(1) Where the individual does not care for punishments and social censures. (2) Where a man, by reason of certain superiorities of force over others with whom he is more directly in contact, is able to obtain power and suppress their resistance, or where the moral weakness of others leaves him unpunished. In these exceptional cases, we have the contradictory phenomenon that an ideal which can maintain its existence is yet declared to be bad. "Such cases mark a stage of transition in the processby which the distinction of good or bad is established." In the struggle of animal species, the same phenomenon may be found; an exceptional individual of a vanishing variety maintains his existence for a time by reason of his exceptional endowment or of coming in contact merely with the weaker members of the successful variety.
There are two ways in which the moral ideal is maintained,—by education and by punishment. Punishment is the condemnation of wrong-doing by censure or by legal penalties. The unpleasant consequences of neglect of the self-regarding virtues are not punishment; but the reaction of the good forces of society against wrong-doing is as natural as the unpleasant physical effects of imprudence.
"If the question as to what moral sanction is means, 'What reason is there why morality exists?' the answer lies not in enumerating the penalties of wrong-doing, but in tracing the origin of morality as an equilibrium of the forces of society.... But the question, 'Why should I be moral?' means, most naturally and usually, What inducements are there to me to do right?" The answer is that motives differ for different individuals. With some, outer social inducements, with others, the approbation and disapprobation of conscience are stronger. These latter ethical pains and pleasures which are felt at the idea of an action stand on a different footing from feelings having regard to external rewards and punishments and also the prospective pleasures and pains of conscience. The man who does right because he shrinks from prospective pains of conscience is not a good man, but intermediate morally between the bad man who seeks only to escape legal punishment and the good man whose pains of conscience felt at the idea of a wrong act prevent his performing it.
Punishment wears different shapes according to the point of view from which it is regarded, but, in the distinctively moral view, is reformatory. All punishment is retribution, but not in the sense that it is personal vengeance. The value of this idea of retribution lies in the fact that it places punishment on a line with the process of self-assertion by which species maintain their life; it is a part of the reaction of the organism against anything which impedes its vitality. If, however, punishment avenges the evil deed, it is a confusion to say that it is for the sake ofvengeance. The purpose in the mind of those punishing is not necessarily vengeance, and the idea of mere retribution is repugnant to the good man. From the juridic point of view, the object of punishment is prevention; from the moral point of view, reformation. The reformation seeks to destroy a bad ideal, and does not necessarily destroy the individual in whom it is found; but in some cases the wrong-doer's mind is so perverted that only death, it is judged, will suffice. "Here, too, paradoxical as it may seem, though perhaps the chief object of our punishment is the indirect one of bettering others, we punish with death in order to make him a good man and to bring him within the ideal of society.... The penalty of death is thought necessary to bring home to him the enormity of his guilt."
The object of punishment is not always achieved, but this matters not for its moral character, which lies in its conscious object. The idea of punishment as reconciling the criminal with society includes the aspect of retribution or expiation, under which punishment may be viewed from without; but it is only when the suffering is attended by reformation that it can be considered in a proper sense expiation or atonement.
Responsibility differs from obligation by introduction of the element of punishment. Obligation is the necessity of good conduct which arises out of the relation of the act to the order of which it forms a part. "Responsibility is the negative aspect of this relation. When I think of conduct as required of me, I think of it as my duty; when I think of it as conduct which if I do not perform, I shall be rightly punished, I have the sense of responsibility." The sense of responsibility is thus a knowledge of the requirements of the law, and it is only as we have law-abiding instincts that we feel it; and we feel it differently according as we think of the authority of the law as derived from its mere enactment or as founded upon the social good, or as established in our own conscience and self-respect, which represent the social good. As including recognition of certain conduct as right, the sense of responsibility is more than the mere knowledge and fear of punishment. "It is only those who can appreciate that punishment will be deserved to whom the idea of responsibility applies. There is, therefore, no difference between the fact of responsibility and the sense of responsibility, any more than there is between goodness and the feeling of approbation,or duty and the sense of duty. When we declare a bad man responsible, we mean that the good man holds him to be justly punished."
Responsibility depends, then, on two things,—that a man is capable of being influenced by what is right, and that whatever he does is determined by his character. This capacity depends on his being aware of the meaning of his acts, and so of their connection with other acts, and contains thus an element not present in the relations of animals.
"Except for the authority of one or two great names, there seems to be a general agreement that the will is determined by character." If character means the principle of volition, as it is regarded in our analyses, the assertion is a truism. It is no less true if character is defined as disposition; all our dealings with our fellow-men reckon on their acting in accordance with their character. The distinction made by Green that the mind acts from its own nature (the motive and the whole process of willing being within the mind) is no more and no less true of the action of other bodies. The emergence of new sentiments in character might be urged as an argument for free will; but this is of no more significance than the budding of trees in springtime. The sense of freedom is the sense of choice between two motives; but this merely depends upon the intellectual property that the object willed is present to consciousness,—in case of choice two objects being present to the mind. "So far is the consciousness of freedom from being a ground for assuming an arbitrary or undetermined power of volition that it is exactly what would be expected to accompany the process of determination when the object concerned was a conscious mind. Pull a body to the right with a force of twelve pounds and to the left with a force of eight; it moves to the right. Imagine that body a mind aware of the forces which act upon it; it will move in the direction of that which, for whatever reason, appeals to it most; and in doing so it will, just because it is conscious, act of itself, and will have the consciousness of freedom." But which motive is chosen is fixed and dependent upon character, that cannot choose otherwise than it does; and the sense of freedom is a sheer delusion. The feeling that one ought to have acted otherwise implies another sort of freedom, according to which he only is truly free who chooses the right; in such choice it is, however, the characterwhich acts, and though a man is free, in this sense,if he chooses, his choice is determined. The argument of free will in regard to punishment does not explain punishment, but renders it inexplicable. It would be senseless to punish except as, by so doing, we can influence a man's character. Determinism does not make punishment wrong; it is not cruelty, but kindness to punish: it saves a man from worse, from degradation of character, enabling him to change his ideal, and thus bringing himself into equilibrium with his kind. The reason of certain doubts which are beginning to be felt to-day with regard to punishment is the larger knowledge of the dependence of men on their surroundings, hence of the culpability of society as a whole; it is not an objection to responsibility as such, but to the distribution of responsibility.
Education, the second means by which the moral ideal is defended, is not identical with social progress, by which the moral ideal is itself changed, but is the individual progress included within each definite moral ideal. Education and progress are, however, inseparably bound together, in that education goes hand in hand with punishment, and in that it leads to the discovery of new ideals. If we take only the irregular line which includes the good, and discard the ideals which are exterminated or left behind, the movement of ideals is continuous with education, and progress may therefore be described as an education of society. The education of children has to put them in possession of the present moral achievement, and to make them independent individuals,—so to penetrate them with the moral order that it shall appear in them as spontaneous character. It is an evolving of an ideal already present; for, to be capable of education, a person must have already set foot on the right path.
As in the physical world, so in the moral, we have the survival of many different genera and species,—various ideals of conduct or institutions of life, some of which may be grouped together by strong resemblances, others of which stand to each other in the relation of lower to higher organisms; the survival of archaic institutions in the higher as well as their history of progress showing their affinities with the lower. "History is the palæontology of moral ideals," and provides us with a better means of studying the growth of morality than exists for the study of the growth of species. As in the organic world, varieties developfrom species by a gradual and continuous movement of sentiment, each successful variation forming the basis of a new variation, and the differences of the varieties from each other and from the original species increasing with their distance from the original species, until the difference amounts to a difference of species. We may call these modifications "accidental," but, as in the physical world, they are so only as we regard them from the position occupied by a person before the event; they have their causes if we can find them. These causes are to be found in the contact of different minds. Variability depends to a considerable extent on the size of a genus, but only in so far as greater size involves greater complexity and variety of interests; the vast but homogeneous societies of the East being less progressive than the smaller but more complex ones of the West. "Where freer scope is left to individual inclinations or aptitudes, there the friction of mind against mind is more intense. New ideas are generated in the more vivid consciousness of the people, and life becomes more inventive."
Species developed from a common genus will show some common traits and some rules of mutual observance, savage peoples which have divided into tribes being an exception to the latter part of the statement, for the reason that lower societies have very little moral cohesion; they may be compared to lower organisms which reproduce themselves by fission, or to homogeneous colonies of animals, like sponges. Under the generic institutions we must not include those which arise merely as the result of similar circumstances. Ideals once formed advance at very different rates, though the tendency to divergence is always being corrected by the diffusion of ideas. But where one nation takes ideas from another, these ideas are not borrowed, in the sense that they come wholly from the other nation; there must have been, in the borrowing nation, a development of ideas up to the point that makes the borrowing possible,—a similar development to that of the nation from which the borrowing takes place, due to similar circumstances. The communication of moral ideas does not depend upon race-community, as is shown by the ready adoption of Western ideas by such nations as the Hindoos and Japanese.
In general language, we identify development and progress; and this is true also in the case of morality. Goodness meansprogress; wickedness, retrogression or else stagnation, which, compared with advance, is retrogression. "In changing from one form to another, morality changes from what is right under one set of conditions to what is right under another set, and such change from good to good is what we mean by becoming better. To deny this is to find some other standard of advance than in the actual movement which has taken place, to put ana prioriconception of development in place of the facts." "The moral ideal is always, therefore, a progress, for either the society is single, and goodness represents the law of its advance, or if the society is part of a larger one, its ideal can be retrogressive only because the society is so far bad." "And since goodness and badness exhaust the field of moral possibilities, if the propositions that goodness means progress, and badness regress, are both true, we must be able to convert them, and maintain that all progress is due to goodness and all regress to badness." To do this, we must distinguish between degradation and a mere degeneration which involves a return to simpler conditions as an adaptation to changed environment. Such degeneration as adaptation to circumstances, in an individual or a society as a whole, is progress. Fish who become blind by living in the dark become thus better fitted to their circumstances, and the like is true of moral degeneration under simpler conditions. Old age and death are characteristic of the higher type of organism, in distinction from the lower types which, multiplying by fission, are practically eternal; they are conditions of the advantage of type, in which the individual is partaker. So a good society under simpler conditions is on the side of progress, though it may lie outside the main line of advance.
It is true that bad persons often help on progress, but the good they do lies in their representation of the will of society for progress, the evil lies in their use of this will as means to their own ends. It may be objected, too, that the good man is sometimes a hindrance to progress through stupidity; but to this is to be answered that intellect itself becomes morally characterized in action.
All events and institutions are thus determined by their conditions; but there is a movement forward distinguishable from the delay of stragglers and the resistance of enemies, and this distinction is enforced by the moral predicates of good and bad.
Our theory does not imply that whatever is, is right; such astatement involves the use of the word right in the sense of "correct," or "intelligible," "accountable by reflection." Nor is the doctrine fatalistic. Fatalism implies that men act at the impulse of some force which they do not understand; "but the history of mankind is the history of beings who, through their own gift of consciousness, subdue circumstances to their own characters." In judging a nation's development, we must not interpret it according to our own likings, as progression or retrogression; nor must we imagine retrogression from relaxation of duties in some certain directions, but must regard the society and its institutions as a whole.
The test of higher organization usually given is that of increasing differentiation of parts with corresponding specialization of function. But the main course of progress is not linear, or in one continuous direction; apparent reversions to former types are only apparent; the new type stands higher than the old. In other words, history moves in cycles. It follows, from this, that mere differentiation is insufficient for definition. While the differentiation advances, its significance alters, or, let us say, the relative places of specialization and of unity alter. Along with differentiation goes a process of integration. Great revolutions simplify. The result of greater and greater heterogeneity is to produce a new principle, which combines the warring elements. The definition of progress by increased differentiation is lacking in two ways: It tells us nothing of the forces by which progress is produced, and it gives no connected view of the actual facts of historical development. A general statement of progress in its formal sense is found in the conception of a struggle of ideals. But as in this struggle the survival of the fittest does not necessarily mean the destruction of those who represented the defeated ideal, but the supplanting of their ideal by another, the movement is one of comprehension, and we should expect to find, and do find, the history of morality exhibit the gradual development of a universal moral order, good not for one group of men but for all. It would be a misapprehension to regard this change as merely quantitative, as if the virtues were the same whether they applied on a larger or a smaller scale. "The quantitative extension is parallel with, and in reality proceeds from, a change in the conception of the human person himself." In primitive communities, the individual is so limited that he canhardly be called an individual at all. First among the Greeks do we find the person the embodiment of the social order, but in a limited sense. "When this limitation breaks down, and the individual stands forth as independent and self-conscious, the author of the laws he obeys, we have at the same time the extension of the area of persons with whom he is in moral relation."
"It matters little that the Western ideal of a society of humanity is realized to so slight an extent. The ideal exists and implies the inclusion of mankind." The principle of democracy, which we are engaged in working out, "continues, or perhaps supersedes, under much more complex conditions and over a wider range of institutions, the same principle as Christianity introduced." It is not merely an identical element in many individual states, but a comprehensive ideal. The power of naturalization, extradition laws, international action among the working classes, etc., imply this.
This "comprehension" is not merely one of breadth, but of depth as well: the ideal includes not only the present of mankind, but its whole future also. Duties have always been recognized to posterity, but the range of generations to whom they applied was small, and the interests which it was believed could be secured were limited also.Après moi le délugedescribes a form of selfishness of all ages, but different ages have understood theaprès moiquite differently. At the present day, the range of responsibility is extending indefinitely.
A common political ideal does not mean a universal peace. Coarser forms of dispute disappear, but, on the other hand, as nations grow more refined in their ideals, they grow more susceptible. What a political humanity, or a political community of Europe, would mean, is the substitution of international punishment for the self-willed conflicts of irresponsible nations.
We cannot say what the future of society and of morality may be,—whether mankind will be able to take mechanical means against a period of ice, or whether human society may not, as a whole, be destroyed, to be replaced by a higher type of existence, which may arise on the earth from the development of humanity, or may, on some other planet, take up the tale of human civilization as we take up that of the civilization of Greece and Rome.
Two things follow from the progressive character of the moral ideal: (1) that the classification and description of duties willvary with each age; (2) that, as the ideal changes from age to age, the highest moral principle or sentiment will change with it.
At the present time, a belief has gained great authority, that the sense of duty is transitory and will finally disappear; but whether we, with Spencer, identify obligation with coercion, or understand it as the relation of a part of conduct to the rest, in neither sense is the proposition true as it stands. If duty means constraint, it by no means follows that constraint will cease with progress; for constraint arises from confronting one inclination with a higher idea, and its disappearance would mean that inclinations had become constant; this is, however, impossible. The fiction of a final stage of mobile equilibrium is an unwarranted conclusion from the fact that all morality involves a cycle of conduct in mobile equilibrium. But the theory represents a truth,—the truth that morality at no time implies in itself the sense of duty. The sense of duty, as involving the hard feeling of compulsion, of subjection to authority, and bound up with the sense of sin, a sense stronger in proportion to merit or the interval between first inclination and final moral willing, may and is giving place to a higher conception. In the family, this may already be found, where self-sacrifice and aid are matters of affection and rendered freely. In the higher ideal, we have that love of man for a higher and larger order than himself which morality represents as solidarity with society, a continually progressive society of free individuals; which religion represents as the love for and of God.
And at the last two questions may be asked: (1) whether the difficulties in which Christianity is placed at the present day do not arise from absorption of its highest idea into the conceptions and the practice of morality, so that the religious sentiment is starved; and (2) whether the ideal of a free coöperation in the progress of humanity may not be used to interpret the belief in immortality, putting in the place of individual immortality the continuance of life in the persons whom the individual may affect. In "The International Journal of Ethics" July, 1892, Alexander combats some misinterpretations of "Natural Selection in Morals," which he says are partly due to Spencer's Individualism. Natural Selection in social life does not mean necessarily destruction of individuals, but is a struggle of ideals, such as that between Individualism and Collectivism,—in which Selection seems to favor Collectivism.
FOOTNOTES:[82]The reference is here to Wundt, "Phys. Psych.," I. p. 485 (ed. II.).
[82]The reference is here to Wundt, "Phys. Psych.," I. p. 485 (ed. II.).
[82]The reference is here to Wundt, "Phys. Psych.," I. p. 485 (ed. II.).
Dr. Paul Ree's "Source of the Moral Feelings" ("Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen," 1877), is written from a pessimistic and mechanical standpoint. The connection of thought and feeling in the region of morals is, according to Ree, a purely, or very nearly a purely, outward one, moral judgments not being the result of sympathy or antipathy, or related to these feelings in more than an external manner, but arising from associations of ideas engendered by education; the Sense of Justice being, in this manner, the effect of Punishment. A definite distinction is likewise made by Ree, between vice, which affects the individual only, and badness, which affects society, the profligate who satisfies his lust in the most unrestrained manner being regarded as perhaps unwise, but not bad, as long as he does not seduce the pure. The author fails, however, to show us how vice can be practised without social injury, and necessarily fails also—since his position takes into account no organic relations of characteristics—to notice the significance of profligacy as an inherent feature of character. He touches at one or two points, only, on Habit, and at one point alone on Heredity, where he raises the question of the hereditary character of Vanity, but arrives at no conclusion. He also makes the division of Egoism from Non-egoism a definite one, fully identifying the Good with the Non-egoistic, the Bad with the Egoistic. The Non-egoistic really exists; a man may relieve another's suffering in order to free himself from the sight of it; or he may relieve it for the other's sake. Nevertheless, non-egoistic action is rare; men are much more egoistic than the apes, who are rivals only with regard to food and sexual desire, while men are rivals not only with respect to these primitive wants, but with respect to many others besides, especially since they not only regard the present but provide for the future also.
Vanity, according to Ree, gives rise to envy, hatred, and malignity. But, the action of these passions being opposed to the safety of society, some persons[83]introduced punishment for its protection, and fear of punishment, and exchange of labor united men in peace. Deeds and never motives were at first considered in the infliction of punishment, but, outer compulsion not securing safety, the ideal of an inner condition of character which should secure it arose. "Good" and "useful" are synonyms, but men of later generations, receiving laws without explanation of their origin, fail to understand that the Good was, in its origin, simply the Useful, that the Bad was, in like manner, the Harmful, and that Punishment is for the purpose of prevention and not in the nature of a return for things done. The knowledge of this truth takes from life some of its grandeur; but the truth remains the truth, nevertheless.
The will is not free; the mistake of regarding it as free is the result of the failure to perceive that punishment looks to the future, not to the past,—is a means of prevention, not a requital. The right to punish does not rest, therefore, upon the Sense of Justice; but punishment is justifiable as a means of prevention. Its choice, like that of other evils as the alternatives of greater ones, is the practice of the principle, The end justifies the means. Those who repudiate this principle have not generally looked deeply into its meaning; moreover, it has been misused. In putting it in practice, several things must be observed:—
1. The end to be served must be a good one;
2. The choice of means causing pain is permissible only when no other means are possible;
3. The pain must be reduced to the least possible;
4. The pain must be less than would be involved in the omission of this particular choice.
The doctrine of eternal punishment is untenable, because:—
1. It presupposes the existence of a God.
2. Supposing a God to be existent, we cannot name him either good or bad. "God is good" means "He does good to the world and its inhabitants"; but of the world we know only the little earth, and of God we know nothing.
3. If we will, nevertheless, predicate goodness or badness of God, we must call him bad, since all beings known to us suffer much pain and have little pleasure. The gods of the savages, who are not yet led away by theological hair-splitting, are evil.
4. But if we still persist in naming God good, then we cannot suppose him to be also cruel, and even more cruel than the hardest-hearted of mortals.
5. The doctrine of eternal punishment assumes the existence of a soul; but the difference between human beings and the higher animals is not so great that one can ascribe an especial soul to men.
6. But if a soul exists, it cannot be tortured, since it is immaterial.
7. And the deeds which God will thus punish deserve, on the theory of punishment as prevention, no requital.
It is not immaterial to us whether men have a good or an evil opinion of us.
1. Because we hope for advantages from a good opinion.
2. Because we are vain.
Vanity arose, in the first place, because admiration was useful to men, just as it is useful to the birds at pairing-time, and habit rendered it agreeable in itself. Men therefore desire it, even when it has no especial use, because "they know that all admiration is followed by a strong feeling of pleasure."[84]The difference between man and the peacock in respect to vanity is merely that he desires to be admired for other things than outer appearance alone,—for courage, strength, cleverness, the tools of battle, and many other things. Since, among human beings, men and not women choose their mates, endeavoring to obtain one or more of the most beautiful women possible, womenendeavor to render themselves beautiful, expending greater efforts as the stake is greater in their case than in that of the peacock. They endeavor to supplement their outward attractiveness by amiability, cleverness, household industry, and, in our days, wealth; but beauty always makes the strongest impression upon the man. Men desire to be admired rather for other things than outward appearance, though for this, too, to some extent.
But vanity may be objected to (1) on the ground that it is a desire to create envy, and envy is pain and gives rise to hatred; (2) on the hedonistic ground that the vain man more often suffers pain from not being admired than experiences pleasure from admiration; (3) on the intellectual ground that vanity renders a man incapable of impersonal interest in Nature, Art, Philosophy, and Science. Entire freedom from vanity could, however, be attained only by a life of complete isolation. Because of these reasons for blame, men do not confess that they act from vanity, but give other reasons for deeds prompted by this feeling.[85]
Ambition may be blamed on grounds similar to those on which vanity is blamed. However, this feeling urges to many useful acts, and without it few would find interest for great effort. And since, because of its usefulness, ambition is less blamed than vanity, men are more ready to acknowledge that they possess it.
We desire to appear well in the eyes of others, therefore we conceal our envy and hatred, and affect high courage, great honesty, and charity. Such hypocrisy is bad; but it is necessary. For if men were to show themselves as they are, with hearts full of hostility, they could not at all associate. In order to make frankness and peace both possible, men must become what they now pretend to be; but this does not lie in their power.
Malignant pleasure in others' pain arises from a comparison with our own more agreeable situation, or from the pleasure in our own superiority in any respect.
When a woman is seduced, it is in the interest of other women to ostracise her, since, if marriage were to be abolished, women would lose in position; the man who seduces her is blamed for bringing shame on her, but not for unchastity, for men have no interest in maintaining chastity in their own sex.
Caprice arises, not from change of mood, but from the pleasure of power experienced in now charming by amiability, now causing gloom by coldness, and again inspiring fear through anger.
If one desires anything from another, one should not say, "It is a little thing," but "It is very much that I ask"; since he who is asked gives more readily when he thinks he will appear very kind.
Natural Selection does not prefer the individual as far as morals are concerned, but only nations. Moral rules are variable, but not steadily progressive. Man is by nature selfish; simply habit tames men and makes them, by change in nerves and muscle, more amenable to rule.
The good man is probably worse off than the bad man. Pain exceeds pleasure in all beings. Everything, love included, becomes worthless whenattained, and labor begins again for new attainment. Man is, moreover, the most unhappy of all beings, for he feels most strongly, and in his complicated organism there is almost always something out of order. For this reason, sympathy[86]brings more pain than pleasure. The bad man has only pangs of conscience to disturb him, and, if he is superstitious, the fear of punishment after death. It is difficult to say whether the bad man or the good man is happier. In fact, happiness depends rather on temperament, power of self-control, and health. Possibly these truths may seem harmful; and if the good man is higher than the bad man, and goodness should be sought, only so much of the truth should be revealed as is not antagonistic to this end. But the good man is not the higher, although, because goodness is useful, our education has attempted to make us believe this. The animals may be unselfish as well as man; on the other hand, the disinterested search for truth is not found among the animals. The attainment of truth is, moreover, pleasurable to the searcher, turning painful desire for truth to pleasurable fulfilment.
Dr. Ree's later book, "The Origin of Conscience" ("Die Entstehung des Gewissens," 1885), does not add anything distinctly new in theory to this first book; it is rather noticeable for what it omits of the pessimism of the earlier book, for a more moderate, thoughtful, and less assertive tone, than for additional theories or even much further elaboration of the old theories, except as regards the derivation of the Sense of Justice. It traces the savage custom of the revenge of death through its displacement by the payment of blood-money, up to the final substitution of state punishment. Punishment does not grow out of revenge, but succeeds it. It is not revenge, though the desire that the guilty may be punished and the desire for revenge may be mixed, in some cases. Pain, not the Sense of Justice, drives the savage to revenge. Punishment does not grow out of the Sense of Justice, but the latter out of the former. The interference of the state with the revenge of the individual is at first a mediation between the two parties for the maintenance of peace in the interest of the community; later, the state arrives at a method of punishment for the purpose of prevention.
Hume's theory of the origin of religion has been confirmed by Anthropology. The savage sees in natural phenomena the action of living beings endowed with mental faculties like his own, and he gradually comes to transfer this action to beings not in, but, according to his new idea, behind, phenomena. The gods of primitive religions are moral only as the peoples whose gods they are, are moral. As society progresses, religion falls behind, and a new interpretation of old doctrines must be introduced in order to bring it up to the later standard. Then the gods, as moral with the morality of this later date, are imagined as commanding the later standard, and to the fear of punishment by the state is added, as a preventive force, that of the punishment of the gods. The gods command what men command, forbid what men forbid. The God of the Old Testament, Jahveh, was, like Zeus, a nature-god, and took revenge as men did. When a later date demanded a standard of greaterhumanity, Christ came, and he represented the God of the Old Testament, no longer as revengeful and passionate, but as possessing the attributes of sympathy which he felt in himself. The later standard of the New Testament takes into consideration motives as well as deeds, and commands positively as well as forbids. But the God of the New Testament is not wholly love; if his love is unreturned, he becomes angry, like men.
The Categoric Imperative in the individual is merely the result of his individual education. Conscience alone accomplishes little; other motives than the desire to do right—fear of punishment, etc.—are stronger. Nothing is, in itself, good or bad, but only so far as it is useful or harmful.
Sympathy is to some degree innate,—how it arose we cannot say; but it has been preserved by natural selection.
FOOTNOTES:[83]P. 46.[84]P. 78.[85]See, in contradistinction to Ree's theory of vanity, Sigwart's admirable essay on this subject, contained in his "Kleine Schriften."[86]Dr. Ree appears to depart from his general theory here and identify sympathy with morality.
[83]P. 46.
[83]P. 46.
[84]P. 78.
[84]P. 78.
[85]See, in contradistinction to Ree's theory of vanity, Sigwart's admirable essay on this subject, contained in his "Kleine Schriften."
[85]See, in contradistinction to Ree's theory of vanity, Sigwart's admirable essay on this subject, contained in his "Kleine Schriften."
[86]Dr. Ree appears to depart from his general theory here and identify sympathy with morality.
[86]Dr. Ree appears to depart from his general theory here and identify sympathy with morality.
Twenty years ago, any one about to deal with moral science from the standpoint of the Theory of Evolution, might have deemed it necessary to preface his work with a statement of cogent reasons for the assumption of such a standpoint. At a time when Theology saw in Darwinism only a weapon of the anti-theological party, and when even many scientists were not yet decided as to the worth of the new ideas, the right of the student to make use of them in psychological and ethical investigations might have been a subject for dispute. Yet even in the beginning the attitude of apology was assumed oftener without, than within, English-speaking countries, for the very reason that exactly among the race from which Darwin sprang, the warfare of his conception of animate nature with older systems was fiercest. At the present date, the attitude of opinion is changed in all countries. The Theory of Evolution has few, if it can be said to have any, enemies among the students of science. "With Louis Agassiz died the last opponent of Darwinism deserving scientific notice," says Haeckel.[87]Theology itself has ceased from extreme hostilities, and many theologians have even found in the idea of Evolution an argument with which to defend teleological doctrine. The present opponents of Darwinism as applied to psychology and ethics rather contest its special worth for these provinces than deny its validity in them. Nevertheless, a universal acceptance cannot be claimed for the theory; and sinceethics is, above all other sciences, the one that should most desire to persuade rather than to alienate,—and this the more, the stronger its conviction of its own truth,—it may be well to state or restate some of the reasons which justify, from almost all modern standpoints, at least a tentative application of the ideas of Evolution to ethical theory. Such a statement, or restatement, must be an attempt to demonstrate the validity of the theory in this province, and to give some good reasons for supposing,a priori, that a survey of ethical questions from the point of view it furnishes may be of ethical utility. The proof of such utility can be found, ultimately, only in the results of the investigation itself.
There is but one phase of the theological doctrine of Creation with which the mere idea of an evolution of life, by itself considered, is directly at variance; this is the doctrine of Creation as taught by the older Theology, which accepted the opening chapters of Genesis as literal history, not as, by any possibility, an oriental allegory. Between the theory of Evolution and the idea of Creation as a primal formation of matter with force or motion in accordance with fixed laws, between it and the idea of an initial application of force from without,—an impulsion which set the universe in motion,—between it and the conception of a transcendental guidance through natural law or of a pantheistic order of development, there is no such necessary contradiction as could justify the denial of Evolution from the standpoint of any of these theories. It is, therefore, with the defenders of the older theological doctrine of creation only that ana prioridefence of Evolution has to deal.
The argument which this doctrine has always regarded as one of its strongest defences is that of the universality of the notion of a Creating Spirit. But this defence is no longer available; modern research has proved the idea to be by no means universal. Sir John Lubbock says, "The lower races have no idea of a Creation; and among those somewhat more advanced it is, at first, very incomplete." "The lower savages regard their gods as scarcely more powerful than themselves;... they are not creators; they are neither omniscient nor all-powerful; far from conferring immortality on man, they are not even in all cases immortal themselves."[88]"Stuhr, who was, as Müller says, a goodobserver of such matters, reports that the Siberians had no idea of a Creator. When Burchill suggested the idea of creation to the Bachapin Kaffirs, these 'asserted that everything made itself,' and that trees and herbage grew by their own will."[89]"As regards Tahiti, Williams observes that the 'origin of the gods and their priority of existence in comparison with the formation of the earth, being a matter of uncertainty even among the native priests, involves the whole in the greatest obscurity.'"[90]"When the Capuchin missionary, Merolla, asked the queen of Singa in Western Africa who made the world, she, 'without the least hesitation, readily answered, "My ancestors."'"[91]"The Bongos of Sudan had no conception of there being a Creator,"[92]the Adipones, the Californian Indians, before they came in contact with white men, the Crees, the Zulu Kaffirs, the Hottentots, had no idea of a creation. "Even in Sanscrit, there is no word for creation, nor does any such appear in the Rigveda, the Zendavesta, or in Homer."[93]The idea of a creation in any sense is not, then, universal, and cannot be asserted to be innate,a priori, primordial, or essential to human nature. Nor, assuming the standpoint of belief in a Creator, is there any ground for supposing that he would have chosen the one rather than any other method of creation. The internal as well as the external difficulties in the way of a too literal exegesis of the Old Testament are rapidly causing the abandonment of dogmatism with respect to this point; and any other interpretation than a literal one cannot, as has been said, logically object to a theory of Becoming based on scientific grounds.
It is in the nature of many of our greatest scientific theories that their simplicity and naturalness in the explanation of facts fill us with a sense of wonder that they had not long before suggested themselves to scientists. If, for instance, we were to attempt, in a Cartesian spirit, to free ourselves from all the prejudice of previous dogma and regard only the general course of nature, we could not logically avoid the conclusion, even from a superficial view, that a theory of the gradual development of existing forms has far more probability on its side than that of a creation from without which broke in upon natural process, and placed ready-made suns and planets in the heavens, and finished beasts and men upon the earth. Everywhere in the organic worldwe behold the process of growth, the development of germs, the passage of the inorganic into the organic, and of the organic into the inorganic again,—change and transformation under natural law.
The difficulty which difference of form and function in the various species offers to a theory of Evolution is by no means so large as has often been claimed; as great difference exists between the oak and the acorn, from which we know it, nevertheless, to spring; as much contrast is exhibited between the brown twigs of the trees and shrubs in winter and the brilliant foliage and flowers which they put forth under the warmer sun of spring; quite as great contrasts may be found, in the life of every human being, between the single cell and the individual completeness attained at birth, between infancy and morally characterized manhood and womanhood, between the vigor of full maturity and the deterioration of age. Even the chasm between the organic and the inorganic is not logically impassable. The necessity of nourishment is the natural bridge between the two, and the equivalence of conditions and result, the indestructibility of matter and motion, establish at once the necessity of the inference that the organic can exist only at the ultimate expense of the inorganic, from which it is continually renewed. Were our senses such that, having before been closed, they were suddenly opened to the perception of the daily observable facts of growth, these would probably appear to us very nearly as strange, anomalous, and impossible as the changes which, according to the Darwinian Theory, have resulted in the existence of different species; and it is obvious that the public mind, becoming gradually accustomed to the conception of the latter changes, does not now regard them as so wonderful and anomalous as they appeared to it in the beginning.
Processes involving complete change of form may be observed, at the present time, everywhere in nature; but they are observable, everywhere in the organic, as growth without breaches; even a primitive science has always recognized the gradual character of motion, the absence of gaps in the causal chain, at least outside of the initiative action of human will. Such a natural hypothesis of creation as we have above supposed, formed upon crude and superficial, but as far as it goes, logical reasoning from facts of observation, could not regard the process as other than a gradual one, in which simpler forms and conditions must be supposed tohave preceded more complex ones; in other words, it could not logically conceive the process as other than an evolution.
Traces of an idea of Evolution may be found in various crude forms in nearly all the earlier Greek philosophers, especially in Anaximander, Heraclitus, Democritus, Empedocles, and later in Aristotle. Such traces may even be found in many heathen mythologies in contradistinction from the Judaic. The progress of investigation, establishing the universality of natural law and, in every province, the gradual character of change was, before Darwin, as it has been since his work, in the direction of such a theory, as was shown by the ready acceptance with which Darwinism met, if not by the world at large, at least by the majority of scientists. In England, France, and Germany, there were others at work under the influence of thoughts similar to if not identical with those that inspired the researches and experiments of Darwin; and the nebular theory of Kant had already claimed in Astronomy what the Darwinian claimed in Biology. "When Kant, in his Natural History of the Heavens, which has become the fundament of modern Astronomy, says, 'Give me matter and I will make you a world,' what he intended to express was that the natural laws of matter are perfectly competent to render comprehensible to us the development of our well-known solar system."[94]
In the very beginning, the theory of Evolution may be said to have had three distinct branches, represented by the Nebular Theory in Astronomy, Haeckel's Ontogeny, and the Biology of Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley; and to these should properly be added the Sociological Ethics of Spencer, which was not, however, worked out to a complete system. But Du Prel says of later research: "In the progress of modern science, no principle has proved so fruitful as that of evolution. All branches compete with one another in its use, and have brought about by its aid the most gratifying results. Geology interprets the significance of superimposed, hardened strata of the earth's crust in the sense of a history of the earth's development; Biology, in union with the study of fossils, arranges the living and petrified specimens of plants and animals in their order, and constructs a history of the evolution of organic life; Philology prepares a genealogical tree of languages, and finds in it signs which throwlight on prehistoric times, and reveal facts forgotten for thousands of years; Anthropology discovers in the form and expression of human beings rudimentary signs that point to a theory of development from lower forms; and, finally, History reveals the evolution of civilization in far-distant historic times; and in all these branches it becomes apparent that we only then understand phenomena when we have comprehended their Becoming."[95]
It is due to the gradual perception of the fact that some such theory as that of Evolution is implied in the very conception of the constancy of nature that there has been a continual decrease of that negative form of criticism which has made much of the gaps in the direct proof. Modern science has so grown to, and by, the theory of Evolution that the overthrow of the latter means nothing more nor less than the destruction of science itself in its highest results. Even those who reject the conclusions of Evolution are found to make use of its methods, and must do so perforce. As the breadth and depth and height of the theory come to be perceived, it is seen that the demand for complete proof is nothing more nor less than a demand for the perfection of all branches of knowledge, the refusal of credit without such proof a refusal to place any confidence in the first principles of scientific theory until it has fully explored the universe and left nothing further to be discovered. But science would have less ground for complaint, if the opponents of Darwinism consistently refused, on the ground of the incompleteness of our knowledge, to form any theory whatever on the subject of man's nature and development, permitting the worth of the evolutional theory to be determined by its future results in application as hypothesis. But the peculiar spectacle is afforded us of a party rejecting a theory supported by numberless facts in all branches, and whose very breaches the direction of discovery continually tends to bridge, in favor of a dogma which cannot point to one scientific fact in its support,—a party demanding absolute perfection of proof as the condition of its acceptance of one theory, while it at the same time fiercely defends a conception of nature of which it cannot furnish the most imperfect proof. It is true that mankind has not beheld the evolution of the whole vegetable and animal kingdom. But neither had any human eye ever yet beheld the planet Neptune when Le Verrier prophesied its existence and calculatedits size and position. The theory of Evolution is a reasoning from the constancy of nature, as was that of Le Verrier, only, in the case of the former, we have the observation and calculations of not one scientist alone, but of thousands, on which to rely. To demand of the scientist that he shall produce the organic from the inorganic, and practically demonstrate the change of form and function, and the process of separation of species, before the possibility of such development is conceded, is on a par with demanding of him an actual reproduction of the Glacial Period before the theory of its previous existence shall be accepted. There is no reason for supposing that, if spontaneous generation once took place, the peculiar complication of conditions which produced it will ever again recur or can be artificially constructed.
But science has no desire to be dogmatic. It readily acknowledges the total absence of direct and established proof at this particular juncture of the beginning of life. It can only point to the indirect testimony of Physiological Chemistry and Crystallogeny, to the simplicity of structure and movement in certain forms of life, and finally to the observed constancy of nature. But an exaggerated significance has been given to this chief flaw in the theory of Evolution, by those who, starting with the intention of defending Theology or the dignity of the Human, have been driven back, step by step, to this point, and fail to perceive that, arrived here, they have already abandoned the ground on which contest was possible. What significance a primal creation merely of lowest organisms can have, for either a defence of human dignity or for Christian Theology, it is difficult to perceive. As a matter of choice, it would seem to be more consistent with the omnipotence and dignity of a Creator to suppose that these very simple organisms arose, like other forms, under the action of natural law than that special interference was necessary in just their case. But, supposing such a special Creation, the following questions immediately present themselves from the theological standpoint: Are these special creations endowed with soul? If so, they must be immortal; if not, then soul arises in the process of evolution; if it arises as do all other things, qualities, functions, by growth,—that is, by the addition of infinitesimal increments (as we must, indeed, suppose it to arise if we regard it as "evolved")—then whence come these increments? If they come direct from a Creator, then surely no special favor towards man in the bestowmentof soul can be alleged; and if they arise by natural causes, out of nature, then why may not their first beginning, their first infinitesimal appearance, also be supposed to be due to such causes?
The proof of an increase, a growth, of what have been called distinctively the mental faculties, throughout the animal kingdom, is every day stronger. No one believes, at the present date, with Descartes, that the animals are automata. Differences of mental power would seem to be but differences of degree; the facts all point to such a theory. The more scientific theologians have, indeed, abandoned this with the other minor points of contest above discussed, and devoted their efforts to argument from the moral nature of man. Philology, Anthropology, and Geology testify to mental progress, even in the human species; and if such a progress is a fact, it cannot have been without influence upon the moral nature of man, even supposing the latter to be God-given. Indeed, a merely physical progress or change cannot have been without such influence; for the most conservative theologians admit the strong action of the body upon the mind. It would seem, then, for all reasons, that an investigation of the process of mental evolution, or of evolution in general, ought not to be without results significant for any system of morality. If it is true that we learn wisdom and morality from human history, this can be so only because history gives us increased knowledge of the constancy of nature in those of its manifestations which specially concern the human, and thus enables us better to judge the present and predict the future. We should suppose that a still wider knowledge of our mental and physical evolution must be of yet greater worth to us in the same manner,—that the disclosure of more extended fields of nature to our vision must afford us new and valuable lessons with regard to ourselves; just as the telescope makes no discovery in the most distant regions of space that does not prove to have, in the end, its peculiar significance for our own planet. If our investigations should prove fruitless, as all such investigations have been said by some to be, the fact, establisheda posteriori, could not be disputed. But, considering all the points above noticed, such a result could not but astonish us; and we should even be inclined, after all that has been said, to suspect that the fault lay rather in the particular method than in the direction of our research.