A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 17

This is, in fact, an a.s.sumption which the moral members of society have, in general, made. They boast of the morals of their religion, comparing it, in this respect, with other religions; and thus they subject it to the test of morality. Moreover, when we examine the Christian gospel, we find that it in general a.s.sumes the moral laws as already existent and only urges obedience to them. The good is, as we have seen, that which conduces to the general welfare. The earliest religions had no connection with rules of morality; these have developed with the social life of human beings and have, in it, their root.

As to the belief in immortality, cannot the human being do right without the thought of the reward and punishment of another life? As a matter of fact, many good men have not possessed such a belief. The distance of such an end often makes its effect a weak one, and the motive may easily become selfish. Yet it is true that a loss of faith may include a loss of morality, in case the belief exist that there is no basis for morality outside religion; the responsibility of such a loss of morality lies with those who teach this latter doctrine. Through love to others and the thought of the immortality of influence, the moral man gains a larger life and loses the fear of death. He who has thus faced the thought of death finds life more earnest but not less happy. Each hour has not the less its own joy because there is an end, at last. Nor, in spite of the deep pain the loss of friends causes us, do we lose them wholly, since the memory of all that was best in them may remain with us. Our own pain may bring to us a deeper sympathy with, and love for, others.

If we are able to love the good in G.o.d, we may also learn to love the good in those about us, and be incited, by it, to emulation. The love of the good in men has always had stronger effect than love for a distant G.o.d of whom but little was known. It was the thought of the man Buddha which exerted an enn.o.bling influence upon thousands, and it was the thought of another human being that moved the "christians" more strongly than did that of a Father in Heaven. Do we love father and mother, brother or sister, wife or child, or our friends, for G.o.d's sake? Why may we not love all men, as we love our friends and children, for their own sake?

It has been said that there is no accountability, if not to G.o.d. But if G.o.d is the author of the world, he must himself be the cause of evil, either by direct influence or by neglect to avert. Where, then, is the justice of his punishment? It does not suffice to answer that G.o.d's justice is not our justice; for in that case, what right have we to apply the word to him at all?

History demonstrates the fact that morality is by no means necessarily connected with religion. In the name of religion millions upon millions of human beings, and these often the most upright and conscientious men of their nation, have been put to death, and thus the civilization of whole peoples has been r.e.t.a.r.ded. Slavery in America had no stronger friends than the churches. How is the forgiveness of sins by G.o.d to be justified? Are the evils which they caused any the less existent because of such forgiveness, and is it well for the doer to escape, in this way, the sense of responsibility? Only labor for the good of humanity is the way of atonement. We ourselves are the creators of the kingdom of righteousness.

Many claim that Ethics is not indeed based upon Theology, but that it needs a metaphysical, a teleological, foundation. For it presupposes that human life has an "end." If we wish to ascertain how our life should be conducted, we must ascertain what is the end Nature has in view for us.

But an end is an effect imagined beforehand and willed, which we cannot bring about immediately but only through a chain of causes. These causes we call the means to the end. They too are willed, but only indirectly and because the end is attainable only through them. These processes to an end are sometimes treated as if the causal succession in them were reversed, so that the last effect appears as the beginning, and the future determines the present; in this sense, the end has been called the end-cause, because the final link of the process causes the beginning. But this is a senseless conception, since the future, that which does not yet exist, cannot now operate. In fact, the succession of causes and effects is no more broken into in the processes leading to an end than in any other processes. When a human being imagines to himself a result and endeavors to bring it about, these mental processes are not future but present; and they are not determined by an influence of the future upon the present, but by an influence of the past upon the present; they follow from experience, that is, from that which has already occurred. They are causal processes in which the activities of understanding and will have part. Hence "ends" exist in nature in so far as they exist in man and the higher animals; but outside these, ends cannot be predicated, unless Nature is regarded either as gifted with imagination and will or as the creation of a being possessing these. But imagination and will require, according to all our experience, a highly developed nervous system, and to a.s.sume their existence where such a centralized system does not exist is scientifically injustifiable.

Moreover, the laws of thought by no means determine us to inquire after a cause of the whole world, since the concept of cause is applicable only to changes, not, however, to enduring existences and their qualities.

Or let us a.s.sume that we had discovered an end set by Nature. Then, either it would appear useless to interfere with its attainment and unnecessary to a.s.sist in it, or it would appear to us possible to oppose this end. In this latter case, cause must be shown why we should a.s.sist, or should resist, the process of Nature.

Many philosophers have said that man should live according to his own nature. If the word "nature" here denotes the totality of his characteristics, it is evident that the worst actions are not less natural than the best. Therefore, the word nature cannot, as here used, have this sense; the natural in this sense is not identical with the moral. Nor can the term as here used refer to the usual, for in that case the greatest moral excellence, as unusual, must be rejected. Nor can it be used to designate the more primary, for in that case, again, the later developments of benevolence and truthfulness should be rejected.

The word can have but one other sense, namely, as opposed to artificial.

But what is in man artificial and what is natural? It seems that the natural is understood as that which is not the work of human intention and reflection, of labor, and of education. Innate impulses would be, according to this definition, natural. But it is evident that one cannot abandon himself to his blind impulses; society could not exist under such circ.u.mstances.

Or if it be said that, since all organs and impulses of the human being tend to preservation of the species, and that this must, therefore, be the end, then let us say "the preservation of the species," or "the good of mankind" but not "the natural life," is the end for man to attempt.

Nature as a whole is neither good nor bad. Her cruelty in the struggle for life is continuous. Yet this is not "cruelty," in so far as it is not willed. She has often selected the best men for her sacrifices. Yet this is not all that is to be said of the relation of Darwinism to Ethics. The law of natural selection regulates not only the life of the individual but also that of peoples and nations. Evil may arise and prosper in society. But it has no permanent existence. The chances that the descendants of human beings possessing evil characteristics will long survive, that they will not, sooner or later, perish as the result of conflict with the mandates of health, or the laws of the state, or the demands of society, are not great. In the life of nations, it appears more clearly than in the life of the individual, that "Death is the price of sin." Should in any society the opinion gain power that the struggle for existence authorizes or demands a regardless pursuit of one's own interests, an oppression and robbery of the weak by the strong, an annihilation of pain through the annihilation of the suffering individuals, an outrooting of conscience, and the natural voice of pity which raises protest against such a course; should selfishness be bred, and physical strength and refined cunning become the highest ideal; such a community would be on the verge of its own destruction; it would have labored for this result by justifying the struggle of all against all, permitting this the moment that a conflict of interests arose. Let times of need and danger, times of national war, come, and we shall see what is the fate of a society in which love of country, self-sacrifice, a sense of the ideal, respect for truth and justice, are only subjects for scorn. "The world's history is its judgment-day."

All positive human authorities are subject to the authority of the conditions of life. If they do not take note of the nature of things, if they disturb the foundations of social life, their endeavors must finally suffer s.h.i.+pwreck on the rock of this powerful impersonal authority.

Natural selection is therefore a power of judgment, in that it preserves the just and lets the evil perish. Will this war of the good with the evil always continue? Or will the perfect kingdom of righteousness one day prevail? We hope this last but we cannot know certainly.

We ourselves shall decide our future, by our acts.

In an essay written for the Society for Ethical Culture, and read October 10, 1891, before the London branch of that society, Gizycki reconstructs his theory of the right final end of life, advocating as such the General Welfare, instead of Peace of Conscience in the pursuit of the same. The objections to his own former theory offered are, chiefly, that if peace of conscience is regarded as the final end, the individual is likely to take too little account of the outward effects of his action, to be too little impressed by the evil results which should teach him greater care. The good of society is regarded by the virtuous man as more important than his own happiness, as that for which he is willing to sacrifice his own peace.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] The references here are to Lombroso, "Der Verbrecher," deutsche Ausgabe, S. 129 u. f.; H. v. Valentini, "Das Verbrecherthum im preussischen Staate," S. 226 u. f.

[80] Intelligibile Ursache.

[81] Grenzbegriff.

S. ALEXANDER

"MORAL ORDER AND PROGRESS" (1889)

The proper business of Ethics is the study of moral judgments--or, if we say of human conduct, then of conduct as submitted to the praise or blame of moral judgments. But these judgments are not mere opinions; conduct is not that which is "judged" to be right in distinction from that which is right; and thus the a.n.a.lysis of such judgments is a systematization of both conceptions and facts.

The task of Ethics falls into two parts. It has (1) to supply a _catalogue raisonne_ of the moral observances of life, the various moral judgments which make up the contents of the moral consciousness, and (2) to discuss what it is that the moral judgment, as such, expresses.

Nothing is more striking at the present time than the convergence of different schools of Ethics--English Utilitarianism developing into Evolutional Ethics, on the one hand, and the idealism a.s.sociated with the German philosophy derived from Kant on the other. The convergence is not, of course, in mere practical precepts, but in method also. It consists in an "objectivity" or impartiality of treatment, commonly called "scientific." There is also a convergence in general results which consists in a recognition of a kind of proportion between individual and society, expressed by the phrase "organic connection."

The theory of egoism, pure and simple, has been long dead; Utilitarianism succeeded it and enlarged the moral end. Evolution continued the process of enlarging the individual interest, and has given precision to the relation between the individual and the moral law. But in this it has added nothing new; for Hegel, in the early part of the century, gave life to Kant's formula by treating the law of morality as realized in the society and the state. The change in ethical conception is not due to biological research alone, but to the study of history also, and to other general changes in the practical data on which its principles are built. The social and political history of the century represents the growth of the idea of freedom, which has properly two sides--that of individual liberty of healthy development, and that of the solidarity of society and the responsibility of the individual to it. With the increasing complexity of interests and the growth of individual freedom, has come, however, a certain sense of loneliness to the individual in the midst of modern compet.i.tion, and this explains, to a great extent, the increase of suicide in the present century.

The convergence of dissimilar theories affords us some prospect of obtaining a satisfactory statement of the ethical truths towards which they seem to move.

Our inquiry falls into two parts, according as we a.n.a.lyze the conceptions which relate to the existence of the moral judgment or those connected with its growth, maintenance, and change--the statics or the dynamics of morality. To these two divisions is to be added a third, preliminary division, more closely allied with the statical examination of morality. These three parts are represented by the questions: (1) What is it that is good? To what are the terms good and bad applied? (2) Why is it good? What does its goodness mean? (3) How does goodness come into being; how is it maintained; how does it advance?

Moral judgments apply to voluntary action, that is, action distinguished by the presence of an idea of the end to be attained "not merely _in_ consciousness but _to_ consciousness," and the conversion of the idea into the actual reality of presentation. The terms good and bad, indeed, are applied, not only outside the realm of morals, but also, within it, to desires and thoughts; but to these only as they are the objects of volition, in that the will at present allows them to persist in consciousness or in that their present occurrence is regarded as the result of past willing.

The conduct to which we apply moral judgment is a whole made up of many parts--and actions, consequences, and internal feelings have value for morality only in so far as they are its elements.

External action concerns conduct only in so far as the object of volitions (which may be either internal or external) is derived from this source. Voluntary external action is not external only, but has also an internal side; and not whether I succeed in performing a certain action or am prevented in the middle of it, but whether I willed it, is of importance to moral judgment. Conduct is sometimes considered separately from character; but this separation results from confusing conduct with mere action. A character exists only in its conduct, and all moral actions issue from character.

The consequences cannot be separated from conduct in the moral judgment, except in so far as they could not have been foreseen. The consequences of conduct are a most important part of action, in that they should be considered by the person willing, and should influence the nature of his conduct.

The internal side of conduct is represented by the moral sentiments.

These are to be distinguished from the mere motives, which, defined as something that has propulsive force, whether a feeling or a pa.s.sion, does not enter into moral action except as absorbed into volition. No emotion is, in itself, right or wrong, but is only indirectly judged as such as it makes a difference to the action--as an apt.i.tude of mind which tends to this or that predominating form of conduct. Moral sentiments, on the other hand, as moral apt.i.tudes effective for particular conduct, contain an additional element. Moral sentiments, thus defined, being equivalent to conduct, it follows that the mere possession of sentiments cannot const.i.tute the difference between intrinsic or internal, and customary morality; customs are themselves a matter of sentiment. Thus "conduct as a concrete whole has an inward element of sentiment and an outward element of action, and these are different, on the one hand from mere given feelings, on the other from mere action." "Conduct is this unity of feeling and action in which mere feeling is modified by the idea of action, and mere action becomes a mental, or, if we like, a spiritual thing." "Conduct and character are the same thing facing different ways." "Think of a man's conduct in relation to the mental conditions from which it proceeds, and you think of his character; think of his character as it produces results beyond these sentiments themselves, and you have conduct."

There are no morally indifferent acts; when viewed in general and broader lights, all acts are either good or bad; though there are some cases of really indifferent means arising from the mechanism of action; as, for instance, that I am to go to London is not indifferent, but we may suppose that the fact that I may go by the road or by the river makes no difference to my volition. There is no distinction between virtue and prudence as regard for self, but prudence, in so far as it is compatible with social requirements, is a duty and a virtue.

Ethics, then, has to do with conduct as a whole in its external and its internal aspects. In distinction from Psychology, it has to do with it not merely as a fact to be a.n.a.lyzed, but with reference to its nature, quality, or content, judged by a standard of value. It is not dependent upon Metaphysics, but precedes it in order of time, whatever may be said of the order of importance; Metaphysics examines, properly, the ultimate questions left over unanswered by the other sciences. From the purely physical method, Ethics has advanced to a biological method; and the doctrine that pleasure is the end of right action has been replaced by the idea of social vitality as the end.

STATICAL a.n.a.lYSIS--MORAL ORDER

The recognition of the reference in morality to society has been implied in all ethical theories; theories of selfish pleasure themselves recognize the social element in individual gratification, even Cyrenaic theories recommending selection and refinement of pleasures, and containing a reference to personal dignity which implies a conception of man as typical of a perfection that others may sympathize in and attain.

Individualism and Universalism in morals differ only in the order in which they take their terms. "To the former, the individual comes first and is the measure of the law; to the latter, the law or society comes first, and is the measure of the worth of the individual." Nevertheless, the ethical problem is very differently conceived by the two schools.

But the History of Philosophy shows a tendency to harmonization of the two; we find that Individualism becomes more and more socialistic, while Universalism becomes more and more conscious of individuality. We may trace this movement, in the case of Individualism, in the development of the philosophic theory of morality as true benevolence from the theory of benevolence as merely another form of self-love. The earlier conceptions of Universalism, emphasizing the good as something binding irrespective of the inclinations of the individual, issue in particular formulae of virtue; later conceptions recognize the differences of individual cases while still insisting on the universal or authoritative character of morality. The problem receives its definite shape when the explanation of authority is sought, not in some categorical imperative, but in the very nature of society itself, which, if a whole, is yet a whole made up of individuals. Ethical inquiry thus naturally breaks up into two parts, according as we consider the meaning of right and wrong for the individual, or for society as embracing many individuals.

As far as morality concerns itself with the individual, the good act implies a certain adjustment of functions to one another, too much in any one direction implying a defect in others. "The good life as a whole is a system of consecutive acts, where each function has its limits prescribed for it by the demands of all the other functions." And the good character is "an order or systematic arrangement of volitions." The goodness of an act is thus a matter of equilibration or adjustment of the elements of an individual's nature. In this proportion or adjustment consists the reasonableness, rationality (ratio, [Greek: logos]) of good conduct. This does not mean that the principle of morality is the result of reason, for moral adjustment is no more specially the work of reason than of any other mental faculty.

This account of good character uses ideas which apply, _mutatis mutandis_, to the life of any organism, as well as to the mind of man; it merely explains, in terms of human experience, the elements involved in the conception of organization; the difference lies simply in the nature of the elements involved in the adjustment, the elements being, in the case before us, conscious acts. To the question whether such a definition of morality would not apply rather to conduct than to character, and whether, the volitions being conceived as a series in time, it does not dissolve the unity of character, may be answered that conduct and character have already been shown to be identical, and that unity can no more be denied to the series of acts involved than it can be denied to the growing plant or animal whose functions are successive.

The unity conditioned by time is a unity characterized by succession, as that of s.p.a.ce by extension. The objection, as it gathers its strength from a persuasion that the good character should be described by the feelings or sentiments of any one time, is legitimate; good conduct is built upon a man's needs or desires and is defined as satisfying every part of his nature in its proportion; so that an equilibrium of the emotions and the moral sentiments is involved in morality, and any sentiment is moral which can be equilibrated with the rest. "The good man may be described either as an equilibrated order of conduct, or as an equilibrium of moral sentiments or of the parts of his nature.

Nevertheless, the order of conduct is a prior conception to that of structural equilibrium." In a machine, the combination of parts is made in order to produce the motion of the engine, and the equilibrium is maintained by the motion. "In the organism, the bodily structure retains its proportion only in so far as it is in physiological action, and this physiological action subserves the conduct of the organism," while "in like manner the equilibrium of moral sentiments exists only through conduct and is determined by the requirements of conduct." The equilibrium is effected simultaneously both for conduct and the moral structure. The ideal is a plan of conduct, ideal in that it is never fully attained. The ideal is hypothetical in two senses. It supposes that every member of the order is good, whereas no life contains good acts only; and that the order itself remains permanent, whereas morality is necessarily progressive. Nevertheless, it is to be observed that the ideal is a realized ideal. It is realized in every good act, since the good act is the act which has the shape it would wear in the ideal order. "Though it is adjusted to imaginary elements, it realizes the whole so far as its own particular share is concerned."

Morality implies the existence of society. It is useless to inquire what would be moral in case the human individual were an isolated being; the fact is that he is not so, and that all moral judgment implies not only the judgment of other individuals besides the acting individual, but also the function of the acting individual as a member of a society. Yet each member of a society has his special individual work, so that duty varies according to individual circ.u.mstances, and so far from its being true that morality is not a respecter of persons, it is a fact that it is always a respecter of persons. This does not deny that there are certain common bounds of morality, which allow the formation of some general propositions; nor does it mean that each individual is at liberty to construct his own moral precepts. The individuality of morality, which finds a place or vocation for each individual, involves an equilibrium between the members of society, in which consists the morality of the whole.

The so-called self-regarding virtues are social as well as self-regarding; their disregard involves evil, not to the individual alone, but to others also. It may be objected that acts and thoughts which can never be known to others are condemned by conscience. In answer it must be observed:--

(1) That the knowledge of others is a matter of degree; my friends know my actions; and in order to judge an action, it is not necessary to suppose the whole nation looking on.

(2) That as personal morality becomes more and more complex, and hence knowledge by others less and less possible, we leave the judgment of an act more to the conscience of the individual, as vicegerent of the moral law. "Acts which are wrong when n.o.body knows them have come to be so by a process beginning with simple acts which are known, that is, known in their outward appearance." The act, known or unknown, leaves its impress upon character, raising or lowering the efficiency of the agent; and hence is judged good or bad. The study of art and science has, thus, moral value, as influencing character.