommon view has been that
the sense of duty as such must be the work of a peculiar faculty of
the mind. Admitting that the recognition of this or that particular
thing as right or wrong, is the work of ordinary intelligence, it is
held that the additional recognition of the absolute obligatoriness of
the right cannot be the work of this intelligence. For our intellect is
confined to judging what is or has been; the conception of obligation,
of something which should be, wholly transcends its scope. There is,
therefore, some special moral in faculty called which affixes to the
ordinary judgments the stamp of the categorical imperative "You ought".
See for example Maurice on "Conscience". The view is
traceable historically to Kant's conception of Practical
Reason, but as the view is ordinarily advanced the function
of Practical Reason in Kant's philosophy is overlooked. The
Practical Reason is no special faculty of man's being; it
is his consciousness of himself as an acting being; that
is, as a being capable of acting from ideas. Kant never
separates the consciousness of duty from the very nature
of will as the realization of conceptions. In the average
modern presentation, this intrinsic connection of duty with
activity is absent. Conscience becomes a faculty whose
function it is to clap the idea of duty upon the existent
conception of an act; and this existent conception is
regarded as morally indifferent.
It is true that Kant's Practical Reason has a certain
separateness or isolation. But this is because of his
general separation of the rational from the sensuous
factor, and not because of any separation of the
consciousness of action from the consciousness of duty. If
Kant erred in his divorce of desire and duty, then even the
relative apartness of the Practical Reason must be given
up. The consciousness of obligation is involved in the
recognition of _any_ end of conduct, and not simply in the
end of abstract law.
Such a conception of conscience, however, is open to serious
objections. Aside from the fact that large numbers of men declare
that no amount of introspection reveals any such machinery within
themselves, this separate faculty seems quite superfluous. The real
distinction is not between the consciousness of an action with, and
without, the recognition of duty, but between a consciousness which is
and one which is not capable of conduct. Any being who is capable of
putting before himself ideas as motives of conduct, who is capable of
forming a conception of something which he would realize, is, by that
very fact, capable of a sense of obligation. The consciousness of an
end to be realized, the idea of something to be done, is, in and of
itself, the consciousness of duty.
Let us consider again the horse-car conductor (see Sec. LVI). After he
has analyzed the situation which faces him and decided that a given
course of conduct is the one which fits the situation, does he require
some additional faculty to inform him that this course is the one
which should be followed? The analysis of practical ideas, that is, of
proposed ends of conduct, is from the first an analysis of what should
be done. Such being the case, it is no marvel that the conclusion of
the reflection is: "This should (ought to) be done."
Indeed, just as every judgment about existent fact naturally takes the
form 'S _is_ P', so every judgment regarding an activity which executes
an idea takes the form, 'S ought (or ought not) to be P'. It requires
no additional faculty of mind, after intelligence has been studying
the motions of the moon, to insert itself, and affirm some objective
relation or truth--as that the moon's motions are explainable by the
law of gravitation. It is the very essence of theoretical judgment,
judgment regarding fact, to state truth--what is. And it is the very
essence of practical judgment, judgment regarding deeds, to state that
active relation which we call obligation, what _ought to be_.
The judgment as to what a practical situation _is_, is an untrue or
abstract judgment.
The practical situation is itself an _activity_; the needs, powers, and
circumstances which make it are moving on. At no instant in time is
the scene quiescent. But the agent, in order to determine his course
of action in view of this situation, has to _fix_ it; he has to arrest
its onward movement in order to tell what it is. So his abstracting
intellect cuts a cross-section through its on-going, and says 'This
_is_ the situation'. Now the judgment 'This ought to be the situation',
or 'in view of the situation, my conduct ought to be thus and so', is
simply restoring the movement which the mind has temporarily put out
of sight. By means of its cross-section, intelligence has detected the
principle, or law of movement, of the situation, and it is on the basis
of this movement that conscience declares what ought to be.
Just as the fact of moral law, or of authority, of the incumbency of
duty, needs for its explanation no separation of the 'is' from the
'ought' (see LVI), but only recognition of the law of the 'is' which
is, perforce, a law of movement, and of change;--so the consciousness
of law, 'the sense of obligation' requires no special mental faculty
which may declare what ought to be. The intelligence that is capable
of declaring truth, or what is, is capable also of making known
obligation. For obligation is only _practical_ truth, the 'is' of doing.
See upon this point, as well as upon the relation of laws
and rules to action, my article in Vol. I, No. 2, of the
International Journal of Ethics, entitled 'Moral Theory and
Practice'.
LXII.
Conscience as Emotional Disposition.
Probably no judgment is entire-free from emotional coloring and
accompaniments. It is doubtful whether the most indifferent judgment
is not based upon, and does not appeal to, some interest. Certainly
all the more important judgments awaken some response from the self,
and excite its interests to their depths. Some of them may be excited
by the intrinsic nature of the subject-matter under judgment, while
others are the results of associations more or less accidental.
The former will necessarily be aroused in every being, who has any
emotional nature at all, whenever the judgment is made, while the
latter will vary from time to time, and may entirely pass away. That
moral judgments, judgments of what should be (or should have been)
done, arouse emotional response, is therefore no cause for surprise. It
may help clear up difficulties if we distinguish three kinds of such
emotional accompaniment.
1. There are, first, the interests belonging to the sense of obligation
as such. We have just seen that this sense of obligation is nothing
separate from the consciousness of the particular act which is to
be performed. Nevertheless the consciousness of obligation, of an
authority and law, recurs with every act, while the special content of
the act constantly varies. Thus an idea of law, or of duty in general,
is formed, distinct from any special duty. Being formed, it arouses the
special emotional excitation appropriate to it. The formation of this
general idea of duty, and the growth of feeling of duty as such, is
helped on through the fact that children (and adults so far as their
moral life is immature) need to have their moral judgments constantly
reinforced by recurrence to the thought of law. That is to say, a
child, who is not capable of seeing the true moral bearings and claims
of an act, is yet continually required to perform such an act on the
ground that it is obligatory. The feeling, therefore, is natural and
legitimate. It must, however, go hand in hand with the feelings aroused
by the special moral relations under consideration. Disconnected from
such union, it necessarily leads to slavish and arbitrary forms of
conduct. A child, for example, who is constantly taught to perform acts
simply because he _ought_ to do so, without having at the same time
his intelligence directed to the nature of the act which is obligatory
(without, that is, being led to see how or why it is obligatory), may
have a strongly developed sense of obligation. As he grows up, however,
this sense of duty will be largely one of dread and apprehension; a
feeling of constraint, rather than of free service. Besides this, it
will be largely a matter of accident to what act this feeling attaches
itself. Anything that comes to the mind with the force of associations
of past education, any ideal that forces itself persistently into
consciousness from any source may awaken this sense of obligation,
wholly irrespective of the true nature of the act. This is the
explanation of strongly 'conscientious' persons, whose morality is yet
unintelligent and blundering. It is of such persons that it has been
said that a thoroughly _good_ man can do more harm than a number of bad
men.
When, however, the feeling of obligation in general is developed along
with particular moral judgments (that is, along with the habit of
considering the special nature of acts performed), it is one of the
strongest supports to morality. Acts constantly need to be performed
which are recognized as right and as obligatory, and yet with reference
to which there is no fixed habit of conduct. In these cases, the more
direct, or spontaneous, stimulus to action is wanting.
If, however, there is a strong sense of obligation in general, this may
attach itself to the particular act and thus afford the needed impetus.
In unusual experiences, and in cases where the ordinary motive-forces
are lacking, such a feeling of regard for law may be the only sure stay
of right conduct.
2. There is the emotional accompaniment appropriate to the special
content of the act. If, for example, the required act has to do with
some person, there arise in consciousness the feelings of interest, of
love and friendship, or of dislike, which belong to that person. If it
relate to some piece of work to be done, the sweeping of a room, the
taking of a journey, the painting of a picture, there are the interests
natural to such subjects. These feelings when aroused necessarily form
part of the emotional attitude as respects the act. It is the strength
and normal welling-up of such specific interests which afford the best
assurance of healthy and progressive moral conduct, as distinct from
mere sentimental dwelling upon ideals. Only interests prevent the
divorce of feelings and ideas from habits of action. Such interests are
the union of the subjective element, the self, and the objective, the
special relations to be realized (Sec. XXXIV), and thus necessarily
produce a right and healthy attitude towards moral ends. It is obvious
that in a normal moral life, the law of obligation in general, and the
specific interests in particular cases, should more and more fuse. The
interests, at their strongest, take the form of _love_. And thus there
is realized the ideal of an effective character; the union of law and
inclination in its pure form--love for the action in and of itself.
3. Emotions due to accidental associations. It is matter of common
notice that the moral feelings are rarely wholly pure; that all sorts
of sentiments, due to associations of time and place and person not
strictly belonging to the acts themselves, cluster about them. While
this is true, we should not forget the great difficulty there is in
marking off any associations as _wholly_ external to the nature of
the act. We may say that mere fear of punishment is such a wholly
external feeling, having no place in moral emotion. Yet it may be
doubted whether there is any feeling that may be called mere fear
of punishment. It is, perhaps, fear of punishment by a parent, for
whom one has love and respect, and thus the fear has partially a
genuinely moral aspect. Some writers would call the æsthetic feelings,
the feelings of beauty, of harmony, which gather about moral ends
adventitious. Yet the fact that other moralists have made all moral
feelings essentially æsthetic, as due to the perception of the fitness
and proportion of the acts, should warn us from regarding æsthetic
feelings as wholly external. About all that can be said is that
feelings which do not spring from _some_ aspect of the content of the
act itself should be extruded, with growing maturity of character, from
influence upon conduct.
LXIII.
Conscientiousness.
Conscientiousness is primarily the virtue of intelligence in regard
to conduct. That is to say, it is the formed habit of bringing
intelligence to bear upon the analysis of moral relations--the habit of
considering what ought to be done. It is based upon the recognition of
the idea first distinctly formulated by Socrates--that "an unexamined
life is not one that should be led by man". It is the outgrowth of the
customary morality embodied in usages, codes and social institutions,
but it is an advance upon custom, because it requires a meaning and
a reason. It is the mark of a "character which will not be satisfied
without understanding the law that it obeys; without knowing what
the good is, for which the demand has hitherto been blindly at work"
(Green, Op. cit., p. 270). Conscientiousness, then, is reflective
intelligence grown into character. It involves a greater and wider
recognition of obligation in general, and a larger and more stable
emotional response to everything that presents itself as duty; as well
as the habit of deliberate consideration of the moral situation and of
the acts demanded by it.
Conscientiousness is an analysis of the conditions under which conduct
takes place, and of the action that will meet these conditions;
it is a thoroughly _objective_ analysis. What is sometimes termed
conscientiousness is merely the habit of analyzing internal moods
and sentiments; of prying into 'motives' in that sense of motive
which identifies it not with the end of action, but with some
subjective state of emotion. Thus considered, conscientiousness is
morbid. We are sometimes warned against _over_-conscientiousness.
But such conscientiousness means simply over-regard of one's private
self; keeping an eye upon the effect of conduct on one's internal
state, rather than upon conduct itself. Over-conscientiousness is as
impossible as over-intelligence, since it is simply the application
of intelligence to conduct. It is as little morbid and introspective
as is the analysis of any fact in nature. Another notion which is
sometimes thought to be bound up with that of conscience, also has
nothing to do with it; namely, the notion of a precision and coldness
opposed to all large spontaneity and broad sympathy in conduct. The
reflective man of narrow insight and cramped conduct is often called
the conscientious man and opposed to the man of generous impulses. This
comes from identifying conscience with a ready-made code of rules, and
its action with the application of some such fixed code to all acts
as they come up. It is evident, on the contrary, that such a habit is
opposed to conscience. Conscience means the consideration of each case
_in itself_; measuring it not by any outside code, but in the existing
moral situation.
On conscientiousness, see Green, Op. cit., pp. 269-271
and 323-327; and Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 156-160. These
writers, however, seem to identify it too much with
internal scrutiny. Green, for example, expressly identifies
conscientiousness with a man's "questioning about himself,
whether he has been as good as he should have been, whether
a better man would not have acted otherwise than he has
done" (p. 323). He again speaks of it as "comparison of
our own practice, as we know it on the inner side in
relation to the motives and character which it expresses,
with an ideal of virtue". The first definition seems to be
misleading. Questioning as to whether the end adopted was
what it should have been, _i. e._, whether the analysis
of the situation was correctly performed, may be of great
service in aiding future decisions, but questioning
regarding the purity of one's own 'motive' does not seem of
much avail. In a man upon the whole good, such questioning
is apt to be paralyzing. The energy that should go to
conduct goes to anxiety about one's conduct. It is the view
of goodness as directed mainly towards one's own private
motives, which has led such writers as Henry James, Sr.,
and Mr. Hinton, to conceive of 'morality', the struggle
for goodness, to be in essence bad. They conceived of
the struggle for 'private goodness' as no different from
the struggle for private pleasure, although likely, of
course, to lead to better things. Nor in a bad man is such
scrutiny of 'motive', as apart from objective end, of much
value. The bad man is generally aware of the badness of
his motive without much close examination. The truth aimed
at by Green is, I think, amply covered by recognizing that
conscientiousness as a constant will to know what should
be, and to readjust conduct to meet the new insight, is the
spring of the moral life.
LXIV.
Moral Commands, Rules and Systems.
What is the part played by specific commands and by general rules
in the examination of conduct by conscience? We should note, in the
first place, that commands are not rules, and rules are not commands.
A command, to be a command, must be specific and individual. It must
refer to time, place and circumstance. 'Thou shalt do no murder' is
not strictly speaking a command, for it allows questioning as to what
is murder. Is killing in war murder? Is the hanging of criminals
murder? Is taking life in self-defense murder? Regarded simply as a
command, this command would be 'void for uncertainty'. A true command
is a specific injunction of one person to another to do or not to do
a stated thing or things. Under what conditions do commands play a
part in moral conduct? In cases where the intelligence of the agent is
so undeveloped that he cannot realize for himself the situation and
see the act required, and when a part of the agent's environment is
constituted by others who have such required knowledge, there _is_ a
moral element in command and in obedience.
This explains the moral responsibility of parents to children and of
children to parents. The soldier, too, in recognizing a general's
command, is recognizing the situation as it exists for him. Were there
simply superior force on one side, and fear on the other, the relation
would be an immoral one. It is implied, of course, in such an instance
as the parents' command, that it be so directed as to enable the child
more and more to dispense with it--that is, that it be of such a
character as to give the child insight into the situation for himself.
Here is the transition from a command to a rule.
A rule does not tell what to do or what to leave undone. The Golden
Rule, for example, does not tell me how to act in any specific case. _A
rule is a tool of analysis._ The moral situation, or capacity in its
relation to environment, is often an extremely complicated affair. How
shall the individual resolve it? How shall he pick it to pieces, so as
to see its real nature and the act demanded by it? It is evident that
the analysis will be the more truly and speedily performed if the agent
has a method by which to attack it, certain principles in the light of
which he may view it, instruments for cross-questioning it and making
it render up its meaning. Moral rules perform this service. While the
Golden Rule does not of itself give one jot of information as to what I
should do in a given case, it does, if accepted, immensely simplify the
situation. Without it I should perhaps have to act blindly; with it the
question comes to this: What should I, under the given circumstances,
like to have done to me? This settled, the whole question of what
should be done is settled.
It is obvious, then, that the value of a moral rule depends upon
its potency in revealing the inner spirit and reality of individual
deeds. Rules in the negative form, rules whose application is limited
in scope because of an attempt to be specific, are midway between
commands proper and rules. The Golden Rule, on the other hand, is
positive, and not attempting to define any specific act, covers in
its range all relations of man to man. It is indeed only a concrete
and forcible statement of the ethical principle itself, the idea of a
common good, or of a community of persons. This is also a convenient
place for considering the practical value of ethical systems. We have
already seen that no system can attempt to tell what in particular
should be done. The principle of a system, however, may be of some aid
in analyzing a specific case. In this way, a system may be regarded
as a highly generalized rule. It attempts to state some fundamental
principle which lies at the basis of moral conduct. So far as it
succeeds in doing this, there is the possibility of its practical
application in particular cases, although, of course, the mediate rules
must continue to be the working tools of mankind--on account of their
decided concrete character, and because they have themselves taken
shape under the pressure of practice rather than of more theoretical
needs.
LXV.
Development of Moral Ideals.
Thus far we have been speaking of conscience mainly as to its method of
working. We have now to speak more definitely of its content, or of the
development of ideals of action.
It is of the very nature of moral conduct to be progressive. Permanence
of _specific_ ideals means moral death. We say that truth-telling,
charity, loyalty, temperance, have always been moral ends and while
this is true, the statement as ordinarily made is apt to hide from us
the fact that the content of the various ideals (what is _meant_ by
temperance, etc.) has been constantly changing, and this of necessity.
The realization of moral ends must bring about a changed situation,
so that the repetition of the same ends would no longer satisfy. This
progress has two sides: the satisfaction of wants leads to a larger
view of what satisfaction really is, _i. e._, to the creation of new
capacities and wants; while adjustment to the environment creates wider
and more complex social relationships.
Let the act be one of intelligence. Some new fact or law is discovered.
On one hand, this discovery may arouse a hitherto comparatively
dormant mind; it may suggest the possession of capacities previously
latent; it may stimulate mental activity and create a thirst for
expanding knowledge. This readjustment of intellectual needs and
powers may be comparatively slight, or it may amount, as it has with
many a young person, to a revolution. On the other hand, the new
fact changes the intellectual outlook, the mental horizon, and, by
transforming somewhat the relations of things, demands new conduct.
All this, even when the growth of knowledge concerns only the physical
world. But development of insight into social needs and affairs has a
larger and more direct progressive influence. The social world exists
spiritually, as conceived, and a new conception of it, new perception
of its scope and bearings, is, perforce, a change of that world. And
thus it is with the satisfaction of the human want of knowledge, that
patience, courage, self-respect, humility, benevolence, all change
character. When, for example, psychology has given an increase of
knowledge regarding men's motives, political economy an increase of
knowledge regarding men's wants, when historical knowledge has added
its testimony regarding the effects of indiscriminate giving, charity
must change its content. While once, the mere supplying of food or
money by one to another may have been right as meeting the recognized
relations, charity now comes to mean large responsibility in knowledge
of antecedents and circumstances, need of organization, careful tracing
of consequences, and, above all, effort to remove the conditions which
made the want possible. The activity involved has infinitely widened.
Let the act be in the region of industrial life--a new invention. The
invention of the telephone does not simply satisfy an old want--it
creates new. It brings about the possibility of closer social
relations, extends the distribution of intelligence, facilitates
commerce. It is a common saying that the luxury of one generation
is the necessity of the next; that is to say, what once satisfied a
somewhat remote need becomes in time the basis upon which new needs
grow up. Energy previously pent up is set free, new power and ideals
are evoked. Consider again a person assuming a family relation. This
seems, at first, to consist mainly in the satisfaction of certain
common and obvious human wants. But this satisfaction, if moral,
turns out rather to be the creation of new insight into life, of new
relationships, and thus of new energies and ideals. We may generalize
these instances. The secret of the moral life is not getting or having,
it is doing and thus being. The getting and the possessing side of life
has a moral value only when it is made the stimulus and nutriment of
new and wider acting. To solve the equation between getting and doing
is the moral problem of life. Let the possession be acquiesced in for
its own sake, and not as the way to freer (and thus more moral) action,
and the selfish life has set in (see Sec. LXVII). It is essential to
moral activity that it feed itself into larger appetites and thus into
larger life.
This must not be taken to deny that there is a mechanical
side even to the moral life. A merchant, for example, may
do the same thing over and over again, like going to his
business every morning at the same hour. This is a moral
act and yet it does not seem to lead to a change in moral
wants or surroundings. Yet even in such cases it should
be noted that it is only outwardly that the act is the
_same_. In itself, that is, in its relation to the will
of the agent, it is simply one element in the whole of
character; and as character opens up, the act must change
somewhat also. It is performed somehow in a new spirit. If
this is not to some extent true, if such acts become wholly
mechanical, the moral life is hardening into the rigidity
of death.
This progressive development consists on one side in a richer and
subtler individual activity, in increased individualization, in wider
and freer functions of life; on the other it consists in increase in
number of those persons whose ideal is a 'common good', or who have
membership in the same moral community; and, further, it consists in
more complex relations between them. It is both intensive and extensive.
History is one record of growth in the sense of specific powers.
Its track is marked by the appearance of more and more internal and
distinguishing traits; of new divisions of labor and corresponding
freedom in functioning. It begins with groups in which everything
is massed, and the good is common only in the sense of being
undifferentiated for all. It progresses with the evolution of
individuality, of the peculiar gifts entrusted to each, and hence of
the specific service demanded of each.
The other side, the enlargement of the community of ends, has been
termed growth in "comprehensiveness". History is again a record of
the widening of the social consciousness--of the range of persons
whose interests have to be taken into account in action. There has
been a period in which the community was nothing more than a man's
own immediate family group, this enlarging to the clan, the city,
the social class, the nation; until now, in theory, the community of
interests and ends is humanity itself.
This growth in comprehensiveness is not simply a growth in the number
of persons having a common end. The quantitative growth reacts upon
the _nature_ of the ends themselves. For example, when the conceived
community is small, bravery may consist mainly in willingness to fight
for the recognized community against other hostile groups. As these
groups become themselves included in the moral community, courage must
change its form, and become resoluteness and integrity of purpose in
defending manhood and humanity as such. That is to say, as long as
the community is based largely upon physical facts, like oneness of
blood, of territory, etc., the ideal of courage will have a somewhat
external and physical manifestation. Let the community be truly
spiritual, consisting in recognition of unity of destiny and function
in coöperation toward an all-inclusive life, and the ideal of courage
becomes more internal and spiritual, consisting in loyalty to the
possibilities of humanity, whenever and wherever found.
On this development of moral ideals, and especially of
the growth in "comprehensiveness" as reacting upon the
intrinsic form which the ideal itself takes, see Green, Op.
cit., pp. 264-308, followed by Alexander, Op. cit., pp.
384-398. For the process of change of ideals in general,
see Alexander, pp. 271-292, and 369-371.
CHAPTER II.--THE MORAL STRUGGLE OR THE REALIZING OF IDEALS.
LXVI.
Goodness as a Struggle.
We have already seen that the bare repetition of identically the
same acts does not consist with morality. To aim at securing a
satisfaction precisely like the one already experienced, is to fail
to recognize the altered capacity and environment, and the altered
duty. Moral satisfaction prior to an act is _ideal_; ideal not simply
in the sense of being conceived, or present to thought, but ideal in
the sense that it has not been already enjoyed. Some satisfaction has
been enjoyed in a previous activity, but that very satisfaction has
so enlarged and complicated the situation, that its mere repetition
would not afford moral or active satisfaction, but only what Kant
terms 'pathological' satisfaction. Morality thus assumes the form of a
struggle. The past satisfaction speaks for itself; it has been verified
in experience, it has conveyed its worth to our very senses. We have
tried and tasted it, and know that it is good. If morality lay in the
repetition of similar satisfactions, it would not be a struggle. We
should know experimentally before hand that the chosen end would bring
us satisfaction, and should be at rest in that knowledge. But when
morality lies in striving for satisfactions which have not verified
themselves to our sense, it always requires an effort. We have to
surrender the enjoyed good, and stake ourselves upon that of which we
cannot say: We _know_ it is good. To surrender the actual experienced
good for a possible ideal good is the struggle.
We arrive, in what is termed the opposition of desire and duty, at the
heart of the moral struggle. Of course, taken strictly, there can be
no opposition here. The duty which did not awaken _any_ desire would
not appeal to the mind even as a duty. But we may distinguish between
a desire which is based on past satisfaction actually experienced, and
desire based simply upon the idea that the end is _desirable_--that it
ought to be desired. It may seem strange to speak of a desire based
simply upon the recognition that an end _should_ be desired, but the
possibility of awakening such a desire and the degree of its strength
are the test of a moral character. How far does this end awaken
response in me because I see that it is the end which is fit and due?
How far does it awaken this response although it does not fall into
line with past satisfactions, or although it actually thwart some
habitual satisfaction? Here is the opposition of duty and desire. It
lies in the contrast of a good which has demonstrated itself as such
in experience, and a good whose claim to be good rests only on the
fact that it is the act which meets the situation. It is the contrast
between a good of possession, and one of action.
From this point of view morality is a life of _aspiration_, and of
_faith_; there is required constant willingness to give up past
goods as the good, and to press on to new ends; not because past
achievements are bad, but because, being good, they have created
a situation which demands larger and more intricately related
achievements. This willingness is aspiration and it implies _faith_.
Only the old good is of sight, has verified itself to sense. The new
ideal, the end which meets the situation, is felt as good only in so
far as the character has formed the conviction that to meet obligation
is itself a good, whether bringing sensible satisfaction or not. You
can prove to a man that he ought to act so and so (that is to say,
that such an act is the one which fits the present occasion), but you
cannot _prove_ to him that the performance of that duty will be good.
Only faith in the moral order, in the identity of duty and the good,
can assert this. Every time an agent takes as his end (that is, chooses
as good) an activity which he has not already tried, he asserts his
belief in the goodness of right action as such. This faith is not a
mere intellectual thing, but it is practical--the staking of self upon
activity as against passive possession.
LXVII.
Moral Badness.
Badness originates in the contrast which thus comes about between
_having_ the repetition of former action, and _doing_--pressing
forward to the new right action. Goodness is the choice of doing; the
refusal to be content with past good as exhausting the entire content
of goodness. It is, says Green, 'in the continued effort to be better
that goodness consists'. The man, however bad his past and however
limited his range of intellectual, æsthetic and social activity, who
is dissatisfied with his past, and whose dissatisfaction manifests
itself in act, is accounted better than the man of a respectable past
and higher plane of life who has lapsed into contented acquiescence
with past deeds. For past deeds are not _deeds_, they are passive
enjoyments. The bad man, on the other hand, is not the man who loves
badness _in and for itself_. Such a man would be a mad man or a
devil. All conduct, bad as well as good, is for the sake of _some_
satisfaction, that is, some good. In the bad man, the satisfaction
which is aimed at is _simply_ the one congruent with existing
inclinations, irrespective of the sufficiency of those inclinations in
view of the changed capacity and environment: it is a good of _having_.
The bad man, that is to say, does not recognize any _ideal_ or _active_
good; any good which has not already commended itself to him as such.
This good may be good in _itself_; but, as distinguished from the good
which requires action, that which would fulfill the present capacity or
meet the present situation, it is bad.
Thus Alexander terms badness _a survival_, in part at
least, of former goodness. Hinton says (Philosophy and
Religion, p. 146), "That a thing is wrong does not mean
that it ought never to have been done or thought, but that
it ought to be left off". It will be noted that we are not
dealing with the metaphysical or the religious problem of
the nature and origin of evil, but simply with an account
of bad action as it appears in individual conduct.
Badness has four traits, all derivable from this basal fact. They are:
(1) Lawlessness, (2) Selfishness, (3) Baseness, (4) Demoralization.
1. _Lawlessness._ When desire and duty, that is, when desires based on
past having and on future acting, conflict, the bad man lets duty go.
He virtually denies that it is a good at all--it may be a good in the
abstract but not a good for him. He denies that obligation as such has
any value; that any end is to be consulted save his own state of mind.
He denies that there is law for conduct--at least any law beyond the
inclination which he happens to have at the time of action. Keeping
himself within that which has verified itself to his feeling in the
past, he abrogates all authority excepting that of his own immediate
feelings.
2. _Selfishness._ It has already been shown that the self is not
necessarily immoral, and hence that action for self is not necessarily
bad--indeed, that the true self is social and interest in it right (see
Sec. XXXV). But when a satisfaction based on past experience is set
against one proceeding from an act as meeting obligation, there grows
up a divorce in the self. The actual self, the self recognizing only
past and sensible satisfaction, is set over against the self which
recognizes the necessity of expansion and a wider environment. Since
the former self confines its action to benefits demonstrably accruing
to itself, while the latter, in meeting the demands of the situation,
necessarily contributes to the satisfaction of others, one takes the
form of a _private_ self, a self whose good is set over against and
exclusive of that of others, while the self recognizing obligation
becomes a social self--the self which performs its due function in
society. It is, again, the contrast between getting and doing.
All moral action is based upon the presupposition of the identity
of good (Sec. XL), but it by no means follows that this identity of
good can be demonstrated to the agent at the time of action. On the
contrary, it is matter of the commonest experience that the sensible
good, the demonstrable good (that is, the one visible on the line of
past satisfaction) may be contradictory to the act which would satisfy
the interests of others. The identity of interests can be proved _only
by acting upon it_; to the agent, prior to action, it is a matter of
faith. Choice presents itself then in these cases as a test: Do you
believe that the Good is simply your private good, or is the true Good,
is _your_ good, one which includes the good of others? The condemnation
passed upon the 'selfish' man is that he virtually declares that good
is essentially exclusive and private. He shuts himself up within
himself, within, that is, his past achievements, and the inclinations
based upon them. The good man goes out of himself in new action. Bad
action is thus essentially narrowing, it confines the self; good action
is expansive and vital, it moves on to a larger self.
In fine, all conduct, good and bad, satisfies the self; bad conduct,
however, aims at a self which, keeping its eye upon its private and
assured satisfaction, refuses to recognize the increasing function with
its larger social range,--the 'selfish' self.
Light is thrown upon this point by referring to what was said about
interest (Sec. XXXIV). Interest is _active_ feeling, feeling turned
upon an object, and going out toward it so as to identify it with self.
In this active and objective interest there is satisfaction, but the
satisfaction is _in_ the activity which has the object for its content.
This is the satisfaction of the good self. In the bad self, interest is
reduced to mere feeling; for the aim of life in such a self is simply
to have certain feelings as its own possession; activity and its object
are degraded into mere means for getting these sensations.
Activity has two sides; as activity, as projection or expression of
one's powers, it satisfies self; as activity, also, it has some end,
some object, for its content. The activity as such, therefore, the
activity for its own sake, must involve the realization of this object
for its own sake. But in having, in getting, there is no such creation
or maintenance of an object for itself. Objects cease to be 'ends
in themselves' when they cease to be the content of action; and are
degraded into means of private satisfaction, that is, of sensation.
3. _Baseness._ For, when we say that bad action takes account of
ideals only on the basis of possession, we say, in effect, that
it takes account only of _sensible_ satisfaction. As it is in the
progressive movement of morality that there arises the distinction of
the law-abiding and the lawless self, of the social and the selfish
self, so in the same aspect there comes into existence the distinction
of the low, degraded, sensual self, as against the higher or spiritual
self. In themselves, or naturally, there is no desire high, none low.
But when an inclination for an end which consists in possession comes
into conflict with one which includes an active satisfaction--one not
previously enjoyed--the contrast arises. It is wrong to say, with Kant,
that the bad act is simply for pleasure; for the bad act, the choice
of a past satisfaction as against the aspiration for a wider good,
may have a large content--it may be the good of one's family; it may
be scientific or æsthetic culture. Yet the moment a man begins to live
on the plane of past satisfaction as such, he has begun to live on the
plane of 'sense', or for pleasure. The refusal to recognize the ideal
good, to acknowledge activity as good, throws the agent back into a
life of dwelling upon his own sensible good, and thus he falls more and
more into a life of dwelling upon mere sensations. What made the past
good a good at all was the spirit, the activity, in it, and when it is
no longer an activity, but a mere keeping, the life is gone out of it.
The selfish life must degenerate into mere sensuality--although when
sensuality is 'refined' we call it sentimentality.
4. _Demoralization._ Morality is activity; exercise of function.
To cease this activity is not to remain on the attained level, for
that, _when attained_, was active. It is to relapse, to slip down
into badness. The moral end is always an activity. To fail in this
activity is, therefore, to involve character in disintegration. It can
be kept together only by constant organizing activity; only by acting
upon new wants and moving toward new situations. Let this activity
cease, and disorganization ensues, as surely as the body decays when
life goes, instead of simply remaining inert as it was. Bad conduct
is thus _unprincipled_; it has no center, no movement. The good man
is 'organic'; he uses his attainments to discover new needs, and to
assimilate new material. He lives from within outwards, his character
is compact, coherent; he has _integrity_. The bad man, having no
controlling unity, has no consistent line of action; his motives of
conduct contradict one another; he follows this maxim in relation to
this person, that in relation to another; character is _demoralized_.
The bad man is unstable and double-minded. He is not one person, but a
group of conflicting wills. So far as he is really bad he becomes as
many persons as he has desires. His conduct cannot be made universal.
He always makes exceptions in favor of himself. He does not want moral
relations abolished, but relaxed or deflected in his own case, while
they still hold for other men.
This is the truth at the basis of Kant's contention
regarding goodness as conduct whose maxim is capable of
generalization. See also Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 261-271.
And Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 309-312.
LXVIII.
Goodness in its Relation to the Struggle.
1. Two aspects of this we have already noted; one, that of
conscientiousness, or habitual alertness and responsiveness of
intelligence to the nature of obligation, both in general and as to
the specific acts which are obligatory. The other is that goodness,
in this relation, consists in _progressive_ adjustment, involving
aspiration as to future conduct, and correlative humility as to present
achievements of character.
2. We may state what has already been suggested, that goodness as
self-sacrifice or self-renunciation has also its place here. The moral
attitude is one of renunciation, because, on account of the constantly
growing wants and circumstances, the satisfactions which belong to
the actually realized self must be given up for active goods. That
the self-sacrifice takes largely the form of the surrender of private
interests to the welfare of the whole, is explained by what has just
been said regarding selfishness. Self-sacrifice is not in any way the
moral end or the last word. Life is lost that it may be found. The
smaller local life of the private self is given up in order that the
richer and fuller life of the social or active self may be realized.
But none the less the self-sacrifice at the time that it is made is
genuine and real. While it is involved in the very nature of morality
that moral conduct shall bring greater activity, larger life, the
motive of the agent in self-sacrifice is not to give up the lesser
satisfaction for the sake of getting a greater. It is only so far as
he is already moral that he is convinced that the new duty will bring
satisfaction, and his conviction is not one of sense, but of faith.
To the agent at the time of action, it is a real satisfaction which is
given up for one that is only ideal, and given up because the ideal
satisfaction is ethical, active--one congruent to duty, while the
actual satisfaction is only pathological; that is, congruent to the
actualized self--to the having, instead of the doing self.
3. Goodness is not remoteness from badness. In one sense, goodness is
based upon badness; that is, good action is always based upon action
good once, but bad if persisted in under changing circumstances. The
moral struggle thus presents itself as the conflict between this
"bad" and the good which would duly meet the existing situation. This
good, of course, does not involve the annihilation of the previously
attained good--the present bad--but its subordination; its use in the
new function. This is the explanation of the apparently paradoxical
statement that badness is the material of good action--a statement
literally correct when badness is understood as it is here. Evil is
simply that which goodness has to _overcome_--has to make an element of
itself.
Badness, as just spoken of, is only potential--the end is bad as
contrasted with the better. Badness may also, of course, be actual;
the bad end may be chosen, and adopted into character. Even in this
sense, goodness is not the absence of evil, or entire freedom from it.
Badness even on this basis is the material of goodness; it is to be put
under foot and made an element in good action. But how can actual evil
be made a factor of right conduct? In this way; the good man learns
from his own bad acts; he does not continue to repeat such acts, nor
does he, while recognizing their badness, simply endeavor to do right
without regard to the previous bad conduct. Perceiving the effect of
his own wrong acts, the change produced in his own capacities, and his
altered relations to other people, he acts so as to meet the situation
which his own bad act has helped to create. Conduct is then right,
although made what it is, to some degree, by previous wrong conduct.
In this connection, the introduction of Christianity made one of its
largest ethical contributions. It showed how it was possible for a man
to put his badness behind him and even make it an element in goodness.
Teaching that the world of social relations was itself an ethical
reality and a good (a redeemed world), it taught that the individual,
by identifying himself with the spirit of this ethical world, might be
freed from slavery to his past evil; that by recognizing and taking
for his own the evil in the world, instead of engaging in an isolated
struggle to become good by himself, he might make the evil a factor in
his own right action.
Moreover, by placing morality in activity and not in some thing, or in
conformity to an external law, Christianity changed the nature of the
struggle. While the old struggle had been an effort to get away from
evil to a good beyond, Christianity made the struggle itself a good.
It, then, was no longer the effort to escape to some fixed, unchanging
state; the constant onward movement was itself the goal. Virtue, as
Hegel says, is the battle, the struggle, carried to its full.
4. _The conception of merit._ This is, essentially, the idea of social
desert--the idea that an agent deserves well of others on account of
his act or his character. An action evokes two kinds of judgments:
first, that the act is right or virtuous, that it fulfills duty. This
judgment may be passed by any one; as well by the agent as by any one
else. It is simply the recognition of the moral character of the act.
But a right act may also awaken a conviction of desert; that the act is
one which furthers the needs of society, and thus is meritorious.
_This_ is _not_ a judgment which the agent can pass upon his own act.
Virtue and duty are strictly coextensive; no act can be so virtuous, so
right, as to go beyond meeting the demands of the situation. Everything
is a duty which needs to be done in a given situation; the doing of
what needs to be done is right or virtuous. While the agent may and
must approve of right action in himself, he cannot claim desert or
reward because of its virtuousness; he simply does what he should.
Others, however, may see that the act has been done in the face
of great temptation; after a hard struggle; that it denotes some
unusual qualification or executes some remarkable service. It is not
only right, but obligatory, for others to take due notice of these
qualities, of these deeds. Such notice is as requisite as it is to show
gratitude for generosity, or forgiveness to a repentant man.
Two errors are to be avoided here; both arising from the identification
of merit with virtue. One view holds that the virtue and merit consist
in doing something over and above duty. There is a minimum of action
which is obligatory; to perform this, since it is obligatory, is no
virtue. Anything above this is virtuous. The other view reverses this
and holds that since no man can do more than he ought, there is no
such thing as merit. Great excellence or heroism in one man is no
more meritorious than ordinary conduct in another; since the one man
is naturally more gifted than the other. But while one act is no more
right or virtuous than another, it may be more meritorious, because
contributing more to moral welfare or progress. To depreciate the
meritorious deed is a sign of a carping, a grudging or a mean spirit.
The respective relations of duty, virtue and merit have
been variously discussed. Different views will be found in
Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, Bk. III, ch. iv; Alexander,
Moral Order and Progress, pp. 187-195 and 242-247; Stephen,
Science of Ethics, pp. 293-303; Martineau, Types of Ethical
Theory, pp. 78-81; Laurie, Ethica, pp. 145-148.
CHAPTER III.--REALIZED MORALITY OR THE VIRTUES.
LXIX.
Goodness as Found in Character.
We have treated of the forming of moral ideals, and of the attempt
to realize them against the counter attractions of sensible desire.
We have now to treat these ideas as actual ends of conduct and thus
reacting upon the agent. The good character, considered in relation
to the moral _struggle_, is the one which chooses the right end,
which endeavors to be better. The good character _in itself_ is that
made by this choice. It is good for the self to choose a due end in
an effort caused by contrary allurements. But the very fact of the
struggle witnesses that morality is not yet the natural and spontaneous
manifestation of character. A _wholly_ good man would feel such
satisfaction in the contemplation of the ideal good that contrary
desires would not affect him. He would take pleasure only in the
right. Every accomplished moral deed tends to bring this about. Moral
realization brings satisfaction. The satisfaction becomes one with the
right act. Duty and desire grow into harmony. Interest and virtue tend
toward unity.
This is the truth aimed at, but not attained, by the hedonistic school.
In complete moral action, happiness and rightness know no divorce. And
this is true, even though the act, in some of its aspects, involves
pain. The act, so far as its quality of rightness is concerned, calls
forth unalloyed satisfaction, however bound up with pain to self and to
others in some respects. The error of hedonism is not in insisting that
right action is pleasurable, but in its failure to supply content to
the idea of happiness, in its failure to define what happiness is. In
the failure to show those active relations of man to nature and to man
involved in human satisfaction, it reduces happiness to the abstraction
of agreeable sensation.
A virtue then, in the full sense, that is as the expression of virtuous
character, and not of the struggle of character to be virtuous
against the allurements of passive goods, is an _interest_. The
system of virtues includes the various forms which interest assumes.
Truthfulness, for example, is interest in the media of human exchange;
generosity is interest in sharing any form of superior endowment with
others less rich by nature or training, etc. It is distinguished
from natural generosity, which may be mere impulse, by its being an
interest in the activity or social relation itself, instead of in some
accidental accompaniment of the relation.
Another way of getting at the nature of the virtues is to consider
them as forms of freedom. Positive freedom is the good, it is realized
activity, the full and unhindered performance of function. A virtue
is any one aspect which the free performance of function may take.
Meekness is one form of the adjustment of capacity to surroundings;
honesty another; indignation another; scientific excellence another,
and so on. In each of these virtues, the agent realizes his freedom:
Freedom from subjection to caprice and blind appetite, freedom in the
full play of activity.
LXX.
Two Kinds of Virtues.
We may recognize two types of virtuous action. These are:
1. _The Special Virtues._ These arise from special capacities or
special opportunities. The Greek sense of virtue was almost that of
"excellence", some special fitness or power of an agent. There is the
virtue of a painter, of a scientific investigator, of a philanthropist,
of a comedian, of a statesman, and so on. The special act may be
manifested in view of some special occasion, some special demand of
the environment--charity, thankfulness, patriotism, chastity, etc.
Goodness, as the realization of the moral end, is a system, and the
special virtues are the particular members of the system.
2. _Cardinal Virtues._ Besides these special members of a system,
however, the whole system itself may present various aspects. That
is to say, even in a special act the whole spirit of the man may be
called out, and this expression of the whole character is a cardinal
virtue. While the special virtues differ in content, as humility from
bravery, earnestness from compassion, the cardinal virtues have the
same content, showing only different sides of it. Conscientiousness,
for example, is a cardinal virtue. It does not have to do with an
act belonging to some particular capacity, or evoked by some special
circumstance, but with the spirit of the whole self as manifested in
the will to recognize duty--both its obligatoriness in general and the
concrete forms which it takes. Truthfulness as a special virtue would
be the desire to make word correspond to fact in some instance of
speech. As a cardinal virtue, it is the constant will to clarify and
render true to their ideal all human relations--those of man to man,
and man to nature.
LXXI.
The Cardinal Virtues.
The cardinal virtues are marked by
1. _Wholeness._ This or that virtue, not calling the whole character
into play, but only some special power, is partial. But a cardinal
virtue is not _a_ virtue, but the spirit in which all acts are
performed. It lies in the attitude which the agent takes towards duty;
his obedience to recognized forms, his readiness to respond to new
duties, his enthusiasm in moving forward to new relations. It is a
common remark that moral codes change from 'Do not' to 'Do', and from
this to 'Be'. A Mosaic code may attempt to regulate the specific acts
of life. Christianity says, 'Be ye perfect'. The effort to exhaust the
various special right acts is futile. They are not the same for any
two men, and they change constantly with the same man. The very words
which denote virtues come less and less to mean specific acts, and more
the spirit in which conduct occurs. Purity, for example, does not mean
freedom from certain limited outward forms of defilement; but comes
to signify rightness of natures as a whole, their freedom from all
self-seeking or exclusive desire for private pleasure, etc. Thus purity
of heart comes to mean perfect goodness.
2. _Disinterestedness._ Any act, to be virtuous, must of course be
disinterested, but we may now connect this disinterestedness with the
integral nature of moral action just spoken of. Immoral action never
takes account of the whole nature of an end; it deflects the end to
some ulterior purpose; it bends it to the private satisfaction of the
agent; it takes a part of it by making exceptions in favor of self. Bad
action is never 'objective'. It is 'abstract'; it takes into account
only such portion of the act as satisfies some existing need of the
private self. The immoral man shows his partial character again by
being full of casuistries, devices by which he can get the act removed
from its natural placing and considered in some other light:--this
act, for example, _would_ be dishonest, of course, if done under
certain circumstances, but since I have certain praiseworthy feelings,
certain remote intentions, it may now be considered otherwise. It is a
large part of the badness of 'good' people that instead of taking the
whole act just as it is, they endeavor to make the natural feelings
in their own mind--feelings of charity, or benevolence--do substitute
duty for the end aimed at; they excuse wrong acts on the ground that
their 'intentions' were good, meaning by intentions the prevailing
mood of their mind. It is in this sense that 'hell is paved with good
intentions.'
Now it is against this deflection, perversion and mutilating of the
act that disinterestedness takes its stand. Disinterested does not
mean without interest, but without interest in anything except _the
act itself_. The interest is not in the wonderful moods or sentiments
with which we do the act; it is not in some ulterior end to be gained
by it, or in some private advantage which it will bring, but in the
act itself--in the real and concrete relations involved. There is a
vague French saying that 'morality is the nature of things.' If this
phrase has a meaning it is that moral conduct is not a manifestation
of private feelings nor a search for some unattainable ideal, but
observance and reproduction of actual relations. And this is the mark
of a disinterested character.
CONCLUSION.
LXXII.
The Practical End of Morality.
Virtues, then, are cardinal, and character is integral, just in the
degree in which every want is a want of the whole man. So far as this
occurs, the burden of the moral struggle is transformed into freedom of
movement. There is no longer effort to bring the particular desire into
conformity with a law, or a universal, outside itself. The fitting
in of each special desire, as it arises, to the organism of character
takes place without friction, as a natural re-adjustment. There is not
constraint, but growth. On the other side, the attained character does
not tend to petrify into a fixed possession which resists the response
to needs that grow out of the enlarged environment. It is plastic to
new wants and demands; it does not require to be wrenched and wracked
into agreement with the required act, but moves into it, of itself. The
law is not an external ideal, but the principle of the movement. There
is the identity of freedom and law in the good.
This union of inclination and duty in act is the practical end. All the
world's great reformers have set as their goal this ideal, which may be
termed either the freeing of wants, or the humanizing of the moral law.
It will help summarize our whole discussion, if we see how the theories
of hedonism and of Kant have endeavored to express this same goal.
Hedonism, indeed, has this identity for its fundamental principle.
It holds strongly to the idea of moral law immanent in human wants
themselves. But its error lies in taking this identity of desire and
the good, as a direct or immediate unity, while, in reality, it exists
only in and through activity; it is a unity which can be attained only
as the result of a process. It mistakes an ideal which is realized only
in action for bare fact which exists of itself.
Hedonism, as represented by Spencer, recognizes, it is true, that
the unity of desire and duty is not an immediate or natural one; but
only to fall into the error of holding that the separation is due to
some external causes, and that when these are removed we shall have a
fixed millenium. As against this doctrine, we must recognize that the
difference between want and duty is always removed so far as conduct
is moral; that it is not an ideal in the sense of something to be
attained at some remote period, but an ideal in the sense of being
the very meaning of moral activity whenever and wherever it occurs.
The realizing of this ideal is not something to be sometime reached
once for all, but progress is itself the ideal. Wants are ever growing
larger, and thus freedom ever comes to have a wider scope (Sec. LXV).
Kant recognizes that the identity of duty and inclination is not a
natural fact, but is the ideal. However, he understands by ideal
something which ought to be, but is not. Morality is ever a struggle
to get desire into unity with law, but a struggle doomed, by its very
conditions, not to succeed. The law is the straight line of duty, which
the asymptotic curve of desire may approximate, but never touch. An
earthly taint of pleasure-seeking always clings to our wants, and makes
of morality a striving which defeats itself.
The theory that morality lies in the realization of individuality
recognizes that there is no direct, or natural, identity of desire and
law, but also recognizes that their identification is not an impossible
task. The problem is solved in the exercise of function, where the
desires, however, are not unclothed, but clothed upon. Flowing in the
channel of response to the demands of the moral environment, they
unite, at once, social service and individual freedom.
LXXIII.
The Means of Moralization.
This practical end of the unification of desire and duty, in the play
of moral interests, is reached, therefore, so far as the desires
are socialized. A want is socialized when it is not a want for its
own isolated and fixed satisfaction, but reflects the needs of the
environment. This implies, of course, that it is bound by countless
ties to the whole body of desires and capacities. The eye, in seeing
for itself, sees for the whole body, because it is not isolated but,
through its connections, an organ of a system. In this same way, the
satisfaction of a want for food, or for commercial activity, may
necessitate a satisfaction of the whole social system.
But how shall this socialization of wants be secured? It is in
answering this question that we are brought again to a point already
discussed at length: the moral bearings of intelligence. It is
intelligence that is the sole sure means of taking a want out of the
isolation of merely impulsive action. It is the passing of the desire
through the alembic of ideas that, in rationalizing and spiritualizing
it, makes it an expression of the want of the whole man, and thus of
social needs.
To know one's self was declared by Socrates, who first brought to
conscious birth the spirit of the moral life, to be the very core
of moral endeavor. This knowledge of self has taken, indeed, a more
circuitous and a more painful path, than Socrates anticipated. Man has
had, during two thousand years of science, to go around through nature
to find himself, and as yet he has not wholly come back to himself--he
oftentimes seems still lost in the wilderness of an outer world. But
when man does get back to himself it will be as a victor laden with the
spoils of subdued nature. Having secured, in theory and invention, his
unity with nature, his knowledge of himself will rest on a wide and
certain basis.
This is the final justification of the moral value of science and art.
It is because through them wants are inter-connected, unified and
socialized, that they are, when all is said and done, the preëminent
moral means. And if we do not readily recognize them in this garb,
it is because we have made of them such fixed things, that is, such
abstractions, by placing them outside the movement of human life.
INDEX.
Absolute--and relative Ethics, according to Spencer 72.
Accountability--See responsibility.
Activity--human, the subject-matter of ethics 1 ff.
--the object of desire 21 ff.
--the standard of pleasure 45; 50.
--equals exercise of function 101.
--opposed to mere possession 209; 215; 218; 220.
--two sides of 219.
--see freedom.
Æsthetic feelings--may be moral 199.
--see art.
Agent--moral, one capable of acting from ideas 3.
--see person.
Alexander, S.--quoted: on idea of sum of pleasures 46.
--referred to: 9; 46; 77; 111; 134; 158; 165; 202; 216; 221; 227.
Altruism--how identified with egoism 59.
--reconciled, by Spencer, with egoism 70 ff.
--conflicts, at present, with egoism 76.
--older moralists termed benevolence 195.
--not necessarily moral 107.
--not disguised selfishness 109.
--may equal charity 125.
Amusements--moral nature of 133.
Approbation--nature of 161.
Aristotle--quoted: on pleasure 18;
on pleasure and character 29;
on the mean 136.
--referred to: 31.
Art (and Science)--nature of interest in 111.
--distinction of fine and useful 112.
--interest in, why moral 113 ff.
--interest in, really social 118 ff.
--life an, 120.
--essentially dynamic 126.
Asceticism--means formalism 94.
--element of truth in 95.
--results when interest is excluded 106.
Aspiration--involved in morality 213; 222.
Autonomy--Kant's conception of justified 149.
Badness--of environment a factor in right action 176; 224.
--its source and factors 214.
--its relation to goodness 223.
--potential and actual 223.
--of good people 232.
Bain, A.--quoted: that pleasure is a self-evident criterion 16;
his definition of utilitarianism 53;
on obligation 140; 141.
--referred to: 17; 66; 227.
Barratt--quoted: that all pleasure is individual 14.
Baseness--why badness becomes 219.
Benevolence--see altruism.
Bentham, J.--quoted: pleasure both criterion and motive 15;
self-evident criterion 16;
all motives good 34 ff.;
hedonistic calculus 36 ff.;
identity of individual and general pleasure 57 ff.;
influence of law 59.
--referred to: 53.
Birks--referred to: 66.
Blackie, J. S.--referred to: 66.
Bradley, F. H.--quoted: on pleasure and desire 21;
scientific interest not necessarily social 122;
on merely individual conscience 189.
--referred to: 25; 26; 42; 48; 54; 91; 124; 134; 165; 221.
Browning, R.--referred to: 111.
Butler--Bishop, quoted: on conscience 167.
--referred to: 110.
Caird, E.--quoted: on collision of moral ends 88.
--referred to: 21; 82; 87; 91; 92; 93; 95; 109; 111; 149; 165.
Calderwood--referred to: 158; 166.
Capacity--its relation to environment 97.
--increased by moral action 206.
Carlyle, T.--referred to: 128.
Casuistry--inevitable, if moral end is not wholly social 119.
Character--reciprocal with conduct 9.
--the source of motive, desire and moral pleasure 26 ff.
--separated from conduct by hedonists 32 ff.
--and virtues 227 ff.
--see capacity, conduct, interests and motive.
Charity--idea of, involves social inequality 125.
Christianity--ethical influence of 224.
--has no specific ethical code 231.
Coit, S.--referred to: 28; 66.
Commands--moral value of: 203.
Common Good--an ethical ideal 51.
--not furnished by hedonism 60.
--not furnished by Kant 91.
--why necessarily involved in morality 117; 217; 222.
--demands reciprocal satisfaction of individual and society 127.
--its existence postulated by moral conduct 130.
--results from exercise of function 168.
--constituted by activity 169 ff.
--realized in institutions 173.
--development of 210.
--see institutions and society.
Comprehensiveness--growth of, in moral end 210 ff.
Conduct--defined 3.
--relation to consequences 7.
--relation to character 9.
--an individual system 133.
--a social system 136.
--how related to character 163.
--see activity, consequences, character and motive.
Conflict--of moral ends 88 ff.
--morality has an aspect of 151; 227.
Conscience--Bain's idea of 141.
--equals consciousness of action 181.
--elements in 182.
--not a special faculty 183.
--kinds of 183 ff.
--not merely individual 188.
Conscientiousness--nature of 199.
--does not equal introspection 200.
--nor application of code 201.
--a cardinal virtue 232.
Consequences--moral value of 7 ff.; 84; 114; 160.
--excluded from morality by Kantianism 13; 29.
--identified with moral value by hedonism 33.
--responsibility for 160.
Criterion--hedonistic is pleasure 15.
--criticism of hedonistic 31 ff.
--two ends to be met by every 32.
--of higher and lower pleasures 49 ff.
--when pleasure may be a 50.
--Mill's really social 63.
--Spencer's really social 73.
--Kant's nominally formal 79 ff.
--the real 132 ff.
--its elasticity 135.
Darwin, C.--referred to: 78.
Demoralization--involved in badness 220.
Desire--pleasure as end of 16; 18 ff.
--defined 19.
--how spiritualized 23.
--not purely pleasurable 27.
--an expression of character 28.
--excluded from moral motive by Kant 79.
--all or no involved in morality 94.
--relation to pleasure 83.
--particular, an abstraction 96.
--how distinguished from interest 103.
--opposed to reason by Kant 147.
--when opposed to moral action 148; 155; 213; 216.
--how socialized, 237.
Dewey, J.--referred to: 25; 78; 194.
Disinterestedness--equals full interest 107.
--an aspect of cardinal virtue 232.
Disposition--Bentham on 35.
Dualism--the Kantian 148 ff.
Duty--see obligation.
Egoism--see altruism.
Empiricism--Spencer's reconciliation with intuitionalism 69 ff.
End--moral: see common good; function; motive.
Environment--defined by relation to capacity 99 ff.
--meaning of adjustment to 115 ff.
--moral, exists in institutions 171.
--badness of, an element in right action 176; 190.
--enlarged by moral action 207.
Ethical World--discussed 167 ff.
--nature illustrated 168.
--relation to moral law 174.
--see Institutions.
Ethics--defined 1.
--divided 3.
--its object according to Spencer 68.
--see theory.
Evolution, Theory of--combined with hedonism 67 ff.
--not really hedonistic 71 ff.
--its real standard objective 72.
Faith--a factor in moral progress 123; 127 ff.
--in humanity, meaning of 129.
--why demanded in moral action 217; 222.
Feelings--natural and moral 5 ff.; 25 ff.; 87.
--sympathetic relied upon by utilitarians 57.
--necessary in moral activity 85.
--active, equal interests 102.
--moral, defined by end 108;
see also motive.
--value of 195 ff.
--moral, not too narrowly limited 199.
Freedom--is object of desire 24.
--equals exercise of function 138.
--various aspects of 158.
--of choice defined 159.
--of indifference discussed 161 ff.
--actualized in rights 172; 174.
--positive, realized in virtues 229.
Function--union of capacity and circumstance in act 103.
--freedom found in exercise of 164 ff.
Gizycki--referred to: 66.
God--an external, cannot be the source of obligation 149.
Goethe--referred to: 128.
Golden Rule--identified by Mill with principle of utilitarianism 59.
--gives no directions as to conduct 204.
--is a concrete statement of ethical postulate 205.
Green, T. H.--quoted: on desire and pleasure 21;
on sum of pleasures 43;
on nature of happiness 45;
on conscientiousness 200; 202;
on goodness 215.
--referred to: 9; 25; 42; 54; 110; 158; 165.
Grote, J.--referred to: 66; 158.
Guyau--referred to: 66; 143.
Hedonism--defined 14 ff.
--its paradox 25.
--confuses feeling and idea 26; 43 ff.
--summarized 30.
--all motives good 33.
--its calculus 36.
--fails to provide laws 39 ff.
--its contrast with Kantianism 82 ff.
--its treatment of obligation 140 ff.
--is correct in holding rightness to be pleasurable 228.
--truth and falsity in 234.
Hegel--quoted: on reflective conscience 188;
on merely individual conscience 189.
Hinton, J.--quoted: on altruism 109;
on badness 216.
--referred to: 202.
Hodgson, S. H.--referred to: 14.
Idealism--when feeble 128.
Ideals--moral, progressive, 206.
Imperative, Categorical--of Kant 147.
--of conscience 191.
Impulse--and pleasure 17.
--and desire 22.
--nature of action from 159.
--see desire.
Individuality--defined 97.
--not identical with inner side alone 98.
--evils of defining from this standpoint 110.
--made by function 131.
--realized is autonomy 150.
--realized is freedom 164.
--growth in 210.
--see freedom and rights.
Institutions--nature of 169 ff.
--sovereignty, rights and law inhere in 171 ff.
--influence of, upon conscience 184; 189.
--movement of, the source of duties, 194.
--see common good and society.
Interests--are functions on personal side 102 ff.
--classified and discussed 104 ff.
--social, involve science and art 123 ff.
--realized in institutions 170.
--their relation to conscience 198.
--pure, are virtue 228.
--the active element of 218.
--the freeing of, the moral goal 233.
James, Sr., H.--referred to: 202.
James, Wm.--quoted: on pleasure and desire 20.
--referred to: 77.
Kant--agrees with hedonism as to end of desire 79.
--his end an abstraction 84.
--his practical ideal that of Mill and Spencer 93.
--value of his theory 93.
--his theory of obligation 147.
--his conception of autonomy 149.
--his idea of duty 156.
--his conception of practical reason 191.
--quoted: on pleasure 47;
on pleasure as common good 52;
on priority of duty to good 78;
on good will 79;
his formula for right action 80;
illustrations of moral law 80 ff.
--referred to: 14; 78; 212; 221; 235.
Kantianism--compared with hedonism 82 ff.
--its practical breakdown 90.
Knowledge--moral effect of advance in 207.
--socializes wants 237.
--see art.
Laurie, S. S.--quoted: on happiness 66.
--referred to: 227.
Law--utilitarian use of 58; 61 ff.
--Kant's moral, formal 78.
--relation to desire 94.
--realized in institutions 172; 174.
--of the 'is', not merely of the 'ought' 175.
--idea of, in general 195.
--see obligation.
Lawlessness--involved in morality 216.
Leckey--referred to: 66.
Limitation--the basis of moral strength 128.
Lincoln, A.--anecdote regarding 28.
Lotze--referred to: 16; 166.
Love--the union of duty and desire 154.
Martineau, J.--quoted: on the difficulty of the hedonistic calculus 38.
--referred to: 42; 78; 158; 166; 227.
Maurice, F. D.--referred to: 191.
Merit--means social desert 225.
Mill, J. S.--criticizes Kant 91.
--his equivoke of pleasure and pleasant thing 20.
--his fallacy 56.
--introduces quality of pleasure into hedonism 42; 46.
--quoted: pleasure self-evident criterion 16;
end of desire 17;
on rules of morality 39 ff;
on moral tribunal 48;
on utilitarian standard 53;
on importance of law and education 59;
on social feeling 63 ff.
--referred to: 25; 30; 49.
Morality--sphere of as broad as conduct 2; 154.
--not dependent upon an individual's wish 167 ff.
--realized in institutions 170.
--struggle for private, bad 202.
--in the nature of things 233.
Motive--defined 5.
--two elements in 10.
--determined by character 28.
--never bad according to hedonism 33.
--formal and legislative according to Kant 80.
--not a subjective mood 232.
Norms--in philosophy 1.
Obligation--in conflict with pleasure 76 ff.
--how related to function 138.
--theories regarding 139.
--distinct from coercion 144.
--enforced, not created by power 145.
--Kantian idea of criticized 148.
--does not relate simply to what ought to be, but is not 151; 174 ff.
--relation to conscience 183.
--how made known 190 ff.
--practical value of sense of 196.
--must be individualized 197; 201.
--when opposed to desire 213; 216.
--the union with desire the moral ideal 234.
--see desire, law and universal.
Pater--referred to: 66.
Pathological--all inclination, according to Kant 86.
--opposed to active 212.
Paulsen--referred to: 67; 111.
Person--is one capable of conduct 97.
Pleasure--an element in activity 24.
--not the moving spring to action 26.
--sum of, dependent on objective conditions 44 ff.
--quality of, similarly dependent 47 ff.
--may symbolize action 51.
--general, a vague idea 62.
--fixed by social relations 65; 77.
--not a sufficient guide at present 75.
--dependent on self-realization 83.
--all right action involves 228.
--see desire and hedonism.
Postulate--moral, defined 129 ff.
--equals Golden Rule 205.
Problem--moral 3.
Progress--necessary in moral action 135 ff.
--moral, nature of 209.
Prudence--not outside moral sphere 105.
Reason--opposed to desire by Kant 147.
--Kant's conception too immediate 150.
--practical, idea of 191.
Reformation--possibility of 162 ff.
Relativity--of morals, means what 136.
Responsibility--nature of 160 ff.
--of parents and children 203.
Reverence--Kant regards as sole moral feeling 86.
Rights--exist by common will 172.
Rousseau--his influence upon Kant 148.
Royce, J.--referred to: 61; 111.
Rule--moral, not a command 204.
--a tool of analysis 204.
Satisfaction--moral, creates new wants 208.
--good and bad 217.
Science--nature of interest in 111.
--the preëminent moral means 237.
--see art.
Schurman, J. G.--referred to: 78.
Self--interest in 105 ff.
--involves sympathy 109.
--dualism in self, how arises 216.
--knowledge of 237.
Selfishness--involved in immorality 216.
Self-sacrifice--its moral nature 222.
Sentimentality--immoral 113.
--escape from, only through knowledge 120.
--results from abstract idea of duty 157.
--refined, equals sensuality 220.
Shakespeare--quoted: on common good 131.
Sidgwick, H.--quoted: on the hedonistic assumption 43;
on utilitarian standard 53;
on intuitional utilitarianism 54.
--referred to: 14; 16; 18; 66; 111; 227.
Society--its moral influence 146; 157.
--its relation to obligation 152.
--constituted by moral relationships 175.
--development of, changes moral ideals 207.
--see common good, institutions.
Socrates--author of idea of reflective conscience 188.
--initiator of modern ethical spirit 237.
Sorley--referred to: 78; 111.
Sovereignty--exists in common will and good 171.
--ultimate possessed in humanity 173.
Spencer, H.--believes in fixed social ideal 73 ff.; 235.
--quoted: on pleasure as a necessary effect 68;
not immediate object of desire 69;
egoism and altruism 70 ff.;
on ideal man 73;
equilibrium of functions 74;
on obligation 142; 143.
--referred to: 16; 67; 72; 73; 74; 75; 76; 111; 125; 235.
Stephen, L.--quoted: on feeling as universal motive 27;
on sympathy 109 ff.
--referred to: 16; 25; 67; 68; 78; 111; 165; 227.
Struggle--when morality is a 212.
--changed by Christianity into movement 225.
--see conflict.
Sully, J.--referred to: 17.
Theory--ethical and conduct 1.
--ethical, sub-divided 13.
--ethical, not casuistry 89.
--value of 186.
Universal--a, lacking in hedonism 37.
--Kant's emphasis of 80.
--Kant's, formal 80; 85; 90.
--Kant's, leads to conflict 87.
--true, equals organization, 88; 90; 96.
--bad action cannot be 221.
--means a method, not a thing 136.
--found in movement of character 234.
--see law.
Utilitarianism--is universalistic hedonism 13; 53.
--defined by Mill, Sidgwick, Bain, 53.
--criticized 54 ff.
--assumes social order 63 ff.
--combined with evolution 67.
Virtue--change in nature of 211.
--correlative to duty 225.
--distinguished from merit 226.
--is an interest of character 228.
--two types of 229.
--cardinal 230.
Wants--see desires.
Wilson (and Fowler)--referred to: 67.
Will--Kant's good will 79.
TRANSCRIBER'S CORRECTIONS
page original text correction
17 endquote missing are one and the same thing."
20 want simply sweat-meats; want simply sweet-meats;
24 so that it becoms one factor so that it becomes one factor
35 unless as a sort of suprise unless as a sort of surprise
38 but the the most conscientious but the most conscientious
38 cicumstances were such as circumstances were such as
42 sum of pleasnres sum of pleasures
47 this agreableness is. this agreeableness is.
68 Science of Ehtics, ch. IX. Science of Ethics, ch. IX.
74 endquote missing "members of a society"
83 of well as of hedonism as well as of hedonism
92 without expressily giving up without expressly giving up
124 ordinary chords and and tunes, ordinary chords and tunes,
156 just what what morality demands just what morality demands
183 LVIX. LIX.
192 seems quite superflous seems quite superfluous
251 entry Society missing from index in original
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.