Creative Intelligence Part 14

The paradox results from omitting from right the elements of the immediate situation and considering only consequences. The very meaning of the concept right, implies focussing attention upon the present rather than upon the future. It suggests a cross-section of life in its relations. If the time process were to be arrested immediately after our act I think we might still speak of it as right or wrong. In trying to judge a proposed act we doubtless try to discover what it will mean, that is, we look at consequences. But these consequences are looked upon as giving us the meaning of the present act and we do not on this account subordinate the present act to these consequences. Especially we do not mean to eliminate the significance of this very process of judgment. It is significant that in considering what are the intrinsic goods Moore enumerates personal affection and the appreciation of beauty, and with less positiveness, true belief, but does not include any mention of the valuing or choosing or creative consciousness.

(4) If we regard right as the concept which reflects the judgment of standardizing our acts by some ideal order, questions arise as to the objectivity of this order and the fixed or moving character of the implied standard. Rashdall lays great stress upon the importance of objectivity: "a.s.suredly there is no scientific problem upon which so much depends as upon the answer we give to the question whether the distinction which we are accustomed to draw between right and wrong belongs to the region of objective truth like the laws of mathematics and of physical science, or whether it is based upon an actual emotional const.i.tution of individual human beings."[73] The apprais.e.m.e.nt of the various desires and impulses by myself and other men is "a piece of insight into the true nature of things."[74] While these statements are primarily intended to oppose the moral sense view of the judgment, they also bear upon the question whether right is something fixed. The phrase "insight into the true nature of things" suggests at once the view that the nature of things is quite independent of any att.i.tude of human beings toward it. It is something which the seeker for moral truth may discover but nothing which he can in any way modify. It is urged that if we are to have any science of ethics at all what was once right must be conceived as always right in the same circ.u.mstances.[75]

I hold no brief for the position--if any one holds the position--that in saying "this is right" I am making an a.s.sertion about my own feelings or those of any one else. As already stated the function of the judging process is to determine objects, with reference to which we say "is" or "is not." The emotional theory of the moral consciousness does not give adequate recognition to this. But just as little as the process of the moral consciousness is satisfied by an emotional theory of the judgment does it sanction any conception of objectivity which requires that values are here or there once for all; that they are fixed ent.i.ties or "a nature of things" upon which the moral consciousness may look for its information but upon which it exercises no influence. The process of attempting to give--or discover--moral values is a process of mutual determination of object and agent. We have to do in morals not with a nature of things but with natures of persons. The very characteristic of a person as we have understood it is that he is synthetic, is actually creating something new by organizing experiences and purposes, by judging and choosing. Objectivity does not necessarily imply changelessness.

Whether right is a term of fixed and changeless character depends upon whether the agents are fixed units, either in fact or in ideal. If, as we maintain, right is the correlate of a self confronting a world of other persons conceived as all related in an order, the vital question is whether this order is a fixed or a moving order. "Straight" is a term of fixed content just because we conceive s.p.a.ce in timeless terms; it is by its very meaning a cross-section of a static order. But a world of living intelligent agents in social relations is in its very presuppositions a world of activity, of mutual understanding and adjustment. Rationalistic theory, led astray by geometrical conceptions, conceived that a universal criterion must be like a straight line, a fixed and timeless--or eternal--ent.i.ty. But in such an order of fixed units there could be no selection, no adjustment to other changing agents, no adventure upon the new untested possibility which marks the advance of every great moral idea, in a word, no morality of the positive and constructive sort. And if it be objected that the predicate of a judgment must be timeless whatever the subject, that the word "is"

as Plato insists cannot be used if all flows, we reply that if right=the correlate of a moving order, of living social intelligent beings, it is quite possible to affirm "This is according to that law." If our logic provides no form of judgment for the a.n.a.lysis of such a situation it is inadequate for the facts which it would interpret. But in truth mankind's moral judgments have never committed themselves to any such implication. We recognize the futility of attempting to answer simply any such questions as whether the Israelites did right to conquer Canaan or Hamlet to avenge his father.

(5) The category of right has usually been closely connected, if not identified, with reason or "cognitive" activity as contrasted with emotion. Professor Dewey on the contrary has pointed out clearly[76] the impossibility of separating emotion and thought. "To put ourselves in the place of another ... is the surest way to attain universality and objectivity of moral knowledge." "The only truly general, the reasonable as distinct from the merely shrewd or clever thought, is the _generous_ thought." But in the case of certain judgments such as those approving fairness and the general good Sidgwick finds a rational intuition. "The principle of impartiality is obtained by considering the similarity of the individuals that make up a Logical Whole or Genus."[77] Rashdall challenges any but a rationalistic ethics to explain fairness as contrasted with partiality of affection.

There is without question a properly rational or intellectual element in the judgment of impartiality, namely, a.n.a.lysis of the situation and comparison of the units. But what we shall set up as our units--whether we shall treat the gentile or the barbarian or negro as a person, as end and not merely means, or not, depends on something quite other than reason. And this other factor is not covered by the term "practical reason." In fact no ethical principle shows better the subtle blending of the emotional and social factors with the rational. For the student of the history of justice is aware that only an extraordinarily ingenious exegesis could regard justice as having ever been governed by a mathematical logic. The logic of justice has been the logic of a we-group gradually expanding its area. Or it has been the logic of a Magna Charta--a doc.u.ment of special privileges wrested from a superior by a strong group, and gradually widening its benefits with the admission of others into the favored cla.s.s. Or it has been the logic of cla.s.s, in which those of the same level are treated alike but those of different levels of birth or wealth are treated proportionately. Yet it would seem far-fetched to maintain that the countrymen of Euclid and Aristotle were deficient in the ability to perform so simple a reasoning process as the judgment one equals one, or that men who developed the Roman Law, or built the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, were similarly lacking in elementary a.n.a.lysis. Inequality rather than equality has been the rule in the world's justice. It has not only been the practice but the approved principle. It still is in regard to great areas of life. In the United States there is no general disapproval of the great inequalities in opportunity for children, to say nothing of inequalities in distribution of wealth. In England higher education is for the cla.s.ses rather than for the ma.s.ses. In Prussia the inequality in voting strength of different groups and the practical immunity of the military cla.s.s from the constraints of civil law seem to an American unfair. The western states of the Union think it unfair to restrict the suffrage to males and give women no voice in the determination of matters of such vital interest to them as the law of divorce, the guardians.h.i.+p of children, the regulation of women's labor, the sale of alcoholic liquors, the protection of milk and food supply. Are all these differences of practice and conviction due to the fact that some people use reason while others do not? Of course in every case excellent reasons can be given for the inequality. The gentile should not be treated as a Jew because he is not a Jew. The slave should not be treated as a free citizen because he is not a free citizen. The churl should not have the same wergeld as the thane because he is lowborn. The more able should possess more goods. The woman should not vote because she is not a man. The reasoning is clear and unimpeachable if you accept the premises, but what gives the premises? In every case cited the premise is determined largely if not exclusively by social or emotional factors. If reason can then prescribe equally well that the slave should be given rights because he is a man of similar traits or denied rights because he has different traits from his master, if the Jew may either be given his place of equality because he hath eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pa.s.sions, or denied equality because he differs in descent, if a woman is equal as regards taxpaying but unequal as regards voting, it is at least evident that reason is no unambiguous source of morality. The devil can quote Scripture and it is a very poor reasoner who cannot find a reason for anything that he wishes to do. A partiality that is more or less consistently partial to certain sets or cla.s.ses is perhaps as near impartiality as man has yet come, whether by a rational faculty or any other.

Is it, then, the intent of this argument merely to reiterate that reason is and ought to be the slave of the pa.s.sions? On the contrary, the intent is to subst.i.tute for such blanket words as reason and pa.s.sions a more adequate a.n.a.lysis. And what difference will this make? As regards the particular point in controversy it will make this difference: the rationalist having smuggled in under the cover of reason the whole moral consciousness then proceeds to a.s.sume that because two and two are always four, or the relations of a straight line are timeless, therefore ethics is similarly a matter of fixed standards and timeless goods. A legal friend told me that he once spent a year trying to decide whether a corporation was or was not a person and then concluded that the question was immaterial. But when the supreme court decided that a corporation was a person in the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment it thereby made the corporation heir to the rights established primarily for the negro. Can the moral consciousness by taking the name "reason"

become heir to all the privileges of the absolute idea and to the timelessness of s.p.a.ce and number?

Suppose I am to divide an apple between my two children--two children, two pieces--this is an a.n.a.lysis of the situation which is obvious and may well be called the a.n.a.lytic activity of reason. But shall I give to each an equal share on the ground that both are equally my children or shall I reason that as John is older or larger or hungrier or mentally keener or more generous or is a male, he shall have a larger piece than Jane? To settle this it may be said that we ought to see whether there is any connection between the size of the piece and the particular quality of John which is considered, or that by a somewhat different use of reason we should look at the whole situation and see how we shall best promote family harmony and mutual affection. To settle the first of these problems, that of the connection between the size of the piece and the size of the hunger or the s.e.x of the child, is seemingly again a question of a.n.a.lysis, of finding identical units, but a moment's thought shows that the case is not so simple; that the larger child should have the larger piece is by no means self-evident. This is in principle doubtless the logic, to him that hath shall be given. It is the logic of the survival of the strong, but over against that the moral consciousness has always set another logic which says that the smaller child should have the larger piece if thereby intelligent sympathy can contribute toward evening up the lot of the smaller. Now it is precisely this att.i.tude of the moral consciousness which is not suggested by the term reason, for it is quite different from the a.n.a.lytic and identifying activity. This a.n.a.lytical and identifying activity may very well rule out of court the hypothesis that I should give John the larger piece because he has already eaten too much or because he has just found a penny or because he has red hair; it has undoubtedly helped in abolis.h.i.+ng such practices as that of testing innocence by the ordeal.

But before the crucial question of justice which divides modern society, namely, whether we shall lay emphasis upon adjustment of rewards to previous abilities, habits, possessions, character, or shall lay stress upon needs, and the possibility of bringing about a greater measure of equality, the doctrine which would find its standard in an _a priori_ reason is helpless.

If we look at the second test suggested, namely, that of considering the situation as a whole with a view to the harmony of the children and the mutual affection within the family, there can be even less question that this is no mere logical problem of the individuals in a logical genus.

It is the social problem of individuals who have feelings and emotions as well as thought and will. The problem of distributing the apple fairly is then a complex in which at least the following processes enter. (1) a.n.a.lysis of the situation to show all the relevant factors with the full bearing of each; (2) putting yourself in the place of each one to be considered and experiencing to the full the claims, the difficulties and the purposes of each person involved; (3) considering all of these _as_ members of the situation so that no individual is given rights or allowed claims except in so far as he represents a point of view which is comprehensive and sympathetic. This I take it is the force of President Wilson's utterance which has commanded such wide acceptance: "America asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask in the name of humanity." Kant aimed to express a high and democratic ideal of justice in his doctrine that we should treat every rational being as end. The defect in his statement is that the rational process as such has never treated and so far as can be foreseen never will treat _human_ beings as ends. To treat a human being as an end it is necessary to put oneself into his place in his whole nature and not simply in his universalizing, and legislative aspects: Kant's principle is profound and n.o.ble, but his label for it is misleading and leaves a door open for appalling disregard of other people's feelings, sympathies, and moral sentiments, as Professor Dewey has indicated in his recent lectures on "German Philosophy and Politics."

The term "reasonable," which is frequently used in law and common life as a criterion of right, seems to imply that reason is a standard. As already stated, common life understands by the reasonable man one who not only uses his own thinking powers but is willing to listen to reason as presented by some one else. He makes allowance for frailties in human nature. To be reasonable means, very nearly, taking into account all factors of the case not only as I see them but as men of varying capacities and interests regard them. The type of the "unreasonable"

employer is the man who refuses to talk over things with the laborers; to put himself in their place; or to look at matters from the point of view of society as a whole.

Just as little does the term reasonable as used in law permit a purely intellectualistic view of the process or an _a priori_ standard. The question as to what is reasonable care or a reasonable price is often declared to be a matter not for the court but for the jury to decide, i.e., it is not to be deduced from any settled principle but is a question of what the average thoughtful man, who considers other people as well as himself, would do under the circ.u.mstances. A glance at some of the judicial definitions of such phrases as "reasonable care,"

"reasonable doubt," "reasonable law," as brought together in _Words and Phrases Judicially Defined_, ill.u.s.trates this view. We get a picture not of any definite standard but of such a process as we have described in our a.n.a.lysis, namely, a process into which the existing social tradition, the mutual adjustments of a changing society and the intelligent consideration of all facts, enter. The courts have variously defined the reasonable (1) as the customary, or ordinary, or legal, or (2) as according with the existing state of knowledge in some special field, or (3) as proceeding on due consideration of all the facts, or (4) as offering sufficient basis for action. For example, (1) reasonable care means "according to the usages, habits, and ordinary risks of the business," (2) "surgeons should keep up with the latest advances in medical science," (3) a reasonable price "is such a price as the jury would under all the circ.u.mstances decide to be reasonable." "If, after an impartial comparison and consideration the jury can say candidly they are not satisfied with the defendant's guilt they have a reasonable doubt." Under (4) falls one of various definitions of "beyond reasonable doubt." "The evidence must be such as to produce in the minds of prudent men such certainty that they would act without hesitation in their own most important affairs." There is evidently ground for the statement of one judge that "reasonable" (he was speaking the phrase "reasonable care," but his words would seem to apply to other cases) "cannot be measured by any fixed or inflexible standard." Professor Freund characterizes "reasonable" as "the negation of precision." In the development of judicial interpretation as applied to the Sherman Law the tendency is to hold that the "rule of reason" will regard as forbidden by the statute (_a_) such combinations as have historically been prohibited and (_b_) such as seem to work some definite injury.

III

The above view of the function of intelligence, and of the synthetic character of the conscious process may be further defined in certain aspects by comparison with the view of Professor Fite, who likewise develops the significance of consciousness and particularly of intelligence for our ethical concepts and social program.

Professor Fite insists that in contrast with the "functional psychology"

which would make consciousness merely a means to the preservation of the organic individual in mechanical working order, the whole value of life from the standpoint of the conscious agent consists in its being conscious. Creative moments in which there is complete conscious control of materials and technique represent high and unique individuality.

Extension of range of consciousness makes the agent "a larger and more inclusive being," for he is living in the future and past as well as in the present. Consciousness means that a new and original force is inserted into the economy of the social and the physical world."[78] On the basis of the importance of consciousness Professor Fite would ground his justification of rights, his conception of justice, and his social program. The individual derives his rights simply from the fact that he knows what he is doing, hence as individuals differ in intelligence they differ in rights. The problem of justice is that of according to each a degree of recognition proportioned to his intelligence, that is, treat others as ends so far as they are intelligent; so far as they are ignorant treat them as means.[79] "The conscious individual when dealing with other conscious individuals will take account of their aims, as of other factors in his situation. This will involve 'adjustment,' but not abandonment of ends, i.e., self-sacrifice. Obligation to consider these ends of others is based on 'the same logic that binds me to get out of the way of an approaching train.'"[80]

The point in which the conception of rights and justice and the implied social program advocated in this paper differs as I view it from that of Professor Fite is briefly this. I regard both the individual and his rights as essentially synthetic and in constant process of reconstruction. Therefore what is due to any individual at a moment is not measured by his present stage of consciousness. It is measured rather by his possibilities than his actualities. This does not mean that the actual is to be ignored, but it does mean that if we take our stand upon the actual we are committed to a program with little place for imagination, with an emphasis all on the side of giving people what they deserve rather than of making them capable of deserving more.

Professor Fite's position I regard as conceiving consciousness itself too largely in the category of the identical and the static rather than in the more "conscious" categories of constant reconstruction. When by virtue of consciousness you conceive new ends in addition to your former particular ideas of present good the problem is, he says, "to secure perfect fulfilment of each of them." The "usefulness" or "advantage" or "profitableness" of entering into social relations is the central category for measuring their value and their obligation.

Now the conception of securing perfect fulfilment of all one's aims by means of society rather than of putting one's own aims into the process for reciprocal modification and adjustment with the aims of others and of the new social whole involves a view of these ends as fixed, an essentially mechanical view. The same is the implication in considering society from the point of view of use and profit. As previously suggested these economic terms apply appropriately to things rather than to intrinsic values. To consider the uses of a fellow-being is to measure him in terms of some other end than his own intrinsic personal worth. To consider family life or society as profitable implies in ordinary language that such life is a means for securing ends already established rather than that it _proves_ a good to the man who invests in it and thereby becomes himself a new individual with a new standard of values. Any object to be chosen must of course have value to the chooser. But it is one thing to be valued because it appeals to the actual chooser as already const.i.tuted; it is another thing to be valued because it appeals to a moving self which adventures upon this new unproved objective. This second is the distinction of taking an interest instead of being interested.

The second point of divergence is that Professor Fite lays greater stress upon the intellectual side of intelligence, whereas I should deny that the intellectual activity in itself is adequate to give either a basis for obligation or a method of dealing with the social problem. The primary fact, as Professor Fite well states it, is "that men are conscious beings and therefore know themselves and one another." It involves "a mutual recognition of personal ends." "That very knowledge which shows the individual himself shows him also that he is living in a world with other persons and other things whose mode of behavior and whose interests determine for him the conditions through which his own interests are to be realized."

What kind of "knowledge" is it "which shows the individual himself"?

Professor Fite has two quite different ways of referring to this. He uses one set of terms when he would contrast his view with the sentimental, or the "Oriental," or justify exploitation by those who know better what they are about than the exploited. He uses another set of terms to characterize it when he wishes to commend his view as human, and fraternal, and as affording the only firm basis for social reform.

In the first case he speaks of "mere knowing"; of intelligence as "clear," and "far-sighted," of higher degrees of consciousness as simply "more in one." "Our test of intelligence would be breadth of vision (in a coherent view), fineness and keenness of insight."[81]

In the second case it is "generous," it will show an "intelligent sympathy"; it seeks "fellows.h.i.+p," and would not "elect to live in a social environment in which the distinction of 'inferiors' were an essential part of the idea."[82] The type of intelligence is found not in the man seeking wealth or power, nor in the legal ac.u.men which forecasts all discoverable consequences and devises means to carry out purposes, but in literature and art.[83]

The terms which cover both these meanings are the words "consider" and "considerate." "Breadth of consideration" gives the basis for rights.

The selfish man is the "inconsiderate."[84] This term plays the part of the _amor intellectualis_ in the system of Spinoza, which enables him at once to discard all emotion and yet to keep it. For "consideration" is used in common life, and defined in the dictionaries, as meaning both "examination," "careful thought," and "appreciative or sympathetic regard." The ambiguity in the term may well have served to disguise from the author himself the double role which intelligence is made to play.

The broader use is the only one that does justice to the moral consciousness, but we cannot include sympathy and still maintain that "mere knowing" covers the whole. The insistence at times upon the "mere knowing" is a mechanical element which needs to be removed before the ethical implications can be accepted.

Once more, how does one know himself and others? Is it the same process precisely as knowing a mechanical object? Thoughts without percepts are empty, and what are the "percepts" in the two cases? In the first case, that of knowing things, the percepts are colors, sounds, resistances; in the case of persons the percepts are impulses, feelings, desires, pa.s.sions, as well as images, purposes, and the reflective process itself. In the former case we construct objects dehumanized; in the latter we keep them more or less concrete. But now, just as primitive man did not so thoroughly de-personalize nature, but left in it an element of personal aim, so science may view human beings as objects whose purposes and even feelings may be predicted, and hence may, as Professor Fite well puts it, view them mechanically. What he fails to note is that just this mechanical point of view is the view of "mere knowing"--if "mere" has any significance at all, it is meant to shut out "sentiment." And this mechanical view is entirely equal to the adjectives of "clear," "far-sighted," and even "broad" so far as this means "more in one." For it is not essential to a mechanical point of view that we consider men in ma.s.ses or study them by statistics. I may calculate the purposes and actions, yes, and the emotions and values of one, or of a thousand, and be increasingly clear, and far-sighted, and broad, but if it is "mere" knowing--scientific information--it is still "mechanical," i.e., external. On the other hand, if it is to be a knowledge that has the qualities of humaneness, or "intelligent sympathy," it must have some of the stuff of feeling, even as in the realm of things an artist's forest will differ from that of the most "far-sighted," "clear," and "broad" statistician, by being rich with color and moving line.

And this leads to a statement of the way in which my fellow-beings will find place in "my" self. I grant that if they are there I shall take some account of them. But they may be there in all sorts of ways. They may be there as "population" if I am a statistician, or as "consumers,"

or as rivals, or as enemies, or as fellows, or as friends. They will have a "value" in each case, but it will sometimes be a positive value, and sometimes a negative value. Which it will be, and how great it will be, depends not on the mere fact of these objects being "in consciousness" but on the capacity in which they are there. And this capacity depends on the dominant interest and not on mere knowing. The trouble with the selfish man, says Professor Fite, is that he "fails to consider," "he fails to take account of me."[85] Well, then, _why_ does he fail? _Why_ does he not take account of me? He probably does "consider" me in several of the ways that are possible and in the ways that it suits him to consider me. I call him selfish because he does not consider me in the one particular way in which I wish to be considered.

And what will get me into his consideration from this point of view? In some cases it may be that I can speak: "Sir, you are standing on my toe," and as the message encounters no obstacle in any fixed purpose or temperamental bent the idea has no difficulty in penetrating his mind.

In other cases it may interfere with his desire to raise himself as high as possible, but I may convince him by the same logic as that of an "approaching railway train"--that he must regard me. In still other cases--and it is these that always test Individualism--I am not myself aware of the injury, or I am too faint to protest. How shall those who have no voice to speak get "consideration"? Only by "intelligent sympathy," and by just those emotions rooted in instinctive social tendencies which an intellectualistic Individualism excludes or distrusts.

IV

What practical conclusion, if any, follows from this interpretation of the moral consciousness and its categories? Moral progress involves both the formation of better ideals and the adoption of such ideals as actual standards and guides of life. If our view is correct we can construct better ideals neither by logical deduction nor solely by insight into the nature of things--if by this we mean things as they are. We must rather take as our starting-point the conviction that moral life is a process involving physical life, social intercourse, measuring and constructive intelligence. We shall endeavor to further each of these factors with the conviction that thus we are most likely to reconstruct our standards and find a fuller good.[86]

Physical life, which has often been depreciated from the moral point of view, is not indeed by itself supreme, but it is certain that much evil charged to a bad will is due to morbid or defective conditions of the physical organism. One would be ashamed to write such a truism were it not that our juvenile courts and our prison investigations show how far we are from having sensed it in the past. And our present labor conditions show how far our organization of industry is from any decent provision for a healthy, sound, vigorous life of all the people. This war is shocking in its destruction, but it is doubtful if it can do the harm to Great Britain that her factory system has done. And if life is in one respect less than ideals, in another respect it is greater; for it provides the possibility not only of carrying out existing ideals but of the birth of new and higher ideals.

Social interaction likewise has been much discussed but is still very inadequately realized. The great possibilities of cooperation have long been utilized in war. With the factory and commercial organization of the past century we have hints of their economic power. Our schools, books, newspapers, are removing some of the barriers. But how far different social cla.s.ses are from any knowledge, not to say appreciation, of each other! How far different races are apart! How easy to inculcate national hatred and distrust! The fourth great problem which baffles Wells's hero in the _Research Magnificent_ is yet far from solution. The great danger to morality in America lies not in any theory as to the subjectivity of the moral judgment, but in the conflict of cla.s.ses and races.

Intelligence and reason are in certain respects advancing. The social sciences are finding tools and methods. We are learning to think of much of our moral inertia, our waste of life, our narrowness, our muddling and blundering in social arrangements, as stupid--we do not like to be called stupid even if we scorn the imputation of claiming to be "good."

But we do not organize peace as effectively as war. We shrink before the thought of expending for scientific investigation sums comparable with those used for military purposes. And is scholars.h.i.+p ent.i.tled to s.h.i.+ft the blame entirely upon other interests? Perhaps if it conceived its tasks in greater terms and addressed itself to them more energetically it would find greater support.

And finally the process of judgment and appraisal, of examination and revaluation. To judge for the sake of judging, to a.n.a.lyze and evaluate for the sake of the process hardly seems worth while. But if we supply the process with the new factors of increased life, physical, social, intelligent, we shall be compelled to new valuations. Such has been the course of moral development; we may expect this to be repeated. The great war and the changes that emerge ought to set new tasks for ethical students. As medievalism, the century of enlightenment, and the century of industrial revolution, each had its ethics, so the century that follows ought to have its ethics, roused by the problem of dealing fundamentally with economic, social, racial, and national relations, and using the resources of better scientific method than belonged to the ethical systems which served well their time.

Only wilful misinterpretation will suppose that the method here set forth is that of taking every want or desire as itself a final justification, or of making morality a matter of arbitrary caprice. But some may in all sincerity raise the question: "Is morality then after all simply the s.h.i.+fting mores of groups stumbling forward--or backward, or sidewise--with no fixed standards of right and good? If this is so how can we have any confidence in our present judgments, to say nothing of calling others to an account or of reasoning with them?" What we have aimed to present as a moral method is essentially this: to take into our reckoning all the factors in the situation, to take into account the other persons involved, to put ourselves into their places by sympathy as well as conceptually, to face collisions and difficulties not merely in terms of fixed concepts of what is good or fair, and what the right of each party concerned may be, but with the conviction that we need new definitions of the ideal life, and of the social order, and thus reciprocally of personality. Thus harmonized, free, and responsible, life may well find new meaning also in the older intrinsic goods of friends.h.i.+p, aesthetic appreciation and true belief. And it is not likely to omit the satisfaction in actively constructing new ideals and working for their fulfilment.

Frankly, if we do not accept this method what remains? Can any one by pure reason discover a single forward step in the treatment of the social situation or a single new value in the moral ideal? Can any a.n.a.lysis of the pure concept of right and good teach us anything? In the last a.n.a.lysis the moral judgment is not a.n.a.lytic but synthetic. The moral life is not natural but spiritual. And spirit is creative.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE IN PHILOSOPHY, ART, AND RELIGION

HORACE M. KALLEN

He who a.s.siduously compares the profound and the commonplace will find their difference to turn merely on the manner of their expression; a profundity is a commonplace formulated in strange or otherwise obscure and unintelligible terms. This must be my excuse for beginning with the trite remark that the world we live in is not one which was made for us, but one in which we happened and grew. I am much aware that there exists a large and influential cla.s.s of persons who do not think so; and I offer this remark with all deference to devotees of idealism, and to other such pietists who persist in arguing that the trouble which we do encounter in this vale of tears springs from the inwardness of our own natures and not from that of the world. I wish, indeed, that I could agree with them, but unhappily their very arguments prevent me, since, if the world were actually as they think it, they could not think it as they do. In fact, they could not think. Thinking--worse luck!--came into being as response to discomfort, to pain, to uncertainty, to problems, such as could not exist in a world truly made for us; while from time immemorial _pure_ as distinct from human consciousness has been identified with absolute certainty, with self-absorption and self-sufficiency; as a G.o.d, a goal to attain, not a fact to rest in. It is notable that those who believe the world actually to have been made for us devote most of their thinking to explaining away the experiences which have made all men feel that the world was actually not made for us. Their chief business, after proving the world to be all good, is solving "the problem of evil." Yet, had there really been no evil, this evil consequence could not have ensued: existence would have emerged as beat.i.tude and not as adjustment; thinking might in truth have been self-absorbed contemplation, blissful intuition, not painful learning by the method of trial and error.

Alas that what "might have been" cannot come into being by force of discursive demonstration! If it could, goodness alone would have existed and been real, and evil would have been non-existence, unreality, and appearance--all by the force of the Word. As it is, the appearance of evil is in so far forth no less an evil than its reality; in truth, it is reality and its best witnesses are the historic attempts to explain it away. For even as "appearance" it has a definite and inexpugnable character of its own which cannot be destroyed by subsumption under the "standpoint of the whole," "the absolute good," the "over-individual values." Nor, since only sticks and stones break bones and names never hurt, can it be abolished by the epithet "appearance." To deny reality to evil is to multiply the evil. It is to make two "problems" grow where only one grew before, to add to the "problem of evil" the "problem of appearance" without serving any end toward the solution of the real problem how evil can be effectively abolished.

I may then, in view of these reflections, hold myself safe in a.s.suming that the world we live in was not made for us; that, humanly speaking, it is open to improvement in a great many directions. It will be comparatively innocuous to a.s.sume also, as a corollary, that in so far as the world was made for mind, it has been made so by man, that civilization is the adaptation of nature to human nature. And as a second corollary it may be safely a.s.sumed that the world does not stay made; civilization has brought its own problems and peculiar evils.

I realize that, in the light of my t.i.tle, much of what I have written above must seem irrelevant, since the "problem of evil" has not, within the philosophic tradition, been considered part of a "problem of values"

as such. If I dwell on it, I do so to indicate that the "problem of evil" can perhaps be best understood in the light of another problem: the problem, namely, of why men have created the "problem of evil." For obviously, evil can be problematic only in an absolutely good world, and the idea that the world is absolutely good is not a generalization _upon_ experience, but a contradiction _of_ experience. If there exists a metaphysical "problem of evil," hence, it arises out of this generalization; it is secondary, not primary; and the primary problem requires solution before the secondary one can be understood. And what else, under the circ.u.mstances, can the primary one be than this: "Why do men contradict their own experience?"

II

So put, the problem suggests its own solution. It indicates, first of all, that nature and human nature are not completely compatible, that consequently, conclusions are being forced by nature on human nature which human nature resents and rejects, and that traits are being a.s.signed to nature by human nature which nature does not possess, but which, if possessed, would make her congenial to human needs. All this is so plat.i.tudinous that I feel ashamed to write it; but then, how can one avoid plat.i.tudes without avoiding truth? And truth here is the obvious fact that since human nature is the point of existence to which good and evil refer, what is called value has its seat necessarily in human nature, and what is called existence has its seat necessarily in the nature of which human nature is a part and apart. Value, in so far forth, is a content of nature, having its roots in her conditions and its life in her force, while the converse is not true. All nature and all existence is not spontaneously and intrinsically a content of value.