159. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM.—I am almost tempted to avoid the discussion of this thorny subject by simply referring the reader to what has been said already on "The Spread of the Community," and developed in the chapters on "The Rational Social Will" and "The Individual and the Social Will." [Footnote: See Sec 75 and chapters xxi-xxii.]
He who confines himself to generalities avoids many difficulties and can assure himself of the approval of many. Who, condemns justice and humanity in the abstract? Who can wax eloquent in his condemnation of freedom? Who finds the Christian Church on his side, when he advocates rapacity and the oppression of the helpless, without entering into details?
On the other hand, who wishes to view his country with a cold impartiality, and to place its interests exactly on a par with the interests of other lands? Who, save the Chinaman himself, thinks it as important that a Chinaman should have enough to eat as that an American or an Englishman should? Was not the turpitude, that excluded the Chinaman from Australia, traced to the two deadly sins of undue diligence and sobriety? [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article, "Australia."] As for freedom, men of certain nations regard it as the highest virtue to be willing to die for it—their own freedom, be it understood,—while they regard the same desire for freedom on the part of their colonists as a moral obliquity to be extirpated, root and branch.
That the historian and the sociologist should find much to say touching the relation of nations to each other and to subject peoples goes without saying. But the cynic may maintain with some plausibility that the moralist's chapter on International Ethics must be as void of content as the traditional chapter on "Snakes in Ireland." In this the cynic is wrong, as usual; but it is instructive to listen to him, if only that we may intelligently refute him.
It is not always easy for an individual to determine just what he owes to his family, to his neighbors, or to his country. Is it surprising that it should be difficult for men to determine just what one country, or what one race, owes to another? This is the subject of international ethics. He who treads upon this ground should walk gingerly, and not feel too sure of himself. But there is no reason why the moralist should not put upon paper such reflections as occur to him. He cannot say anything more devoid of reason than much that is said by others.
The great Grotius, in writing on international law, in the seventeenth century, drew his illustrations chiefly from Greeks and Romans long dead. He had much more recent material ready to hand. But he well knew that he, who would induce another to give him calm and dispassionate attention, must not begin by treading on the toes of his listener. I shall strive to profit by his example. It is best to say only what each man can apply to his neighbor. We are all sensitive in this field.
160. OUR METHOD OF APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT—We have seen (Sec 80) that rational elements are to be found even in the irrational will, if one will look below the surface.
Is it rational for the mother to place before all else the interests of the hairless, toothless and, apparently, mindless little creature that she clasps to her breast? The very existence of society depends upon her having the feeling that prompts her to do it. Is it rational to favor one's neighbor, to be proud of one's native town, which may be a poor sort of a town? Is it rational to be patriotic, even when one's state is not much of a state?
We have seen that the Rational Social Will incorporates itself in societies very gradually, and that it draws into its service lesser groups of many descriptions. He who detaches himself from these lesser groups is not a man. He is the mere outline of a man—the "featherless biped" of the philosopher. It is not of such that a state can be made.
It is the duty of the state to prevent a man from shrinking into being the mere member of some lesser group, but it is not its duty to obliterate what is human in him. And the Rational Social Will must see to it that he does not, on the other hand, forget, in a blind and irrational patriotism, that he is a human being with a capacity for human sympathies—sympathies extending far beyond the limits of any state. Except when they are under the influence of strong passion, I think we may say that men in civilized states, at least, have already shown themselves amenable to the influence of the Rational Social Will in this direction. It must be confessed that that influence has, as yet, been limited.
The approach to the subject of international ethics must lie in the recognition that men are set in families, in neighborhoods, in towns or cities, in states; and are yet human beings with a capacity for respecting and loving those who belong to none of these particular organizations. My advice to the man who wishes to abuse his fellow-man is to do it quickly, and before he is acquainted with him. If he gets to know him well, he will probably find something lovable in him, and he will lose the pleasure of being malicious.
161. SOME PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL ETHICS.—The man who reads history finds, sometimes, things to inspire him; and sometimes, things that are depressing. He sees that the family must expand into the clan, that the clan must come into contact with others, that the state must rise, and that some interrelation of states is an inevitable necessity. He sees that man's increase in insight, in diligence, in enterprise, must make him reach out and trade with his fellow-man.
He sees also conquest, with the subjugation of peoples; he sees trade extended by force, and under the smoke of cannon; he sees a peaceful economic penetration, which ends in protectorates and annexations, in defiance of the will of those who do not want to be either protected or annexed.
What is rational is real, and what is real is rational, said Hegel. [Footnote:The Philosophy of Right, Preface, and see Sec Sec 351 and 347.] He further maintained that civilized nations may treat as barbarians peoples who are behind them in the "essential elements of the state"; and also that, in a given epoch, a given nation is dominant, and "other existing nations are void of right."
Hegel has long been dead, and is turned to dust. He always was as dry as dust, even when he was alive, but he was a great man. But the famous Englishman, Sir Thomas More, wrote more engagingly; and does he not tell us, in his "Utopia," that any nation's holding unused a piece of ground needed for the nourishment of other people is a just cause of war?
Such doctrines should be most comforting to us Americans. They appear to teach us that we are, at present, the chosen people; that the rights of other peoples are as the rights of the Hivites, the Hittites, and all the rest; that we are justified in taking what we please, for who is there to withstand us?
Yet ethical Americans shake their heads over such philosophies, and some of them even speak slightingly of philosophers. This, in spite of the fact that great men seldom talk pure nonsense, except when carried away by excitement, as all men may be, at times. If what they say sounds to us wholly unmeaning, it is probable that we have not fully understood the voice that speaks within them. What can be said in their defense? and what can be said in, at least, partial defence of the actual historical procedure of the nations? They have not been wholly composed of criminals, and they must possess at least the rudiments of a moral sense.
(1) We have seen that the state maintains its right as against those who belong to it by controlling, not by destroying, the lesser groups which exist within the state. Such a control appears to be demanded by the Rational Social Will, but it often frustrates the will of the individual.
(2) We have seen that the spread of the community is inevitable, and that, in the interests of rationality, it is desirable.
(3) We have seen that, even in the family, all the members are not equally free agents. The small boy is not consulted touching the amount of his punishment, nor can he dictate where it shall be laid on. And the state does not give to all the individuals in it equal political rights, nor guarantee to them an equal share of influence. This is desirable, on the whole, in the interests of the whole, but grave abuses may easily come into being.
(4) We have seen that the greater whole guarantees to individuals rights, and assigns to them duties. In so far as it is rational, it cannot do this arbitrarily. To have recourse to metaphysical abstractions is futile. Shall we say, without hedging, that a man has a right to the fruits of his labor, or that first occupation gives a right to the soil? Then, shall the man who is too weak to work be refused a right to the ownership of a coat? Or must the discoverer of a continent prove a real occupancy, by performing the ridiculous task of the abnormal center of the mythical mathematical infinite circle, by being everywhere at the same time?
(5) We have seen that the human community, taking the words in a broad sense, will spread, and already has spread, beyond the limits of several nationalities. It is in the interest of human society that it should do so. It is rational, in the sense of the word everywhere used in this book. But the nations continue to exist, and they often cultivate selfishly national interests. So do families cultivate selfishly family interests. So does the egoist selfishly dig about and fertilize the number One.
(6) It requires little acuteness to see that some communities of men are miserable exponents of the social will. They are deplorably governed. Read Slatin's fascinating book, "Fire and Sword in the Soudan,"—it is better than any novel,—and ask yourself what becomes of the social will or of rationality of any sort under the rule of a Mahdi. Is it not the duty of the nations to combine and to relieve suffering humanity?
(7) There are theorists who maintain that, in the nature of things, the soil belongs to nobody. We find, in the actual state of things, it usually belongs to somebody, unless it is so poor that it is not worth owning at all. But it may belong to somebody who can make little more use of it than an infant can of a gold watch. A handful of Indians, wandering over a great tract of country in which they chase game in the intervals of time during which they chase and scalp one another, may have an immemorial, although unrecorded, title to the land.
Shall they be permitted to keep back settlers from more or less civilized and densely populated countries? Settlers eager to cultivate the land and to make it support many, where before it supported few, and supported those few miserably?
And shall the natural resources of great regions of the earth be permitted to lie fallow merely because the actual inhabitants are too ignorant and too indolent to want to produce anything and to trade? He who finds his happiness in idleness, bananas, and black wives who can be beaten with impunity, has little interest in international traffic, with such blessings as it is supposed to bring.
The world is filling up. The losses due to war and pestilence, said no less an authority than Darwin, are soon made up. There is something terrifying in what the very modern science of geography has to tell us about the rapidity with which the remaining part of the earth's surface, available for the nourishment of man, is being exhausted. What problems will face the Rational Social Will in the none too distant future?
162. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD.—We have seen that something can be said for the philosopher. The Rational Social Will does not appear to give carte blanche to the man who wishes to remain ignorant, idle, cut off from the family of the nations, the possessor of great tracts of land which he will not develop, the cruel oppressor of such as he finds within his power. It tends to deal with him, wherever it finds him, as an enlightened nation treats the idle, the vicious and the irresponsible within its own borders.
Undoubtedly civilization has made some advance in the course of the centuries. When the world is at peace, the stranger is not normally an outlaw. I have sojourned in the cities of many of the nations of Europe and have made excursions into Africa and Asia. Nowhere have I been compelled to ask for the protection of an American consul. It has been recognized that I had rights, although an American. And the ability to sign my name has procured me a supply of money.
Notwithstanding all this, it is depressing to read of the dealings of the nations with each other, and with backward peoples—who have been well defined as peoples who possess gold-mines, but no efficient navy. Is it not generally taken for granted that it is the duty of more powerful and more enlightened nations to take the backward nations in hand, to exploit their resources, and, incidentally, to exploitthem?
Not that international law has not counted for something. To be sure Hegel reduced it to the level of "a good intention," [Footnote:The Philosophy of Right, Sec Sec 330-333.] but it has counted for something. Descartes and Spinoza could, with impunity, be heretics in little Holland. Switzerland has for centuries been the refuge of the oppressed. But we cannot forget that our highest authority, Captain Mahan, declared, in 1889, that certain rights of neutrals were "forever secured," [Footnote:The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Boston, 1908, chapter ii, p. 84.] and he has since stood revealed as a false prophet, a mere man making a guess. International law is a capital thing—when it is not put under a strain, and when no nation is too powerful.
The depressing thing is that rapacity and oppression become glorified, when the cloak of patriotism is thrown over their shoulders. I drew my illustrations in the last section from wild Indians and from African savages. But there are nations in all stages of their development. How "backward" must a nation be to give us the right to rule over it by force? No people were more ingenious than the ancient Romans in finding plausible reasons for the wars which it pleased them to wage. This has never been a lost art. Men's enemies are, like the absent, always in the wrong; and those are apt to become enemies, in whose defeat some substantial advantage is to be looked for.
163. THE SOLUTION.—The very title seems a presumption. Who may dogmatize in matters so involved? I make no pretentions to giving a clear vision of "yonder shining light," but I venture to hint at the general direction in which one is to seek the little wicket gate.
The only ethical solution of our problem appears to lie in the frank recognition of the fact that the groups of men, called nations, may be as brutal egoists as are individual persons, and in the earnest attempt to avoid the baleful influence of such egoism.
Manishis brother's keeper. But that does not give him the right to keep his brother in chains, nor to use him for selfish ends. This is as true of nations as it is of individuals, of families, of religious orders, or of unions, whether of employers or of employees.
It is certainly true of nations. It is only as having a place in, and as being an instrument of, the great organism of humanity aimed at by the Rational Social Will, that the individual, the family, the tribe, the nation, have any ethical justification for being at all. Sometimes it is very profitable for the individual, or for some group of human beings, to disallow this obligation to be moral. We treat the individual as a robber; why not admit that there are robber nations?
I feel like reiterating that it is a great thing to be young; to live in that Golden Age in which one still believes what one sees in print, and still is moved by the honeyed words of statesmen. When one is old, and has enjoyed some breadth of culture, one has read the newspapers of many lands, and has met a certain number of statesmen, usually with a start of surprise.
It is borne in upon one—a matter touched upon in the last chapter—that it appears to be generally accepted that the state and its representatives may adopt a peculiar variety of ethics. Certainly statesmen feel justified in doing for their country what they, as gentlemen, would never dream of doing for themselves. They talk of justice, when they would scoff at such justice within the borders of their own states; they talk of humanity, and they have in mind the economic advantage of their own peoples; they speak of protection and Christianization, when they mean economic exploitation or strategic superiority. As for truth, the less said about that subject the better.
I know of only one way in which the determination of a nation to aid in the general realization of the Rational Social Will can be tested. Does it, in dealing with other nations, civilized or backward, propose what is palpably to its own advantage, or is it evidently disinterested? It is thus that we judge a man, when we wish to fix his ethical status; it is thus that the Rational Social Will judges a nation. The language in which the proposals are made is a matter of no moment. It may fairly be called professional slang, and can quickly be acquired, even by men of mediocre intelligence, in any diplomatic circle.
164. THE NECESSITY FOR CAUTION.—Shall a man, then, eschew patriotism, and become a citizen of the world, as though he were a Stoic philosopher? By no means. As well eschew the family or the neighborhood. But let him not, in his patriotism, forget that he is a man. Here, as everywhere, he is called upon to exercise judgment. This is a burden which he can never throw off. He must pay the penalty of being a rational human being. As an instrument of the Rational Social Will the state must be kept up. It is his duty to see that it is done. His cat has an easier task; she may sleep her life away in peace.
We hear much of the brotherhood of man and of artificial barriers. The barriers are not all artificial, and they cannot be swept away with a gesture.
Races and peoples are formed upon the model of their own immemorial past. They have their institutions, their traditions, their loyalties, their standards of living. What is tolerable to one man is wholly intolerable to another. To compel men to live together in intimacy, when centuries of training have made them antipathetic, is sheer cruelty.
Men may be brothers, but there are big brothers and little brothers. I do not refer to physical bulk. I refer to the development of intelligence, to the degree and kind of culture, which has been attained. There are little brothers still at the stage of development at which it is natural for human beings to drool. Shall we have them sit up to the table and serve them with the complete dinner, enlivening it with intellectual conversation?
Between incontinently doing this, and relegating the little brothers to a nursery where they will be treated with cruelty and starved in our interests, some persons seem to think there is no middle course. In their enthusiasm for humanity, they forget that the brotherhood of man may be made as ridiculous as the eight-hour day. Between eight hours of the creative work of a Milton and eight hours of the dawdling done by a lazy housemaid, there is no relation save that both may be measured by a clock.
These enthusiasts forget much. Men are not alike; they do not want to be alike; they do not want to live together in close intimacy, when they have little in common; they reverence different things; as a rule, they would rather be somewhat unhappy after their own fashion, than be happy under compulsion, after the fashion of someone else.
We have, thus, on the one hand, the enthusiasts who would at once sound the trump and announce the millenium, feeding the lion and the sucking calf out of the same dish and on the same meat. We have, on the other, those who are eager to take on their shoulders the white man's burden—to enclose in a coop, as if they were chickens, the greater part of the human race, allaying the discontent of the imprisoned by pointing out to them that, although their freedom of movement is limited, they are growing fat, and that they should show their gratitude by laying eggs.
Surely, there must be some middle course. Patience and caution are virtues. Surely, it is possible to accept the existing organism of society, to love one's country, and yet to strive to respect the freedom of others. It is not easy for a true patriot to do this, but it seems to be what the Rational Social Will demands of him.
The moralist who reads history carefully is not wholly discouraged. He may look forward to some time, in the more or less distant future, when there may be a union of the nations in the interests of all men; when the gross egoism of the hypertrophied patriot may be curbed; when the mellifluous language of the statesman may mean more than did the pious letter which Nero wrote to the Roman Senate, after he had murdered his mother.
165. SCIENCES THAT CONCERN THE MORALIST.—There are certain sciences that the Moralist must lay under contribution very directly, and yet he seems to be able to make little return to those who cultivate them, at least in their professional capacity.
He must ask aid from the biologist, the psychologist, the anthropologist. They help him to a comprehension of what man is; and, hence, of what it is desirable that man should strive to do. But these men seldom come to the moralist for advice. They appear to be able to work without his help.
There are, however, other sciences in which the moralist feels that he has more of a right to meddle, however independent they may regard themselves.
Take, for example, politics or economics, or the very modern and rudimentary science of eugenics. The man who cultivates political science may know much more than do most moralists about states and their forms of organization; about legislative, executive and judicial functions; about the probable effects of the centralization or decentralization of authority; about what may be expected, in a given case, from a restriction or extension of the franchise; about the creation and maintenance of a military establishment and the building up of an efficient civil service. The economist may be a monster of learning and a master in ingenuity on all problems touching the creation and distribution of wealth.
But the political scientist and the economist, however able, share our common humanity. A man's outlook is more or less apt to be bounded by the limits of the science of his predilection. The several sciences, broader or more specialized, rest, in the minds of most men, upon foundations which are taken for granted. It is too much to expect that every sermon should begin as far back as the Garden of Eden. "Practical" politics and economics do not, as a rule, go so far back.
The transition from practical politics and economics to ethical problems may be made at any time. No man was shrewder than Machiavelli, and the moral sense of mankind has rebelled against him and made him a byword. A state, desirous of maintaining itself, may palpably violate in its institutions, inherited from the past, a social will grown more rational, more conscious of its rights and more articulate. Then the appeal is made to right and justice in other than the traditional forms. It may, in a given instance, be wrong to create wealth; existing forms of its distribution may be iniquitous. The ultimate arbiter in all such matters must be the Ethical Man.
Human society is indefinitely complex. Many specialists must occupy themselves with its problems. A technical question in this field may always be carried over to moral ground. He who undertakes to make this transition without having made a fairly thorough study of ethics appears to be working in the dark. His assumptions have been questioned, or have been abandoned. Who shall furnish him with a new basis for his special science?
Ethics is a basal science. It justifies, or it refuses to justify, those specialists who concern themselves with men in societies. It is a very old science and has interested men vastly. I have spoken above of eugenics as a new science. Only in its modern form is it new. Plato cultivated it intemperately when he wrote his "Republic"—but he saw that his "Republic" would not do, and he wrote his "Laws." He stood condemned by Ethics.
Usually men who occupy themselves seriously, and in a broad way, with man in society, have adopted, consciously or unconsciously, some ethical doctrine. But this is often done without due consideration, and without a sufficient knowledge of what has been said by the great thinkers of the past. It is for this reason that I have treated at such length in this volume of the schools of the moralists.
166. ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY.—It should be observed that in developing the Ethics of the Rational Social Will, or the Ethics of Reason—the doctrine advocated in this volume—I have not depended upon a particular philosophy.
I see no reason why a Realist or an Idealist, a Monist or a Dualist, one who holds to an immediate perception of an external world or one who regards our acquaintance with it as a matter of inference, should refuse to go with me so far. Nor do I see any reason why a believer in God, one who bows at the shrine of Mind-Stuff, or one who refuses to commit himself at all upon such matters, should enter a demurrer. The Parallelist and the Interactionist, however widely they differ touching the relation of mind and body, may here fall upon one another's necks and shed tears of brotherly affection.
That it is proper for the philosopher to interest himself in ethics, I have maintained. [Footnote: See chapter vi, Sec 18.] He is supposed to be a critical and reflective man, and to take broad views of human affairs. Such views are needed when one comes to the study of ethics.
I am forced to admit that some philosophers, when they have written on ethical subjects, have said certain things to which the critical moralist cannot readily assent. He who maintains that certain human intuitions— which it may even appear impossible to reconcile with each other—are inexplicably and infallibly authoritative, seems to leave us without so much as the hope of ever attaining to ultimate rationality. [Footnote: See chapter xxiii.]
And there are philosophers who would persuade us that, unless we accept all the religious or theological doctrines which have appeared to them acceptable, we rob man of every incentive for being moral at all. If God is not going to repay him with interest for the pains which he gives himself, does he not play the part of a dupe in being good? We have seen that this was palpably the position of Paley. [Footnote: Chapter xxiv, Sec 96.] If God will not reconcile, ultimately, benevolence and self- interest, proclaimed Reid, man "is reduced to this miserable dilemma, whether it is best to be a fool or a knave." [Footnote:Essays on the Active Powers of Man, Essay III, Part III, chapter viii. It would be absurd to believe that either Paley or Reid lived down to the level of his doctrine. Both were very decent men, and capable of disinterestedness.] Some of the utterances of Kant and of Green seem to point in the same direction, but both have made it abundantly plain that they, personally, and whatever their intellectual perplexities, were moved by something much higher than egoism. [Footnote: See chapters xxiv, Sec 97; xxvi, 3; and xxix.]
I mean to say very little about philosophy in this volume. I wish to keep to ethics, a science old enough and strong enough to stand upon its own feet. But it would be wrong not to underline one or two points in this connection, if only to obviate misunderstanding:
(1) There is nothing wrong in a man's wishing to earn the heaven in which he believes. It is not wrong for him to wish to be happy on earth and in the body. But if the desire for his own happiness, either here or hereafter, is theonlymotive that can move him, he is not a good man. Prudence may be a virtue, generally speaking; but it is no substitute for benevolence. The man who isonlyprudent is no fit member of any society of rational beings anywhere.
(2) Men are often better than their words would indicate. Paley talks as if he were a cad; Reid flounders; Kant, noble as are many of his utterances, sometimes gives forth an uncertain sound. Yet no one of these men was personally selfish.
And yet all of these men assumed that morality is endangered unless there is a God to repay men for being good. Why did they insist so strenuously upon this, and incorporate it into their philosophy? We must, I think, go beneath the surface to find the real reason; and when we have discovered it, we cannot regard them in an unfavorable light.
They felt, I believe, that good menoughtto be made happy; that this is rational, if anything is. So far, they are quite in accord with the doctrine of the Rational Social Will. And they saw no other way of guaranteeing a complete rationality than in holding to a theistic philosophy.
(3) This means that their real motives were not selfish and personal. This is admirably brought out when we turn to Green. It is too much to expect that many of my readers have read his "Prolegomena to Ethics," which is repetitious, tedious, and rather vague, though it is inspired by a fine spirit and has the great merit of having influenced, directly or indirectly, a number of able writers to produce excellent works on ethics. [Footnote: I need only to refer to the text-books by Muirhead, Mackenzie, Dewey and Fite.]
Green dwells, with infinite repetition, upon the presence in man "of a principle not natural," which is identical in all men, and which, in some way that he does not explain, holds the world of our experiences together, being itself not in time or in space. The disciple of Paley or Reid or Kant will search his pages in vain for any indication that this "principle" performs or can perform any of the functions of the God believed in by the above-mentioned philosophers. Nevertheless, it is the source of an ardent inspiration to Green, who relieves the baldness of the appellation "principle," by calling it, sometimes, "self- consciousness," sometimes, "reason." It does not appear to promise Green anything, so his devotion to it may be regarded as disinterested. However, he owes to it inspiration.
Philosophers find their inspiration in very different directions. The philosopher, as such, sometimes rather objects to the word, "God." [Footnote: See chapter xxvi, Sec 123, note.] But he may feel much as men generally feel toward God, when he contemplates his "Conscious Principle," or his "Idea," or the "Substance" which he conceives as the identity of thought and extension, or, for that matter, "Mind-Stuff" or the "Unknowable." That other men may not see that he has anything in particular to be inspired about, or that he can hope for anything in particular for himself or for other men, does not rob him of his inspiration, and that may affect his life deeply.
It is, hence, not a matter of no importance to ethics what manner of philosophy it pleases a man to elect. One's outlook upon the great world may repress or may stimulate ethical strivings, may narrow or may broaden the ethical horizon. It is something to feel, even rather blindly, that one has a Cause. For myself, I think it is better to have a Cause that seems worth while, even when rather impartially looked at. But, of this, more in the next section.
(4) Whatever one thinks of such matters, it is well to come back to the fact that, nevertheless, ethics stands upon its own feet. Even if Paley, and Reid, and Kant, and Green, and many others, are in the wrong, the doctrine of the Rational Social Will stands sure. It is wrong to be selfish; it is wrong to be untruthful; it is wrong to be unjust. It is wrong for individuals, and it is wrong for nations. The man, or the group of men, that does wrong, is irrational. It stands condemned.
167. ETHICS AND RELIGION.—I regret having to speak, in this book, about religion at all, just as I regret having to refer to the philosophers. But it would be folly to omit all reference to religious duties. They have played quite too important a part in the life of the family, of the tribe, of the state; and that not merely here and there, but everywhere, in societies of all degrees of development, in recent centuries and in times of a hoary antiquity. Those interested in the classics have read the remarkable little book, "The Ancient City," by Fustel de Coulanges. As schoolboys we were brought up on the pious Aeneas. All Christians have some knowledge of the theocratic state of the Hebrews, and we know something of the history of Christian Europe. The anthropologist gives us masses of information touching the religious duties of all sorts and conditions of men.
There are those who rid themselves easily of the problem of religious duties. They simply deny that there are any. And there are those—the classes overlap—who easily shuffle off duties to the family and to the state. They regard it as their function to ignore and to destroy.
(1) I cannot think the matter is so simple. There always have been religious duties generally recognized, as a matter of fact. The boldest and most gifted of thinkers, who have not hesitated to call into being Utopian schemes for an ideal state, such men as Plato and More, have thought that the ideal state must have a religion. And the modern scientist has gravely raised the question whether the state can maintain itself, if all religious beliefs, with their inspirations and their restraints, die out. [Footnote: McDougall,Social Psychology, chapter xiii.]
The moralist, who accepts religious duties, has a difficult task. It is not enough for him to say that men have religious duties "in general," just as it is not enough for him to say that they have political duties "in general." On the other hand it would be the height of presumption for him to endeavor to tell every man what he should do in detail. He does not feel it his duty to tell every man whom he should marry, or for whom he should vote at each election. Still, it does seem as though the moralist ought to do more than tell a man vaguely that he has religious duties.
(2) Why not follow the analogy suggested by duties to the family, the neighborhood, the state?
States have their religions, sometimes unequivocally and unmistakably, and sometimes not so palpably. The religion of a people has, as a rule, its roots far back in the history of that people. Its religion has influenced in many subtle ways its institutions, its emotions, its habits, its whole outlook upon life.
Even where, as with us, state and church have been, in theory, wholly sundered, there has been no question, up to the present, of the disappearance of a religion. The United States has been regarded as a Christian nation, inspired by ideals and addicted to customs only explicable by a Christian past.
The fact that it is so is somewhat obscured to us. For this there are two causes. The first is, that the American, who is a freeman, possesses and exercises a fatal ingenuity in the creation of a multitude of sects out of practically nothing. Still, most of these sects have more in common than some of their adherents suppose. They spring, as a rule, from a Christian root. The second is, that our land has been the goal of the greatest migration ever recorded in human history. Most of those who have come to us have, so far, come from nations in some sense Christian, but they have brought with them very diverse traditions, and some appear to object to traditions altogether.
Nevertheless, I think we may be called a Christian nation, and if we follow the analogy above suggested—that of the relations of men to the state and to lesser organisms within the state—it would appear that it is the duty of an American to recognize himself as a Christian rather than as a Mahometan or a Pagan. If he does recognize this, he will feel himself under certain obligations which are independent of his personal tastes and proclivities.
(3) For one thing, he will recognize that a religion is not a thing to be stripped off and drawn on as one changes a suit of clothes.
A woman may regret that her infant has red hair. She will not, on that account, as a rule, exchange him surreptitiously for another. Men do not commonly repudiate their fathers because they are not rich or are growing old. A good citizen may regret that his country has seen fit to enter into a given war, but he will not, therefore, give aid or comfort to the enemy.
He who is capable of lightly repudiating his religion resembles the man who is capable of discarding his wife, when he sees the first grey hair. Those who do such things are apt to be men who fill their whole field of vision with their rights, and can find no place there for their duties. Nor should it be overlooked that the man, who is capable of lightly discarding his wife, is the man as capable of supplying her place with a worse. Even so, he who easily throws off his religion is usually the man who easily replaces it with some superstition, scientific or merely whimsical, at which other men wonder.
Men lament sometimes over the fact that the task of the foreign missionary is a hard one. Were it really an easy one, there would be no stability in human societies, for there would be no stability in human nature. The man of light credulity is the man who easily takes on new faiths; not the man to whom tradition and loyalty mean something.
(4) It seems to follow, as a corollary, that the religion in which a man has been brought up has the first claim upon him. I accept this without hesitation.
But this does not mean that the claim is in all cases final and valid.
There may be cases in which it seems to be the duty of a man to leave his wife, to disinherit a child, to transfer his allegiance from one state to another. Such cases are recognized as justifiable by men who are thoughtful and disinterested. But the same men also recognize that, were such disruptions of the bonds which unite men in communities the rule and not the exception, it would mean the destruction of the community. Similarly, it may become the duty of a man to transfer his allegiance from one church to another.
Are not religions, rationally compared, of different values? Have there not been religions indisputably on a moral level lower than that of the community which they represent? Undoubtedly.
And there have been governments so bad that the only refuge has seemed to lie in revolution. It should be remembered, however, that revolutions can be resorted to too lightly; and that evolution, where possible, is preferable to revolution, whether in things secular or in things religious. It is always easier to tear down than it is to build up. Nor does anyone, save the anarchist, tear down through wanton love of destruction. Even he is apt to feel called upon to give some sort of a vague excuse for his violence.
It will be observed that I have all along spoken, not merely of religion, but of the Church. I have done this because religion is a social phenomenon. It has its institutions, and cannot live without them.
It cannot be denied that individual philosophers have evolved religious philosophies; it cannot be denied that solitary individuals, as such, have felt religious emotions. How much of this is due to the fact that there have been religions and churches, I do not believe that they themselves have realized.
But, if religion is to be a vital force of any sort in a state, holding up ideals and stimulating the emotion that helps to realize them, it must be incorporated in an institution or in institutions. You cannot remove the rose and keep the perfume. Even the memory of it tends to vanish. A religious man without a church is like a citizen without a state. A citizen without a state is a man who makes the effort to keep step, and to walk in single file, all alone.
(5) Having said so much for Religion and for the Church, it is right that I should refer to some things that may be said on the other side.
It may be claimed that men of science have a tendency to turn away from religion and to grow indifferent to or to deny religious duties. In this there is some truth, although notable exceptions to the rule may be cited.
But I have known many men of learning in two hemispheres, in some cases rather intimately. With the utmost respect for their learning and for their mental ability, I am still bound to say that I have found them quite human. Some of them—among the greatest of them—have been so absorbed in their special fields of investigation, that they have not merely given scant attention to religion and to religious duties, but have done scant justice even to their own family life or to the state. And all have not been equally broad men, capable of seeing clearly the part which religion has played in the life of humanity.
To this I must add that the impartial objectivity with which the scholar is supposed by the layman to view things is something of a chimera. In saying this I criticize no one more severely than I criticize myself. This may be taken as my apology for the utterance. Have we not seen, not many years since, that, in the feeling aroused by an international conflict, some scores of great scholars on the one side found it possible to write and to sign a series of statements diametrically opposed to a series drawn up and signed by some scores of equally famous scholars on the other? Was either group walled in hopelessly by sheer ignorance? It is easy to take lightly matters about which one does not particularly care.
There is another objection brought against religion and the church which seems to be more significant. Is there not a danger that an interest in these may hamper freedom of thought and encourage an undue conservatism?
It should be borne in mind that religion and the church are not the only forces that make for conservatism. Family affection is conservative; the law is conservatism itself, and men feel that it should not be lightly tampered with. How impartial and how ready to introduce innovations should men be in any field? Changes of certain kinds, though they may have no little bearing upon our comfort, do not threaten the existence of either state or church. Could someone devise a scheme by which the periodical visits of the plumber could be avoided, we should all welcome it, and have no fear of the consequences.
Other innovations may bring in their train consequences more momentous. What men deeply care about, they cling to, and the question which confronts us is a very broad one. Does humanity, on the whole, gain or lose by a given degree of conservatism? An increase of knowledge is by no means the only thing that makes for civilization. Men may be highly enlightened, and yet rotten to the very core. How much of the ballast of conservatism and of loyalty to tradition is it well to throw overboard in the interest of accelerated motion? Those who, in our judgment, throw overboard much too much we have taken to deporting.
(6) Here it will very likely be objected: In all this you are advocating sheer Pragmatism! Are we to accept God and look for a life to come, extending the spread of the community after the fashion suggested in Chapter XIX, and broadening the outlook for a future and more perfect rationality, for no better reason than that it is our whim? Shall webelieveand join ourselves with otherbelievers, for no better reason than that something happens to tempt our will?
I beg the reader, if he will be just to my thought, to follow me here with close attention.
168. ETHICS AND BELIEF.—Under this heading I must call attention to several points.
(1) I deny that I advocate Pragmatism at all. The views which I advocate are so many thousand years older than Pragmatism, that it seems unjust to them, at this late date, to compel them to take on a new name, and to be carried about in swaddling clothes in the arms of the philosophers, after they have been functioning as adults in human communities from time immemorial.
(a) That abounding genius and most lovable man, William James, realizing, as many lesser men did not realize, that the truth contained in such views was in danger of being lost sight of by many, wrote, with characteristic vivacity and unerring dramatic instinct, the little volume called "Pragmatism." It is with no lack of appreciation of the services he has rendered, that I venture to call attention to the fact that he has, in certain respects, failed to do justice to those views.
(b) Pragmatism has received attention partly on account of the exaggerations of which it has been guilty. These have repelled some men of sober mind. It appears to be maintained that we can play fast and loose with the world, and make it what we will. I have criticized this elsewhere,9 and shall not do so now. I shall only say here that I do not believe that so able a man of science as William James meant all that he said to be taken quite literally. He was gifted with a sense of humor. This, some lack.
(c) Men of genius are apt to be strongly individualistic and impatient of restraints. We have seen that there is such a thing as a public conscience and a private conscience. The latter is only too often a whimsical thing. Pragmatism appears to teach that any individual, as such, has a moral right to adopt any hypothesis live enough to appeal to his individual will. One has only to call to mind the extraordinary assortment of guests collected by Signer Papini in his novel pragmatic "hotel." [Footnote:Ibid.] Can such, by any human ingenuity, be moulded into anything resembling an orderly community?
(d) In a later work, Professor James, realizing that religion and theology are not identical, and strongly desirous of promoting religion, deals severely with theology and the theologians. [Footnote:Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture xviii.]
One truth has been seen, but has not another been treated with some injustice? Is it not inevitable that reflective men, who cherish beliefs, should endeavor to give a more or less clear and reasoned account of them? What degree of success is to be looked for, and what emphasis should be laid upon such attempts, are questions which will probably divide men for a long time to come.
(2) Hence, I do not advocate Pragmatism at all, but I agree with it in so far, at least, as to recognize that belief is a phenomenon which concerns the will. That it is so is a commonplace of psychology; and it was recognized dimly long before the psychologist, as such, came into being.
That it is so is rather readily overlooked where the evidence for certain beliefs is undeniable and overpowering. I seem forced to believe that I am now writing. I do not seem forced in a similar manner to accept a particular metaphysical doctrine or a given system of theological dogma. Intelligent men appear to be able to discuss such matters with each other and to agree to disagree. If they are tolerant, they can do this good- temperedly. It is worth while to keep several points clearly in mind:
(a) Beliefs are not a matter of indifference. Some evidently lead to palpable and speedy disaster. If I elect to believe that I can fly, and leave my window-sill as lightly as does the sparrow I now see there, it is time for my friends to provide me with an attendant.
Other beliefs are not of this character. And that they will lead to ultimate disaster of any sort to myself or to others seems highly disputable.
(b) What may be called scientific evidence may be adduced for different beliefs with varying degrees of cogency. Hegel tries to distinguish between the authority of the state and that of the church by attributing to the former something like infallibility. He maintains that religion "believes," but that the state "knows." [Footnote: The Philosophy of Right, Sec 270.]
We have had abundant reason to see that the state does notknow, butbelieves, and that it is very often mistaken in its beliefs. Nevertheless, it does its best to keep order, to be as rational as it can, and to look a little way ahead. I think it ought to be admitted that it concerns itself with matters moreterre-a-terrethan does the church; and that it ought not to be taken as a general truth that the state should take its orders from the church. It has to do with matters which, like our daily bread, must be assured, if certain other matters are to be considered at all. In so far Hegel was right. There are those who forget this, and talk as if metaphysical systems and religious beliefs should be forced upon men in spite of themselves, either by sheer force of windpower or with the aid of the police.
To this it may be added that beliefs range from an unshakable and unthinking conviction to that degree of acquiescence which can scarcely be distinguished from mere loyalty. It remains to be proved that the latter may not come under the head of belief, and is something to be condemned. [Footnote: More than thirty years ago, while I was the guest of Henry Sidgwick at Cambridge, England, I asked him how it was that he, the President of the British Society for Psychical Research, had never, in his presidential addresses, expressed a belief in the phenomena investigated. He answered that if the word "belief" were taken broadly enough to express a willingness to look into things, he might be said to believe. No more candid soul ever breathed.]
(c) Beliefs, being phenomena which concern the will, are at the mercy of many influences. Is there any scientific evidence open to the parallelist in psychology which is not also open to the interactionist? Is the conviction that one's country is in the right a mere matter of scientific evidence? Are the enlightened adherents of a given sect wholly ignorant of the tenets and of the arguments of another?
I maintain that tradition and loyalty have their claims. They are not the only claims that can be made, but they are worthy of serious consideration. Man is man, whether he is dealing with things secular or with things religious.
To see that such claims are recognized everywhere we have only to open our eyes. It is absurd to believe that all the adherents of a political party are influenced only by the logical arguments published in the newspapers. A newspaper that lived on logic alone would starve to death. It is ridiculous to believe that all the members of a church are induced to become such only by the arguments of the theologians, many of which arguments the mass of the members are not in a position to comprehend at all.
And learned men are men, too. The philosopher who really kept himself free from all prepossessions would, if he did much serious reading, probably epitomize in his own person a large part of the history of philosophy, falling out of one system and into another, like an acrobat. But he is usually caught young and influenced by some teacher, or he is carried away by some book or by the spirit of the times. As he is not an abnormal creature, he acts like other men, becoming an adherent of a school, or, if he is ambitious, starting one.
(d) We have seen that the individual has duties toward the state. We have also seen that the state has duties toward the individual. The state should not make it practically impossible for him to be a loyal citizen. A somewhat similar duty appears to be incumbent upon the church.
A church that forces upon all of its members, as a condition of membership, intricate and abstract systems of metaphysics; a church that does not teach good-will toward men, but makes walls of separation out of slight differences of opinion; a church that lags behind the moral sense of the community in which it finds itself; a church that starves the religious life; these, and such as these, must expect to lose adherents. It is not that men reject them; it is that they reject men.
Those who read history have no reason to think that men, except here and there and under exceptional circumstances, will cease to regard religious duties as duties. I have not ventured to offer any detailed solution of the problem of loyalty to the church. But neither have I ventured to offer any detailed solution of the problem of loyalty to the state. In the one case, as in the other, I suggest as guides tradition, intuition and reflective reasoning. I can only counsel good sense and some degree of patience. It may be said: You do not solve the difficulty for the individual. I admit it. Such difficulties every thinking man must meet and solve for himself.
169. THE LAST WORD.—Those persons, whether students, or teachers, who dislike this final chapter, may omit it, without detriment to the rest of the book. The doctrine of the Rational Social Will is not founded upon this chapter. The latter is a mere appendix.
I regret that, in a work in which I have wished to avoid disputation, I have felt compelled to touch upon religious duties at all. But they have played, and still play, so significant a role in the history of mankind, that the omission could scarcely have been made. You are free to take them or leave them; but you are not free to take or leave the Rational Social Will as the Moral Arbiter of the Destinies of Man.
1. CHAPTERS I TO III.—The notes in a book of any sort are rarely read, except by a few specialists, and by them not seldom with a view to refuting the author. I shall make the following as brief as I may. But I do wish to give some of my readers—all will not be equally learned—an opportunity to get acquainted with a few books better than this one. This first note is not addressed to the learned, and some will find it superfluous.
I intend to mention here a handful of books which any cultivated man may read with profit, and re-read with profit, if he has already read them. They can be collected gradually at a relatively slight expense, and it is a pleasure to have them in one's library. The list may easily be bettered, and may be indefinitely lengthened. I mention only books for those who are accustomed to do their reading in English.
It is hardly necessary to say that I do not advise all this reading in connection with the first three chapters of this book. But, as those chapters are concerned with the accepted content of morals as recognized by individuals and communities, I have a good excuse for bringing the list in here. Many other good books, not in the list, are referred to later in the volume, in other chapters.
It is very convenient to have within one's reach some such book as Sidgwick'sHistory of Ethics. The only fault to find with Sidgwick is that he has made his book too short, and has not given enough references. But he is admirably fair and sympathetic, as well as clear and interesting.
He, who would dip more deeply into the Greek moralists, can read the accounts of the ancient egoists, Aristippus and Epicurus, in theLives of the Philosophersby that entertaining old gossip, Diogenes Laertius. The translation in Bohn's edition will serve the purpose.
As for the greatest of the Greeks—a keen pleasure, intellectual and aesthetic, awaits the man who turns to Plato'sRepublicand hisLaws. Jowett's great translation is in every public library. And we must read Aristotle'sNichomachean Ethicsand hisPolitics. Here little attention is given to artistic form; but the preternatural acuteness of the man is overpowering. If we would understand some of the reasons which induced Plato and Aristotle to write of the state as they did, we can turn to chapter xiv of Grote'sAristotle.
With certain later classical moralists most of us are more or less familiar. Seneca, in his workOn Benefits, gives a good picture of the moral emotions and judgments of an enlightened man of his time. He was a great favorite with Christian writers later. Cicero's work,De Officiis—On Duties—it is best known under the Latin title, is very clear and very clever. It is, in its last half, full of "cases of conscience." I venture to suggest to the teacher of undergraduates who find ethics a dry subject, that he give them a handful of Cicero's "cases" to quarrel over. Doing just this has brought about something resembling civil war in certain classes of my undergraduates. It has done them good, and it has vastly entertained me. But each teacher must follow his own methods. We can none of us dictate.
How many of us have drawn inspiration from the noble reflections contained in theThoughtsof Marcus Aurelius and in theDiscoursesof Epictetus, those great Stoics! The unadorned translations of George Long will serve to introduce us to these.
To get a good idea of how the moral world revealed itself to a Father of the Church in the fifth century, we have only to turn to that most fascinating of autobiographies, theConfessionsof St. Augustine. HisCity of Godis too long, though interesting. Augustine's thought influenced the world for centuries. Then we may take a long jump and come down to St. Thomas, the great Scholastic of the thirteenth century. To get acquainted with him, we may turn to the English versions by Rickaby,Aquinas Ethicus. Those of us who are smugly satisfied at belonging to the twentieth century must remind ourselves that there were great men in the thirteenth, and that many among our contemporaries are still listening to them. We Protestant teachers of philosophy are sometimes in danger of forgetting this. A strictly fresh century and a strictly fresh egg cannot claim to be precisely on a par.
I do not think that I shall add the modern moralists to this list. There are a great many of them, and many of them are very good. But they are discussed at length in Part VII, which deals with the schools of the moralists. Citations and references are there given. I think, however, that I ought to add here that I should regard an ethical collection incomplete that did not include at least one of the comprehensive works on morals lately offered us by certain sociologists. Westermarck's wonderful book—a mine of information—onThe Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, or the admirable book by Hobhouse,Morals in Evolution, will serve to fill the gap.
Information regarding editions of all the books I have mentioned can be had in most public libraries, or from any good publisher and book-seller.
As for the reading to accompany these Chapters, I-III, I suggest looking over the chapters by Westermarck and Hobhouse, indicated in foot-notes. He who would realize how men have differed in their moral outlook on life might read the lives of Aristippus, Epicurus and Zeno, in Diogenes Laertius; or follow the account, in Sidgwick'sHistory of Ethics, of Aristotle's teaching, as compared with the ethics of the Church.
2. Chapters IV to VII.—These chapters on ethics as science and on ethical method do not appear to me to call for extensive notes. Several foot-notes are given which might be followed up. I think it would be a very good thing for the student to read chapters i and vi in Sidgwick's admirable work, TheMethods of Ethics.
3. Chapters VIII to X.—To undertake to give any adequate list of references on the chapters which treat of man's nature and of his material and social environment would take us quite too far afield. I merely suggest looking up the articles on "Anthropology" and "Sociology" in theEncyclopedia Britannica.References are given there. And one should not overlook Darwin's great book onThe Descent of Man. It will never be rendered superfluous, although the men of our day criticize it in detail. A recent work of value is "Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men," by Professor Edwin Grant Conklin, 1918.
4. Chapters XI to XVI.—Here my notes must be somewhat more detailed, for we are on quite debatable ground. At any rate, there is much dispute, between men of unquestionable ability, on the one side and on the other. I may be pardoned for thinking that the general argument of these chapters is reasonable and sound.
In commenting upon Chapter XI, I suggest that the reader look up what Hobhouse has to say on impulse, desire and will, in his volume,Morals in Evolution; also that he consult the same topics in James'Psychology. McDougall'sSocial Psychologymight be read with much profit.
Some admirable writers have a repugnance to using the word "volition" in speaking of the brutes. I cannot help thinking that this is a dispute touching the proper use of a word, rather than that any important distinction inkindis marked. Some human volitions stand out very clearly as such. There are free ideas present, there is the tension of desires, there is deliberation, and there is clearly conscious choice, or the final release of tension. But how many of the decisions—I see no objection to the word,—which we make during the course of a day, are of this character! It would be difficult to set a lower limit to volition.
Muirhead, who writes, in hisElements of Ethics, clearly and well of desires, emphasizing the presence of "tensions," follows the Neo- Hegelian tradition in speaking of will. He describes it as the act by which the attention is concentrated upon one object of desire, and he calls the act of choice theidentifying of oneselfwith one object or line of action.
Naturally, it is not easy to think of the bee or the ant or the spider, perhaps not even of the cat or dog, as "identifying itself" with some object of desire. I suggest that the reader, after a perusal of Muirhead, reflect upon what Hobhouse has to say of the lower animals; or that he look up Miss Washburn's book onThe Animal Mind, (second edition, 1918), where a really serious study of the brute is undertaken.
On Chapter XII, I find no comment necessary. As to Chapter XIII, I recommend to the reader a reading or re-reading of the fascinating pages in which James treats of instinct in hisPsychology. And let him look up the same subject in McDougall'sSocial Psychology. At the same time, I enter a note of warning against reading even such good writers uncritically. There is no little dispute in this field. Dr. H. R. Marshall's volumeMind and Conductgives an unusually thoughtful account of instinct (N. Y., 1919).
Comment on Chapter XIV is not imperatively necessary. But I must speak with detail of Chapter XV, for the best of men quarrel when they come upon this ground:
Sec 49. The psychologist takes into his mouth no word more ambiguous than "feeling." It may be used to indicate any mental content whatever—John Stuart Mill could speak of consciousness as composed of a string of feelings. Herbert Spencer divided conscious processes into "feelings" and "relations between feelings." James obliterates the distinction, and finds it possible to speak of "a feeling ofand, a feeling ofif, a feeling ofbut," etc. (PsychologyI, p. 154, ff.).
Some writers do not distinguish between emotions and feelings. Thus, Darwin, in hisDescent of Man, calls pleasure and pain "emotions." Marshall (op. cit., chapter ii) makes emotions, and even intuitions, "instinct-feelings." Dewey, in hisEthics(p. 251), appears to treat emotions as synonymous with feelings. Gardiner, in his interesting and careful study,Affective Psychology in Ancient Writers after Aristotle(Psychological Review. May, 1919), treats of "what are popularly called the feelings, including emotions."
On the other hand, in ethical writings the word, "feelings," very often means no more than pleasure and pain. Thus,Seth(A Study of Ethical Principles, p. 63), makes feelings synonymous with pleasure and pain. Muirhead (Elements of Ethics, p. 46), says, "by feeling is meant simply pleasure and pain"; and to have "interest" in, he defines as to have pleasure in (p. 46).
This narrowing of the meaning of the word on the part of ethical writers is, perhaps, natural. The hedonistic moralists made pleasure and pain the only ultimate reasonable stimulants to action. Many moralists opposed them (see, later, Chapters XXIV and XXV). So pleasure and pain became "the feelings,"par excellence. Both Dewey and Alexander sometimes speak as if, by the word "feeling," we meant no more than pleasure and pain. So does Kant.
The modern psychologist sometimes distinguishes pleasure and pain from "agreeableness" and "disagreeableness." Marshall, a high authority on pleasure and pain, refuses to draw the distinction (op. cit., Part III. chapter vi). But he also refuses to call pleasure and pain sensations, regarding them as "qualifications of our sensations," like intensity, duration, and the like.
Are pleasures, as pleasures, alike? and are pains, as pains, alike? Jeremy Bentham refused to distinguish between kinds of pleasures. On the other hand, John Stuart Mill did so (see Chapter XXV in this volume); and S. Alexander, in his work entitledMoral Order and Progress, maintains that pleasures differ in kind, and cannot be compared merely in their intensity (see page 202).
The whole matter is complicated enough, and there is occupation for the most disputatious. But I do not think that these disputes very directly affect the argument of my chapter.
Sec 50. That there is a relation between feeling and action, but that the two are by no means nicely adjusted to each other, has been recognized in many quarters.
Darwin, discussing the mental and moral qualities of man, points out that the satisfaction of some fundamental instincts gives little pleasure, although uneasiness is suffered if they are not satisfied. Seth (op. cit., p. 64) says that feelings "guide" action; and he claims that the energy of a moving idea lies in the feeling which it arouses (p. 70). On the quantity of emotion, and its relation to action, see Stephen, The Science of Ethics, ii, iii, 25.
Sec 51. It appears to be repugnant to Green to admit that feeling— pleasure—can be the direct object of action; and he denies roundly that a sum of pleasures can be made an object of desire and will at all (Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 221; see Sec 113 of this book). Moreover, he maintains, and in this Dewey follows him, that the making of pleasure an object is evidence of the existence of unhealthy desires. I cannot but think this, taken generally, an exaggeration. Of course, what is called "a man of pleasure" is a pretty poor sort of a thing.
Sec 52. In this section I do not touch at all upon the immemorial dispute concerning what has been called "the 'freedom' of the will."
Indeed, I leave it out of this book altogether. The moralist must, I think, assume that man has natural impulses and is a rational creature. Those who are interested in the problem above mentioned, may turn to myIntroduction to Philosophy, chapter xi, Sec 46, where the matter is discussed, and references (in the corresponding note) are given.
Men of quite varying views have inclined to the doctrine which appeals to me. I think it is to be gotten out of Hegel. Green, who is much influenced by him, takes, as the rational end of conduct, a "satisfaction on the whole," which implies a harmonization and unification of the desires (see, in this book, Chapter XXVI, Sec 122). Spencer, in hisStudy of Sociology, defines the rational as the consistent. Stephen, in hisScience of Ethics, chapter ii, Sec 3, says: "Reason, in short, whatever its nature, is the faculty which enables us to act with a view to the distant and the future." He claims that rationality tends to bring about a certain unity or harmony. Hobhouse,Morals in Evolution, (pp. 572-581), says that reason harmonizes the impulses.
The champions of the opposite view are the intuitionists proper—such men as Kant, Reid, Price, even Sidgwick. To judge of their doctrine—they were great men, be it remembered, and worthy of all respect—I suggest that the reader wait until he has read the chapter onIntuitionismin this volume, Chapter XXIII.
5. CHAPTERS XVII TO XIX.—What is said in Chapter XVII seems too obviously true to need comment. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the chapter is not full of platitudes. But even platitudes are overlooked by some; and there is some merit in arranging them systematically. Besides, they may serve as a spring-board.
As to Chapter XVIII, I suggest reading chapter vii, of Westermarck's book onThe Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. It is entitledCustoms and Laws as Expressions of Moral Ideas.
For Chapter XIX, one may read Hobhouse,Morals in Evolution, Part I, chapter vi, where he shows how the mere "group morality" gradually gives place to a wider morality in which the concept of humanity plays a part. In the same work, Part II, chapters i and ii, the author treats of religious or sub-religious ideas as affecting conduct. Compare Westermarck,op. cit., chapter xl. See, also,The Ancient City, by Fustel de Coulanges.
6. CHAPTERS XX TO XXII.—What is said in Chapter XX may be well reinforced by turning to Hobhouse (op. cit.), Part I, chapter iii, where he traces the gradual evolution of rational morality in the field of justice. See, also, Westermarck, (op. cit.) chapters ix and x, i. e., "The Will as the Subject of Moral Judgment and the Influence of External Events," and "Agents under Intellectual Disability." In the last chapter referred to, animals, drunkards, idiots, the insane, etc., come on the stage. The chapter is full of curious information.
In Chapter XXI (Sec 86), I have spoken of the hesitating utterances of moralists touching any duties we may owe to the brutes. I suggest that before anyone dogmatize in detail on this subject he read with some care such a comprehensive work as Miss Washburn'sThe Animal Mind. The book is admirable. Chapters x and xliv of Westermarck's work are instructive and entertaining on this subject. Hegel disposes of the animals rather summarily. See hisPhilosophy of Right, Sec 47. Sidgwick,The Methods of Ethics, Book III, chapter iv, 2, is well worth consulting. See in my own volume, Chapter XXX, Sec 141.
For Chapter XXII, I give no references. I appeal only to the common sense of my reader.
7. Chapters XXIII to XXIX.—For the chapters on the Schools of the Moralists, XXIII to XXIX, I shall give briefer notes than I should have given, were the chapters not already so well provided with foot-notes.
So far as the first four of these chapters are concerned, I shall assume that enough has been said, drawing attention only to two points which concern Chapter XXIII.
It is very interesting to note that one of our best critics of intuitionism, Hemy Sidgwick, was himself an intuitionist. HisMethods of Ethicsdeserves very close attention. Again Intuitions are often spoken of as if they had been shot out of a pistol, and had neither father nor mother. To understand them better it is only necessary to read chapter viii of Dr. H. R. Marshall's little book,Mind and Conduct, which shows how difficult it is to mark intuitions off sharply, and to treat them as if they had nothing in common with reason.