Socrates was among the first teachers of antiquity who led the way to that self-knowledge which is of the essence of conscience, and in the 'Daemon,' or inner voice, which he claimed to possess, some writers have detected the trace {70} of the intuitive monitor of man. Plato's discussion of the question, 'What is the highest good?' involves the capacity of moral judgment, and his conception of reason regulating desire suggests a power in the mind whose function it is to point to the highest good and to subordinate to it all the other impulses of man. In the ethics of Aristotle there is a reference to a faculty in man or 'rule within,' which, he says, the beasts lack.
But it is among the Stoics that the word first appears; and it is to the Roman moralist, Seneca, that we are indebted for the earlier definite perception of an abiding consciousness bearing witness concerning a man's own conduct. The writings of Epictetus, Aurelius, and Seneca approach in moral sublimity and searching self-analysis the New Testament Scriptures. It was probably to the Stoics that St. Paul was indebted for the wordsyneidêsisto which he has given so distinctive a meaning that it has coloured and determined the whole later history of the moral consciousness.
2. But if the word as used in the New Testament comes from Greek sources the idea itself was long prevalent in the Jewish conception of life, which, even more than the Greek, was constitutive of, and preparatory to, the Christian view. The word does not, indeed, occur in the Old Testament, but the question of God to Adam, 'Where art thou?' the story of Cain and the curse he was to suffer for the murder of his brother; the history of Joseph's dealing with his brethren; the account of David's sin and conviction, are by implication appeals to conscience. Indeed, the whole history of Israel, from the time when the promise was given to Abraham and the law through Moses until the denunciations of wrong-doing and the predictions of doom of the later prophets, is one long education of the moral sense. It is the problem of conscience that imparts its chief interest to the book of Job; and one reason why the Psalms in all ages have been so highly prized is because they are the cries of a wounded conscience, and the confessions of a convicted and contrite heart.
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3. If we turn to the New Testament we find, as we might expect, a much clearer testimony to the reality of the conscience. The word came into the hands of the New Testament writers ready-made, but they gave to it a richer meaning, so that it is to them we must go if we would understand the nature and the supremacy of the conscience. The term occurs thirty-one times in the New Testament, but it does not appear once in the Gospels. It is, indeed, principally a Pauline expression, and to the apostle of the Gentiles more than to any other writer is due the clear conception and elucidation of the term. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the doctrine itself depends entirely upon the use of the word. Our Lord never, indeed, employs the term, but surely no teacher ever sounded the depths of the human heart as He did. It was His mission to reveal men to themselves, to convict them of sin, and show the need of that life of righteousness and purity which He came to give. 'Why even of yourselves,' He said, 'judge ye not what is right?' Christ, indeed, might be called the conscience of man. To awaken, renew and enlighten the moral sense of individuals, to make them know what they were and what they were capable of becoming was the work of the Son of Man, and in contact with Him every one was morally unveiled.
The word occurs twice in Acts, five times in Hebrews, three times in the Epistles of Peter, and more than twenty times in the Pauline Epistles. St. Paul's doctrine of the conscience is contained in Romans ii. 14, 15, where he speaks of the Gentiles being 'a law unto themselves,' inasmuch as they possess a 'law written in their hearts,' 'their conscience bearing witness, therewith accusing or excusing them.' The idea underlying the passage is the responsibility of all men for their actions, their condemnation in sin, and their acceptance in righteousness. This applies to Gentiles as well as Jews, and it applies to them because, though they have not the explicit revelation of the law, they have a revelation of the good in their hearts. The passage therefore teaches two things: (1) That man has received a {72} revelation of good sufficient at all stages of his history to make him morally responsible; and (2) That man possesses a moral faculty which indeed is not a separate power, but the whole moral consciousness or personality in virtue of which he recognises and approves of the good which, either as the law written in his heart or as the law communicated in the Decalogue, has been revealed to him, and by whose authority he judges himself.
II.Nature, and Origin of Conscience.—While experience seems to point to the existence of something in man witnessing to the right, there is great diversity of view as to the nature of this moral element. The word 'Conscience' stands for a concept whose meaning is far from well defined, and the lack of definiteness has left its trace upon ethical theories. While some moralists assign conscience to the rational or intellectual side of man, and make it wholly a faculty of judgment; others attribute it to feeling or impulse, and make it a sense of pleasure or pain; others again associate it more closely with the will, and regard its function to be legislative or imperative. These differences of opinion reveal the complexity of the nature of conscience. The fact is, that it belongs to all these departments—the intellectual, emotional, and volitional—and ought to be regarded not as a single faculty distinct from the particular decisions, motives, and acts of man, not as an activity foreign to the ego, but as the expression of the whole personality. The question of the origin of conscience, though closely connected with its nature, is for ethics only of secondary importance. It is desirable, however, to indicate the two main theories which have been held regarding its genesis. While there are several varieties, they may be divided broadly into two—Intuitionalism and Evolutionalism.
1.Nativism, of which Intuitionalism is the most common form, regards the conscience as a separate natural endowment, coeval with the creation of man. Every individual, it is maintained, has been endowed by nature with a distinct faculty or organ by which he can immediately and clearly {73} pronounce upon the rightness or wrongness of his own actions. In its most pronounced form this theory maintains that man has not merely a general consciousness of moral distinctions, but possesses from the very first, apart from all experience and education, a definite and clear knowledge of the particular vices which ought to be avoided and the particular virtues which ought to be practised. This theory is usually connected with a form of theism which maintains that the conscience is particularly a divine gift, and is, indeed, God's special witness or oracle in the heart of man.
Though there would seem to be an element of truth in intuitionalism, since man, to be man at all, must be conceived as made for God and having that in him which points to the end or ideal of his being, still in its most extreme form it would not be difficult to show that this theory is untenable. It is objectionable, because it involves two assumptions, of which the one conflicts with experience, and the other with the psychological nature of man.
(1) Experience gives us no warrant for supposing that duty is always the same, and that conscience is therefore exempt from change. History shows rather that moral convictions only gradually emerge, and that the laws and customs of one age are often repudiated by the next. What may seem right to one man is no longer so to his descendant. History records deeds committed in one generation in the name of conscience which in the same name a later generation has condemned with horror. Moreover, the possibility of a conflict between duties proves that unconditional truth exists at no stage of moral development. There is no law so sacred that it may not in special cases have to yield to the sacredness of a higher law. When duties conflict, our choice cannot be determined by anya prioriprinciple residing in ourselves. It must be governed by that wider conception of the moral life which is to be gained through one's previous development, and on the basis of a ripe moral experience.[5] (2) Nor is this theory consistent with {74} the known nature of man. We know of no separate and independent organ called conscience. Man must not be divided against himself. Reason and feeling enter into all acts of will, since these are not processes different in kind, but elements of voluntary activity itself and inseparable from it. It is impossible for a man to be determined in his actions or judgments by a mere external formula of duty, a 'categorical imperative,' as Kant calls it, apart from motives. Moreover, all endowments may be regarded as divine gifts, and it is a precarious position to claim for one faculty a spiritually divine or supernatural origin which is denied to others. Man is related to God in his whole nature. The view which regards the law of duty as something foreign to man, stern and unchangeable in its decrees, and in nowise dependent upon the gradual development and growing content of the moral life is not consistent either with history or psychology.
2.Evolutionalism, which since the time of Darwin has been applied by Spencer and others to account for the growth of our moral ideas, holds that conscience is the result of a process of development, but does not limit the process to the life of the individual. It extends to the experience of the race. While admitting the existence of conscience as a moral faculty in the rational man of to-day, it holds that it did not exist in his primitive ancestors. Earlier individuals accumulated a certain amount of experience and moral knowledge, the result of which, as a habit or acquired capacity, was handed down to their successors. From the first man has been a member of society, and is what he is in virtue of his relation to it. All that makes him man, all his powers of body and mind, are inherited. His instincts and desires, which are the springs of action, are themselves the creation of heredity, association and environment. The individual takes its shape at every point from its relation to the social organism of which it is a part. What man really seeks from the earliest is satisfaction. 'No school,' says Mr. Spencer, 'can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable {75} state of feeling.'[6] Prolonged experience of pleasure in connection with actions which serve social ends has resulted in certain physiological changes in the brain and nervous system rendering these actions constant. Thus, according to Spencer, is begotten conscience.
While acknowledging the service which the evolutionary theory has done in calling attention to the place and function of experience and social environment in the development of the moral life, and in showing that moral judgment, like every other capacity, must participate in the gradual unfolding of personality, as a conclusive explanation of conscience it must be pronounced insufficient. Press the analysis of sensation as far back as we please, and make an analysis of instincts and feelings as detailed as possible, we never get in man a mere sensation, as we find it in the lower animal; it is always sensation related to, and modified by, a self. In the simplest human instincts there is always a spiritual element which is the basis of the possibility at once of knowledge and morality. 'That countless generations,' says Green, 'should have passed during which a transmitted organism was progressively modified by reaction on its surroundings, by struggle for existence or otherwise, till its functions became such that an eternal consciousness could realise or produce itself through them—might add to the wonder with which the consideration of what we do and are must always fill us, but it could not alter the results of that consideration.'[7]
No process of evolution, even though it draws upon illimitable ages, can evolve what was not already present in the form of a spiritual potency. The empiric treatment of conscience as the result of social environment and culture leads inevitably back to the assumption of some rudimentary moral consciousness without which the development of a moral sense would be an impossibility. The history of mankind, moreover, shows that conscience, so far from being merely the reflex of the prevailing customs and institutions of a particular age, has frequently {76} closed its special character by reacting upon and protesting against the recognised traditions of society. The individual conscience has often been in advance of its times; and the progress of man has been secured as much by the champions of liberty as by those who conform to accepted customs. In all moral advance there comes a stage when, in the conflict of habit and principle, conscience asserts itself, not only in revealing a higher ideal, but in urging men to seek it.
III.The Validity and Witness of Conscience.—It is not, however, with the origin of conscience, but with its capacities and functions in its developed state that Ethics is primarily concerned. The beginning must be interpreted by the end, and the process by the result to which it tends.
1. The Christian doctrine is committed neither to the intuitional nor the evolutionist theory, but rather may be said to reconcile both by retaining that which is true in each. While it holds to the inherent ability on the part of a being made in God's image to recognise at the different stages of his growth and development God's will as it has been progressively revealed, it avoids the necessity of conceiving man as possessing from the very beginning a full-fledged organ of infallible authority. The conscience participates in man's general progress and enlightenment. Nor can the moral development of the individual be held separate from the moral development of the race. As there is a moral solidarity of mankind, so the individual conscience is conditional by the social conscience. The individual does not start in life with a full-grown moral apparatus any more than he starts with a matured physical frame. The most distinctively spiritual attainments of man have their antecedents in less human and more animal capacities. As there is a continuity of human life, so individuals and peoples inherit the moral assets of previous generations, and incorporate in their experience all past attainments. Conscience is involved in man's moral history. It suffers in his sin and alienation from God, becoming clouded in its insight and feeble in its testimony, but it shares also in his {77} spiritual advancement, growing more sensitive and decisive in its judgments.
(1) Conscience, as the New Testament teaches, can bepervertedand debased. It is always open to a free agent to disobey his conscience and reject its authority. On the intuitional theory, which regards the conscience as a separable and independent faculty, it would be difficult to vindicate the terrible consequences of such conduct. It is because the conscience is the man himself as related to the consciousness of the divine will that the effects are so injurious. Conscience may be (a)Stained, defiled, and polluted in its very texture (1 Cor. viii. 7); (b)Brandedor seared (1 Tim. iv. 2), rendered insensible to all feeling for good; (c)Perverted, in which the very light within becomes darkness. In this last stage the man calls evil good and good evil—the very springs of his nature are poisoned and the avenues of his soul are closed.
'This is death, and the sole death,When man's loss comes to him from his gain.'[8]
(2) But if conscience can be perverted it may also beimproved. The education is twofold, social and individual. Through society, says Green, personality is actualised. 'No individual can make a conscience for himself. He always needs a society to make it for him.'[9] There is no such thing as a purely individual conscience. Man can only realise himself, come to his best, in relation to others. The conditions amid which a man is born and reared—the home, the school, the church, the state—are the means by which the conscience is exercised and educated. But the individual is not passive. He has also a part to play; and the whole task of man may be regarded as an endeavour to make his conscience effective in life. The New Testament writers refrain from speaking of the conscience as an unerring and perfect organ. Their language implies rather the possibility of its gradual enlightenment; and St. Paul specially dwells upon the necessity of 'growing in spiritual {78} knowledge and perception.' As life advances moral judgment may be modified and corrected by fuller knowledge, and the perception of a particular form of conduct as good may yield to the experience of something better.
2. 'It is one of the most wonderful things,' says Professor Wundt, 'about moral development, that it unites so many conditions of subordinate value in the accomplishment of higher results,'[10] and the worth of morality is not endangered because the grounds of its realisation in special cases do not always correspond in elevation to the moral ideas. The conscience is not an independent faculty which issues its mandates irrespective of experience. Its judgments are always conditioned by motives. The moral imperatives of conscience may be grouped under four heads:[11] (1)External constraints, including all forms of punishment for immoral actions and the social disadvantages which such actions involve. These can only produce the lowest grade of morality, outward propriety, the mere appearance of virtue which has only a negative value in so far as it avoids what is morally offensive. (2)Internal constraints, consisting of influences excited by the example of others, by public opinion and habits formed through education and training. (3)Self-satisfaction, originating in the agent's own consciousness. It may be a sense of pleasure or feeling of self-approbation: or higher still, the idea of duty for its own sake, commonly called 'conscientiousness.' (4)The ideal of life, the highest imperative of conscience. Here the nobility of life, as a whole, the supreme life-purpose, gives meaning and incentive to each and every action. The ideal of life is not, however, something static and completed, given once and for all. It grows with the enlightenment of the individual and the development of humanity. The consciousness of every age comprehends it in certain laws and ends of life. The highest form of the ideal finds its embodiment in what are called noble characters. These ethical heroes rise, in rare and exceptional circumstances, above the ordinary level of {79} common morality, gathering up into themselves the entire moral development of the past, and radiating their influence into the remotest distances of the future. They are the embodiments of the conscience of the race, at once the standard and challenge of the moral life of mankind, whose influence awakens the slumbering aspirations of men, and whose creative genius affects the whole history of the world, lifting it to higher levels of thought and endeavour.
The supreme example—unique, however, both in kind and degree, and differing by its uniqueness from every other life which has in some measure approximated to the ideal—is disclosed in Jesus Christ. Thus it is that the moral consciousness of the world generally and of the individual in particular, of which the conscience is the organ and expression, develops from less to more, under the influence of the successive imperatives of conduct, till finally it attains to the vision of the greatness of life as it is revealed in its supreme and all-commanding ideal.[12]
3. Finally, in this connection the question of thepermanence of consciencemay be referred to. Is the ultimate of life a state in which conscience will pervade every department of a man's being, dominating all his thoughts and activities? or is the ideal condition one in which conscience shall be outgrown and its operation rendered superfluous? A recent writer on Christian ethics[13] makes the remarkable statement that where there is no sense of sin conscience has no function, and he draws the inference that where there is complete normality and perfect moral health conscience will be in abeyance. Satan, inasmuch as he lacks all moral instinct, can know nothing of conscience; and, because of His sinlessness, Jesus must also be pronounced conscienceless. Hence the paradox attributed to Machiavelli: 'He who is without conscience is either a Christ or a devil.' But though it is true that the Son of Man had no actual experience of sin, and could not, indeed, feel remorse or contrition, yet in so far as He was man there was in Him {80} the possibility of sin, and in the intimate relation which He bore to the human race He had a most accurate and clear knowledge both of the meaning and consequences of evil. So far from saying that Christ had no conscience, it would be nearer the truth to say that He had a perfect conscience, a personality and fullness of consciousness which was a complete reflection of, and harmony with, the highest conceivable good. The confusion of thought into which Professor Lemme seems to fall is due, we cannot help thinking, to the too restricted and negative signification he gives to conscience. Conscience is not merely the faculty of reproving and approving one's own conduct when brought into relation with actual sin. It is involved in every moral judgment. A good conscience is not only the absence of an evil one. It has also a positive sanctioning value. The 'ought' of life is constantly present. It is the whole man ever conscious of, and confronted by, his ideal self. The conscience participates in man's gradual progress and enlightenment; so far from the individual growing towards a condition in which self-judgment ceases, he is progressing rather in moral discernment, and becoming more and more responsive to the will of Him whose impress and image he bears upon his soul.
The tendency of modern physiological accounts of conscience has been to undermine its authority and empty life of its responsibility, but no theory of the origin of conscience must be permitted to invalidate its judgments. If conscience has any moral worth it is that it contains the promise and witness of God. The prime question is, What is the nature of its testimony? According to the teaching of Scripture it bears witness to the existence of a higher than man—to a divine Person with whom he is spiritually akin and to whom he is accountable.
'God's most intimate presence in the soul.' As the revelation of God's will grows clearer man's ideal becomes loftier. Hence a man's conscience is the measure of his moral life. It reveals God, and in the light of God reveals man to himself. We carry a 'forever' within our bosom, {81} 'ein Gott in unserer Brust,'[14] as Goethe says, which reminds us that even while denizens of this earth we are citizens of heaven and the sharers of an eternal life. Like another John the Baptist, conscience points to one greater than itself. It emphasises the discord that exists between the various parts of man's nature, a discord which it condemns but cannot remove. It can judge, but it cannot compel. Hence it places man before Christ, and bids him yield to the sway of a new transforming power. As one has finely said, 'He who has implanted in every breast such irrefragible testimony to the right, and such unappeasable yearnings for its complete triumph, now comes in His own perfect way to reveal Himself as the Lord of conscience, the Guide of its perplexities, the Strength of its weakness and the Perfecter of its highest hopes.'[15]
[1] Davidson,The Christian Conscience.
[2] Cf. Symonds,Studies of Greek Poets, first series, p. 191.
[3]Antigone, Plumptre's Trans., 455-9.
[4] Cf. Bunsen,God in History, vol. ii. p. 224; also Campbell,Religion in Greek Literature.
[5] Cf. Wundt,Ethik, vol. ii. p. 66.
[6]Data of Ethics, p. 18.
[7]Proleg., section 83.
[8] Browning.
[9]Proleg., section 321.
[10]Ethik, vol. ii. p. 66.
[11]Idem.
[12] Cf. Wundt,Ethik, vol. ii. pp. 67-74.
[13] Lemme,Christliche Ethik, vol. i.
[14]Tasso, act iii. scene 2.
[15] Davidson,The Christian Conscience, p. 113.
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Closely connected with the conscience as a moral capacity is the power of self-determination, or as it is popularly called—free-will. If conscience is the manifestation of man as knowing, will is more especially his manifestation as a being who acts. The subject which we now approach presents at once a problem and a task. The nature of freedom has been keenly debated from the earliest times, and the history of the problem of the will is almost the history of philosophy. The practical question which arises is whether the individual has any power by which the gulf between the natural and the spiritual can be transcended. Can man choose and decide for a spiritual world above that in which he is by nature involved? The revelation of the good must, indeed, precede the activity of man. But at the same time the change cannot merely happen to him. He cannot simply be a passive recipient. The new life must be taken up by his own activity, and be made his by his own decision and acceptance. This responsive activity on the part of man is the task which life presents to the will.
Much obviously depends upon the answer we are able to give to this question. If man has no power of choice, no capacity of self-determination, and is nothing more than a part of the natural world, then the ethical life is at once ruled out of court.
The difficulties connected with the problem of moral freedom resolve themselves mainly into three: a scientific, a psychological, and a theological.
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I. On the part of natural science it is claimed that man is subject, like everything else, to physical necessity.
II. From the psychological standpoint it is urged that man's actions are always determined by the strongest motive.
III. On the theological side it is alleged that human freedom is incompatible with divine Sovereignty. A complete doctrine of freedom would require to be examined in the light of these three objections. For our purpose it will be sufficient to indicate briefly the value of these difficulties, and the manner in which they may be met.
The wonderful progress of the natural sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century has tended to banish the old idea of freedom from the realm of experience. Science, it is maintained, clearly shows that man belongs to a great world-movement, in relation to which his whole life and work are completely determined. Though even in earlier ages, and especially in Stoic philosophy, this conception of life was not ignored, it is more particularly in recent times, under the influence of the evolutionary theory, that the idea of determination has been applied with relentless insistence to the structure of the soul. There is, it is alleged, no room for change or spontaneity. Everything, down to the minutest impulse, depends upon something else, and proceeds from a definite cause. The idea of choice is simply the remnant of an unscientific mode of thinking. It might be sufficient to reply that in thus reducing life and experience to a necessary part of a world-whole, more is surrendered than even science is willing to yield. The freedom which some writers reject in the interests of science they attempt to introduce in an altered form. Why are these philosophers so anxious to conserve the ethical consequences of life? Is it not because they feel that there is something in man which will not fit into a rigid world-mechanism, and that conduct would cease {84} to have moral worth if life were reduced to a causal series of happenings? But it may be further argued that, if the mechanical conception of life, which reduces the spiritual to the natural, were consistently carried out it would lead not merely to the destruction of the moral life, but to the destruction of science itself. If man is merely a part of nature, subject entirely to nature's law, then the realities of the higher life—love, self-sacrifice, devotion to ends beyond ourselves—must be radically re-interpreted or regarded simply as illusions. But it is also true that from this standpoint science itself is an illusion. For if reality lies only in the passing impressions of our sensible nature, the claim of science to find valid truth must end in the denial of the very possibility of knowledge. Does not the very existence of physical science imply the priority of thought? While in one sense it may be conceded that man is a part of nature, does not the truth, which cannot be gainsaid, that he is aware of the fact, prove a certain priority and power which differentiates him from all other phenomena of the universe? If he is a link in the chain of being, he is at least a link which is conscious of what he is. He is a being who knows himself, indeed, through the objective world, but also realises himself only as he makes himself its master and the agent of a divine purpose to which all things are contributing, and for which all things exist. In all our reasoning and endeavour we must start from the unity of the self-conscious soul. Whatever we can either know or achieve, isourtruth,ouract presented in and through our self-consciousness. It is impossible for us to conceive any standard of truth or object of desire outside of our experience. As a thinking and acting being man pursues ends, and has the consciousness that they are his own ends, subject to his own choice and control. It is always the self that the soul seeks; and the will is nothing else than the man making and finding for himself another world.
The attempt has recently been made to measure mental states by their physical stimuli and explain mental {85} processes by cerebral reaction. It is true that certain physical phenomena seem to be invariably antecedent to thought, but so far science has been unable to exhibit the form of nexus between these physical antecedents and ideas. Even if the knowledge of the topography of the brain were immeasurably more advanced than it now is, even though we could observe the vast network of nerve-fibres and filaments of which the brain is composed, and could discern the actual changes in brain-cells under nerve stimulations, we should still be a long way off from understanding the nature and genesis of ideas which can only be known to us as immediate in their own quality. All that we can ever affirm is that a certain physical excitation is the antecedent of thought. It is illegitimate to say that it is the 'cause' of thought; unless, indeed, the word 'cause' be invested with no other meaning than that which is involved in such a conception. It is, however, in a very general way only, and within an exceedingly narrow range, that such measurement is possible. We do not even know at present what nerves correspond to the sensations of heat and cold, pain and joy; and all attempts to localise will-centres have proved unavailing.
The finer and more delicate feelings cannot be gauged. But even though the alleged parallelism were entirely demonstrated, the immediate and pertinent question would still remain, Who or what is the investigator? Is it an ego, a thinking self? or is it only a complex of vibrations or mechanical impressions bound together in a particular body which, for convenience, is called an ego? Are the so-called entities—personality, consciousness, self—but symbols, as Professor Mach says, useful in so far as they help us to express our physical sensations, but which with further research must be pronounced illusions?[1] Monistic naturalism, which would explain all psychical experiences in terms of cerebral action, must not be allowed to arrogate to itself powers which it does not possess, and quietly brush {86} aside facts which do not fit into its system. The moral sanctions so universally and deeply rooted in the consciousness of mankind, the feelings of responsibility, of guilt and regret; the soul's fidelities and heroisms, its hopes and fears, its aims and ideals—the poetry, art, and religion that have made man what he is, all that has contributed to the uplifting of the world—are, to say the least, unaccounted for, if it must be held that 'man is born in chains.' Primary facts must not be surrendered nor ultimate experiences sacrificed in the interests of theoretic simplicity. In the recent anti-metaphysical movement of Germany, of which Haeckel, Avenarius, Oswald and Mach are representatives, there is presented the final conflict. It is not freedom of will only that is at stake, it is the very existence of a spiritual world. 'Es ist der Kampf um die Seele.'[2]
If the world forms a closed and 'given' system in which every particular is determined completely by its position in the whole, then there can be no place for spontaneity, initiative, creation, which all investigation shows to be the distinctive feature in human progress and upward movement. So far from its being true that the world makes man, it would be nearer the truth to say that man makes the world. A 'given' world can never be primary.[3] There must be a mind behind it. We fall back, therefore, upon the principle which must be postulated in the whole discussion—the unity and self-determining activity of the self-conscious mind.
We may now proceed to the second problem of the will, the objection that human action is determined by motives, and that what we call freedom is nothing else than the necessary result of the pressure of motives upon the will. In other words, the conduct of the individual is always determined by the strongest motive. It will be seen on examination that this objection is just another form of that which we have already considered. Indeed, the {87} analogy of mechanical power is frequently applied to the motives of the will. Diverse motives have been compared to different forces which meet in one centre, and it is supposed that the result in action is determined by the united pressure of these various motives. Now it may be freely admitted at the outset that the individual never acts except under certain influences. An uninfluenced man, an unbiassed character cannot exist. Not for one moment do we escape the environment, material and moral, which stimulates our inner life to reaction and response. It is not contended that a man is independent of all motives. What we do affirm is that the self-realising potentiality of personality is present throughout. Much of the confusion of thought in connection with this subject arises from a false and inadequate notion of personality. Personality is the whole man, all that his past history, present circumstances and future aims have made him, the result of all that the world of which he is a part has contributed to his experience. His bodily sensations, his mental acts, his desires and motives are not detached and extraneous forces acting on him from without, but elements which constitute his whole being. The person, in other words, is the visible or tangible phenomenon of something inward—the phase or function by which an individual agent takes his place in the common world of human intercourse and interaction, and plays his peculiar and definite part in life.[4] But this totality of consciousness, so far from reducing man to a 'mere manufactured article,' gives to personality its unique distinction. By personality all things are dominated. 'Other things exist, so to speak, for the sake of their kind and for the sake of other things: a person is never a mere means to something beyond, but always at the same time an end in himself. He has the royal and divine right of creating law, of starting by his exception a new law which shall henceforth be a canon and a standard.'[5]
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The objection to the freedom of the will which we are now considering may be best appreciated if we examine briefly the two extreme theories which have been maintained on the subject. On the one hand,determinismor, as it is sometimes called, necessitarianism, holds that all our actions are conditioned by law—the so-called motive that influences a man's conduct is simply a link in a chain of occurrences of which his act is the last. The future has no possibilities hidden in its womb. I am simply what the past has made me. My circumstances are given, and my character is simply the necessary resultant of the natural forces that act upon me. On the other hand,indeterminism, or libertarianism, insists upon absolute liberty of choice of the individual, and denies that necessity or continuity determines conduct. Of two alternatives both may now be really possible. You can never predict what will be, nor lay down absolutely what a man will do. The world is not a finished and fixed whole. It admits of infinite possibilities, and instead of the volition I have actually made, I could just as easily have made a different one.
Without entering upon a detailed criticism of these two positions, it may be said that both contain an element of truth and are not so contradictory as they seem. On the one hand, all the various factors of the complex will may seem to be determined by something that lies beyond our control, and thus our will itself be really determined. But, on the other hand, moral continuity in its last analysis is only a half truth, and must find its complement in the recognition of the possibilities of new beginnings. The very nature of moral action implies, as Lotze has said, that new factors may enter into the stream of causal sequence, and that even though a man's life may be, and must be, largely conditioned by his circumstances, his activity may be really originative and free. What the determinists seem to forget is, as Green says, that 'character is only formed through a man's conscious presentation to himself of objects ashisgood, as that in which his self-satisfaction is found.'[6] {89} Desires are always for objects which have a value for the individual. A man's real character is reflected in his desires, and it is not that he is moved by some outside abstract force, which, being the strongest, he cannot resist, but it is because he putshimselfinto the desire or motive that it becomes the strongest, the one which he chooses to follow. My motives are really part of myself, of which all my actions are the outcome. Human desires, in short, are not merely external tendencies forcing a man this way or that way. They are a part of the man himself, and are always directed towards objects related to a self; and it is the satisfaction of self that makes them desirable.
On the other hand, the fallacy lurking in the libertarian view arises from the fact that it also makes a hard and fast distinction between the self and the will. The indeterminists speak as if the self had amongst its several faculties a will which is free in the sense of being able to act independently of all desires and motives. But, as a matter of fact, the will, as we have said, is simply the man, and it cannot be separated from his history, his character, and the objects which his character desires. To speak, as people sometimes do in popular language, of being free to do as they like—that is, to be influenced by no motive whatever, is not only an idea absurd in itself, but one which, if pushed to its consequences, would be subversive of all freedom, and consequently of all moral value. 'The liberty of indifference,' if the phrase means anything at all, implies not merely that the agent is free from all external compulsion, but that he is free from himself, not determined even by his own character. And if we ask what it really is that causes him to act, it must be answered, some caprice of the moment, some accidental impulse or arbitrary freak of fancy. The late Professor James makes a valiant attempt to solve the 'dilemma of determinism' by resorting to the idea of 'chance' which he defines as a 'purely relative term, giving us no information about that which is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected with something else—not controlled, secured or {90} necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence.'[7] 'On my way home,' he says, 'I can choose either of two ways'; and suppose 'the choice is made twice over and each time falls on a different street.' 'Imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then am set again at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice was made. Imagine then that,everything else being the same,[8] I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. Looking outwardly at these universes of which my two acts are a part, can you say which is the impossible and accidental one and which the rational and necessary one?' Perhaps an outsider could not say, but Professor James, if he examined his reasons, could say. He assumes that 'everything else is the same.' But that is just what cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation—a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be determined by the kind of man he was.
Let us not seek to defend freedom on inadequate grounds, or contend for a spurious liberty. No view of the subject should indeed debar us from acknowledging 'changes in heart and life,' but a misunderstanding of the doctrine of freedom may tend to paralyse moral initiative. The attempt to sunder the will and the understanding and discover the source of freedom in the realm of the emotions, as the voluntarists seek to do, cannot be regarded as satisfactory or sound philosophy. In separating faith and knowledge the Ritschlian school tends to make subjective feeling the measure of truth and life; while recent psychological experiments in America with the phenomena of faith-healing, hypnotism and suggestion, claim to have discovered hitherto unsuspected potencies of the will. This line of thought has been welcomed by many as a relief from the mechanical theory of life and as a witness to moral {91} freedom and Christian hope. But so far from proving the sovereignty and autonomy of the will, it discloses rather the possibilities of its abject bondage and thraldom.
No one can doubt the facts which Professor James and others, working from the side of religious psychology, have recently established, or discredit the instances of conversion to which the annals of the Christian life so abundantly testify. But even conversion must not be regarded as a change without motives. There must be some connection between motive, character and act, otherwise the new spiritual experience would be simply a magical happening lacking all moral significance. If there were no continuity of consciousness, if I could be something to-day irrespective of what I was yesterday, then all we signify by contrition, penitence, and shame would have no real meaning. Even the grace of God works through natural channels and human influences. The past is not so much obliterated, as taken up into the new life and transfigured with a new value.
The truth of spontaneity and initiative in life has lately found in M. Bergson a fresh and vigorous advocacy, and we cannot be too grateful to that profound thinker for his reassertion of some neglected aspects of freedom and his philosophical vindication of the doctrine which puts it in a new position of prominence and security. 'Life is Creation.' 'Reality is a perpetual growth, a Creation pursued without end.' 'Our will performs this miracle.' 'Every human work in which there is invention, every movement that manifests spontaneity brings something new into the world. In the composition of the work of genius, as in a simple free decision, we create what no mere assemblage of materials could have given.'[9] But yet he says that 'life cannot create absolutely because it is confronted with matter. . . . But it seizes upon this matter which is necessity itself, and strives to introduce into it the greatest possible amount of indetermination and liberty.'[10] Even Bergson, though he emphasises so strongly immediacy and incalculableness in {92} all human action, cannot deny that the bodily arrangements and mechanisms are at least the basis of the working of the soul. Man cannot produce any change in the world except in strict co-ordination with the forces and qualities of material things. The idea in his consciousness is powerless save in so far as it is a guide to combinations and modifications which are latent in reality. The man who works with his hands does not create out of nothing a new totality. Even genius is conditioned by the elements he works with and upon. He can do nothing with his materials beyond what it is in themselves to yield. This sense of co-operation is strongly marked in the higher grades of activity. The world may be in the making, as Bergson says, but it is being made of possibilities already inherent in it. Life may be incalculable, and you can never know beforehand what a great man, indeed, what any man may achieve, but even the originality of a Leonardo or a Beethoven cannot effect the impossible or contradict the order of nature. The sculptor feels that the statue is already lying in the marble awaiting only his creative touch to bring it forth. The metal is alive in the worker's hands, coaxing him to make of it something beautiful.[11] Purpose does not come out of an empty mind. Freedom and initiative never begin entirelyde novo. Life is a 'creation,' but it is also, as M. Bergson labours to prove, an 'evolution.' Our ideals are made out of realities. Our heaven must be shaped out of the materials of our earth.
A moral personality is a self-conscious, self-determining being. But that is only half the reality. The other half is that it is a self-determining consciousnessin a world. As Bergson is careful to tell us, the shape and extent of self-consciousness are determined by our relation to a world which acts upon us and upon which we act. Without a world in which we had personal business we should have no self-consciousness.
The co-operation of spontaneity and necessity is implied {93} in every true idea of freedom. If a man were the subject of necessity alone he would be merely the creature of mechanical causation. If he had the power of spontaneity only his so-called freedom would be a thing of caprice. Necessity means simply that man is conditioned by the world in which he lives. Spontaneity means, not that he can conjure up at a wish a dream-world of no conditions, but that he is not determined by anything outside of himself, since the very conditions amid which he is placed may be transmuted by him into elements of his own character. Moral decisions are never isolated from ideals and tasks presented by our surroundings. The self cannot act on any impulse however external till the impulse has transplanted itself within and become our motive.
'Our life,' says Eucken, 'is a conflict between fate and freedom, between being "given" and spontaneity. Spiritual individuality does not come to any one, but has first to be won by the work of life, elevating that which destiny brings. . . . The idea of freedom calls man to independent co-operation in the conflict of the worlds. It gives to the simply human and apparently commonplace an incomparable greatness. However powerful destiny may be, it does not determine man entirely: for even in opposition to it there is liberation from it.'[12]
It will not be necessary to dwell at any length on the third difficulty—the incompatibility of divine sovereignty and grace with moral personality.
How to reconcile divine power and human freedom is the great problem which meets us on the very threshold of the study of man's relation to God. The solution, in so far as it is possible for the mind, must be sought in the divine immanence. God works through man, and man acts through God. Reason, conscience, and will are equally the testimony to God's indwelling in man and man's {94} indwelling in God. It is, as St. Paul says, God who worketh in us both to will and to do. But just because of that inherent power, it is we who work out our own character and destiny. The divine is not introduced into human life at particular points or in exceptional crises only. Every man has something of the divine in him, and when he is truest to himself he is most at one with God. The whole meaning of human personality is a growing realisation of the divine personality. God's sovereignty has no meaning except in relation to a world of which He is sovereign, and His purposes can only be fulfilled through human agency. While His thoughts far transcend in wisdom and sublimity those of His creatures they must be in a sense of the same kind—thoughts, in other words, which beings made in His image can receive, love and, in a measure, share. And though God cannot be conceived as the author of evil, He may permit it and work through it, bringing order out of chaos, and evolving through suffering and conflict His sovereign purposes.
The problem becomes acutest when we endeavour to harmonise the antinomy of man's moral freedom and the doctrine of grace. However insoluble the mystery, it is not lessened by denying one side in the interest of unity. Scripture boldly affirms both truths. No writer insists more strenuously than the Apostle Paul on the sovereign election of God, yet none presents with greater fervour the free offer of salvation. In his ethical teaching, at least, Paul is no determinist. Freedom is the distinctive note of his conception of life. Life is a great and solemn trust committed to each by God, for the use or abuse of which every man will be called to account. His missionary zeal would have no meaning if he did not believe that men were free to accept or refuse his message. Paul's own example, indeed, is typical, and while he knew that he was 'called,' he knew, too, that it lay with him to yield himself and present his life as a living sacrifice to God. Jesus, too, throughout His ministry, assumed the ability of man freely to accept His call to righteousness, and though He speaks {95} of the change as a 'new birth,' a creation from above, beyond the strength of man to effect, He invariably makes His appeal to the will—'Follow Me,' 'Come unto Me.' He assumes in all His dealings with individuals that they have the power of decision. And so far from admitting that the past could not be undone, and no chain of habit broken, the whole purpose of His message and lifework was to proclaim the need and possibility of a radical change in life. So full of hope was He for man that He despaired of none, not even of those who had most grievously failed, or most utterly turned their back on purity. The parables in the Third Gospel of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son lay emphasis upon the possibility of recovery, and, in the case of the prodigal, specially on the ability to return for those who have gone astray.
The teaching of Scripture implies that while God is the source of all spiritual good, and divine grace must be present with and precede all rightful action of the human will, it rests with man to respond to the divine love. No human soul is left destitute of the visiting of God's spirit, and however rudimentary the moral life may be, no bounds can be set to the growth which may, and which God intends should, result wherever the human will is consentient. While, therefore, no man can claim merit in the sight of God, but must acknowledge his absolute dependency upon divine grace, no one can escape loss or blame if he wilfully frustrates God's design of mercy. Whatever mystery may attend the subject of God's sovereign grace, the Bible never presents it as negating the entire freedom of man to give or withhold response to the gift and leading of the divine spirit.
In the deepest New Testament sense to be free is to have the power of acting according to one's true nature. A man's ideal is his true self, and all short of that is for him a limitation of freedom. Inasmuch as no ideal is ever completely realised, true freedom is not so much a possession as a progressive appropriation. It is at once a gift and a task. It contains the twofold idea of emancipation {96} and submission. Mere deliverance from the lower self is not liberty. Freedom must be completed by the appropriation of the higher self and the acceptance of the obligations which that self involves. It is to be acquired through submission to the truth. 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' A man is never so free as when he is the bondsman of Christ. The saying of St. Paul sums up the secret and essence of all true freedom: 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.'
[1] Mach,Erkenntniss und Irrtum. Vorwort. See alsoDie Analyse der Empfindungen, p. 20. 'Das Sich ist unrettbar,' he says.
[2] Cf. W. Schmidt,Der Kampf um die Seele, p. 13.
[3] Cf. Eucken.
[4] Cf. Wallace,Logic of Hegel, Proleg., p. 233.
[5] Wallace,Idem, p. 235. Cf. Aristotle's wise man whose conduct is notkata logonbutmeta logon.
[6]Proleg., section 108.
[7]The Will to Believe, p. 154.
[8]The italics are ours.
[9]Creative Evolution(Eng. trans.), p. 252.
[10]Idem, p. 265.
[11] Cf. Morris,Lects. on Art, p. 195; Bosanquet,Hist. of Aesthetic, p. 445; alsoIndividuality and Value, p. 166.
[12]Life's Basis and Life's Ideals, p. 181 f.
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Bearing in mind the three fundamental ideas lying at the root of all ethical inquiry—End, Norm, and Motive—we have now to deal with the shaping forces of the Christian life, the making of character. In this section, therefore, we shall be engaged in a discussion of the ideals, laws, and springs of moral action. And first, What is the supreme good? What is the highest for which a man should live? This question determines the main problem of life. It forces itself irresistibly upon us to-day, and the answer to it is the test of every system of morals.
But before endeavouring to determine the distinctively Christian ideal, as presented in the teaching of Jesus and interpreted by the growing Christian consciousness of mankind, it may be well to review briefly some of the main theories of life which are pressing their claims upon our attention to-day. Many of these modern views have arisen as a reaction against traditional religion. From the seventeenth century onwards, and especially during the nineteenth, there has been a growing disposition to call in question the Christian conception of life. The antagonism reveals itself not only in a distrust of all forms of religion, but also in a craving for wider culture. The old certitudes fail to satisfy men who have acquired new habits of reflection, and there is a disinclination to accept a scheme of life which seems to narrow human interests and exclude such departments as science, art, and politics. One reason of this change is to be found in the wonderful advance of science during the last century. Men's minds, withdrawn {100} from primary, and fixed upon secondary causes, have refused to believe that the order of nature can be disturbed by supernatural intervention. Whether the modern antipathy to Christianity is justified is not the question at present before us. We may see in the movements of our day not so much a proof that the old faith is false, as an indication that if Christianity is to regain its power a radical re-statement of its truths, and a more comprehensive application of its principles to life as a whole must be undertaken.
In the endeavour to find an all-embracing ideal of life two possibilities present themselves, arising from two different ways of viewing man. Human life is in one aspect receptive; in another, active. It may be regarded as dependent upon nature for its maintenance, or as a creative power whose function is not merely to receive what nature supplies, but to re-shape nature's materials and create a new spiritual world. Receptivity and activity are inseparable, and form together the harmonious rhythm of life.
But there has ever been a tendency to emphasise one or other of these aspects. The question has constantly arisen, Which is the more important for life—what we receive or what we create? Accordingly two contrasted conceptions of life have appeared—a naturalistic and an idealistic. Under the first we understand those theories which place man in the realm of sense and explain life by material conditions; under the second we group such systems as give to life an independent creative power.
1. Naturalism has usually taken three forms, an idyllic or poetic, a philosophic, and a scientific, of which Rousseau, Feuerbach, and Haeckel may be chosen as representatives.
(1) According to Rousseau, man is really a part of nature, {101} and only as he conforms to her laws and finds his satisfaction in what she gives can he be truly happy. Nature is the mother of us all, and only as we allow her spirit to pervade and nourish our being do we really live. The watchword, 'back to nature' may be said to have given the first impulse to the later call of the 'simple life,' which has arisen as a protest against the luxury, ostentation, and artificiality of modern times.
(2) The philosophical form of naturalism, as expounded by Feuerbach, inveighs against an idealistic interpretation of life. The author ofThe Essence of Christianitystarted as a disciple of Hegel, but soon reversed the Hegelian principle, and pronounced the spiritual world to be a fiction of the mind. Man belongs essentially to the earth, and is governed by his senses. Self-interest is his only motive, and egoism his sole law of life. It was only what might be expected, that the ultimate consequences of this philosophy of the senses should be drawn by a disciple of Feuerbach, Max Stirner,[1] in whose work,The Individual and His Property, the virtues of egoism are extolled, and contempt is poured upon all disinterestedness and altruism.
(3) The latest form of naturalism is the scientific or monistic, as represented by Haeckel. It may be described as scientific in so far as its author professes to deduce the moral life from biological principles. In the chapter[2] devoted to Ethics in his work,The Riddle of the Universe, his pronouncements upon morality are not scientifically derived, but simply dogmatically assumed. The underlying principle of monism is that the universe is a unity in which no distinction exists between the material and the spiritual. In this world as we know it there reigns only one kind of law, the invariable law of nature. The so-called spiritual life of man is not an independent realm having its own rights and aims; it belongs wholly to nature. The moral world is a province of the physical, and the key to all the departments of reality is to be found in science {102} alone. The doctrine of evolution is brought into the service of monism, and the attempt is made to prove that in the very process of biological development human thought, moral sentiment, and social instincts have been evolved. With a curious sacrifice of consistency, Haeckel does not agree with Feuerbach in exalting egoism to the place of supremacy in the moral life. He recognises two kinds of duty—duty to self and duty to society. The social sense once created is permanent, and rises to ever-fresh developments. But benevolence, like every other obligation, is, according to evolutionary monism, a product evolved from the battle of existence. Traced to its source, it has its spring in the physical organism, and is but an enlargement of the ego.[3]
The monistic naturalism of Haeckel offers no high ideal to life. Its Ethics is but a glorified egoism. Its dictates never rise above the impulses derived from nature. But not religion only with its kingdom of God, nor morality only with its imperatives, nor art with its power of idealising the world of nature, but even science itself, with its claim to unify and organise facts, proves that man stands apart from, and is higher than, the material world. The very existence of such activities in the invisible realm renders vain every attempt to reduce the spiritual to the natural, and to make truth, goodness and beauty mere outgrowths of nature.
2. On its ethical side naturalism is closely associated with the theory of life which bears the name ofutilitarianism—the theory which regards pleasure or profit as the aim of man. In its most independent form Hedonism can hardly be said to exist now as a reasoned theory. Carried out to its extreme consequences it reduces man to a mere animal. Hence a type of reflective egoism has taken the place of animal gratification, and the idea of ulterior benefit has succeeded to that of immediate pleasure.
The names associated with this theory of morals are those of Hobbes, Bentham, and the two Mills. Hobbes, {103} who preaches undiluted egoism,[4] may be regarded as the father of utilitarianism. But the title was first applied to the school of Bentham.[5] Bentham's watchword was 'utility' expressed in his famous formula—'The greatest happiness of the greatest number.' While renouncing the abstract ideal of equality, he yet asserted the equal claim of every individual to happiness. In its distribution 'each is to count for one, and no one for more than one.' Hence Bentham insisted upon an exact quantitative calculation of the consequences of our actions as the only sufficient guide to conduct. The end is the production of the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain.
J. S. Mill modified considerably the principle of utility by introducing the doctrine of the qualitative difference in pleasures.[6] While Bentham assumed self-interest as the only motive of conduct, Mill affirmed the possibility of altruism in the motive as well as in the end or criterion of right actions.[7] Thus the idea of utility was extended to embrace higher moral ends. But the antithesis between the 'self' and the 'other' was not overcome. To introduce the notion of sympathy, as Adam Smith and others did, is to beg the question. Try as you will, you cannot deduce benevolence from selfishness. The question for the utilitarian must always arise, 'How far ought I to follow my natural desires, and how far my altruistic?' There must be a constant conflict, and he can only be at peace with himself by striking a balance. The utilitarian must be a legalist. The principle of self-sacrifice does not spring from his inner being. Truth, love, sacrifice—all that gives to man his true worth as a being standing in vital relation to God—are only artificial adaptations based on convenience and general advantage.
3. Evolutionary ethics, as expounded by Spencer and others, though employing utilitarian principles, affords an ampler and more plausible account of life than early {104} Hedonism.[8] The evolutionists have enriched the idea of happiness by quietly slipping in many ends which really belong to the idea of the 'good.' As the term 'gravitation' was the magic word of the eighteenth century, so the word 'evolution' is the talisman of the present age. It must be admitted that it is a sublime and fruitful idea. It explains much in nature and history which the old static notion failed to account for. It has a great deal to teach us even in the spiritual sphere. But when applied to life as a whole, and when it is assumed to be the sole explanation of moral action, it is apt to rob the will of its initiative and reduce all moral achievements to merely natural factors in an unfolding drama of life. The soul itself, with all its manifestations and experiences, is treated simply as the resultant and harmonious effect of adaptation to environment. Man is regarded as the highest animal, the most richly specialised organism—the last of a long series in the development of life, the outstanding feature of which is the acquired power of complete adjustment to the world, of which it is a part. Strictly speaking, there is no room for a personal God in this mechanical theory of the universe. The world becomes inevitably 'the Be all and the End all.' Hence, as might be expected, while evolutionary Ethics claims to cover the whole range of this present life, it does not pretend to extend into the regions of the hereafter. It is concerned only with what it conceives to be the highest earthly good—the material and social well-being of mankind. But no theory of life can be pronounced satisfactory which explains man in terms of this earth alone. The 'Great Unknown' which Mr. Spencer posits[9] as the ultimate source of all power, is a force to be reckoned with; and, known or unknown, is the mightiest factor in all life's experiences. Man's spiritual nature in its whole range cannot be treated as of no account. 'The powers of the world to come' have an essential bearing upon human {105} conduct in this world. They shape our thoughts and determine our ideals. Hence any view of life which excludes from consideration the spiritual side of man, and limits his horizon by the things of this earth must of necessity be inadequate and unsatisfactory.
4. Closely connected with, and, indeed, arising out of, the evolutionary theory, another type of thought, prevalent to-day, falls to be noted—the socialistic tendency. It is now universally recognised that the individual cannot be treated as an isolated being, but only in relation to society of which he is a part. The emphasis is laid upon the solidarity of mankind, and man is explained by such social facts as heredity and environment. Marx and Engels, the pioneers of the socialistic movement, accepted in the fullest sense the scientific doctrine of evolution. So far from being a mere Utopian dream, Marx contends that Socialism is the inevitable outcome of the movement of modern society. The aim of the agitation is to bring men to a clear consciousness of a process which is going forward in all countries where the modern industrial methods prevail. Democracy must come to itself and assume its rights. The keynote of the past has been the exploitation of man by man in the three forms of slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour. The keynote of the future must be the exploitation of the earth by manassociated to man. The practical aim of Socialism is that industry is to be carried on by associated labourers jointly owning the means of production. Here, again, the all-pervading ideal is—the general good of society—the happiness of the greatest number. The reduction of all aims to a common level, the equalising of social conditions, the direction and control of all private interests and personal endeavours, are to be means to one end—the material good of the community. Socialism is not, however, confined to an agitation for material welfare. The industrial aspect of it is only a phase of a larger movement. On its ethical side it is the outcome of a strong aspiration after a higher life.[10] The world is awakening to {106} the fact that the majority of the human family has been virtually excluded from all participation in man's inheritance of knowledge and culture. The labouring classes have been from time immemorial sunk in drudgery and ignorance, bearing the burden of society without sharing in its happiness. It is contended that every man ought to have an opportunity of making the most of his life and obtaining full freedom for the development of body and mind. The aim to secure justice for the many, to protect the weak against the strong, to mitigate the fierceness of competition, to bring about a better understanding between capital and labour, and to gain for all a more elevated and expansive existence, is not merely consistent with, but indispensable to, a true Christian conception of life. But the question which naturally arises is, how this reformation is to be brought about. Never before have so many revolutionary schemes been proposed, and so many social panaceas for a better world set forth. It is, indeed, a hopeful sign of the times that the age of unconcern is gone and the temper of cautious inaction has yielded to scientific diagnosis and courageous treatment. It must not be forgotten, however, that the exclusively utilitarian position tends to lower the moral ideal, and that the exaggerated emphasis upon the social aspect of life fails to do justice to the independence of the individual. The tendency of modern political thought is to increase the control of government, and to regard all departments of activity as branches of the state, to be held and worked for the general good of the community. Thus there is a danger that the individual may gradually lose all initiative, and life be impoverished under a coercive mechanical system.
Socialism in its extreme form might easily become a new kind of tyranny. By the establishment of collectivism, by making the state the sole owner of all wealth, the sole employer of labour, and the controller of science and art, as well as of education and religion, there is a danger of crushing the spiritual side of man, and giving to all life and endeavour a merely naturalistic character and content.
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5. It was inevitable that an exaggerated insistence upon the importance of society should provoke an equally one-sided emphasis upon the worth of the individual, and that as a protest against the demands of Socialism there should arise a form of subjectivism which aims at complete self-affirmation.
(1) This tendency has received the name ofaesthetic-individualism. As a conception of life it may be regarded as intermediate between naturalism and idealism. While rooted in a materialistic view of life, it is moulded in the hands of its best advocates by spiritual aspirations. Its standpoint may be characterised as a theory of existence which seeks the highest value of life in the realm of the beautiful, and which therefore endeavours to promote the supreme good of the individual through devotion to art. Not only does the cultivation of art tend in itself to elevate life by concentrating the soul upon all that is fairest and noblest in the world, but the best means of enriching and ennobling life is to regard life itself as a work of art. This view of existence, it is claimed, widens the scope of experience, and leads us into ampler worlds of interest and enjoyment. It aims at giving to personality a rounded completeness, and bringing the manifold powers and passions of man into harmonious unity. As a theory of life it is not new. Already Plato, and still more Aristotle, maintained that a true man must seek his highest satisfaction not in the possession of external things, but in the most complete manifestation of his faculties. Individual aestheticism largely animated the Romantic movement of Germany at the beginning of last century. But probably the best illustration of it is to be found in Goethe and Schiller; while in our country Matthew Arnold has given it a powerful and persuasive exposition. It was the aim of Goethe to mould his life into a work of art, and all his activities and poetic aspirations were subordinated to this end. The beautiful harmonious life is the true life, the well-rounded whole from which must be banished everything narrow, vulgar, and distasteful, and in which {108} everything fair and noble must find expression. 'Each individual,' says Schiller, 'is at once fitted and destined for a pure ideal manhood.' And the attainment of this ideal requires from us the most zealous self-culture and a concentration of effort upon our own peculiar gifts.[11]
A new form of aestheticism has lately appeared which pretends to combine morality and culture. 'The New Ethic,'[12] as it is called, protests against the sombreness of religious traditions and the rigidity of moral restrictions, and assigns to art the function of emancipating man and idealising life. But what this movement really offers under its new catchword is simply a subtler form of epicureanism, a finer self-indulgence. It is the expression of a desire to be free from all restraint, to close one's eyes to the 'majesty of human suffering,' allowing one's thoughts to dwell only upon the agreeable and gay in life. It regards man as simply the sum-total of his natural inclinations, and conceives duty to be nothing else than the endeavour to bring these into equilibrium.
That the aesthetic culture of life is a legitimate element in Christian morality can hardly be denied by any one who has pondered the meaning in all its breadth of the natural simplicity and spiritual beauty of the manifestation of the Son of Man. The beautiful, the good, and the true are intimately connected, and constitute together all that is conceivably highest in life. Christian Ethics ought to include everything that is gracious and fair; and any theory of life that has no room for joy and beauty, for laughter and song, for appreciation of artistic or poetic expression, is surely deficient. But it is one thing to acknowledge these things; it is another to make them the whole of existence. We live in a world in which much else besides beauty and joy exists, and it is not by shirking contact with the unlovely phases of experience, but by resolutely accepting the ministry of sorrow they impose, {109} that we attain to our highest selves. The narrow Puritanism of a past age may need the corrective of the broader Humanism of to-day, but not less must the Ethic of self-culture be reinforced by the Ethic of self-sacrifice. We may not cultivate the beauty of life at the cost of duty, nor forget that it is often only through the immolation of self that the self can be realised.