LITERATURE

"The happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed is ... the sole standard, in conformity to which each individualoughtto be made to fashion his behavior. But whether it be this, or anything else that is to be done, there is nothing by which a man can ultimately bemadeto do it, but either pain or pleasure."

A kind of pain or pleasure which tends tomakean individual find his own good in the good of the community is asanction. Of these Bentham mentions four kinds, of which the first alone is not due to the will of others, but isphysical. Thus the individual may check his inclination to drink by a thought of the ills that flow from drunkenness. Metaphorically, then, he may be said to have a duty not to drink; strictly speaking, however, this is his own obvious interest. The sanctions proper are (a) political, consequences in the way of pleasure and pain (especially pain) attached to injunctions and prohibitions by a legal superior; (b) popular, the consequences following from the more indefinite influence of public opinion—such as being "sent to Coventry," being shunned, rendered unpopular, losing reputation, or honor, etc.; and (3) religious, penalties of hell and rewards of heaven attached to action by a divine being, or similar penances and rewardsby the representatives on earth (church, priests, etc.) of this divine being.[168]

Value and Deficiencies of This View.—The strong point of this explanation of duty is obviously that it recognizes the large, the very large, rôle played by social institutions, regulations, and demands in bringing home to a person the fact that certain acts, whether he is naturally so inclined or not, should be performed. But its weak point is that it tends to identify duty with coercion; to change the "ought" if not into a physical "must," at least into the psychological "must" of fear of pain and hope of pleasure. Hope of reward and fear of penalty are real enough motives in human life; but acts performed mainly or solely on their account do not, in the unprejudiced judgment of mankind, rank very high morally. Habitually to appeal to such motives is rather to weaken than to strengthen the tendencies in the individual which make for right action. The difficulty lies clearly in the purelyexternalcharacter of the "sanctions," and this in turn is due to the fact that the obligations imposed by the demands and expectancies of others do not have any intrinsic connection with the character of the individual of whom they are exacted. They are wholly external burdens and impositions.

The individual, with his desires and his pleasures, being made up out of particular states of feeling, is complete in himself. Social relationships must then be alien and external; if they modify in any way the existing body of feelings they are artificial constraints. One individual merelyhappensto live side by side with other individuals, who arein themselves isolated, and are complete in their isolation. If their external acts conflict, it may be necessary to invade and change the body of feelings which make up the self from which the act flows. Hence duty.

The later development of utilitarianism tended to get away from this psychical and atomic individualism; and to conceive the good of an individual as includingwithinhimself relations to others. So far as this was done, the demands of others, public opinion, laws, etc., became factorsin the development of the individual, and in arousing him to an adequate sense of what his good is, and of interest in effecting it. Later utilitarianism dwells less than Bentham upon external sanctions, and more upon an unconscious shaping of the individual's character and motives through imitation, education, and all the agencies which mould the individual's desires into natural agreement with the social type. While it is John Stuart Mill who insists most upon the internal and qualitative change of disposition that thus takes place,[169]it is Bain and Spencer who give the most detailed account of the methods by which it is brought about.

(b) Bain's Account.—His basis agrees with Bentham's: "The proper meaning, or import, of the terms (duty, obligation) refers to that class of action which is enforced by the sanction of punishment" (Bain,Emotions and Will, p. 286). But he sets less store by political legislation and the force of vague public opinion, and more by the gradual and subtle processes of family education. The lesson of obedience, that there are things to be done whether one wishes or no, is impressed upon the child almost unremittingly from the very first moment of life. There are three stages in the complete evolution of the sense of duty. The first, the lowest and that beyond which some persons never go, is that in which "susceptibility to pleasure and painis made use of to bring about obedience, and a mental association is rapidly formed between the obedience and apprehended pain, more or less magnified by fear." The fact that punishment may be kept up until the child desists from the act "leaves on his mind a certain dread and awful impression as connected with forbidden actions." Here we have in its germ conscience, acknowledgment of duty, in its most external form.

A child in a good home (and a citizen in a good state) soon adds other associations. The command is uttered, the penalty threatened, by those whom he admires, respects, and loves. This element brings in a new dread—the fear of giving pain to the beloved object. Such dread is more disinterested. It centers rather about the point of view from which the act is held wrong than about the thought of harm to self. As intelligence develops, the person apprehends the positive ends, the goods, which are protected by the command put on him; he sees the use and reason of the prohibition to which he is subject, and approving of what it safeguards, approves the restriction itself. "A new motive is added on and begirds the action with a threefold fear.... If the duty prescribed has been approved of by the mind asprotective of the general interests of persons engaging our sympathies, the violation of this on our part affects us with all the pain that we feel from inflictingan injury upon those interests."

Transformation into an Internal Power.—When the child appreciates "the reasons for the command, the character of conscience is entirely transformed." The fear which began as fear of the penalty that a superior power may inflict, adds to itself the fear of displeasing a beloved person; and is finally transformed into the dread of injuring interests the worth of which the individual appreciates and in which he shares. The sense of duty now "stands upon an independent foundation." It is an internal "ideal resemblance of public authority," "an imitation (or facsimile) within ourselves of the government without us." "Regard is now had to the intent and meaning of the law and not to the mere fact of its being prescribed by some power." Thus there is developed a sense of obligation in general, which may be detached from the particular deeds which were originally imposed under the sanction of penalty, and transferred to new ends which have never even been socially imposed, which the individual has perhaps for the first time conceived within himself. "The feeling and habit of obligation" which was generated from social pressure remains, but as a distinct individually cherished thing (Bain,Emotions and Will, p. 319 n.). This view of thefinalsense of obligation thus approximates Kant's view of the autonomous character of duty.

(c) Spencer's Account.—Herbert Spencer (like Bentham) lays emphasis upon the restraining influence of various social influences, but lays stress, as Bentham does not, upon theinternalchanges effected by long-continued, unremitting pressure exercised through the entire period of human evolution. Taken in itself, the consciousness of duty—the distinctively moral consciousness—is the control of proximate ends by remote ones, of simple by complex aims, of the sensory or presentative by the ideal or representative. An undeveloped individual or race lives and acts in the present; the mature is controlled by foresight of an indefinitely distant future. The thief who steals is actuated by a simple feeling, the mere impulse of acquisition; the business man conducts his acquisition in view of highly complex considerations of property and ownership. A low-grade intelligence acts only upon sensory stimulus, immediately present; a developed mind is moved by elaborate intellectual constructions, by imaginations and ideas which far outrun the observed or observable scene. Each step of the development of intelligence, of culture, whether in the individual or the race, is dependent upon ability tosubordinatethe immediatesimple, physically present tendency and aim to the remote, compound, and only ideally present intention (Spencer,Principles of Ethics, Vol. I., Part I, ch. vii.).

Subordination of Near to Remote Good Dependent on Social Influences.—"The conscious relinquishment of immediate and special good to gain distant and general good ... is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral." But this develops out of forms of restraint which are not moral; where the "relinquishment" and subordination of the present and temporary good is not consciously willed by the individual in view of a conscious appreciation of a distant and inclusive good; but where action in view of the latter is forced upon the individual by outside authority, operating by menace, and having the sanction of fear. These outside controls are three in number: political or legal; supernatural, priestly, or religious; and popular. All these external controls, working through dread of pain and promise of reward, bring about, however, in the individual a habit of looking to the remote, rather than to the proximate, end. At first the thought of these extrinsic consequences, those which do not flow from the act but from the reaction of others to it, is mixed up with the thought of its own proper consequences. But this association causes attention at least to be fixed upon intrinsic consequences that, because of their remoteness and complexity, might otherwise escape attention. Gradually the thought of them grows in clearness and efficacy and dissociates itself as a motive from the externally imposed consequences, and there is a control which alone is truly moral.

The Internal Sanction.—

"The truly moral deterrent from murder, is not constituted by a representation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation of the horror and hatred excited in fellow-men; but by a representation of thenecessary natural results—theinfliction of death agony on the victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed sufferings to his belongings" (Spencer,Ibid., p. 120).

The external constraints thus serve as a schoolmaster to bring the race and the individual to internal restraint. Gradually the abstract sense of coerciveness, authoritativeness, the need of controlling the present by the future good is disentangled, and there arises the sense of duty in general. But even this "is transitory and will diminish as fast as moralization increases" (Ibid., p. 127). Persistence in performance of a duty makes it a pleasure; an habitually exercised obligation is naturally agreeable.

In the present state of evolutionary development, obligation, or the demands made by the external environment, and spontaneous inclination, or the demand of the organism, cannot coincide. But at the goal of evolution, the organism and environment will be in perfect adjustment. Actions congenial to the former and appropriate to the latter will completely coincide. "In their proper times and places, and proportions, the moral sentiments will guide men just as spontaneously and adequately as now do the sensations" (Ibid., p. 129).

Criticism of Utilitarianism.—The utilitarian account of the development of the consciousness of duty or its emphasis upon concrete facts of social arrangements and education affords a much-needed supplement to the empty and abstract formalism of Kant. (i.) The individual is certainly brought to his actual recognition of specific duties and to his consciousness of obligation or moral law in general through social influences. Bain insists more upon the family training and discipline of its immature members; Bentham and Spencer more upon the general institutional conditions, or the organization of government, law, judicial procedure, crystallized custom, and public opinion. In reality, these two conditions imply and reënforce each other. It is through the school of the family, for the mostpart, that the meaning of the requirements of the larger and more permanent institutions are brought home to the individual; while, on the other hand, the family derives the aims and values which it enforces upon the attention of its individual members mainly from the larger society in which it finds its own setting. (ii.) The later utilitarianism, in its insistence upon an "internal sanction," upon the ideal personal, or free facsimile of public authority, upon regard for "intrinsic consequences," corrects the weak point in Bentham (who relies so unduly upon mere threat of punishment and mere fear of pain) and approximates in practical effect, though not in theory, Kant's doctrine of the connection of duty with the rational or "larger" self which is social, even if individual. Even in its revised version utilitarianism did not wholly escape from the rigid unreal separation between the selfhood of the agent and his social surroundings forced upon it by its hedonistic psychology.

Fictitious Theory of Nature of Self.—The supposition that the individual starts with mere love of private pleasure, and that, if he ever gets beyond to consideration of the good of others, it is because others have forced their good upon him by interfering with his private pleasures, is pure fiction. The requirements, encouragements, and approbations of others react not primarily upon the pleasures and calculations of the individual, but upon hisactivities, upon his inclinations, desires, habits. There is a common defect in the utilitarian and Kantian psychology. Both neglect the importance of the active, the organically spontaneous and direct tendencies which enter into the individual. Both assume unreal "statesof consciousness," passive sensations, and feelings. Active tendencies may be internally modified and redirected by the very conditions and consequences of their own exercise. Family discipline, jural influences, public opinion, may do little, or they may do much. But their educative influence is as far from themere association of feelings of pleasure and pain as it is from Kant's purely abstract law.Social influences enable an individual to realize the weight and import of the socially available and helpful manifestations of the tendencies of his own nature and to discriminate them from those which are socially harmful or useless.When the two conflict, the perception of the former is the recognition of duties as distinct frommereinclinations.

Duty and a Growing Character.—Duty is what is owed by a partial isolated self embodied in established, facile, and urgent tendencies, to that ideal self which is presented in aspirations which, since they are not yet formed into habits, have no organized hold upon the self and which can get organized into habitual tendencies and interests only by a more or less painful and difficult reconstruction of the habitual self. For Kant's fixed and absolute separation between the self of inclination and the self of reason, we substitute the relative and shifting distinction between those factors of self which have become so definitely organized into set habits that they take care of themselves, and those other factors which are more precarious, less crystallized, and which depend therefore upon conscious acknowledgment and intentionally directed affection. The consciousness of duty grows out of the complex character of the self; the fact that at any given time, it has tendencies relatively set, ingrained, and embodied in fixed habits, while it also has tendencies in process of making, looking to the future, taking account of unachieved possibilities. The former give the solid relatively formed elements of character; the latter, its ideal or unrealized possibilities. Each must play into the other; each must help the other out.

The conflict of duty and desire is thus an accompaniment of agrowingself. Spencer's complete disappearance of obligation would mean an exhausted and fossilized self; wherever there is progress, tension arises between what is already accomplished and what is possible. In a being whose "reach should exceed his grasp," a conflict within the self making for the readjustment of the direction of powers must always be found. The value of continuallyhaving to meet the expectations and requirements of others is in keeping the agent from resting on his oars, from falling back on habits already formed as if they were final. The phenomena of duty in all their forms are thus phenomena attendant upon the expansion of ends and the reconstruction of character. So far, accordingly, as the recognition of duty is capable of operating as a distinct rëenforcing motive, it operates most effectively, not as an interest in duty, or law in the abstract, but as an interest in progress in the face of the obstacles found within character itself.

LITERATUREThe most important references on the subject of duty are given in the text. To these may be added: Ladd,Philosophy of Conduct, chs. v. and xv.; Mackenzie,Manual, Part I., ch. iv.; Green,Prolegomena, pp. 315-320, 353-354 and 381-388; Sharp,International Journal of Ethics, Vol. II., pp. 500-513; Muirhead,Elements of Ethics, Book II., ch. ii.; McGilvary,Philosophical Review, Vol. XI., pp. 333-352; Stephen,Science of Ethics, pp. 161-171; Sturt,International Journal of Ethics, Vol. VII., 334-345; Schurman,Philosophical Review, Vol. III., pp. 641-654; Guyau,Sketch of Morals, without Obligation or Sanction.

The most important references on the subject of duty are given in the text. To these may be added: Ladd,Philosophy of Conduct, chs. v. and xv.; Mackenzie,Manual, Part I., ch. iv.; Green,Prolegomena, pp. 315-320, 353-354 and 381-388; Sharp,International Journal of Ethics, Vol. II., pp. 500-513; Muirhead,Elements of Ethics, Book II., ch. ii.; McGilvary,Philosophical Review, Vol. XI., pp. 333-352; Stephen,Science of Ethics, pp. 161-171; Sturt,International Journal of Ethics, Vol. VII., 334-345; Schurman,Philosophical Review, Vol. III., pp. 641-654; Guyau,Sketch of Morals, without Obligation or Sanction.

FOOTNOTES:[166]Last Essays on Church and Religion, preface.[167]Historically it has often taken theological form. Thus Paley defined virtue as "doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." Of obligation he said, "A man is said to be obliged, when he is urged by a violent motive resulting from the command of another."[168]The earlier English utilitarians (though not called by that name), such as Tucker and Paley, assert that upon this earth there is no exact coincidence of the right and the pleasure-giving; that it is future rewards and punishments which make the equilibrium. Sidgwick, among recent writers, has also held that no complete identification of virtue and happiness can be found apart from religious considerations. (SeeMethods of Ethics, p. 505. For theological utilitarianism see Albee,History.)[169]See hisUtilitarianism, ch. iii.

[166]Last Essays on Church and Religion, preface.

[167]Historically it has often taken theological form. Thus Paley defined virtue as "doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." Of obligation he said, "A man is said to be obliged, when he is urged by a violent motive resulting from the command of another."

[168]The earlier English utilitarians (though not called by that name), such as Tucker and Paley, assert that upon this earth there is no exact coincidence of the right and the pleasure-giving; that it is future rewards and punishments which make the equilibrium. Sidgwick, among recent writers, has also held that no complete identification of virtue and happiness can be found apart from religious considerations. (SeeMethods of Ethics, p. 505. For theological utilitarianism see Albee,History.)

[169]See hisUtilitarianism, ch. iii.

We have reached the conclusion that disposition as manifest in endeavor is the seat of moral worth, and that this worth itself consists in a readiness to regard the general happiness even against contrary promptings of personal comfort and gain. This brings us to the problems connected with the nature and functions of the self. We shall, in our search for the moral self, pass in review the conceptions which find morality in (1) Self-Denial or Self-Sacrifice, (2) Self-Assertion, (3) Combination of Regard for Self and for Others, (4) Self-Realization.

Widespread Currency of the Doctrine.—The notion that real goodness, or virtue, consists essentially in abnegation of the self, in denying and, so far as may be, eliminating everything that is of the nature of the self, is one of the oldest and most frequently recurring notions of moral endeavor and religion, as well as of moral theory. It describes Buddhism and, in large measure, the monastic ideal of Christianity, while, in Protestantism, Puritanism is permeated with its spirit. It characterized Cynicism and Stoicism. Kant goes as far as to say that every rational being must wish to be wholly free from inclinations. Popular morality, while not going so far as to hold that all moral goodness is self-denial, yet more or less definitely assumes that self-denial on its own account, irrespective of what comes out of it, is morally praiseworthy. A notion so deeply rooted and widely flourishing must have strongmotives in its favor, all the more so because its practical vogue is always stronger than any reasons which are theoretically set forth.

Origin of the Doctrine.—The notion arises from the tendency to identify the self with one of its own factors. It is one and the same self which conceives and is interested in some generous and ideal good that is also tempted by some near, narrow, and exclusive good. The force of the latter resides in thehabitualself, in purposes which have got themselves inwrought into the texture of ordinary character. Hence there is a disposition to overlook the complexity of selfhood, and to identify it with those factors in the self which resist ideal aspiration, and which are recalcitrant to the thought of duty; to identify the self with impulses that are inclined to what is frivolous, sensuous and sensual, pleasure-seeking. All vice being, then, egoism, selfishness, self-seeking, the remedy is to check it at its roots; to keep the self down in its proper place, denying it, chastening it, mortifying it, refusing to listen to its promptings. Ignoring the variety and subtlety of the factors that make up the self, all the different elements of right and of wrong are gathered together and set over against each other. All the good is placed once for all in some outside source, some higher law or ideal; and the source of all evil is placed within the corrupted and vile self. When one has become conscious of the serious nature of the moral struggle; has found that vice is easy, and to err "natural," needing only to give way to some habitual impulse or desire; that virtue is arduous, requiring resistance and strenuous effort, one is apt to overlook the habitual tendencies which are the ministers of the higher goods. One forgets that unless ideal ends were also rooted in some natural tendencies of the self, they could neither occur to the self nor appeal to the self. Hence everything is swept into the idea that the self is inherently so evil that it must be denied, snubbed, sacrificed, mortified.

In general, to point out the truth which this theory perverts, to emphasize the demand for constant reconstruction and rearrangement of the habitual powers of the self—is sufficient criticism of it. But in detail the theory exercises such pervasive influence that it is worth while to mention specifically some of the evils that accrue from it.

1. It so Maims and Distorts Human Nature as to Narrow the Conception of the Good.—In its legitimate antagonism to pleasure-seeking, it becomes a foe to happiness, and an implacable enemy of all its elements. Art is suspected, for beauty appeals to the lust of the eye. Family life roots in sexual impulses, and property in love of power, gratification, and luxury. Science springs from the pride of the intellect; the State from the pride of will.Asceticismis the logical result; a purely negative conception of virtue. But it surely does dishonor, not honor, to the moral life to conceive it as mere negative subjection of the flesh, mere holding under control the lust of desire and the temptations of appetite. All positive content, all liberal achievement, is cut out and morality is reduced to a mere struggleagainstsolicitations to sin. While asceticism is in no danger of becoming a popular doctrine, there is a common tendency to conceive self-control in this negative fashion; to fail to see that the important thing is some positive goodforwhich a desire is controlled. In general we overemphasize that side of morality which consists in abstinence andnotdoing wrong.

2. To Make so Much of Conflict with the "Flesh," is to Honor the Latter too Much.—It is to fix too much attention on it. It is an open lesson of psychology that to oppose doing an act by mere injunction not to do it, is to increase the power of the thingnotto be done, and to weaken the spring and effectiveness of the other motives, which, if positively attended to, might keep the obnoxious motive from gaining supremacy. The "expulsive power"of a generous affection is more to be relied upon than effort to suppress, which keeps alive the very thing to be suppressed. The history of monks and Puritan saints alike is full of testimony to the fact that withdrawal from positive generous and wholesome aims reënforces the vitality of the lower appetites and stimulates the imagination to play about them. Flagellation and fasting work as long as the body is exhausted; but the brave organism reasserts itself, and its capacities for science, art, the life of the family and the State not having been cultivated, sheer ineradicable physical instinct is most likely to come to the front.

3. We Judge Others by Ourselves Because We Have No Other Way to Judge.—It is impossible for a man who conceives his own good to be in "going without," in just restricting himself, to have any large or adequate idea of the good of others. Unconsciously and inevitably a hardening and narrowing of the conditions of the lives of others accompanies the reign of the Puritanic ideal. The man who takes a high view of the capacities of human nature in itself, who reverences its possibilities and is jealous for their high maintenance in himself, is the one most likely to have keen and sensitive appreciation of the needs of others. There is, moreover, no selfishness, no neglect of others more thoroughgoing, more effectively cruel than that which comes from preoccupation with the attainment of personal goodness, and this interest is an almost inevitable effect of devotion to the negative ideal of self-denial.

4. The Principle Radically Violates Human Nature.—This indeed is its claim—that human nature, just as human nature, requires to have violence done it. But the capacities which constitute the self demand fulfillment. The place, the time, the manner, the degree, and the proportion of their fulfillment, require infinite care and pains, and to secure this attention is the business of morals.Morals is a matter of direction, not of suppression. The urgency of desires and capacities for expression cannot be got rid of; nature cannot be expelled. If the need of happiness, of satisfaction of capacity, is checked in one direction, it will manifest itself in another. If the direction which is checked is an unconscious and wholesome one, that which is taken will be likely to be morbid and perverse. The one who is conscious of continually denying himself cannot rid himself of the idea that it ought to be "made up" to him; that a compensating happiness is due him for what he has sacrificed, somewhat increased, if anything, on account of the unnatural virtue he has displayed.[170]To be self-sacrificing is to "lay up" merit, and this achievement must surely be rewarded with happiness—if not now, then later. Those who habitually live on the basis of conscious self-denial are likely to be exorbitant in the demands which they make on some one near them, some member of their family or some friend; likely to blame others if their own "virtue" does not secure for itself an exacting attention which reduces others to the plane of servility. Often the doctrine of self-sacrifice leads to an inverted hedonism: we are to be good—that is, to forego pleasure—now, that we may have a greater measure of enjoyment in some future paradise of bliss. Or, the individual who has taken vows of renunciation is entitled by that very fact to represent spiritual authority on earth and to lord it over others.

The idea that morality consists in an unbridled assertion of self, in its forceful aggressive manifestation, rarely receives consistent theoretical formulation—possibly because most men are so ready to act upon it practically that explicit acknowledgment would be a hindrance ratherthan a help to the idea. But it is a doctrine which tends to be invoked more or less explicitly as a reaction from the impotency of the self-denial dogma. In reference to some superior individual or class, some leader or group of aristocratically ordained leaders, it is always a more or less conscious principle. Concerning these it is held that ordinary morality holds eventually only for the "common herd," the activities of the leader being amenable to a higher law than that of common morality.[171]Moreover, since the self-sacrifice morality is almost never carried out consistently—that is, to the point of monastic asceticism,—much popular morality is an unbalanced combination of self-sacrifice in some regards and ruthless self-assertion in others. It is not "practicable" to carry out the principle of self-denial everywhere; it is reserved for the family life, for special religious duties; in business (which is business, not morals), the proper thing is aggressive and unremitting self-assertion. In business, the end is success, to "make good"; weakness is failure, and failure is disgrace, dishonor. Thus in practice the two conceptions of self-denial in one region and self-assertion in another mutually support each other. They give occasion for the more or less unformulated, yet prevalent, idea that moral considerations (those of self-denial) apply to a limited phase of life, but have nothing to do with other regions in which accordingly the principle of "efficiency" (that is, personal success, wealth, power obtained in competitive victory) holds supreme sway.

Recently, however, there has sprung up a so-called "naturalistic" school of ethics which has formulated explicitly the principle of self-assertion, and which claims to find scientific sanction for it in the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin. Evolution, it says, is the great thing, and evolution means thesurvival of the fit in the struggle forexistence. Nature's method of progress is precisely, so it is said, ruthless self-assertion—to the strong the victory, to the victorious the spoils, and to the defeated, woe. Nature affords a scene of egoistic endeavor or pressure, suffer who may, of struggle to get ahead, that is, ahead of others, even by thrusting them down and out. But the justification of this scene of rapine and slaughter is that out of it comes progress, advance, everything that we regard as noble and fair. Excellence is the sign of excelling; the goal means outrunning others. The morals of humility, of obedience to law, of pity, sympathy, are merely a self-protective device on the part of the weak who try to safeguard their weakness by setting fast limitations to the activities of the truly strong (compare what was said of the not dissimilar doctrine among the Greeks, pp. 120-22). But the truly moral man, in whom the principle of progress is embodied, will break regardlessly through these meshes and traps. He will carry his own plans through to victorious achievement. He is the super-man. The mass of men are simply food for his schemes, valuable as furnishing needed material and tools.[172]

Practical Vogue of the Underlying Idea.—Such a theory, in and of itself, is a literary diversion for those who, not being competent in the fields of outer achievement, amuse themselves by idealizing it in writing. Like most literary versions of science, it rests upon a pseudo-science, a parody of the real facts. But at a time when economic conditions are putting an extraordinary emphasis upon outward achievement, upon success in manipulating natural and social resources, upon "efficiency" in exploiting both inanimate energies and the minds and bodies of other persons, the underlying principle of this theory has a sanction and vogue which is out of all proportion to the number of those who consciously entertain it as a theory. For a healthy mind, the frank statement and facing of the theory is its best criticism. Its bald brutalism flourishes freely only when covered and disguised. But in view of the forces at present, and especially in America, making for a more or less unconscious acceptance of its principle in practice, it may be advisable to say something (1) regarding its alleged scientific foundation, and (2) the inadequacy of its conception of efficiency.

1. The Theory Exaggerates the Rôle of Antagonistic Competitive Struggle in the Darwinian Theory.—(a) The initial step in any "progress" isvariation; this is not so much struggleagainstother organisms, as it isinventionor discovery of somenewway of acting, involving better adaptation of hitherto merely latent natural resources, use of some possible food or shelter not previously utilized. The struggle against other organisms at work preserves from elimination a species already fixed—quite a different thing from the variation which occasions the introduction of a higher or more complex species. (b) Moreover, so far as the Darwinian theory is concerned, the "struggle for existence" may take any conceivable form; rivalry in generosity, in mutual aid and support, may be the kind of competition best fitted to enable a species to survive. It not only may be so, but it is so within certain limits. The rage for survival, for power, must not be asserted indiscriminately; the mate of the other sex, the young, to some extent other individuals of the same kin, are spared, or, in many cases, protected and nourished.[173](c) The higher the form of life, themoreeffective the two methods just suggested: namely, the method of intelligence in discovering and utilizing new methods, tools, and resources as substituted for the direct method of brute conflict; and the method of mutual protection and care substituted for mutual attack and combat. It is among the lower forms of life, not as the theory would require among the higher types, that conditions approximate its picture of the gladiatorial show. The higher species among the vertebrates, as among insects (like ants and bees), are the "sociable" kinds. It is sometimes argued that Darwinism carried into morals would abolish charity: all care of the hopelessly invalid, of the economically dependent, and in general of all the weak and helpless except healthy infants. It is argued that our current standards are sentimental and artificial, aiming to make survive those who are unfit, and thus tending to destroy the conditions that make for advance, and to introduce such as make towards degeneration. But this argument (1) wholly ignores the reflex effect of interest in those who are ill and defective in strengthening social solidarity—in promoting those ties and reciprocal interests which are as much the prerequisites of strong individual characters as they are of a strong social group. And (2) it fails to take into account the stimulus to foresight, to scientific discovery, and practical invention, which has proceeded from interest in the helpless, the weak, the sick, the disabled, blind, deaf, and insane. Taking the most coldly scientific view, the gains in these two respects have, through the growth of social pity, of care for the unfortunate, been purchased more cheaply than we can imagine their being bought in any other way. In other words, the chief objection to this "naturalistic" ethics is that it overlooks the fact that, even from the Darwinian point of view, the humananimalis ahumananimal. It forgets that the sympathetic and social instincts, those which cause the individual to take the interests ofothers for his own and thereby to restrain his sheer brute self-assertiveness, are the highest achievements, the high-water mark of evolution. The theory urges a systematic relapse to lower and foregone stages of biological development.

2. Its Conception of "Power," "Efficiency," "Achievement" is Perverse.—Compared with the gospel of abstinence, of inefficiency, preached by the self-denial school, there is an element of healthy reaction in any ethical system which stresses positive power, positive success, positive attainment. Goodness has been too much identified with practical feebleness and ineptitude; strength and solidity of accomplishment, with unscrupulousness. But power for the sake of power is as unreal an abstraction as self-denial for the sake of sacrifice, or self-restraint for the sake of the mere restraint. Erected into a central principle, it takes means for end—the fallacy of all materialism. It makes little of many of the most important and excellentinherent ingredientsof happiness in its eagerness to masterexternal conditionsof happiness. Sensitive discrimination of complex and refined distinctions of worth, such as good taste, the resources of poetry and history, frank and varied social converse among intellectual equals, the humor of sympathetic contemplation of the spectacle of life, the capacity to extract happiness from solitude and society, from nature and from art:—all of these, as well as the more obvious virtues of sympathy and benevolence, are swept aside for one coarse undiscriminating ideal of external activity, measured by sheer quantity of external changes made and external results accumulated. Of such an ideal we may say, as Mill said, that the judge of good, of happiness, is the one who has experienced its various forms; and that as "no intelligent person would consent to be a fool" on account of the pleasures of the fool, so no man of cultivated spirit would consent to be a lover of "efficiency" and "power" for thesake of brute command of the external commodities of nature and man.

Present Currency of This Ideal.—In spite of the extraordinary currency of this ideal at present, there is little fear that it will be permanently established. Human nature is too rich and varied in its capacities and demands; the world of nature and society is too fruitful in sources of stimulus and interest for man to remain indefinitely content with the idea of power for power's sake, command of means for the mere sake of the means. Humanity has long lived a precarious and a stunted life because of its partial and easily shaken hold on natural resources. Starved by centuries of abstinence enforced through lack of control of the forces and methods of nature, taught the gospel of the merit of abstention, it is not surprising that it should be intoxicated when scientific discovery bears its fruit of power in utilization of natural forces, or that, temporarily unbalanced, it should take the external conditions of happiness for happiness itself. But when the values of material acquisition and achievement become familiar they will lose the contrast value they now possess; and human endeavor will concern itself mainly with the problem of rendering its conquests in power and efficiency tributary to the life of intelligence and art and of social communication.[174]Such a moral idealism will rest upon a more secure and extensive natural foundation than that of the past, and will be more equitable in application and saner in content than that with which aristocracies have made us familiar. It will be a democratic ideal, a good for all, not for a noble class; and it will include, not exclude, those physical and physiological factors which aristocratic idealisms have excluded as common and unclean.

For the last three centuries, the most discussed point in English ethical literature (save perhaps whether moral knowledge is intuitive or derived from experience) has been the relation of regard for one's own self and for other selves as motives of action—"the crux of all ethical speculation," Spencer terms it. All views have been represented: (a) that man naturally acts from purely selfish motives and that morality consists in an enforced subjection of self-love to the laws of a common social order, (b) That man is naturally selfish, while morality is an "enlightened selfishness," or a regard for self based upon recognition of the extent to which its happiness requires consideration of others. (c) That the tendencies of the agent are naturally selfish, but that morality is the subjection of these tendencies to the law of duty. (d) That man's interests are naturally partly egoistic and partly sympathetic, while morality is a compromise or adjustment of these tendencies. (e) That man's interests are naturally both, and morality a subjection of both to conscience as umpire. (f) That they are both, while morality is a subjection of egoistic to benevolent sentiments. (g) That the individual's interests are naturally in objective ends which primarily are neither egoistic nor altruistic; and these ends become either selfish or benevolent at special crises, at which times morality consists in referring them, equally and impartially for judgment, to a situation in whichthe interests of the self and of others concerned are involved:to a common good.

Three Underlying Psychological Principles.—We shall make no attempt to discuss these various views in detail; but will bring into relief some of the factors in the discussion which substantiate the view (g) stated last. It will be noted that the theories rank themselves under three heads with reference to the constitution of man's tendencies: holding they (1) naturally have in view personal ends exclusively or all fall under the principle of self-love or self-regard; that (2) some of them contemplate one's own happiness and some of them that of others; that (3) primarily they are notconsciouslyconcerned with either one's own happiness or that of others. Memory and reflection may show (just as it shows other things) that their consequences affect both the self and others, when the recognition of this fact becomes an additional element, either for good or for evil, in the motivation of the act. We shall consider, first, the various senses in which action occurs, or is said to occur, in behalf of the person's own self; and then take up, in similar fashion, its reference to the interests of others.

I. Action in Behalf of Self.—1.Motives as Selfish: The Natural Selfishness of Man is maintained from such different standpoints and with such different objects in view that it is difficult to state the doctrine in any one generalized form. By some theologians, it has been associated with an innate corruption or depravity of human nature and been made the basis of a demand for supernatural assistance to lead a truly just and benevolent life. By Hobbes (1588-1679) it was associated with the anti-social nature of individuals and made the basis for a plea for a strong and centralized political authority[175]to control the natural "war of all against all" which flows inevitably from the psychological egoism. By Kant, it was connected with the purely sense origin of desires, and made the basis for a demand for the complete subordination of desire to duty as a motive for action. Morals, like politics, make strange bedfellows! The common factor in these diverse notions, however, is that every act of a self must, when left to itsnaturalor psychological course, have the interest of the self in view; otherwise there would be no motive for the deed and it would not be done. This theoretical anda prioriview is further supported by pointing out, sometimes in reprobation of man's sinful nature, sometimes in a more or less cynical vein, the lurking presence of some subtle regard for self in acts that apparently are most generous and "disinterested."[176]

Ambiguity of the Psychological Basis.—The notion that all action is "for the self" is infected with the same ambiguity as the (analogous) doctrine that all desire is for happiness. Like that doctrine, in one sense it is a truism, in another a falsity—this latter being the sense in which its upholders maintain it. Psychologically, any object that moves us, any object in which we imagine our impulses to rest satisfied or to find fulfillment,becomes, in virtue of that fact, a factor in the self. If I am enough interested in collecting postage stamps, a collection of postage stamps becomes a part of my "ego," which is incomplete and restless till filled out in that way. If my habits are such that I am not content when I know my neighbor is suffering from a lack of food until I have relieved him, then relief of his suffering becomes a part of my selfhood. If my desires are such that I have no rest of mind until I have beaten my competitor in business, or have demonstrated my superiority in social gifts by putting my fellow at some embarrassing disadvantage,then that sort of thing constitutes my self. Our instincts, impulses, and habits all demand appropriate objects in order to secure exercise and expression; and these ends in their office of furnishing outlet and satisfaction to our powers form a cherished part of the "me." In this sense it is true, and a truism, that all action involves the interest of self.

True and False Interpretation.—But this doctrine is the exact opposite of that intended by those who claim that all action is from self-love. The true doctrine says,the self is constituted and developed through instincts and interests which are directed upon their own objects with no conscious regard necessarily for anything except those objects themselves. The false doctrine implies that the selfexists by itself apart from these objective ends, and that they are merely means for securing it a certain profit or pleasure.

Suppose, for example, it is a case of being so disturbed in mind by the thought of another in pain that one is moved to do something to relieve him. This means that certain native instincts or certain acquired habits demand relief of others as part of themselves. The well-being of the other is an interest of the self: is a part of the self. This is precisely what is meant ordinarily by unselfishness: not lack or absence of a self, butsucha self as identifies itself in action with others' interests and hence is satisfied only when they are satisfied. To find pain in the thought of others pained and to take pleasure in the thought of their relief, is to have and to be moved by personal motives, by states which are "selfish" in the sense of making up the self; but which are the exact opposite of selfish in the sense of being the thought of some private advantage to self.[177]Putting it roundly, then, the fallacyof the selfish motive theory is that it fails to see thatinstincts and habits directed upon objects are primary, and that they come before any conscious thought of self as end, since they are necessary to the constitution of that thought.

The following quotation from James[178]states the true doctrine:

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